I Manifested My Dream Business: Here's What Actually Happened

Welcome back y'all! In this episode, I'm sharing everything that's happened over the past few months, from launching my coaching business and filling my client roster faster than I ever imagined, to making the decision to leave my job.

I'm taking you behind the scenes of what this journey actually looked and felt like - the fear, imposter syndrome, nervous system overwhelm, and the emotional reality of manifesting something you've wanted for so long. I talk about what manifestation really means to me now that I understand it better, why aligned action matters more than waiting until you feel ready, and how authenticity has become the most powerful tool I've found for building a business and creating meaningful connections.

If you've been sitting on a dream, waiting for the "right" time to start, I hope this episode reminds you that clarity comes through action, not perfection, and that the life you're hoping for may be much closer than you think.

Thanks for being here! 

Xx,

Shy ♡  

Transcript

0:00

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Shy Space, where we talk about all things pertaining to mental health and manifestation. It's been a minute since I've been here, and I'm so excited to be back with you all. I can't even put it into words. There has been so much going on over the past few months that I have to catch you up on, and so much that I wanna talk about in terms of everything that I've learned, and I'm just really, really excited. I feel like there's gonna be a lot of episodes on just the topics and learnings that have come from the past few months. So I'm really excited for this week's episode. The most important piece to start off with is just the crazy success that has come from launching my business back in April, so a couple months ago now, and just how I was able to manifest that success and manifest a, literally a full client load within a week of launching. There's a lot that has gone into that success, building blocks over years. Decisions I've made over years, like consistency that I've built over the years, particularly as it pertains to online presence and all of that, and treating that as a business opportunity. However, I also think that when you're starting a new business venture, there's always a risk of it not being successful, especially if you're not like some really big shot celebrity that has, you know, millions of followers where you're at least likely gonna get a percentage of that following to be interested in the product and therefore going to have at least some success. I am nowhere near that category, at least not yet. Um, I'm micro in terms of influencing, if you even wanna call it that. But content creation, whatever. I prefer to call it content creation 'cause I love creating content in all forms. Um, and I always have. I've always been a picture and videographer lover. Um, so yeah. Anyways, I am just really excited to talk through how I've done what I've done, and hopefully help others do the same, because it's not easy out there to chase your dreams and try to make a business work. I mean, it's scary, it's daunting. There's so many questions marks. There's so many unknowns. And it's something that I've been so afraid of my entire life. I've been learning a lot in therapy why I'm afraid of it, but it's also very interesting to dissect because I also don't get why I'm afraid of it. Like, why am I more afraid of investing in myself and betting on myself in like any capacity than I am in putting myself into somebody else's dream or, you know, business, whatever, and just trusting that they're going to treat me well, A. B, give me a good opportunity like they said they were. Or C, Actually have my back and, have, like, have my back in the sense that if something were to go down, you know, like layoffs or anything, you know, you're not blindsided. It's just hard because you can be blindsided and let go from a company at any point, and that's happened to me before. It's happened to many others before. And the one thing you can count on in business when it comes to yourself is that you're not going to disappear from yourself. You are gonna show up every single day because you literally have to. So I don't know. It's an interesting concept. I feel like we could dive into the psychology of that. I would love to talk to some guests about that too, like other entrepreneurs. But anyways like I said, been really lucky to have the success come from my equine-assisted coaching business that I launched in April, and literally have manifested more demand than I could keep up with, um, having had a full-time job up until this past week. Uh, so I actually quit my job, and my last day was on Friday. Today is Saturday, so that was yesterday. So yeah, it's been a pretty interesting week. But yeah, I-- for anyone who doesn't know, I've been doing this equine-assisted coaching certification for several months, and I finalized the certification and everything that comes with, like, needing to prepare to launch the business in April, and then I came back from a trip, and I started taking clients, and it's just been amazing. It's been a whirlwind. Like, I can't believe that I've had so many people interested in working with me, so many people come to work with me, so many people want to work with me on a recurring basis. Like, it's just the biggest blessing in the entire world. It's literally a dream come true in every possible way. I feel like if you know me, and you know my passions and my