How To Be Unforgettable With Marsha Shandur

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Hi, Greg Faxson here. In the spring of 2015, I had the honor of interviewing a select group of incredibly brave entrepreneurs. Some of them, like Seth Godin you may recognize, others you may not. All of them have done the hard work, mentally and emotionally, of building businesses that support them while making a positive difference in the world. These interviews will give you the inspiration and strategies you need to do the same. I hope to help you take action on something that scares you today. Thanks for listening. All right, everyone. Today I'm talking to Marcia of yes, yes, marcia.com and Marsha Sandor is. She's great. We talked recently and I was trying to kind of craft my elevator picture, kind of explain to people what I do and who I do it for. And I spoke with her a couple weeks ago and she gave me some great insights. And Marsha is definitely more than just a networking kind of expert or a mentor. She has knowledge in all different areas. So I'm excited to talk to her and kind of mine some of those insights around bravery for the Bravery project. So, Marsha, thanks for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk to you. Great.

So Marcia, if you could, and actually for me too, because I don't know too much of your background, I know you are in radio. Could you give me a little bit of. Give people a sense of how you got to. Yes, yes, marcia.com.

So I was a radio host for 15 years. Then I started choosing music for TV shows. And then I moved to Toronto four years ago. And when I moved, I was choosing music for TV shows. But I knew that was not really what I wanted to do. Not least because kids would email me all the time going, oh my God, you're doing my dream job. And I would be like, I am so sorry because it is not mine. And I was kind of wondering. I knew, I felt like I was done with radio. I knew that I was good at a bunch of stuff. And what I wanted was for someone to climb inside my brain, have a look around and then go, oh, okay, here's your dream job. And then I encountered Marie Forleo's B school, which is like an eight week online business and marketing course cult. And I did it. And basically it's usually for people who already have their own business, but there's a whole component for people like me who didn't know what they wanted to do. And basically it never occurred to me that I could be the boss without having to have a staff of 40 because that's what my brother does. He runs his own business and he has 40 people in a three story office building. And I wasn't interested in that. And kind of through looking at Marie Forleo's stuff, I was like, oh, it can just be me and a laptop and a virtual team. And then through doing it I realized what had never occurred to me is that basically the stuff that I've been doing for free my entire life, the stuff that I corner people at parties to make them talk about is like something that people would pay me money for. And I think it's because usually I mostly did it for free for 20 year old boys who wanted to get into radio or 20 year old musicians who wanted to make a hit in the music industry. And it never crossed my mind that actually what I was teaching them, which is mostly about networking and building your career and making good connections and that kind of thing was actually applicable to a whole different bunch of people, including people who actually have money, unlike 20 year old musicians and 20 year old boys trying to get into radio. And so that's what I'm doing now. So I teach people about networking and about making kind of these strong connections with people who will then introduce them to their audiences so they can get clients without having to hustle for them. And then this other thing that I do since I moved to Toronto is I run a storytelling show called True Stories Told Live, which kind of grew from four people, one of whom was my mom, to 150 people in the course of a year. And now is is the biggest. On last count, we were the biggest storytelling show in Toronto. There's a bunch of storytelling shows in Toronto and I coach all the storytellers through the process. So now that's another thing that I do to make a living as well is coach people either who maybe they're doing a crowdfunding thing and they need to make a video and in the video they need to tell their story in one minute. Or I have someone who wants to do, she's a coach, but she wants to do speaking gigs. So she wants to tell her story of why she's teaching, why she's coaching the people that she coaches. But when she tells her story now it takes her two and a half hours. So we're going to get it down to like a tight 10 minutes and a 5 minute version and a 3 minute version. And that's something I'm obsessed with storytelling at the moment. So that's the thing I'm really excited about. And then the other Thing that I do is the thing that you and I have talked about before is helping people answer the question, what do you do in a way that is engaging and makes people want to give you money and takes less than 30 seconds.

This is interesting because the theme throughout is all kind of personal marketing. It's marketing for the person. Whether it's storytelling or networking or whatever, it is super cool. So with the storytelling thing that you're running now, we have something in DC called Speakeasy dc. And it's similar. When you're coaching people, do you find that you're coaching them more on how to actually craft their story or the inner game of, like, actually going up there and doing the story?

