The 5-Step Framework for Turning Fear into Fuel

It's a New Year and a New You, Right. You got plans to start a new business or add something new to your current business but where do you start and how you do get over the fear. In this episode, I share how I started a new shop despite never doing anything like it before. These 5 steps are the same ones that I use to help my clients work through fear and create the things that they have been afraid to launch. 

Transcript

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welcome to She's crafted a thrive I'm your host, Nikita Williams, and this show is from all the ladies who are making creating things that they love. You will hear conversations about the real everyday struggles of juggling life, and this is trying to maintain passion and harmony. As women, we have the skill of getting things done, but sometimes we get in our own way. It's here. Well, you'll see that you're now alone. You'll discover that success does not mean perfection. Fear and negative thoughts and challenges are all a part of the journey on this podcast. So find the inspiration tools you need to have a life and business thrives. Welcome to she's crafted the thrive. You guys, I'm so excited that you're here and joining me and a new year of listening and being inspired and moving past our fears and all the things right in the year 2020. I cannot believe we're saying that's a new decade in general. I just was thinking about with my husband the other night. We were talking about how time flies, and I think you all would agree with me time. It's crazy. It's going so fast so many things are happening and things were happening. And it just really brings to mind why it's important for us to take moments in the day, um, moments in the months in the year to really reflect on where we are, what we're doing, where we're going and really being purposeful and intentional interactions. And I'm just so I just want to keep the time right now just to say Thank you so much for being a supporter of the she's crafted community. Been amazing to have some comedian ladies reach out to me last year to share their thoughts about the show and share their love about the show, because it really helps me to see that this is helping some of you. It's really reaching you, and it's inspiring you to do some things that you may not have done before or may not have thought of doing. I've had so many ladies really share with me their their journeys, living with a chronic illness or starting a creative business and all that here and here and all these other amazing women coming on the show and sharing their journey has helped them to take that next step or take that leap or change that mindset, Um, so that they could be more positive and have more purposeful connections with their everyday life and in their business. So I am so thankful for you guys. Excuse me? If I sound a little weird. I have a cold of medical for over three weeks now, Uh, I am working through it, doing what I can, but I want to show up for you guys. Um, I just want to say thank you again. Thank you. Thank you. Last year, we had over 1000 downloads which you guys is amazing because I did not expect this to be like the show. This was really a place that I wanted just to come and connect with women. And I'm doing that. And you guys are connecting back. I feel like we're building a community. That was my word. Last year for 2019 was community. And I feel like we're definitely building that you guys are using each other's resource is and connecting and reaching out to me, and I just just absolutely love it, so thank you. Thank you. Now I want to get into the topic that we're gonna talk about today. It's a new year, and everyone is thinking about all these huge goals. And one of the guests I've had on the show, her name is Christy Monty. Um, she's like, I don't believe in your round goals and I kind of agree with her. I think your round goals are kind of overwhelming. I think what we really need to do is have I'm quarterly goes weekly, goes, um, monthly goals because things change. And if you're anything like most women in the creative space or women who are living with a chronic illness, you understand this to be true every day and every week is very different. And so sometimes your goals have to shift and change color sort of speak, you know, to work with what we want to do and one of the big goals that I often hear, Um, for lots of you guys, it's starting something it whether you have an established business or you are looking to start a business because you're in a 9 to 5 or you have a hobby, you want to turn into a business. It's like, How do you start something you've never done? before or that something you've imagined of doing. How do you get started? And you guys, I really feel really passionate about talking about this off it because as you guys know, I hate feeling stuck. Like that's been my thing, like whether it's stuck in my body, my circumstances, whatever the case may be, I always like That's a feeling I don't like. I don't like to feel stuck, and sometimes we can put stuck on us. If that makes any sense, we could have these beautiful ideas and these great big grand thought. But we allow fear to get in the way. And so I want to talk to you guys about fear, and then how to move past your fear and how to do that thing you want to do. Last year was a lot for me last year, you know, besides continuing going on with the podcast, uh, we decided to move back home to Georgia, Um, which means we decided to buy a house as well. Um, we've never done that before. I decided that I wanted to do group coaching, or so I thought I wanted to do group coaching, so I did a beta program. And, um, I also wanted to start a shop. Now for a minute, You guys, you may or may not know this, And if you've listened to some of the earlier solo cast excuse my cat, you're gonna hear him because he's been really active the last couple weeks. It's probably because I've been sick. So he's here all the time of with me. So anyway, um, one of the things that I really