Transcript of Episode

Leah Gervais: Hey visionaries. Welcome back to the Your Biggest Vision show. I’m your host Leah, and we have a real treat today. We have Sara Anna Powers who is a success coach. She is an incredible copywriter. She helps entrepreneurs with their success and copywriting. She is the host of the faith forward online business podcast and she is just one of the sweetest people I have met in my entrepreneurial journey. I just always light up when I see anything from here or chat with her. She just one of those people that you just want to hear from. So thanks for being here Sara Anna. 

Sara Anna Powers: Oh, thank you so much Leah. I feel the same about you and I was so, so excited to connect with you for this interview and I’m super stoked to see where we’re going to go with it. 

Leah Gervais: Part of me is like I want to interview her on my podcast. I just want to talk to her and it’s going to happen now. So you are a success coach, you are an expert copywriter, you’ve worked with entrepreneurs. Is there anything else you want to add to your, and what you really do right now before we go into your evolution? 

Sara Anna Powers:Yeah, I brought in speaking a lot and um, last year at the end of the year I said, you know, 2019 is gonna be the year that we bring in speaking because I feel like I’m speaking allows you to reach so many people with a message that has the opportunity to motivate them into action. So it may not be the talk that transforms them, but the talk can plant a seed that then inspires them to take some action. That’s a longer term action that transforms them. So, um, that’s the only other thing I would add is that that’s something I’ve posted a few live events and, and you know, excited to be speaking on other people’s stages as well. 

Leah Gervais: Great. Congratulations. I’m sure that you are incredibly inspirational. 

Sara Anna Powers: Thank you. 

Leah Gervais: Of course. No brainer. So you live in Mississippi, is that right? 

Sara Anna Powers: Yeah, Mississippi, 

Leah Gervais: Are you from Mississippi?

Sara Anna Powers: I am, yes. And honestly never expected to be back here. Not that I don’t love the state. And in fact, I love Mississippi. We have, um, I mean, you, you’re so kind to say I’m sweet. I think that that’s just, we are like a hospitable state. Like we’re literally called the hospitality state. Um, and I took a few years off of work or sorry, off of school after undergrad. I worked for a few years and then I went back to law school, which meant that I came out of law school in 2009, which was one of the worst years you could possibly come out of law school, especially in a state like Mississippi. And I got a really great offer to work at a firm in Mississippi. So I was like, well, I never expect to be back here. But like the amount of money that they offered me, um, at the time I was like, staggered. I was like, wait, what? And so there was no way I felt that I could turn that down. And that was the only offer I got. So I thought, Mississippi it is.

Leah Gervais: Mississippi it is. It’s so funny you say that. I was a, um, one of my girlfriends from high school went to Ole Miss, she got married a few years ago and I was in her wedding and my then boyfriend, now fiance and I were down there and we were walking, you know, we were like at the liquor store getting groceries and everyone was like waving at us and we were like, what do they want? So like we’re so cynical from New York or like why is everyone looking at us? Why are they smiling? Do they want something that is so funny because I was just this past week I was in Laguna and the Newport area and in Laguna, Laguna beach. Um, one of my mentors is James Wedmore and he had hosted an event at this place called, I think it’s called seven one four. And it’s just down the street from the Pacific edge. And so when we had our inner circle retreat, we met at this like really cold little like space. And I was just like walking down the street and I look in and I see a girl like, you know, setting up for an event or something. And it just came out of me naturally. I just wave and smile and she gave me this look like, Oh my gosh, what is wrong with you? She’s hoping to kill me. I was like, Oh wait, people who don’t do that here. 

Leah Gervais: That is so, so funny. When you were growing up, did you want to be a lawyer? 

Sara Anna Powers: Oh yeah. Yeah. Because of Claire Hawk Huxtable on the Cosby show. 

Leah Gervais: That is so funny. I wanted to be a lawyer because of to kill a Mockingbird. 

Sara Anna Powers: Um, that’s a better answer. Not really. I’m pretty sure that’s like every law school admission answer there. Like ever since I read To Kill a Mockingbird. So like me and thousands of other people. But yeah. So you want it to be Claire Huxtable yeah, but cool story about to kill a Mockingbird. Actually random. This is how the South works. So Harper Lee is from Monroeville, Alabama and my aunt, my dad’s sister married a guy who’s from Monroeville, so like she has, they have run into the family like, and it’s so cool. Like I happened to end up with a signed copy. Yes. And then I had organizers come into my home and like I, I was on a trip and they came in, they organized and then I came back. I was like, where is my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird? 

Leah Gervais: Not my jewelry or my passport.

Sara Anna Powers: I don’t care about the rings. Where’s the book? Um, yeah, yeah. So my, my story about wanting to be a lawyer, Clair Huxtable, you know, the Cosby show was such an iconic show. I was born in 1980 and so that was like the family show and I just loved that. Um, she was smart. She was funny. She seemed like she didn’t work very much and they had plenty of money. I mean, then I got into law and I was like, Oh, it’s not like that at all. 

Leah Gervais: That is a TV show. Yeah. I mean go figure. Yeah. Okay. So, but you, you do, you go to law school and you think that that’s what you’re going to be and you end up being it. And then personally you have some, one of your personal struggles start along the way, which started ending up eventually if we’re informing what you do now. 