It's all about how to craft the story. I mean, I make them all watch the Amy Cuddy TED talk about doing, you know, if you do power poses for two minutes before you go on stage, then that will lower your stress hormone cortisol and raise your testosterone. But actually, my feeling is that if you have a really great story and if you practice it out loud by yourself in a room because it. Particularly because it's your own personal story, you're not going to forget the main facts of it. And if you practiced it, then even if you fall off, you'll be able to plug back into it. I mean, one of the things that I do with the networking coaching is literally give people a script for what to say when they walk up to someone at an event. And sometimes that script could be, hi, I'm Greg. What's your name? But I find that in moments of terror, I need very specific instructions. You know, I was a terrible cook for most of my life. And if someone said, add some onion, I'd be like, what does that mean? I need them to say, you know, add one small onion and chop it this way and add it at this point and then keep stirring it. And so I feel like with the storytelling, it's like they have their own script. So whatever goes wrong, they have the script to fall back on.

Yeah, I love that. And that's something that I haven't. It seems so obvious, but that's something that hasn't even come up yet. And the people I've been talking to is, especially when I think it's out of your comfort zone and the thing is new for you, just to know that you've practiced and you have the tools and you have the thing to fall back on, I think that's huge.

That's huge. And it's the same even with the you know, answering the question, what do you do? It's like everybody gets asked that question. There's periods of my life where when someone's asked me that, my heart has sunk, mostly because, you know, I wasn't really doing anything. And I would think, wouldn't it be hilarious if I told you the truth, where you said, what do you do? And I said, mostly, I pace the corridors of my mum's house because I'm living with my mum again and cry and wish I'd never left my last job. What do you do? And so what I would do is I would give myself a script, basically, to say to people. You know, I would trot an answer out so that I had something to say, so that in those moments of terror, there was something to fall back on.

I love it. So for your own journey, when you were transitioning from radio, and then I guess you had kind of a gap there in your mom's house and then. Yes. Yes, Marcia.

Right.

Well, I'm curious. Was that, like, what was scared? Was that a scary moment? I mean, what was. What was going on there?

You know, what the mum's house thing was? Actually, when I left one radio job, I left my radio job in Scotland and moved to London to try and get a job at xfm. And then when I moved to London, I was like, what an idiot. This is never gonna happen. I had kind of a year and a half, basically, of being utterly miserable.

So you knew. You knew you wanted the job and you just jumped for it.

Yeah, I knew I wanted the job. And I left this great job in Scotland where I had all these prospects, and I moved into my mum's house and sat around eating cookies all day wishing that I hadn't left my job, which, in retrospect, I'm glad that I did it, but honestly, I do a lot of brave things, and I think most of them are done through naivety. So when I moved to Toronto, it's because I fell in love with the Torontonian. And I was. I was really ready to leave. I was ready to leave London, but I loved my job at the radio station and I needed. Like, I knew my plan was actually to go back to Scotland, back to Edinburgh, but it was hard to leave a job that I really loved to go to, like a not as good job. And so when I was moving for love, I was like, well, this is the obvious answer, you know, I'm not leaving because I'm not, because they don't want me. I'm mo love. And that's Romantic and, you know, going to a new place and won't that be exciting? And so many people said to me, oh, my God, you're so brave. You're so brave. And I was like, no, I'm not. If I don't like it, I just come back. And then after about six months, I think whenever you move to a new city, the first three or four months, you're like, oh, my God, best decision in the world. Everyone else is a loser for staying where they are. And then that kind of honeymoon period wears off and you're suddenly like, oh, my God. I think I might have moved to Toronto. And then. And I was really. I really thought this is why everyone said I was brave, because what hadn't crossed my mind would be that I wouldn't want. I wouldn't hate it so much that I'd want to leave, but it would still be really, really hard. And that actually is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, was that first, after the kind of first six months, was the first year of being in Toronto. And, you know, for me, it was moving in my mid-30s, so I wasn't 21 and out on the lash all the time. I didn't have a job, so I wasn't. It was really hard to make friends. And I compulsively make friends, usually, but I wasn't, like, meeting people at work. I was actually working a ton, doing music supervision, but all alone in my bedroom. But even things like not knowing, you know, where do I buy a power adapter? Like, I can tell you 20 places in London where I'd buy a power adapter. But I didn't know here. You know, there were so many, like, tiny little things that were different or even, like, you know, when you're making new friends, it's very high energy because you're like, oh, my God, tell me about you. And. But actually, what you want in your life is people who you can just watch TV with and not have to have a conversation. And I had, like, my partner. But in terms of, you know, there was all these things that were really difficult. And I, having spent my whole life going, I don't follow the crowd, like, whatever, I'm brave and I do brave stuff. High five me. I had this period of several months where I was like, f. Being brave. I wish that I wasn't brave. I wish that I had taken a boring job, got into a boring relationship, moved to some boring suburb where everyone has the same conversations over and over again. Because then I wouldn't have to go through this extremely painful and difficult and effortful experience. And actually what changed my mind about that was a quote that I knew, a version of the quote I just hadn't known. The long quote.

