You are listening to the Show Up Society podcast.

If you want to feel better about the way you show up in the world, you're in the exact right place.

I'm your host, certified life coach, tammy Bennett, and I'm here to help you stop giving a poop about what others think so you can make confident decisions.

Your whole outlook on goals will change too.

You'll see.

They can be fun, doable and full of celebration, not something to be afraid of failing.

And speaking of fears, I'll help you work through all of yours so you can take more action.

You're already a badass in my book, and if you want to learn how to create the life you want, then get your buns in here and let's go.

Hey friend, welcome to episode 233 of the Show Up Society podcast, today's episode.

I'm going to be talking a little bit about my origin story and how I got started coaching.

A couple months ago, I asked on Instagram what people would like to hear on the podcast and I had a couple people say that they wanted to know more about my journey and what I did before coaching and how I became a coach and that kind of thing.

So I felt like today would be a fun day to do that I was thinking back to a recent episode where I talked about how people don't know who we are and what we have to offer in the world unless we tell them, and so I wanted to take this episode to talk about how I became a coach and then, probably next episode, I'm going to talk a little bit about what I do, like what I actually do as a coach and what that looks like.

So this will be sort of the background, and I thought it would be interesting too to sort of show how all the things that I did prior to coaching have led me to here and they've all mattered and they've all been really important to my skills as a coach.

And I think it's important for me to bring that up, because I used to be really scared of setting goals because I had very short attention span and I thought, well, what if I spend all this time and money and energy working on this goal and then I get there and I don't want it, or I want to change my mind, or I want to do a different thing, and I don't want my time, energy and money to be wasted if I'm going to put it all towards something and then decide to do something else, and so I used to be totally afraid of making a choice and taking action forward, because I was like, well, I don't know if that's what I'm going to want to do in two years or four years, I don't know.

I don't want to waste time, money and energy.

And it just turned out that I was wasting time, money and energy by just spinning my wheels, and so I just wanted you to know that it's okay for you to choose a goal and to go after it and then change your mind at a later date, because, I mean, we're human, we have lots of interests, and a lot of people in my audience have ADHD, and you know, a lot of people in my audience have ADHD, and a lot of people in my audience are creative and we want to do all the things.

Everything is interesting to us, or at least a lot of things are interesting to us, and we want to kind of do them all.

And so this is my message to you that whatever you do decide to take action towards now will help you in some way, even if you change your mind.

And I think you'll see that with my story, that even some things that I have done that seem very unrelated to what I'm currently doing.

I learned a lot of skills and a lot of cool things that now help me in my coaching business.

So here we go.

Let's start.

When I was in college back in the late 90s, I went to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I ran track and cross country there, which taught me so much.

I started competing and running when I was nine years old and so I actually took one year off of running in college to party and do not great things.

But luckily I came back to running and found quite a bit of success there with my running and I just learned a lot about, you know, being a teammate and being in community and working really hard for things and sacrificing things and finding joy in hard things.

So that has stayed with me obviously ever since.

That's also.

My time at UNC was also when I became a journalism major.

The University of North Carolina is one of the best journalism schools in the country and I really enjoyed that major and in the journalism major at Carolina, at least when I was there, you could choose a track, so you could choose like PR or reporting.

I chose marketing and so that the journalism and marketing major really taught me a lot about how to think about what people want and what they need and how to get it in front of them and how to present things in a way that what they want and they need, they know that you have it and they want to get it from you.

And so that journalism and marketing knowledge that I have has stayed with me now all the way up into this coaching business, and you're going to hear a little bit more about that through my journey today.

So that was college.

Then I went to law school, as so many people do when they don't know what else they want to do, right?

So I finished college.

I remember walking down the street on my campus.

I was crying.

I was 22.

I had graduated, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and I just remember feeling so lost and so untethered and I literally was just crying walking down the street because I'm like I am supposed to be a grown up and I have no idea what I want to do.

So I moved home for a little bit and I took the LSAT and I went to law school because I felt like that was nice and responsible and that could be a good thing.

And I did find it interesting.

I actually really, really loved law school.

I went to Pepperdine in Malibu, california.

I really enjoyed my time in law school, although I knew halfway through my first year that I probably did not want to practice law.

But I really enjoyed the school of it.

I enjoyed the way that we learned and I think what I took most from law school was I know how to take in a lot of information and quickly pare it down to what is the issue here, what is the thing that we need to focus on?

And quickly pare it down to what is the issue here, what is the thing that we need to focus on?

And I take that into my coaching now, where I can have somebody come on a call with me and sometimes they will kind of ramble for 15 minutes just telling me all the things and I'm able to very quickly distill okay, here's the issue, here's where there might be a limiting belief or here's where you might be getting blocked.

