EP 22 - It's Supposed to Feel Scary!!

That fear you're feeling right now? That pit in your stomach when you think about investing in yourself, betting on your dream, taking the leap?

It's supposed to feel that way.

Fear isn't a red flag. It's not your intuition telling you to stop. It's your old self fighting for survival... and the only way to become the next version of yourself is to walk directly into it.

Joseph Campbell said, "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek."

In this episode, I'm sharing:

💜 Why I put $22K on a credit card making $29K/year (and what happened)
💜 The terror barrier - why your brain is designed to keep you stuck
💜 Client stories of women who almost didn't invest (and did anyway)
💜 Why building a business is a SKILLSET (and winging it = failing)
💜 6 steps to push through fear and make the decision your future self would make
💜 The empathy angle: why your future clients need you to go through this first

If you've been sitting on a decision... playing it safe, waiting to feel ready...this episode is your permission slip to move. 💜

We are the women who were supposed to stay broken. We refuse. We turn our mess into millions. This is how leaders rise.

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Transcript

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(Cont.) EP 22 - It's Supposed to Feel Scary!!

SPEAKER_00 0:07

I want to tell you something that might change everything for you. That fear that you're feeling right now, that pit in your stomach when you think about investing in yourself, betting on your dream, or taking that leap, it's supposed to feel that way. That fear isn't a red flag. It's not your intuition telling you to stop. It's not a sign that you're not ready. It's your old self fighting for survival. And the only way to become the next version of yourself, the one with the thriving, multiple six-figure or million-dollar business, the freedom, the impact is to walk directly into that fear. Joseph Campbell said, the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. Today we're talking about why the scariest decisions are usually the right ones, why your brain is designed to keep you stuck, and how you can push through the terror barrier to the life that's waiting for you. Hey beautiful soul, welcome back to Mess to Millions. I'm your host, Erica Kariko. If you're new here, this is the podcast where we're turning your mess into your millions. Today's episode is a little different. This one's gonna be part coaching, part truth bomb, and part permission slip. Because I know so many of you right now are sitting on a decision. And I'm always sitting on a decision as well. In fact, I just made two really big investments this week after just deciding to do them. So maybe the decision is investing in a coach or a program. Maybe the decision is actually starting your business. Maybe the decision is to invest into a new scary strategy that is going to scale your business. Maybe it's leaving the job, or maybe it's betting on yourself in a way that just feels terrifying. And you're waiting for the fear to go away before you move. Here's what I want you to know: the fear doesn't go away. You don't get to feel ready first. You don't get certainty before you leap. You leap and then you build the wings on the way down. Let me show you why. This is where everybody gets stuck. This is how you, this is the differentiating factor between those who make their dreams a reality and those who keep getting rubber banded back through scarcity, through fear, and they just feel like nothing is ever working out for them. The very first scary financial decision I ever made was back in 2016. I was making$29,000 a year working at a not-for-profit, which is kind of a joke, right? I had a master's degree. Um, I came from six figures in corporate, but I wanted to be making a difference in the world. So I took an executive director position at a not-for-profit and was earning$29,000 a year. My husband at the time did not believe in what I was trying to build. He didn't want me to use family money on what he saw as a pipe dream. And I, back in 2013, I had found a coaching program that I knew in my gut and in my soul was going to change my life. I knew it. It was, I think it was$5,000, but I was also going to need a website. I was also going to need a business coaching program because I knew nothing about building a coaching business and I didn't want to just try and wing it. I needed this to work. So I had$22,000 that I needed to find. And I did not have that money. I was only making$29,000 a year. So what I did was I took out a 0% interest credit card and I put$22,000 on that 0% interest credit card. I remember my hands were shaking when I typed in the credit card number. I remember feeling like I was going to throw up. I remember thinking, what if this doesn't work? What if I can't pay this off? What if everyone's right and I'm totally delusional? Every cell in my body was screaming at me to stop, to close the laptop, to be responsible. That, my friends, is what Bob Proctor calls the terror barrier. And the terror barrier is that moment when you're about to do something that