Leah Gervais: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Your Biggest Vision Show. Leah here, and today’s episode is all about time and your timeline. I admit that this episode might feel a little bit scattered , but I hope that there are some juicy takeaways from you because there’s so much I wanted to say on the topic. 

So as I was preparing for it, I was really just trying to let things come through that felt very, um, relevant, important things that I’ve really been talking about. Hi, Ashley, and things that have just been really important to me as a business owner, as a new mom, things that have really helped me achieve things quickly, things that have helped me sort of defy expectations of what people thought have been possible for me, and they’re not what you might think.

 So, let’s talk a little bit about this. Today’s episode is all about time, time, time, time, which is such a tricky concept because even though I think many people think they want more money, at the end of the day, I would say most people, me included, are more concerned with a timeline, how long things take the, take us, how much more time we have for things, how we can do things quicker.

And it’s honestly quite understandable that a timeline feels almost hard to conquer or hard to understand because unlike money, there is a finite amount of time that we are all allocated. We are all in the same line on this earth to eventually leave it some sooner than others. 

And there’s nothing we can do about that money. There is an unlimited amount of money, and I think it’s very, very important to get to your goal, to get to a spot where you really know that and believe that, and it’s not part of your consciousness to stress you out. There’s absolutely no reason for that, because it truly is abundant. 

You know, how to tap into that time is not right. Time is not that is the truth. So I wanted to start this episode with a few truths about my own experience with a timeline to sort of like a level set.

I think just some of what I’ve experienced and some of the things you do or don’t see on social media, I think that’s where a lot of this timeline anxiety comes from, which I don’t think is a surprise to anyone, is our comparisons of how long things take other people, how quickly things take on other people, why things are happening quicker for others, why they’re not happening as quickly for us. 

Let me know for those of you here who live, if any of that resonates with you, because I’ve definitely been there. And I think that in the quick, uh, nature of social media, just how quickly you have to feed the algorithm to keep up with it, how quickly you have to keep people’s attention span in order to keep them engaged with your content. It’s just a war. We can’t really win, right? It’s just getting more vicious and more vicious.

And this is kind of another topic, but whatever. I’m just gonna kind of share all my thoughts on a timeline right now. But, um, one of the things that really surprised me when I became a mom was sort of the, the, uh, danger of a show called Coco Melon. I’ve never seen Coco Melon. I had, I guess really kind of heard of it, um, in passing, but I didn’t really know that there was anything different about it than any other cartoon or kid show out there on tv. 

It wasn’t until I heard someone talk about how Coco Melon is extremely addictive to a child’s brain. And the reason being that the jump cuts in between kinds of camera angles. Of course, there’s not actually a live camera with a cartoon like Coco Melon, but the different sort of, uh, just scenes in every episode are so quickly moving.

In fact, they change every 2, 2, 3 seconds. So that’s kind of like crack on a child’s brain because they are so overstimulated and they continually have their attention being drawn to different things, different cuts, different scenes, different characters that when co melon gets turned off, it feels like they’re withdrawing because they have that overstimulation that mimics true stimulants that adults take that are drugs, right? 

And so one of the things that, uh, some, you know, moms that I had kind of talked to have done was to wean their child off of Coco Melon. So this was really eye-opening to me. Paul is too young to watch tv, but it was just helpful for me to know, as you know, beforehand.

 And so I did a little bit more digging and it turns out that, um, my little pony in SpongeBob Squarepants, which I loved SpongeBob growing up, so I’m not pretending that I’m above all of this, but those jump cuts were every like five to seven seconds, which was the fastest ever for at the time.

But now Coco Melon is every two to three seconds. And if you compare that to something like Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street, they focus on the same scene, the same setting for around 10 minutes. There’s really only three different scenes per episode. 

So a 10 minute attention span versus a two to three second, you can understand how much more harmful it would be to the two to three second, uh, for two to three, second to a child’s brain, a developing brain. This further got me thinking about something that feels very similar to that hugely quick moving cadence for adults, which is TikTok. 

TikTok is crazy. I mean, if you are scrolling through TikTok and someone’s video doesn’t get your attention within under a second, I would say you truly need to have someone’s attention within the first millisecond of them looking at it unless they know who you are and they’re very loyal to you as a creator and they watch everything you do.

If you’re new, if it’s something that they’re just stumbling upon, you have to be so quick that they’ll just, you know, you’ll just swipe through and go to the next TikTok. This made me feel very uncomfortable. 

So I discovered this in, I think June of 2022, June of last year. And right away, once I made the connection to how Coco Melon is basically TikTok for kids, or rather TikTok is coco melon for adults, um, I deleted it. I do not feel comfortable doing that to my brain at all. I know that’s probably a mis bus business opportunity. I don’t care. 

