Re-Release 10: (Ep. 15) Stop Waiting for Perfect Conditions

And I always say that to myself when I’m scared, when there’s risk, I can always get back on the train. I can always go home, right? I can always go back to safety. You can always find another job that you hate. You can always fire that employee and get your money back. You could decide not to hire that person after interviewing a bunch of people.

You could decide, “This strategy doesn’t work for me anymore,” and stop using it. You can always go back to safety. It’s not set in stone. If you take a risk, you’re not there, stuck there forever. There’s always the option to return to what is safe and comfortable.

It’s not the end of the world. So when you think about, “Oh I’m taking this massive, enormous risk,” actually, you’re not in a lot of ways. It’s really not as risky as we’re making it in our heads.

Welcome to the Hello Seven Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Rodgers, wife, mother of four children, a lover of Beyoncé, coffee drinker, and afro-wearer, and I just happen to be the CEO of a seven-figure business. I am on a mission to help every woman I meet become a millionaire. If you want to make more money, you are in the right place. Let's get it going.

So, I talk to women every single day on Instagram. You can follow me @rachrodgersesq or on Facebook in my free Hello Seven Facebook group. Find us on Facebook. But these are the places that I am interacting with women every day. And then, of course, I get a million messages in my inbox every day from women who want to build wealth, women entrepreneurs, very advanced women entrepreneurs, women who are just starting out as entrepreneurs, and really at every level I see women waiting, and it drives me a little bit nuts, I’ll be honest.

I talk to a lot of women who are waiting for the perfect conditions before they make the next move; whether it’s, “I’m waiting to hire someone and bring them onto my team until I’m ready.” And I say, you know, what would being ready look like?

And they describe things – either they can’t describe what being ready would look like, or they describe things which are unlikely to happen, you know, like, “When I have an extra $500,000 in my bank account then I’ll be ready to hire. When I sell X, Y, Z more widgets, then I’ll be ready to hire.” But the reality is that you need that person. You need to hire that person to help you sell more widgets, to help you get that 500K in your bank account. So, not likely to happen.

And that’s, of course, hiring is a big one that scares people, especially if you’ve hit 100,000 and you want to go beyond that, you have to start hiring people to make more money. But that’s not the only one, right, whatever that next move is. For a lot of women, it’s transitioning. Like, I’ve started out with this business and I’m ready to move onto something else, you know.

Sometimes your first business is a gateway to the next one. It’s a gateway to what you really want to be doing. So the fear around launching that thing that you really want to launch, maybe sharing that message that you really want to share that is a bit risky that is going to turn some people off, coming up with your special impactful personal revolution that you’re creating with your business. It could be investing. I see this a lot too wit women investing in real estate and being scared to make the move.

And by the way, it’s not just women, men do this too. However, this podcast is for women, so I’m talking to you. So I want to talk about this; waiting for perfect conditions, because the reality is that those perfect conditions rarely ever come and that means we rarely ever make the moves we say we’re going to make, so that business never gets started, that property never gets invested in, that employee never gets hired, and we never make the moves that we say we want to make because we’re always waiting for something to be perfect, for conditions to be ripe and, you know, juicy.

And that’s usually not how it works. What I want to talk to you about today is ushering in those conditions, because we think we need to just sit around and wait for them to fall into our lap, and that’s not the case. Typically, we have to usher in the conditions to make it possible to do the things we want to do and make the moves that we want to make.

An example I’ll give you is buying a house. My husband and I bought our dream home last year, and a building process was part of it as well. And I’m actually writing a blog post about that, so if you don’t read the blog, go to helloseven.co/blog and you will see that on the blog in the next week or two.

So you’ll see, when you read that post, and one of the things that I’m sharing in that article, is the steps that I had to take to be ready, the steps that I had to take to make myself ready, to create the conditions that would allow for me to buy my dream home. And it’s starting before you’re ready and you always, always have to do that. That is part of the process.

And you can’t run away from discomfort because that’s just what you have to do. And so even when it comes to buying a home, I was looking at houses, I was trying to consider what neighborhood I wanted to be in. so I was working with a realtor even though I didn’t have my full 20% in my bank account yet. I knew it would be there by a certain time and I started before it was there.

And honestly, really, once I’d narrowed down the neighborhood I wanted to be in, the kind of home that I wanted to have, once I’d narrowed those things down, then I was so much more motivated to get that last but of that 20% deposit that I needed. So you often have to start before you’re ready and you prepare yourself and the conditions sort of ready while you’re making the move, you know what I’m saying?

A lot of times, we think once I have everything right, that’s when you start. No, you start before you have everything right, and I’m using air quotes for that. You start before. Like, when I hired my first employee, I put a job description out and started taking applicants and started interviewing people before I felt ready to start paying that salary.

But I started the process anyway. And as I went through the process and started to narrow down and found those people that I thought were going to be my top three – and I was hiring an associate for my law firm, so this was my first big hire, it was a really big deal, not a low-level position, I was hiring an attorney. So, first of all, it’s a lengthy process. And during that process, I started to get a real good understanding of what do I actually need to be ready.

I didn’t even know how to be ready until I actually started. And that’s the point that I’m trying to make to you guys. I didn’t realize, I need to be ready to train this employee. So I started to realize I actually don’t want to hire someone who comes from a big law firm because I have to un-teach all of the stuff they’ve learned at a big firm, because working at a small firm is completely different, you know. So I don’t want that type of person, so let me alter my job description a little bit so I can attract the people that I do want.

And then I realized, well, I need to have a training program for them. What kind of salary is this person looking for? Oh, I thought I needed to pay this salary, actually this other salary with certain benefits is what the people who I really want are looking for. Maybe I don’t need to offer the huge salary, I can offer a comfortable salary and also working from home remotely, and that’s the benefit.

