Dear Black Woman,
You can be brilliant at what you do and still be getting in your own way.
You can have years of experience, a valuable skill, a good offer and a genuine desire to build something meaningful.
And still find yourself struggling to make progress.
When that happens, the advice is usually familiar.
Post more consistently. Improve your marketing. Fix your sales funnel. Get clearer on your niche.
And sometimes, that's exactly what you need.
But I've been thinking about something we don't discuss nearly enough in business-building conversations.
What if the problem isn't always your strategy? What if it's the way you're approaching the strategy?
The way you communicate. The way you make decisions. The way you respond to pressure. The way you work with other people.
The behaviours you've developed over years, some of which have served you extremely well.
Until they don't.
Here are five ways that might be showing up in your business.
1. Your perfectionism is delaying your progress
This often shows up in people who lead with the C style.
You tell yourself you have high standards.
And you probably do.
You've built a career on being thorough, dependable and producing excellent work.
But now you're trying to build a business, and those standards have started working against you.
The website isn't ready. The offer needs another revision. The presentation needs a little more work.
Meanwhile, someone with half your experience has put something into the market and is learning from actual customers.
Your commitment to quality is a strength.
But when quality becomes a reason never to release anything, it's worth examining.
2. You keep researching when you should be deciding
Common in the C and S styles.
You're the person who likes to understand things properly.
You compare options. You ask thoughtful questions. You think through the consequences.
All useful skills.
But there's a point where gathering more information becomes a very sophisticated form of avoidance.
Another course. Another strategy. Another expert's opinion.
Not because you lack intelligence, but perhaps because making a decision means accepting uncertainty.
And business comes with plenty of that.
3. You're selling the way you like to buy
Every style does this.
This one is particularly interesting.
Think about how you prefer people to communicate with you.
Maybe you want all the details. Evidence. A thorough explanation.
Or perhaps you prefer someone to get straight to the point and tell you what the outcome will be.
Now think about your sales conversations.
Are you automatically communicating with everyone the way you prefer to be communicated with?
You might be giving a potential client twenty minutes of explanation when what they really want to understand is the result.
Or jumping straight into the benefits when they need more time to ask questions and establish trust.
I'm a high I. I have caught myself telling stories to clients who just wanted the bottom line.
Good selling isn't about manipulating people or guessing their personality.
It's about paying attention, asking better questions and adapting your communication to what the other person actually needs.
4. Your independence has become a bottleneck
Common in people who lead with the D style.
You know how to get things done.
For years, people have relied on you because you're capable, resourceful and dependable.
And that's something to be proud of.
But there's a difference between being capable of doing everything and needing to do everything yourself.
Perhaps you struggle to delegate because nobody does it quite the way you would.
Perhaps asking for help feels uncomfortable.
Perhaps you've convinced yourself it's simply quicker to do it yourself.
And sometimes it is.
But if your business can only move forward when you're personally touching every part of it, you may have built yourself another job rather than the business you wanted.
5. You don't recognise who you become under pressure
Your DISC report includes a graph of exactly this: how you respond under pressure.
It's relatively easy to understand ourselves when things are going well.
The more revealing question is what happens when they aren't.
When a client challenges your price.
When a launch doesn't perform as expected.
When someone disagrees with your decision.
When the numbers aren't looking good.
Do you become controlling?
Do you withdraw?
Do you rush into another idea?
Do you start questioning every decision you've made?
None of these reactions automatically defines who you are. But noticing your patterns can help you respond more intentionally.
This is where self-awareness becomes a business skill
One of the tools I use to explore these questions is DISC.
DISC is a behavioural assessment framework that looks at four broad behavioural preferences: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness.
I use the Maxwell DISC approach, including an Entrepreneur Report that explores communication, working styles, leadership and selling preferences.
But here's something important.
DISC doesn't tell you whether you'll succeed in business.
It doesn't measure your intelligence, your expertise or your worth.
And it certainly doesn't mean every problem in your business can be explained by a personality profile.
It's a starting point for asking better questions about yourself.
The value comes from examining those insights against your actual experiences and making intentional changes.
Because understanding your behavioural preferences is useful.
Understanding what to do with that knowledge is where the work begins.
You are not starting over. You are building forward.
If you've spent ten, fifteen or twenty years becoming excellent at what you do, you already have something valuable.
But the next stage of your journey may require a different relationship with some of the habits that helped you get here.
Not because those habits are bad.
Because growth sometimes asks us to adapt.
So before you invest in another business strategy, I'd encourage you to ask one more question.
What is it about the way I'm operating that I haven't examined yet?
You might be surprised by what you discover.
And if you'd like to explore your behavioural preferences with me, I offer a Maxwell DISC Assessment and private coaching experience designed to turn self-awareness into practical action.
With you as you build,
Padebi Ojomo
Build With Padebi. Business building for Black women experts.