So anyway, this is kind of my first tangent on, on, on a timeline and I, and I hope that you’re kind of starting to see what inspired me to, to create this episode, which was just thinking about kind of this war that we’re all in with it and how we can’t win it, but how we can win parts of it so that we do truly create our own timeline.

So, back to some truths that I wanna give you about the timeline I’ve experienced in my life and in my business since I’ve transformed my life, which I would say happened basically when I started my business. I had my first seven figure sales year, five years after I first purchased my domain, which was my first signifier of having started my business. 

And it’s funny cuz that sounds very fast, but as I’m recording this, one of my own clients is on who had her first seven figure year, one year after she published her domain and had her and, and started her business. 

So that was fast, it was fast for me, it was much faster for her. Both of us did that much quicker than the average business in any industry. Another truth is that I once made $152,000 in sales in 24 hours. That’s crazy.

Feels like collapsing a timeline. I never made $152,000 in any nine to five job ever, not even a third of that in a year. And I was able to generate sales for that in one day in 24 hours. I also, in 2022 at the end, Q4 made around $300,000 in sales in one quarter. 

So do I believe that things can happen quickly? Obviously I’ve proved it and I will never, ever talk to my own clients or anyone that is trying to collapse their own timeline out of it, through thinking things are impossible, through thinking that it can’t be done through thinking that there, that’s wishful thinking. I don’t believe that. 

I do believe you can collapse their timeline. I do believe you can bend a timeline and space. I do believe that God or the universe, whatever kind of phrase resonates with you more, uh, knows better than we do, right?

I mean, we’re just people and I think we become so obsessed with what we think we can control, that we forget that there’s a lot we can’t control. And that can be really fun and playful. There’s a double edged sword to that though.

 Let’s look at some other truths about my own timeline and things that haven’t, haven’t happened in the first two years of my business. Two years, I made probably under three, $3,000 in two years. Okay? So I now know that I look like I have this shiny business and I do, and it’s super sexy and I’m obsessed with it.

 But it didn’t start that way. I was not an overnight success story. There was a long time where I only made a few hundred dollars a month, if that.

 Another truth is that in January of 2020, coming off my first seven figure year coming off multiple six figure months in 2021 in the first month of 2022, I made $200 in sales.

That’s true too. Another truth is that at the time of recording this February 16th, halfway through the month, we’ve made $6,000 in sales. I’m not worried about it. It’s not the season we’re in, we’re not selling right now. 

 Then I have other things that I’m doing to prepare for things. I’m not in a quick win chapter. Um, I kind of have a bigger picture in mind for what I wanna do. In fact, I’m really proud of those $6,000 because they were completely passive. It’s nothing I have to do. It’s stuff that’s either, um, already created or that my team is executing for me. 

 So it’s completely off my plate. So that’s okay, right? That’s, I know the, I know the season I’m in, and that’s kind of a recurring theme here too, is like knowing the seasons you’re in. But why am I telling you guys this?

 Because I want us to all have awareness that for every shiny timeline you see, and for every quick win you see there are probably lots of slow burns, slow wins, losses and failures, uh, with that on the other side. And one of the most common frustrations, excuse me, I get from people in the dms and emailing me these days, entrepreneurs trying to make it work is, is this very topic. 

It’s not happening fast enough. Leah, I’ve done all these things. I’ve, so, you know, I I grew my email list, I’ve started Instagram, I’ve done it. Where’s the results? Where’s the results? Where’s the results? And these are the truths. The results are on the other side of the non-res results. The roles, the results are on the other side of that timeline. The results are on the other side of doing things meticulously, thoughtfully, and with mastery, which freaking takes time.

One of the things I’ve consciously stopped doing with my son, he’s 15 months old now, is I’m, I’m removing these timeline-based words from my vocabulary with him. No, hurry up. No. Are you ready? No. 

Um, con you know, no conversation around where he should be developmentally no, no conversation around, um, what, where he, what his timeline is or how he compares to the other kids in his class. So-and-so’s walking yet he’s not walking. That’s okay. You know, he, um, didn’t crawl for his fir into his first year of life at all.

 Uh, to the point where I pretty much was assuming he was gonna skip crawling. That’s kind of what our pediatrician said would happen. And we take p to lots of classes and lots of playgroup and play dates, and everyone else was crawling and my baby wasn’t crawling. And now he crawls everywhere.

I mean, I can’t stop him from crawling. I can’t believe how fast he can crawl. It’s incredible watching him chase our dog throughout our apartment.

 But what I realize in removing these words around him, and I did this because childhood is so precious and it is so finite, and it is so, you know, short and the way our society has probably unconsciously yet still effectively hammered that respect and that preciousness out of parenting and out of kids is sad and disappointing and not the way I want a mother, my son. I, I, he’s not gonna be immune from it.