will fundamentally change your life. It'll break a pattern, step into a completely new identity, make a decision the old you would never make. And your brain freaks out. Literally freaks out. All hell breaks loose because your brain's job is not to make you happy. It's not to help you grow. It's not to support your dreams. Your brain's job is to keep you alive. And to your primitive brain, alive means same, familiar, predictable, safe. Even if safe is actually keeping you in bondage. That$29,000 a year job, y'all, that was safe. It was miserable, soul crushing, making me cry every Sunday night, but it was safe. The$22,000 investment. Now that was terrifying, unknown, uncertain, but it was also freedom. Here's what happened. Year one of my business, I made$22,000, paid off the credit card completely. Year two, I made$113,000 and quit my full-time job on the one-year anniversary of starting my business, literally within two days. That one terrifying decision, that moment of pushing through the terror barrier, changed the entire trajectory of my life. I now have a multi-million dollar company. I now have a home, a beautiful home for my kids and I. I am divorced. I support my kids on my own. We travel. My time is my own. I have a mountain house. I have investment properties. I have life insurance. My kids have index accounts, right? Like we are, we are completely changing the trajectory of my family's timeline. So let me explain what's happening when you feel the fear, because I see this every day in the coach, in the clients that I coach, right? The clients who are starting businesses, the clients who are quitting jobs, the clients who are scaling businesses, and everybody is afraid. Everyone is afraid. I know most of my clients are probably listening to this right now, and I know you're scared. I know you're scared when you join my program. I know you're scared when you start putting yourself out there. I see it. And the people who make it versus the ones who quit are the ones that can push through this fear and do it anyway. If you can't push through the fear and do it anyway, you're not going to be able to make it in business. Okay. So here's the thing: you have a comfort zone, and that comfort zone is made up of your current habits, your beliefs, your patterns, and your identity. Everything inside of that zone feels familiar. It feels normal. It feels safe. When you try to step outside of it, when you try to make a decision the new version of you would make, you hit what Bob Proctor calls the terror barrier. Your brain releases stress hormones. So you start to feel anxious. Your mind starts creating worst case scenarios. Literally every limiting belief that you've ever had is going to come rushing to the surface. This is science. This is going to happen to you. And if this sounds familiar, like you're thinking in your head, oh, I can't afford it, or what if it doesn't work? Or who am I to do this? Or I should wait until, or maybe next year when things are more stable. Those aren't rational thoughts. That's your old programming fighting for its life. And here's what most people do they feel the fear and then they retreat, right? They go back to the comfort zone. They tell themselves they're being smart or responsible or realistic, and then nothing changes. I have a client right now, and if you're listening, I'm not gonna say your name, um, but she's wanting to scale her business. She's had a lot of success in her business and she's wanting to scale her business. And so the first, once you're ready to scale past six figures, right, you're aiming for the 30,000, the 50,000, the million-dollar mark, the strategy that I bring in then is an ads and funnel strategy, right? Now she is, she's like a health coach, basically. So marketing, you know, is not her thing. And organically, we got her to six figures through my Soul Business Accelerator program. And now she's ready to scale. So I told her, you know, let's have, let's hire a company to build your funnel and, you know, have them on board on a monthly basis so that they can constantly be testing your funnel. We need to hire an ads person, they'll constantly be testing your ads. The ads person and the funnel people will work together. So you don't have to worry about any of that, right? They're just going to be doing it for you. But you have to invest. And this kind of a strategy takes a big investment. Like you need at least$50,000 to invest in this strategy and actually make it work. So she took out a loan, has the$50,000, but her, she hit the terror barrier, right? And so what happened was she was excited to invest in these companies. She was excited to get this going. And all of a sudden, she she's like, Well, I'm gonna build the funnel myself because if I hire the funnel company, I won't be able to afford to pay them the second month. Well, out of$50,000, two months of working with the funnel company is$6,000, right? They're$3,000 a month. In two months, they would already have the funnel up and running. They would be working with your ads people. So you would already, of course, you're gonna have to front load the budget, right? It's probably a thousand dollars