Ep. 75 Overcoming Subconsious Blocks That Are Holding You Back In Business w/ Guinevere Martin

May 19

[This is a Six Figure Brand Society vault training from hypnotherapist Guinevere Martin]

I say it all the time: starting and running a business is the biggest personal development project you will ever take on in your life. And most of us had absolutely no idea that was going to be the case when we started.

I certainly did not know that our subconscious was something we had any control over until I met Guinevere Martin. Guinevere is a hypnotherapist and mind coach who helps people release subconscious patterns, limiting beliefs, and fears that are getting in the way of achieving their goals. She came into the Six Figure Brand® Society to give a live training on overcoming the subconscious blocks that show up in business, and it was one of the most eye-opening conversations we have had inside the membership.

This post covers what she shared: why your brain is literally working against your business goals, where those patterns come from, and what you can actually do about it.

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Why Your Brain Is Not Designed for Business Growth

Here is the first thing Guinevere wants you to understand: your subconscious is not designed for change. It is designed to protect you. And the way it does that is by keeping you in the known, because what is known feels safe.

This is why, when you sit down to work on a big goal, you suddenly find yourself doom scrolling, reorganizing your desk, or inexplicably in the kitchen looking for a snack. It is not a character flaw. It is not a motivation problem. It is your brain doing exactly what it was built to do: keeping you away from the unfamiliar.

Understanding this is the first step, because once you stop blaming yourself for procrastinating and start recognizing it as a protective mechanism, you can actually begin to work with your brain instead of against it.

Where These Patterns Come From

From birth through around age nine, our subconscious is absorbing everything around us and building a set of associations about what is safe and what is not, what to move toward and what to move away from. This happens through our families, our culture, our education system, and the broader messages of society. And most of it happens completely below our conscious awareness.

Guinevere breaks down several patterns that are especially common for business owners.

We are conditioned to be employees, not entrepreneurs. Our entire school system rewards us for following directions, regurgitating information, and getting external validation in the form of grades and approval from authority figures. The problem is that business requires the opposite: self-direction, self-trust, and the willingness to make mistakes and figure things out on your own. If your subconscious learned early on that mistakes are dangerous and validation must come from outside yourself, you are going to feel that friction every single time you try to show up in your business.

Perfectionism is a conditioned response. If you grew up in an environment where anything less than an A was considered failure, making mistakes becomes a deeply negative association. This is why so many business owners will not post a video, publish a post, or launch an offer unless it is perfect. The brain is not being precious. It is genuinely trying to protect you from what it learned was a threatening outcome.

Being in business feels unsafe on a subconscious level. We have been taught collectively that safety comes from having a job, a paycheck, and a predictable structure. Entrepreneurship is, by definition, none of those things. Your subconscious may be treating every step forward in your business as a threat, even when you consciously know better.

For women, there are additional layers. Guinevere points out that women have only been able to own businesses without a man's signature since 1988. We are genuinely among the first generations of women building businesses in a real way, and we are doing it while working against intergenerational conditioning that said women should not be seen, should not be heard, should take care of everyone else's needs first, and should not deal with money. The subconscious does not know those rules are outdated. It is still running the old programming.

The Conscious Mind Is the Minority

Here is something that reframes the entire conversation: your conscious mind, the part that makes decisions, sets goals, and tells you what you want to change, makes up about 12% of your brain. Your subconscious makes up the other 88%.

So when you set a goal and then find yourself doing everything except working toward it, you are not lacking willpower or motivation. You are experiencing the 88% overriding the 12%. That is not a character flaw. It is math.

The reason affirmations and vision boards often fall short is that they are operating at the level of the conscious mind. If the subconscious has a deeply ingrained association that contradicts what you are trying to affirm, that new information will get filtered out before it can take root. The critical mind acts as a gatekeeper, allowing in only what already matches existing beliefs.

This is why Guinevere works at the subconscious level. The goal is not to convince the conscious mind of something new. It is to actually shift the associations that are driving behavior underneath the surface.

What Hypnotherapy Actually Is (and Is Not)

Guinevere addresses the misconception head-on: hypnotherapy is not about someone else controlling your mind. It is about gaining more control over your own.

