Embracing Authenticity and Action for Personal Empowerment with Chelsey Ritson

Have you ever felt stuck in a cycle of perfectionism and self-sabotage, only to realize that the key to unlocking your potential was through authenticity and daily action? That's exactly what Chelsey Ritson discusses with me, Nicole, as we explore the transformative power of becoming the face of your brand, finding strength in vulnerability, and harnessing gratitude for personal and professional growth.

From the scenic vistas of Australia's Gold Coast, Chelsey brings to the table her personal brand expertise and her enlightening journey towards empowerment. We tackle the challenging transition from presenting a polished persona to embracing the raw, real you that resonates with audiences. My own evolution in social media, switching from scripted videos to engaging, off-the-cuff live streams, showcases how authenticity fosters true connection. Chelsey and I also dissect the interplay of confidence and competence, and how celebrating our achievements can open doors to new opportunities.

Wrapping up our heart-to-heart, Chelsey and I share insights on managing energy for entrepreneurs and the power of listening to one's intuition. We reflect on the dangers of 'toxic gratefulness' and the importance of flipping the script on our perceived flaws to uncover their hidden value. This episode isn't just a conversation; it's an invitation to join a community eager to support and inspire each other in business and beyond. So, tune in, take notes, and let's keep the dialogue going online, where your insights and questions can make the conversation even richer.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

So there, everyone, and welcome back to the overcome yourself podcast. So you know, my name is Nicole and I'm so excited to be here today with Chelsea, chelsea, emma, and she's coming to us from literally halfway across the world. So take it away, chelsea, and introduce yourself. Tell us who you are and what you do, who you help.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Hello Nicole, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate that and, yes, I'm tuning in from the very sunny Gold Coast in Australia. It's on the East Coast of Australia and it's beautiful, beautiful here. We have sun every day in winter and I just absolutely love it. I'm a heat seeker If for anyone who relates to that I don't do cold, so I'm very happy to move here. A few years ago, my name yes, so my name is Chelsea Emma Ritzen. I help personal brands. I help women who run their own businesses, who are the face of their businesses, to show up powerfully and confidently online so that they can attract in their most ideal clients and align clients with what they do.

Speaker 1: 1:03

That is amazing. That's incredible. So tell us a little bit about your journey. Did you overcome yourself in any way as you were making this your career? Like tell us about that journey.

Speaker 2: 1:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:18

So I thought that question was was so big because, like I just said before we started recording, business is the biggest personal growth journey you will ever go on if you ever want to start a business.

Speaker 2: 1:28

You got to be prepared to grow, you got to be prepared to overcome so many things about yourself, about the way that you think, about life is so many things that you have to overcome, and I think the most recent one I was thinking about this earlier I think the most recent one, that recent moment that I had to overcome myself, was a period where I realized that I had been going for quite a while and I hadn't been seeing big changes and big shifts and big results. And I got to a point where I felt so crap, like I felt so crap in myself, and I realized that those moments and the feelings that we get from our body, the feelings that we get around that are actually just communication, and I realized that something was wrong, something was out of alignment, and I reached out for help from a coach and I worked with him to realize and I as, alongside that, I also started reading the book existential kink, which have you read that one, nicole?

Speaker 1: 2:28

I haven't read it yet, but it keeps coming up and so that one is on my list to read because people keep recommending it to me. So tell us about that.

Speaker 2: 2:35

Yeah, that's exactly what happened to me as well. I've been like, oh, you need to read this book. I'm like, yeah, okay, you know, I take that with a grain of salt because books can change people's lives in different ways. But when multiple people recommend the same book, that's when you know okay, especially if you're, if you are more like spiritual, you believe in signs and like I do, it's like okay if something is is given, recommended to me, assigns, given to me more than three times, I know that that's meant for me. So I said, okay, I picked up that book and it dives into any kind of like enjoyment.