interests, like, this is, like, the mecca for me. Like, this is it. And to pour your heart and soul into something is one thing, but to pour your heart and soul into something and, like, truly believe that it's going to be something is a whole other ballgame when it comes to the challenges of your mind and just, like, blocking out fear because that's a big thing that I struggle with, and I think a lot of people do. It's a scary world we live in. There's always information about "what if" out there on, you know, everywhere, and it can be a little bit much. If we can focus on the good though and focus on what we can control, that's where the power and the magic happens. So let's talk about what actually happened behind the scenes when I launched my business. So from the outside, I feel like it probably looked really effortless. I came back from this trip. It was like I posted, you know, some TikTok, some Instagram stories, and suddenly I had clients. But internally, I was completely oscillating from every emotion that you could think of on the scale that you don't wanna be on. So, some excitement, but the excitement was really manifesting as anxiety, a lot of fear, a lot of imposter syndrome, a lot of complete nervous system overload and disarray, which was challenging. And then just, like, also this really intense knowing that my life was changing right before my eyes and changing in a really rapid and aggressive way, like literally doing a full 180, and I was just still waking up every single day the same way I had and just going through the motions and just adding new motions to my day. And it was as simple as that in terms of how that change was happening. And again, this is a result of years of building blocks that have led to this point and this decision and this idea. However, that transformation from being who I was before to being who I am now was just something that almost happened overnight and just was, like, very subtle and felt like it was nothing, but it was also everything at the same time. I could really feel it on a cellular level, and I felt... I-- it's, like, really hard to explain, especially if you're not into, like, the woo-woo spiritual stuff. You're gonna think I'm crazy in terms of how I felt these past couple months and, like, just shedding, like, this version of me that is not meant to be around anymore, the version that, kept me safe and kept me in a good spot as I needed it to in the past but no longer serves me now. And it just was excruciating. It was painful. It was emotionally exhausting. It was physically exhausting. It was draining from head to toe. It was anxiety-inducing. It felt like self-abandonment in a lot of ways because I was constantly and have been constantly, like, in productive overdrive, like hyper-productivity basically because I feel like I have so much opportunity that's happening right now, and I have to jump on it or else. And just struggling with, balance and not having a scarcity mindset at-- when it comes to the demand and the interest that comes, and not being able to immediately, like, fulfill that full-blown set of interest and demand. And then again, the imposter syndrome, which I need to do a whole separate episode on imposter syndrome, y'all, because I have some really interesting stories about people experiencing it, and I just realized, like, it's a very normal human thing, and that's totally fine, and again, we'll get into this later. But it's something that will really never go away if you don't tackle it head-on, I feel. So I'd like to do some work on that. But like I said, I was just, like, really struggling, and I think that people maybe hear the word manifestation or hear the word law of attraction, or maybe they perceive something that I'm doing and they're like They just think that it means that I'm sitting around doing nothing and, like, visualizing and meditating on it and praying and journaling all the time, but that's only part of it. That is a, a good part of it, but it's also about, like, the aligned action. So they always tell you in, like, spirituality when it comes to the law of attraction, you have to get yourself in alignment first with what you truly want, and then from there you take aligned action. So really what it's about is just having total energetic congruence. And I just had finally reached that point where it was like I had an idea, I believed that I could do it, I believed that it could help people and be real and serve people, and I went out there and I expressed it, and I... My heart was, like, truly in it, and the response just completely mirrored that 1,000%. Because your body and your beliefs and your energy and your actions as well as, you know, your willingness to put yourself out there to be seen by others, to be perceived by others and your willingness to fail, p- like, fail, I'm putting that in air quotes if you're listening, because I don't believe in failure. You have to try to be able to grow, so failure is just a stepping stone to growth. But being willing to, like, fail publicly per se, all of that stuff matters more than just what's your business plan? Or what are you charging your clients? Or how much do you have saved to invest in the business or whatever it is. Like, having that congruence and just that belief, like, "This is what I'm doing and it is going to work out," is so powerful. I feel like the reason that everything worked and happened so quickly for me is because I stopped doing something that I've done my entire life, which was waiting to feel ready to begin something