I know how to ask really good questions and then we can focus on the thing that we need to focus on to help my client move forward, and so that has been really helpful.

Law school also taught me how to persevere even when there were really hard things going on.

So my first semester in law school there was an extreme domestic incident in my family that I flew back to North Carolina for, and it was extremely disturbing and upsetting and I had to, you know, go and do what I needed to do for that and then come back and just get right back into law school.

And there was kind of no waiting around for me.

And then in my third year of law school a little bit of a happier event, but still hard I had my son when there were about 10 weeks left of school and my husband and I lived separately because I was just, you know, I had planned to finish law school and then we were going to move together in Northern California where he was training for an Olympic development team Olympic development team and so, you know, I had a roommate and I had my son and I was terrified of him crying in the night because I didn't want to wake up my roommate and I didn't have any childcare.

So I took him with me to class and so I was lugging this heavy, heavy bag of books and a heavy car seat up this hill from the parking lot to the law school.

I would nurse him in the back of the class.

Sometimes he would cry and I would have to go out in the lobby, or sometimes there were other people in the lobby that worked in class at that time and they would hold my baby for me.

And it was a lot.

So my mom came out for a few days and then my in-laws came out for a few days while I took my exams, and then you know, so I would go take an exam and I would do the breast pump in the car on the way back to the hotel, um, cause sometimes I was just like about to burst Um.

So that that was a lot.

And I I took my son with me across the stage when I got my law school degree and then I had to study for the bar exam and the California bar exam is no joke, uh.

But I didn't have childcare again, so I would stay home with him and sort of try to study.

But any of you that have had an infant, it's really hard to do much of anything, and so my husband would come home around seven o'clock at night and I would immediately leave to go to a study group.

So there was a study group from 7pm to 10pm at night every night for a couple months and that was really the only time that I got to study.

And so then I took and passed the California bar exam and I just learned so much about.

I think the biggest thing I learned then is I had so many of my law school classmates that were studying like 12, 15, 18 hours a day.

I had a couple friends who went through some major anxiety episodes and panic attacks and a couple of my friends did not pass the bar exam on the first try and I did.

And I think that one of the reasons why is because I kind of put it into perspective I had really focused time and I didn't.

I had other things to worry about.

I had a brand new baby that I was trying to keep alive and keep entertained, and so I just kind of put it into perspective that there were more important things than just this bar exam and I think that really helped me, because I think the people that were so immersed in it and it was like everything this or bust I think that can add so much pressure to ourselves sometimes and I think it just really helped me to have a little bit of perspective and also just really focused study time where I knew like these three hours I have to be like really intent and intentional and really get in the information, because I'm not going to be able to do it for the other hours of the day.

So it just taught me a lot about kind of prioritizing and perspective and focused learning and focused attention spans.

So I had my son, then two years later, had my daughter, and when I first became a mother, I really got this huge wave of wanting to be crafty and to create things and to sew and knit and make things for our home and make clothing, and it just could not be denied.

So I started knitting and I started sewing and I ended up starting a business that I called Head Full of Pixies and that's where I sold tote, bags, pillows, that kind of thing, and I had an online website on Shopify and I also did a lot of craft fairs.

So I did indoors and outdoors, setting up the tent, setting up the booth, setting up the table and the merchandising and standing on my feet for hours you know, eight hours at a time, with a smile on my face and being interested in the people walking by and trying to interest them in what I was selling.

And you know, having people walk by the booth and go them in what I was selling and having people walk by the booth and go well, I could have made that or I could make that All kinds of comments that you get when you are manning a craft booth.

But I learned a lot during that time too.

I learned what it meant to show up for myself and how to make sales and how to make products when I had two kids napping literally on the floor of my sewing room and I don't know how the sewing machine didn't wake them up, but it didn't.

But just learning how to take photographs and how to write copy for that on website, and so just learning all the parts of owning a product-based business and having to put yourself out in the world and try to make sales, okay.

So then we had our third child and we moved to a new state and I started Stroller Strides.

So it's a franchise.

So I owned my franchise in New Jersey and Stroller Strides is a fitness class that moms do with their babies in the stroller.

So I would bring, depending on what day it was depending on if one of my kids had preschool.

I would either have one kid with me or two kids, and sometimes, if my oldest was not at school for like a holiday or whatever, then I would have three kids on my exercise stroller and so, yeah, that taught me a lot.

That taught me the importance of moving your body, because, for these women who had just had babies including myself, I mean when I started at my baby that taught me a lot.

That taught me the importance of moving your body, because, for these women who had just had babies including myself, I mean when I started at my baby, my third child was nine months old but just how good we feel as humans when we are moving our body.