Sara Anna Powers: Yeah. So honestly, Leah very quickly into my first law job, Oh my gosh, I’m going to tell you such a funny story that I don’t think I’ve ever shared publicly. So this isn’t done yet. You, um, but I could tell very quickly it wasn’t, wasn’t a career that I felt like, it didn’t light me up at all. Like I love people, I love doing stuff like this, just just chatting with people, getting to know people. I love traveling. And part of the reason I love travel is that you’re exposed to a whole new group of people and you get to see how people live and interact with people that aren’t on your day to day path. So to put me into an office and say, okay, shut the door and you’re going to look up cases and you’re going to write briefs for 12 hours a day, and then you’re going to go home to your cat. 

You know? Uh, but I mean that’s literally like I had very little human contact because my, um, my, my partners at the time did not. I was just the first year. Right. So they’re not gonna let you talk to the clients because they’re like, you’re going to screw something up, understandably. Right. You really didn’t get any. Um, somebody choked when I said you didn’t get any human interaction and I did work with people, but literally I was just sitting in my office with the door closed for most of the day. Um, so, OK. The, the nugget that I was gonna share is this is how you listen to your intuition and your gut. And I do believe everything happens for a reason. And I’m so happy that my path was my path because it absolutely had to happen to bring me to this place. So I don’t like regret it or feel like, Oh, that was a waste. 

It, you know, those years were wasted or Oh, I did the wrong thing at all. Like it was the perfect path for me. And I really want people to hear that and like to think about their own situations like that. Cause you can, you can take in me where you’re at and have it be a stepping stone for where you are going to be. And I really believe that’s the way that life works. But I remember sitting in a hotel room, I had taken like two days to go to the Coldplay concert, the Viva LA Villita tour. It was in Cleveland, Ohio. I had flown up there, this was I guess my senior year of law school. Um, yeah, that would’ve been when I was getting the offers. Maybe like the end of 2008 beginning of 2009 probably beginning of 2009. And um, and this firm that I had interviewed with, the one that ended up giving me this great offer, this partner sent me this message and he said, he said I had clerked with them for like a week or two over Christmas. 

Like over the Christmas break. I had spent some time in the office, like, you know, writing briefs, like kind of just as a trial. And, and they loved my work. He said, ordinarily we only take people in the top 10% of the class, but perhaps we can get your undergrad transcripts to make up for your deficiencies. Oh my God. I remember reading that word deficiency deficiency, just like ringing through my ears. And I remember how it hit me and I thought, nobody in my life has ever, ever called me deficient. Keep in mind, I went to a very nice private school. I was a valedictorian. I graduated like 104. I then had a double major in E because of AP classes. Right. They wait it. So you end up with lower than a hundred because people were like, how does that work? I had a double major English and French. 

I, I’m in, uh, in, in uh, undergrad and I had a fora there. I’m a member of Mensa, so I was like deficiency. But in law school, when I started law school, I was just coming out of the tail end of really a year where I was depressed. I had struggled with interacts Aksia in college from age 19 to 23. I went to treatment kind of got that under control, but then around 2005 I went the whole other way, which was the year before I started law school. So I did end up, my first semester of law school I had like 2.53 I had to have a 2.5 to keep my scholarship. I was like, shoot. And then from there on out I had like a, you know, 3.5 to 4.0 but that first semester was so low it just, I ended up graduating like 0.02 away from graduating with honors and I think it was just the fact that, you know, he didn’t know my life. He didn’t. I was like, honestly that first year I was doing awesome to get myself to class. That alone was, I mean for context, I’m five, seven and I had binged eaten my way from like 140 in the middle of one in like the summer of 2005 to like 220 by February of 2006 while we give you context. And that doesn’t happen outside of like some serious emotional stuff. Right? That’s not just like I didn’t work out for a few months far beyond like, oops, forgot to go to the gym. 

Leah Gervais: Oh my God. And so this is a very personal question and it’s up to you if you wanted to answer it or not, but like when you got that kind of email and when you started as a first year, did that trigger like your, like any eating issues? Cause I would imagine that that would be, feel hugely like you were out of control of your own life at that point. 

Sara Anna Powers: That’s a great question. But it actually didn’t trigger because I’m the eating stuff really. I started, I hate to even say getting that under control because that’s not really, that’s not really what happened for me. It was, it was, um, I’m a, I’m a Jesus follower. I love the Lord. And um, it was a spiritual shift that I had in the spring of 2006 where I remember looking in the mirror and I saw my face was so like inflated. Like I hardly recognize myself, but it was really like the voice of the Holy spirit was like, you’re still you and God loves you and he’s not mad at you for like having binge eating the donuts and pizza and all the stuff, but he doesn’t want you to hurt. And so you can choose to see herself how God sees you and to love yourself. Like you can choose to treat yourself with love and kindness. And I know it sounds so ridiculous, like what just looked in the mirror and it just shifted. But that is actually what happened. It was a moment where I just, I just felt God speak into my life like love and comfort and assurance. And it had always been my biggest fear. Like what I used to pray when I was interacts like I would pray like, dear Lord, please bless my camp and also please don’t let me get fat. I’m not even kidding, like sickening to think about it. But that’s where I was, you know? And that’s, that was a prayer. Like please don’t let me get that. And then I got fat and then I realized like, but I’m still me. 

