Do It Scared

there's no reason to be afraid of success. There's no reason to be afraid of scaling because all of that is just fear telling you that you're not gonna be able to handle this stuff. And I can guarantee it that you're gonna be able to handle it and that you're gonna get through it and you're gonna be stronger on the other side. And even if you're like in the middle of something crappy, once you're through it and once you're on the other side, I think you're gonna be so proud of yourself and so amazed at how much you grew and how much more of a leader and a teacher and an educator, you're going to be on the other side of that. In today's episode, we are going to talk about the time that I lost $80,000 from a single webinar, and I'm going to share a little bit about what that did to my brain, what I learned from it, and talk a little bit more about how I am using that experience or those kinds of experiences into shaping how I show up now, how I coach now, and just how I'm showing up in spite of the fact that growing an online business hasn't been a walk in the park. It hasn't been easy. I've been through a lot of stuff in the last 5 years, like worst-case scenario stuff, and I'm still here. And I— a lot of women especially that I coach operate from this fear of success. It's not so much fear of failure but fear of success. Like, what if I'm so visible that my relationship dynamic changes? What if I get so successful that I don't want to spend time with my kids? What if everything I want comes true and I'm not happy in my current life? Or, you know, what if it comes true and it's not what I thought it was going to be, or somehow, you know, I have to show up as a different version of me and I'm scared? All of these things are super normal feelings. The question that I want to pose you at the beginning of this podcast is, what would you do if you were just a little less scared, like just 10% less scared? What would you do? So hold onto that. We're gonna come back to that throughout the episode, but I wanna share a couple stories about your fear is actually legitimate. Like when you are running a business online and you're visible and you have clients coming in and you have people working for you, like some shit is gonna hit the fan and it's there. There's no way around it. Like there's, it's literally not preventable. But a lot of people operate from that mindset of like, what if something bad happens? What if somebody gets mad at me? What if someone joins my program and decides it's not for them or they don't like me anymore? That stuff is gonna happen. So I wanna share a couple stories that I've been through in running an online business and having a group coaching program, running weekly webinars, hiring people, because I wanna normalize that for you, that guess what? I have 100% survival rate from all of these things, worst case scenario things having happened, and I'm still here, still teaching, I'm still standing, and I'm still wanting to grow this business online. So the first story that I wanna share, and these wounds are not necessarily chronological or by weight, but these are all things that have happened to me. So I just wanna validate for you that like it happens, it's gonna happen. The very first one, when I think of the last few years, like some of the scariest experiences that I've had are I used to spend a lot of money on a weekly live webinar to the tune of $100K a week on Meta ads.. And I had this one webinar that I was running and I spent $80,000 on ads that week. And guess what happened? The tech broke. The delivery sequence telling people when to come watch this webinar was wrong. I think it had the wrong date in it. Something didn't get updated. Something wasn't triple checked and a team member had forgotten to change the date. So I spent $80,000 on ads for a webinar that no one knew how to get to. Nobody knew when it was. They didn't have the link. They didn't know like how to come watch this webinar. It's really hard to get a return on ad spend, especially an $80,000 ad spend when people aren't there to see the pitch, right? It's really hard to recover that attention and that buy-in and that engagement for a live webinar when you miss the whole selling points of that presentation of that webinar. So nobody showed up to the webinar. I was sitting on, you know, GoToWebinar. I was sitting there, I was ready and nobody was coming into the waiting room. And I was like, well, this is weird. And then 5 minutes went by and still nobody came into that webinar. And at that point I was cursing in my brain because I knew how much money we had spent to get people to that webinar. And I knew something was broken. So I logged off the webinar. I was like, what happened? I was like frantically messaging my team and come to find out we were looking at the email sequence and something misfired. It did not have the right link in it. It didn't tell people where to go. So I threw up just about, like I felt so sick to my stomach. I had no idea what to do. I was coaching with Julie Chenelle at the time and I was like, Julie, I don't know what to do here. Like I remember sitting on my porch and I was like crying on Voxer and I was like, we spent $80,000 for this webinar. Nobody came. Like I don't know what to do. And we came up with a plot twist, right? We ended up promoting it to my email list. We did an encore. We came up with a plan because sometimes we're too close to it, we're too attached to it. We think the worst-case scenario is going to actually kill us, and we can't see it. We can't see the forest through the trees, or the quote that is, you can't see the label from inside the bottle. And she was a great coach, got me out of it, helped me see this isn't an end-of-day scenario, this is just a plot twist. We need to figure out how to get back in front of people. We need to, you know, come up with a story or a marketing spin on why that webinar didn't happen and why there's an encore. And you know what? I ended up recovering that entire ad spend in sales the following week, and I made 2 times what I spent in sales because we pushed it to my email list. We did a big social media push. We came up with Plan B and Plan C, and we put it together. And you know what? It ended up being completely fine, even though that was definitely worst-case scenario. That's why a lot of people