Transcript of Episode

Leah Gervais:

Welcome back to the Your Biggest Vision show, I’m your host Leah. We are live on Facebook and Instagram just like every single Monday at 10:00 AM eastern standard time. Please excuse the sirens. I live in New York City, but I love being live here with you guys because I love being able to answer your questions in real time and connects with you in real time about these really important topics. Today is something that’s very near and dear to my heart, but I’m also just really energized because of the day itself. So it’s the first day of July as I’m recording this. It’s the first day of the second half of 2019. It is the first day of the week and we have a vacation kind of week. It’s a shorter week. It’s really time to take a hard look, honest, look at yourself and your life and recognize that you truly do not have time for people, things  , thoughts, beliefs, et Cetera, that are standing in your way right now. 

You have six months of this year left and it is really up to you to take that seriously and take that to heart and decide that you are not going to let anything get in your way for these next six months. This is your time. You have the power to step up and really make these happen. And I’m very, very excited about it. I mean, we’re so, so fortunate to get to do what we do. It can be so easy to get bogged down in the stress or the money or the clients or the confusion or the clarity or everything else you might want to focus on. And none of that needs to overshadow how grateful we all are to be able to do what we do, to be able to be entrepreneurs, to be able to really care about what it is that you’re doing, to create something that’s completely your own. I mean, this stuff is truly what dreams are made of and I just want to remind you of that.

Today we are talking about some of the biggest fears I had in the earlier days of my business. And I want to be really honest and vulnerable. In this episode, I’m sharing some things I’ve never really opened up about because I was afraid to for a long time. And you know, I am not immune to the fears that come up with starting and running a business and putting yourself out there. So if you are starting out or if you are going to the next level and you have some fears coming up, then I hope this episode will be in service to you because I don’t just want to share with you the fears that I’ve had. I also want to share with you how I got over them and what I would tell myself now looking back, what I would tell that girl three years ago when she was really bogged down by some of these fears. 

Honestly, this is kind of a pep talk to myself because it helps me remember that whatever I’m nervous about right now or whatever and going for next or whatever possibilities of, you know, the worst case scenario I have in my head I just know that in a few years I’m going to look back and think, Leah, why did you waste your time and energy being afraid of those things? They either weren’t true or they didn’t happen or they did and you could handle them and it wasn’t really that big of a deal. That’s generally the theme. But I want to get really specific and I would love it if you guys would share with me throughout this today, if any of these resonate with you, if you have had any of these fears, maybe if you still have any of these fears and just let me know if there’s any other things that, you know, you feel like stand in your way of, of getting going and really getting things started. A lot of these are themes I see in my clients as well. So I know I’m not alone and you’re not either. If you’re having any of these fears, let me go ahead and take a quick sip of water and went to an amusement park this last weekend. And so my voice is a little hoarse from roller coasters. You only live once. 

Okay, let’s dive into five fears I had when starting out. The very real fear that I had when I was very, very early on in the stage when I was just starting to create an Instagram account and post on social media and even put my website live was honestly what people that I grew up with would think about me. People from high school or even people from college. People that I wasn’t really friends with or maybe I kind of was, but we didn’t really stay friends or maybe we were friends and I was still just afraid. I had this just clear fear of what they would say about me. I think that this came from seeing how other people either handled or talked about or thought when they saw other people doing other things online, whether that was like starting a youtube channel or even just posting something they really cared about, you know, like on Facebook or really long posts or politically posted things. 

It’s really hard when you don’t keep in touch with people but you only see these little slivers of their life, whatever they’re sharing online and that’s kind of what you base all of them on and that’s kind of how you end up remembering them or associating you with them. So I was just nervous about what me starting at the time, blog would mean for that and what people would think if they saw me putting a blog out there, maybe people would think, you know, who did it, who did I think I was to do something like this or how I was such a try hard. I Dunno, I had all these paranoids about it. So if you guys are ever worried about that kind of thing, you are not alone. I was definitely nervous about what people would think about me. Like everyone, I was nervous about what they would think about me and I’m not sure where this deep insecurity came from because I don’t really have it anymore. 

