Are You In The Exact Moment That Will Change Everything? (I didn’t know mine was until 3 years later)

When it feels like nothing is happening, When you have been building for a while, whether that is inside someone else's company, or your own business and now you are figuring out how to make this season yours. 

Three years ago I was a private Instagram account posting travel photos and content for my friends. Three years later, after going from a content creator, to strategist and now to coach/consultant, I can tell you, every pivot is worth it. 
 

In this episode we cover:

• How you are already in the moment and why you can't see it from inside it yet
• The conversation that started everything and why I had no idea it was one of the several turning points until years later
• What going all in actually looked like after spending $1,000 in courses, 50+ collaborations, and knowing the whole time that I wanted more
• Mapping out a friend's entire business in 10 minutes without having an offer of my own
• Why people kept coming to me with business questions, and what I finally asked myself because of it 
• What the alternative really is, and why that question moved me every single time I wanted to stop
• Why certainty does not come before the move. It comes because of it.
• 4x'ing my income and 300% engagement drop in the same year led me to find my true passion

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Transcript

0:00

Hello, hello. Welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited for this episode because this week really holds a special place in my heart because this week, three years ago, has marked a really big turning point in what I do now and what I was doing. And I felt like this episode was really going to allude to that. And for those who don't know, I was a private account on social media until June of 2023. And the catalyst for all of this was a fitness retreat that I had attended. And I was working with one of my trainers. And I flew from California to Florida. And I had never met any of my, like any of my friends who are now my friends, um, any of the girls who attended in person. And I had never met my trainer in person. But I just knew that I would love it and it would be such an experience. And I went on this fitness retreat and we were shooting so much content. It was so much fun. We were taking so many videos. And I remember sitting in the Tampa airport about to leave, and I turned to my friend Lynn's, and I've talked about her before, but I, you know, I said to her, I think I want to take my account off private. And she was in the network marketing world, and I am not in the network marketing world, but I knew that she had had so much experience in the content side of things. And I just told her, like, look, I want to showcase my life more publicly. I want to speak more publicly, and I wanted to learn to become a content creator. And she said, Well, you should. And it was a really natural thing for me to kind of fall into because I had done photography since 2017. And at the time, this was now 2023. And so I had an eye for all of those things. And I knew what looked good and what didn't, but I hadn't brought it to social media yet. And there's such a huge like scope of things that you can do with social media. But for me, I have always documented my travels. And I'll talk about this in a second. But what I want to say is that the retreat was such a big catalyst for me and a turning point. But the biggest thing is that I didn't even know it was really a turning point until even just two years ago, or even a year ago. But I speak on this three years later. And so today I really want this episode and just to have a conversation with you. I'm not coming in with any framework or list. I just want to kind of talk about something that I've been thinking a lot lately, which is what would happen if you don't make the move that you say that you want to make? And I don't mean that to scare you, but it's a genuine question because I think most people, when we're sitting in that in-between, and there's a place where you know what the next thing is, but you haven't really stepped into that, whether it's that identity, that shift, that um career, that title. But most people are not really asking themselves yet, like, what happens if I don't make that move? And I think when you actually sit with it, something can really shift and happen. And so I'm excited to dive into this episode. Let's go. Welcome to After You Decide. I'm Sheer, your business mentor and consultant, and the person in your corner who is going to help you build the thing you have already decided to create. This show is for anyone who is ready for their next era of business or ready to start one. We talk about the real actions, the habits, the moves that actually have to happen to make it a real thing for you. No more waiting for the perfect moment. There is no such thing because it is now. Let's go. So in 2023, when I decided to go public on Instagram and really go all in on content creation and brand collaborations, I want to be really honest about what that kind of looked like because the way that people talk about pivots and decisions make it sound a lot kind of simpler and cleaner than it really is. But like I said, my account was on private and I was posting travel photos. I was obsessed with Soul Cycle, for those who know, know. Um, fun fact about me, I rode with the same instructor since 2017 till 2019. And I took over like 600 classes for spinning. And then the day that my instructor left, I no longer went back. Um, so creature of habit. God knows why I do that, but fine. So there were just like a lot of things, and actually looking back on it, there were a lot of things that kind of foreshadowed. So, for example, I had a really, really unique story of how I like started spinning and all these things. And so there was an article actually written about me at the time um that went live. Now, mind you, like this is just foreshadowing what has happened here because I've had several articles written about me. Um, and I've been interviewed on so many podcasts. And so, yeah, like now thinking about it from like 20, I mean, I've had articles written about me 2018. Um, but I started like being a guest on people's