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I don’t have it all together. I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no idea what the next few months/years hold for me. But I’m okay with this.
There’s beauty in uncertainty. There’s intrigue in not having a perfect plan.
The 10 years Iâve been an entrepreneur are proof of this. Iâve almost never known where I was going next, or what the 3-5 year plan looked like (heck, what about a 6-month plan?).
I often find myself dreaming of owning a simpler business. A business where I have one product to sell that speaks directly to one customer. But then I think about the limitations that “dream” would bring. The box that “dream” would put me in creatively and operationally. It is much safer to run a business with a single, focused product, targeting a specific customer. But I choose not to play it safe.
I’ve never wanted to play it safe. I’ve never wanted to accept things as they are. This is who I am, and this is what brings me personal fulfillment.
Iâve been a 7-figure business owner, but I can tell you it didnât mean I had everything together. At every level of business, money does not mean you know what youâre doing or have it all figured out. It just means youâre doing something that people are paying attention to (and paying money to).
I look at my many businesses as canvases. The ideas for those business are the brushes and paints. Sometimes I paint wildly, ending up with a business that only suits my needs and costs me money to keep afloat (Bumpsale). Sometimes I paint by the numbers, which leads to a business that provides more consistent (but not super sexy) income (Teachery). Iâve come to learn that a mix of both balances everything out.
Iâm not searching for a perfect idea or perfect business. I’m not sure I’ll ever find a truly sustainable business model for myself. But that’s okay.
As my wife Caroline and I like to say: Life is an experiment.
I’m excited to keep playing this game at my own pace and by my own rules, because that’s what gives me satisfaction.
If you feel the same way, then keep trying things. Keep building things. Keep swinging wildly with your paints and brushes. Enjoy the outcomes, whatever they may be, and know you can always start a completely new canvas at a momentâs notice.
There’s nothing special about today. There’s nothing special about this week. There’s nothing special about this month.
It isn’t the start of a new year. It isn’t the perfect time when the stars align just right. There’s no magic in the air that’s going to help you.
But you donât need any of that, anyway. You never did.
This can still be the exact moment you decide to make a change.
A journey to start a business you’ve always wanted to start. A journey to move somewhere in the world you’ve always wanted to live. A journey to jump into (or out of) a relationship. A journey to build a better version of yourself.
Living an intentional life, where you call the shots, doesn’t happen because that decision coincides with the start of a new year, month, or week. It happens because you decide it happens.
You didn’t get into your current circumstances overnight, and you won’t get out of them overnight.
It’s going to be hard.
It’s going to take effort.
It’s going to take sacrifices.
Hardly anything worth doing in life is going to happen by consuming more information (via social media, news, etc). You have all the right tools, all the knowledge, and all the time you’ll ever need. You just need to be willing to take a chance. You need to want the outcome more than you fear the reality.
Make today the day.
Are you on the field or are you in the stands? Unlike professional sports, owning your own business doesnât require physical gifts. You donât have to be freakishly tall to build a piece of software. You donât have to be able to bench press a VW Bug to write a book. You donât even have to be able to run at a moderate pace to start a website.
As a result, everyone thinks they can just jump into the entrepreneurial game and start playing. Worse, they think theyâre playing when theyâre actually just scarfing hot dogs, vying for the Kiss Cam, and yelling a lot.
They read articles and books so they think they can do and teach the same things they read (hello, life coaches with zero life experience).
They buy products/services/software and think they know all the intricate details of how to build those things and how to improve them.
They sit atop their social media thrones and cast judgment and criticism without having any experience to back things up, and without understanding the negative effect their opinions can have on the people who are actually building things (sure, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it doesnât mean you actually have to give it).
People tend to think starting a podcast, launching a website, or creating a social media strategy is a business. But unless you have an exchange of goods or services for money, those things are just sprinkles on an empty ice cream cone.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it takes actual work to be on the field.
Itâs easier than ever to feel like youâre on the field when youâre not. Creating a logo for your business idea and launching a website can be done in a matter of a few hours. Thatâs relatively easy. Anyone can do that. But can you:
Those are just a handful of things that happen on the actual field of business. And each one of those bullet points has a bunch of nested bullet points below it that you canât be prepared for or even predict.
If you can do them, great. In this case, youâre not joining the masses who are already playing the gameâyouâre actually one of the few who stepped out of the stands and down onto the field. And in that situation, youâre the one who gets the creditânot the people whoâll criticize you for the rest of your time in the game.
Thereâs a great Roosevelt quote that Brene Brown made popular in her book, Daring Greatly:
âIt is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.â
You know whatâs even easier than starting a business these days? Working for someone else. Thereâs nothing wrong with that. Let someone else navigate the field. All you have to do is show up and do what they tell you to do.
Many people arenât cut out to handle all the work it takes to be on the field. They even have little voices in their head and feelings in their gut, but they ignore those things. Instead they force themselves to be on the field and be in a worse situation than just working for someone else (and avoiding all the bad feelings).
Knowing who you are and what you value in life is incredibly important. So if being in the stands, or maybe not even coming close to this metaphorical stadium, is right for you? Great. Embrace that. Live that life. Be happy you donât have to worry about the 10 bullet points I listed above (that each have at least 10 hidden bullet points nested below them).
If it is right for you, though, know that the game looks a lot different from ground level than it does from the nosebleeds, the lower bowl, or even the box seats. Once you get down here, you could swear itâs not even a game at all.
The idea of becoming a better writer is daunting but I’m living proof that you can improve your writing, especially if you start out as a really crappy writer (hah!)