Speaker 2: 3:08

It's a hard concept to grasp, but any kind of enjoyment that you might get out of doing the things that don't feel good or out of attracting the things that don't feel conventionally good in a similar way to like kink in the other other realm and the more in the in the realm that you hear that word more it's like something that's bad that actually feels good. And so one thing that I had to overcome and I realized that there, I realized that working with the coach was that there was an element of responsibility, of lack of responsibility, that I actually enjoyed. But I've been demonizing that. I've been demonizing that. I've been demonizing that. I've been taking responsibility of myself because you know you're supposed to take responsibility, you're supposed to. If you don't take responsibility, that's bad, like that's wrong, and especially in business, especially when you are the face of your brand, when, especially when you're the one working with the responsibility for their lives, that element of like oh crap, that huge realization that I had, oh, my goodness, I think that I'm finding enjoyment in not taking responsibility.

Speaker 2: 4:12

So after doing that, I had to overcome so many things in my mind about that the judgment, the criticism, the thoughts about what that meant about me, and just continually let those things go. And the biggest piece here was giving myself so much compassion for just having a human experience, because that's all this is. We're just having a human experience as a soul, as a spirit, and I just had to keep dropping into that compassion. And through doing that and through really deeply accepting that part of myself, I overcame the parts of myself that I was holding myself back through, secretly enjoying a lack of responsibility. I overcame all of the self sabotage behaviors that came along with that and I stepped.

Speaker 2: 5:00

Can I, can I swear on the on your show. Yeah, okay, I stepped the fuck up and I and I think that's like that's the most powerful way to say it I stepped the fuck up and I took responsibility and I started to take action every single day. Bigger actions, bigger actions, bigger actions, putting myself out there even more. And anytime that little voice started to creep in of like, oh, you know probably best to just not do anything today and switch on Netflix and crawl into bed, I was like, no, that's not me, that is not what I'm about, and I overcame so much within that and it's. It's opened up a huge realm of possibility and also results, because action creates results and clarity, as well, oh, I love that.

Speaker 1: 5:46

I love that so much. Now, gratitude to gratitude, to play a part of this journey, like practicing gratitude.

Speaker 2: 5:54

Yeah, I would say so. I've been in the entrepreneur space for about six years and I had been starting yes, I've been starting different online businesses and all of that kind of stuff and seeing how that all works. I started my first gratitude practice. I think that was in 2019. I'm going to say I got a gratitude journal gifted to me and that was the first introduction to gratitude, and I did the gratitude journal every single day for six months.

Speaker 2: 6:22

Now people say habit building comes over 21 days or so. I would say it's longer, but definitely you want to give yourself a shorter timeframe, because if I told myself I'd do that for six months, probably would have been. I did that journal every day for six months and then I started to see how my life's changed in the way that you know. I'd be washing my hands in the sink and be like, wow, I am so grateful to have clean running water straight from this tap to wash my hands with, and I love having clean hands, so extra grateful that I know and yeah, and since then, gratitude has been, yes, absolutely fundamental as part of my life, as part of what I do, as part of how I show up. So it's, I believe gratitude is now very deeply ingrained in me and in my core that it is always and consistently playing a part in in the way that I show up and everything that I do.

Speaker 1: 7:16

Yes, and like those are some of the big themes in my book.

Speaker 1: 7:20

Like that, we start off with gratitude.

Speaker 1: 7:22

I love how. And then I love how you incorporated habits, because that's part two of my book right, it was learning how to incorporate practicing gratitude as a habit, and those little things that I do as a teacher and one of the things that my coach tells us all the time is that it takes 21 days to establish a habit, but it's going to take three to six months to start seeing the like, the seeds sprouting from those habits of consistent action, you know, and so I think it's so important that, but that we focus on not the six months, but that the one day at a time. All you've got to do is write three things down one day at a time, that's it. That's the whole, that's the whole mission three things every day and just breaking it down into those baby steps. I know that you help entrepreneurs with social media, so can you talk to us a little bit about how this all ties back into social media and being our authentic selves, because we hear that a lot. But what does that mean?