Leah Gervais: Yeah. Wow. Wow, wow. I mean, I am so my heart truly out to you. I was a ballerina growing up and have seen firsthand how dark some of those places can be and thank you for sharing that with us. But I feel like that revelation has probably made you such a better entrepreneur because so many of us get wrapped up in, well, what happens if I fail? What happens if I don’t make investment? What happens if no one likes me? And you’re like, Oh, I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to, to become your greatest fear. And I still know that my relationship with God doesn’t falter. So do you feel like that has carried over into your life now? 

Sara Anna Powers: Yes, absolutely. And I felt it in different ways. When I lived in France, I took this trip to Barcelona and everything I had got stolen like wallet keys and I had remembered thinking, Oh, that would be the worst thing. And then it happened and then you realize it’s not the worst thing. And I think having had a few of those experiences, you don’t have to to fear, you know, you can walk forward in the faith and you hear the phrase the faith over fear, faith over fear. But it’s true that faith and fear really can’t coexist. And from a spiritual perspective, I think fear, like the kind of fear that most of us experience, like I’m scared I will make this investment back. Or what if no one joins this program that is not coming from a place of light, right. That is coming from a place of darkness. Because if you are living in that fear, you’re actually going to act differently and you’re going to bring the fear into reality, right? Right. You approach a launch from what if nobody buys? You have this whole different energy around it and people will pick up on that. Like energy is everything. People will pick up on that people won’t buy. And then guess what? Your fear came true. 

Leah Gervais: You proved yourself right, which is not really what you wanted to do.  I can talk to you about that kind of stuff for forever. But before we get into business, I do want to go back to your story a little bit. So you get this job at this law firm right away. You’re sort of like, they called me deficient and right away, you know it’s kind of not for you. And so what do you do? When do you take action? 

Sara Anna Powers: Actually, I know they kind of ended this story, but, well actually, so that was my first law job. So here’s what happened that first year and a half at that first job, I worked my tail off. I worked every Saturday. I worked most Sundays. I took three days off in the year, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and one of the Monday holidays. I missed my grandfather’s funeral because I felt that I couldn’t be away for the funeral and to be by his bedside as he passed. So I chose to fly up and be with him as he passed. But then I had been gone. I had missed a day of work and I thought I can’t miss two more and stay for the funeral. So back I flew and um, and then about a year and a half into practice, I had a knock on the door at the end of the day. 

Hey Anna, we love having you here. We’d love to keep you, but we’ve had a downturn in business and we’re going to have to let you go. We’re so sorry. I will give you a month severance and you’re welcome to use the office for the next month to look for your next position. And uh, and you know, thank you. Oh my God. Where are you? Sun sun done primarily because that happened. I remember the day. It was March the first 2011. Yeah, 2011. I was stunned because in the fall I could see that the work was decreasing and as a first year it’s really not your responsibility to go out and get new clients. Most clients are not going to sign on with a first year attorney. It’s the partner’s job and that I feel like that even sounds blaming like it was their job. But Joe law firm works like the partners and the senior associates, they network, they bring in the business and then the associates, that’s literally that your title, you are an associate. 

You were there and I could see, I could see wow, like there’s not enough work to do and I would, I kept a paper trail, all the emails I would send an email to, you know, two thirds of the partners individually. Like, Hey, I’m available. Do you have anything for me to work on? And I was concerned because in law you’ve got to have billable hours and so if you don’t have enough work, you can’t meet your requirements. But again, you only have the work that the partners have brought in. And I actually had gone to the managing partner in the fall before I got let go and had said, Hey, like I’m concerned, is there, you know, should I be, should I be worried? Should I be looking because there’s doesn’t seem to be enough work for me to be able to meet my hours. And I’m asking everybody and nobody lost work to give me. 

And he said, we have made a commitment to you. You know, you’re the future of the firm and you don’t, you want me to be worried, you know, you, you were brought here for a reason. You know, we’re committed to you. Well, what was then that managing partner went out of power and a new one came in who was just much more like, could you T and so what I, again, this is second hand, but what I was told is, um, is it was just a very fast, you know, non emotional kind of decision and, um, and there you go. And it wasn’t just me. Actually. One of my good friends was, um, was also let go. And I remember going down the hall to another of my good friends and, and he said, Oh my gosh, did you hear that so-and-so was just let go? 

And I was like, no, but I was two and the look on my friend’s face who didn’t get let go [inaudible] was like, Oh, what’s happening? Oh my gosh, that’s crazy. So you don’t have your law job, you don’t have the job that you’ve invested two years of every day of your life doing. What is your life look like then? Internally and externally? Well, there I got real scared. Leah. I think I had about eight grand on credit cards because I had purchased a house, um, when I moved to Mississippi and uh, I had done that. I was engaged at the time and so we were planning on, you know, he never paid anything for the house, but like we bought, like in my name with my money, we bought a family house. And so I knew like when that broke off, which was definitely for the best, I knew, well I can still afford to make these payments, but I honestly never would have bought the house that I bought. 