Definitely don't tell anyone that. We don't want to know the quote. No, I'm curious. No, this sounds great. So the quote changed it.

But, yeah, this quote, which actually I'm going to look up to make sure I don't. Oh, hang on, I'm writing. I'm going to look it up to make sure I get it perfectly. So the original quote that I knew was by Helen Keller, who's the deaf, dumb and blind lady from the early 1900s, I think, and she was deaf, dumb and blind, and they kind of thought, well, you know, nothing will come of her. And then she learnt how to read and write and now she's written all these books and. And whatever. She was a phenomenon. And so the quote that I knew was the short version at the end, which was, life is either a daring adventure or nothing. And before, when I was all bravado and whatever, I was like, yeah, life is a daring adventure or nothing. You guys who don't take dares, who don't do adventurous things, are useless and I'm amazing. And then the full quote that I read was, security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Which I took to mean you can do the boring job and get in the boring relationship and move to the boring area and have the boring conversations, but then someone is going to get cancer or someone is going to get hit by a car, or, you know, something is going to happen. And if you haven't exposed yourself to danger, you're not going to be very well equipped to deal with it. And so actually, it all works out the same. Either you constantly expose yourself to danger and then when those unexpected things happen, you can roll with them or you don't and you're fine that much of the time. And then that thing happens and it's extremely painful and you don't know how to deal with it.

Wow. Wow. Okay, so I love that. So there's almost a distinction between. There's like proactive bravery and flexing that bravery muscle, and then there's reactive, I guess, coping and bravery, and either way they're gonna be pushed. It's just you get to choose, right? Or did you Not.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Wow, okay, that's totally cool. So how do you, how do you define bravery? When I say bravery, what does that mean to you?

I guess doing something that you know could go really badly for you and doing it anyway. Another real, like life changing book for me was the first self help book I ever read, which I bought as a joke. My friend Zoe and I always send each other the most disgusting Christmas presents we can find. And I was in a charity shop in the UK and I found this book that was called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Especially being British and cynical about self help. I was like, feel the fear and do it anyway. Nice one. I'm gonna buy this for Zoe. She's gonna find it hilarious. And then I read it on the bus home and then went home and bought like 12 copies for all my friends. And the kind of two main premises of that book, it's now like a Susan Jeffers. It's now like a self help staple. But the two main premises, one is if you don't like your life before you try and change it, see if you can change your attitude towards it. And the other one is if you are someone. And I was desperately shy as a teenager and I think when you're very shy or don't consider yourself to be brave, you think, oh, brave people, they just have a different chip in their brain. Like, they are brave and I am not. So I'm not going to do what they can do because I don't have that thing that they have. And what Susan Jeffers talks about in this book is like, brave people are scared too. The difference between them and you is that they just suck it up. You know, that's what feel the fear and do it anyway means is. It means like, don't let being scared be the thing that stops you from doing stuff. And I do think that a lot of stuff that I do is naivety because I just don't like la la la, you know, think that it'll be just like quite fun. And then halfway through I'll be like, oh. And it's too late by that point to back out. I've run two marathons, which pretty much both of those happened like that. And that was the first race I ever ran, was a marathon. Like a first race since I left school. I didn't kind of build up to it slowly. And with both of those, I was really. Yeah, the first one in particular was so hard and I was really like, I didn't think this through. So I think sometimes it's about naivety. And sometimes it's just about feeling like, well, history tells me that this will probably be fine. Or like, the worst thing that can happen. Feels really scary right now, but probably it'll be okay. Do you know what? Perfect example? It's my birthday on Monday. I thought about having a party. I decided not to. And then yesterday, my friend was like, you should have a party. So I rang my local, like, coffee shop bar, and I booked it. And now I'm like, oh, my God, no one's gonna come to my party. This was a terrible idea. What was I thinking? And I'm totally freaking out. But I also know that there's some tiny rational part of my brain that's like, marsh, absolute worst case scenario. No one's gonna come. Except for one person who's gonna think that you have no friends. But that's okay. That's just one person. You know, you have friends.

