‘Most people consider life a battle, but
it is not a battle, it is a game.’
FLORENCE SCOVEL SHINN
Having created a multimillion-dollar business without taking outside investment or working my guts out (while also raising young kids), many women ask me my number-one secret to success. The answer is: mindset. Constantly working on your mindset is honestly the most important – if not the only – thing you have to master. Everything else, you can just Google. Really. Business isn’t that complicated.
Unfortunately, women often think they need more qualifications, a new funnel, or a different website, instead of working on their fears, beliefs, and other mindset issues. (Seriously, stop worrying about your funnels, you’ll figure it out.) Of course, you need a product or service that people want to buy, you need to market yourself, and there are a million logistical things to do, but without the right mindset, everything else will fall apart.
And many women also think they have to be perfect before they can start: an attitude that’s the antithesis of being a Chillpreneur – it will derail you and make things way harder than they need to be.
Basically, being in business is like playing a giant, real-life game of snakes and ladders (aka chutes and ladders). The board-game version is a game of chance. If you roll the dice and happen to land on a snake (chute), you fall behind. Bad luck. And if you land on a ladder, you get to skip ahead. There’s no skill involved at all – your fortune is totally determined by the luck of the dice.
In reality, I believe we make our own luck. In the world of entrepreneurship, each time you encounter an obstacle, you can choose how you engage with it. You can’t avoid obstacles, but fortunately, you don’t need to do that to ‘win’ the game. The weird thing is that, when normal, inevitable challenges come up – like a refund request – some people not only fall down, they launch themselves down a snake/chute and refuse to play the game again, convinced they’re a failure. They quit, or remain paralyzed by fear, shame, and indecision for years.
Knowing ahead of time about these inevitable rites of passage gives you the opportunity to be reasonably chill about things you can’t avoid. It’s unlikely that you’ll have zero refund requests for your services; so if you know that they’re inevitable, you can stop ‘preworrying’ about them, and they won’t bother you as much when they happen (and they will).
You have a choice: throw yourself down a snake/chute and stop playing the game, or shrug, pick yourself up, and roll the dice to see what’s next in your entrepreneurial adventure. Being an entrepreneur isn’t life-or-death. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that serious or hard. As scary as it is some days, it’s still better than doing a job you hate or wasting your potential.
I’m not that amazing at business, but I know how to play the game. I’ve become successful because I choose to see obstacles as inevitable rites of passage along the path to my destiny. I’ve experienced the same challenges as any other entrepreneur, but I’ve always found a way to reframe them instead of letting them derail me.
Seriously, I’ve celebrated every ‘bad’ thing that has happened because I know it brings me one step closer to success. My first one-star book review on Amazon? I celebrated! My first refund request? I felt like I’d made it! It’s not that these things felt good (far from it): I just knew that it was a mark of success, like making it through to the next level of a challenging video game. I made it through and I didn’t die! Whoo-hoo! See the difference?
How many people do you know who have experienced an ordinary setback like this and just quit in shame and fear? I’ve seen women quit after a single refund request, convinced they must be terrible at their business. I’ve seen women give up after a less-than-spectacular launch, not realizing that anyone who has created a thriving business had crappy launches too.
Everyone starts from zero, everyone! The journey is inescapable. You have to be willing to get through everything on your way to your fabulous life. Playing the game doesn’t mean you won’t get scared. In fact, the biggest obstacle you’ll face is fear.
You might be thinking I’m not brave enough to do this. Or I’m not competitive enough to make it in business. I understand. I don’t even like playing Monopoly, and I’m not at all cutthroat. Plus, I’m the biggest introvert in the world. But the belief that you have to be a certain way or a particular personality type comes from a place of scarcity. There’s more than enough business to go around, but we’ve been taught from a young age that there are only a few slots available for success, and they go to the most competitive, deserving, or ambitious.
I call this the ‘Highlander Myth.’ Highlander is a cult 1986 movie starring Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery whose premise is that some immortal Highlander warriors have to defeat each other for the ultimate prize: the power to rule the world. There’s no amicable sharing of power. It’s a fight to the death, and the winner absorbs the other’s life-force after basically decapitating him for no reason other than to win. On its release, the movie’s tagline was ‘There can be only One.’
