Maya is a peak performance specialist and hypnotherapist working with entrepreneurs, who either want to set up or who are already running their own business.
She helps them create & maintain success from the inside out by building the mindset they need in order to achieve their goals. She helps them to dissolve overwhelm, self-doubt, fear or resistance and instead create the empowering beliefs and emotional resources to support them on their business journey.
She does this by using tools that create change on the deepest, subconscious level. She holds a master’s degree in clinical hypnosis and has conducted research on the efficacy of using hypnosis for academic performance. She is also a facilitator of the Sedona Method™.
She has been coaching and empowering individuals and teams since 2007 and has been focusing on women entrepreneurs since 2016. She has been featured in the Authority Magazine and Thrive Global.
What is Maya Zack Mindset Training all about?
I’m a peak performance specialist and I help entrepreneurs, mostly women, redesign their thinking and feeling patterns so that they have the beliefs, mental & emotional skills and internal resources to support them on their business journey and help them achieve their goals.
Having the right mindset has been shown to be the #1 predicting factor of success.
It’s a known fact that the majority of business owners fail or quit within their first two years and I want to help change that.
My mission in my business is to help contribute to a future world where people and women in particular, are freer – personally, professionally and financially.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I qualified in 2007 as a hypnotherapist. I chose this path because self-hypnosis had completely changed me and my life and I was always interested in how the mind works, how it determines our experience and how we can use it to achieve or create anything we want.
I started out working with issues around stress & anxiety and quickly found myself specialising in performance in business and work settings as well as academic achievement. I also trained in the Sedona Method™ which was a game-changer for me personally and so I wanted to share that too and incorporate it into my work.
For my master’s degree, I conducted research which investigated and showed the efficacy of hypnosis to reduce university students’ academic anxiety and help them to do better in their studies.
Around 2016 and after not experiencing much success with taking hypnosis into the academic world, I decided to focus on working with entrepreneurs, mostly women, as supporting other women in business is important to me.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
- Although having good practical business & financial skills are of course needed for a business to be successful, I would say that mindset skills are far more important. This is because when you have these in place – you can easily learn and upgrade your skills in any other area you need.
- Confidence & self-belief. You must have an unshakeable belief in yourself, your self-worth & your ability to achieve your goals. Building any successful business is never straightforward. It will require you to challenge yourself, face difficulties and get very uncomfortable. Believing in your success is essential to keep you going and motivated. Confidence in yourself will also allow you to make decisions or change direction if you need to.
- A positive, growth-mindset. Building a business isn’t an easy ride. You’re going to face lots of challenges and sometimes you won’t get the results you want. So you need to make a commitment to continue on, no matter what, with grit and an open and curious mind. This will ensure you’re solution-focused.
There will be trial and error. You’re going to have to experiment & take risks. Top-performers don’t tend to be held back by perfectionism and they don’t relate to the word ‘Failure’ – only to the ongoing process of learning and development.
In fact, many entrepreneurs started out with a business idea that didn’t work. But they didn’t stop there. Instead, they went on to the next, better idea which has brought them success.
- The ability to focus. This goes way beyond external focus on tasks without distractions or being in a state of flow or productivity. What I really mean is the ability to take charge of your mind – directing your attention wherever you want it to go. I believe that the ability to be in charge of your focus is one of most important skills in life, not only business.
- Intentional & internal focus allows you to choose to give your attention to what serves you rather than not. For example, this helps to keep you positive as you choose which thoughts to ‘follow’. You can also use what I call ‘intentional imagination’ to bring clarity, create states of high motivation & keep heading towards your goals (creative visualisation is a powerful tool many top-achievers use). Intentional focus also allows you to choose beliefs that support you, and beliefs actually drive everything you think, feel, and as a result how you act and the results you get.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
My coaching & mentoring is different in that we create change on the subconscious level. This is where more profound transformation and learning happens.
In fact, almost all your responses and decisions are made on a subconscious level, without your awareness, according to your beliefs. Your beliefs then drive everything you do, determine how you do it, and of course the results you get from taking that action.
Subconscious ‘reprogramming’ of the mind and its thinking and feeling patterns means that new behaviour soon becomes automatic, natural, and therefore more effortless. Therefore the process is not only easier and faster, but it also means that you won’t need to fight old patterns pulling you back further down the line and you can easily create success-focused habits empowering you and keeping you on track allowing you to achieve any of your goals.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
- Not addressing my own mindset weaknesses. When I first started out, I had already done a lot of personal development work on myself. I’ve managed to let go of trauma and emotional limitations that were stopping me from experiencing life in the way I wanted to.