It also taught me that I could juggle being a mom and owning a business.

It was a very successful business, but I had three kids under the age of five when I started, and so it taught me also about empowering people.

It felt really good to help these moms feel good.

A lot of moms, you know, when it's their first child, they feel isolated and alone and they feel like they've lost a part of themselves.

So it was so great to be in a circle of 15, 20 moms and their babies and see them create community with each other and to see them coming back into who they are and reconnecting with themselves, and it just felt really good to be a part of that.

It also taught me how to juggle a lot of needs at one time because, like I said, there was 15 or 20 moms and their babies so we had to keep the babies entertained and in their strollers for 40, I think there were 45 minute classes.

That's a long time, but we figured out ways to do both to work out our bodies and to entertain the kids and that just felt really good, to just sort of have that.

Like you know, we have a lot going on at the moment and we're able to handle it, so that felt really good.

I think it also taught me a lot about how to make sure that people's needs are met.

So sometimes a mom would have a very ornery baby or colicky baby and I would make sure that she got the workout and sometimes I would hold the baby, sometimes I would push the stroller, sometimes I would give the baby snacks or sing to them.

So I was making sure that these moms got some exercise and got what they came for, and so I was always having to be attuned to their need.

Are they happy?

Are they feeling exhausted?

What do these moms need and how can I give that to them?

So I really had to work on my listening skills, my observational skills and just connection with other people.

I also had to learn a lot about sales and customer retention and customer turnover right.

So moms with their babies in the strollers once their babies hit about two and a half or three, they didn't want to stay in the stroller anymore, and it was really hard for these moms to come to class.

And so you know, my customers, my clients, were only with me for about two years and then they would move on, unless they had another baby, and then with the new baby they would figure out how to come.

But so I was always having to bring new moms in to keep my business alive, and so I had to find ways to market myself and to put myself out there and always attracting new moms to come in because there was such a high rate of turnover.

Also, I learned a lot about partnerships, so I had to find my own location.

So we actually did Stroller Strides in the mall before they opened.

We did them at parks.

We did them at the Salvation Army gym let us rent the gym for a little bit but I was always searching for different locations and you know, sometimes we would have events so I would have to find places that we could rent for events.

So it was a lot of learning how to solve problems.

Sometimes a park would be closed and I would have to figure out what we're going to do, and so a lot of problem solving, a lot of partnerships and negotiating went into that too.

Another thing I learned with my time at Stroller Strides is I helped that's sort of when I started helping people find their wins.

A lot of times new moms are exhausted.

There are days when they don't even get to take a shower.

There are days when they are covered in spit up and vomit and food and gross stuff, and I think it can feel really easy to get sort of I don't want to say depressed, but like depressive when you are a brand new mom and, like I said, you lose your sense of self and you just kind of like don't know what end is up.

And so it felt really important to me to point out to these moms all the wins that they were creating.

They were getting their asses out of bed, they were getting their kids dressed and packing the diaper bag, loading up the stroller into the car, getting to class on time, you know, working out their bodies for 45 minutes while their kids were having fun and making friendships.

And a lot of these friends, a lot of the people that were in this class, this was like 15, 20 years ago.

They're still friends, and so I made sure to point out all of these wins that they were creating and I wanted to make sure that they always left feeling better than when they came, and that was just really important to me.

Also, around this time, my husband and I started a business together called Bennett Running.

I know it's like so original, right, but we had day camps, we had sleepaway camps for high schoolers co-ed, by the way, a lot of stress there.

We had community runs, we did private coaching.

We put on so many different kinds of events.

We put on many different kinds of races.

It was a lot of fun and it was a lot of work.

So my marketing skills came into play, because I was always emailing people about our events and getting them to sign up and telling them how to sign up, inviting them to all these different things.

It was a lot of event planning, right.

So we had, you know, planning all of these different events.

We had to make sure that there was first aid and that there were, you know, emts on staff and that we had the proper insurance and that we had fun stuff for the kids to do and that we had water and we had snacks and we had t-shirts and all the things.

There's so much that goes into all of these camps and all of these events.

So I definitely got really good at event planning and making it fun.

And you know, it didn't always look cute there's only so much cuteness you can make at a day camp for runner, for cross country runners or something but we did our best.

I learned how to manage stress and not that I did a great job about it.

I always felt a lot of stress, especially with our sleepaway camps.

So it was co-ed high school sleepaway camps for like five days, six, like six days, five nights, something like that and that was really, really stressful to me because I just felt like there are so many kids with their lives in our hands and I just wanted to make sure that every single thing was like perfect and in place and I'm happy to report the only injury we ever had was somebody chipped a tooth when they tripped on a rock.