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to rule the world: I just want to contribute to making it a better place. I don’t want to kill my competitors – I actually like them. I’m just not that competitive or ruthless; I want everyone to win! Before you beat yourself up for not having the right ‘edge’ to make it in business, think about the messages you’ve been absorbing your whole life: success is a zero-sum game. This age-old story leads to all sorts of screwed-up business beliefs, including:
How many times have you come up with a great idea, but thought it was already taken? Or believed you have to be the Oprah of your industry, and therefore didn’t even try? Think of the ‘cool girl’ in your industry. Do you compare yourself (unfavorably) to her? Is she your benchmark of success because she seems to be the popular one who everyone wants to work with?
Good news: you don’t have to decapitate her to be successful in business! Whew, right? She’s probably no more special than you are; there’s room for you, too. You just have to release some of your old programming about competition. There’s only one Oprah, and there’s only one you. You have just as much right to be here as anyone else. So, every time you think you’re not unique enough to make it, remember: you don’t have to kill everyone else in your industry and absorb their power. There’s more than enough to go around!
It’s not just Highlander. Pretty much every movie perpetuates this ‘there can be only one’ myth, especially when there’s room for only one primary female character. She’s usually of royal birth (Princess Leia, Snow White, Wonder Woman), The Smart One (Hermione Granger), or the token minority character (where there’s definitely only one).
Back in 1991, Katha Pollitt of New York magazine coined a term for these token female characters: the ‘Smurfette Principle.’ She says: ‘The message is clear. Boys are the norm, girls the variation; boys are central; girls peripheral; boys are individuals, girls types. Boys define the group, its story and its code of values. Girls exist only in relation to boys.’1
In the Smurfs cartoon, there was Brainy Smurf, Clumsy Smurf, Greedy Smurf, Hefty Smurf, Jokey Smurf, and… Vagina Smurf. Sorry, I mean Smurfette: the only female Smurf in the whole village. Smurfette didn’t have any defining attributes or personality traits – she was special because she was the Only.
But that’s the message all around us. Most reality shows follow the same concept: there can be only one winner. Participants have to compete and be eliminated each week until there’s only one contestant left. Most of the time, there isn’t even a prize for the runner-up! Everyone else must lose, which sucks, because most women don’t want to win at the expense of someone else. It feels mean and bitchy, especially if you’ve ever been excluded from the ‘cool group’ yourself.
The great news is that you don’t have to be the best or the smartest to succeed in business. It’s not a popularity contest, and there’s more than enough room for everyone. But you do have to choose yourself. And that’s one of the hardest mindset lessons to master: I deserve success. I’m good enough. I’m ready. I believe in myself.
It feels presumptuous to choose yourself. Women, especially, aren’t supposed to brag or be too confident. It feels audacious to say that you like and believe in yourself, let alone believe in your business success.
‘I had to make my own living and my own opportunity!
But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the
opportunities to come. Get up and make them.’
MADAM C.J. WALKER
I once had a dude at a barbecue ask my husband how my business was doing, and when Mark said, ‘Great, actually!’ the guy responded, ‘Well, some people will buy any old shit, won’t they?’ I couldn’t believe it! Obviously if I was successful without working hard, I must be somehow scamming people.
Sometimes I forget that my business success isn’t the norm. I chose myself. I self-published my first books, built my first website myself, and had the audacity to run my own workshops before anyone else thought I was worthy enough. No way was I going to wait until the dice rolled a lucky number. I decided I was enough to get started and to build success, despite what other people thought.
Here’s the thing: nobody is going to give you permission to be successful, so stop waiting for external validation. I know – waiting for someone to pick you can be excruciating. Remember at school when you had to line up and wait for the team captains to pick those they wanted on their side? It can feel that way in business, too – like someone else has to deem you ready for the big stage.
The truth is that you’ll never feel ready enough, and chances are that nobody is going to ‘choose’ you. You have to choose yourself. When I first started teaching personal development, I didn’t exactly look and feel like a success story, especially when I drove up in my dodgy 20-year-old car with the saggy roof hanging around my ears. But I started small, and most importantly, I showed up and declared myself ready. My first few goal-setting workshops had four people on average. Then 10, then 20, and now, we regularly get hundreds to a seminar. Maybe one day, thousands.