or ready to take a step or make a change or whatever, and I just came back and it was like I had one month to do my case study clients, and that was not enough time for me to dwell on it, and so I had to go full force into website building, marketing, all of the things, booking, scheduling, payment ex- payment processing, transferring domains. Getting all of the things in place. I had already done a lot of the business ops last year in 2025, but there was still a lot of pieces that I hadn't done, and I just had to come back and I went into, again, like hyper productivity, crazy mode, and got it all done and started taking clients like within a week of getting back. And it was just crazy. It literally was like a whirlwind. I was like, "What the fuck is going on?" But I think what's really important is first talking about like that version of me before all this happened, because like I said, it took years to get here. And I also will say for years I have had this vision and this goal of creating something that was mine. The story of Shy Space or the idea of Shy Space started five years ago, and it just started with the idea of being an Instagram page, then it evolved into a podcast, then it evolved into a business. And so I've always wanted to create something meaningful like this and something that actually will be helpful to people in allowing them to feel seen, to feel heard, accepted, and actually be able to help in their transformation, overcoming obstacles, self-doubt, self-pity, helping them build their self-love, you name it. I feel like for me personally over the years, I just kept putting off, you know, doing something with it in a real capacity that wasn't just like a social media outlet because I always thought that I needed more, more of something. I wasn't qualified to do it for whatever reason. Like, I needed more certifications, more money, more experience, more confidence, more therapy on myself or even just more proof that I could succeed doing something like this. And I think a lot of people are waiting for external proof to be able to make an internal decision. If you just base your life and your decisions off of what you see on the outside, you're probably not going to actually take the leap that you want to, if you're always looking for external proof and external validation. I think a lot of us also stay in that preparation mode because that feels safer than, like, actually going into action mode and, like, being visible. Because again, if you never try, you never fail. So you just kinda stay in that space, and that's what I did for a really long time. But then eventually it just got to a point where for me, staying in that space felt so painful, it was so excruciating, it felt like I was dying inside. And that was, like, worse than risking being seen, being embarrassed, whatever, like those types of things. So yeah, there was a lot to, to work through there and like I said, this was years in the making. But I will say the retreat and basically just being a client for a week in terms of the work that I do that retreat in Arizona was literally life-changing. I'll have to do a whole separate episode 'cause I have so many notes from it and so many things I wanna share. But that truthfully shifted my nervous system and impacted me mentally and physically in ways that are very difficult for me to put into words. But I genuinely came back a different person. I came back having had my first client sessions, and so I just felt like a totally different person already. And I stopped approaching this plan with my business from the hyper-analytical energy or mindset of being like, you know, "How's this gonna work?" And instead I just started showing up and being like, "Okay, this work is real. I know I can help people. I know I'm gonna be good at this. I know I am good at this. I don't need to force anything. I just need to believe in myself and believe in my ability to take up space and do that." and like put myself out there and I will attract the people that I am meant to work with and all of the opportunities that are meant to, you know, be aligned with me in this space. And I think something that I learned too at the retreat is that like your why is really important because people can really feel when you believe in what you're offering or what you're selling, so to speak, and what you're doing. And that's like for everything, right? But especially when it comes to spaces that are, you know, more about like mindset, healing, therapy, things of that nature because your energy is extremely important and it's always going to speak for you on your behalf before and after your words do and at all times in between your words. So, it's an important thing to focus on in terms of like how you show up in all spaces and in all conversations. I truthfully believe in what I'm doing in a way that is mind-boggling. Like it makes me emotional at all times when I think about it. And every single time I have a session with a client, I just, I feel like my whole world lights up in a way that I just can't even put into words. Like it just truly doesn't feel like work. It feels like magic. It feels like friendship and fun and alignment and every single thing that you would ever want in a dream job if you dream of working. So talking about now what I actually did once I got back from the retreat to overcome being in that analysis paralysis state. So I decided I wasn't gonna hide, and I wasn't gonna wait until everything was perfect. So I just started announcing things and marketing things