Transcript of Episode

Leah Gervais:

Welcome back to the Your Biggest Vision show. I’m your host, Leah and every Monday we come to you with a weekly episode of this podcast live on Facebook and Instagram. So, if you want to tune in live, like many of you are now, hey you guys, let me know where you’re joining from. And then you can always come to my Facebook page or my Instagram page, which is Facebook ad Urban 20… Wait, it’s Instagram, just @urban20something and we will be here live and I love doing them with you live because I love answering your guys’ questions and hearing what you are up to and how these resonate, these types resonate with you and your business, your journey, et cetera. Today I have a topic I’m really excited to share with you because we’re going to talk about three radical, radical changes I had to make to my life, not just my business, but my life in order to hit six figures in business. 

Looking back to the girl I was before I started this and the things that I did in the way that I acted, I, you know, really know how different I am now and how much a lot of these would have scared me and I honestly never would have thought that these were changes I would’ve made in my life or that I would’ve been okay with. So this is going to be a pretty vulnerable episode because these things really had to make me redefine my own values and my own faith in myself. They took a lot of risk and they took a lot of fear. So, I’m really grateful that I did all of these obviously because they ended up where I am now, but at the time they weren’t all that easy or obvious to do because I had never done them and I was scared. 

Before we dive into that, I just want to say I hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend. The time of this recording is Monday, July 8th. So I’m sure everyone is just getting back in the flow of life. I personally had my wedding shower this weekend, which was such a blessing. I can’t believe I’m getting married in less than three months. I love you too. My fiance, if he’s watching this and if you guys ever want to follow more behind the scenes of our wedding or see pictures from our wedding shower, you can always follow me on Instagram. It’s just @urban20something and there’s photos and behind the scenes and everything else like that. Then the other thing I want to share is that this week the doors to my signature programs scale your side hustle are open. And you guys, this is the last time we have planned to run this program. 

So that’s a really big deal. I ran this program several times. I have seen more success from my clients through this program than I have seen people from many other programs that they’ve gone through. It is a true roadmap to get you from starting a side hustle to scaling it, to understanding how to do it around your nine to five job, to getting it profitable and then eventually leaving. And the reason I created Scale Your Side hustle was because for me, I know when I got the idea of wanting to leave my nine to five job and work for myself, you know, it sounded so great but I had no clue how to even begin to make it happen. It was like a completely foreign concept for, I did not have a yellow brick road on my way to Oz. I had to, you know, weed whack on the trail there. 

So I wanted to make a roadmap for other people because I knew that I couldn’t be alone in wanting to have done this. So if you are interested in scale your side hustle, then you can find it on my website. You can find it right in the comments here on Facebook. I’m happy to answer more questions about it. But I do want to talk about the radical changes I had to make in my life without further ado, in order to get my business up to six figures.Hey crystal, happy Monday. I hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend with your sweet daughter. Would love to hear how you’re doing today. 

Alrighty, let’s get into it you guys. So when it comes to your goals and knowing that you want to hit six figures, leave your day job, hire a team, whatever your next business step is, a lot of times without consciously realizing it, we are doing so by trying to ramp up what we’ve done in the past. But as we all know, what has gotten you here will not get you there. So if you continue doing the things that have gotten you to this point, you’re just going to continue to either say stuck or get the same results. And if you’re watching this, my guess is that you’re ready for something bigger, something better, something new, something next. And that takes a little bit of out of the box thinking and it really does sometimes mean transforming who you are and what you believe and the way you act. 

So one of the things that I really had to get honest with myself about, you know, I would watch all these other entrepreneurs that looked like they were taking off and that looked like they were making lots of money. And I would get really sad that I wasn’t like that and I promised myself that I would be so committed to being successful that I would have the self discipline to do it. And now looking back, that just wasn’t enough. I needed guidance, I needed people to hold me accountable and I needed kind of an inside scoop and something like that. And so I really started thinking about both the internal and external changes I need to make. So let’s start with the biggest internal change I made. And just to give you a little bit of context, here’s what my life was like at the time. I was working at a nonprofit here in New York City where I live and I really love this nonprofit, but it was um, somewhat, you know, near the election, the crazy election that happened in 2016 and so no matter which side of the aisle you fall on, I think everyone agrees that it was just a very intense time. 