a day in ad spend, which does start to add up. And so, you know, her comfort zone is having this money in the bank and not investing it in her business, right? So, what I'm telling her to do is to pay the money, invest with this company, you know, pay even six months ahead of time. So, um, what would that be? That would be$18,000 plus your ads person is about$2,500 a month plus$1,000 a day ad spend. This is why I don't teach this strategy to beginners because you don't have this money up front, right? Once you're already earning six figures in your business, this is a good scale strategy. But she came back to me the other day and she said, Well, I've decided I'm gonna build a funnel myself because if I hire the company, I'm not gonna have the second month to pay them. And then I'm gonna pay for someone to do my ads. Well, that is her comfort zone, right? She hit the terror barrier. Spending that money felt too scary. She literally has the money in the bank, but her brain is telling her that she does not have the money to pay the second month, which she absolutely does if she's taking out this$50,000 loan. And so she hit the terrier barrier and it boom, it pulled her, it pulled her right back to uh to where she feels comfortable, right? I feel comfortable having this money in the bank and trying to do this myself. Meanwhile, she's gonna struggle to build a funnel. She's not gonna know what is going wrong when things are going wrong. She's not gonna know how to troubleshoot. It's probably not gonna be bringing in clients. Um, and then she's gonna be in month two, probably at the very beginning, still trying to build. Whereas if she were to step outside of her comfort zone, make this investment in this funnel company, they would already be flying her second month, right? But she hit the terror barrier and she's back in her comfort zone. So on the other side of the terror barrier, that's where everything you want lives. That the business, the clients, the income, the freedom, the impact, it's all on the other side of that terror barrier. It's all on the other side of fear. If you keep rubber banding and going back to your comfort zone, you are gonna keep creating the same results in your life and in your business. You have to make big, scary moves. So if you're a coach or a healer or a practitioner, a health and wellness practitioner, and if you want to help people transform, your future clients are gonna also feel this exact same fear when they're deciding whether to work with you, right? So they're gonna feel the terror barrier. So it's really good that you have this experience and you know how to push through because they're gonna be in the same situation when they're thinking about investing with you. They're gonna have the sweaty palms, they're gonna have the pit in their stomach, they're gonna have every limiting belief screaming at them to retreat. And if you haven't been through it, if you haven't pushed through your own terror barrier, how are you going to help them through theirs? So you need to know what it feels like. You need to have the story of I was terrified and I did it anyway, and look what happened, right? Because that's what your clients need to hear from you. Your investment isn't just for your business, it's for your ability to serve. Now I've helped a million, not a million, I've helped a lot of clients scale their businesses using the funnel and ad strategy once they already are at six figures. Remember. Otherwise, if you're just trying to get to 10,000, 12,000 a month, we do that organically in my program, Soul Business Accelerator. If you're already past that and you're wanting to scale, you can come and work with me privately in my Soul Business Scale program. But what happens is let's say they take out this loan of$50,000 or they have the$50,000. They invest in the funnel company, they invest in the ad companies that I recommend. They get, you know, they go all in and by within usually month three, they're probably around$50,000 a month. And um this is what happens when you just push through the terror barrier, right? So I've got a couple of other actual um amazing stories. Rachel, a client of mine, she was a yoga teacher making, I think,$40,000 a year. And she had literally maxed out all of her credit cards. She had a husband who thought online business was a scam. She had zero support from anyone in her life. And when she got on a call with my team, she actually said these words. I literally cannot afford this. There's no logical way. But something in her knew. She felt it. She made a payment plan work. She figured it out. She pushed through the terror barrier. 