Speaker 2: 8:23

Yeah, absolutely, and I, like I've been. I started my last business, so I'm in Australia, but I lived in New Zealand before this. I am a New Zealander by passport but British by birth, so if anyone's like, where the heck is this accent from, it's all over, don't even worry about it. But my last business in New Zealand was around social media coaching for for business owners, and so I was helping business owners to understand social media and show up effectively, and in doing that, I needed to get on video on social media myself, because that's around the time that video was starting to become a real thing online. And so I showed up and I was like, okay, everything needs to be perfect, I need to have the right lighting, I need to have a clear skin and my hair needs to look good, I need to have a professional camera and to have a script. Like all of that is where I started, and it's gone from that all the way through to me being like, oh my gosh, you know I'm exhausted. I've just gone for like a beach walk, my hair's messy, and I'm feeling like really tired. But I have something to say and, gosh darn it, I'll say it. So I hop on a live on on social media and I'll just share what I need to say, because and the difference between those two things is authenticity, is confidence, and it is also around messaging, and so I would say those three things is what I'll talk into now. When you can get the right messaging, then you can really own your social media, and that is a huge element and huge part of what I help my clients with is like using the right language to get people over the line. It's powerful, it's so powerful, but apart from that, it's just around who are you and how are you showing up and what is that confident version of yourself that is possible for you?

Speaker 2: 10:07

And if you're not feeling confident online, if you're not feeling confident about putting yourself out there online, the biggest thing that I would say is action, and action cures fear and competence builds confidence. And so if you are someone who's like, oh, I just don't know, I'm not sure, maybe I'll just think about it even more the fear is just going to sit there, it's going to brew, it's going to, it's going to, you know, like a, it's going to age, like a cheese might get moldy, I don't know. The fear will be there with you and it will just continue to grow. But taking action, no matter with what, even if that's a post with your face on it that is going to show you that, yes, you are safe, yes, you are still okay, you're not going to die, you're not in any immediate danger. You know all of those things. And so that's the biggest thing is taking action on whatever you're feeling doubt about, whatever you're feeling unsure about.

Speaker 2: 11:02

And then, as well as that, the competent side of things and I think that often doesn't get talked about enough Like people like yeah, okay, cool, I'll build up my confidence, I'll I'll. I'll just take the action and I'll do it. But competence plays a huge role in that, because if you are sharing a message like, for example, I'm talking about showing up online powerfully as a personal brand, if I wasn't already competent at that, it would be a lot harder for me to talk about. And I see that some people who are personal brands maybe let's talk life coaches who have not really coached, they haven't really been through a lot in their lives, but they did get a certification, and this is an area where I'm like okay, but you know, you need some experience, you need some some solid foundations here that they'll go online and be like, oh well, you know, this is the stuff I talked about in my certification and everything, but there's a real, a bit of a lack of competence there, and so if there's someone like out there doing that and they're not feeling confident, it could be a matter of building up your competence and showing yourself that you can get results for people, because once you can show yourself that you get results for people, obviously your confidence levels are going to go up.

Speaker 2: 12:14

Like I look at, sometimes obviously I'm human, right Like sometimes my confidence goes down. I'm like, oh, you know, what am I doing? Am I even getting results? Like, am I doing the right thing? And then I just go and look at my reviews, my testimonials, the clients that have gotten on video and given me incredible video testimonials, and I'm like, yes, I can do this. Of course I can do this, I do do this. And then it's like, cool, I have the competence, I have the proof for myself to build up that confidence as well, and so, yeah, and so when I talk about showing up on social media, there's basically three areas that I talk into its confidence, its content and its consistency, and so build up those three things will help you so much in going from crickets, going from nothing on social media all the way through to getting clients to social media.