I declared myself an author way before anyone else believed I was one. I wasn’t waiting for someone else to choose me, and I wasn’t waiting until I felt ‘anointed’ by the universe. I decided that there was room for me, and yes, there’s room for you too. There’s room for:
You don’t have to be the best, and you don’t have to compete against anyone to be successful. Why not you, too?
You’ll never feel ready enough, and chances are that nobody is going to ‘choose’ you. You don’t have to wait to be anointed by someone. You can choose yourself.
One of the most popular posts on my blog was ‘37 Lessons from Becoming a Self-Made Millionaire,’ and lesson number 35 was: ‘I’m a contributor, not a guru.’ As soon as I gave myself permission to contribute to the conversation about women and money, and not have to be a guru or expert on it, my business became fun. If you truly and deeply care about a topic or cause, be a contributor. Who cares if you don’t know everything? You don’t have to be the best to make a difference to someone.
I didn’t expect the response I got to that ‘lesson.’ People took screenshots of it and messaged me to say how powerful it was and how relieved they were to hear that they don’t have to be a guru to be successful. It resonated so deeply with people that I decided to include it in this book. And it’s central to the Chillpreneur philosophy. To me, it meant that I didn’t have to try so hard. Suddenly, success in business seemed attainable. I could just show up and teach what I knew, and that was enough. I didn’t have to be super-special! I could be one of many voices.
When I really ‘got’ this, everything changed in my business. I gave myself permission to show up exactly as I am. It helped me to feel excited about offering my work to the world, to make offers to potential clients, and to extend invitations to people to join my Money Bootcamp – even though I wasn’t Oprah.
I also became a lot less precious about my work because I knew it didn’t have to be completely groundbreaking or unique to make a difference to the people who needed to hear it from me. I worried less about competitors because I cared so much about the overall mission: that women change the way they feel about money. How can I begrudge anyone talking about money, too, when we’re all striving to achieve the same outcome?
I was so passionate about the topic of women and money that I didn’t care about being the ‘One’ anymore. In fact, I realized that my voice was needed to tip the overall mission into the mainstream. The more money conversations the better, and I didn’t need the ego trip of being the gatekeeper of the information.
Why not you, too? You’re allowed to add your voice and perspective. Who’s going to stop you? There’s no ‘cool girl’ deciding who’s in and who’s out. Only you can decide if you’re ‘worthy’ enough. And you are – but only if you choose to be.
I no longer get hugely nervous when speaking on stage, and I don’t feel overwhelmed by meeting hundreds of people at events, because I know they aren’t showing up to see ‘me.’ They want to see a representation of themselves. They want to see an example of an imperfect person choosing herself. It’s attractive, compelling, and inspiring.
I’m happy to be an example and symbol for people who need to hear from me. Some like me because I’m Australian. Others like the fact that I’m not a perfect body shape. Some relate to me because I have kids. Others like my sense of humor. Whatever the reason, someone in that audience will be thinking, If she can do it, so can I. Why not me?
Gurus want people to follow their particular brand of ‘religion,’ forsaking all others. That’s not what you’re looking for, because it’s a lot of pressure. You don’t need all the followers, just the people who want to see and hear from you. Lots of people will be happy to tell you why you can’t play the game. They’ll say you’re too young, too old, too inexperienced, too shy, too sensitive, too loud, too… something. But we need all types of leader, not just the obvious ones. Show up and fill that gap.
Why not you?
It’s helpful to listen to your own responses when you ask, ‘Why not me?’ Because if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll have a few excuses. Here are some examples.
Why not me? Because…
Grab your journal and see if you can write down some more excuses.
You’re not just expressing negativity for the sake of it when you identify these excuses. They will reveal valuable information that will help you uncover your business mindset issues. In fact, you can even go one layer deeper for each excuse. Take ‘I’m not ready,’ for example. Why am I not ready? Because:
What do you do with that information? Grab your journal again and ask yourself:
‘Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It’s about
getting up one more time than we fall down.’
ARIANNA HUFFINGTON
Joan of Arc is reported to have said, ‘I am not afraid… I was born to do this.’ You might not be fighting an army, but being in business is still scary! Just because you feel like it’s your destiny, doesn’t mean it will be smooth sailing.
A friend who was relatively new to online business sent me a text saying, ‘I’m hosting a live webinar today, and I’m so scared! Tell me the fear goes away?’ Um, I’m sorry, but no, it doesn’t. Not entirely. But here’s the good news: what scares you today won’t scare you tomorrow. I can now host webinars with little stress, even though the first dozen were terrifying. Paying a six-figure tax bill isn’t scary now, though I worried about paying my very first (tiny) tax bill when I started out.