don't scale, why a lot of people don't spend ad money at that level. But there was a full recovery, and now I might have a little bit of trauma around abs. We'll talk about that in a little bit, and, and how I'm talking to myself now about scaling, because yes, we recovered, but my body still remembers that feeling. I still have that, that core memory of what it felt like to spend that much on abs and think it's just going to be gone, right? Just burnt, burned to the ground. So So that was one experience that I had. Another experience that I had in scaling my group coaching program was I launched it originally and we had, I think, about 20 people that came in the first round, maybe 25. And I was, I was doing this weekly calls with this cohort and I had a marketer on my team and we'll talk about him in a little bit. I had this marketer on my team who was helping me scale the program and he was like, you know what, let's add another cohort to the cohort. Who cares? Let's add in another group.. And I was like, that feels kind of weird, but okay. Like if that's what people are doing and that's what you're suggesting that I do as this consultant that I'm paying to be the expert and tell me what to do, then yeah, let's do it. So we opened up a second cohort. We added them to the same Facebook group. We added them to the Zoom calls. And there was a group of about 5 women in that first cohort that got really, really mad at me because I added other people to what they thought was a closed container. In hindsight, I totally understand. What I still don't understand is the childish reaction that I got from this group of about 5 or so women. They ended up putting together a private Facebook group where they invited people. They called themselves the Tiny Offer Rebels, not even kidding you. And they try to gather people into this group where they just talk smack about me. And all they did was like, oh, Allie's greedy, Allie just wants our money, blah blah blah. Like, she's a bad person, her system doesn't work, it's all BS. Like, the only purpose of this group that they created was not to take action. It was not to implement. It wasn't to actually better themselves or make more money in their business. The sole purpose of that group was just to talk shit about me. And learning that happened, I mean, that illustrated or highlighted an extremely core wound that I have. I was bullied all through middle school, bullied all— well, elementary school, middle school, and high school for all varying reasons. And maybe we'll do a whole podcast episode on that. At some point, but I am very familiar to or with the scenario of being bullied, like terrible, terrible bullying. And I'm very sensitive to that kind of behavior. So again, I could have said, you know what, I don't want to run a group coaching program. This is uncomfortable. I don't like being the target of groups of women. Like, I don't like this feeling of having people kind of turn on me and like having people love bomb you initially and then switch and all of a sudden they hate you. Like, it's very, it's a very confusing experience and it happens a lot with online creators, especially if you're a personal brand. Like, people will love bomb on you when they discover you, and they'll go through your program and they'll implement it, and then they want, you know, they want a reason to not actually do the work, and all of a sudden you're the worst person in the world. I've seen it so many times. That's again a different story. But if my brain was like, I don't want to teach a group at the same time because what if a group goes rogue? Like, what if they turn against me? What if this group starts bullying me? Guess what? It happened and I didn't die. I'm stronger because of it. And now I have better boundaries. I understand the psychology of growing a group coaching program and what to do and what not to do and how to position it and how to introduce another cohort. If you're going to rolling enrollment, I learned all that stuff because I saw firsthand what happens when you do it badly. I saw what happens when you don't prepare people for that type of rolling enrollment and what people think they're entitled to when they join a cohort and what types of feelings and types of discomfort can come up for people when things change, when what they bought and what they paid for is not the same as what they perceive to be what they, you know, what they're getting. You can have people turn against you super fast. So as a creator, as an educational online expert, like, these are things that we've got to understand. Basic human psychology, understanding, you know, the art of the deal. Like, how are you to continue selling and not piss off the people that are already in those groups. I've learned a lot. The third thing that I went through was a fear about hiring, a fear of relinquishing control. I had a guy on my team in kind of that, I guess, CMO role for a while. And like I said, with the last lesson that I had learned is he was really good And this, it was not all negative by any means. He was really good at pushing me out of my comfort zone. He was really good at saying, we're gonna send another email, we're gonna pitch harder, we're gonna raise the price, we're gonna open up another cohort. And because of him, that was the beginning of my brand name really catapulting to the front of a lot of people's minds. It was a huge push on ad spend. I would've never spent $80,000 in a week on my own. Without having someone who had done it before and was pushing me to do those things. However, there was a dark side to working with this type of consultant who I kind of, you know, put my, put my hands up and said, you tell me what to do, you're the expert, was that he really enjoyed, I think, having that level of control of my business. And at one point when I won my Two Comma Club Award, he made the comment, wow, it's really not fair that you get to be on stage when I'm the one who's doing all the work. And I remember just looking at him. It was supposed to be like this joyful day, right? Like winning a Two Comma Club Award had been a goal of mine forever. Like, it was huge. My family was there. I got to bring my family up on stage with me. Like, I was so proud of myself that, you know, as a woman, a work-at-home mom, like, I had made $1 million in my business and I did