So I felt really good about having years and years of those camps with nobody, you know, getting lost, nobody getting injured, like nothing bad happened.

But one funny thing was one time in the summer, a couple weeks before the summer camp, the sleepaway camp I had a knock on the door and I went to the door and it was a mom and she said, hi, my, my daughter's gonna attend your sleepaway camp and so was her boyfriend and I just wanted you to promise me that you won't let her get pregnant.

I was like what is happening?

Why are you on my front porch telling me to not let your daughter get pregnant?

But I had so much fear and I watched that girl like a hawk and her boyfriend and we had a lot of really good counselors that I really respected and trusted.

But that's so terrifying to have a mom come to your front door and plead with you with tears in her like absolute pleading.

But nobody ever got pregnant at our sleepaway camps either.

So you know I'm calling that a win on so many levels.

But no, that was just kind of a funny story about the stress that you have to go through when you, when you are hosting these camps and hosting events for people, and not only am I so concerned about their safety, which is ultimately the most important, of course, but I'm so always concerned about their they're having a fun time.

I want them to feel good about themselves and, again, in all of our events, we wanted people to leave feeling better about themselves than when they came, and so we did.

There were so many things that we did and so many mindset tools that I learned to help people feel better about themselves than when they came and to help them feel successful and empowered and to help them find their wins and celebrate their wins.

So that was one of the biggest things that I learned from my time with Bennett Running.

I also had to really learn a lot about being organized.

So we had, you know, 250 people at our camps and all these people at events and I had to make sure that everybody there had a waiver for insurance and you know that the money was paid when we rented venues and just so many.

You know contact information, emergency contact information and so many details to help them know where to go, at what time and what to bring, and so I had to learn how to be really organized, and that's when I became very good friends with Excel and Google Sheets and all the spreadsheets.

So, yeah, that was where my passion and love for spreadsheets happened.

I remember first learning about Excel in my marketing major and journalism major and I remember thinking like this is terrible, I'm never going to use this, and I use it all the time now for the last, like decades.

So, all right, what else?

What do we have next?

So, also, while Bennett Running was going on, I started coaching moms and the Stroller Stride moms.

So some of them graduated sort of, and some of them still did this with their babies, but I started coaching them to run their first 5k.

So most of the moms in my group hadn't really been runners before, but since I had been a runner since I was nine, I knew a lot about running and so I started coaching them and that was so fun to see these moms go from you know zero to 5k, but they would do these 5k races and not walk at all in a pretty short amount of time, and it was just so fun.

And a fun fact, one of the moms in that group now does ultra marathons, so like more than 100 miles or more and she was actually on my podcast.

I'll link to that episode in the notes.

But her name is Lisa Devona and she's been a very successful ultra marathoner.

So look for that link if you're interested in hearing her story, because it's really cool.

But so I also started coaching in middle school.

So I wanted my kids to have really good experiences with running.

I didn't want them to have.

I didn't want running to be not fun for them, and so I knew that if I was their coach, that they were really going to enjoy running.

So I also started coaching at the middle school, and so what I learned from these coaching experiences is how to make hard work fun.

So we did really hard workouts, both with the moms and the middle school kids.

We did really hard workouts.

They were age appropriate and they felt really fun.

And it doesn't mean that we had to play games.

It just meant that I think the key to making something fun is to feel successful at it.

Right, we all want to feel successful at things, and if we feel successful, we're going to have fun and we're going to want to do it more, and so I found all these different ways to help these kids and the moms feel successful and again they left better.

They left feeling better than when they came to practice.

I also learned a lot about herding cats my husband called it, you know.

He looked at one of my practices one time and there was like 65 kids running around and it was very contained chaos.

I knew exactly what was going on and what they were doing, but he was like this is literally like herding cats and it kind of was.

But so I learned a lot again about having my attention be in all kinds of different directions but having it still all like organized chaos, right, contained chaos.

Okay.

So also around this time, I really wanted to get back to some of the creativity that I had stopped doing while I was doing all of this running coaching and all of the running event planning.

So I started I wanted to get into art licensing.

So that means that I would create art and then I would try to license it to companies to use on their products.

So anything from shoes to bedding, to stationery, to gift bags, to wallpaper, to curtains, fabric, anything that you look around in your world and see anything with a print or pattern on it.

There is a designer somewhere that designed that, and so I never even knew that that was a thing.

But I was making a quilt and I was looking at the fabric and I'm like it dawned on me somebody designed this, somebody designed this pattern, and in that moment I was like I want to be the person that designs the patterns for these things.

And so I didn't know anything about art.

I'd only taken art, like for a year, like in sixth grade, because it was mandatory.