At some point, with practice, everything you do in business will feel like second nature. But the first time you refuse a discount request or have to chase down a client who defaults on a payment, it’s going to feel horrible, like you might actually die of fear. But you won’t, and soon it will be no big deal.
And here’s the bad news: there’s always something new to be afraid of. Sorry! No matter how often I do it, public speaking still scares me, though it depends on the audience. Speaking to a small group is on the lower end of my fear spectrum, but people are asking me to speak to increasingly larger audiences, and that pushes me toward the middle of the spectrum. On the higher end is the idea of doing live TV interviews, which is kinda scary to me. Soon, that will be no big deal.
Why does something that seems so simple, like ‘just publish a blog post’ or ‘just ask for the sale,’ make us feel like we’re literally going to die? I’ve found some good theories.
Have you ever heard of the ‘Witch Wound’ or the ‘feminine wound?’ I hadn’t, until I read Lisa Lister’s amazing book Witch; it helped me understand the fear that I and many other women experience when we start out in entrepreneurship.
According to spiritual teacher Kimberly Jones, the Witch Wound is ‘the psychic scar in the collective consciousness that (mostly) women start to awaken to and feel deeply in their bodies as soon as they consider stepping into their power.’2
Think of your own experiences. Have you ever felt irrational terror or reluctance over something quite simple? Well, no wonder: it’s never really been safe for women to speak up, display power, or create our reality without fear of persecution or conflict. Millions of women throughout history have been burned, drowned, hanged, tortured and enslaved for their beliefs, or for simply being born a girl.
Times have changed for women, but this stuff runs deep. Even though we’re unlikely to be literally burned at the stake, it still feels dangerous to step into our power. You don’t have to go very far back to see how women have been treated when they speak up. Your mother and grandmother faced a very different world than we do – one in which they had fewer rights and protections, and less respect in the workplace. And it still happens. Female politicians are called witches and bitches, and online trolls often target successful, outspoken women.
Kimberly Jones says, ‘When your throat closes over when you stand up to speak or face up to authority, that’s the Witch Wound closing your throat chakra. It’s the shared memory of thousands of spiritual brothers and sisters being hanged and persecuted for generations of going against the grain.’3
Heavy, I know, but it makes sense, right? Studies are starting to reveal that we can inherit trauma from previous generations of our family,4 and when you think about it, that makes sense, too. Passing down information about potential dangers from one generation to the next can help a species survive. It might sound far-fetched, but inherited trauma may be one of the reasons it feels so unsafe to make your voice heard by publishing a blog post or creating a simple video. Your body goes into fight-or-flight mode to keep you safe from centuries of dangerous conditions for women like us.
Life coach Natalie Ann Taggart says: ‘For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why I and the spiritual, creative women I work with felt such massive, existential fear when it came to sharing our spiritual messages. It often bordered on the point of irrational, like the time I literally felt like I was dying after I posted on Facebook or the time a client sobbed and sobbed over creating her opt-in.’5
Natalie says that just knowing about the collective experience of the Witch Wound can help you heal it. ‘Next time you feel that resistance, that inner tug that wants to keep you safe in the status quo, recognize it as your Witch Wound. Give it love – it is protecting you. And you can choose to not be beholden to it. You can choose to heal, and to rise into the powerful magic that your soul is calling you to.’6
Author Seren Bertrand says, ‘As women rise into their power, we face all that once held us down. We meet everything that has shamed us, blamed us, judged us. We face the long shadow of “The Inquisitor” in all the forms he or she takes. It looms large in the dark of our nightmares, our anxiety, our self-doubt.’7
One of my earliest memories is sitting in the welfare office with my mother, feeling terrified of the stern, besuited man and the power he had over my family and our ability to eat that month. That one experience lived with me for decades. It kept me scared about getting into trouble with authority figures like the ‘taxman,’ which caused me to unconsciously hold back my income for years. Starting my business made me feel incredibly vulnerable and unsafe.
And you thought you were just procrastinating! Maybe you thought you weren’t qualified enough or that you needed a different background color on your website? Nope. You’re breaking cycles, kicking through glass ceilings, and smashing the patriarchy! Your lizard brain thinks you’re going to die, so cut yourself some slack!