But I was experiencing many setbacks and external blocks in my business and for some time I was really feeling stuck. I then realised that although I was great at what I do and I did have absolute belief in what I was offering, I still had limiting beliefs about money & success.
So I then did deeper work on myself in the context of business, and that’s when things started shifting and moving. That’s also why I eventually decided to focus on this area working with others. It’s all out of my personal experience – I know exactly what it’s like.
- Not having a clear strategy in place. I wasted so much time on doing this and that, being pulled to different directions by different marketing ‘gurus’ selling their ‘hacks’ and not consistently following any one path to actually allow it to get results.
So it took me some time to get clear on my niche and on my plan for how I was going to reach my audience and get them to engage with me while doing it in a way that worked for me and was true to me and my values. Having that clarity & confidence meant that I was then able to regularly focus on taking the right, high-impact actions.
- Not asking for help. I felt like I had to do it alone, and somehow ‘show myself’ I can do it. Starting out, I also had limited funds to invest in professional help and so whatever I could do myself, I did. That did have its advantages as I ended up learning a lot and expanding skills way beyond what I had intended for. However, this was also very time-consuming and at times hugely frustrating.
Although I do value self-learning and development, I realised that acknowledging limitations is actually a strength rather than not. Asking for help where and when needed meant that I could move forward more quickly and easily. In fact, the truth is most high-achievers have support structures in place, whether it’s delegating tasks to others or having coaches and mentors.
Tell us a little bit about your marketing process, what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
When I first started out as a coach, I got most of my clients through giving talks and presentations, running collaborative workshops, and participating in events in the local community. This was when online marketing was still in its infancy.
Nowadays I still love running training and coaching events, albeit online, either paid or free. Many of these are also collaborative so that’s another way of growing my audience.
Still, many of my clients come through word of mouth and recommendation – which I believe is the most effective way of getting someone to want to work with or buy from you! Since my clients get life-changing results and tend to want to do more work with me, I also offer them free sessions for referrals they send over to me. It’s an effective win-win strategy.
Otherwise, I also focus on building my email list through social, and I reach out to them on a regular basis giving them real value tips and advice. In honesty, I’ve had mixed results with social media campaigns. But as social media marketing continuously changes and evolves I continue to learn.
What’s a productivity tip you swear by?
Use self-hypnosis if you know how to, or some creative visualisation tools. It’s great to do this as you start your day. This will get you into flow & productivity mode; motivated, focused, clear and energised towards your day and getting things done. Otherwise, you can use this at any time you feel you’re getting distracted or losing motivation.
I would also suggest planning your weekly and daily schedule in advance. You’d be surprised how many don’t do this and opt for never-ending to-do lists instead which can be disorganised and overwhelming. So break down your big goals to weekly goals, then to daily and hourly tasks. It’s then important to stick to your schedule of the day, whether you’ve completed a task or not. You can always schedule in more time for it the next day or week. This keeps you clear & focused without confusion or overwhelm and it makes sure you’re on top of everything that needs to be done, step by step.
What helps you stay driven and motivated to keep going in your business?
I keep reminding myself of what got me into this in the first place – which is the freedom to create my own lifestyle. I also often use self-hypnosis and other mindset tools to keep myself on track.
What is your favorite quote?
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I truly believe that you’re always free to be whoever you want to be and that you’re not limited to your past stories. In the present moment, it’s only your own mind limitations that are stopping you, and in the Here and Now they are imaginary.
What valuable advice would you give new entrepreneurs starting out?
Prioritise your mindset. It’ll literally make or break your business. Making that your first step is the one thing that will enable you to consistently and most effectively take all the other necessary steps.
How do you personally overcome fear?
It’s important to face the fear rather than try to ignore or suppress it. That’s the only way you can actually become free of it. Personally, I use practical mind-tool processes that help me and which I also use with my clients. These include hypnosis and the Sedona Method™. These can very quickly genuinely dissolve the fear or minimise it so that it’s just not in my way.
I also identify what stories I might be telling myself around the fear and that has created it, and then I challenge and reprogram that conditioning.
Otherwise, I like to remind myself often that I’ve only got this one and only opportunity at life. This for me is bigger than the fear and is a stronger motivator. Regret about stuff I haven’t done or tried is far scarier to me than going for it and taking risks.
How can readers get in touch with you?
You can contact me on my website youcandoanything.co.uk , on IG @mayazackmindset or on linkedin.com/in/mayazack
Maya Zack – How to Overcome FEAR & The Definition of SUCCESS
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