I know it’s probably easier said than done after the fact because now, you know, I’m really happy to share what I’ve done because it’s become a six figure business. So it’s not really that early days jitter, but I still feel like it was really unjustified how insecure I was in the earlier days and what I wish I could go tell myself now is that one, most important, No one, no one cares. You might think that they care. They don’t care. Everyone is busy worrying about themselves and they are worrying about what they think about themselves and they’re worrying about what other people think about them to think about you. So no one really cares too. Even if they did care. No one really saw anything. Just because you have something out there online does not mean people are getting alerts on their computer saying so-and-so who you went to middle school with and did math with or whatever now has a website and you should go check it out and really judge them harder, whatever. 

No one even really knew about my side hustle until several months, maybe even a year into it. Now, some of this was a bit by design in the sense, not by design that I like was preventing people from knowing, but I didn’t really share it all that personally at first. I think at first I really relied on cold traffic to kind of build it up and start it, which I don’t recommend. I would recommend sharing it with friends and family because they’ll help you out and they’ll spread the word and they would make it a heck of a lot easier than I did. But that was the way I did it and so a lot of people didn’t even know at the beginning. So I was freaked out about what people would think of me for no reason because they, one didn’t even know. And two, if they do, they didn’t even really care. 

Since then, after about a year or two as things started to pick up for me and as my business was taking off and I was starting to get really good results from my clients and things like that, I started getting a lot of referrals from people that I did know, you know, way back when, like whether in high school or in college or whatever. And I didn’t even know those people who were referring me knew about my business. So it’s actually hugely beneficial to go out and show people what you’re made of. To this day I’m very humbled by lots and lots of messages that I get and, and emails and stuff from people that I haven’t talked to in years that will say, you know, I’ve been so inspired seeing your journey. I’ve been so inspired by your business and I just want to say what you’re doing is awesome. 

I think you’re really brave or something like that and every time, I mean, those are some of the most rewarding things that I get in my business at all, including like results in sales and clients and all of that. That’s because it just proves this point that I’m so passionate about, which is that when you go for your dreams, you inspire other people to go for theirs and you give them permission that maybe no one else has given them to go for theirs. Maybe their parents aren’t telling them that it’s a good idea to start something around their nine to five job because they’re already too busy and it’s not going to work or whatever. Maybe their friends aren’t really understanding why they would want to start a business or a blog or something because they’re not sure if they would ever return or they’re thinking that it’s too saturated of a market or whatever. 

Maybe their dreams aren’t even business related. Maybe they’re busy dreams or travel related or maybe their money related, but the environment that they’re in is not harmonious with that dream or vision. So if you put yourself out there and you are someone that is, you could really change someone’s life just by doing that. Just by showing them that it is okay to take a big leap and it is okay to try something radically different. In a situation or a world where they may have felt really alone in doing so, they no longer need to feel alone because they’ve seen you do it. So that’s a little bit of a tangent, but my point is having people see what I’ve done and having people see my business and everything has been the most rewarding parts of the whole thing and it is one of the ways I feel like I make an impact more than in a lot of other ways. 

I know for me that like goals and I don’t know, spreadsheets and facts and research and how tos, all of that stuff helps me when I’m trying to go for something. But nothing helps me take action more than simply being genuinely inspired. So if you can genuinely inspire someone, that is something that’s usually helpful in itself. And you know what, there probably are people that judge me and not think things of me and there probably are people that, you know, say things behind my back in person or maybe they don’t even talk to me and so they think negatively of me or whatever. I’m sure that does happen. I want to be clear that I don’t think that this fear was something that wasn’t real. I do think people have judged me, but here’s where the power is. 

Number one, people are going to judge you no matter what. People are gonna judge you if you go for things and you put yourself out there and they’re also going to judge you if you stay meek and hold yourself back and stay silent so you can’t escape judgment. You just need to do what you really want to do and realize that you’d rather be judged for doing something you want than judged for doing something that you don’t even really care about. Then two, the good has outweighed the bad, the judgements that might be happening in the people that might be saying mean things about me are so much less quiet and so much less important and so much less profound than the people that are inspired by my story or reaching out because they also want to start a business or doing something different. 