before I felt confident in myself and before I felt ready. And I just went after it. My website was not even fully launched. My payment system had issues when I did launch it. My domain wasn't transferred, so I had this weird Squarespace saxophone domain. I didn't have, like, this massive marketing strategy that I had put together and laid out with, like, a posting schedule or anything like that. But I just started moving anyways. I was just like, "I just have to start." It's just bit by bit by bit, post by post by post, outreach by outreach. And that movement, that aligned action, it gets you so far because I think that piece is so important because everybody is so into confidence and being confident. And I think a lot of people have a lot of fake confidence, which is totally fine 'cause I do too. But the thing is, confidence comes from doing the hard things, and taking the risks, and failing forward, and t- taking action. So you can fake it, but if you actually just, like, take the step, you're gonna be a lot more confident. I mean, it's a win-win, right? Another thing too I will say is, like, just being so raw and authentic, I think, you know, it doesn't take a marketing specialist or a sociologist or anything to know that the way that we buy and engage with people has changed a lot. And with that being said people want authenticity. They want real. They want connection. And I think something that I do in my content when I talk about anything is I don't try to sound really polished. I don't try to sound corporate. I'm genuinely just me. I cuss. I say what I want. I do what I want, and that attracts the right people, and that's the magic for me. I also talk about my own pain and my own dysregulation and, disassociation issues and problems with feeling disconnected with myself and, you know, my relationship with my horse and how he coaches me on a daily basis like he does my clients. I talk about my own experiences because they're important. I don't make them the center of the session when I'm working with clients, but I share it publicly in other ways so that people know who I am, who they're working with, and feel like they can trust me and feel safe working with me. Because if I just showed up as some robot, nobody's gonna feel like they can open up to me, 'cause it's like, "Who is this girl? Has she been through anything? Does she even fucking understand what I'm saying or what I'm going through? Like, what is this?" But because I was real, people resonated with it so much, and truly, like, I will say this now, and I will forever lean into this and harp on this. I think authenticity is the new way of marketing. That's the new strategy, period. People are just exhausted by overproduction, overconsumption, oversaturation, overediting, AI shit, fake shit on the internet. People wanna see real. They wanna see the process. They wanna see the pains, the pitfalls, the ups, the downs, the good, the bad, and everything in between. Not just the highlights and everything that people wanna put online. And I feel like something that I do is let people witness the process, and sometimes it's really embarrassing, and I post something where I'm like, "This is actually so fucking embarrassing of me," and then I get the best response, and I'm like, "We've done it again." Pushed past the fear, posted something that I thought was really embarrassing, and had a really great response. And I feel like, again, that shows who I am as a person and allows you to see that I'm doing this thing and I still don't have it figured out totally, and it's okay that you don't either, because nobody does. So for example, when I came back from my retreat, I was so emotional. I felt like... I can't even explain the emotions that I felt that day coming back. It was just so, so much, and I cried basically that entire day, and I took a video of myself, you know, crying on the plane and I posted it with, like, a little blurb about how I was feeling about the experience and the transformation. And I'm so glad that I posted that, because I feel like it really showed people who I am and how much I care, and it just, like, allowed me to connect with people, which is so powerful. I've done that in other scenarios when I've had panic attacks and my dog supports me or, you know, I have a really, like, big empathetic meltdown about something that feels silly and other people are like, "You know, I feel the same way. I totally get it." I just think being vulnerable and showing your pain and showing the process is so important. I'm never gonna pretend that I have it all figured out. I'm never gonna pretend that, I am perfect and that I don't have any problems. Like, I will let people see what I'm building in real time and be honest about how it's going in real time because I think that that is the way that it should be. And I think that that makes people trust me more because they can see the humanity in what I'm doing. I wanna pivot and talk about manifestation and how actually attracting the things that you want in your life can actually feel really, like, activating to your nervous system, which can sometimes be stressful and a little bit hard to manage. Because when your life starts to change really significantly, your body doesn't always interpret that as a successful thing. Sometimes it comes in as a threat and just feels really overwhelming and really not safe, which is totally normal. And it can feel overwhelming, unfamiliar and manifest as, you know, the things that I had mentioned earlier, like exhaustion, being really