If I had for myself, I would have gotten something much, much different. So then everything broke the second year that I lived in the house. Like F like I mean everything. And this is what, you know, owning a home is a beautiful thing and I love it and it’s upkeep. So there was like a new air conditioning. Well the air conditioning broke later, I take that back. So, but there was like the stove and um, the air events, like we had to do some work on the ducks. Um, the electric major plumbing issues, like separated pipes from trees, trees had to be cut down anyways as a whole ordeal. So I had savings when I moved into the house, but I put them all into repairing the house. And so I had gradually, you know, making these bigger payments, uh, house payments than I had planned on making by myself and gradually like gotten myself into a place where I was just like using credit to kind of get by. 

All of a sudden I have like eight grand on credit cards, one month of severance and I think my take home was somewhere around like five thousands right a month. And I just was panic and, but again, it’s like, well, this is the situation. So, okay. So I literally went to a networking lunch the day after I got let go. I had already planned on going just to, just to meet other women lawyers and I said, okay, well I’m not going to sit and grovel. I, um, was teaching yoga at the time. I taught yoga for 13 years. My mom is a yoga teacher and so I had a, an an ROIT 200 license and I contacted all the places where I had taught. I said, I’m free, I’m available. So I started adding yoga classes to my schedule. I was teaching Zumba. I started, you know, went from like one class a week to like four, you know, um, so I just, I just hit the ground running and talk to anybody that I thought would have a contact or an N and through my work with rotary international, because I was a rotary scholar from 2000 to 2003, that’s how I got to live in Switzerland for a year and I had joined the local rotary club and there were several attorneys there. 

Um, I got connected with the next firm that I ended up going to and honestly, it was such a better fit for me and I got that new job in two months and so I was able to make it through that with that severance and then, you know, getting the next job lined up. Plus the all, I, you know, the aerobics wasn’t a ton of money, but it was enough to kind of like float me and get me by. Um, yeah, it, it just, it was, yeah. And then when I got to the new firm, I thought, Oh my goodness, I didn’t know how horrible the other one was. Then you maybe had a moment where you’re like, Oh, maybe I could be a lawyer, just not a lawyer there. Yeah. Well you just, you only know what you know and that, and I really don’t want to sound like I’m knocking that first firm. 

I feel like it really sounds like I am, because again, that was my perfect path and everything that happened that I learned so many lessons there and I learned the lesson. Huge lesson I learned is in corporate, it doesn’t matter if you work your tail off and hard work does not always equal success because in the end with a company like that, it really is about the bottom line. Like [inaudible] I don’t think it was personal. Nobody there had some vendetta against me or had some like ill personal feelings. There was nothing personal about it. It was just, okay, here’s the numbers, you know? Yeah. It makes the most sense. And I get that logically, but I think I, I was raised, um, and my parents were definitely raised in a, if you do your job, you show up, you have a good attitude, you work hard, you’ll get rewarded. 

The wall just doesn’t work that way anymore. And it was very, very good for me to learn that in the beginning because I was able to see and forecast in my later law jobs like, Ooh, okay, I see. Cause I had two more legal jobs after that. Um, and the second one, I was there for five years. It was an amazing firm. They get fortune 100 best places to work pretty much every year. Um, really, really talented people. I was given a lot of responsibility and really enjoyed the practice there. And I did mortgage servicing work. So, uh, that’s a cyclical trend and we had a ton of work due to the, the crash in Oh eight. But because of that experience that I have with the first firm, I knew like this isn’t gonna last forever. And I was able to have my eyes open. 

My eyes have been and actually left that firm to go practice with a small like boutique family owned construction law firm because I could see this work is starting to trickle down. I’ve know how this goes. And I was a staff attorney there. I wasn’t an associate, so they, they had even less, you know, reason to be loyal to me than the first firm. And I thought, okay. And the crazy thing is very few people that I worked with on the kind of work that I did are still there. Like really? I think within a year of me leaving, lots of them either got let go or left to do something else. Sure. Wow. Wow. And it was just great to learn that lesson early. So wasn’t, you know, frankly I’d rather learn the lessons earlier to use them in life than B. I’d rather be 30 learning that lesson in 35 learning that lesson, if that makes sense. 

Leah Gervais: Right. Well, it sounds like you’ve learned a lot from everything you went through with health, your health experience and everything you went through with your mental health and then what did and didn’t work. Being at a law firm, it didn’t, didn’t work in a relationship. Being a homeowner, like my good name, I’m not, I’m as you know, getting married in a few weeks and we don’t own our apartment in New York cause no one does cause it’s New York. We don’t have a car cause it’s New York. We don’t have a, we’re sort of like, are we even adults? Do we actually have responsibilities because we don’t really own anything. You really experience a lot of that early on. Yeah. Yeah. Well and again, we were chatting, I know before we started recording just about the differences. I mean it’s a whole different world like Mississippi real estate versus New York. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean it very, very hard to make sense of buying here, which is just, yeah, it is what it is. You know, it’s for better or worse, but it’s, it also just doesn’t make sense without getting on a tangent. As much economic sense here as it does other places, because you’re co-op fees and tax real estate fees are often higher than your mortgage. And so you think like investing in your own property, but a lot of times you end up having fees that are just double. You’re paying your mortgage and you’re paying rent. Exactly. So you have to ask, am I like, is that even worth it? You know? And so anyway, it’s a whole different conversation. But yeah, we’re like, we’re getting married and we don’t even have a plan. 