I never thought of myself as creative or an artist, but I decided that I wanted to be an artist and I wanted to license my work, and so I signed up for a quick class online about how to use Adobe Illustrator, which is just a program, a software program to help you create patterns, and I decided I was going to make a repeat pattern every single day.

I think this was in 2011.

My years get all fuzzy, so it's around 2011.

So I started doing that and I posted them online a lot.

And then the posting online got to be too hard and my website wouldn't hold all of that many images, so I stopped posting them daily, but I did create at least one every single day.

And then I entered a fabric design competition I think it was called the Printed Bolt.

It was the repeat competition.

I had no business entering it.

The judges on this were giants in the industry, but I got fourth and I felt really good about that and I think what that taught me is to do things sometimes before I felt ready.

I am really proud of that skill.

I'm really proud of the guts that I have sometimes to just put myself in the ring before I'm even ready there and have guts and have faith in myself that I'm going to figure it out.

And that's what I did.

So when I applied, I had no, I had no expectation that they were going to even let me in the competition and it was sort of like a project runway way style competition.

So they would give you like a brief, they would tell you what they wanted, and then you had like three days to do it and then they judged and then somebody went home and I kept making it through, rounds and rounds and you know I finally got out right before the final three, which was so heartbreaking.

I figured it out as I went and I was terrified the whole time.

I mean, I was like my body was just going through so much, like oh my gosh, what is happening?

This was public, it was on blogs, and the humiliation risk was real.

But I love that I developed that skill to just put myself out there, trust that I'm going to figure it out and figure it out as I go along.

So that was really important to my philosophy that I now use with my coaching.

It also taught me a lot about daily habits.

So I think actually back in 2009 is when I started doing daily habits and I started kind of sketching a little bit every day.

But having this pattern a day was pretty time intensive and so it just taught me a lot about how to keep showing up for myself, even when I didn't want to, and it just felt really good for my brain to know every day I know that no matter what else I accomplish, I'm also going to accomplish doing a pattern on the computer, and so it just felt really good.

Then in 2012, I think it was I went to Surtex, which is surface and textile trade show in New York.

It's at the Javits Center.

It happens every year and this is where artists come and they have their booths with all of their art and then all of the companies and manufacturers come and they walk from booth to booth and they decide whose art they want to license for their products.

And I had this dream of working with a fabric company to put my art on fabrics to make, you know, for quilting fabrics.

And one of my dream companies was Wintem Fabrics.

And so just put that aside for just a minute.

So my booth was a corner booth.

I was right across the aisle from Kelly Ventura and she was super sweet, still is super sweet, just had gorgeous watercolor work, a lot of watercolor florals, gorgeous work.

And she and I, you know, as you do when you're at trade shows and booths and craft fairs and such, you get to know the people around you.

And so we had shared our mutual.

You know, we both had a dream of working with Wyndham Fabrics and yourics and licensing our designs.

So the first day of the show it was a three-day show.

The first day of the show I don't think I mean hardly anybody came by my booth and stopped to talk to me and it was so demoralizing maybe would be the right word to stand there on your feet in heels and a dress and uncomfortable, and is my makeup melting off and I'm hungry and I have to go to the bathroom.

But I'm the only person in my booth.

And what if my dream client comes by right when I go to the bathroom or right when I go get a snack, all of those stresses of being at a trade show solo and so you know, standing there and acting like, oh, I'm so happy, it's okay that nobody's stopping at my booth.

And anyway, on the first day maybe I don't know the first day or second day this group of people came up to Kelly Ventura's booth and they stayed for a while and they were looking through her stuff and they signed a contract and they walked away and I was like who was that?

And she was like Wyndham Fabrics and I was so excited for her and she still has fabric collections with Wyndham today.

She's still putting out fabric collections with them.

So this has been a very long time that they've been working together.

And as I was so excited for her and still am there, was this like really sad part of me that she got this and I didn't.

And it felt really hard and joyous at the same time because I was so happy for her and her work so deserves it.

And also I think the public humiliation of it Like for her and her work so deserves it.

And also I think the public humiliation of it, like I had told her that that was my dream and she got it and I didn't, and they didn't even glance at my booth.

I mean, they were not interested at all and so there was just the like, the sadness about it and that like the knowing that she knew that I didn't get my dream, I think felt a little bit hard.

So the reason I'm bringing that up is because I know what it feels like when my clients are putting themselves out there and they're scared of humiliation, they're scared of failure, they're scared of it not working out, they're scared of looking dumb, they're scared of people not liking their work.

I mean I totally, I viscerally feel it in my body what it felt like to be in that booth.

Spoiler alert I ended up coming away with several licensing contracts that lasted me years and years and that felt really good.