emotional, being overstimulated, being really scared, and just feeling like you might mess something up. Even if you're, like, objectively on paper succeeding, that's literally me. Like, everything on paper is great, but inside, I just haven't felt safe because I'm transitioning and my body's learning how to accept a new normal and a new way of life, and it's a lot. So we're working through it, and that's really all we can do. I think also that this is where a lot of people start to really subconsciously, like, self-sabotage themselves and their own success because they don't realize that actually receiving something in any capacity, whether it's a job, money, relationships, you name it- receiving something is a skill that you have to practice and learn. It's not easy to do, especially if you're not used to receiving and you're not somebody that's experienced a lot of abundance in any realm of life, you know? Whatever realm you've had the most lack is where you're going to struggle the most naturally in being receptive. So I think the receiving is actually harder than the manifesting because in my case, like I had thousands of views on the videos that I was posting. I had hundreds of comments, hundreds of messages, hundreds of shares and saves, people wanting to book before I was ready, people, you know, sharing their vulnerable stories with me about how they wanted to work with me. All these opportunities were opening, and honestly, like I was having a full-blown panic attack. I wasn't even enjoying it at first. I was so stressed out about everything because I just felt like I wasn't ready, and I felt like I was gonna let people down and disappoint people. And I also was then struggling with like, "Oh, now this thing that I've been thinking about is real. Am I capable of like being that person that I said I am and holding space for these people and holding space for the business to grow and evolve and do all those things?" Which requires boundaries with myself and how I think and how I operate. It requires structure. It requires intense regulation of your nervous system and emotions. It requires intense self-trust. Not hustle. Like, I'm sorry, anybody who tells you that you just need to hustle your way to the top is a fucking idiot. There is a way easier way to succeed, and it's about getting in alignment and regulating yourself first. You can hustle your way to the top, too. That's totally fine. I've done that. I don't like it. It doesn't feel good, so that's not what I'm trying to do anymore. And on that note, I think the biggest shift in how I perceive manifesting things and law of attraction and all that is I stopped asking myself, and this is also at the help of my therapist, so thank you, Kerry. I freaking love her so much. But I stopped asking myself, "What if this doesn't work?" I decided I'm closing the door on fear, and started asking, "What if it does? What am I gonna do with all this success? How am I going to manage the success and all the clients and all the things?" Literally have a pillow right here that London is laying on that says, "What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?" Seriously, what if you fly? This pillow should be reminding me every single day, and I forget even when I lay my head on it. Sweet London. But that question and that reminder, honestly, that visual of her telling me, like, "Close the blinds, close the door on fear. We don't allow that in our life," it was life-changing because I realized that I have and had spent years of my life emotionally preparing for disappointment instead of preparing for expansion. And this doesn't pertain to just my business, but in past opportunities and experiences where I struggled with, again, receiving and accepting and allowing things in. I was way more comfortable in my younger years bracing for failure than bracing for success and abundance. And I think that says a lot about how I grew up, the natural state that my mind tends to live in, if I don't work on setting boundaries with my thoughts and all of those things. And just, like, truly how important it is for me to lean into manifestation because of those blockers that I've had growing up. And I think, too, you know, I've learned about manifestation over the years in so many different capacities. I've been studying it for so many years, and so it meant one thing to me back in the day, and it means a totally different thing to me now, because I think back when I was younger, I used to think about manifestation as control. Controlling my outcomes, controlling what happens to me and all of that. I feel like that's more from a place of lack when you think about control, um, 'cause it's really, like, you're white-knuckling the outcome, right? And it's like if it doesn't happen, then you're probably gonna struggle. But now I feel like manifestation to me is just about becoming available to the things that I want, and then also becoming so in alignment with this, like, radical acceptance that anything and everything happens to me for a reason, and I don't have to know what that reason is. But I just have to have enough trust in myself, in the universe, in the divine process, in divine order, in God, whatever you believe in, that every single thing is happening to me for a reason, and then have that radical acceptance. And now that I have that, I think I've learned that it truly comes from doing things that are actually somewhat easy. Not easy in the sense that, like, "Oh, It's easy to regulate your nervous system." That's not easy by any means, especially if