it right. Like, even if someone else was helping me as a team member, because that's what you do when you build a team, you work together. He was acting like I didn't deserve it, like he couldn't believe that I was the one on stage and that I was a fraud and I didn't really know how to grow a business to $1 million. And it made me feel so stinking small. It made me feel tiny, if you will, and not, not the good kind of tiny. It made me feel like crap, like I didn't deserve it. And I couldn't even enjoy that moment of being on stage or even really looking at the award on my wall because it was like, Well, I don't deserve that because I didn't mastermind every piece of it. I hired someone, which, oh my gosh, you guys, have you ever thought of— and not to be sexist here, but as women, we so easily sink into that role of feeling less than, right? I don't think a man would ever say that to another man. And I don't think a man would be like, oh, you're right. I didn't do everything. The guy would be like, yeah, I hired you because you know what you're doing, because I'm smart. Like a woman, a woman so quickly and me, and this is, you know, generalizing, so I'm sorry if this is offensive, but we so quickly default to feeling not enough. And there's data on this. This is why women don't speak up as often in boardrooms. This is why there's a whole movement about leaning in and like saying what we think. So for a long time, I let, eventually he ended up losing my team. We did not part on good terms. Like there's a lot more to that story. Story, but we did not part on good terms. I had to buy out his contract. I went into a huge amount of debt for a little while because of having to pay to not have him on my team anymore because of what it was doing to my energy and my self-belief and all of the things. And actually, after that was when I ran the $80,000 webinar that lost money. So I was already a mess when that happened, but I learned so much from that experience. But it took me a really long time, you guys, dig out of that hole to believe that I knew enough, that I was the one who was driving the strategy, that people liked Tiny Offers for me, even if someone else was helping me grow it because he'd already done it, right? Like he had this expertise on scaling a high-ticket group coaching program. I didn't. And that's what we do when we hire experts. But when you hire an expert who then makes you feel small, that's a personality issue. That's a narcissism issue. That's not a you problem. And it took me a really long time to recover from that and continue being able to show up as a leader, as an educator, as, you know, feeling like I'm smart enough to be able— which is, you know, like an old wound of mine, probably— feeling like I'm smart enough to keep teaching people how to grow businesses online. Because you know what, it was me. I did learn from that. I have a lot to share with people, even if it was someone else in my team who was helping me make some of those decisions. But for a really long time, it put me in a super dark place. It really hurt my self-concept of being an expert. It hurt my self-concept of wanting to show up. And part of like the quiet period that you guys maybe witnessed was me wondering about my own worthiness of, should I continue showing up? Maybe all that success had nothing to do with me. Maybe it was all this guy who was, you know, pulling the puppet strings and I was just this pawn in a game. Like, for a long time I wrestled with a lot of feelings like that, but I got through it and I continued showing up and I worked through some of that. I healed some of that stuff and whatever came up for me through that stuff from childhood or whatever, the stories we learn about ourselves that dug into that and it made me feel a certain kind of way. So it helped me going through these experiences, the loss of AEK, the bullying group from my own group coaching program, the team member that manipulated me, right? All of those things. Helped me heal those old wounds and let me show up as an even better leader, a stronger person. So if we can look at all of the scary things, like, you are going to go through hard stuff in your business. It is going to challenge you. It's going to build you and break you down in ways that you never expected. And what a gift that is to get to have those experiences. Because if we don't go through challenges, right, like, what do they say? A smooth, smooth seas never led to an experienced sailor, or whatever. Whatever that quote is, it's so true. Like, if everything is perfect, if you never face any challenges, if you never, you know, for other examples, lose an ad account or go through a few days of Meta not spending the way it's supposed to, you're never going to dig your heels in and be like, you know what, I am going to figure this out. I am going to fix this challenge in my business. I am going to show up as the version of myself that I need to be to be able to continue building that business that you want to have. So I get questions like this all the time from people, and there's more that I could say say about like, what if somebody copies me, or what if someone steals my stuff? That's gonna happen too. And I've been through that hundreds of times probably. And we can, you know, I could do a whole episode on IP theft probably, but it's different with AI now. Like, it's harder. Everything is harder. So we'll talk about that some other day. If you want to hear it, let me know. Send me a DM if this resonates. But all the things that you'll experience— you'll have bullying in your ad comments. People have commented on my face my face looks weird or make comments about my boobs. Like, your boobs are huge. Like, cool. Thanks for leaving that in an ad comment, guy. Like, that's really appropriate. People saying all sorts of weird stuff about my frameworks and my knowledge and that I'm a woman and I'm not smart enough to teach digital marketing and all the things. All of that might happen. And you know what? You're going to be okay. And I'm going to be here to hold your hand through it and tell you that this is normal and this is part of the process. And it's okay. Like, there's no reason to be afraid of success. There's no reason to be afraid of scaling because all of that is just fear telling you that you're not gonna be able to handle this stuff. And