podcasts. Now actually thinking about it. Like in 2020, I was a guest on someone's podcast and 2021 and 2022 and 2023, of course. And then just yeah. So far before I even considered that I was going to go into social media stuff, let alone consulting at all. Okay. Um, wow. I just had that realization. That's pretty cool. Anyway, so when I was posting all these like travel photos and I was obsessed with like working out, I still am obsessed with all those things. Obviously, that's a big part of my my brand. But I was posting it, you know, for myself, for my friends, just documenting. And so when I made the decision to flip to being public and figure out kind of the whole content creator side of things, I bought nearly a thousand dollars worth of courses and guides. And it led me to working with over 50 brands like Hyatt and Hilton. I flew to Mexico for a collaboration. I was working with hair care brands, um, skincare brands, and a lot of fashion brands. And on the outside, it was working and it was so much fun and it was fulfilling. But I also knew like, is this really what I'm going to do for the foreseeable future? And I wasn't in any rush either. I wasn't like panicking about it. I just kind of knew that I at one point wanted something different. And I remember sitting there, and it's hard not to feel like selfish when you're saying this, honestly. But I, you know, I was sitting there and I was like, is this it? Or what is more? And I realized that like no matter what way I looked, it was never going to be enough for me. And so I just knew that I wanted something different. I wanted something more, I wanted to make it add to my life. And I think what was starting to happen was that the conversations all around me, and actually this did happen, but for a while it was just kind of like in my head of okay, these conversations that I think are happening are relevant. But what was actually happening was conversations of companies that I was working with and friends of mine and even like content creators online would come to me about it was not about content creation. And they weren't about collaborations or deliverables. Like these conversations had nothing to do with it, but they were conversations where someone would come to me, again, like it was a brand or another creator or a friend of mine, and they started asking me about their business and like marketing questions and like really, really questions about like pricing. And I really like a lot of it was also the the results that they weren't getting, um, or things that they didn't expect, or roadblocks that they were hitting. And the way that I explain it is that people are running through a maze, and at one point, something's gonna happen that no course, no guide is ever going to explain like a human conversation, period. Regardless of if it's like, I mean, it could be about anything. But I would hard, I would have these conversations and I could just see immediately what was happening in their world. And I always say, you can literally like place me in anybody's business and I will understand within 20 minutes what is going on, and then really understand where they can go, where they want to go, and then work backwards from there. What steps need to happen to get there? How can we make this happen? Um, map it all out. And I remember that there was a moment that really, really clicked for me. I was sitting with a friend at a coffee shop in downtown LA and I was in school at the time and I was studying business management. That's one of my degrees. And she had been styling people, like fashion styling, for events for many, many years and had never charged for it. Always treated it like a hobby. And within 10 minutes, we had mapped out her entire offer suite, what she should charge, what she could charge, where she would want to go with it. And mind you, I wasn't a coach or consultant. Like I had no offer, quote unquote. I had been a photographer, and just like in my photography, I have had offers, of course. And then I had done collaborations, but I just could no longer sit in conversations with people without having something real and tangible for them to take away from it. It was out of like nature of mine that came really, honestly, really natural for me to give advice, give tangible steps. And what was happening was more and more people would come to me as a problem solver, as someone who always had a solution. And that's actually something that one of my longest clients has said to me. It's like you always have an answer. But this started far before I quote unquote put myself as a coach or consultant. So I kept having these conversations and over and over again, and in my DMs with other creators and with friends, and like I said, with companies that I was working with. And I finally just asked myself, like, okay, what is the alternative here? What actually happens if I don't move towards the thing that is clearly pulling at me? And every time the answer was the same. The alternative was staying where I was, which was not bad, by the way. But I just keep kept like being placed in new conversations and situations, and I kept enjoying them. And I knew that that meant something. I didn't know what it meant, but I knew that it meant something. And it's actually an exercise that I work on with my clients a lot is like, what do people naturally come to you for? And so that was a really big catalyst for me that I had to look inwards. I did not have a business mentor, mind you. I didn't have a business mentor until about a year into, no, like eight months into coaching. And so I really started having real conversations one at a time. And I ended up with 30 clients who signed with me for one-to-one mentorship without me ever posting a single thing about coaching. If you go to my Instagram in April or May or June or even July of 2024, you will not see a single thing about coaching. There was no really announcement, no really launch. And I just was having conversations in the DMs with people, in person with people. Clients who have worked with me for photography were now asking me questions about their businesses. And I would just be answering their questions and they would be getting results. And so I really was just having conversations where people had asked me if I