Those are way more powerful. Plus your friends and family will help you. I mean, they’re the ones that will refer people to you. They’re the ones that believe in you. They’re the ones that will share things that you do, et cetera. So that fear of what other people will think about me. For me, I have to say was for some reason more concerning about people I already knew. I was more afraid of what people from college and high school would think of me. But I have seen this show up everywhere where people are just afraid of what strangers will think about them or people are afraid of what people in the similar niche will think about them. All those principles still apply. I think for the most part, people, one, don’t even notice what you’re doing. Two, don’t care. Three, will end up being more inspired than judgmental if you actually can let yourself not be cynical about that and even if they are judgemental, they’re gonna judge you either way. So you might as well do what you really want. That was fear number one. Let me take another sip of water and we will go on to fear number two. But I’d love to hear from you guys, does this resonate with you? Have you had any of these fears? Have you ever felt like people were going gonna judge you and that made you uncomfortable? Let me know.

Okay. The fear I had, number two. I was afraid that other people had a secret sauce that I didn’t have. In other words, I was afraid that the people that were successful had figured something out that I would never be able to attain, whether it was them starting out at the right place and right time and I had missed that window or them having started out with a better background in marketing or business than I had. You know, I didn’t go to the business school at NYU or anything. Whether it was because they had more money when they started out. When I did, I didn’t have any money saved to do this. Maybe they were just more photogenic. I mean, you could think of whatever thing other people had that I didn’t and I felt all of those things. 

I don’t think I got so hung up on one thing on one thing I thought everyone else had that I didn’t, but it was very easy for me to tell myself that other people were in a privileged situation, whether it was time, resources, money, ability, background, whatever, that I didn’t have. I remember so clearly being on Instagram in the early days while I was still thinking about starting, like I lived in that zone of thinking for so long, where before I actually did anything, which like now it makes me just want to punch myself. But during that time I remember sitting on Instagram and I found a girl’s blog on Instagram and bless her heart, she blogged her heart out. You know, she did a couple of blog posts a week and she had something like a hundred followers on Instagram or whatever and it looked like, from what I could tell, that she had been doing it for awhile. I remember thinking, wow, so this doesn’t just work for everyone. You know, some people do what you think you should be doing. They’re consistent. They do it often. They’re authentic and still they’re not getting, you know the momentum, the followers, the publicity, the visibility that they probably want or that I would want. 

This is flawed in every way, right? Because there’s so many different things that go into why someone does or doesn’t take off. Why someone is or isn’t successful, why someone is or isn’t making the kind of impact that they want. Also actually just your followers on Instagram have nothing to do with that. But I let this like eat me alive. I remember thinking that’s going to be me. I am going to be the person that does this consistently, that posts all the time and that, you know, never actually sees any momentum for it. And you know what’s crazy is that you have to really believe that you can visualize your own future. Because I did kind of happen to me for the first year. I did post all the time and I did stay consistent and I thought I had content and I didn’t really make any money and I didn’t really gain any followers and I just didn’t understand why. 

So it’s funny because if you focus on the worst case scenario, a lot of the times you will manifest the worst case scenario, you know, ask and you shall receive. It’s just the most simple way of looking at things ever. And it’s pretty universal across all beliefs. And so I was thinking, I bet I’m going to be, you know, in this lower percentage or I’m going to be one of the people that this doesn’t work for. And low and behold, for awhile I was, and when I realized that I was self sabotaging myself with my own beliefs, I started visualizing myself being one of the most successful, being someone that had a six figure business.

Oh. And then I of course realized that I didn’t really care all that much about how many followers I have on Instagram because that doesn’t actually matter so much when it comes to actually running a business. It matters if you’re trying to get brand sponsorships and stuff like that. But I wasn’t really trying to just be a blogger. So not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that just wasn’t my business model. So, two crucial lessons right there. One, I was comparing myself to a metric that didn’t end up mattering that much for my business. And it came true for me until I started swishing, switching my, my beliefs, my visualization, my understanding of who I thought I was and who I thought I could be and then what, you know, that, and then that’s what came true for me. That’s when I was able to really grow. That’s when I was able to get my income up. That’s when I was able to quit my nine to five job. 

So the lessons from this one where one, no one has anything that you can’t have. I’m going to repeat that one more time. No one has anything that you can’t have. If you see someone with anything, and I know you’re probably just running wild with excuses right now in your head about why I’m wrong, but really you are doing yourself no favors by allowing yourself to believe that other people have any sort of secret sauce, special ability, background, privilege, whatever it is that you don’t have. It’s one a lie. Two, It puts you in a victim mode and we all know that you cannot be the powerful Badass that you need to be when you are in a victim mode. You cannot blame anyone for any other circumstance except yourself. Start switching out really quickly. Start looking at all the things you do have going for you.