Sara Anna Powers: You know what, there’s something really, I mean, I do love owning a home, um, just because I’ve always been this way, Leah, even when I would travel internationally, I wanted to go and stay. So I spent us, I said six weeks in Argentina. I spent a semester in France, I spent a year in Switzerland. I’ve never really loved going somewhere for a week and then coming back, I’m the exact same way. Yeah. It’s like I’d rather not go and go when I can go for a longer amount of time. I love that because I love going to the places where they get to know you and they, Oh, this is the coffee drink you want, or Oh, like you, like these kind of eggs. Like that makes me feel connected. Um, so I do love having a home and there is something great to be said for having those fewer encumberment. 

I mean, when Tim Ferris came out with the whole four hour work week, yeah. Just the idea that you can, and we can be mobile now, which is rentable. Like I just spent 10 days in California and one day there it was kind of a mix of business and, and personal fun. Um, but there was a day that I was at Pacific edge, um, literally had a room looking out over the ocean and I’m on a call with my speaking coach and then I’m on a discovery call with a client just looking at the ocean. Pretty darn cool. But has that, had some nice offices when I was in the law practice. But none of them compared to a bird’s eye view of the Pacific ocean. 

Leah Gervais: Definitely not. I know it’s that I think is one of the biggest still like pinch me parts of the path that I’m on now and I know you’re on the same. You and I have had somewhat parallel stories and I’m still to this day, I think that’s one of the biggest moments where I’ll just be like, Oh my God, like I am on my computer in Greece and I’m like working right now. I cannot believe this is happening because it’s one of those things that when you hear about when you’re in a nine to five job, it’s almost too good to be true to even relate to because it’s so far from [inaudible], you know? And you know I even get butterflies just when I like go to a nice bar in New York and have a glass of wine and I can oversee the city on my laptop because I love New York so much. And if you’re not careful in this city, then your whole experience here is your over air conditioned cubicle, this crowded subway and then your 500 square foot apartment. 

And so you’re not really experiencing it at all. And so to me, even just to like not be in that pattern, which I feel unbelievably blessed to be in that situation because I know that, you know, probably like 75% in New York, cause if not more are a, and w I wouldn’t go crazy too. I wouldn’t like the city if that’s all I did too. So anyway, I know that’s a, a bit of a tangent, but I think that it really is incredible to be mobile and you know, I’m so impressed with the business you built. So actually it looks so, that’s a good segue. Let’s talk a little bit about that. I know that you started health coaching while you were still an attorney. Is that right? Yes. Okay. So when did you decide I’m gonna explore something new? 

Sara Anna Powers: Yeah. So 2015 um, and I started practicing in 2009, so in the fall of 2014, I hired my first business coach and I had listened to the Dave Ramsey show or religiously through law school because I was gonna make my $1,000 a month go as far as that possibly could and Dave would have this guy, Dan Miller on his show and Dan Miller became one of my mentors. 

In fact, um, we were just emailing yesterday, but he still listens to the podcast and gives me feedback and advice and coaching. Um, just because that’s the awesome kind of guy he is. But I heard Dan and Dan wrote this book called 48 days to the work you love. And I bought it at the bookstore with my cynical lawyer brain thinking, I’m going to disprove this. That is not possible. You cannot find, you cannot find work you love. And 48 days [inaudible] I was so lawyerly. I am going to approve this positive message wrong. I bought the book, Leah and I was reading it chapter by chapter and just seeing all these beautiful examples of people who were just ordinary people and they had some kind of quirky skill or gift and they made it into a business. And they were all these examples of six figure businesses, which for me at the time, that was the Mecca, like Whoa, six figures. And I thought, wow, there’s something to this. What kind of put it on the shelf. Cause I read it in Oh six, Oh seven, somewhere around my first year of law school. And I got, uh, I got about four years into my practice and I just saw, wow. Uh, my salary had gone down from where I started, you know, I had that great offer. And then when I took the job with the bigger firm, which was again, a much better fit for me, but the pay was lower, um, significantly lower. 

Hmm. It was just, you know, it was what was available to me at the time, but I thought, this is crazy. I’m not working any less hard. My pay is going down. Yeah. I can’t imagine keeping this up for much, much longer. So I applied for coaching with Dan’s company and they, um, and I was thinking Leah, that I would get coaching with them to figure out how to use my skills and package them up into a different job. I actually applied for career coaching, not business coaching. And I sat on the discovery call with the coach that Dan’s team placed me with and she heard my story of having overcome the inner Axion binge-eating and she said, you could do that, you know, you could help people with their body image issues. And I thought, what? Yeah, it was such a novel idea, but I say that, but I had already had entrepreneurial ideas when I was between jobs, actually met with web developers because I had this, I had this idea for this site. 

It was kind of a collaborative site, but then I just didn’t have the money to make it go forward. And I, at the time I ended up using credit, like nobody’s business. But at the time I had a lot of resistance to, you know, especially in that situation where I didn’t have my basic bills covered, which is something I always encourage my clients, like have your basic bills cupboard, then you know, know that you have food, clothing and shelter and then like be okay with taking a risk risk can, can yield great rewards. But anyhow, I had this discovery call with this coach and she convinced me or open my eyes to, Hey, I can start my own business. So I really just went for it. I hired her, I had done my Dave Ramsey plan, I had my thousand dollar baby emergency fund. Her deposit was nine 97 so I took my savings down to $3 and I negotiated a super extended payment plan because I wanted to cashflow it. 