18 months later, she's running a$300,000 a year coaching business. She quit teaching yoga classes, just hired her second team member, and her husband. Well, he now manages her books. Then there's Maria. She is one of my favorites. I remember because she's a single mom, three kids, working full-time as a nurse, and she almost didn't join. She had her credit card out, she was ready to pay, and then she closed the laptop twice. The third time, she called her mom and she said, Mom, I'm about to do something scary. And her mom said, Good, that means it matters. So Maria went from side hustle to replacing her nursing income in just 12 months. And she now has time with her kids instead of working the night shifts. Oh, and I have to tell you about Jen because Jen almost said no as well. So she was on the fence for weeks. Her brain had convinced her that it wasn't the right time, right? Not the right time. I need to save more first. She needed to figure out her niche first. She needed to feel ready first. And this is a lot of our clients, actually. Um, Jen was she's an example of a lot of our clients. But finally, she asked herself one question. Am I going to feel ready in six months? Or am I going to be exactly where I am now, wishing I had started earlier? That question broke something open in her. So she joined us, she did the work, and she made$50,000 in her first six months. Every single successful client I have was once where you might be right now, scared, uncertain, and on the fence. And the only difference between them and people that are still stuck is that they pushed through the terror barrier. If you're listening to this and you've been thinking about Soul Business Accelerator, if you've been on the fence, weighing the decision, feeling the fear, I want you to know that fear is the sign, not the stop. Building a business, it's a skill set. And so many brilliant, talented, gifted women try to wing it. They try to figure it out on their own. They watch free YouTube videos and piece together strategies from different coaches, and they fail. I see them because we talk to them all the time. We talk to five to ten women a day, and they are either out there trying to post on social media endlessly, or they've been trying to do it on their own and they're failing. And it's not because they're not good enough, because but it's because they don't have the roadmap, right? You wouldn't try to become a doctor by watching YouTube videos. You wouldn't learn to fly a plane by reading blog posts. Building a six-figure business is a skill, and skills require investment. They require investment in time, in money, and in mentorship. I personally have invested over$250,000 in my own coaching and education, not including my master's degree. This is just since I started my coaching business. And not because I had money lying around, because I absolutely did not, um, but because I believed in myself more than I believed in my fear. If Soul Business Accelerator keeps coming to mind, that's not random. Just book a call with my team and let's talk about where you are and where you want to go. I'll put the link in the show notes, or you can just DM me on Instagram at Erica LynnCarico. The call is totally free and the conversation might actually change your life. And we'll let you know if we can help you, and we'll let you know if we can't help you as well. We don't ever invite anyone into the program where we if we don't think that we can help you. Okay. Okay, let's get practical. So here's how you actually push through the terror barrier when you're facing a scary decision. Step one, recognize the fear for what it is. When you feel that fear rising up, name it. Say it out loud. This is the terror barrier. This is my old self trying to keep me stuck. This is not my intuition. This is conditioning. Okay. Your intuition is gonna feel like a deep knowing, a deep knowing where you just, it's a deep knowing. Fear feels like panic, anxiety, doubt, and worst case scenarios. You have to learn to tell the difference. Step two, ask the right question. Stop asking yourself, can I afford this? Ask, what will it cost me not to do this? Okay. Don't ask, what if it doesn't work? Ask yourself, what if it does? And don't ask, am I ready? Because you're never going to be. Ask, will I ever feel ready, or am I just waiting for certainty that will never come? And here's what I always have to think about. Whenever I'm getting ready to make a scary investment, where will I be in one year if I keep doing what I'm doing? Right? If I don't do something different in my business, I'm just gonna keep creating the same results. If my business is failing, it's gonna continue to fail. If my business is just plateauing and not continuing to grow, it's just gonna keep plateauing, right? For one year, five years, 10 years. If you don't do anything different for that amount of time, you're gonna be creating the same results down the road. Now, does that feel like freedom to you, or does that feel like bondage? Step three, make the decision that the next version of you would make. This is how we create a different reality. The woman that you want to become, the one with a thriving business, the clients, the growing income, the freedom. What decision would she make? I can guarantee it. She would invest. She would bet on herself like she is a lottery ticket. She would push through that fear. And you're going to become her by making the decisions that she would make before you feel ready. That's just how transformation works. You don't think your way into a new life, you act your way there. Step four, make the decision quickly. Oh my goodness, this one. The longer you sit on a decision, the more time