This Mindset Coach Explains Your Fear Of Success

You want to start a business. The idea’s there. You know what you need to do. But you’re not doing it.

Instead, you’re rearranging pillows on the couch…

Mowing the lawn…

Organizing your desk for the third time this week…

Anything but the thing you actually need to do.

That feeling boiling up inside, “What if I can’t do it? What if I fail?”, that’s what we’re tackling today.

Valentina is a certified hypnotherapist and mindset coach who’s worked with dozens of people in the Dropship Breakthru community (and beyond).

She’s spoken at Ben and Jon’s events three times, and she’s here to talk about the mental demons that stop people from starting and what to actually do about them.

This isn’t woo-woo BS.

This is about recognizing the patterns holding you back and doing something about it.

What Even Is a Mindset Coach?

Let’s clear this up right away because some people hear “mindset coach” and immediately think of crystals and manifestation boards.

Valentina’s definition: A mindset coach helps you understand what your mind is doing when you’re trying to start a business, build relationships, or navigate any major life change. It’s about your internal state and how you react to the situations you’re in.

She uses hypnosis, not the “quit smoking” or stage hypnosis you’re thinking of.

It’s essentially guided meditation to help you identify patterns, understand where they came from, and rewire them.

The real question: What is your mind doing, and what is your internal being doing when you’re trying to take action?

For most people starting a business, the answer is: self-sabotaging like crazy.

Valentina’s Story: From Nurse to Hypnotherapist

Valentina’s been helping people for a long time. She’s from Chile, got certified in holistic massage in her early 20s, moved to the US, became a licensed massage therapist, and ran her own practice for over a decade.

Then her dad got acute myeloid leukemia. That pushed her into nursing school.

She became an RN, worked in healthcare for five years, but something was always missing.

She knew her purpose was to serve and help people, she just hadn’t found the right modality yet.

The turning point: Elliot Roe (Ben’s coach, and now Valentina’s mentor) introduced her to hypnotherapy.

That’s when everything clicked.

The physical body (massage), the science (nursing), the energy work, and now the mind, it all came together.

Her Own Session Changed Everything

Before becoming a hypnotherapist, Valentina did a session with Elliot. She was going through a bad breakup and grieving the loss of her grandmother. She was drowning in grief.

In that session, Elliot helped her see patterns she’d been repeating her whole life:

• Severe people-pleasing
• Really low self-esteem
• Daddy issues (her dad wasn’t involved in her life starting at age 6)

The breakthrough moment:

Elliot asked if she realized she was dating people she could control.

People who had to depend on her. That way, she decided when the relationship ended, not them.

She couldn’t be left if she was always the one who left.

Five months after that session, she met her husband.

That’s the power of doing the work.

What Are People Actually Scared Of?

When someone’s trying to start a business but can’t seem to pull the trigger, what’s actually happening?

First, let’s normalize this: It’s normal to feel something when you step outside your comfort zone. The question isn’t whether you’ll feel fear, it’s what you’ll do with it.

Will that fear paralyze you, or will it push you forward?

Fear of Failure

This is the big one. But “fear of failure” isn’t really about failing. It’s about what failure means:

• Increased judgment (“People will think I’m an idiot”)
• Disappointing someone (“I’ll let my family down”)
• Challenging your self-worth (“Does this mean I’m not good enough?”)

Failure feels like proof that you were right to doubt yourself all along.

Fear of Success

People say “of course I want to be successful!” but there’s an underlying terror about what success actually brings:

• Increased demand on your life
• More responsibility
• Visibility (this is huge)

That visibility piece stops people cold. They’ll only talk about their business when it’s making “enough” money because then they can say “I made it, everything’s good.”

When you’re in the trenches? Nobody wants to talk about it. What if people judge you? What if it fails and everyone watched it happen?

Growth = Danger (To Your Nervous System)

At a nervous system level, your body interprets growth as danger. You’re leaving the familiar. The safe. The known.

So your nervous system kicks in with self-sabotaging behaviors to “protect” you:

• Procrastination (the big one)
• Hiding behind information (“I need to research more before I start”)
• Perfectionism (“It’s not ready yet”)
• Overdoing (working on everything except the thing that actually matters)

These aren’t character flaws. They’re survival mechanisms. But once you’re aware of them, they’re not an excuse anymore.

What Does “Doing the Work” Actually Mean?