So I was doing like $500 a month over six months as opposed to her program was like 3,500 for six calls. Um, which is again, we would never say that as a coach. It was for three month program. But in my mind at the time, I was like six calls, how much per call is that? Right? Yeah. And so, so we ended up actually working together for six months and I didn’t see the fruit, but all of those, all of the work that we did, they were all building blocks because ultimately in that health coaching career was out of alignment. I have a heart for women to accept themselves and love themselves and see themselves as God sees them. But I really always knew in my gut like that’s what the work I want to do. I wanted to do the kind of work she was doing, but I just-

Leah Gervais: I think you still do that work. You still work with women to love themselves and see them, sees them, but just not in terms of health. 

Sara Anna Powers: Yes. Oh, that’s a great point. Yeah, absolutely. 

Leah Gervais: Because as you’re saying that, I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s exactly what you do. 

Sara Anna Powers: Yeah, it would. But it was, it was the health piece that was a bit of a disconnect because, um, there was just a lot, there was a lot wrapped up in it. And it’s not that I wasn’t still struggling in that area at the, at that time, um, but it just wasn’t where I feel that I really Excel. I fell in helping women the way that I helped them now. Um, but with the, there’s just other people, like I remember when my business got really successful and I needed to give up my yoga class, which I was still teaching yoga as of like two a year and a half ago. 

I was still teaching a class $25 an hour. It would take up two hours by the time I got, you know, and my coach was like, my business coach was like, are you a yoga teacher? I was like, yes, yes, I’m our way. Teach you a hundred. She’s like, you know, are you a yoga teacher? I was like, no. There’s someone that feels about teaching yoga, how you feel about running your business and if you’re gonna hold onto that class, you’re taking their spot. And that’s kind of what the health coaching thing was like. There are people who feel about health coaching the way that I feel about business coaching. And online marketing. Like I’m just like, Oh, like how many hours could I stay up and learn all this new stuff? Like I love it that much. Yeah. I love what I do so much that I have to put limits on myself to stop working. 

Leah Gervais: That’s awesome. 

Sara Anna Powers: Yeah. So, um, so it morphed over time and it was actually, you and I have both worked with Emily Williamson. It was, uh, at a graduation ceremony of one of her programs where I realize, Oh, I can’t be a health coach anymore. I have to really go for what I want to do. And it was the day before a $40,000 photo shoot that I had booked for health coaching and we had all our wardrobe picked out with these like flowy Bohemian dresses that I would never, ever, ever wear in real life. Like if you feel like you’re playing dress up for your photo shoot, there’s probably something wrong. Whereas now like every shoot I do, I’m like, Oh, I would, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t wear it in the shoot unless I’d actually wear it. And in real life. Yeah. In fact, like the last shoot I did with windy, y’all on the New York, like I bought every single thing that I wore. I was like, okay, cool. We’re getting it all actually stuff that I wear would wear and use in my real life. Um, so anyhow. Does that answer your question? 

Leah Gervais: Absolutely. It’s amazing. I mean there’s so many, the nuggets there that I want to pull out for anyone listening, one alignment is King and it’s so very in the beginning, you know, I mean, I don’t know. I actually want to be careful when I say that because I wanna I want to be honest and say that in the beginning for me, there were clients that I took on that maybe I wouldn’t now because I was trying to get my business off the ground and I wanted, you know, the experience, what was I doing it out of intense, like out of integrity. No, I knew I could help them and I was able to know, but there were, you know, it probably wasn’t so much of a perfect fit. It also isn’t so much of my ideal client. It was like they needed help and I could help them. And I did that. I wouldn’t say that that’s so much out of alignment cause it was always within the bigger picture of what I was going toward. 

But other than that, I think that your advice is so critical and the quicker you can be honest with yourself about when you’re not in alignment, the more successful you’ll be faster. And it can be scary because sometimes you can be doing something that works but it doesn’t feel good and it will not work in the end. Like I just, I can’t say it enough because I’ve experienced it and I’ve seen it over and over with people where they’ll like, you know, make money doing something but then realize they don’t really love it. But that’s the only way they’re making money. And so I think it’s great that you are a living example of I’m changing my $4,000 photoshoot. I’m not, you know, going to do this because it’s not really what I want to do anymore. Um, I mean in your whole story is just amazing. 

It sounds like you have followed your gut the whole time. And I know, and I love, you know, I’m Catholic as well. Um, I don’t know if a Catholic, but I know you’re a religious and Christian, how you, you know, keep God as your compass. And I just feel so blessed to have grown up with that background. And I’m sure you feel the same way because my favorite thing that you said on this interview so far is that faith and fear can’t coexist. They just can’t. And that can be a really tough realization when you feel terrified that you can’t pay back your credit card or you feel terrified that your launch is gonna fail or you feel terrified that you’ve gotten main message. And what if they’re writing and what if you need to go back or you feel terrified that your parents don’t approve of what you do and should you be going to get a nine to five job? Those, those are dark moments, but where there’s dark, there’s light. And I feel grateful that we intuitively know that because it can be a harder thing to learn during the time. So do you agree with that? And I guess would you have any advice for someone who is wanting to be quicker about remembering that in the dark moments? 