And so this is interesting because maybe that's part of your strategy, right? It's just a leap first strategy. Like, you just. That's the way Marcia's brave is she just does the thing before deciding whether it's a good idea. And then she has to be brave by default.

Right? You know, I think I've never really. I've never really thought of that as actually being a strategy, but I think it's true. I think it's true. That's. That's even, like, now that I am. So now I host my own storytelling show. And so people have asked me to start telling stories at their shows. I never considered myself a storyteller before. And I'm telling a story next Thursday, and I haven't written the story yet. And there is part of me just being like, oh, my God, I'm gonna get on stage and I'm not gonna have a story. But the rest of me is, like, probably fine. It's always fine. You know, in the two days before, I'm gonna hate myself and be like, why did you agree to this? You're such an idiot. And then I'll do it and it'll be fine. Or, you know, I've told stories that have gone down like a lead balloon. And then it feels awful, it feels wretched for, like, three days. And then you get over it, you know, something else happens and you're distracted with that instead. So I think it's really. Yeah, I feel like it's combination of leap before you look, but also just history teaching me. Even in the networking thing, I've written before, I wrote A whole post called behind the Scenes of My Brain. Going to a conference because I feel like I coach people. You know, some of the people I coach go to conferences and are completely terrified. And I thought if they think they might think that, like, oh, Marcia doesn't, like, doesn't get this because she must be so confident. And I go to, like, went to five conferences last year, and before the first, on the first day of each one, my internal monologue is exactly the same every time. And my internal monologue is like, oh, my God, I'm not going to know anyone. Everyone else is going to be best friends. Friends. I'm not. I'm gonna be stood by myself in the corner. Why did I wear this dress? It has a hole in it. Everyone's gonna think I'm a dirtbag. What was I thinking? But the reason I go is because history tells me that I'll probably be fine. And the first, like, three or four hours, I pretty much want to vomit. But I force myself to, you know, feel the fear and do it anyway to talk to people. And then it's fine, and then I have a great time.

One thing that's interesting, too, is I think sometimes, especially in, like, a coach or mentor or Internet business world, I think people choose the things that scare them so that they end up having to do them in a way, right? So, like, you're the networking person, so you're not allowed to leave the conference after hour one. It would feel terrible. It would be like something about that doesn't line up. So it's like in business coaching, right? If that scares you to start and grow a business, go become a business coach. Now. You're going to get good at it because you'll feel shame if you don't do it. It's kind of a way that I think we sometimes get leverage on ourselves.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. I would also add that another of my heroes is Mastin Kipp, who runs the DailyLove.com and he also had a really big influence on me. I started reading his blog maybe three or four years ago, and he talks a lot about how you should use fear as your compass. And unless you are in danger, then if something scares you, then you should move towards it. And it's funny, I don't know that. I don't know that I even fully understand why that is the case, why you should do that, but I feel like I generally tend to follow that rule. And I think it's partly that you feel amazing afterwards. So something that I did recently, which was totally influenced by Mastin saying that was. There's a night here called Queer Slow Dance. And it's basically like a four hour slow dance and there's 10 slow songs per hour and they have a bunch of designated dancers. And my friend had said to me, would you like to come and be a designated dancer? And what that involves is you just walking up to strangers and asking them to dance to slow dance with you. And I'm from the uk where we don't really do slow dancing, so I don't know that I ever like had slow danced before or like once at camp and it was a bit weird. And, and my friend had said, would you like to do it? And I was like, can I think about it? That sounds terrifying. You know, it felt like basically, can you please spend two hours potentially getting rejected by a bunch of strangers who then have to be in the same room as for the next two hours. But I did it and it was really scary. But then afterwards I felt like a total superhero. Like I felt like I left that place walking two feet higher than I had come in. And if it hadn't been terrifying, I wouldn't have done.