People throw around phrases like “do the work” or “you need to work on your mindset” and if you’re on the outside, it sounds like meaningless jargon.

So let’s be specific.

Doing the work means: Dealing with the emotional part. When resistance comes up, what do you do with it?

Some people use breathwork. Some go to therapy.

Valentina uses hypnosis to go to the subconscious level and rewire old thought patterns.

But here’s the key: Are you regulated or dysregulated?

Are you functioning from alignment or not?

Are you expanded or contracted?

When you notice resistance, your chest feels heavy, you can’t breathe, your stomach hurts, that’s your body contracting.

That’s your nervous system saying “danger.”

Doing the work means:

1. Noticing when that happens
2. Not just giving in to the fear and going to fold laundry instead
3. Sitting with it and asking: “Am I safe in this moment to do this thing?”

Why Working With Someone Helps

You can do some of this alone. You can journal. You can notice patterns. You can sit with discomfort.

But here’s why working with someone (a coach, therapist, hypnotherapist) is valuable:

You can’t see your own blind spots.

When you’re lying to yourself about why you’re not taking action, someone else can call you on it. When you’re making excuses that sound totally reasonable in your head, someone else can say “I see this differently.”

Plus, when you work with someone, you can’t bypass the hard stuff. You have to deal with it.

Tracing Back to the Root

A lot of what Valentina does in hypnosis is tracing feelings back to a specific memory, usually from childhood.

Ben shares an example: His grandma told him when he was young that he’d never be successful because “we’re Connecticut Dolls, we’re poor.”

He doesn’t even remember it happening consciously, but that moment stunted him. It made him believe he couldn’t achieve what he wanted.

Until he went back and dealt with it, that belief was running in the background sabotaging everything.

The point: Most of your self-sabotage isn’t coming from your current circumstances. It’s coming from programming that got installed years ago.

The Employee to Founder Identity Shift

Most people listening to this have a job. At some point, if they’re successful, they’ll face the choice: stay an employee or become a founder.

This is more than just a career change. It’s an identity shift.

When you’re an employee, you:

• See yourself as an employee (it’s part of your identity)
• Get external validation from your boss
• Don’t have to trust your own judgment on everything
• Have a safety net

When you’re a founder, you:

• Are in a leadership position (even if you don’t think of yourself as a leader)
• Have to make tough calls with no external validation
• Have to trust your own judgment
• Have no safety net

The Authority Problem

Valentina sees this constantly: people who start businesses but still treat them like they’re employees.

They people-please with suppliers (treating brands like “mom and dad” they don’t want to disappoint). They’re scared to make tough calls with employees.

They won’t fire someone who clearly isn’t working out because they don’t want to hurt feelings.

Ben’s take: We’re indoctrinated into being employees our whole lives. We sit in school, please our teachers, get good grades. We’re not trained to be in control or make decisions. We’re trained to follow instructions.

When you start a business, you have to flip that switch. But most people don’t even realize they need to.

Leadership Is a Skill

Jon points out something critical: We don’t teach people to be leaders in normal life.

Most people think you’re only a leader if you’re leading a big group.

The president is a leader.

A CEO of 500 people is a leader.

But the owner of a 2-person business? They don’t think of themselves that way.

But you are a leader the moment you start a business. Even if it’s just you. And leadership is a skill you can learn.

You have to connect with that identity. You have to see yourself as someone who makes decisions, takes responsibility, and handles uncertainty.

Does the Fear Ever Go Away?

Short answer: No.

Ben’s been in business for 11 years. He still procrastinates. He still wonders if he’s doing enough, if he’s good enough, if he’s reaching his potential. He still worries about laying on his deathbed thinking “why didn’t I give it my all?”

The demons don’t disappear. You just get better at managing them.

Jon’s been doing this for 12 years. People ask him how he keeps going after all the challenges.

His answer?

He just keeps replacing old fears with new fears. The pain of going backward is so great that he keeps moving forward.

What Changes With the Work

Valentina’s point: The triggers don’t go away. Life keeps throwing hurdles at you. As your business grows, the hurdles get bigger.

$0 to $1M in sales? Lots of hurdles.

$1M to $3M? New set of hurdles.

$3M to $10M? Even bigger ones.

What changes is:

• The intensity of your reaction decreases
• You recover faster
• You can regulate your nervous system better
• You’re not emotionally hijacked when problems come up

You’re not eliminating the problems. You’re changing how you react to them.