‘We are the granddaughters of the
witches you weren’t able to burn.’
TISH THAWER
You might not have heard of the Witch Wound until today, but I’m sure you’ve experienced some other fears, like:
I know I have. Let me tell you again, as a self-made millionaire: the fear never truly goes away 100 percent. No magical revenue number makes you immune to fear. And that’s okay. The absence of fear is not the goal. This is just the game of business. The goal is to use the vehicle of entrepreneurship to create more freedom, abundance, and creativity in your life and to impact the lives of others positively. That’s going to come with a healthy dose of fear. It’s unavoidable, but it’s survivable.
Have you ever bargained with the universe about your business? ‘Give me a big following, but no unsubscribes!’ ‘Give me Oprah-level fame, but no haters or critics!’ ‘Send me lots of money, but no tax bills!’ Yeah, it’s not going to happen. But over time, you’ll gain more experience, more resources, and more resilience, which will enable you to deal with anything that gets thrown at you.
‘A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is
another stepping stone to greatness.’
OPRAH
You will fail in business. A lot. Some people won’t like you or your work. You’ll make mistakes – like sending out emails with broken links and typos. You’ll f-ck up all the time, in big and little ways. When you accept that, you won’t fear it, and you won’t be surprised when it happens. In fact, you can plan for it.
I’m not psychic, but here are some predictions for how much you’ll fail. Your sales will suck and 98 percent of people won’t buy from you. (Actually, that’s normal, as I’ll explain later.) At least 75 percent of the customers you send newsletters to won’t open them. Does that mean your emails stink? No: it has nothing to do with the quality of the content; that’s just how the numbers play out. Track it over time and see – just don’t think you’re a failure because of it.
‘You never lose in business. Either you win, or you learn.’
MELINDA EMERSON
People will complain. Whenever I create a course, I know that at least 3 percent of customers will need extra help, have complaints, or ask for a refund. It’s inevitable and it has nothing to do with me. There’s just no such thing as a 100 percent approval rating. That’s not failure – it’s statistics. Knowing that has helped me become way more chill. I know roughly how many customers will default on their payment plans and how many refund requests to expect when we do a big launch. As long as the numbers are within our predicted rates, I don’t waste a minute worrying about it. You are going to have a lot of failures; it’s part of doing business.
‘I have written 11 books, but each time I think, “Uh-
oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game
on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.”’
MAYA ANGELOU
Do me a favor: Google ‘famous people with impostor syndrome.’ You’ll see that virtually everyone has it, including incredibly accomplished people.
In her book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Sheryl Sandberg says: ‘Every time I was called on in class, I was sure that I was about to embarrass myself. Every time I took a test, I was sure that it had gone badly. And every time I didn’t embarrass myself – or even excelled – I believed that I had fooled everyone yet again. One day soon, the jig would be up.’8
In The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It, author Valerie Young writes that Meryl Streep once told a reporter, ‘You think, “Why would anyone want to see me again in a movie? And I don’t know how to act anyway, so why am I doing this?”’9 This wasn’t baby Meryl speaking, either: it was after 17 Oscar nominations and 26 Golden Globe nominations!
Isn’t it reassuring to know that accomplished and famous women feel the same way you do? The way I’ve overcome this particular fear is to forgive myself for not knowing everything, while at the same time realizing that what I do know can really help people. Being in business is simply sharing your gifts (knowledge and expertise) with others who don’t have them. Your experiences are valuable; your opinions are useful; and someone out there needs what you have.
Women sabotage themselves by thinking they need to know everything about a topic before they teach it, or they’ll be exposed as a fraud. When I started talking about money, I thought it would count only if I was as qualified to do so as financial expert Suze Orman. Otherwise, what right did I have to teach anything to do with money? And who was I to talk about living your best life if I wasn’t already as successful as Oprah?
But the world needed my unique take on money. I didn’t have to worry about being exposed as a fraud because I wasn’t pretending to be Suze. You don’t have to lead the conversation to contribute to it and honestly share your experiences. When you realize that your opinions, thoughts, and voice not only matter but are also needed, you can give yourself a break and just show up.