Youâre not a writerâStephen King is a writer.
You canât write anything about marketingâSeth Godin has written it all.
No one wants to read your opinionsâeveryone has their own opinions to sort through.
You have no writing credentials. You didnât go to school for writing. Youâre terrible at grammar, punctuation, and using parentheses. (I still donât think I do this âcorrectly.â) People donât need yet another thing to read.
Now, granted, I didnât actually realize I was committing to becoming a full-time writer. I had merely decided to step away from a business and the audience of 25,000+ people that came with it. I had decided I would instead share my experiences as an entrepreneurâthe real experiences, not the hacks/tips/secrets/3 easy steps that pepper the headlines of prominent media outlets.
But when you have zero experience writing, except for 140-character messages to random strangers on Twitter, where do you start?
From the experience I had filming daily YouTube videos, creating a daily writing practice made perfect sense. When I started filming daily videos for my previous IWearYourShirt business, I had absolutely zero experience (the same experience I had as a writer).
The first videos I created were cringe-worthy; in fact, I still canât watch them. For some odd reason, I thought my writing would be different. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t. My early writing is cringeworthy, but that early writing has helped me overcome the fear of writing. The fear of comparing myself to other writers. And part of that process is allowing myself to be a bit more vulnerable with my writing.
Based on my research, I committed to four things when I made the decision to stick to a daily writing practice:
And so I committed, starting on June 1, 2013. I didnât have a repository of writing topics. I didnât know exactly what I wanted to be writing about. I just knew I wanted to try out this writing thing.
The first few days? Not fun. As soon as my butt hit my blue yoga ball (what I sat on at the time), the doubts I wrote at the beginning of this article ran rampant through my mind. But instead of letting those thoughts control me, I fought them by hitting the keys on my keyboard. Without a succinct topic to write about, Iâd just write my exact feelings or stream of thoughts.
Day after day, the writing practice got easier. The pressure I put on myself to write something worthwhile started to lessen. My writing actually started to improve.
Once every couple of days, Iâd have an idea for an article that seemed interesting or that I thought may be valuable for other people. There was no Action Army back then. There were no Road Runner Rules. I had no idea who I was writing for or why I thought they would even want to read my writing. I just wanted to share my thoughts.
Coming off a business where I hosted a daily live video show that shared 90% of my life, I knew I could make an easy transition into writing something similar. Instead of trying to create some fancy way of writing or spending arduous hours trying to figure out interesting topics, Iâd just leverage something I had at my disposal: my life.
âSharing my lifeâ was familiar to me, but it also looked a certain way. During my days of hosting a live video show and representing a different company on my t-shirt every day, I couldnât have bad days. I couldnât complain, be upset, or be honest if I was feeling pressure and stress. That would reflect negatively on the brand that was paying me, and I knew that wasnât fair to them. Sure, I probably should have seen the writing on the wall that it wasnât a healthy way to operate my life/business, but we all make mistakes.
Once I removed the shackles of worrying about representing a company, I felt the freedom to share what was actually going on. I felt a burning desire to let the world know that everything wasnât okay because I knew everything wasnât okay for other people as well (or at least I hoped I wasnât alone in thinking that).
That shackle-removal was the best thing I did for my journey into writing. Being more vulnerable and honest about my life and business pushed away people who only wanted to see a perfect life and pulled in people who could relate and who shared my thoughts and feelings. Writing about Feeling Lost, Values, Friendships, and various other topics attracted the types of people who were going through (or had gone through) similar things. And when they commented or emailed to thank me for my words, it was a life-changing revelation to me:
I could be real about things not going perfectly, and people wouldnât scatter away like cockroaches when you flick on a light in a dark dingy motel room.
Defining the audience I was writing for was extremely painful for me, but I knew it was necessary. I had seen with my previous business that having a very broad audience led to a lot of surface-level connections. Without a deep-rooted (and defined) connection, those audience members would leave at the drop of a hat to find the next shiny object. Luckily, my life partner eats bowls of soul-searching-deep-rooted connections for breakfast.
I had countless conversations with my wife, Caroline, about âwho I wanted to be writing toâ and âwhy I wanted to be writing to them.â Just typing those words makes my stomach do a slight turn. Not because itâs cliche or extremely commonplace to think about those things, but because it felt so limiting and constricting to me.
How I thought about defining my audience: This will limit the number of people I can attract, which will limit the amount of money I can make, which will make me feel unimportant and not unique.
How defining my audience actually makes me feel: I have attracted a specific group of people who can benefit from my writing. Iâm empowered to know Iâm making an impact on peopleâs lives (impact > number of eyeballs).
Bonus resource: I sweet-talked my wife Caroline into letting me share the Ideal Audience Profile PDF that we used to help me define my audience. This PDF is actually only available in her Better Branding Course, but youâre getting it for free because Iâm a master negotiator (and because I agreed to do the dishes a few extra nights).
As Iâve written this article, itâs for the Action Army, a group of people who want to take control of their businesses and do things in ways that align with who they are (not who society says they should be). But the Action Army could transition into something completely different in six months or two years. Iâm 100% okay with and open to that change, because I know Iâll continue to evolve the definition of who my writing is for.
I didnât have the Road Runner Rules exercise when I first started writing. Instead, I had one guiding principle: I wanted my writing to be useful to other people.
Actually, I think I had two guiding principles: My writing would be helpful, and I would avoid the awful trend of articles that start with â27 tips to…â and â6 important hacks for…â. Sure, every now and again, Iâll write an article that has a number in the title, but out of my past 100 articles, only 8 of them have had numbers in the title. Iâd say thatâs sticking to my second writing principle.