People were very either angry or very secretive or deceptive and there was just like a tough energy. It felt very stressful. The news always seemed like there was something alarming happening. It always seemed like something was an emergency. It was just not a very fun time to be really involved in politics. And so, but my job kind of had me be very in job involved in politics because I worked at a nonprofit. So this stuff, it was our job to the New York Times every day and it was our job to understand how policies were being effected, what might be changing and how that might be affecting certain demographics of people, particularly if we were working with that demographic of people. This work was rewarding, but eventually, you know, I had to step back and realize that it was very emotionally exhausting and it was very tiring. Just to be clear, leading up to that election, I was like a news junkie. 

I loved reading the New York Times every day. I could read it for hours every day. I loved reading Twitter and I love listening to the podcasts. I mean, I was so into it. It was so interesting to me, and I still do like politics to this day, but I’ll never forget. One day I was coming up the subway that I live near and I was coming up the escalator and I was listening to one of my favorite books, the one that changed my life the most. It’s called The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles. I talk about it all the time. And this was when this was a huge turning point in my business when I read this book for so many reasons and I’ve talked about that on a whole other podcast episode where I just talk about my biggest takeaways from the book. But one of the things at this time that hit me was when he talked about how you just about how much our focus matters and how much our mind set matters. 

And he said, you cannot get rich if you’re always focusing on thoughts of poverty. This happens with anything. You cannot get thin if you’re always focusing on thoughts of things that aren’t healthy. You cannot get a lot of savings if you’re always focused on debt, your focus and what you allow to fill your head and your thoughts will be what your actions gravitate to. Your thoughts come first and your actions follow suit. So even if you feel like you’re being responsible and thinking a lot about debt or financial risk or in my case, you know, poverty and what was going on politically, you have to really recognize the toll that might be taking on your emotional state and on the capabilities that you have to take action toward what you want. Because instead you’ll start taking action toward the things that you don’t want toward the things that you’re afraid of, towards the things that are negative. 

So long story short, this point that I’m trying to make, one of the most radical things I did in order to get to six figures was I completely stopped reading the news. And this might sound a little bit crazy and I’d have to say I even had heard of other entrepreneurs doing the same thing beforehand. And I remember thinking how naive of them or just how, how convenient to be so checked out from what’s going on. Do you know what I mean? I really thought that it was just a way to be in denial or avoid politics and in a way to kind of dismiss your own like civic duty of understanding what’s going on in this country. So I did not really think highly of it. I really thought it was kind of a cop out and I really had to drop that judgment and just get curious about how I could bring myself into a more positive and more optimistic and a more hopeful state of mind. 

Because if you are trying to build a business, if you are trying to build wealth, if you are trying to do anything big and positive or reach any big goal, you need all the belief behind the fact that that’s going to happen and your belief is going to be shaken the most when you are reading stories of people whose dreams aren’t coming true or whose situations aren’t going so well or whose fears that did come to fruition. And again, I’m not trying to be insensitive and say that we should ignore those people. Absolutely not. But the way I had to eventually come to terms with my choice was that at this point in time, the best thing I could do for the causes I cared about and those that were being politically oppressed would be to make the most of myself and my business so that I could have the influence and the finances to actually impact people in a way that could make a difference. 

Rather than sitting at my desk reading the New York Times, putting myself in a depressed state of mind or a concern state of mind or a fearful state of mind or stressed, I already said stress, but just like a stressful heavy place which does not inspire action. You know, I started realizing that when I would read the news a lot and I would get concerned or I would get sad or I would get frantic, I wasn’t all that psyched about working or even if I was, it felt a bit heavier. And so you might not see this connection right away. And I want you to really be, I’m curious about this here because you might not be like, oh well I, you know, I read the news and then I still go to work and it’s fine. Just like every other day that might be true. 