Remember, you’re an expert to someone. That realization has given me so much relief. The pressure was off to be Suze (I don’t look good in a blazer anyway), and there’s only one Oprah. And guess what: there’s only one you, too. Someone needs to hear your voice. If you show up with integrity and teach what you know with a lot of heart, you won’t feel like an imposter.
‘To people making mean comments about my GG
(Golden Globe) pics, I mos def cried about it on that
private jet on my way to my dream job last night.’
ACTRESS GABOUREY SIDIBE
The fear of criticism holds so many women back. Being criticized hurts, but it’s inevitable, and therefore not a valid excuse to forfeit your business dreams. Sorry! Do I get criticized? Yes, I’m sure I do all the time. But I don’t read any unsolicited feedback about my business because honestly, I’m pretty uninterested in doing so. Why? It’s none of my business what other people think of me.
Being a Chillpreneur isn’t about being dismissive of negative feedback. Chillpreneurs just realize that they can’t do anything to avoid it, so they shrug it off. I have friends who take criticism personally – so much so that it paralyzes them and has driven some out of business. Negative feedback isn’t personal, but it’s entirely unavoidable. Criticism is another statistical problem because, no matter how much you try to please everyone, you won’t.
If you disagree with something I’ve said, that’s understandable. I can often be an intolerant, bossy know-it-all. I get it. But I’m not going to expend any energy trying to change your mind. I can only be myself. And honestly, it’s a colossal waste of your time to read most feedback, comments or reasons why people unsubscribed from your newsletter – because it’s usually about that person’s personal preference.
I can guess exactly what my negative feedback will be:
Again, I’m not psychic, it’s just that business is very predictable and knowing this stuff helps you not freak out when it happens. When someone says you’re ‘too this’ or ‘too that,’ there’s nothing you can do about it. Should you change everything about your business to accommodate everyone’s preferences? No: because it’s impossible! You could shorten your newsletters, and you’ll still be criticized. You could change your face, and someone won’t like the new one.
What’s the simplest solution to overcoming the fear of being criticized? Just be yourself: it’s the only thing you can do. If people like that, great; if they don’t, they can find someone else. It’s no big deal. You’re not a perfect match for everyone. It’s not your job to fix every problem in the world. That’s so exhausting. Stand steady in who you are and attract the people who not only accept that but love it.
‘You cannot please everyone and the effort required to
try shaves years off of your life and steals your joy.’
GAYNETÉ JONES
So, how does a Chillpreneur deal with fear?
You don’t need to fight against it, completely change yourself, or find some way to protect yourself from it. It’s going to happen. Period. Recognize that you’re scared. Acknowledge that it’s entirely normal. Accept that it’s inevitable, predictable. As business mentor Marie Forleo says, ‘everything is figureoutable.’ Then, give yourself permission to be imperfect. Love and accept yourself, and move forward anyway.
Get out your journal and ponder the following questions until you get a juicy answer (or 10). Get specific: what are you really afraid of?
Go deep and dirty. Get it all out. Better out than in.
Being in business is scary, but don’t let fear derail you before you’ve even started. I hear women say, ‘Oh, I’m terrified of having a big tax bill when I’m a millionaire,’ and I’m like, ‘Honey, just get your first client.’ You’ll deal with the million dollars later. You’re smart and you can deal with it when it’s a problem!
You might realize that some of your fears are so far in the future that you can ‘park’ them for a little while. It’s like saying, ‘Hey, Fear, you know that worry about dealing with a multimillion-dollar tax bill? Wanna come back when I’m actually a millionaire? Thanks, see you later.’ And just let it go. You can’t worry about everything at the same same time; focus on baby steps right now.
Rather than obsess over worries (that might not even come true), use that energy to strengthen your vision for the future. The more time you spend connecting with your dreams, the less time you’ll have to think about how terrified you are! Your vision only has to be a tiny bit bigger than your fear. That’s the only thing that will keep you moving forward.
Remember: fear is normal, understandable, and totally inevitable. But it’s not a good excuse to stop pursuing your dreams. If you’re scared, welcome to the club! Now get on with it. You don’t need to be the bravest to succeed. We’re all scared, but it’s our time and we’ve got a lot of work to do.
The Chillpreneur approach to fear is to recognize
that you’re scared, acknowledge that it’s
entirely normal, and accept that it’s inevitable,
predictable, and totally figureoutable. Then,
give yourself permission to be imperfect.