The pursuit of discomfort: and why it's important to entrepreneurs
Transcript
Even when I worked for agencies, I had a lot of corporate clients, big, big accounts. I almost never knew what I was doing. But on the flip side of that, I always had a deep, deep belief that I could figure anything out. So, it didn't matter if the problem or the project that the clients were coming to me or the rest of the team that I worked with was just like this huge, hairy, scary thing. All of us always just believed that we were going to figure it out, even though like 99.9% of the time. We're like, "Whoa, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how we're going to figure this out." One of the things I like about that is I like thinking back on that feeling. So what I mean by that is I remember I was very, very early in my career and I had a mentor, so he's a good friend of mine now, and he's a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant designer and strategist.
And I remember talking to him and talking about this feeling like there's just like this terrified feeling anytime I would start working on a new project or a new client or something new and I was admitting to him because I felt like nobody else ever talked... Everybody else always acted like they just had it. They knew exactly what to do. They knew how to figure things out. They just knew what was going on and I think a lot of that had to do with a masculine energy culture that is the corporate world. That is the business space for the most part or has been. I think now we're infusing it more with that feminine energy.
And I'm not talking about gender roles, I'm just talking about that masculine versus feminine energy. And that masculine energy is very much like, "Yeah, I got this, I know exactly what I'm doing." And so I was vulnerable with him and said, "When is this going to go away? Every single time I start a new project or I start working on something, I am terrified, like terrified that this is going to be the thing, the project that everybody's going to find out that I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.
And he looked me dead in the eye and said, "Oh yeah, that never goes away." I was like, "What." But that is probably some of the best business and career advice I ever got, like ever. And so even now, basically now when I'm feeling like I'm not terrified enough and I don't mean like terrified, where you're legit terrified. I mean that feeling where you're just challenged or you're feeling like, "Yeah, I don't know. I'm feeling really scared right now, because I got to figure this out." But you're up for the challenge. You're scared, but you're up for the challenge. If it's been too long, since the last time I had that feeling, then I know it's time to change things up to think about things and think about like, "Okay, what else can I be doing? How can I push myself to grow more? What other products, or services, or things can I come up with that give me the same feeling."
Meet Sarah
Sarah is an award-winning Designer, Creative Director & Brand Strategist for billion-dollar companies turned entrepreneur. She’s passionate about empowering online coaches and experts with tools that help them build businesses aligned with their values and lives, not the other way around.