Clean Fuel vs. Dirty Fuel

Ben describes two types of motivation:

Dirty fuel: Anger, resentment, “I’ll prove them all wrong,” chip-on-your-shoulder energy. It works. You can burn a lot of midnight oil on dirty fuel. But it feels… dirty.

Clean fuel: Being pulled toward something greater. Having a purpose. For Ben, having kids changed this. It’s a cleaner-burning fuel. More genuine.

Valentina sees both types of fuel in her clients. Some are running away from pain. Some are running toward a vision.

The key: Eventually, you want to channel that energy productively. Anger and resentment can get you started, but they’re not sustainable long-term.

What to Do If You’re Paralyzed by Fear Right Now

If you’re listening to this and you want to start something but you’re frozen, here’s what Valentina says:

Ask yourself: What’s your why?

Why do you want this? What outcome are you trying to achieve?

• More freedom?
• More time with your family?
• Financial security?
• Autonomy?

Is that why big enough to push you past the resistance?

Because here’s the truth: You don’t have to do this. You can stay comfortable. You can stay an employee forever if you want. That’s fine. It’s a valid choice.

But if you want something different, you have to push through the resistance. That’s where freedom is. On the other side of that fear.

Not everyone will choose entrepreneurship, and that’s okay. But if you do choose it, you have to acknowledge that discomfort is part of the deal.

The Modalities: What Actually Works

If you can’t afford to work with someone like Valentina (or Elliot, who’s priced himself out of most people’s budgets at this point), what can you do?

Valentina recommends:

1. Breathwork – Amazing for letting go of emotions without having to talk about them
2. Hypnosis – Reprogramming subconscious patterns, establishing new neural pathways
3. Talk therapy – Traditional therapy can be great for some people
4. Meditation – Building awareness of your internal state
5. Psychedelics (with proper support) – The “nuclear option”

The Psychedelic Conversation

Ben and Jon are both fans of using psilocybin (mushrooms) or similar substances as a tool for deep work, when done responsibly, with proper dosing, in the right setting, with clean substances.

Ben’s description: Think about that one thing you almost never let yourself think about because it hurts too much. You only let yourself be there for 0.2 seconds before you shut it down.

On psychedelics, you’re going to stare at that thing for two hours.

Valentina’s take: There’s a place for medicinal therapies. Psilocybin can be powerful. But it’s not for everyone. Some people don’t want to take their mind to that place.

The key with psychedelics: Integration. What are you doing with the experience afterward? How are you processing what came up? That’s where working with someone helps.

Jon’s approach is less structured (he grew up doing these things regularly and never had someone telling him “you need to be ready to look at yourself”). Valentina thinks the integration piece is critical for therapeutic use.

Emotional Capacity and Burnout

Here’s something most people in business never talk about: emotional capacity.

Valentina can only take 4 clients per day. More than that, and she’s emotionally exhausted. She can’t show up for her family. She can’t be present with her 1-year-old or her husband.

Jon’s take: This is something people should pay more attention to.

Your business can become addictive (there’s a lot of dopamine in wins). It’s easy to let it consume you.

If you’re snappy with your kids, dismissive of your partner, not present at family dinners, that’s a sign you’ve exhausted your emotional capacity. You don’t have enough left in the tank to operate as a human outside of work.

Valentina’s advice:

• Know your limits and set boundaries
• Schedule your meditation time, family time, and block it off
• Respect those times (this actually helps you enter flow state more easily)
• Watch your mood and presence—if you’re in a bad mood constantly, you’re approaching burnout

If you have a family, they’re your canary in the coal mine. How you show up for them tells you if you’re pushing yourself too hard at work.

The Bottom Line

Starting a business brings up all your shit. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Imposter syndrome. Self-sabotage.

These feelings are normal. Everyone has them. The question is: what will you do with them?

You can let them paralyze you. You can keep rearranging pillows and mowing the lawn and “doing research” forever.

Or you can sit with the discomfort, do the work (whatever modality resonates with you), and push through.

The fear doesn’t go away. But you get better at managing it. You recover faster. You don’t let it run your life.

And if you’re stuck in patterns you can’t see, find someone who can help you see them. A coach. A therapist. A hypnotherapist. Someone who can call you on your bullshit when you’re lying to yourself.

Because the only thing between you and starting is you.