 I’ll just give you this example here. So if I, when I was starting out, if I was looking at the fact that I didn’t know social media, I had never blogged, I had never run a website. I didn’t even know anything about business really. So one, didn’t have the background, two didn’t have any money. I didn’t save to start my business. I went into credit card debt to start my business, which I can do a whole other episode on. But that was really scary. So I didn’t have the money to do this. Three, I didn’t have a photographer. I didn’t know how to take pictures. Like I really was focusing on all the things I had working against me. 

But instead, what can I do? I can totally flip that on its head. I am young and so I have all this time in front of me to learn what I need to learn, whether or not I went to business school, whether or not I know social media, et Cetera. I can learn it just like everyone else did. I have a credit card that I can actually put an investment on and I can actually pay someone to teach me what, I don’t know what a gift that is. Not everyone has a credit card. Not everyone has good credit like I did. So not everyone is able to actually believe it or not go into credit card debt temporarily so that they can actually invest in themselves and move forward. I live in New York, which is like the most photogenic place ever and there’s tons of photographers, so you know what I mean? 

You get to choose what you focus on and there are always advantages you have. There are always things that can help you really accelerate if that’s what you’re focusing on. And then further than that, don’t spend your attention focusing on what you don’t want. Your focus and what you give and do your focus experiencing becomes true for you. Another crazy thing I did when I was really ramping up my business, I’m going to do a whole another episode on this later on about crazy things I had to do, but one of the most radical things I did was basically stopped reading any negative news, which at the time was hard. The election had just happened. Pretty much nothing was positive from anywhere at the time, but I knew that my energy mattered and I had proven to myself that if I focused on what I didn’t want and I focused on negativity, I would get that. 

But if I focused on what I did want and who I want to be and what was possible, then that’s what I got. So I stopped reading stories of like war and poverty and all these things that I really thought were important to stay up to date with, but they were hurting my mind and my focus. So ask yourself, what are you focusing on? Are you focusing on what you don’t have or are you focusing on what you do have? Are you focusing on what you don’t want to happen or are you focusing on what could happen and what you do want to happen? Don’t let the fear of negativity, worst case scenario, other people having something you don’t stand in your way because it’s not true and you can change it at any time. 

Okay. Fear number three. Let me know if that resonated with you. Olivia says that the first one, the fear of what other people would think resonates with her a lot. She is a single person running a dating business and knowing some of your exes are still friends with me on social media. Thank you so much for sharing that. Olivia, I hope that this is helpful to you and everything you shared on that first one. I can imagine that it is hard to put yourself out there, especially when you have past relationships and everything else like that in there. But, I really believe some of the things I shared, which, you know, come back to people are way more concerned with themselves than with you. The best and most badass thing you can do is prove them wrong and show them how great you are and show them that you know your stuff and that you are forced to be reckoned with because we know who you are. You’re amazing. 

Okay. Fear number three. I was afraid that starting my business would be a waste of money. I was afraid that I would invest in it and that I would, you know, spend pretty much any extra money that I had on and that I wouldn’t end up getting that money back because I just didn’t know that I would and I was afraid that it was going to be foolish. I was afraid that it was foolish of me not to save the extra money that I had. I had always been taught to be a saver. But now what I could tell myself, looking back are that one, you always have to do something for the first time. So I was afraid I wouldn’t make money back because I hadn’t made money for my business yet. But of course I hadn’t because I had just started it like we all make our first dollar and still at every new income level. I really have to remind myself of this. 

I have to think, okay, I want to make $15,000 this month and how am I going to believe that I can do that? Well, any doubt is coming from the place of me never having done it before, so I don’t know that it’s possible. But remembering that every new milestone was a place that I had never been to before. Before I had made $5,000 a month. I didn’t know that I could and I just had to keep believing it because of course I never had. Same with 10,000 the same with 15,000 same with 20,000 same with, you know, however high you want to go. So reminding yourself that this pattern comes up every time, every time is your first time doing something. Do not let the situation of never having done something before cloud your brain about the possibility of you doing it. Of course you can do it. Of course you can make money back. Of course you can make your investment back time and time and time again. 

