We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ashley DelBello. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ashley below.

Hi Ashley, thanks for joining us today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

Am I happier as a business owner? 100%.

But in the times when the financials are more up and down than I would like and when I feel the loneliness of being a small business owner, I do crave more financial stability and camaraderie.

The camaraderie is easier to solve as I have purposefully and intentionally surrounded myself with supportive business owners – such as peers, coaches, friends and mentors – and/or put myself into communities (paid and unpaid) where I know there will be others who I can discuss the challenges (and joys and wins!) that comes with being an entrepreneur.

The financial ups and downs though – while there are certainly things we can do about it – it can feel overwhelmingly heavy. And going back to corporate or at least consulting has definitely been something I have thought about.

2023 was a challenging year for a lot of entrepreneurs – including myself. My revenue was lower than it had been in previous years, and while I was trying new and different things, getting creative with what I offer and refining my marketing and sales process, there were times when it felt like nothing was working. And when it feels like that for an extended period of time, it gets tough and can be harder to keep going. You switch into survival mode, and while yes there’s a one put in front of the other mentality there, it can be very easy to slip down the path of “nothing is ever going to work again”, and “my business is a failure…which means so am I”, and a million other thoughts that I know so many of us entrepreneurs have thought. It becomes harder to focus on solutions, creativity and quite frankly getting out of bed when we switch into that survival mode – especially financially because money is something that we need in our modern society currently.

But I kept reaching for that strength – that strength to keep going – despite the thoughts of “should I just go back to corporate so we don’t have to be so financially stretched right now” – which let’s be real – there would have been nothing wrong if that’s what I had decided (or if anyone decides to do that). My nervous system would have been thrilled, and I could have always came back to my business if I wanted to.

So while getting a regular job or going back to corporate is an option, there was something that kept tugging at me that I hadn’t reached that threshold. Because of the inner work (mindset & somatic) that I’ve done over the last several years, I am deeply in tune with my intuition and inner wisdom, so I knew that tug was coming from a place of wisdom (and not stubbornness, which I have some of that too).

So, I doubled down on getting support/asking for help, getting creative, being flexible with what I offer and being bolder with putting myself and my business out there. And while it feels like it took a while, I’m in a better place now. I’m able to look back at 2023 and see how much I grew as a business owner. It also forced me to get creative and problem solve in a way I hadn’t been tested yet. I now know that I can weather not so great years.

But I think the thought “would it be better to have regular job” is such a normal thought for entrepreneurs and I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

Is it something to reflect on and evaluate based on what would be best for your personal situation? Yes.

But does it mean that you have to quit your business or that you’re a failure in business? No.

I think hearing from others that this thought of going back to a regular job is normal and that it does pop up from time to time as an entrepreneur was very liberating for me. It doesn’t mean I have to entertain it, but I can if I want to and that’s OK. It also doesn’t mean that my business is doomed to fail because I am thinking about it. For some, getting a regular job can be what keeps their business going.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Ashley, a passionate Intuitive Life, Business & Career Coach who loves traveling around the world, lattes with oat milk, and curling up with a page-turning fantasy novel or personal development book on the couch with my husband and my two very adorable cats.

I also love helping women see what’s truly possible for themselves, so they can create the life and career or business they’ve always desired. On their terms. With confidence. I’m a Texan at heart, but have been living in California for the last 16 years with a pit stop in NYC for a few years.

As the Founder of Ashley DelBello Coaching Inc, I specialize in guiding my clients from perfectionism, burnout, people-pleasing and self-doubt, to reconnecting with themselves, their confidence + intuition, and what they truly want in life and work, so they can live and work with more ease and joy. I coach female business owners, leaders, entrepreneurs and women in corporate who know they’re meant for more and want support getting unstuck and out of their own way. I am a trauma-informed Coach who combines mindset, nervous system + somatic work, and strategy to holistically support my clients in leading a life that they feel aligned with, confident in, and works in harmony with their career or business. I provide both private/1:1 coaching as well as offer several group programs.

I became a Coach because of my first experience with coaching and how much it changed my life. For the 15 years prior to me starting my coaching business, I was in the corporate world, climbing that corporate ladder – the only way that has ever been shown to me to be “successful” in life. However, I was miserable. Everything looked good on paper – I was a high-performer, I was paid well, I was in a long-term relationship, I worked at a prestigious company in the pharmaceutical world on their high-impact products. But I wasn’t fulfilled, I wasn’t happy, I was way overworked, and I felt stuck – I had been in the same industry for 15 years and didn’t think anything else was possible for me because PR & Communications was all I knew.