could coach them and I said yes. And at some point, I was coaching over 10 clients one-to-one and I had no capacity left for collaborations. I was, I was obviously enjoying the conversations with coaching in uh in a new way. And so I stopped taking on brand collaborations and I went all in and I told myself, if a brand wants to work together, I'm willing to work on the strategy side. I'm willing to work on the photography side, I'm willing to shoot content even. But it was no longer a collaboration. And instead, it was working with this person. It was a partnership. I was helping them get at a certain goal. And I went all in. And so it was the most incredible, rewarding thing, mind you. It has not been easy whatsoever. But I want to tell you that three years later, what this really looks like, because I I think I owe it to you to really be honest about this. I think a lot of people see the traveling, the fun, the the amazing highlights, but and and I'm really, really blessed to have the most incredible, abundant life. Um I was just talking with my boyfriend, and I was like, I literally get every single thing that I want because I always will figure out how to get the thing that I want, and that's not even from a materialistic perspective, right? I recently started running, like I've said in a in the previous episode, but I recently started running. And actually, did I talk about this on my previous episode? I forgot. Whoops. But anyways, it doesn't matter. I recently started running. And all I want is to be faster. Like I would love my pace to be quicker. And lo and behold, two weeks later, my pace is faster. Why? It's not out of accident. It's literally I I knew that I want that, I'm going to get it. And so I just think that that's a really powerful position to be in, but I also want to emphasize that it is not a straight line at all. There were months inside of these past three years where I have genuinely did not know if something was working. And I was dealing with situations where I looked around and I felt like everybody else had figured out something that I was missing. And there were times where I wanted to stop and moments where I questioned whether I was even cut out for this. And every single time I came back to the same question of what is the alternative? And that's really, really powerful to sit in. But here's also something I want to be really transparent about. The day that I started posting about my coaching publicly, I think it was around August or September of 2024, but my engagement had dropped by over 300%. And I have yet to get that back. And I can also tell you that I have forexed my income. I have worked with over a hundred clients. I am obsessed with the work that I do. I feel fulfilled. I don't feed an algorithm for validation anymore. My clients know me as the most supportive human. My engagement on Instagram dropped. Okay, fine. But my entire caliber and standard that I hold for myself, my business, my clients, and the people who find me and the opportunities I am literally given, and the opportunities that I find and seek out and put myself out there in. Okay. Worth every single engagement drop, follower lost. It is so much worth it. And as somebody who has been on that side, literally 300%, y'all. 300%. It's ridiculous. But having worked with over 100 people at a one-to-one level, I have a retention rate of clients who have worked with me quarter after quarter, year over year. I launched this podcast. I have built a real business that is actually mine in a way that nothing I had ever done before really was. I have companies that I work with, companies that bring me into their teams as a consultant to work with them, to problem solve. I have individuals who bring me into their worlds and their companies and their startups, or creators who bring me in and are starting their agency and want to have a plethora of retainer clients because they're so done with one-off opportunities. Fitness instructors, right? Real estate agents. And so I just think back to the work that I now have and what I do on a on a day-to-day basis, but then I think back to three years ago that it's the same person who was sitting in that coffee shop that I'm having the same conversations, obviously of different caliber and different types and styles and different people, but you you get the point. And so none of that was waiting for me on the other side of just waiting. And right now, actually, I think this is so relevant to what I'm talking about right now. But we are in a moment collectively where the world is really asking us to just move. And there are things this month that are just going to land in ways that they have not landed before. And so for anybody who has been in an in-between season, I don't think that it is a coincidence that you are listening to this episode right now in this specific week. I have this quote on my vision board that consistently says, I think it's on my phone. Yeah, I have I have two vision boards. I have one on my phone and one on my desktop. And I have a quote on the vision board that says, Don't be afraid to be seen trying. And I think that in in a lot of ways, like I think about that so much because in photography, for example, I said yes to opportunities that I had no idea if I was ready for. And with the podcast, it was the same thing. And with clients, I have taken on clients who had, you know, higher degrees than me and way more followers than me. I mean, I have I've had the honor of working with clients who, you know, people in industry that I have looked up to for years. I have been a consumer of their brand. And suddenly they are reaching out to me to support them in their business. And it's just like they chose to trust me. But our brains have this very unique ability to talk us out of those things to tell us that we're not ready. But your body and your brain want to keep you safe. And everything outside of that comfort zone is meant to feel uncomfortable. That is not a sign that you are doing it wrong, but that is just what it feels like. And so do you move when it even feels uncomfortable, when your drafts are sitting in like in your IG stories or in your drafts on edits. Like I also want to say this too, in terms of alluding, like to not be afraid to be seen trying. But