âIs what I just wrote useful?â
Whenever I sat down to write or finish an article, I would ask myself, âIs what I just wrote useful?â The answer means 90% of my writing never sees the light of day. Itâs not useful. Itâs just words, jumbled together, often without a cohesive thread. I keep doing it because I like the writing process, but Iâm being 100% serious when I say I have 24 articles in drafts right now, most of which are between Âœ and Ÿ complete because theyâre not really useful. Yesterday, I wrote an entire article about what I learned from taking out my smelly trash. That was fun, but I think Iâll trash it. đ
I wanted someone to read what Iâd written and one of two things would happen:
I like to think of my early writing like my younger self. Full of flaws, trying too hard, and lacking the experience or confidence to deliver something of actual value.
That may sound harsh, but I believe weâre all our own worst critics. And hey, thatâs how I reflect on the beginning of my writingâitâs not where I am today. I 100% realize Iâm not the next Kerouac, Nietzsche, or even Stephen King, but Iâm also not trying to be. I donât aspire to be a great writer or to win awards for my writing. I aspire to write useful things. If Iâm doing that, Iâll continue to keep writing.
Iâm writing a lot about entrepreneurship and living an intentional life these days, but maybe Iâll write the next great fiction series? Maybe Iâll get really into carpentry and write all about how to carve chairs out of sporks?
Iâm completely open to the evolution of my writing as long as it stays useful. One of the things thatâll stay intact for me in all my future writing will be bringing my audience (you reading this) along with me. I thoroughly enjoy sharing my experiencesâagain, the real experiences, not a sugar-coated version that will make headlines for major media companies. I enjoy the deeper connection my writing helps create, and Iâll continue to invest in deepening that connection for as long as I can.
Ahh, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the mythical sasquatch for online writers these days. So many people buy the advice to write for search engines, and to stuff their âcontentâ full of âkeywords.â Iâll be honest: talking like that make makes my left eye twitch.
Letâs take a look at organic (search) traffic of JasonDoesStuff.com since I started sharing my writing consistently (weekly) in January of 2015:
One of the things youâll notice right away are the two gaps. The first one, from January 2015 – August 2015, shows almost zero search traffic. Thatâs not surprising since it can take 3-6 months for a site with new content to index in Google. This is the stage of creating content when you just have to believe in your writing (you know, when NO ONE is reading it đ).
The second gap was a month when my website was offline and being redesigned. Notice that it didnât affect the overall organic traffic growth after it was brought back online (yay!)
None.
Well, thatâs not entirely true. My friend Paul Jarvis gave me a great piece of advice that I still adhere to today: Write for people, not for robots.
I like Paulâs advice, and I havenât concerned myself with a single other SEO strategy since then. I donât care about what to put in H1, H2, or H3 tags. I donât count my words. The only SEO-related WordPress plugin I have on my site is Yoast. And the only reason I have it is because my buddy Ben said I should. I fill out the title, keyword, and meta description with each article I write. But I have no clue if Iâm picking the right title, keyword, or metadata. Iâm just inputting stuff that feels right.
Otherwise, Iâve just continued to write consistently useful content. Iâve listened to my reader’s suggestions, and Iâve tried to write about the things people seem to actually want to read. Iâm happy to let the search engine robots (Skynet!?) figure out the rest of the details.
Could I be getting a lot more organic traffic? Probably. Iâve seen all the same articles/webinars/courses you have about the topic. But that would be a lot of time spent focusing on things I donât want to waste my time with. Iâd rather enjoy the process of writing for and helping others, and not concern myself with eeking out a little extra traffic here and there.
Your words are good enough as long as they are your words. Itâs easy to copy. Itâs easy to put a slight spin on something Seth Godinâs already written. In fact, thatâs a great place to spend 90% of your writing time. Just be willing to throw away the unoriginal stuff that isnât useful.
Share your stories. Your stories are unique to you. Even if you arenât going through crazy things in life, youâre experiencing things in a way that other people can resonate with. This is how you build an audience of readers.
Be willing to throw away your writing. At least early on, your writing is nothing more than an exercise to help you grow and get better. If you start with this thought (or change your current thinking about it), writing becomes way less stressful and can be done with much less pressure. Eventually, you wonât need to throw away your writing (maybe).
Embrace vulnerability in your writing. Writing my book Creativity For Sale was one of the most cathartic things Iâve done in my life. It allowed me to share a lot of thoughts and feelings Iâd bottled up. I do the same thing on a weekly basis with these articles. You donât have to pull all your skeletons out of your closet, but maybe start with a handful of them that you think other people can learn from.
This article on becoming a better writer went through a few revisions to make sure it met my #1 rule of being useful, but it also came together a lot more easily than 2500 words used to. Iâm more comfortable writing these days than I ever have been, and even though I still donât consider myself a capital-W writer, I donât think I (or you) need the title to do the thing.
Just start writing, and see where it takes you.
Whether you want the confidence to make and share your art, to build your business by selling your services or growing an audience, to negotiate for more money, to feel good in your own skin, to speak to a large group of people, or take a big risk⊠we all have a hunger to feel capable and safe from rejection. Thatâs what confidence does for you.
But where does it come from? And how do we get more of it? Well, thatâs what I want to explore inside Color Your Soul, but today I want to share one tiny nugget that has helped me approach projects and risks in my own life with a bit more confidence.