But the point is you have to control your focus and these ways in which the doubt and stress and chaos of, of politics or of poverty or of any reporting of negativity can seep into your subconscious as far more powerful than you realize. And you know, the truth is I wanted to build a business based on optimism. I wanted to build a business based on opportunity and strength. There is so much strength in the world. There are so many happy endings. There are so many people achieving their dreams. They’re just not on the news a lot. We all know this, the news exploit’s bad situations, but it’s a small representation of how many great things actually are going on. So I needed to saturate my mind with positivity and the encouragement and the optimism that would support the mindset to get me to a place that would carry my business to its next level. 

Does that make sense? So I’m just giving you this justification and background for why I decided to stop reading the news. I hope that you can take this concept and think about places in your life where you might be allowing doubt, fear, insecurity, unhappiness, disbelief, any other type of emotions that could damper your motivation, your dreams, your belief in yourself, and really ask yourself how you can cut them out. And again, I never would have pictured that I would just stop reading the news after years of loving it and even working in policy and working in nonprofit and working in the law. And feeling really involved in it. But it’s what I realized I had to do. And I can look back and now say it was one of the best decisions I could’ve made for myself, both for my business and for my own mental health. I no longer felt, you know, this daily pressure or this stress or this sadness or this concern or this fear. Um, I realized that the best thing I could do for the causes I care about would be to take care of myself first, get myself to a place where impact and finances were actually available to me and make a change on that level. Because otherwise I hate to break it to you. You can wear a badge of honor about wearing the, watching the news as much as you want in your life. But if you are just sitting there consuming it and not actually taking action to a place where you could influence it, you are not doing yourself any favors. You’re actually hurting your emotional state and you’re not doing the rest of the world any favors either. 

So that’s a little bit blunt. I know all three of these are kind of meant to ruffle some feathers. I’m like not saying that you need to do all of these, but you need to get honest with yourself about what needs to change. And you might be thinking, Leah, I don’t want to make these dramatic of changes, but then that tells me that you’re okay with your life staying the same. So let’s move on to the second point. Let me take a sip of water. 

Okay. The second thing, this is very vulnerable for me because this was probably the hardest thing. The second thing I had to change in order to get to my six figure business about myself completely was that at some point, at one point in the earlier days when I was really trying to ramp it up, I decided that I was going to allow myself to not have to pay off my credit card in full every single month for a little while, and that didn’t mean that I wanted to. That didn’t mean that I wouldn’t pay it off if I couldn’t. That didn’t mean that it was a plan to live off credit card debt. It was nothing like that, but what it did mean was that I looked at the type of business I wanted to build. I looked at the type of people that were able to mentor me or to teach me or to you know, really guide me through this or coach me and I looked at the kind of businesses that I was, that I admired and you know, I was really all in at that point and I decided that I was not going to half ass this. I decided I was not going to have a mediocre business or mediocre website or mediocre branding and that I was not going to know mediocre skills about online business. I’ve really become one of the experts in it. I know more about it than most people. And that’s because, and this was by intention. I decided that I was going to be one of the best. I was not going to just sort of do this. And so that meant that I was going to need to invest in myself. I was going to have a professional website, I was going to have professional branding, I was going to take accelerated, advanced and elite courses, programs, et Cetera, so that I could learn from the best. And know the best and be able to serve my clients the best and all of that mentality, all of that sort of higher level  teaching and business product comes with an equally hefty price. 

So I had to make the decision, am I going to live and invest in my business within the means that I have now or am I going to invest in my business from the place that I want to be? And I knew what I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to be one of the best. I knew that I wasn’t going to settle for a mediocre half ass business or anything like that. I also knew I wasn’t going to settle for waiting for years for it to become good. And because of that, I needed to find the financial resources to get myself there. So for a little while I had to be okay with the potential of not always paying my credit card off in full on time because I was investing in these bigger programs. Now a few things. I am not giving you a recommendation to go into credit card debt at all right now. 