your brain has to talk you out of it. Successful people make decisions quickly and they change their minds slowly. Unsuccessful people make decisions very slowly or not at all, and they change their minds quickly. When you know something is right, move. When you feel something is right, move. Don't give fear time to build its case. Step five, you gotta burn the boats. Really burn the bridges behind. Once you decide, you commit fully. There is no backup plan. There is no, oh, let me try this and see. When you leave yourself an escape route, you've already told your brain that failure is an option. And your brain will take that option the moment things get hard. This is why in the coaching industry, there are no refund policies in the contracts, because people's brains are going to take that option the moment things get hard, right? They're going to want to back out. And this is why, as powerful and strong coaches, we hold you to your word, right? We know what you want. You, you, we hold you to your word. We see that you're powerful. And when I put that$22,000 on a credit card, I did not have a backup plan. I had to make it work. And that level of commitment changed everything. It showed me what I was possible. Uh, it was, it showed me what was possible and what I was capable of. And I'm capable, I was capable of so much more than I thought that I was. Step number six, get support from people who have done it. Don't take advice from people who have not been where you're going. Your broke friends are going to tell you investing is risky. Your stuck colleagues are going to tell you to play it safe. And your scared family members are going to project their fears onto you. And I know this because this happened to me all the time. This happens to my clients all the time. So many times we'll have women that come onto our calls and they're so excited they can't wait to go share this with their husband, that they know what they want to finally do. And their husband is like, that will never work, and fully does not support them, right? That is him projecting his fear onto you. So find the people who've pushed through the terror barrier and come out the other side and listen to them. That's why mentorship matters. That's why coaching matters. That's why being in a room with people who have done what you want to do matters because it normalizes that, right? So when I put myself in a room of women who are running businesses that turn over$10 million a year and they're impacting millions of people around the world, that's normalized, right? Whereas if I put myself in a room of people who are miserable and hate their jobs and complaining over their lunch hour, all of a sudden that's gonna become my norm. Put yourself in the room with who has done it and created what you want to create. Matters. Here's the sole truth I want to leave you with today. The cave you fear to enter truly holds the treasure you seek. That thing you're scared to do, that's the thing that will change your entire life. That investment that makes your palms sweat, that's the investment that will return tenfold. That leap of faith that makes you want to throw up, that's the leap that will set you free. And fear is never going to go away. Fear is not going to go away at your first$10,000 a month. It's not going to go away at your first$100,000 a month. It's not going to go away when you have a million dollars in the bank. And I know this because I've been there. Every new level has a new terror barrier. But the skill that you build in pushing through that compounds. Every time you do it, it gets a little easier. Every time you prove to yourself that you can handle the fear, it's not going to kill you. You're not going to die. You build evidence that you're the kind of woman who does hard things. Okay. You're not broken. You are not behind. You're not incapable. You are a woman standing at the edge of the life you've always wanted. Being asked to be brave enough to step into it. It's supposed to feel scary. Do it anyway. Here's what I want you to do right now. Think about that decision you're sitting on. The one that scares you, the one you keep circling but not landing on. I want you to make that decision today. Not next week. Not after you think about it more. Today. And if that's joining Soul Business Accelerator, book the call, stop thinking about it and talk to my team. And if it's something else, raise the prices, start the business, start your podcast, or have the hard conversation, or end the relationship, or start the relationship. Do that thing today. I would love to know what terror barrier you push through today and I want to celebrate with you. Please DM me on Instagram at Erica Lynn Carico and fill me in. And also, oh my goodness, please share this episode with someone who's on the fence about something. They need to hear this. And if you're still trying to figure out your life purpose, you can grab my book, Awaken Your Purpose, at ericacarico.com backslash books if you haven't already read it. We are the women who were supposed to stay broken, and we refuse. We are turning our mess into millions, and this is how leaders rise. I'll see you next week.