Flashback to when I was 22, fresh out of college by just six months, and I was having a serious conversation with my mom. Right after graduation, Iâd broken up with my husband of a year to start dating Jason (scandalous, I know), and we had been navigating the fun but uncertain waters of a new relationship while doing the long distance thing — him back in Jacksonville, and me in Durham, North Carolina.
Things were going well with us but not so great with my new job. In short, I hated it. After just six months at an esteemed advertising agency, I decided I couldnât stand one more day in a job that didnât utilize my creativity, and so I quit.
The serious conversation with my mom was about my big decision to quit my job and move back to Jacksonville, to MOVE IN with Jason. I remember the look of fear and worry on my momâs face for me. Wasnât this all a bit sudden and was I sure I wanted to do this and what would happen if Jason and I didnât work out.
There are so many things I was NOT confident about back then but I will never forget the unshakable certainty that I felt about that decision to move back to Jacksonville and start a life with Jason.
I was nervous, but I was confident I was making the right decision. HOW?
So many times Iâve asked myself where that unexpected assurance came from in an attempt to unlock some hidden secret about this mysterious thing called confidence.
Was it because I knew Jason and I would work out? Heck no, I had no idea. Was it because I was too naive to think of all that could go wrong? Maybe, but Iâd been in other serious relationships and itâs not like I thought they were always sunshine and rainbows.
Upon looking at it further, I realized that the reason I was so confident about my decision was this:
I think this knowing — this belief that YOU can be your own protector — is the hidden key to cultivating confidence.
Imagine any big (or little) risk in life as though it were an image of you jumping off a cliff into a beautiful, but shockingly cold, lagoon of water below. Thatâs what a risk feels like, right — tempting, but scary because you donât know what will happen when you hit the water, you donât know what it will feel like when you take flight off the cliff. Thatâs when you start to think maybe it would all feel much more comfortable and easy to stay on that ledge forever.
Oftentimes when we think of confidence, we focus on the feeling at the top of the cliff, that moment of courage that we need to work up in order to actually leap. That moment is where confidence ends up, but I donât think thatâs where it comes from.
I think confidence actually lives at the bottom of the cliff in the lagoon.
Confidence resides in the belief that we’ll be okay regardless of what is on the other side of uncertainty.
âConfidence resides in the belief that weâll be okay regardless of what is on the other side of uncertainty.â
It is the voice that tells us that we can take the risk, we can leap off the cliff, because despite not knowing what waits for us below, there is always a safety net. That safety net is YOU.
When I was just starting my design business back in 2014, one thing I struggled with the most was sending out proposals. This is where I basically had to declare what I think Iâm worth as a designer. I would write and rewrite the final project estimate 20 different times because I lacked the confidence to tell someone exactly how much I deserved to be paid. I would fixate on that moment when my potential client would open up the email and look at the price tag, and I agonized over what their reaction would be. Would they think I was arrogant and way overpriced? Would they think I was an amateur and way underpriced?
I struggled with this for months until Jason finally gave me some powerful advice:Â Donât focus on the moment when they open the proposal; focus on the moment when they email you back with a no.
As you write that final project total on your proposal, he said, ask yourself: If they say no, will I feel good about the value Iâve placed on my work?
What? Seems like strange advice doesnât it. Focus on the rejection in order to build your confidence?
What it did for me though is it allowed me to confront my fear of rejection head on and confirm that even if that potential client said no, I wouldnât fall apart. It put me back in control of my own worth.
And THAT is the key.
When you know that you have your own back no matter what, thatâs when you can confidently move forward, even if youâre afraid or unsure.
We all have the tools within us to provide this kind of comfort and protection for ourselves. But in order to use those tools, we have to acknowledge our our power.
We have to take back ownership of ourselves from all the places weâve divvied it out to — to our families, to our relationships, to our social media followers, to near strangers on the other end of a proposal email. We place the delicate matter of our own self-worth in their hands, which leaves us feeling incapable and vulnerable to feelings of rejection.
But once you finally make that shift and decide you are the ultimate judge of your own worth — that you have the ultimate say in who you are and who you become — thatâs when you carry the confidence of a person with a built-in superhero at their side.
Hereâs a sketchbook piece I created inside this monthâs Confidence issue.
It is my own reminder that I can be my own safety net. I can cultivate enough trust with myself to know that even if I take a risk and it doesnât work out, I wonât allow a momentary feeling of failure or rejection stop me from moving forward.
I hope yours does to.
Your challenge this week is to choose one area of your life in which you’d like to feel more confident.
I want you to write down all the fears that affect your confidence in that area. Then I want you to respond to each fear with how your inner self-worth superhero will take care of you if those fears are realized.
I believe that actually confronting your fears head-on and reminding yourself that you will be okay regardless of if those fears come true or not will help you move forward more confidently in reality.
I have so many more thoughts on this topic I want to share with you guys, but I’ll leave it at that for now.
Thanks so much for reading! Wishing you an empowered week!
Through that exercise, Iâve been revisiting the many lessons Iâve learned about overcoming my fears and getting something out into the world.
These contemplations were swirling around in my head (what else is new) when a close friend asked me, âSo, are you nervous to launch Color Your Soul?â
Instinctively I was about to reply âOf course!,â as I would with every other thing Iâve launched in the past, but instead I just paused.
I paused because while the answer IS yes — thereâs always that fear in your mind that no one will like or want or buy what youâre making — I was actually astounded at just how little time I had spent thinking about that fear over the course of the summer, which is honestly a real departure from my normal operating procedure.