That is not where this is coming from. I want to be very clear about that. I am not a certified financial planner and you need to make your own financial decisions. What I’m trying to do is share with you my rationale. Something that worked for me and something that worked for me that was hugely uncomfortable for me. Up until that point, I had kind of worn a badge of honor about the fact that I had never missed a credit card payment in my life. My credit card score was pristine. I was from an accountant family. My Dad was an accountant, so I really knew that credit cards were something that you could take advantage of, but only if you pay them off in full and I like was really psyched about the fact that I did that all. So going from that, going from the place of not really having any money as a young 20 something, but feeling really proud about this one thing like this was my biggest sense of worth within my own finances was that I was really responsible with my credit cards. 

That was terrifying because it made me have to let go of something that I always felt was a sense part of my identity. I had to let go of the one thing I felt were really going right with my finances because remember I was working as a paralegal, I was not making any money, so I wasn’t saving that much, but I was really, this was my one thing, you know what I mean? Like this was the thing that I always took home a saying. I am without a doubt responsible financially because this is my one thing. So letting go of that. I had to really do a lot of mental work around the fact that I needed to find my own self worth and my own pride and my own justification for being responsible within myself other than what I had been doing my whole life. 

And you know, now looking back, I know that this was the best decision I ever could have made. I have a lot of gratitude for credit cards now. I view it completely differently because I did want to quit my job. I did want to get my income up. I wanted to be one of the best in this industry. And, um, this was the only way I could think of to do it. And I did it. And now I do have my six figure business and now my life is totally transformed. So I am very grateful for how it turned out and I wouldn’t have been able to do it if I didn’t make those decisions. You know, there are, I guess other ways I could’ve considered. I did consider going to a bank for a loan. But I didn’t want to do that. 

 I also considered, you know, just going slower, but I also didn’t want to do that. So this was my choice and it was the right choice for me. So I just encourage you to ask yourself, are your choices in alignment with who you want to end up as not who you are now, you know, that’s what really struck me about this whole thing is that I had been listening to the personal advice, personal finance advice of you know, 40 and 50 somethings by reading things like The Millionaire Next Door or I’m like, Dave Ramsey. Yeah. And I had been automating my savings and paying off my credit cards on time and saving, you know, whatever 20% of my income and packing lunches. I was doing all the right things and do know where I was exactly where it started up years ago, I was still making an entry level salary. I still didn’t have much savings. I still didn’t have an unlimited income amount and I still didn’t even like my job to begin with. 

So I was kind of fed up with the advice of these antiquated personal finance regulations. And again, this is not a, a piece of advice to go into credit card debt, but ask yourself if you have been taking advice of people that you really, really trust and you are not in a situation that you want to be, then you might need to change the way that you’re living and you might need to question the advice you have. And there’s no one perfect way to make any goal happen as we all know. There is no reason to say that if I had made a different decision, maybe I still could have ended up here. I don’t want to say that this was the only way. 

We all have different paths and that’s fine, but this ended up being mine. And I want you to ask yourself how bad you want yours and what you’re really willing to let go of in order to get there and what you’re really willing to, what fears you’re really willing to look in the face to get there. You know, I thought that if I didn’t pay off my credit card in full one month that I was going to have my credit score drop, that I’d never be able to buy a home. That like I would be one of those families on the news that was overindulgent. Those were all these fears coming to me and when I really, when it happened, the one month, you know, I didn’t pay it back in full, guess what happened? Absolutely nothing, nothing. I had to pay a couple hundred bucks in interest and that wasn’t all that fun. 

But you know, I actually, I kind of take that back. It, it really wasn’t a problem. I was grateful to pay it because it allowed me to get further than I could have gotten if I hadn’t have done that. So, for me, like that interest was, was worth it. And I know that they’ve personal finance experts might be hearing this and cringing, but again, everyone’s path is different. I had followed the conventional personal finance advice and was not where I wanted to be, so I had to shake it up and it worked for me. And I encourage you to ask yourself, what can you let go of, what fears are holding you back and how can you really look them in the eye and think about what actually will happen if you do that? Are they really going to be as bad as you think they are? And I guess is that they’re not. There’s almost no choice that can’t be undone. There’s almost no decision that can’t be reversed. There’s almost no financial situation you could get into or mistake that you can’t get out of and you really have to ask yourself, what’s the most important thing to you right now? Okay, one more sip of water and then we’ll dive into the last radical change I have to make. 