Speaker 1: 13:05

Yes, that is gold, that is absolute gold. And something that is so important that you mentioned is there's a difference between confidence and competence. What book was it I was just reading? I read it recently, I'll think of the name, but it was discussing the difference between how, as women sometimes as women, we tend to underestimate our competence. So we have high competence but low confidence. And so, working on that confidence and then let's tie back in gratitude Gratitude helps us adjust our perspective so that we can look at those testimonials, so that we can see the amazing things that we've helped our clients to do our competence is there and we need to grow that confidence to be able to speak about those things.

Speaker 1: 13:55

So I've met a lot of people who were great, like you're already competent, right, and they're just not confident enough to talk about it. So it's practicing that gratitude to adjust your perspective so that you can appreciate those things and then you can talk about them, right. So, oh my God, that's just absolutely fantastic and it's just so important to differentiate those two things and understand that the loud people get the opportunities right and so we can be competent, but if we're not confident enough to put our voices out there like say I want this, we're not gonna get it, and so maybe people who are not as competent but they're more confident will get those roles right. So yeah, I absolutely love it. It's helping us as women. We need to support each other and really elevate ourselves, to see each other, to see ourselves better. I'm trying to think of the name of the book. That's why I'm kind of stumbling on my words. Ah, what was?

Speaker 2: 14:54

it. It's up to us. I really think of that. I also wanted to say something the confidence code that's what it is sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 15:02

Yes, yes, yeah, I know that one. I don't know if I've read it, but maybe it's on my list. You know what. You know, you've always got a list, the confidence code, nice, yeah, awesome, yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:13

And I wanted to say as well, on the on the side of gratitude and on the area of that and being like so grateful for all the wonderful things, I think that when building a gratitude practice, you also also really important to then be grateful for everything, and even the stuff that might be perceived as bad or wrong or or a failure as well, like, for example, especially if you are someone who's helping clients or serving clients and let's say that you and this actually happened to me the other week, so I can talk straight into it I had a, I had a discovery call with somebody and on the call she was telling me that all the ways that she wanted to to use social media to grow her business, and I was like awesome, and I was generating some ideas and thinking about the ways that I could help her in my new program and I was like, okay, that all sounds good, that all sounds great. She's like yes, I'm in, 100%, it sounds amazing. I said cool. So I said I'd email her all the details, and I did, and then I heard nothing. And this is the thing, the funniest thing is, when we were on the call, I had an intuitive feeling that she was not the right client for me. And I'm still, I'll still, I'm still learning when to listen to that feeling in different situations. Of course it's a practice and I have this intuitive feeling like it's a no, like it's not meant to be, and I was like, oh, shush, shush voice, she's so keen, you know, and. And so then she's like, yeah, cool, I'm in, so I send her the email with all the information and payment details and all of that kind of stuff. And then I heard nothing. And then she and I said, hey, I've just sent you an email, you know, just just to let you know. And she said, cool, and then she just sent me a text message back, and then that was it, and I didn't hear anything from her.

Speaker 2: 17:01

Funnily enough, I then ran into her at an event on the Saturday a few days later, and we said, hi and everything like that. Still hadn't heard anything back. But when I ran into her at that event on Saturday, that intuitive, that little voice that was there on the call. It came very loud and it was like no, she is not meant for you, she is not right for you. And I was like, oh crap, like that's real. Because I felt that when I saw her, like oh, my goodness, that's so real.

Speaker 2: 17:27

And to this day and this has just happened last week she has not contacted me or paid me. And I'm so grateful for that because I feel like now that now I know why, but sometimes we don't know why. But I can say now I do know why very soon. It's that she wasn't meant to be my client and I in. If I had a work with her, it would have been really challenging and really difficult and there was something was unaligned there. And so when things don't work out in the world of life or business, there's also like cool, because everything is always working out for me. I get to be grateful for this too, even if you don't have an immediate knowledge of why in that moment, like I did.