Yeah, I think we feel satisfaction and, and alive with, with, with the things that make us. That we're really pushing on.

Right, right.

You kind of be complacent and be comfortable, but I don't think that, that, that you get kind of the full juice of it. And so I think that's great. And then another way, one way I explain it to my clients and this comes from another coach, John P. Morgan. They'll say fear and desire are two sides of the same coin. So the things that we fear the most are often the things that we most want, otherwise we wouldn't fear them. Right. So when we're doing work that's really meaningful to us, it's scary because it matters. It's meaningful to us. If it wasn't meaningful, it wouldn't be scary. So if I told you to go rob a bank right now and you imagine that you might not be scared of that because it's not something you were going to do. It's not even real to your mind because you can't imagine doing it unless you've been planning it and it's something you want. I don't know you that well, I guess, but. So, yeah, that's another way to look at it too. I love the idea of using fear as a compass. Yeah.

It's funny, I even just when we were talking I was thinking about how doing stuff like queer slow dance or telling stories on stage, it's kind of. I imagine it's not a dissimilar brain pattern of things that happens. Doing skydiving or bungee jumping or people who like to do that kind of thing for the rush, which doesn't appeal to me at all. Doing skydiving, like 5% appeals, but I feel like it's not. That's something that I don't know because just when you're saying that, I'm like, is that why I'm scared of skydiving? Because I definitely think it'd be really beautiful. But I feel like doing my, you know, going to queer slow dance is like my life of my kind of day to day equivalent of skydiving. It's like a little like extreme social activities instead of extreme sports.

Well, so this is interesting because it's making me think of another thing, which is when people talk to me and they say like, I just need to find my passion, right? Or I need to do something like that. I don't necessarily believe that you just find it or you follow it. And what I always tell them is, right, passion is. Passion doesn't actually mean what we think it means. The actual definition of passion, one is like, you know, this, this, this real love of something, but the other is suffering, right? You think of like passion of the Christ. So if you look, there's a second definition of passion, which is to suffer. And so suffering through that fear and being like, holy shit, I'm up on stage telling my story. That's what creates passion. So you can't have passion if there's no fear. You know, if there's no fear involved in the jump or the leap, there's no passion. It's just. It's just what it was before. Right?

So cool.

Yeah, awesome. So what, what strategies? If someone's listening and especially if they're thinking about starting a business or growing a business, what strategies can you give someone? We, I know we have the kind of the leap before you're ready, feel the fear and do it anyway. And we have the practice. Right. Become competent if it's something new. What other strategies do you have, how people can cultivate bravery?

Well, I think part of the, part of the leap before you're ready probably related to that is public accountability and telling people that you're going to do things. I found that that's really good. I did that even when I first, you know, I threw up a website and then I put up a Sign up form, you know, an opt in email. Opt in. And it said on it, I'm going to start sending emails and blogging in May. And this was kind of early April, you know, a couple of years ago. And so I threw it up and my boyfriend at the time signed up and then my mum signed up and then one other person signed up and I was like, oh, no, now I have. But I found that to be pretty good. It's the same. I do kind of free classes and free calls sometimes. And I would like to say that it's this strategy at the beginning of the year that I plan out every week what's going to happen. But usually I decide I'm going to do it every week, week after week after week. I haven't done anything about it. And then I just think, sod it. And I write an email out to my list being like, free call happening next week. And then I'm like, now I have to do it. So I do think that, like, public shame is a really good way for me, is a very good motivator. And I guess the same with, you know, even doing the. Whatever. Someone asked me to tell a story and I'll just say yes just so that then I have to. Because then it's really embarrassing if I don't. And I do think that, like, it's okay to back out of stuff and that we're not as important to other people as we think that we are. But yeah, I think public tell people that you're going to do something even if you're not sure if you can. And I think that's the same, you know, in a lot of different career stuff that people will say, people have hired me for jobs and they're like, can you do this? And I'm like, oh, yeah, thinking I guess I'll have to learn in the next three days. You know, unless you're. Unless it's actually open heart surgery, there's a lot of stuff that you can work out how to do. So, yeah, fronting and public accountability.