Through a catalyst of events (including a trip to Tuscany that woke me up to other ways of living and working), I had finally had enough and decided I was going to quit. I was so burnt out – the brain fog and exhaustion was overwhelming and having such an impact on all areas of my life, and I felt like I was living a shell of my life. I just had no clue what else I was going to do for income. Through working with my first Coach, I was shown a whole new world, limitless possibilities and the confidence to figure out what I wanted and to actually go for it. My core values were all pointing toward entrepreneurship, but that was never a thought that crossed my mind before working with my Coach. I had always thought that was for people smarter than me, more creative than me, braver than me and who had more money than me. But starting my own business just kept coming back to me, and that’s when it hit me that I really wanted to help other people who were in similar situations as me get unstuck, find fulfillment, and become more confident in who they are and what they have to offer to the world. As well as show them that there are so many possibilities out there that you can truly live life authentically, on your terms and redefine what success looks like for you.

My business has grown over the nearly four years that I’ve been doing it – supporting women in truly finding their confidence, inner peace and fulfillment in both their personal and professional lives. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been in business for almost four years – lots of businesses don’t make it after year 1 or 2 – and I’m beyond proud of the courage and resiliency that I’ve continued to have as I’ve navigated entrepreneurship. This is coming from someone who had never thought entrepreneurship was something I was capable. Yet, here I am. It is my path forward, and hard for me to now imagine myself not being a business owner.

It helps that I get to work some very amazing clients, and that I get to do work that is truly transformative and positively changes the trajectory of my clients’ lives. I love getting to dig in deep with my clients, really get to know them, their dreams, challenges and aspirations, and be their Guide, Coach, Strategic Partner, Mentor & Sounding Board through it all. It’s really cool work that truly lights me up.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Coming from the Corporate World, failure was not an option. Experimentation was not a thing. When I first started my business, I had to quickly learn how to drop the perfectionism and get real comfortable with failure and experimentation. It wasn’t easy. I wanted everything to be perfect, to be overprepared for anything and everything, and was afraid of messing things up.

That was the model of “success” that I had learned in the corporate world and thought that’s how my business was also going to succeed. I had to unlearn that (over and over again as so much fear and unhelpful thinking came up).

Otherwise, my business wasn’t going to grow. I wasn’t going to be able to move forward, and it greatly inhibits our creativity and problem-solving if we’re afraid to fail or test multiple things out. As a small business owner, perfectionism is not a virtue you want. We of course want to delight our clients, but sometimes good enough is great. Sometimes, it’s OK to be building the plane while also flying it.

That wasn’t something I was taught in the corporate world, and it certainly wasn’t modeled. In fact, you were penalized or criticized if you “failed” at something and you certainly didn’t have the bandwidth or autonomy to experiment.

Fortunately, I’ve had amazing coaches/mentors who not only articulated that failure and experimentation are a must; they also modeled it beautifully and were transparent when they “failed”. This is something I strive to model to my clients as well. It’s just a part of the process, and is what has helped shaped my business and the way I do business to what it is now.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

This is a story of so-called “failure” and pivoting. In the digital age that we live in, and with something that is considered an online business, it can be very easy to get “tunnel vision”, and only focus on social media as your primary marketing channel.

Which is what I did for one of my group coaching program launches. I almost solely relied on my social media channels to launch this new group coaching program I was offering.

For businesses with a large community and following, this can absolutely work, but with a small business like mine that doesn’t have a large community (yet!), it is unlikely that it will. This is something I had to learn the “hard way”.

I got caught up in a couple of things when it came to primarily marketing on social media for that particular group program launch:

1. It was in some ways “easier” for me to just put together posts or reels versus actually selling my program. Yes, you can market and sell on social media, but I was hiding behind the computer in many ways. I wasn’t learning how to sell and I wasn’t really putting myself out there by solely relying on social media posts. At this point, I don’t think I was even really selling in my Instagram Stories (so people could actually get a taste of me and my personality).

2. I got caught up in thinking that social media was the only way to market and sell. Yes, I knew there were other options and even had been successful with other options previously in my business, but I think I was looking for a quick hit and an easy way to do it. Which turned out to be my least successful launch ever (zero people signed up for that program).

Fortunately, I learned my lesson toward the end of that particular launch and started pivoting to more directly selling – asking clients for referrals, reaching out personally to previous clients and people in my network who I thought may be a good fit, using my email list more effectively, and started really getting into networking (both in-person and virtual events). It was too late for that launch, but I sold out my next group program launch five months later by continuing to prioritize several marketing channels versus only one.

Social media is still a part of my business, but I focus on other channels now, and have much more of a focus on relationship building as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ashleydelbello.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachashleydelbello/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coachashleydelbello
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-delbello-b356a81/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ashleydelbello4813
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/ashley-delbello-coaching-los-angeles

Image Credits
Lauren Cheek