You cannot let yourself think that just because you haven’t doesn’t mean that you can. It’s two very different things. And if we allowed ourselves to think like that, just because we hadn’t made money yet or we hadn’t made the money back yet, it means we can’t, we would never go higher. So don’t let yourself get deceived by your own, you know, amazingness of pushing yourself to the next level. That’s all this is. This is not about not being able to do something or possibilities, etc. 

Fear number four, I was afraid that no one would take me seriously. I was afraid that I was just going to be a young girl with a blog and that no one was really going to think it was a real business. I just didn’t know if I really had what it took. As you can kind of reflect. So if you’re feeling any of those things you guys, you know, I have my signature program Scale Your Side Hustle, which is like my most it’s just a really great program if you’re starting a side hustle and, or you have an idea and you really want to scale it. And something really common that comes up with those people in it is that they had to get past or they have to have to still get past the place of feeling like they don’t know if like who are they to do this? Who are they to be the one person to be a relationship coach, to be a health coach, to be a travel blogger, to be an Instagram influencer or whatever it is that they’re really chasing. 

They know it’s possible because they see other people do it, but they need to know that they can be the person to do it too. I didn’t know what I was going to tell people about what I was doing. I didn’t know why they think I was able to do it. All this was just like a lack of belief in myself, right? First of all, it doesn’t really matter if people take you seriously or not. You need to take yourself seriously and you need to be grounded in what your clients can get from working with you and that’s all that matters. You know, your clients need to know that you can get them the results and that’s where marketing comes in. But in terms of the world, we’re not really looking for their approval here. That’s like a loser’s game. 

So I was afraid that no one was going to take me seriously and I got really nervous during the first year or so about even talking about it because I didn’t make a whole lot of money for the first year. So I didn’t even really want to share because I thought people wouldn’t take me seriously as a business owner or even as a blogger because they probably, I thought they probably would have thought, what, you know, why is she spending all this time and money? And energy doing something that’s not really paying off is she just must not have what it takes or she’s kind of living with their head in the clouds or whatever story that I thought people were thinking. It all boiled down to this place of me not feeling like they would take me seriously and that really, really permeated throughout the beginning stages when I wasn’t making any money. 

So if you’ve been there, if you are at the place where you’re like, all right Leah, I’ve started, you know, I’m here, I’m doing it, but I’m just not really seeing the momentum that I want and I’m embarrassed to tell other people about it because I feel like I should be making more money and they’re not going to take any more seriously. I completely understand that it’s normal that you feel that way and there’s two things I invite you to release with that. One, it’s not up to people to take you seriously. It’s up to you to take yourself seriously and it is up to you to hang the frick in there, excuse my language, but it is really up to you to not give up. When you are going through those, those earlier days when you’re feeling like no one’s listening, when you feel like no one cares, when you feel like you don’t know what to tell people, everyone has been there. 

There is no overnight success, there is no overnight success. So everyone you look up to how to period where nothing was happening for them or something wanted to, they wanted it to happen faster. They probably still have periods like that. So what makes the successful, the successful and what makes people take business owners seriously is that they don’t give up and they don’t throw in the towel when they’re not seeing the results that they want. And this desire to have people take you seriously or to prove yourself. It’s a desire of the ego. It is not a desire of your true self. I believe that the true self in all of us has faith in our ability to undertake whatever we’re working toward. Otherwise we wouldn’t have started it to begin with. So the noise that comes around doubt that comes around concern of what other people would think, concern around judgment that is often of the ego. It’s not of a true subconscious, faith-based place.

It is not from your true center. It is not from who you really are. So release the need for other people to tell you that they take you seriously. Take yourself seriously and know that just by making that commitment, just by deciding that you are not going to throw in the towel because you’re not making X amount of money yet or you’re worried about what other people will think about you and so on that does make you a more serious business owner than most ever will be because most throw in the towel. You are way ahead just by hanging in there during those times. All right, we are going to be almost done here. Let me just take one more sip of water. 

