Why Fear Means You’re On the Right Path

Can we get real for a second?

So many entrepreneurs are waiting to feel "ready." Waiting for the right gear, the right timing, the right confidence. But here's the thing… you’ll never have enough.

In this short but mighty episode, I’m sharing a powerful snippet from a past conversation with my friend Ken Coleman—also known as America’s Career Coach—and whew, it’s a gut check.

We talk about:

• The myth that you need more experience, tools, or permission to start.
• Why being uncomfortable is part of the assignment if you’re growing.
• The real truth about imposter syndrome (spoiler: it never goes away).
• And my personal “3 M’s” that I lean on when the fear tries to creep in.

This is a message for anyone who’s sitting on a dream because they’re afraid of being judged, failing publicly, or starting messy.

Let me remind you: people will always have an opinion—whether you sit on the couch or start that business, whether you win or fail. So if you’re going to be judged anyway, you might as well be judged while chasing your purpose.

Let’s normalize failing forward. Let’s normalize standing up after getting knocked down—again and again. Because the people you see “winning” didn’t avoid failure… they just kept getting up.

The next time fear whispers, “Who are you to do this?” I want you to flip it and ask, “Who am I not to?”

This episode is a short pep talk, a rally cry, and a reminder that your purpose doesn’t need permission.

Let’s stop waiting. Let’s start doing.

Click play to hear all of this and:

[00:36] Why we believe we need more than we actually do to start

[01:19] “You’ll never feel like enough”—what we must accept to grow

[01:52] People will always have opinions—do it anyway

[02:56] The truth about getting knocked down (and getting up again)

[03:43] The 3 M’s that helped me move past imposter syndrome

[04:24] Why your message, your medium, and you still matter

🎧 Listen to the full episode with Ken Coleman, How Fear is Getting in the Way of Your Success, >>HERE<<

Connect With Ken Coleman:

Ken Coleman is America’s Career Coach and the #1 national bestselling author of From Paycheck to Purpose and The Proximity Principle. As the host of The Ken Coleman Show, he helps listeners discover the work they were born to do and provides practical advice on how to land their dream jobs. With years of experience interviewing thousands of callers, Ken offers transformative insights on purpose, fear, and calling. He’s a trusted voice in personal development and a key member of the Ramsey Solutions team, known for empowering people to live meaningful and fulfilling lives through purposeful work.

📧 Join my Newsletter for a weekly cocktail of insider business strategy, personal reflections, and the journey of being a thought leader: https://jasminestar.com/newsletter 📧

For full show notes, visit jasminestar.com/podcast/episode590

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Transcript

Rosy Shephard 00:00:00  Hey there and welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, where we're spotlighting a powerful moment from one of Jasmine's favorite past conversations that deserves its own episode. Today's clip comes from an interview Jasmine did with Ken Coleman, aka America's Career Coach, and let's just say it hits deep. They dive into the fear that so often gets in the way of business success. Whether it's fear of failure, fear of what people think, or even fear of being successful. So if you've ever felt torn between dreaming big and playing it safe, this conversation is for you. Let's get into it.

Ken Coleman 00:00:36  I want to go back to some of the lessons about the head and heart. There's a wrestling match for people with the head and the heart. I know this from taking callers every day, and they know they should start something. They really want to do it. And I think they kind of believe. But then there's all these extenuating circumstances, maybe somebody's opinion, maybe I don't have a lot of equipment, like Jasmine didn't have a lot of equipment, and there's so many things that hold them back from starting.

Ken Coleman 00:01:02  And one of the things that I find I want you to comment on this is that people feel like they need to have so much more to start than they actually need. You just illustrated you had nothing. You had a camera. So talk about this myth of how much we need, how much experience we got to have to actually start.

Jasmine Star 00:01:19  Well, the beautiful response and the not so beautiful response is that that never goes away, right? Because even when I acquired the lenses and the memory cards and the websites, there was always the next iteration. If you continue to grow, you will sit in a perpetual state of uncertainty and unknowing. So if you don't embrace it to start, you will never advance. And then you understand that every wave feels like a tidal wave, that every day you will be presented with a problem you've never faced before. So to say that you have to have certain things to get started, I'm like, oh, you're already behind the curve because you will never have enough.