But I know how it feels to stand in a booth all alone and have nobody coming and buying your work.

I know how it feels, and so I think that has helped me so much when I work with a lot of my creative clients that they go to trade shows or they go to art shows or they're putting themselves out there and, you know, applying or submitting themselves for juried competitions.

I know how it feels to be on the sort of fail side when it doesn't work out the way you want it, and the win side, because I've had a lot of wins also.

But I just I know how it feels, I know how much work goes into it.

So then, after Certex, I came home, I did all the follow up and then I went on a mission to just pitch the heck out of all the companies I could find.

So anytime I was on a gift store, if there was like a gift or some, or fabric, something with a design on it, I would pick it up and I would look at who was manufactured by and I would write it down in a little notebook.

And then I would go home and I would find the contact information for that company and I would send them my portfolio and say, hey, I would really love to work with you.

Here's the artwork I have available for licensing.

So I was pitching myself all the time, and so, again, I was putting myself up there on the chopping block, right, I was like, here I am, I'm putting myself in the face of rejection, what are you going to do?

And I got a lot of licensing contracts that way.

But, again, it taught me so much about pitching yourself and believing in yourself and doing it over and over and knowing that it's a numbers game and that you are going to get a lot of no's and you're going to get some yeses too, if you just keep putting yourself out there long enough.

Also, around the same time, I started the Happy, happy Art Collective.

So I was in some kind of online art class and there were so many amazing artists that were worlds above and beyond what I could ever create in art, and I reached out to five of them and I asked them to be in an art collective with me.

These were women that I admired, these were women whose work I admired, and they all said yes.

And when I put out the invite, I'm like, oh, they're probably not going to want to work with me because my work is so much worse than theirs and they're not going to want to be associated with my art, and I just had all of these feelings, insecure feelings, but also this self-trust, when I was like, well, the worst that could happen is they say no and then like it's totally fine, right, like maybe I'll be like a little bit sad for a day and then I'll get over it, I'll move on.

But they all said yes and we had such a good time.

We would meet online I think it was Skype back then, I don't even remember.

I don't feel like Zoom even existed back then but we would meet online and we artist in an art business or any kind of creative business.

A lot of the work is alone.

A lot of the time you're just spent alone creating your work, and it's so important to have other people to connect with.

And so I think I wasn't feeling that connection and so I decided I'm going to create it.

I don't feel like I have a community.

I don't feel like I have people that understand what it feels like to submit your work and to get another no and sometimes a yes, and so I created that community.

So another thing I learned from there is if you don't have what you want, if you don't have the support system that you want, then go create it, make it happen for you.

If you know you need connection and community and support and network, then go create that for yourself.

It was very easy.

It was a simple email, Okay.

So around that time, like after a few years of art licensing, I wanted to branch out on my own and make my own art.

So what happens in art licensing is you are at the kind of direction of the art director of the company that is licensing your work, so they might come back and tell you can you take out that font, or can you use a different font, or can you use a different blue, or can you move that bird over to the other side?

And so you're at their calling a little bit right, like they know what sells for their products, they know what sells for their customers, and so you have to change your artwork around sometimes, which is totally fine.

But I wanted to have my voice heard and not have it be edited or changed, and so I started Tiger Pocket Press, which was my stationary company.

So I had greeting cards, enamel pins and stickers and notepads, and that just felt really, really fun.

And so the biggest thing I learned there that I now take into my coaching is how to trust in the creative process and how to trust in my art and my vision and knowing that there is someone out there for me.

There will be people who don't like my work, but there are definitely going to be people that do, and I just have to figure out how to get myself in front of the people that do.

So I went to a trade show again at Javits Center in New York.

It's a national stationery show and it actually happens at the same time as SurTech.

So I just felt like, oh, full circle.

Here I am again.

I met some amazing people.

One of them was Tiffany McGraw of Paper Rehab, and she is also on a podcast, so I will link to her episode here too.

So I made a lot of good connections with other artists and I made a lot of sales and that felt really good, and I want to share a little story with you here.

So and I might've told this before in another episode, but I'm going to tell you again so, before I went to the trade show, I sent out a lot of catalogs and notes and, you know, sample cards to some of my dream stores.

And I just said you know I'm going to be at the National Stationery Show.

Please come by and visit.

I would love to.

You know, I'd love to meet you and you know here's the cards for sale.

And I didn't hear back from any of those stores before the trade show.

But I had this dream list you know, like if these people come by that'd be amazing, and so on.

I don't remember which day it was.

Again, it was a three day show.

On one of the days, one of my dream stores Gus and Ruby is the name of the store.

They're in the Northeast, they have multiple locations.

They came up to me and they placed the largest order I had ever had to that point and for a long time.