I would add. Thank God for that first stranger who joined your list. Right. We wouldn't be talking now. That's totally cool. Another thing I like about it is that we were talking about kind of proactive bravery. I think there's kind of two types of bravery. There's like the courage of, you know, I'm backed into a corner, right? I got like a thief with a knife to me, and I have to be brave. Well, that's, that's the kind of reactive bravery Right. And that's great. That can be inspiring. But I'm also really interested in the type of bravery, like someone's sitting in a job that they don't like, or someone's in a leadership role and they have to decide, like, what's the right thing to do here for my organization. And it's the stuff that people don't see and that you're not accountable for, that you've proactively been brave about. That, I think, is really cool. And one way to do that, to make sure that happens, is to get it out and make it a reactive thing immediately. Right. Because when you send out an email now, you have to do it if no one knows about it and you're just kind of writing in your spare time or doing something in your spare time. It's hard. It's hard to consistently be brave because we're social animals.

And you know what? Something that I would add, which is kind of the flip side to, like, the public accountability or whatever, is. Especially when you're starting out with a business, remember that you're not that big a deal and that that's cool. There's this Russian phrase that I teach all my clients that my mum taught me, which is my family Russian, Kamuti Nuzhna. And it literally translates as, who needs you? But what it means is, like, what makes you think that you're that big a deal? So my mum would say if her friend said, oh, I can't come swimming with you. I haven't shaved my leg, she'll be like, moti, no. Like, who do you think gives them, you know, crud that you haven't shaved your legs? Come swimming. And so in the same way, if you're like, oh, my God, I can't, you know, I put up this blog post and it has a typo in it, or I made a video and my hair looked weird, or, you know, I didn't send an email that week, or even I wrote blogs every single week for the first year that I had a site, which was really great, and I built up a great cash, you know, and I built up loyalty and fan base and whatever. But then I had this point where my brain was exploding and I realized it was taking up so much time and I had to sit myself down and be like, marsh, you don't have 10 million people on your list. If you don't write a blog this week, the sky is not going to cave in, you know, or if whatever, if your thing is imperfect. There's one video that I made Where I basically decided I could get away without washing my hair. And as you watch the video, I have lots of edits in my videos, mostly so that I don't have to learn long scripts, but basically part of my hair kind of migrates my forehead as the video goes on. And I didn't realize that there's this like weird gap of flesh above my bangs. Looks like I'm wearing a wig or something. And I made it and it was only kind of towards the end of the edit of like 20 hours of editing. And I was like, you know what? You're not that big a deal. It's fine. You know, my very first video, you watch it, it's actually a mirror image because the first kind of few videos I all recorded in the place where I used to live. And you can see that the entire background is the other way around. And my face is the other way around because I haven't figured out how to flip the mirror image in the editing thing. And again, it's. Nobody has ever emailed me about that. Nobody's ever said, hey, I noticed, you know, maybe once I do have 10 million people, there will be some super fan that does that. But actually realizing that the reason it's okay to put out imperfect stuff is because you're not that big a deal right now. And that's fine. And by the time you are that big a deal, you're going to have a team of 50 people who are fact checking everything. So you don't need to worry. And you know, when you're a little bit imperfect, then you're more relatable.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, James Altucher is one of the bloggers that I really like and he has typos in almost everything. One of his piece has a typo and it's actually kind of cool in a way. You know, I don't know if he's deliberately left them in there, but it's like, oh, there's an actual human there. To me. Yeah, okay, that's, that's, that's great. And another thing is, right in the networking context, I know I've heard you say this is right when you show up and you're freaked out. You can only ever be scared when you're focused on yourself. And as soon as you say everyone else is thinking about themselves, I don't matter. I'm not important. It takes all this pressure off of you.

Yeah.