Truthfully it never even occurred to me NOT to launch Color Your Soul once the idea came to me in its fully realized form. And whatever doubts or fears momentarily arose, they were quickly quieted by my passion for getting the thing made.
BUT… this, as I said, is NOT typical of my process in the past.
And I know from the many emails Iâve received from several of you on this list that creative fear is a very real hurdle, one that has the power to take whatâs in your head and your heart and allow it to gather dust.
So I thought to myselfâŠÂ When did it change? What made the difference? When did I reach that point where I was able to dull the voices of fear in my head and what nugget of wisdom might I be able to pluck out and pass on to anyone whose fear voices are the loudest thing in the room?
Well before I get to that nugget, a quick backstoryâŠ
Back in 2011, I was still working for a local ad agency back in Florida. In my less productive work hours, I would find myself straying away from my work and over to my favorite design and lifestyle blogs (I justified this distraction time as âgathering inspiration.â)
I would cozy up in the archives of these popular online spaces, clicking through page after page of words and images and all this juicy creativity, and I would find myself feeling equally inspired and envious. I was completely envious of these people who had such distinct and well-developed creative voices.
The more I saw other people expressing themselves in this very public way — a way that had the power to connect with a random stranger like myself — the more it felt like a mirror reflecting back my own desires, and, more importantly, my own UNREALIZED potential.
I could sense I had something to say, but I didnât have the first clue about how to say it. I knew I had a voice that was begging to be shared too, but I was afraid that no one would care about it.
The fear and overwhelm of not knowing where to start just paralyzed me.
The days and weeks and months ticked by and I remember feeling more and more stifled and frustrated as I kept imagining myself as one of those bloggers I so admired, only to quickly return to reality, disappointed that this vision existed only in my head.
Until.
Until one day, the pain of carrying these suppressed creative impulses inside became so beyond frustrating that it finally drowned out every one of my fears.
The nagging desire to share my own voice became so persistent that it outweighed whatever hesitations I had.
So I finally started my blog.
I was reluctant and full of doubt and honestly kind of embarrassed at first, wondering what my friends would think. But from the moment I hit publish on my first post, I experienced this relief that’s hard to describe. Like a colorful bird that had been trapped in a cage was finally free to fly.
That blog became a place that I could share my writing, my creative ideas and, really, work through my own journey of self-discovery. It was my sandbox to play in, to learn and to stretch the creative muscles that I didnât even yet know the extent of.
That blog turned into a few side design projects which turned into my full-time design business which evolved into the Made Vibrant brand that exists today.
Itâs five years later, but with every single thing that I bring out of my head and out into the world today — whether itâs something as big as a new website or as small as one Instagram post — the same basic battle is waged between my fear and my creative impulse:
Will I express whatâs inside or will my fear keep me from doing so?
In those moments, I always think back to that day I decided to start my first blog because it illuminates for me this very simple logical conclusion in my brain:
âThe pain of standing still will always be greater than the fear of moving forward. â
The PAIN (and yes, I do think it is a soulful, psychic kind of pain) of keeping untapped potential inside me is a fate far worse than putting it out into the world and seeing what comes of it.
Once you finally reach that rational conclusion, you start to feel youâre virtually unstoppable because you have no choice but to go on making.
THIS is the nugget that allows me to silence my fear and keep on creating things, and now it makes sense to me why Color Your Soul has felt like the most fearless thing Iâve ever created.
Itâs not because I donât HAVE these fears anymore (like I said, theyâre always there, and, if anything, when itâs something you care so much about, theyâre even more present);Â itâs simply that my fears are WAAAAY outgunned by the truth and vision and creative impulse I have within this project.
The notion of NOT publishing something this aligned with my creative spirit is so heartbreaking to consider that it makes the alternative — overcoming my fears of rejection — seem like nothing more than a necessary step in the process.
So, my challenge is to you this week is to get REALLY acquainted with the pain of standing still.
I want you to think about that thing — that novel, or blog, or business, or song, or career — still sitting inside you begging to be born. I want you to ask yourself what kind of impact that untapped potential is having on your heart, what kind of subtle shade itâs creating over your true spirit.
And then I want you to ask yourself:
I promise you…
Once you decide that your greatest fear is doing nothing at all, the courage to make things becomes a whole lot easier to muster.
Wishing you all an AMAZING week, and Iâll be back in your inbox on Thursday with all the details about the new website, Color Your Soul and more!
In 2016, I had this vision for a creative hybrid subscription of sorts. I wanted it to be part magazine with rotating content around a central theme; part online learning hub with new classes added on a monthly basis; and part exclusive art gallery where I could make a collection of art with a central message and share it to a group of art lovers that would appreciate it.
I called it Color Your Soul.
The only problem was…
What do you call a thing like that? How do you EXPLAIN a thing like that? And finally, the doozy-of-a-doubt that shows up for me on the regular:
Those are the questions that continued to bubble up as I took each and every step toward making my idea a reality.
Have you ever experienced that feeling before?
Have you ever fallen in love with an idea that felt unprecedented in a way?
Maybe itâs a weird business idea that you just canât shake or a really specific niche audience you want to reach or your own hacked together way of designing something or an art style that feels strange but also kind of wonderfulâŠ
It creates in you a feeling like youâre floating out in the middle of the oceanâno oneâs paper to glance at, no one to ask for advice, no one to walk ten steps ahead and make sure you donât fall down a well. Itâs just YOU.
Well, hereâs what Iâve learned about that feeling.