you've lived in a dysregulated state for a long time. But it's easy to acknowledge that and then take the steps to fix it over time. And in my opinion, a lot easier than hustling. It's also a lot easier to take aligned action before certainty exists when you are regulated. Because when you're not regulated, your brain is constantly scanning for safety or perceived threats, and it's always going to try to assign some type of, like, meaning to anything that is perceived as a threat, and therefore likely spike, you know, cortisol and anxiety levels because that's what it's used to doing. Another thing, too, is when it comes to being available for the life that you want from a manifestation perspective, like, going back to being willing to be seen and in an imperfect way, in a way that defines growth and, evolution, and also just trusting in yourself. Again, like, that's everything. The universe, horses, people, all the things, opportunities respond the most intensely in the same fashion that you respond to yourself. So the energy that you put out is what you get back. And so if you're having radical acceptance and radical trust in your life, you'll never go into any conversation or any relationship or opportunity scared about the outcome. You're just gonna be enjoying the process and the unfolding, and that's everything. That's, that's the goal, is just to enjoy the process. So I wanna wrap up with some advice for anybody who's in a similar situation to where I've been, wanting to start something or take a leap of faith. I just want to emphasize on stop waiting for the perfect moment because your clarity surrounding what you need to do will actually come from movement. So you won't know all the answers or have all the information that you need until you take a step. So just take that step, and I promise you, the information and the answers will follow and fall in line when you need them. This is exactly how I felt when I bought my horse a year ago. I was terrified. I didn't know if I was ready. I didn't know if I could do it. It was one of the scariest things I'd done. Just like when I moved to Texas a few years ago, I was terrified when I did that. And that worked out. The move to Dallas worked out. The business has worked out. Everything has worked out, and it will work out for you, too. So let it be messy. Let it evolve publicly. Let yourself be embarrassed. Let yourself be seen. Let yourself be radically accepted and have radical acceptance for your life, because any version of something that you put out does not have to be your final version. Something that I learned from my coaches in my program is that their businesses have evolved and changed so much over the years, and they've stayed in the same space even. And I think that's just a reminder that, like, you're never gonna stay the same, and so what you're doing is never gonna stay the same, and that's amazing because you get to continue to evolve and create new things and just grow and change as a person. People connect to that and connect to that level of radical honesty more than they connect to AI perfection and fake bullshit online. And I'm telling you right now, if you feel terrified, it probably means you should do that because it means you care. And that's how you know that you have power to be successful, because you care. Your stakes are in it, so you're already halfway there. That's already half of the battle. A few months ago, this entire situation that I'm talking about in terms of my current reality was a figment of my imagination, and it is now a reality. And I just there's so much that's happened in the past eight weeks, and I'm now sitting here telling you that I just quit my job and had my last day. I don't know. I just think it's mind-boggling for me personally, maybe not for others. But everything that I asked for, everything that I was hoping for, everything that I wanted, real clients, real transformations, real experiences, real momentum, real partnerships, all of that came to life and exists in my life because of the steps that I took and the fear that I broke through. They call it the terror barrier. I broke through that, and I have to continue doing that every day, and it's so hard. But I think that... I hope that if anything, you take away this as proof that your life can change extremely fast when your internal world finally catches up to what your soul already knows to be true. If there's something that's calling you, an opportunity, a place, a person, let this be your sign to stop waiting for the perfect moment and start becoming the version of yourself that already exists underneath the fear, the anxiety, the worry, the doubt, the imposter syndrome, and all those things that we need to leave at the fricking door and just go after what it is that we wanna do. There's somebody out there waiting for you to start the venture that you're wanting to start because they're looking for the services that you want to start, and that's why you want to start them. That's why you have that idea, 'cause there's somebody out there who needs what you wanna give out and what you wanna give. So do it. You've got this. I'm here to support you, too, if you need it, obviously, as your new coach. So I love you so much. Thank you all so much for listening. I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to message me on any of social platforms that I'm on, or you can send me an email or shoot me a text even if you have my number. So thank you so much. I love y'all, and I'm looking forward to our next conversation. Bye.