I can guarantee it that you're gonna be able to handle it and that you're gonna get through it and you're gonna be stronger on the other side. And even if you're like in the middle of something crappy, once you're through it and once you're on the other side, I think you're gonna be proud of yourself and so amazed at how much you grew and how much more of a, a leader and a teacher and an educator you're gonna be on the other side of that. And how much empathy that can build for you to be able to understand your clients and serve them on an even deeper level. Because I know all of those lessons did a ton for me as a coach, as a leader, to be able to get on coaching calls with my clients and say, yeah, I have been there and I know how that feels. And here are some strategies that of, you know, what I did to get through it or whatever. So what I learned from doing this work, and even from, you know, putting myself in therapy recently to be able to digest some of this and put it together and understand like the stories behind it, what I've learned is that a lot of my issues with scaling my business, or my fear of scaling my business, has come down to control and people pleasing. Like, I think I can control the room I think I can control my interpretation or how people are going to interpret me at all turns. I think that with people pleasing, I think if I act a certain way, then people have to like me, and that then I'm controlling, right? Like, then I'm controlling the scenario. So it all comes down to control for me. Like, I'm going to control the outcome, I'm going to control— I'm going to be hypervigilant, which is a trauma response. And I think all of us probably— I mean, this is a plug for therapy too. I think every entrepreneur should be in therapy because the business is always impacted by your self-beliefs and a lot of this stuff that you've, you know, subconsciously learned that once you start unlearning it, or sometimes you start seeing a pattern behind it, it can really help you continue growing. So you're not blocking yourself or blocking your growth in business without really understanding why. I had a coaching call last week and the client shared that she had been turning her ad spend down, and I was like, Why? Your ads are profitable. Like, what are we doing? And she didn't know why. She didn't know why she was trying that. It felt like it was too much. Like, I feel like I'm spending too much, but your ads are working. Like, everything is working. You're making money from your ads. Why are we turning that down? And I think that along with all the other stuff that I talked about, I think at the core of it, a lot of us are operating from scarcity, from a basis of fear. You know, what if I, I become too much? Like, quote unquote, too much. What if I'm too successful? What if all— what if, what if, what if— all these things because we think we can control the outcome. And today I learned about the circle of control, right? If we look at the middle of the circle, that's us. It's our feelings, it's our thoughts, it's our emotions, it's our actions. That's what we control. On the outer, one more circle out, is our influence sphere of things that we can kind of influence. So this could be like, you know, how our kids are doing or our relationship with our partner. Like, we can act a certain way and have impact on this outer sphere. And then on the out, out, outside sphere of the circle are things that are completely out of control. And this would be the behavior of people that you hire, the comments that you get on the internet, people joining your program and then having some weird reason to be mad at you. Like, those are all things that are largely out of your control. And the best thing that we can do to continue growing our businesses, to continue growing ourselves, healing our stuff, whatever, is all in that center circle. So Google it. This— if the visual helps, so I'll give you one, but you can also Google it. So this, the circle of control, if all you do is focus on what you can control, you can control your thoughts, you can control your ideas, your energy, your effort. That's what we can do. So back to my original question, if you were just a little less scared, if you controlled only what you can control, and you start acting, managing your energy, and showing up as someone who's just a little bit less scared, what would your control look like? What would you know was in your control, and what would you let go? And when you can start letting things go, when you can focus, start focusing on only what you can control, you're going to realize that it's a lot easier to operate with less scarcity, with less fear, because The things that you're afraid of, you can't control. I didn't know any of that stuff was going to happen when I started, and it did, and I'm okay, and I'm better actually having gone through that stuff. So think about that in your, in your day-to-day, in your business. Think about how much you're spending on your ads, what your offers include, what you're, you know, not giving away anymore, what you don't want to do in your business anymore. You got to listen to those little intuitive nudges and do the things that you can control, which is your energy, which is how you're showing up and doing it scared, like continue doing it scared. So what that actually looks like tangibly is scaling the campaign, even if you're scared, posting a video, if you've, if you're scared of that, putting your name on the framework, showing up as an expert, owning that expertise, even if you don't have, you know, XYZ certification. Like I talk to people about that a lot. Well, I'm not actually a nutritionist, so I can't help people with what they're eating. Yes, you can. Who said? You just say like you're not, you know, a registered dietitian. You can still help people with that stuff. That's a different topic. So you don't need to be less afraid to make the next move. You don't have to control it. You don't have to know exactly what's going to happen. You just have to make the next slightly bigger move. Start tiny, right? You just have to start tiny and show up a little bit bigger than your fear wants you to. Just get a little bit uncomfortable and answer that question honestly. What would you do this week if you were just a little less scared? And then go do some version of that.