The final fear that I had for probably about a year and a half is a theme through all of these, and I know you all can feel me on this in some way or another, so just let me know what comes up for you here. But I feared failure a lot, a lot. Anyone else ever feel that? Do you ever just feel like, I just don’t know if this will work or what if this just totally flops? What if no one ever reads my blog? What if no one ever buys my product? What if no one ever wants my service? What if they do and then I spend all my money and I don’t have any left? What if something happens and I can’t invest in my business anymore? What if someone doesn’t like me and they tell other people that I’m a fraud and they ruined my reputation? What if I’ve been kidding myself all along? What if I don’t actually deserve this much success? Who am I to have this much success?

I went from making $45,000 a year as a paralegal in the middle of Manhattan where it was very stressful. I made very little money. It was a tough job, and I thought that that’s kind of what I needed to do to pay my dues within just a few years working for myself from my laptop, being able to work when I want, however, I want. Making over six figures a year and you better believe that the most amount of internal work I had to do during that time was allowing myself to actually believe that I deserved it. I don’t say that to brag. I don’t say that to say like look at everything I’ve created, but I want to be really upfront and transparent with you and understanding that it takes conscious work and thought and belief in yourself to step into the things that you want, especially if you haven’t had them for a long time. 

If you’ve been living in a place that you are desperately trying to transform from really trying to change, that’s great, but it’s going to take just as much work on your own deservability as it is from the external action in the external parts of it. So if you are afraid of failing from the outside because of what other people will do to you or maybe what you’ll do to yourself or maybe that people will find out you’re an imposter, we all have those fields or if you’re afraid internally, that’s for some reason this isn’t going to work out for you, that you don’t actually deserve this, that you are, you know, biting off more than you can chew any of those stories. Just know that you are not alone in doing this. Know that it is normal to feel those things, especially if you’re transforming quickly and no more than anything. I believe this more than ever, that you are worthy of every single thing you want, every single thing right now just as you are. 

It doesn’t matter how much money you have in the bank, it doesn’t matter how much money you’ve made. It doesn’t matter if you’re married or divorced or have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or whatever. It doesn’t matter if you are mad at yourself for not having worked out this morning. It doesn’t matter if you are failing at some of your goals. You have an inherent worthiness within you for every single thing that you want and not embracing that and not believing that is the biggest threat to your own failure more than anything else. If you really know your own worth and your own deservability, things won’t be able to bring you down, especially and most importantly yourself. 

So know that fear of failure is normal. Know that every single person has gone through it, but when you really remind yourself that you are a gift from God, you are a precious child on this earth with the opportunity to do whatever… this is getting really philosophical and I’m getting emotional, but I’m really passionate about this. You wake up every day with an opportunity to create anything that you want. You wake up every day with truly this gift of life that’s so many people want so badly, so many people want to have kids so badly. It is a miracle that you are alive. It really is, and you just by being that miracle deserve everything, every single thing that you want, and it’s yours for the taking. That’s the best part. It’s right there. You are so close and the more that you believe that, and the more that you remind yourself of that, the more you’ll remember that all these fears that you have are just internal. 

Every fear that you’ve learned can be unlearned. Every thought that you have can be unthought. You have the power to decide how you’re going to approach this, and most of all, you have the power to start today. You have the power to go for anything that’s exciting you. You have the power to go through this week, this month of July, this next half of the year of 2019 and create whatever you want. So stop getting in your own way. Stop holding yourself back. Stop thinking that these fears of what other people will think if they judge you, if you don’t have enough money, if you’re not able to make it back, et Cetera, are actually good enough fears to stand in the way of you doing what you truly want to do. They’re not, they’re not. Why are we giving them the power to stand in the way of the God given talents and deserve ability and everything else that you have within you right now. 

Just picture yourself seeing all the fears that we just talked about and whatever else comes up for you in this in a box or a basket or whatever in your brain and just pushing them to the side, pushing them away. They no longer have the power over everything that you get to do as someone and that you get to do today. And then you get to decide to do and move forward with. So, go big. Don’t give too much power to your fears. Don’t get mad at yourself for having fears. It’s totally normal and it’s not really worth your energy to get rid of them. What is worth your energy is accepting that they’re going to be there and realizing that the power you have within you is so much bigger than any potential fear ever could be and that never changes. And with that, I’m going to leave you guys. I hope you all have an amazing, amazing day and Monday. Thank you for being here with me today. Remember, you have got this. Here is to your biggest vision. I love you all very much and I will talk to you soon.

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