After cards and they left and as they were walking away, they put a checkmark on their clipboard by my name.

And so what I'm telling you here is I had these dream stores.

I reached out and I heard crickets at first, right before the trade show, which is common, like people aren't going to really write out to you before a trade show because they're just going to come by and visit you.

But the point was I didn't know if my work was resonating, I didn't know if people were interested in me.

I didn't know if they even received my letter and my sample package, and then they had on their clipboard a list of people that they wanted to see and order from, and so my message to you, if you're listening, if you have your own kind of creative business or any kind of business where you are doing sales, is there are people out there ready to buy from you, even if it doesn't seem like it, right?

So heading into the show, I was hearing crickets, but leaving the show I had tons of orders, and so just know that your people, your customers, your clients are out there watching you and they just haven't bought yet.

You just have to keep showing up and getting in front of them and they will place their order.

These people that want what you have, they are going to place the order with you or they are going to sign up to work with you, but you just have to keep showing up and making it easy for them, right?

So it was super easy for Gus and Ruby to come place an order with me.

They walked straight up to me, they order, they were in and out, they crossed me off the list and they were on to the next because they already knew what they wanted.

They already knew they wanted to buy from me and I made it really easy for them by being at a trade show where a lot of the other stores, a lot of the other artists that they buy from, were also located right.

So that became my mantra over the next year or two, gus and Ruby, because I started sending my workout, samples of my work, catalogs, emails, all kinds of things, and I pitched.

There were months when I would pitch about 50 to 100 on a month and then sometimes I would take a month off and then go again hard 50 to 100.

So I was constantly putting myself out there and sometimes a week would go by and I would hear nothing, crickets, and I would start to feel discouraged.

And then I reminded myself Gus and Ruby, gus and Ruby, your people are out there, they're watching, they're going to buy from you.

You just have to keep showing up.

And that really kept me going for the next couple years and I ended up in over 100 independent gift and stationery stores across the US within the next year and that felt really good to hit that 100 mark in a year, because that was kind of one of my goals and I did that by having faith in myself, that what I was doing was working, that my art was good enough, that my marketing was good enough, and I just kept showing up over and over and over with that mantra Gus and Ruby.

So some of the skills I learned here.

In addition to that having trust in my art, trust in my vision, trust that my buyers, my clients, customers, were out there I also learned how to handle rejection, because I got a lot of no's.

I think it's about a 2% or 3% conversion rate.

So let's say, if I'm sending out 100 pitch letters, only 2 or 3 of those typically are going to turn into customers.

So that's like 97 or 98 no's that I'm getting each time.

And so to just keep practicing that faith in yourself and in your art and just keep showing up and knowing it's a numbers game, you just have to keep showing up.

I also learned a ton about inventory, tracking and stocking and packaging and shipping and all those other things, but I think the more important things are to just learn to keep showing up and to have that faith in yourself and in your art and in your work, whatever it is that you're doing.

Okay, this is turning into a super long episode.

I thank you for staying with me.

We're getting near the end.

We're getting really close.

Okay, thank you so much, friend, for still being here.

But so 2015 to 2019 were really really hard years for me personally.

We moved across the country.

We just had a lot going on.

All this time I was still coaching, I was still creating and selling my products across the US and I started around.

This time I started teaching tiny daily habits.

So I was teaching how to create a tiny daily habit, how to keep it, and so I started teaching all kinds of workshops.

I was teaching vision boards, tiny daily habits to lots of different organizations and groups, and I had accountability clubs and I was teaching a class called the Book of Me, where it's just about self-discovery, and I even did that at some birthday parties.

So I was just testing ideas basically for different things to teach and seeing what resonated with people and what didn't, and tweaking things and making them better.

And so there, I had to learn a lot about teaching.

I had to learn a lot about marketing.

I had to learn about how to make people feel welcome and safe and excited, to learn and to keep them interested.

So a lot of those skills I still use, you know, today, obviously in my coaching and in my teaching and my speaking engagements.

And that brings us to the pandemic.

So, sadly, I wasn't able to meet with my runners in person anymore, so we weren't, you know, with the quarantine and everything.

And there were a couple days during the pandemic when it was just getting really discouraging, right when the whole country was just the whole United States was feeling just kind of low and isolated.

And there was a day when I spent like eight or 10 hours packaging envelopes.

The good news is that I had a lot of orders.

The bad news is that it was just me, just alone in a room, putting the envelope with the card, putting it in a cellophane package and then packaging them up into shipping containers.

And I just thought I want to have more of an impact on the world, on humanity.

I want to connect with people more than just sitting in a room by myself packing orders for eight to 10 hours.