Oh, and I just want to say one more thing about my credit card situation because I also think it’s important. I have to say, even though I have always really viewed myself as very self-disciplined and you know, really do stick to the goals that I make for myself. There was a shift in my energy when I made that level of commitment to myself and my business. I went all in like I never had before, and you might not need to do what I did in order to go all in, but you also might be wondering why things aren’t moving for you as quickly as you want them to. And my guess is that you’re not going as all in as you wanted to. For me, me proving to myself that I was letting go of my old financial programming to make room for the new future I was about to create. That’s, that’s going all in.

Saying that you’re going to build a side hustle with no clear plan or no sacrifice or no, I’m just total faith in yourself. That is not going all in. And I think the reason I was able to make that decision, even though it was uncomfortable, is because I really believed in myself and I really ask people, you know, when they come to me and they want to join one of my programs, and they’re like, oh, I’m just not sure if I should spend the money. That tells me that they don’t believe in themselves enough to spend it because they don’t necessarily believe they’re going to make it back. That’s not going all in either. So, I guess the biggest takeaway from this point would be ask yourself where you are not going all in.

Okay. The third thing, I did a radical change in my life to really transform this and make everything different was completely cut out complaining. Now I am no mother Teresa. I am not perfect. Yes, I still complain and especially on this podcast, I really do try to keep it real. I try to be really honest about the behind the scenes and the ebbs and flows of business because obviously it’s not all sunshine and roses, but, especially after I read the science of getting rich by Wallace D. Waddles, my favorite book. Once again, I would say that book actually influenced all three of these points. It helped me realize how money is something you can always make back, and you need to have faith in yourself in order to build the life you want. It helps me realize not to read the news and it helped me realize that I needed to stop complaining. And that’s not because things don’t go wrong all the time. They do and that’s fine and you can observe them, and you can have problems in your life as we all do. 

But what really changed things for me, what I really realized is that every time any of us complain about something or any time any of us blame something, then you take away your own power. So, I’d say I’m not much of a complainer by nature. and you know, I think I spent the years before that not really complaining about intense stuff, but when you really imply implement this rule, you’ll start noticing complaints that you do in small things day to day that don’t really sound like complaints. For example, if someone you or someone complains about the fact that you weren’t able to go to the gym because you’re meeting at work ran late and therefore you weren’t able to make it, um, then you are blaming your meeting for, or your job for the fact that you’re not, you know, able to be in shape or go to the gym or whatever. 

If you’re complaining that Whole Foods is too expensive and that’s why you eat, don’t eat organic, then you are putting your own health and your own power to take care of yourself in the hands of a huge corporation. If you are mad at your college because they were so expensive, and you have student loans and you’re complaining about the fact that you have student loans and you wish you could not have to pay those every month, then you are giving your college power over your own financial situation. And this might seem a little bit like a stretch, but subconsciously every time you complain about something, no matter how logical it might sound, your meeting may have run long and that might be the reason you didn’t go to your workout class, but you still can’t give away your power to something else about your own health, happiness or wellbeing. 

It is always your responsibility to stay healthy, stay happy, and feel well and take care of yourself always. No one else can do it for you. You can only do it for yourself. So, every time you even subtly blame something or someone else for the reason, something in that area is not going the way you want it to. You give away the power that you have to make those things happen. So, I had to really cut out all complaints, especially about my business. Because the thing with business, especially in the early days is you are always trying to get in momentum. And for me, once I got in momentum, I’m still riding off that momentum and it’s been over a year. Once you get to that place, you know, then things can really move quickly. But you don’t get in momentum if you’re focusing on all the small roadblocks, you only get in momentum if you can keep reaching for all the things that are going right and keep reaching for them really quickly. 