Even though it can feel vulnerable and risky and kinda lonely and TOTALLY scary, it can also be a beautiful sign that youâre actually creating from your most authentic voice.
I forget sometimes that I actually live with the king of crazy himself, Mr. Jason Zook, who among other things has sold ad space on his chest, sold his last name, and most recently has sold his future.
In response to each one of those ideas, multiple people told Jason they either a) didnât understand the idea or b) knew the idea would never work.
And you know what? He did them anyway. Why? Because thatâs who he is. Jasonâs authenticity lies in constantly doing things that push the boundaries and that challenge convention.
When I feel myself doubting any of my ideas that Iâve come to love so deeply even for one second just because it feels new and different and weird, I think of Jason and Iâm reminded that different is memorable. Different is authentic. Different is original.
So let this article be a permission slip to you (and also to me):
âCreate the thing that only YOU can create. â
Create the thing that is so true to who you are and what your gifts are and what you feel compelled to make that it’s impossible for it to exist because YOU haven’t made it yet.
Go after your unique vision even if it feels weird and scary and completely unknown because that just means that the payoff of creating it will be that much greater when you see your vision come to life.
Not only will you have the distinct pleasure of making something youâve been dreaming of and following through on your idea, but chances are that itâll be the idea that makes people sit up and pay attention because it will be 100% YOU.
Creating is a scary and exciting thing, and I, for one, wouldnât have it any other way.
Public speaking used to be one of my favorite things so I thought I’d share with you everything I learned about being a public speaker.
I heard my name being announced and my bio being read, but even that booming echo was a whisper next to the huge rush of butterflies in my stomach.
I felt like a complete fraud. I donât belong here, I have nothing valuable to share, whereâs the off-ramp?
My thoughts were a mess, but I climbed the metal stairs to the stage, anyway. I shook a manâs hand, took a deep breath, and…boom.
I was on.
The rush I felt after that hour on stage fueled me for many years to come.
Instantly, everything snapped into place. The butterflies disappeared. The feeling of fraud evaporated. I started sharing my story and clicking through my slides, and I worked that room for the next 60 minutesâmoving from side to side, engaging the audience, and making people laugh. It went by in a blur, and before I knew it, the roar of applause was filling my earholes with joy.
That was my first paid speaking gig, and only my fifth gig ever. The rush I felt after that hour on stage fueled me for many years to come.
Since that talk in 2010, public speaking has been my jam. Iâve given over 75 talks. Iâve stood sometimes in front of thousands of people, and other times in front of just 5. Iâve made over $250,000 in speaking revenue, and with every talk, Iâve given 100% effort and energy.
One of my absolute favorite parts of public speaking is the feeling you get knowing you are making an impact on at least one personâs life. I can honestly say I know this happens because Iâve never done a talk where someone hasnât come up to me afterward and said something to the effect of, âThis made such an impact on me!â Iâve also come to really enjoy the adrenaline rush I get after every talk. Itâs a dopamine response like no other.
Want to give it a try? Oh, man, do you ever.
Hereâs what Iâve learned about getting paid to speak and getting good at it…
Imagine being in the audience for two different speeches about healthy eating. The first speaker has a lot of facts to share. Statistics for days. Thereâs no room for emotion in this talk, but wow, he knows a lot about cauliflower. The final slide is a screenshot of his website and social media handles, and his sign-off from the stage is that heâs available to speak at your next event. Yay?
The next speaker shuffles his way to the stage, and he makes you laugh immediately with a silly joke about Nutella as a protein source. He opens up about his own emotional health journeyâsharing moments of failure and success along the wayâand he canât believe it, either, but cauliflower fixed his high cholesterol issues and become a replacement for buffalo wings. A final joke about Nutella Protein Balls finishes off his talk, and he leaves the stage.
Now, which speaker do you think people are going to speak positively about? Which speaker do you think folks will pass stories along to their friends and coworkers about? And most importantly, which speaker do you think is going to get more speaking gigs?
As a speaker, telling stories is paramount. Itâs what creates a connection with the audience and gives them a memorable experience.
We all have stories we can share. The trick is figuring out how to share those stories and weave them into a message that an audience can resonate with, relate to, and learn from.
Take a moment to think about some of your best personal stories.
Write these down, and figure out how they can tie into an impactful message that your audience can use to change their lives.
A few years ago, my speaking schedule seemed to be drying up. I realized I had done a terrible job of reaching out to previous gigs (more on that in a second), so I decided to email a handful of other contacts to see if anyone I knew could recommend me to a friend. Hereâs exactly how I did that:
From those exact emails, I can attribute over $50,000 in speaking revenue. Again, not a single person I emailed ran events, hired public speakers, or was even someone I thought had a contact for me. I was just willing to ask, and I trusted that people I knew might know people (and would vouch for me).
Of course, itâs an even easier idea to reach back out to previous speaking gigs (people whoâve hired you to speak before). You can ask them how things are going with their current events and if they need anyone for future events. I shouldâve done this! If they donât want to bring you back thatâs absolutely okayâyou can also ask these folks for introductions to other potential speaking engagements. This works really well, and a warm introduction can go a long way.
(Queue the Allen Iverson video clip about practice if you know it.)
Iâve had the displeasure of watching my early speaking gigs played back on video. Wowzers, itâs painful. At one event back in 2010, I was so intimidated by the size of the auditorium we were in that I literally hid behind the podium the entire time, white-knuckling the edges and never taking a step. Sounds like a nightmare come true…but! Watching that talk later on helped me realize how important it is to move around the stage, and to watch my own uncomfortable moments so I can learn and grow.