 I mean, we live in New York City. It’s a competitive place. And, and, and that’s okay. And I’m not a perfect parent and I’m not trying to, uh, shell him from the reality that he lives in. But what can I do to help him see that there’s nowhere for him to hurry?

There’s no timeline for him to be on other than his own. There’s no, uh, rush. You know, there’s no reason to not enjoy the chapter that he is in. And what this made me realize, I could choke up, I’m so emotional about this, is if I am not, if I’m deciding not to tell him to hurry up or not to tell him to be on so-and-so’s timeline or not to compare him with other kids and where they are, why am I doing that to myself? 

Why am I beating myself up if things aren’t happening as fast for me as I want them to? Why am I comparing myself with other people on social media because they launched something quicker or they made more money faster, or they did something in a perceived easier way? I haven’t done this in quite some time, but I still know that I’m not great at this.

And I think everyone listening, I mean, this is again, like the, the number one biggest frustration I hear from people is why isn’t it happening faster? Why isn’t it happening faster for someone else? Would you tell your toddler that? Would you tell your infant that? Would you tell your inner child that?

 And that’s what this is about, me recognizing that this protection, this bubble, this just complete honoring of self that I want my son to experience, I need to stand up for that for myself. And you do too. We need to stand up for our own timeline, our own ways of doing things, not comparing ourselves to other people’s timeline.

 And for the love of God, not telling ourself to hurry up. Where are we hurrying up to? What’s the destination? Now, this brings me to a point that I feel like might, um, frustrate people as they’re listening to this.

So I wanna make sure to address it because this would’ve frustrated me a few years ago. You might be saying, Leah, it’s easy for you to say that there’s no need to, uh, to rush my, my timeline, my income goals, how much money I’m making, my launch progress, et cetera, because I have a, you know, a business that’s extremely successful and we don’t worry about money anymore, which I would argue is a mindset thing more than just a pure dollar amount thing.

 And, you know, I can pretty much live life the way I want. So of course it’s easy for me to not feel like I have to rush things, right? I don’t have bills that I’m not able to pay. I’m not in debt. 

Um, I don’t know how to not pay my team or I don’t know how, I’m not at a loss of how to pay my team, excuse me, some of the very real stressors that come when you truly feel behind because there’s consequences to the timeline that you’re on. 

Here’s what I would say to that, because I wanna keep it real here. I believe that life is about enjoying the ride. 

And I do believe that it’s your job to get on the ride you want to enjoy. And if you feel like you need to hurry or feel a little bit of pressure to get on that ride, right, to get to that place, to get to that journey to enjoy it, then I, I get that. I do believe in a season of hustle.

 I do believe in discipline. I just don’t believe in the comparison or the, um, shortcuts that people seem to wanna have.

 So this brings me to, I think the, the bigger message of all of this, I think what’s really healed my own battles with my timeline and wanting to do things quicker and wondering why I wasn’t doing things quicker and actually healed a lot of my other, um, just pains of guilt or being hard on myself is really leaning into seasons of life and recognizing that in this season I’m really focused on marketing X, y, and Z and I’m not gonna want money from it yet because I’m launching it.

 It doesn’t happen that way. There has to be a launch period before there’s a sales period. And if you try to morph them, you’re expecting to build an audience, educate an audience, sell to an audience, and have an audience decide all at once.  

On a more macro level, I’m in a season of life where I have a lot of responsibilities. I have a new baby, I have a family that relies on me financially. I have a business, I have 50 clients, I have a team, you know, uh, there’s certainly more people that have more pressure than I am. I’m not saying this as a pity party, but that I know that that’s the season of life I’m in.

 So what does that mean? That means I tried to give up caffeine for three days and decided to stop because that is not the season that I’m in.

Maybe in another season I will give up caffeine, but not right now. And that’s okay. This also means that I’m in a season of, I wanna, I wanna use a money example. I’m not in a season of extreme growth the way that I was a few years ago where I was tolerating debt so that I could continue investing in my business.

 I’m not there anymore. I don’t need to. I don’t need, I don’t feel the need to do that. My business is able to grow with the cash that we make. But a few years ago, I was in the season of aggressive growth. So much so that I had to tolerate being in debt to do it. And I don’t regret that. 

And it helped me knowing this is the season I’m in. I’m not in the season of savings. I’m not in the season of buying a house.

And I really had to have tunnel vision with that. You know, you’re on social media and you see people buying a home. You see people, I don’t know, talking about their 401K or whatever. You see your parents talking about your 401k and you have to just say, oh God, I should, I should, I should. No, this season I’m in is one of deep growth. I’m gonna do what it takes to grow. 