everything is data. And so if I put something out and it doesn't land, that is data. And if it does, I want to understand why. Nothing is a failure when the goal is experience and reading about the thing is not doing the thing. And that actually comes from like a poem that I really love that one of my mentors showed me. But it's called the, I think it's called the endless loop or something. I've referenced it before. But you know, the only thing that counts as doing the thing is actually doing the thing that you say that you are going to do. And so the the thing that I see in a lot of women who come to work with me, women and men, I work with mostly women, but I've had a few men come to work with me. Um, but these people are not beginners and they're not people who don't know who, like what they want. They know what they want. And they are people who have been building something for a while. And sometimes it has been inside someone else's company or structure, and now they're on their own trying to figure out how to make this new thing work for their life, their season. And sometimes it's somebody who has done something for a very, very long time and it's no longer working for them or no longer fulfilling, and they're ready for that next season and that next era. Really, they they know what their next move is, and they've already made the decision internally, but they're not doing it yet. I use this analogy a lot, which is you cannot expect to get your dream body at the gym without going to the gym. And you're gonna probably despise the gym the first time that you go and the second time, the third time, and it sucks. And like I, for example, hate the stairclimber, can't stand it. My goal in life is to like love the stairmaster. But the reality is like, how am I going to learn to love it if I don't do it? And so, just like for me, it was really, really scary to put myself out there as not a travel creator, and a lot of people. Still come to me for travel questions, which is really, really nice to me because it's a huge part of like my work and what I do and big part of my lifestyle. But at the same time, I think that we often get really, really worried that okay, this person knows me as something, and now they're not gonna know me as that. The reality is like the one constant is you. And so if you want certainty before you want action, I I I don't know what to tell you. I mean, you can't expect to get your dream body without going to the gym. And so I want you to know that the certainty does not come before you move, it comes because of it. And every single person I've worked with found their footing after they moved. Because one of the first things that I do with a lot of my clients actually is map out every single thing that they have done up until this point is that they actually want to carry into their next era. We literally map it out like visually, and suddenly you start seeing how every single thing really connects and you can overthink the bad, but you can also overthink the good. What can happen versus what can't happen? And I mean that literally, like not as not as just like hyping you up. A lot of people think that they will one day just figure out who they want to serve, but you figure out who you want to serve after you start serving people. The clients I now attract are very different from the first ever clients that I spoke to, even when I was working with companies who hired me for collaborations. Like it is a very, very different type of person. And it's it's not necessarily in who they are, but in what they're working through, where they want to go. For for me, even like I launched a membership in January of 2025, and I realized quickly that I did not want a membership for that season of my life. And so I went back all in on one-on-one. And now I'm like building a group program and some challenges. And you just don't have to have it all figured out first. You figure it out by doing. And because, like, honestly, like, what is the alternative? But three years from now, whether you start today or not, three years will still have passed. And the only question is what will you have built in them? And I say that as someone who is on the other side of three years that were incredibly transformative, incredibly challenging in their own unique ways. But I feel like I have lived 10 different lifetimes. And I genuinely cannot even imagine what three years from now is going to look like. So that's really what I want to leave you with today, just as an honest question that deserves an answer from you. But like, what is the alternative? Because every single time I have asked that question for three years, the answer has always been the same. And really, the only the only option is to move forward and to move with integrity and with excitement and with the full picture of what you've already built. And I'll add to this sometimes people think that like everything has to be entirely wrong in order to get support. In all honesty, my life was really, really good before I turned my account off of private and into public. And my life literally got so much better for so many different reasons. I have so much fulfillment, but you don't have to wait until something goes entirely wrong in order to get support or wrong at all. Sometimes people just need a sounding board and someone to walk through it with you and say, okay, you're at level two. Here's what is going to happen and how we're gonna get to level four together. And the the reality is too that like what got you here will not get you to the next place. It it just won't. And so I actually can't even believe that like this was episode 13, which was wild to even like say out loud. But I I launched this podcast on March 24th, and it is now the start of June. And so a lot of things can even shift in two and a half months, let alone three years. So I just wanted to say thank you so much for being here, and I am so grateful for you. And if you love this episode, please share it and leave a review. If you do leave a review, by the way, DM me because I have a little gift for you. But my Instagram is always in the show notes. I would love, love, love to connect with you there. And let's go get into motion, y'all. I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.