And as you can see from this like kind of metaphor, that’s how you’ll end up moving really, really, really quickly. But if instead you’re sort of moving along and you’re focusing on every little bump and roadblock and you know everything that kind of pushes up against you, it’s going to be really hard to get in momentum. So, I don’t care if you feel like you don’t have enough money to invest in a program, but you still want to move forward. I don’t care if you feel like you’re bad at graphic design, I don’t care if you feel like you’re busy, I don’t care if you feel like you’re not going to make it. And I don’t say that to be insensitive. I say it because I know you have the power within you right now to do the things that you want to do and to be the person you want to be and to reach the goals that you want to reach. 

And that’s why I’m not going to give power to the things that might seem difficult to you because the power you have to conquer those things or to make things happen with or in spite of them is so much greater. So, I’d rather talk about that. I’d rather talk about how much power you do have, how much flexibility you have, how much freedom you have, how smart are, how much you have of opportunity in your life. Those are the things that are going to get you in momentum. Those are the things that are true and those are the things that are more empowering, which only leads you to feel more and more powerful. And if you’re hearing this and saying, well, Leah, I know that it might sound easy to ignore the complaints I have in my life, but I do have those, you know, those are things that are real. Well, there’s lots of things that are real out there. There are wars going on out there. I live in New York City and there’s crime going on out there.

I don’t mean to sound insensitive to it, but you get to choose the facts that you’re fixating on. Like you get to choose what you’re fixating upon. I mean, even a simple example, like if you’re, so it’s Monday morning here in New York and you know everyone’s busy always. So let’s say you’re at a Starbucks sign here in the city and you just get to choose right in that moment, there’s two parallel facts. On the one hand, you’re probably tired. It’s Monday morning. You probably have a big week ahead of you. You might be in a long line, you might not want to be waiting, you might not feel patient. On the other hand, you have a fresh week in front of you of everything that you get to create. Do. Imagine, be, you are in one of the best cities in the entire world’s getting to go into a new week. You are standing in a line in a very wealthy, you know, part of the world because you get to have a ritzy coffee that you want to have and you can afford to do so and you get to enjoy that while you go into this next chapter of the day, week, whatever it is.

So, you see what I mean? You get to choose at any moment which facts you’re focusing on and complaints every time you complain or give someone else responsibility for why things aren’t going the way you want them to. You slowly but surely chip away at your own power. And let me tell you to reach these big goals that I know you all have. If you’re watching this or listening to this, you need to step into as much power as you can. It’s not for the faint of heart, but you can absolutely do it. And so, it all starts with just a simple shift in your focus and in your choice of words and in your choice of… I guess just, you know, power. How can you make yourself as power, as powerful as possible so that you can do these big challenges and these big goals and these things that, let’s face it, most people never do because they don’t think about these kinds of things I just talked about? They don’t think about the ways that they can change themselves and their lives in order to step into that new place. And let me tell you, it can be uncomfortable to step into these new things. It can be uncomfortable to let go of things you’ve done your whole life and it can be uncomfortable to put yourself out there as you go for these much bigger goals.

But it’s also uncomfortable living with regret. It’s also uncomfortable living in like with not enough money. It’s also uncomfortable being jealous of lifestyles other people have that you feel like you can’t, and that’s not even true. So, you get to choose your discomfort. And I hope that these three radical shifts I’ve made, which the takeaways I want from you are one, thinking about how you can go all in, how you can be more powerful, and how you can clarify your focus toward what you actually want. I hope that this gives you the power you need for the week to go toward your goals and to make your biggest dreams happen. Because they can happen for you. They are there for you. They are yours for the taking. You just need to step more into who you need to be in order to take them. And I can’t wait for you to do so.

All right, you guys, this was a big one. I just talked a lot. I hope that you enjoyed this. I hope this was helpful and I hope you guys have an amazing week here is to your biggest vision.

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