Sara Anna Powers: Yeah, I do definitely agree with that. And I love everything you just said. We should like make it a timestamp of that and put it in the show. Like this is the nugget and yes, my advice is [inaudible] and it really, it’s spiritual. So if you’re not spiritual listening to this, um, use this as checking in with yourself. But for me it is like if no one else had an opinion that mattered and it was just me and God and I’m just asking God, well, you created me, what do you think I should do here? And when I feel that gut, that gut hit, I call it Holy spirit intuition. Like you said, the faster you can be honest with yourself, the quicker you can have success. Because I really do believe that every single one of us is put on this earth or purpose for a season for a reason. 

That sounds super cheesy, but for the first season and for a reason, and as long as we’re still breathing, we clearly have not yet finished fulfilling our purpose. There’s still something that we’re meant to do, lives we’re meant to touch and just checking in with um, releasing everybody else’s expectations. For example, you said like terrified, you can’t pay the credit card back. Whoever said you have to pay the credit card back though the info the whole month. And I am not a financial advisor, but I used to like be rate myself for carrying a balance. And then it’s like, is that enough? 

Leah Gervais: And then one month you don’t, and you’re like, Oh, everything is so full. Wow. 

Sara Anna Powers: Is that really like, I mean, I just think it’s hilarious in America that we’re totally okay with $500,000 mortgages. Like that’s totally fine, but like a $5,000 credit card bill means you’re a bad person. I just, I think that’s laughable from a point of logic. It makes no sense and cool. So when your house is an asset, we’ll tell that to the people whose house value flipped upside down in the downturn. Not an asset for them. 

Leah Gervais: And you’re still living in it. It’s not liquid cash. It’s kind of an asset. Like it contributes to your net worth. But at the end of the day, your business is something that will return money to. 

Sara Anna Powers: So ask yourself, Oh, aside from what everybody else feels about this, what do I feel about this? And if you hate credit card debt and what that’s like something that know you hate personally, well then don’t have it. But if you’re just feeling some way about something because all these other voices told you, you should, I would encourage you to actually say, well, how do I feel about this? If I could block out all these other people’s opinions, what do I feel about this? What is God telling me about this? And you know, when I made the biggest investment decision I’ve ever made, I had a one on one coach for 40 grand. Still the biggest I, I make a lot of big decisions. I spend way more than that or invest way more than that now in personal development, but I’ll have like I have two different masterminds that are both, you know, significant amounts of money, so totals up to much more than that. 

But at the time, that was the biggest single investment I had ever made that all the people around me would have said that was insane and stupid and very unwise. But I checked in with the Holy spirit and I felt total peace that that was an opportunity that was given to me by God. Wow. That is, and literally asked Jesus a question about how he felt about me making that decision and he gave me a very clear image. I’m a flashback to a memory, which basically the message was, you can’t screw it up. Like this is an opportunity for you. If you make the wrong choice, I will trade you for the right. I will try to make the right choice. And so I went forward and that was a turning point in my business. The work that I did in that relationship helped me set up the coaching side of my business, which at the time I was doing probably 80% to 90% done for you copywriting. 

Now I’m my businesses may be 10% done for you, copywriting, everything else, coaching, teaching, mentoring. And that particular engagement helped me start to shift and I feel much more in alignment with the shift. Just working for a few super high level copy clients that I know, like they have seven figure launches, you know, we knock it out of the park, um, and I can really support them as opposed. And then I teach the people who are newer through my messaging program. Um, which makes much more sense because when you’re starting out, I don’t think you need to invest $7,500 in a copywriter. You need to learn how to write copy for yourself.

Leah Gervais: Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah. Amazing. So it was that, I mean even in that moment you were able to, to act through faith and not fear even when you spent $40,000.

Sara Anna Powers: It was totally a faith, a faith decision. It was, okay God, I split up the payments. Well because it was going to be 50 if I did it in installments. I thought, you know, that’s what man, I’m not, I can’t do that cause I probably my business was making enough. I probably could have cash flow to it with the installments. Um, I definitely could have cash flow debt but I thought an extra 10 grand that seems excessive. Yeah. Let me just put it and I split it on like three to three or four different cards. Don’t even remember how many, but within the first three months I had made the 40 grand back. 

Leah Gervais: Wow. Wow. So that must have been one of the best things that you’ve done for your business. It really was amazing. Um, the one last thing I just want to touch on because uh, it is faith centered and I know that you’ll be able to share your wisdom with us on it. Is that um, the common theme I see, especially lately, I don’t know why. Maybe I’m just like getting deeper with my clients lately or what, but the biggest underlying fear that I feel like is coming up is this fear of not being worthy from people about whether or not they’re, they’re not worthy of selling or they’re not worthy of making as much money as they want or they’re not worthy. You know what I’m talking about? Like that seems what it all comes down to at the end. It can manifest in a lot of superficial, easy to package ways on the surface. 

Like I just don’t want to put myself on Instagram because I’ll be salesy and no one likes someone who’s lazy. Right. You know, you know what I’m talking about. Yeah. And the only real way I can understand inherent worth and move past that with myself, because to be clear, I’ve experienced that too. I’m not immune to this kind of thing. It’s especially when you are, or you know, you and I had so many situations where businesses took off relatively well. I mean, my income changed way faster in two years than it ever did ever, you know, in the rest of my life. And so you really do have to do a lot of internal work to keep up with that. And the way I was able to do it was was was through faith and through thinking, you know, you are a child of God, you are doing not him or anyone else any favors by telling yourself you’re not deserving of something. And I’m wondering if you have any other tangible tips or thoughts or scriptures or references that you have helped you and or your clients find that worthiness piece because it’s so important. 