Speaker 1: 18:08

Yes, that's a whole chapter of my book too.

Speaker 1: 18:10

Oh my gosh, we are. Last section of the book is talking about seeing the superpower and what you thought was your weakness, and so, like, when I was little, I was told I talked too much, and now people pay me to talk to them, right, and so bringing it all together. So I absolutely love that example of being grateful for those things that we might not understand in the beginning, and so one of the questions that I ask in my book is dare I ask, how can I be grateful for this? And so when things happen and it's like this is not going well, how can I be grateful for this? Like, where is that silver lining? What can I look at?

Speaker 1: 18:53

How, even if it's, I'm grateful that I can get myself out of this, like you know what I mean, we don't have to be grateful because I read an article about toxic gratefulness and so we don't have to be grateful and keep ourselves in bad situations. We can even be grateful that we have the power to change those things. So I just wanted to mention that since I had just read about that. But I love, I absolutely love that example Listening to our intuition. I've had those clients to where I did not listen to my intuition, and it was not a good thing.

Speaker 2: 19:25

I was like I should have listened.

Speaker 1: 19:27

It was not worth that. So that's a fantastic example. Now, Chelsea, how can we get in touch with you? How can we work with you? Tell us about how we can follow you on social media.

Speaker 2: 19:39

Yeah, cool. So I would say the best place to find me is Instagram. I love showing up on Instagram, love my reels, you know. And so that's at Chelsea with the Y, c-h-e-l-s-e-y Emma underscore. That's my Instagram account and you can find all the information that you need to work with me there or give me a follow. And I would also love to know, like, if you go through my Instagram and you find me, send me a message and let me know your top takeaway from this episode or a question that you really want answered. I am there in my DMs. I'm happy to answer, so happy to share that information with you. If you're feeling stuck, if you're feeling like you're not sure what the next best thing is, forward, absolutely happy to answer you. Hop on a voice note and let you know my thoughts and guidance for that as well.

Speaker 1: 20:23

That is amazing, and all of those links are gonna be available down in the show notes, in the comments or if it is that you're watching. So check out the you know whatever's down there to get those links. And is there a free gift? We were talking about possibly a gift for the listeners, maybe.

Speaker 2: 20:40

Yeah, absolutely so if you do hop onto my Instagram and you send me a message, and I'd be happy to also send you a free gift. At the moment, my thinking is that I've just created a 101 content prompts document. So that's, if you run a personal brand, if you run a business, then I've got 101 content prompts for anyone to get stuck on creating content, and then if content isn't also an issue for you, then let me know as well. I'm not sure again when this will air, but if it's around the right timing, I've also got something else for you. So send me a message and let me know where you're at, and I will absolutely send you some stuff out for free.

Speaker 1: 21:17

Yes, that sounds amazing. So make sure you send her a message because, obviously, depending on when you listen to this, maybe it's 10 years from now and you're listening Be sure to tell Chelsea and see what she's got in store for you, because I'm sure it's going to be amazing. So thank you so so much for being here with us today, chelsea. It has been absolutely amazing. Any final tips for our audience before we sign off here.

Speaker 2: 21:43

I would say, if you're running a business and you're the face of your brand, the most important work that you can do is your internal work, anything that happens inside and I think that you know that. Nicole, it sounds like you're on a very similar wavelength here but ultimately, manage the fuck out of your energy, manage your energy, manage your energy, manage your energy and do that and, like you said, build your confidence to be aligned with your competence and you'll smash it like there's no holding you back. Once you realize how freaking powerful you are, there's no holding you back.

Speaker 1: 22:18

Yes, I love what you said stepping in like think about who is that confident version of you? And then just stepping into her, like there's no one that says you can't do that, there's no authority, there's no like committee that you've got to ask permission. You get to step into her. So I absolutely love it, thank you. Thank you so much, chelsea. We will see you on the World Wide Web and make sure you check out her links down below. See you next time.