And another way, I mean, another way to kind of, to leverage that is to have. Right. Have sort of a mission in your business or have a mission or a purpose to what you're doing. Because if it's not for you, if it's for some greater good or some impact you want to make, that makes it easier too. So you can say, you know, your fear doesn't really matter because you're doing it for other people to get this result. So why don't you suck it up and just do it anyway?

Right? Right, right. And even, like, I would add, even have like a little missional goal for the, for the next half an hour is something helpful. Because what happens to us is we get spun out thinking in our thoughts, you know, and the actual. This is another quote, which is another Helen's. Helen Fielding, who wrote Bridget Jones Diary, and it was a quote of one of her characters in another book who would say to herself, no one is thinking about me. Everyone's thinking about themselves, just like I am right now. And actually, I got a tweet from someone yesterday who said that she used this on her 11 year old. So son who was going to a birthday party with ink on his shirt, and she sat him down and explained, okay, you know, how much you're worrying about yourself. Everyone else is doing that about themselves, so they're not thinking about you. And this 11 year old went to the birthday party and had a great time. So it's first of all kind of getting out of your head for that. But then I think another thing, in the same way as I love to have scripts to fall back on, it's having little goals, even for the next 20 minutes of saying to yourself, okay, within between now and the next 20 minutes, I have to speak to at least one person and we have to have a conversation that lasts at least three sentences on either side. And then that's less about, you know, I think when we get rabbit in the headlights, it's when we don't have a very specific plan. So we walk into a networking event and they think, I need to network with people and that's just too much. Whereas if you say, you know, I need to have two conversations with two people I haven't met before, and the conversations have to last at least three sentences each. That's a very specific goal. And you can just do it. And then you're allowed to go home.

I love that. Yeah. And breaking it down into small chunks so it's not this big skin thing. It's just, can I be brave enough to do the next 10 minutes?

Yeah. And then you'll feel that sense of achievement.

Yeah. Then you get A win. So you gain momentum. Totally.

Yeah. Yeah. And as we talked about earlier, you've done the brave thing. So then you feel like a winner afterwards and you just want to high five yourself. And that's. That's a good feeling rather than just the terrified feeling or thinking, you know, I have to go and network with people. And then at the end of the evening, being like, I didn't achieve my nebulous goal that nobody could ever possibly achieve.

Awesome. Anything else?

Let's see, what have we covered? Leap before you look, have some public accountability. You're not that important. No one's thinking about you as much as everyone's thinking about themselves. Oh, here's another thing. Okay, so up Until I was 18, I was, like, painfully shy with new people. But once you got to know me, you couldn't shut me up. And so it was killer because people would say to my friends, oh, Marsh is really quiet. And I think, no, I'm not. You don't understand. And I was convinced that everybody was talking to my friends because they were all, you know, prettier than me and cooler than me and, you know, dressed better than me or whatever. In retrospect, nobody talked to me because it's quite hard to start talking to someone who's staring furiously at the ground and not maintaining any eye contact. But two things that happened to me. One was that I worked in a bar, and if you ever want practice having conversations with people, then work in a bar during the day, because you're going to get a lot of them. And I realized that people don't expect you to be fascinating and hilarious. They just want to have a chat. But the other thing was that I faked it. And I remember this, and I've written about this on the blog, like, this seminal moment when it was a few years later when I was living in Edinburgh and I was a student, and I was talking with this friend of mine who I worked with, who was quite shy, and I was talking about, you know, but of course, I'm so shy. And she said, but, Marcia, you're fantastic. Like, she couldn't believe that I was saying that. And I remember this moment thinking, oh, my God, I've pulled it off. I've managed to convince everyone that I'm a confident person. What a brilliant trick. I'm so smart. And then over the period of the years after that, thinking, hang on. If I'm acting like I'm confident and everybody else thinks that I'm confident, maybe that means I'm confident. And I think that was. That was like a really, really big thing. And Amy Cuddy talks about something similar in her TED Talk, where she talks about how it's not about fake it till you make it. It's about fake it until you become it. But I think it kind of with confidence and bravery, it kind of happens by stealth because you see other people out in the world and you assume that they're not quivering wrecks inside. You know, I'm sure people, when they see me at the beginning of a conference, walk up boldly to a stranger and say, hey, how are you? I like your dress. You know, where did you come here from? How's your weekend? How was your weekend? I'm sure they look at me and think, you know, but, Marcia, you're fantastic. She was Scottish. Sorry, that was a really bad Scottish accent. You know, I'm sure they look at me and think that I'm really brave. And they don't know that inside I'm being like, oh, my God, what if she turns around and walks? What if she says, oh, I'm sorry, I'm here with other friends. Stay by yourself. Loner, loser. Because I'm making my body behave as if I'm very confident. And other things that I teach is that people will always follow your physical cues. And so stop thinking that being brave involves having a brave chip in your brain. And stop thinking that being brave involves not feeling scared, because you can incorporate that. And then people will say to you, oh, my God, you're so fantastic. And you'd be like, me, I fooled them.