Jasmine Star 00:01:52  You will never feel like enough, and there will always be people to have an opinion. I've come to learn, especially early in my career, was that people will always have an opinion of you. If you decide to sit on the couch or going to run. If you decide to start a business or not start a business. If you decide to stand on the corner and preach. Or if you decide to stay at home, they are going to have an opinion of you anyway. So if people are going to have an opinion, if they're going to shed doubt or shed fear into your life anyway, regardless of what you choose, then you should choose the thing that gives you life, understanding that not everybody will support you, but your objective is to stand first and foremost as a testament to your purpose. Why you were put on this earth to share your unique skill and then show others what is possible as a result.

Ken Coleman 00:02:37  Yeah. So good. So once you get out there and you begin to start and you begin to just put one foot in front of the other.

Ken Coleman 00:02:44  Talk about what happens, what happens to the human spirit, the mind and the heart when we actually say, all right, I don't have a lot, but I'm going anyway. I'm not going to sit on the couch anymore. I'm going after what happens over time.

Jasmine Star 00:02:56  Well, first and foremost, you're broken again and again and again and again. And the people who you see on the front lines, on stages, in the front row accolades are the people who just decided, I'm not going to stop getting up. Yep. So if you don't have the stomach to be knocked down and stand up again, then you you don't want the thing that you want bad enough. So when you say, I am deciding to become a teacher, a photographer, a dog walker or a jewelry maker, then you must first embrace before anything else is that you're going to get knocked down again and again and again. And that is the process. That is the game. The people who stand at the front or at the top simply refuse to stop getting up.

Jasmine Star 00:03:43  But what I've learned over time is that you have that internal saboteur, your imposter syndrome. And the thing that I've learned is to, number one, ask myself every time I walk from the warehouse to the white House one day, why not me? That somebody is going to be in there, why not me? And there's three M's that I've come to identify. And I learned this lesson from a copywriter whose name slips my mind right now. But if I have the opportunity to remember it. But it's three M's, number one, it'll be the message that even if I say the same thing that somebody has said or a thousand people have said it a thousand times over. That the messenger is different. That can you could say something and I can say it, and somebody needs to hear it differently for each of us.

Ken Coleman 00:04:24  That's exactly.

Jasmine Star 00:04:25  Right. Let's just say, Ken, let's just say that there's listeners right now who are saying, you know, Jasmine and Ken are saying the same thing, and I'm hearing it the same way.

Jasmine Star 00:04:32  Well, then it becomes the medium. Can you're great on television, on radio. And I might be better, perhaps writing, or maybe I might be better at creating an Instagram reel, I don't know, but we have different mediums that can help differentiate us. So even if you think somebody has more, done more, been more, there are more qualified and more educated. They should be there. Guess what? Somebody needs to hear it from you, and they need to hear it in a specific way. And the medium in which you share it was specifically tailored for them. So continue to get up every single day and stand in your purpose.

Ken Coleman 00:05:03  I love that there's three. You just mentioned the imposter syndrome, which is the new fancy way of saying doubt. we talk about fear, doubt, and pride a lot on the show, writing about it extensively. I think there are the three just gigantic enemies that never leave us. They never leave us. We can overcome them, but we never get rid of them.

Ken Coleman 00:05:19  I'm just curious, from your journey, is there a specific fear that may have been bigger for you? A little bit bigger of a monster than other fears?

Jasmine Star 00:05:27  You know, I don't know if you're familiar with the Enneagram. Oh, sure. Enneagram.

Ken Coleman 00:05:31  Oh, okay. So, Ian Cranz, a neighbor in the area here. I mean, we've had him on the show.

Jasmine Star 00:05:34  I just had Ian on my podcast. I'm obsessed.

Ken Coleman 00:05:37  With him. Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:05:38  He's obsessed. He's brilliant. He's brilliant. And, you know, it's like he kind of took. And the thing about Ian is that the way he speaks and the way he teaches is that he carries a scalpel of truth. He's not. He doesn't have a machete. No. He just slowly cuts away at you. And the next thing, you're like, you're bleeding out. Totally true. You know me. So I'm an Enneagram three, wing four. And so we believe that people value us in direct proportion to the value that we provide for others.

Jasmine Star 00:06:01  Ding ding ding. And so, as a result, my greatest fear is that I don't matter if I'm not bringing value and that, you know, so and all of a sudden you put yourself in a perpetual state of give, give, give, give, give, and then you want to be seen. And if you're not seeing, you feel as if you don't matter. So that reoccurring fear of like really separating myself that I myself, by myself, regardless if I'm giving, have some sort of value to give to the world and that I matter, and the small things that I'm doing really do matter.

Ken Coleman 00:06:30  Yeah, I get it. I'm a I'm a three wing four. It's absolutely right. And that we gotta know those big fears. You know, it's it's so important. Okay, let's talk about pride. This is, you know, one of the one of the things that I see again, I get this, you know, incredible privilege. You get to talk to real men and women every day on the phone.

