Pluck Up Your Courage!: Conquer Fear and Claim Your Dream

Welcome to LegalBiz Cafe! Digitally remastered with AI, in this podcast series, Attorney Shaune B. Arnold gives to frustrated professionals like YOU the tools and resources you need to make the LEAP to entrepreneurship so you can start, build or fix a business you will absolutely LOVE. 

Is fear stopping you from launching (or rescuing) your dream business? In this empowering episode, Attorney Shaune B. Arnold shares her personal journey from corporate comfort to entrepreneurial courage. Learn how to face fear, build resilience, and boldly ask: Why not me? Your business isn’t just possible. It's your assignment. 

Transcript

Hello, friends! And welcome to another episode of legal biz cafe. I am your host, Attorney Shaune B Arnold, and I am here today to help you pluck up your courage. But before we get start getting brave, I have a few little housekeeping matters that I want to deal with.

I want to let you know what we’re doing here on legal biz cafe. We’re dealing with your mindset as an entrepreneur. We know there are things that will stop you from starting building the business of your dreams. Those things have absolutely nothing to do with building your business. They're entirely emotional. And that is what we deal with here on legal biz cafe.

I want to encourage you to also listen to my other show, Your Business, Accelerated! Over there we deal with business operations issues that can tank your business overnight. I have advised entrepreneurs on over and other again in the 40 years I’ve been a business consultant, and 30 years that I’ve been a business attorney.

So, when you listen to legal biz cafe AND Your Business, Accelerated!, you are fortified, my friend. You’re ready to go.

And so right now we're ready to pluck up our courage so that we can build our business. Now, you might be asking yourself, what is this woman talking about?? …Courage. …Come on. It's just a business, right?

Yes, for some people, it is just a business. Some people are very well qualified and have all the courage that it takes to build a business. And for others, it's not so easy.

It wasn't so easy for me when I first got started, I was an employee for many, many years before I started my own firm. I was, you may have heard me say before, a baby bird. My mouth was wide open. They fed me checks. As I was always in my office chair, and not out enjoying life, they fed me the next check before I had spent the previous check. That gave me a mindset where I never valued money. I never valued prospecting. I never had to have a conversation with a potential client as to why they should choose me, instead of the next attorney. I spent the majority of my young career on the 45th floor. Clients knew my value before they got to me. I never had to have that conversation.

In 2009, the banking world crashed. As transaction counsel, my job also crashed. I went from running the transaction department of a 30-lawyer firm, to being flat on my face on my kitchen floor. The problem in starting my own firm wasn’t that I didn’t know how to practice law. I had been practicing for 20 years at that point. The problem was I had a lot of fear about having those conversations with prospects. F E A R …Fear is false evidence appearing real. Yeah, it sure does FEEL real when you're in the throes of it. …But, I think the trick to dealing with the fear is to recognize the emotion, to recognize that it IS just an emotion, and then to breathe deep and just let it go. Release the fear.

Most importantly, do not make major decisions while you are in a fearful mindset. If you act while afraid, you will almost always do something that's unnecessarily restrictive on you, on your future or on your business.

So, when you are in that state of fear, I encourage you to start by exercising to get your body balanced. I also encourage you to talk to somebody that you value, somebody that you know will not steer you wrong to get your mind balanced. Above all, once you’ve taken action to alleviate the problem, I encourage you to just give it some time. Sometimes, all you need is time. Sometimes things just work themselves out.

Focus on being prepared. If you are prepared, then you can handle anything. You know, it's better to be prepared and not have an opportunity than to have an opportunity and not be prepared. Right? You want to always educate yourself on your chosen subject. And lo and behold, just like magic, courage results.

You've heard me say time and time again to maximize your competence to get the confidence you need to succeed. I say that, friends, because maximizing your competence gets rid of the fear. It gets your sea legs under you. You know that you know what you're doing, and so it's nothing to build that business of your dreams.

You know, the president of Procter and Gamble once said that a difficult decision is not a difficult decision because we don't know what to do. He said that a difficult decision is a difficult decision because we do know what to do, but so often we lack the courage of conviction.

So is that courage of conviction missing in you, and has that lack of courage kept you from building your business? Is the courage of conviction missing in you when people say you can't have your dream. Do you just fold?? When your wallet says you can't have your dream, do you just quit?? When people tell you that your idea is too radical, it's too new, and nobody has done it, so why should you be able to do that?? Do you ask yourself, why not you??

One of our beloved Olympic athletes spoke to the press, remembering his days in his youth when his dad told him over and over again, people are going to be rich, son, why not you? People are going to be champions, son, why not you?

Well, I'm asking you the same question. Someone is going to build that iconic business, why not you?? You can pull that idea out of the closet, or out of your garage. You might as well. It's not going to leave you alone. It keeps waking you up at three in the morning. It won't go away, even though everybody said that it should. It won't go away because it's your assignment.

You’re thinking, my assignment?? Why me?? Why not you? Why would you not to be the one to start that amazing business, the next Starbucks, the next FedEx??

It takes courage, but you can do it. I believe in you. You can build the business of your dreams. Yes, it takes courage. Your business is your baby. It's your heart. It takes courage to risk rejection. It takes courage to step out on faith, to step out in front of strangers and to step out and bare your heart to the world by building your business.

Maya Angelou tells us that courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage, none of the other virtues matter. It takes courage to go back to school when you are older and sit next to your own kid in class.

But they're going to be so proud of you when they see you studying. They see you doing the work, and they see you progressing. The same is true when they see you build that business of your dreams. Your happiness is going to be infectious. Peace is going to permeate the entire family.

Henry Ford once told us whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're absolutely right. And you know, he was so correct. You can build that business. You absolutely can.

This might take the most courage of all, my friend. Because if you are in a situation where you need to fix your business, you have to ask for help. Go on and ask for the help that you need. If you could have done it already without help, you would have done it already without help, right??

It takes courage to recognize when we've screwed up. It takes courage to recognize when we've gotten in over our head before we were truly ready. Frankly, it takes courage to realize we wrote a check with our mouth that our body simply can't cash.

It's important to stop the hemorrhaging in your business. It is critical to stop the downward spiral before it gets out of control. It always starts at a slow grade. You don't really notice it at first, but then you feel that money missing from your pocket, and before you feel that business missing from your life, reach out, ask for help. Hire a coach. Find somebody that has a deeper knowledge base than you have. Find somebody that has a broader vision than you have. Find somebody that can help you reorient yourself toward your goal.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you so much for joining me this week on legal biz café. I’m your host, attorney Shaune B. Arnold. I encourage you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter X. In all of those places my moniker is Shaune dot Arnold.

I invite you to join me again next week, on Legal Biz Cafe. Until then, I am reminding you …as always, to MAXIMIZE your COMPETENCE, to get the CONFIDENCE YOU NEED …to succeed.

I will see you next week. Bye-Bye, folks!