And then I moved out of that season and now my money can be used in, you know, a little bit more of a just diversified way. So having those seasons, having consciousness around where you are can help you stop the comparison, cut out the drama around where you think you should be, how much further along you think it should, you should be. 

And when we get into that frame of mind you, you, you unknowingly and very easily become a victim to your own position and, and take away your ownership for the decisions you’ve made to get you there and the power you have in that place, it might feel uncomfortable to have debt.

I get it. I’ve been there. But if you can say I’m doing whatever it takes to grow right now, and you focus on that completely, you will pay off your debt faster than you sitting around stress about the fact that you have debt, right? 

Obviously, we only have so many hours in the day. That’s what this is all about. Don’t use them stressing out about something that you think you should be doing that doesn’t at all align with the season of life that you’re in. 

So I wanna end by bringing up a finding from, um, Malcolm Gladwell’s book, the Outliers, where he taught, he studies success. He studied people that have become legendary and innovators, entrepreneurs, founders, uh, you know, icons in what they do. And you may be familiar with the pattern that he found, which is that it takes at least 10,000 hours of doing something to master it.

If you divide 10,000 hours by 40 hours a week, then you are, um, looking at around five years. So when I look at my business and I look at the fact that it took five years for me to hit seven figures kinda adds up, right? I mean, I feel like the reason my business has been so successful is because I’m an excellent coach. I’m probably one of the best that you can hire. 

Why am I an excellent coach? Because I live and breathe online business, business coaching, online marketing, almost there. If you have any problem with the business that you’ve created online, I can almost guarantee I can spot the problem and fix it and know what to do to fix it. 

And that is mastery, right? That has come with me doing nothing else but this in the beginning around my nine to five. 

That was every time, every morning and night around it. And then I quit my job and took a huge risk to go all in on this. So ask yourself that. Am I looking for results that reflect mastering something and have I mastered it? Have I really given the time to it?

 This also speaks w to the marketing statistics you need. If you’re just selling something and you’re feeling like, why aren’t people buying? Remember that people need to see something on average. Originally the principal was seven times. I’ve now heard that that’s closer to 15 or 20 with Instagram and TikTok. 

And again, how quick we all short of an attention span, we all have, uh, so have you, have you allowed your audience 7, 15, 20 times to see that and make a decision? Or do you put something up there three times and then if it doesn’t sell, give up? And in order to, excuse me, ensure that your audience is seeing it that frequently.

They of course need to, you need to talk about it more than those because not everyone’s gonna see it every time that you do it. So this is a little bit of a tangent, but the point is, I hope that this helps you bring some awareness to where you are fighting with your timeline, which is a war you can’t win. 

And when I say fighting with timeline, I mean telling yourself to hurry up, kind of bullying yourself or not being where you think you should be based on things you cannot control that are completely out of your control. You cannot count here’s the truth, right? If we really wanna be honest about the comparison game, some people are gonna have it easier than Neil. 

 That is the honest truth. If you’re comparing yourself with someone else and you’re wondering why is it easier for them than me?

It might be possible to spend days detangling why that is where they were born, who their parents were, the color of their skin, their gender, their ethnicity, um, their education level, how much education was paid for them, how much time their parents spent with them. If they had good caregivers, who are in their life now, who supports them, who believes in them, their religion.

 I mean, we could go on and on and on. It’s not worth it. It is not worth your time. Disentangling someone else’s situation versus your own, especially the things you can’t control about your situation and the things they can’t control about theirs. Can’t control how you were born, what you look like, where you were born, who you were born to, you can’t even control that you were born. Obviously what you can control is your work ethic. 

Leaning into mastering something before you expect masterful reflections of it. You can control your attitude, , which makes a bigger difference than we like to give credit for. And most importantly, you can enjoy the ride that is always within your control. If you’re feeling the itch to get on the ride, by all means, do what it takes. Hustle, have fun.

 But stop comparing yourself. Stop making yourself wrong. Stop robbing yourself of the things you can control, get on the ride and then enjoy it.

 I hope that this helped you guys. There’s a lot that I wanted to just share in kind of my own way here and just really, you know, saddens me and, and, and, but I also wanna normalize that the people you see on Instagram that you think are crushing it are probably messaging me or their business coach asking why they’re not doing it faster or why it’s not happening sooner, or why it’s not happening easier, probably all of them. 

And that’s not even unique to online business. I think online business is the worst because we’re so flooded with these quick winds and these overnight successes. But in every industry, entrepreneurs, visionaries, people working towards something want it to happen faster, which leads you into wanting to control the uncontrollable and leads you away from the present moment, which is where your power is all along.

 All right, visionaries, let me know if you like this episode, you can message me on Instagram @leahgervias_, and I will see you guys on the next one.

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