Whether youâre getting consistent speaking gigs now or you havenât yet had your first public talk, hereâs something simple you can do to get better: grab a video camera, iPhone, or webcam, and record a practice run of your talk. Give it your 100% effort. Do not half-ass it. Then, watch the recording. What did you like? What didnât you like? Make notes, and then repeat over and over again, critiquing yourself (constructively! lovingly!) each time. Youâll get better, I promise.
Should you ever speak for free? Yes! Accepting non-paying speaking gigs early on is a rite of passage. Weâve all been there. The key with those events is to focus on honing your skills. Use the early and unpaid opportunities to try different things and share different stories. What seems to resonate with the audience? What do you enjoy talking about?
If youâre not going to use slides, you can skip this step (but Iâd suggest reading it anyway).
The 10/20/30 rule was created by Guy Kawasaki, and itâs very simple. 10 slides. 20 minutes. 30-point font. Thatâs it.
You donât have to follow this formula exactly (I didnât), but itâs a great way to keep your presentation extremely simple and easy to follow. Itâs a framework rather than a crutch, and itâs a way to make sure your slides reinforce your story instead of the other way around.
The exception to the 10/20/30 rule is if you use a ton of imagery and click through your slides quickly. Now, I donât mean you should rush through your presentation, just that you have a lot of visuals to back you up.
(By the way, if you donât have great imagery of your own, Iâd recommend Unsplash and Death to Stock. Please donât use clip art!)
You donât have to tell jokes to be funny. Many aspiring speakers make the mistake of trying to land jokes (as if they were stand-up comedians). This doesnât work. Unless you have experience doing stand-up comedy, stick to telling funny stories.
And hereâs a huge secret to telling funny stories: they donât have to be your own! That may sound weird, but other peopleâs funny stories are great way to introduce new perspectives, infuse humor, and reinforce your message.
Use pop culture for moments of humor as well. Remember many years ago, when Brett Favre got in trouble for texting scandalous photos of himself? When I gave talks around that time about using photography to promote your business, my running joke was to warn the audience, âJust donât share photos like Brett Favre.â Iâm no stand-up comedian, but this line always got a laugh. It was timely, people knew exactly what I was saying, and it worked like a charm because it fit into the message I was trying to share.
And hey, if you donât want to even worry about trying to add humor to your presentation, thatâs okay, too. As long as youâre telling good stories and delivering valuable information, you can still be a highly sought-after public speaker.
This is your last tip about booking paid speaking engagements. Event coordinators are looking for interesting and unique people. They want people who have their own stories and their own talks. If you copy other people, youâre not going to stand out. Figure out what sets you apart, and embrace the heck out of that!
As a final resource, my buddy Grant Baldwin has a ton of resources that help people learn how to be better public speakers and how to get paid doing it. I highly recommend taking his free course (and he has no idea Iâm even sharing this with you).
The last talk I gave was in November 2015. It was a great event in Dallas that paid well. I shared my story with hundreds of conference attendees, and even did one of my on-stage cartwheels to finish things off.
I walked off that stage feeling pumped up, and was met with an overwhelmingly positive response afterward. So why was it my last?
Well, life has a way of changing. My life right now is moving away from the public speaking phase. I feel like Iâm simply telling the same stories over and over again, so Iâm going to take some time off to create some new stories. To experience new things in life. Will I be back on stage soon? Iâm not sure. I’m also giving myself permission to quit, because quitting creates space for new things.
But you know what? My taking a break just means thereâs at least one more open spot out there for someone whoâs got a story to tell.
Someone like you.
So go do it. Use this article to help.
Iâm coming to you a little later today because Jason and I spent the morning driving around San Luis Obispo looking for houses to rentâŠ
Wait, what?! I thought you loved San Diego, Caroline! Didnât you guys JUST move?
Thank you, rhetorical person, and you are correct. We do love San Diego and we did only move about 10 short months ago! BUT our one-year San Diego lease is ending in March and over the holidays, Jason and I found ourselves wondering what it would be like to move again to a completely new city. To experience the magic and adventure of moving to California all over again. And to challenge ourselves with new people, new places and a new environment.
Thatâs why we decided to take the current week-long trip to visit three areas up the California coast and see how we like them: San Clemente/Dana Point; Santa Barbara; and San Luis Obispo.
Each of these spots has its own charms and its own quirks, and itâs been a short-but-incredible trip for the simple fact that it has forced us to see the world through a lens of possibility.
Every Airbnb weâve stayed in, every restaurant weâve eaten at, every quaint downtown weâve traversed, every stranger weâve met, every coffee shop weâve enjoyedâŠ. weâve had to ask: Could we see ourselves here? What would this look like for us?
What if we found a place at the foot of those mountains? What if we came to this coffee shop every Monday morning to work? What if I hosted art workshops at that cool studio space? What if we took Plaxico for his daily walk with this gorgeous view of the ocean?
What if.
I find myself saying this phrase over and over in my head. Itâs so fun to see a blank canvas before us because it feels like the possibilities are endless.
But, believe me, I havenât always been this comfortable with the notion of an uncertain future.
In fact, I used to be terrified by it.
Weâre conditioned from the time weâre young to think sequentially. When we finish 8th grade, we know 9th gradeâs ahead. When we finish college, we know weâre expected to get a job. When we get a job, weâre supposed to aim for the promotion.
There is comfort to be found in the predictability of this sequence.
So back in 2014, when I started Made Vibrant and suddenly there was no sequence, it honestly freaked me out. A whole different slew of What Ifs ran through my headâŠ
What if I donât make any money and the business fails?
