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Are you a highly sensitive entrepreneur?
Knowing if you’re a highly sensitive entrepreneur can help you better know yourself, which helps you better manage your business.
As a coach, healer, or any service-based entrepreneur, navigating the world of business can be a rewarding and challenging journey. For those of us who identify as a highly sensitive person, the entrepreneurial journey can come with its own set of unique experiences (both good and bad!)
While highly sensitive entrepreneurs are blessed with a heightened awareness, deep intuitiveness, and the ability to sense the feelings and the needs of others, they might also struggle with setting strong boundaries, feeling burned out, and taking care of themselves.
If that sounds familiar, read the list below and see if you resonate with these 10 common traits of highly sensitive entrepreneurs.
10 traits of highly sensitive entrepreneurs
Think you’re a highly sensitive business owner? Check this list of traits and see which ones you resonate with.
Highly sensitive entrepreneurs experience deep emotions
If this is you, you experience emotions with a depth and intensity that can be overwhelming. Maybe you tear up when someone you follow online shares a challenge. You might find yourself getting angry on behalf of your client when they are wronged. Your own ups and downs may affect you more deeply than the average entrepreneur.
How it helps:
Your emotional sensitivity can be a powerful asset in understanding clients and creating authentic connections.
How it hinders:
You can easily become overwhelmed by the emotions of others (and your own.) Strong boundaries and emotional processing skills are key to navigating this!
As an HSP, you might also be an empath
Empaths get a bad rap nowadays, but a true empath is someone who is deeply empathetic to the needs of others. If this is you, you may find yourself almost automatically empathizing with people — and even taking on the emotions of others without noticing it.
How it helps:
Being an empath can have the added benefit of helping the other person realize their true emotions through your experiencing of them. Not to mention, you help them feel understood.
How it hinders:
If you’re not careful, you can be so empathetic that you prioritize other’s feelings and experiences above your own, leading to self-neglect and burnout.
Highly sensitive people notice things others miss
If you’re an HSP, you have heightened senses and pick up on the subtle clues that others miss. You’re tuned in to body language, tone of voice, and micro-expressions. It’s not uncommon for you to “read the room” or read a person before they even start speaking. You’re deeply attuned to your surroundings, environment, and happenings around you.
How it helps:
Being attuned to your surroundings and noticing things others miss would be a highly prized survival skill back in the day! And it still is, by helping you stay safe, aware, and cognizant of what’s going on around you.
How it hinders:
Be careful that you don’t become easily distracted by the things happening around you that you lose your own bearings and sense of focus.
If you’re an HSP, you might not love social media! That’s because highly sensitive individuals can become overwhelmed by excessive stimulation. You might want to avoid social media altogether and/or need regular breaks to recharge and restore your energy, so you don’t burnout.
How it helps:
There’s nothing wrong with being sensitive to stimulation. The more you can set boundaries and manage your energy, the less overwhelmed you will get. You may also become adept at marketing without social media.
How it hinders:
If you focus only on social media for marketing, you might find yourself not getting the results you want or even burning out on your business altogether.
Highly sensitive entrepreneurs have a strong sense of intuition
Highly sensitive entrepreneurs are highly intuitive. You benefit from relying on your keen sense of intuition to make decisions in business. If this is you, you often have a strong gut feeling about the direction of your business or the viability of a new offering, even when logic or expert advice dictates otherwise.
How it helps:
Your intuition is definitely a superpower. The key is being able to trust your intuition to lead you on the paths that are right for you and your business, even when others tell you otherwise.
How it hinders:
When you don’t follow your intuition, and instead favor advice from others that isn’t quite aligned with you, you may find yourself spinning your wheels and back at square one.
HSP entrepreneurs are highly creative individuals
As a highly sensitive entrepreneur, you likely love to express your creativity in artistic ways like writing, art, or design. Your creativity supports your ability to think outside the box and innovate in your business, setting you apart from others in your space.
How it helps:
Not only can you create beautiful and artistic ways of communicating and helping your clients, you can also express yourself in a unique way — something that others often struggle with.
How it hinders:
The only way your creativity could hinder you is if you forget about the people that you’re in business to help — your potential clients. The more you can use your creativity to connect with clients, the more effectively you’ll attract them.
HSPs can be high achievers and highly perfectionistic
Highly sensitive entrepreneurs often hold themselves to high standards of excellence and strive for perfection in their work. While this drive for excellence can lead to impressive achievements, it can also result in experiencing the dark side of perfectionism — self-criticism, shame, and constant doubt.
How it helps:
Your drive for excellence takes you far in work. This can result in you creating stellar offers, going above and beyond to help your clients, and putting a lot of thoughtfulness into your marketing, all which shines through.
How it hinders:
We all know that too much perfectionism can hold us back from sharing our gifts, doing what we’re meant to do, and moving forward faster. Learning to balance your pursuit of excellence with self-compassion and self-care is essential for long-term success and fulfillment.
Highly sensitive entrepreneurs are dreamers with a big vision for life
Your ability to align with your why in business is a strength and will help you stay motivated. Yet, sometimes you might be so focused on the big picture that you struggle to break your business strategy down into an actionable plan.
How it helps:
When you’re tapped into your vision, you not only stay motivated but you can access the high vibrations of what’s possible for you, leading you to play even bigger.
How it hinders:
When you’re so focused on the big picture, you may struggle to take action on a day to day basis. The key is turning your vision into daily to-dos.
As an HSP, you’re an innovative problem solver
Highly sensitive entrepreneurs possess a unique ability to approach problems from multiple perspectives and uncover creative solutions. Your ability to “zoom out” and see the big picture will help keep you tapped in to what’s most important.
How it helps:
Being an innovative problem solver is a strength in pretty much any and every type of business. You’re able to find solutions that others can’t see and explore the roads less taken.
How it hinders:
If you’re focused on innovation at the expense of everything else, you might not give your ideas enough time and execution to see if they actually work, instead pivoting too soon before you see success.
Highly sensitive entrepreneurs value authenticity
Highly sensitive entrepreneurs often value authenticity, vulnerability, and compassion. You’re passionate about being your true self in everything you do, including your marketing and visibility efforts.
How it helps:
Your authentic presence helps foster trust and affinity with your audience, while connecting on a deeper emotional level.
How it hinders:
When you view all marketing as manipulative or all sales as sleazy, you hold yourself back from finding your own way to use marketing and sales as a tool to express your authentic self.
Did you resonate with the signs of being a highly sensitive entrepreneur?
If so, congratulations! Being highly sensitive can make you a highly influential coach or healer.
If that’s you, you want to harness the powers of your sensitivity and put in the safeguards to make them work for you.
Being an HSP entrepreneur impacts your business model, your service offerings, and even your marketing, so it’s important to have a coach by your side who understands what it takes to thrive.
As a holistic business coach, I support highly sensitive entrepreneurs in navigating the path of starting and growing a business in a way that works for them.
To learn more about how I help, view my services here.