Ken Coleman 00:06:47  And the big voice of pride is, I don't want to ask for help. We feel like the question, will you help me is so leaky and gross, but if it's ask the right way, you'd be blown away by how people are willing to help you. So that's a big one. Is there some type of a voice, of a pride or maybe a specific doubt? I just want to let you teach a little bit that you face or you did face, and you were able to push through it and learn so much from it.

Jasmine Star 00:07:15  You know, I don't know if it's because I grew up really poor. I don't know if because I'm brown, I can't really identify why. but into adulthood. I mean, I'm talking about rather recently kin. Is that finally why blessings have gotten to a place in a space in my life where there's financial freedom in a way I've never experienced in my life. And so for me, it's not an issue of pride as much as it is an issue of belonging.

Jasmine Star 00:07:40  Yeah. So, for instance, my husband and I went on a trip and I walk into a hotel and I got out of the car and I didn't realize, can I kept my head down and my eyes down. And I wanted to dart straight through the lobby, and I just wanted to get to the room. And my husband pulled me on my shoulder, and he put his fingers under my chin, and he lifted up my face. And he says, when you walk into any room, you must act like you belong, because you do in, people will treat you that way. Yeah. And so I think that that has been such a shift in a professional capacity that every room I walk in, you know, a boardroom or anywhere, I need to hold my head up high because people will give you what you think of yourself. And I think that that's kind of been a thing. And as a result of that, to piggyback, it's I walk with my emotional or even physical head down.

Jasmine Star 00:08:26  And when it comes to asking for help, it's just something that I wouldn't do. I believe that if I gave and gave and gave to somebody that they would finally say, you know what, Jasmine? What do you need?

Ken Coleman 00:08:34  Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:08:36  No it never happened that way. No it never happened that way. Oh yeah. You have to ask for something you want.

Ken Coleman 00:08:40  I gotta tell you one big truth for me. I mean, I was 33, sitting on my back porch in Atlanta, Georgia, two years into the chase of broadcasting. Nothing's happening, and I'm having a pity party, and I'm the only person there. And I realize that nobody's sitting around thinking about how they can help Ken Coleman. Like nobody woke up today, right? That Ken Coleman guy, I think he has maybe some potential. Maybe I'm going to call him up and give him a crazy opportunity. And everybody else has got their own journey, and they're all thinking about their own deal. And so we gotta ask, but I like what you said there about belonging.

Ken Coleman 00:09:10  That's actually a really positive side of pride. To have to have pride in who you are and your unique makeup. I love your husband's move. Get your chin up. Shine bright I love that. That's really, really good. Okay, let's shift here. So now we know that you are much more than an artist through a camera. You are really a great coach. you're more than an influencer. I don't even like that word anymore. Because now it's taken on this, this cheap connotation. You are making things happen. You've got an incredible business. You're coaching people, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly on Instagram. What do you love most now about what you do if you had to single something out? I know that's hard because you love all aspects of your work, but I'm just curious what's the thing you enjoy the most about what you do now?

Jasmine Star 00:10:01  Igniting belief. Oh, you can you can actually see. Yes, the shift in somebody when they go from I have a question. And so on.

Jasmine Star 00:10:11  The inside of social Curator. My husband and I are co-founders of Social Security, and we empower small business owners to build a brand new market on social media. And so that's where I, by and large, do group coaching and people come on. Yeah. And they will ask a question. But our methodology to how we coach is there's always a question that's a front word facing veneer of the underlying question. Yep. And you could see that when you start tapping at the underlying question you see a shift or you see a flicker in somebody's belief. And when you ignite belief, game over. Yeah. So the hardest thing is not whether or not your business is going to be successful. It's not whether or not you believe in your capacity to succeed. It's truly do you believe you can do it. And the minute that you make that belief concrete and gold game over. And so to me, when I see somebody shift their belief, I also know it's a vehicle for income. And what I've experienced in my family is that income is a gateway to change legacy and to change families, and to give somebody the freedom to make decisions, to grow in ways that they just didn't have the capacity.

Jasmine Star 00:11:11  So in my mind, it's belief leading to prosperity on the back of hard work and understanding that you're here on this earth to do something specific.

Rosy Shephard 00:11:20  We hope that episode gave you the clarity and courage to stop letting fear drive the decisions in your business. Remember, fear is normal. It just doesn't get to be the boss. If you found value in today's episode, send it to a friend who needs a nudge of confidence to see you next time.