have wanted to do for years I have always been attracted, and I love women and just who are creating things with their hands and doing things that are amazing, right? And so you may not know this, but I love to doodle. I love to draw flowers. I have done that since I was in grade school. Like I have tons and tons of flowers and just sketches and stuff like that. I used to be really into poetry and things like that, and I got away from that used to do pro shay, and now I do pro shaking as like, a hobby. This is never gonna be a business. I'll pick it up and I do it. I feel like it But I've always wanted to make or create something and sell it like physically, right? And so I've always allowed fear, and I also have allowed a lot of the things I'm gonna talk about getting in the way. So in 2019 I decided I want to start a boutique, for she's crafted and I had this huge idea of what was going to look like and was gonna do. I also was thinking, Hey, I will create my own products and then I'll do a curated box and one of these things are things that I still plan on doing. But over the course of the year, I found myself allowing fear to get in the way. And so if you're thinking about starting a business, we're starting something new, Um, in your business here, some things to keep in mine, and it's the number. One thing I think stops all of us from pursuing. Whatever. That being ISS, it's fear and fear is funny because it comes in so many shapes and sizes. It's like a diamond in the rough, except it's a diamond we should like. They're away cause it's useless because it's kind of funny how this fear works. It has good aspects of it. Obviously, you know fear. If you go to the fire, you could burn yourself stuff like that. I'm not talking about the good fear. I'm talking about the bad fear, the fear that allows you or stops you from do nothing right. It stops you from junior thing. And fear comes in many shapes and sizes. What do I need by that where fear can be masked as an excuse or a legitimate excuse? And I say that because I really truly believe there are legitimate excuses, especially if you're like me and you have a chronic illness like Look, if there's a florid a it's not an excuse, it's really I'm in pain. I'm down and out buds. Am I going to allow it to stop me forever? Right. So what am I talking about? Fear here comes in those different shapes. And here is what it can look like for all of us thieves that we say to ourselves things that we do. It could be like this. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough money. I don't really know how to do this. I don't really have their resource is to do this. I don't have the energy to do this. I don't really have the support to do this. I'm not really good enough for this. Um, there are too many people doing this thing already. It's already oversaturated in the market, and I don't think I could do this and that feel and yeah, So all of those things are a little different facets of fear, right? We we allow all of these things to stop us and let let me just be, like, totally real with you. It does stop us. It's stopped me. I have clients or have talked them through fear. And I just want you to know that sometimes that all of these things have some truth in them, right? They have some truth. Like we're busy people. We're working through a lot of things, So time is a factor. Money. It's a factor. Resource is is a factor. Energy is a factor. All those things there is a factor. But they are not the reason why you're not pursuing or why you can't start that being that you want to do, for example, I'm gonna use myself and I'm gonna share this story because I really believe that this is like, real life, like real talk. You guys all know I have multiple chronic illnesses and I have a lot of time on my head. I guess you could say so. Time never really is a thing for me, but it is a thing for me in the sense if I'm having really bad days or a really bad few months, time could be a factor. Energy is such a big factor, but those aren't things that should stop me from pursuing pain, Ray. So it's all fear. They all stem from here. We can use these things that are legitimate, but we can use them as excuses. And here's why. We all make time for what we want to make time for right. We all have the same amount of time in the year, but we all make time for what we make time for. So we are using that as an excuse not to start something. Let's be real with ourselves. That's not the reason why. The reason why Another reason why a lot of people don't start something is money. So I'm talking about these like three like top things, Money like yet seriously think they're hard can be tight, especially if you have a running business and you're afraid of figuring out like what is cost? Looks like my biggest being with that is that you just need to take a step back and look at how things are. And maybe the shift priorities the same thing you might have to do with your time and your money. Gotta shift priorities or look for other ways to allow you're south, too. I'm actually do this thing and the other piece, and this is for all my ladies who are dealing with the chronic illness energy and I am not enough. That's a fear that honestly, constantly on our mind. But here's what I know is that there will always be excuses. There were always be fear, and if we lived in that fear and in those excuses, nothing good to be accomplished, nothing could happen, right? Nothing. Just think about the fear and the time and the money and the know how it takes for people to create anything right to do anything. When we look at people who are big and doing amazing things we can't assume matter. Fact. We should assume that there was a lot of fear and obstacles to get in their way before they got to where they are, right? Let's keep that in mind. So here's how I want you guys to think about getting out of here five ways to step out on fear and start one right down. Your idea. All the details down. Make a plan if you wish. If you're like me, I have multiple plans of my plans. I like to write out what