In a hypnotherapy session, you remain fully aware and fully in charge. Nothing gets changed without your consent. What the process does is create a deeply relaxed state that allows the critical mind to rest, so new associations can be formed at the subconscious level without hitting that gatekeeper.

We naturally enter this state twice a day: in the moments between sleep and waking. That threshold state is when the brain is most receptive to reprogramming, which is why Guinevere recommends using it intentionally.

The other important distinction is between knowing something and experiencing it. You can intellectually understand that you are worthy of success or that money is not inherently greedy, but if your subconscious holds a different association, the intellectual knowledge will not move the needle. Hypnotherapy works by creating a new neural pathway at the experiential level, not just the cognitive one.

The Common Subconscious Blocks Guinevere Sees in Business

Over her years of working with clients, Guinevere has seen the same patterns come up repeatedly:

Money beliefs. Whether it is "money is greedy," "rich people are bad," or "I need to struggle to be worthy," money beliefs are among the most deeply ingrained and the most directly impactful on business. She has had clients who would consistently hit a certain income level and then unconsciously sabotage themselves back down because exceeding that number did not feel safe.

Imposter syndrome. The belief that you are not qualified enough, experienced enough, or healed enough to help others. Guinevere notes that this is just a subconscious pattern, not a reflection of reality.

The starving artist belief. The idea that doing creative work and making real money are mutually exclusive. One of her clients was able to shift this and go from struggling artist to thriving artist once that association was updated.

Working hours equal income. The deeply ingrained belief that more hours must mean more money, and conversely that working less is somehow cheating or unsustainable. One of her clients went down to working two days a week and doubled her income after doing the subconscious work to release this pattern.

Keeping your business inside yourself. This one resonated for me personally. Many of us unconsciously conflate our business needs with our personal needs, making decisions based on what feels safe for us emotionally rather than what the business actually needs to grow. Guinevere describes this as "keeping your business in bed with you" and talks about the importance of giving your business its own space to exist and thrive.

A Simple Practice That Actually Works

Guinevere was asked what she recommends for ongoing mind maintenance, and her answer is simpler than you might expect: genuinely acknowledge what you have accomplished, every single day.

Not in a performative way. Not a list of affirmations. Actually pausing to recognize what you did, what you moved through, and how far you have come.

Most of us are wired to immediately move on to the next thing, the next goal, the next problem. We celebrate a win for about ten minutes before our brain starts scanning for what is still missing. That pattern keeps us in a state of low-grade stress and scarcity, which actually closes off access to the creative and problem-solving parts of our brain.

When you slow down to genuinely acknowledge what you have built, what you have figured out, and how much you have grown, you activate a completely different neurological state. One where your brain can actually function at a higher level and do its best work.

Guinevere recommends doing this in that in-between state as you are falling asleep, since the brain is particularly receptive to new associations in that threshold moment. Instead of falling asleep ruminating on what did not get done, let yourself drift off reviewing what did.

If You Feel Like You Cannot Get Out of Your Own Way

If anything in this post made you think "that is me," Guinevere wants you to know that this is not a you problem. It is a subconscious problem, and subconscious problems have solutions.

She also makes a point that I want to echo: building a business is genuinely one of the most demanding personal growth experiences there is. Guinevere has lived off-grid on a mountainside in Ecuador, spent years in meditation centers, and has been through significant life transitions. She says that building a business has been the most challenging thing she has experienced when it comes to personal growth. Not because business owners are weak, but because the work requires us to constantly push against everything we were conditioned to believe about safety, success, money, and our own worth.

If it feels hard, it is because it is hard. That does not mean you are doing it wrong.

🔗 Links & Resources Mentioned In The Episode:

➡️ Connect with Guinevere on Facebook
➡️ Visit Guinevere's Websit e
➡️ Bo ok A Free 1hr Consultation w/ Guineve re
➡️ Follow Morgan on Instagram @spechtand.co
➡️ Learn More About The Six Figure Brand® Soc iety (Use Code FIRSTMONTH for $50 Off Your First Month or FIRSTQUARTER for $100 Off Your First Quarter)