Sara Anna Powers: Yeah. So, well, every day I start my day by meditating on a verse and it is a let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love for I’ve put my trust in you, show me the way that I should go for to you. I lift up my soul. So that is how I started the day is saying, okay God, like you have unfailing love for me. My day is yours. You show me where you want me. Show me who you, who I’m supposed to talk to, how I’m supposed to show up. Um, and from a worthiness perspective, if you really get down to the nitty gritty, if you believe what I believe, which is in Jesus as savior, you are worth God’s son dying for you don’t think you’re worth $3,000 freaking dollars. I mean, seriously are we, are we being for real here? Um, you were worth the God who created everything, sacrificing his only child so that he could be reconciled to relationships so that you could be reconciled to a relationship with him for eternity. I mean, that’s, wow. How could you ever question like you could charge $1 million per year and it wouldn’t even touch a tiny fraction of your worth. This is why when people say charge your worth and just that does not resonate with me at all because, okay, you want me to charge infinity? I mean, how do you accept infinity and credit cards? 

So again, when I look at pricing, I look at that as it’s really the energy that you’re allowing yourself to step into. So it’s not about what you’re worth at all. It’s about what you believe. It’s, it’s your mindset and it’s the value that you believe you’re bringing to the table because your pricing has to match your energy. Cause people will see straight through it if it doesn’t. Um, and that’s the work that only you can do with in partnership with God yourself, to be able to step into those new levels of pricing and income and, and to build that lifestyle that, that many of your listeners I’m sure are looking to build. 

Leah Gervais: Hmm. What an amazing answer. Have you and you know, well, I can go on about this forever, but I guess have you ever gotten resistance from people from, from Christians saying that, you know, we should be happy with what we have or like there’s a lot of praise in the Bible about poverty. 

Sara Anna Powers: Yeah. Yeah. Um, what did you say? There’s a lot of praise?

Leah Gervais: Actually, there’s not, cause I grew up Catholic and like there was a lot of praise within my community about poverty, but there’s not in the Bible. That’s where I don’t get it from. 

Sara Anna Powers: There’s a lot of praise about generosity. And there’s definitely mentions in the Bible about people who are poor, being generous, and how, how beautiful that is. You know, the widow who gets her last month, and that’s praise. Generosity is praise. But man, if you look at all the people who followed after God’s own heart, who had extraordinary wealth, and I don’t preach prosperity gospel, I don’t know what God’s plan in this fallen world is for every human being. But I do believe that there are biblical principles that he has put in place for us to use that most believers don’t use. 

Uh, there’s a verse that says, if you say to the mountain move, and you believe it will move, it will move. Will nobody moves mountains literally, because nobody has that kind of faith. But there’s a story of, um, a woman who had been bleeding for 13 years and she touches Jesus’s robe and he feels power go out from him. And he says, who touched me? And she admits that. And he says, you go by your faith, you’re healed. She believed, she believed. And so she got what she desired. And I bet either a lot of other people who have believed who grabbed onto him, who did not get healed, come at it with full, you know, this is what you’ve put. I always say, you know, there’s a verse that says delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. So if desire it, it’s not immoral, illegal or unethical, it really is put there for you by God and you can, you can ask for that boldly. 

Leah Gervais: Yeah. Oh God, I could talk to you about this kind of stuff around her. And for those of you listening, if you love this, check out her podcast, fade for it online business. It’s so refreshing, so applicable. She does an amazing job applying it to the, you know, the stuff we do everyday. So I’m like losing track of time because I literally could talk to you all day, but I just want to thank you so much for being on and sharing your wisdom with us and your story and your amazing spirit and faith and positivity. It is infectious and it’s going to influence everything we wanted to listen to us. So thank you Sarah. 

Sara Anna Powers: Thank you so much Leah. It has been a delight to chat with you and I’m so excited we touched on so much and um, thank you again and all your amazing listeners. You are in great hands with Leah. She genuinely cares so much. You’re definitely one of the people in this industry that I look up to and respect and value our friendship and relationship. 

Leah Gervais: Me too. So much. And then um, just quick, a little announcement for everyone. You are doing a live event in October and also how can people find out more about you? 

Sara Anna Powers:  Yeah, so the live event is called magnify live. It’s for people who want to magnify the results in business women find God, October 2nd through fourth in Atlanta and we actually have, um, the ticket rates are stepping up as we get closer to the event. So you can get a SaraAnnaPowers.com forward slash magnify live and see the current, um, the current rates. And then to follow me, you can just check out the website. SaraAnnaPowers.com I am more and more active on Instagram, so I love my Insta stories and I love the DMS. So that’s @SaraAnnaPowers and no H on any of those. 

Leah Gerais: That’s awesome. Great. Well, thank you so much and thank you visionaries for listening. Me and Sarah Diana are cheering for your biggest vision. We’ll talk to you guys soon.

Your Biggest Vision’s Daily Checklist for Visionaries;

Free Download!

Click here to download the checklist