I think I'm gonna do and all those things, and I'm going step walk you through the steps of what I did for my shop. If you don't know this, I started my shop literally at the end of 2019 launched like Friday, and it's pretty amazing because I didn't think it was gonna happen for me last year. I did a lot of researching and trying to do this and do does it did all these things right? And then I just decided to keep things simple and focus on a few things versus a lot of things. And I think that's the biggest being you can do when you're starting step out on fear. So write down all of your ideas no matter how crazy they may sound to you, no matter how outlandish they are, write them all down and then kind of make a planet. What, you want it to look like this, this new business or this new revenue stream for your business? I want you to write it all down. Now go to the 2nd 1 Now, the 2nd 1 is to research. So what you're doing when you're going through these five steps is kind of setting yourself up mindset wise to have concrete evidence of the fear that you have is not really okay. So when you're looking at the research, look at it. There's a market for what you're doing. Look at um, how to do what it is that you're trying to do Look at, um, other people how they're doing it and how you would like to be different. Okay. And the number three do now what happens for most of us as we get stuck in number two and we use number two of research to be a fear place, right? You start looking at all these things, and all these things that people are doing are like, Oh, my gosh, I could never do that. I could never do that. I could never do that. But instead of saying that to yourself, you can You should start saying to yourself this affirmation, I may not know how to do this now, but I will. Okay, I may not know how to do this now, but I will. Or if you're feeling like, you know, this is too much. I don't have the time for this. That it this This is what I want you to say to you Say to yourself, This is important to me and I will make this work. Okay? I want you to think about those things when you start getting that, like, overwhelming. And if you start building like you're stuck in the research phase mine it Matter of fact, I and this is very generous and that this really depends on yourself. Give yourself a time limit. How long you're going to research a topic or an actual aspect of this idea or revenue stream that you're going to do for your business? Give yourself no more than three months. Okay, Like three months is being really generous. I really think you need a month, but no more than three months, because everyone's a little bit different. And then go to step number three. Start doing start, implement, start, start trying. They start testing things out, start asking questions and how I did this for my business. For my the shop is that initially I thought I was going to have all these little things like cups and canvas bags and mugs and print. And I realized that what I really wanted to do is focus on my drawings and create them into journals. I'm a huge turnover. I love too, Dude. Oh, I love to write down things. Last year when I was doing my podcast for you guys, Ah, lot of the episodes that I went to share a lot of my raw emotional feelings came for me reviewing my journals. Um, because I write a lot of things down about how I feel. I write a lot of things about me business and all those kind of things. So I'm able to look back and then be able to, like, see how I can make improvements and also use us. Use those writings as a way for me to get out of my own way. So I thought me and it'll be really cool that can make my journals the focus of the shop. And I love canvas bags because everybody needs a camel's back, and I love quotes and things like that that are on those back. So I decided I was gonna really focus. And on those two aspects of my shop, I meant eventually I will probably start a curated box and integrating other, um, amazing creators into the shop. But I wanted to start simple, but it took me some trial and error to get there. You guys, I ordered samples of cups and prince and bags and notebooks, and it dawned on me after had done all that and done all the research of figuring out how much it would cost me to do multiple samples on all these things that I need to keep what I wanted to do. Simple. Because I didn't have the money to do that. I wouldn't have the time to do that. I would never get it done, and I didn't necessarily have all the know how of how to integrate that into a shop. So I stripped it down. And so if you guys are feeling overwhelmed about starting anything, if you're looking airplane, what you get to do part start doing, and what will happen is you'll start to learn where you can strip down to make it simpler and more feasible for you. But you won't get to that point unless you start doing unless you start making action. And then the number four to me is like a really big one. Accountability. I think that this is one of the biggest things we can allow fear to kind of wreck steps 12 and three, which is to write it down on research into Do. But if you have a really good friend, husband, business partner or if you're like me, who my accountability is really done best is if I go out publicly and Sam going to do something because as you guys all know, and if you listen to the show, I'm a big like you're yes means, yes. But like you know, me, no. And so once I say something out there, I'm really I'm really motivated. I'm really accountable to me. I'm sure it gets done. Like seriously, Like my husband is always joking about how serious I am about that, like, seriously So. And I feel really bad if something happens where I can't fulfill something like I will, It's one of those things. I understand life happens in this part of my personality, but I'm very accountable to what I say out publicly. Um, And when I seen it myself, um so for me, the way I did set for which was accountability, was to go on Instagram and I talked about what I was going to do all year last year, last year. You