And so I started really thinking about how to make a shift oh, I forgot to say to you like in 2019, I also started my.

I started this podcast, the show up society podcast, because I really wanted to help people with things that I had been struggling with of how to show up for themselves and how to break tasks down into tiny steps, and so, while I was kind of reviewing and revisiting what I wanted to do with my life, now that I couldn't, you know, I wanted to have something where I could connect with people that felt just a little bit more meaningful and impactful to me.

I decided to use all of the tools that I've used from everything I've talked about so far on this podcast to help people, and so I started taking, I started a certification for life coaching.

I started coaching my face off, coaching anybody who would let me coaching all over the place, obviously with consent.

But I asked people like, hey, would you like some free coaching?

And I did tons and tons of free coaching, and so then that brings me to here, where now it has been years of me being mindset coach and I've read countless articles about the evidence-based mindset tips and tools that I teach.

I am now getting my master's degree in sport and performance psychology to help me be even a better coach, but I absolutely love what I do.

I feel like all the things that I've done have led me to here and it has all clicked in and I take things from everything that I've mentioned to help me be a better coach and to help people, and so I feel like none of those things was a waste of time.

None of those things was a waste of money or energy.

I learned so much about myself.

I learned so much about people and interaction and sales and communication.

I learned so much about myself.

I learned so much about people and interaction and sales and communication.

I learned about how to balance time.

I learned about how to keep things interesting and how to listen to people.

I learned how to handle rejection.

I learned how to help people feel successful and not be afraid of rejection.

I helped people overcome procrastination and perfectionism and I've honed my teaching and speaking and listening and observing skills and I help people pitch themselves and develop self-trust.

I'm able to quickly spot a problem and help people with the thing that's getting in their way.

I'm able to find that really quickly so we can root it out and change it.

I'm really good at helping people find focus and intentional work time and I'm good at helping people sell and market and create and interact with other people.

So all of these skills I've learned from all the things that I've done have helped me become a better coach and they've helped me build my business, and now that's what I help people do, right, and so on next week's episode, when I'm talking about my coaching and what I help with and what can happen for people when they work with me or another coach, it all comes from here, right?

It's like all roads lead to Rome, like all the things that I've done have led me to here and it clicks and it feels so good to help people in this way and I feel like I have.

I feel like I'm the luckiest person in the world and I have the best job in the world getting to work with people and helping them get over their blocks and really create the lives that they want to create.

So I am so grateful to my past self for doing all of these different hard, hard things and spending the time and the money and the energy, even if it's not what I do anymore, right?

So I don't practice law, but I am so grateful to the past me that went through law school because it taught me so much about myself as a person and it's helped me become a way better coach.

Same thing with all of the businesses that I've mentioned.

I am so grateful to past me for doing all of that work, to getting me to here.

So if you are somebody that feels like you are multi-passionate or multi-faceted, and you have many, many interests and you're not sure which one to choose, my advice to you is just choose one and go, do it.

And if you want to then change your mind and do something else, then do that.

But the only way that you're going to figure out what really really lands home for you, what really feels good for you, is to go out and start doing one of the things right now, like literally today.

Just go and choose one of the things on your list that you might be interested in and take some action in that today, because you're never going to figure out what feels good to you until you're actually in it, doing it.

So all the prep, all the research in the world is not going to help you.

The only thing that's going to help you decide what you want to be doing with your wild and precious life is to go, start doing a thing and then you can figure it out Does it feel good, do you like it or do you not, so thank you for being on this.

This is one of the longer podcast episodes I've had in a really long time, but thank you so much for being here and thank you for showing up to this episode of the Show Up Society podcast.

Now go out there and show up for yourself.

Hey friend, if you liked this podcast episode and you want help applying it to your life so you can do more of what you want and feel good while doing it, you're going to love working with me one-on-one for six months.

I'll help you with strategy and mindset so you can figure out what you want, make an action plan, and I'll help you get unstuck all along the way.

Go to showupsocietycom forward, slash coaching to set up a consultation to see if we are a good fit for each other.

Oh, hey, loyal podcast listener, thank you for being here all the way through to the end.

Okay, are you ready for your assignment?

This is your secret assignment.

So go to Instagram, find me at Show Up Society, find the post that corresponds to this podcast episode, and in the comments, I want you to leave me some emojis of things that you have done right, so give me a clue as to what different careers or hobbies or jobs that you've had that have led you to be who you are.

I think it'll be really fun for us to see you know I'll know that you listened to this podcast episode and the other people that have also listened and they're leaving emojis.

We can all see what each other has done and what experiences we've had.

So I think that will be really cool to just have our kind of life history put into picture form.

So thank you so much for being here and I appreciate you.

Have a good day.