What if Iâm not cut out for this entrepreneur thing?
What if nobody gets what Iâm trying to do and I feel completely embarrassed?
These other What Ifs were a manifestation of my fear of the unknown, and I would spend hours just diving deeper and deeper into them.
That was until I stopped worrying and I started doing. I walked into the unknown in spite of my fear and I found out if my fearful What Ifs were grounded in truth. (Spoiler alert: most of them were not.) The further I waded into uncertainty, the more I actually learned to enjoy it.
The thing is, our relationship to the unknown is all a matter of perspective.
We get to choose whether WHAT IF is a question of possibility or of fear.
âWe get to choose whether WHAT IF is a question of possibility or of fear.â
There are constructive What Ifs and there are destructive What Ifs. One breeds possibility and one breeds worry. One chooses to err on the side of hope, one chooses to err on the side of disaster.
And my question to you this week is: Which kind of What Ifs do you entertain more?
The worrisome kind or the possibility kind?
I have absolutely NO idea where I will be living in two months time. I donât know what my routine will look like or what my favorite hangout will be or how Iâll feel. But this no longer scares me; instead it excites me.
I know not all of us will choose to move to a new place each year. But my hope is that this letter will help you stay open to opportunities you might have otherwise been too afraid to attempt.
I canât wait to take you guys along for the ride and share with you our experiences wherever we end up!
And Iâll end it this week with one of my favorite quotes from the young writer Erin Hanson:
â âWhat if I fall?â âOh, but my darling what if you fly?â â
One week, at the bottom of my weekly newsletter, I asked readers to email me with anything they might need right nowâsomething I could help with as a small act of sending love out into the world.
Well, about 40 of those responses had one recurring word that stuck out to me and that word was confidence. So, I wanted to offer up some advice about how I’ve learned to gain confidence in my own life.
The problem with this, though, is that confidence is not a simple problem with a simple solution.
How does one encourage another to have confidence? How can I give someone something that so clearly has to come from within?Â
But thatâs when I thought to myself: I may not be able to GIVE someone confidence, but maybe I can help someone see their own confidence in a new light. Maybe I can uncover a new way of looking at confidence, a new angle that might allow some of you out there to finally have that light bulb moment that could make all the difference.
So I asked myself:Â What exactly is confidence? Where does it come from? How do we relate to it?Â
I thought about all the times I have to call upon my confidence:
Each one of these moments requires confidence. And when I broke each of these situations down further, I realized that in each of those moments, the thing that allows me to walk confidently or speak confidently or share confidently is that I have built up trust with myself.
âConfidence is really about being able to TRUST yourself.â
The trust you have with yourself is what your confidence rests on.
And so thatâs when I started wondering, well if confidence rests on trust, how do we build trust with ourselves? Because if we can understand how to build trust, then maybe we can better understand how to boost our confidence too.
Thankfully I remembered this fascinating talk by BrenĂ©Â Brown called “The Anatomy of Trust” that I might have shared with you guys a few weeks back.
In it, BrenĂ© talks about the fact that the research shows that âtrust is built in very small momentsâ â these tiny opportunities in which people choose to show us theyâre worthy of our trust.
She compares trust to a marble jar, where others can do small things to demonstrate theyâre trust-worthy and each time they do we add a mental marble to their jar. Only when the marble jar is full do we feel we can trust someone.
People have to show us that theyâre deserving of our trust because thatâs how we feel safe and protected from betrayal.
BrenĂ©Â goes on to break down the âanatomy of trustâ into its parts, which can be remembered using the acronym BRAVING: Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Non-judgment, and Generosity. (I recommend giving the talk a watch now if you want to better understand what each of the elements of trust pertains to. Itâs a great talk!)
But the reason I want to share all of this with you is that while BrenĂ©’s talk is in the context of trusting other people, I was struck by how transferable all her points were to the practice of learning to trust ourselves.
We have to demonstrate to ourselves that we are deserving of trust, and thus, that our confidence is not misplaced.
How do we do that? The same way we would show others weâre trustworthy. Through BRAVING…
That last one in particular really stuck with me as the crux of this trust/confidence business: generosity.
Are you generous in your assumptions with yourself?
In other words, do you see the best in yourself? Do you give yourself the benefit of the doubt? If not, Iâm betting you find it hard to trust yourself, and if thatâs the case, you probably also find it hard to muster confidence at times.
So often we think of confidence as something that is dependent upon the behavior of other people. That our ability to approach a situation confidently relies on whether or not other people will accept us or reject us. But if we continue to think of it that way, weâre giving up our power to build our confidence and improve it over time.
Instead, we have to think about confidence as an inside job. We have to think of our actions as marbles in the jar of trust we have with ourselves. If we can build up enough trust to KNOW that the actions or responses of other people wonât prevent us from continuing to go after our dreams, then our inner selves will feel safe enough to create confidently. To share confidently. To speak confidently.
Do you have trouble trusting yourself? If so, try to pinpoint why that is using BrenĂ©âs BRAVING model above. Is it because you break your promises to yourself? Because youâre afraid youâll judge yourself if you put yourself out there? Is it because you have trouble living your values in moments that are challenging?
Whatever it is, I want you to identify it and decide one way you can start building more trust within yourself. Maybe itâs a commitment to talk more kindly to yourself or to make it your mission to follow through on your next promise no matter what.
You have to fill up your own marble jar with enough tiny moments to know that when you encounter a situation that requires you to be confident, that you have your own back.