will listen to the podcast and you're here Different episodes where we're talking about something completely different and I'm talking about I'm gonna watch a shop, I'm going to launch a shop, I'm going to launch a shop. And this one is amazing affirmation and an amazing way to keep yourself accountable because you're not saying Oh, I'm thinking about or I might you're seeing I will do something right. So that's step number four. And number five is Just do it. Just launch it. Nothing is going to be perfect. You can adjust and tweak and listen to feedback. Asked for feedback all while you're doing this being that you're trying to start for your business. But here's another thing to keep in mind. Keep the idea at its simplest form. Simple like keep it simple because it will stop the overwhelmed. Really, it will help you not to feel overwhelmed and actually complete this goal. An idea? No, I've talked a lot, right? And my voice is getting even more like frosty because I'm sick. But just know that fear is an obstacle that can be overcome by knowledge and do it right. It is something that we can literally just jump over fear. So remember these five steps right down your idea? All the details. Make a plan. Get a general idea of what it is you want. Accomplish Number two Research. Google Sceviour ideas Viable? Decide then, if that's really something you want to pursue, ask people for questions. Who's done it? Who's been there before? Do all of those things and the number three is at Do start doing so whether you're deciding that you want to start a business like a crafting business, start crafting. Start making that piece of art Start doing this. Start testing out different ideas, share it on Instagram and Facebook and see what people think start doing. There was one point in my journey of doing my journal. I had don't so much research and, um, I was like figuring out drawing. And then I was sitting at home one day and I was just feeling so like, I need to go touch a journal like That's not mine. So I like, lost my mind. I was Fear was getting in the way And I told my husband cause you know, he works from home now and I was like, I have to go touch something And he's like What? It's like. I have to go toe hobby lobby or Joan's and, like, just start touching on journals and like looking at them because there's so many different things. I'm like I've learned. But now I need to go test and touch it and ask people what they think, and that's what I did. And that one actually really propelled the rest of why I feel like I even got to a point of launching. The shock was because I got out of my head and out of the paper and start physically creating and do it. So do that. Okay. Number four. Having accountability, partner. Whether it's yourself, whether it's sharing it with your audience and saying I am, I will do this thing. This is so important because it keeps you honest and keeps you going and keeps you working through the fear and number five. Just get out there and launch it, Test it out. Don't wait forever because it's not gonna be perfect. You're gonna have to make changes. You're going to fail. You're going to make mistakes and guess what? You're going to learn and bounce back and go. It's kind of like I think about it's kind of like having a chronic illness. I know something weird, but it's like I feel like when I first got, like, understood that I had endometriosis and fibromyalgia, like every decision I made after that was like a bomb, like I don't know what I was thinking. Why didn't do this like all of these different things and over the course of time, I have to keep living right. So I had to keep living. I had to keep doing. And I over the last three years really have come to know and understand my body so well, and I know what I can and what I can't do. But that didn't happen. Like, you know, by not living my life that happened by living my life and analyzing the mistakes and analyzing the pain and analyzing a whole bunch of things and tweaking this, tweaking that and last the same thing you're going to do with this big idea that you have you're gonna do those five steps you're gonna you're gonna like, step out on fear and start and you're good and learn and you're gonna grow and you're gonna be amazed, right? You're gonna be so amazed at the end of it because you accomplish something. Now, if you're listening to this episode, you're like, Oh, my gosh, this is so amazing. I can't believe that I need to do these things. Oh, I'm so scared to keep I'm so scared. Jump out and reach out to me. I will love to be your cheerleader. I love helping people just really connect, um, with what they want to do and how to get it done and get out of their own head. One of my favorite things to do while I'm coaching is the have my client's right down their fears. And then we talk about each one and then we write the answer to their fear when I say the answer, because fear is kind of like a question mark, right? I don't think I have this. I don't think I need this or I don't think I am good enough for that. And so right, all those fears down and then right, the answer to them. And that's what I do with my client's Axum. Okay, so is that really true? Is that really true? And it's amazing because once they're done and they're looking at in there like Oh my gosh, I was just in my head. I was just afraid. So I want you to step out on fear and kill it and do it and reach out to you. It's community at She's crafted a thrive on instagram or in the in the comments, or join the Facebook group that she's she thrives tribe. All right, you guys, thank you so much for joining me for this solo cast. There are so many new episodes coming up for this year. Um, this was probably one of my longer solo cast, but I am again so grateful and thankful for you being a part of the show. And, um, please reach out at info at crafts to thrive if you have any questions for topics for ladies who elect to here on the show, and I will be so glad to answer them on the show as well. But in the meantime, just know that you are crafted to thrive.