I love that kind of. I love the fake it until you become it. And I've seen that talk, but I don't remember that part. And stop thinking that. That being afraid is something that prevents you from being brave. Right. I think bravery is kind of the being able to feel the fear and see that it's risky and it might not work and continue forward.

And just do it and just realize that usually it's not the end of the world. I mean, if you jump out of an airplane and you're not convinced that your parachute is, like, that's not a good idea. But most of the stuff we do, the worst case scenario is that you'll look a little bit like an idiot, often to people who you may never see again as long as you live.

We can deal with that.

Yeah. And I would say practice as well. One of the things that Susan Jeffers talks about in the book is expanding your zone of comfort. So, you know, probably the very first day you ever Went to work at your job or, you know, met your, whatever, girlfriend's parents, you were probably quite nervous. But now you go to work and you're not nervous anymore because you know these people. So the first time, like, the first time you ever got on a bike, you were really nervous and now you can ride a bike and it's fine. So think about stuff that you've done. Probably the first time you, like, got on the subway, it was really terrifying and now it's just second nature. So there will be things that once you do them with practice, you'll stop being scared of doing them. So practice doing things and sometimes in terms of talking to people, that can be. Practice having a bit of a chat with the person you buy your coffee from, you know, just asking them how they are and then that's it. Start with something really small and then once you get into chatting with those people, then, then that's going to make it easier for you to talk to people, you know, at work or at a networking event or at a conference or whatever. So practice tiny little, you know, practice frightening yourself in tiny little ways through the day as well. Because I feel like not only do you start becoming comfortable with those things, but it also, that's historical evidence that you can give yourself so that when you're doing other scary things, you think, oh, well, all this other historical evidence shows me that it's not the end of the world if it doesn't go the way that I hoped it would. And sometimes I feel like I asked this guy out once when I was at university and it was a guy that I worked with and I had made out with him at a couple of parties but didn't realize I liked him. And then I had this moment where I was like, oh my God, I love Matt Lloyd. And I basically just went round to his house and was like, so turns out I really like you. Do you want to be a friend? And he said no. And he said no in a lovely way. But I went round and sorted out all these other personal relationships that I had. And I think had he said yes, I probably wouldn't have been able to do that. But it was exactly that thing where I was like, I asked him out, he flatly turned me down and I'm alright, so I'm amazing, I'm a superhero. I was able to do that incredibly terrifying thing and the worst case scenario happened and I survived. So therefore I can go and confront all these other situations because nothing that awful can happen.

Thank you, Marcia. It's so insightful and articulate. I love it. If people want to get a hold of you, where should they go?

They can go. I've made a very special webpage, secret webpage, just for anyone who's listened to this interview where I'll put the links to all those blogs that I talked about. And you can find that@yesyesmarcia.com Greg G.

R E G All right, so yesesmarcia.com Greg and she'll have the blog post that she mentioned and she'll have lots of good stuff and you should definitely check that out because Marcia's great and I highly recommend her newsletter. So thanks, Marcia. Thanks again for coming on and we'll talk soon.

Thanks. That was so fun.

All right, take care. Thank you for listening to the Bravery Project with Greg Faxson. To learn more about Greg and to subscribe to his weekly Updates, please visit Gregfaxon.com if you enjoyed this episode, send it to a friend or leave a rating interview in itunes. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.