So, what I’m saying is the job description got changed, the interview process changed. What I was looking for, who I was looking for changed as I started. I figured it out as I went. And that’s the key thing that I want you to take away from this is that you actually have to start before you’re ready and that’s how you get ready, by starting, by doing.

I think we tend to think we just need to sit and philosophize and meditate and all of the genius that we need will come just melt into our minds. And yes, I think there is a time and place for meditation and for time to think. You know, I always tell my clients, you need CEO time. You’re the CEO of your business, of the empire you’re trying to create, so you need time to think. So yes, there is a place for that, but we’re not going to think our ways to the life that we want. We actually have to turn that thinking into actual action.

We have to do, and I think – no, I don’t think, I know – you learn while you do. So getting in the game now so that you can begin the learning process is going to move you a lot faster and is going to make you ready. That is how it works. So that’s one of the things I want to share. And here’s the thing too about imperfect conditions; I think we are way too obsessed with comfort, and that’s why we don’t want to take risks. That’s why we want to wait for perfect conditions.

Well, I’ll be comfortable if I launch my business and leave my job but I have a huge sum of money in the bank that I could live off for the next 10 years. Let me tell you something, honey, if you have this huge sum of money in the bank that you could live off for the next 10 years, you wouldn’t be starting a business. You’d be quitting your job and probably laying on a beach, maybe working on a book, and you know, slowly figuring out what you want to do with your life, right?

You’ve already bought yourself freedom. Rarely are we going to have those kinds of conditions available to us, especially as women and especially as women of color. We don’t tend to have those kinds of resources. The generational wealth that is available to us is very different based on your culture and the conditions of our country and racism in our country and sexism in our country.

We’ve been discriminated against in a variety of ways, so all of these things make it so that we rarely have the conditions. Most of us are not going to have that. Most of us are not going to have a bank account that we can call on. Most of us don’t have a trust fund. We don’t have family who can bail us out and pay our mortgage if shit hits the fan. A lot of us do not have those kinds of safety nets.

And if you were only willing to make a move if there is an epic enormous safety net, well guess what, you’re not going to ever make that move. You’re never going to take those risks, which means you’re never going to get those rewards. And that’s just part of the game. And I think the more that you can build that muscle of being comfortable with discomfort and being comfortable with taking risks, the faster you’re going to grow your wealth and grow your business and accomplish the things that you want to accomplish in life.

And here’s the other message that I have for you; getting outside of your comfort zone is a goal in and of itself. It’s not just a means to an end, like, “I’m willing to not have that paycheck every week in order to basically get to a place where I can have the business. I’m willing to hire this person and put them on my team and deal with the discomfort of I’ve got to split my salary now, instead of taking home everything that’s left in the business, I’m sharing it. I’m giving part of that to an employee that I’m paying a salary to. And I’m going to do that so I can grow my business.”

It’s not like discomfort is a negative thing or those risks are a negative thing. It’s exhilarating, right, to be uncomfortable. Comfortable is boredom, right? Comfort is boredom and there’s a time and place for comfort, but you know when comfort feels the best? When you’ve been out there all day in the arena taking risks, working your ass off, trying to make shit happen, and you come home at the end of the day and you’re with your family and you’re on the couch relaxing, and that’s where comfort comes in and that’s where comfort feels amazing.

But if you’re on that couch day in and day out and you never get off of it and you never go out into the world and take risks, well then, that comfort becomes less comfortable because we know we’re not living up to our full potential, we’re bored, we’re not using out intellect the way that we could be. We’re not using our talent the way that we could be. So that so-called comfort that you’re holding onto so very tightly is actually really not that comfortable.

It’s actually really uncomfortable if you’re not out there taking risks. So don’t rob yourself of the opportunity to take a risk, put something out into the world, make something and share it, put your offers out to the world and see how they respond, pitch yourself for that podcast or pitch yourself for that book deal. Make an offer on that property. Take a chance on yourself to try something that’s really challenging because that’s how you know you’re living. And that’s how you know you’re living up to your full potential and you feel alive and it’s exciting.

So, I want to stop for a moment and share a story about my own journey with this recently, waiting for perfect conditions. And trust me, even though I’m talking to you about it, maybe even beating you up about it a little bit, I still do this. So I have to battle myself as well and, you know, I deal with these challenges as well.

So let me give you an example; I recently came across a building in downtown Greensboro. I live in Greensboro, North Carolina. I’m a New Yorker that lives in North Carolina because I just wanted to get out of New York. And so I was driving by a particular building, an old historic building in downtown Greensboro and I saw it and thought, wow, I love this building. It’s an historic old brick building. It’s built in the 1800s, fascinating history, and I saw it was for sale, absolutely prime location downtown and totally looks a little dilapidated on the inside. Clearly, it’s a gut renovation.

And so, anyway, I saw this building a year ago, friends. So I saw this building and I drove by it many times for a year. And there was a sign out front with the phone number of the realtor. If you were interested in purchasing the building or learning more about it, you could call that number.

And I drove by probably at least 30 times and I never called that number. One time, several months ago, I did Google the address and I found the listing for it online. So I did take that step, and that was probably months in. After seeing it for months I finally was like, let me just Google the listing. And so I Googled it, looked it up, found out it was an old historic mill, it’s on the National Historic Register, found out a little bit about its history, that it used to be a mill many years ago in Greensboro when Greensboro was just being built up and created.

It was built right next to the railroad strategically. So it was a building that was very active and that a business grew wildly in long, long ago. And then later on it was a boarding house, and then later on it was like a garage for a small business. And that’s the last owner. That’s the person who owns it right now.

So, anyhow, after driving past this building for a year, taking months to even just take a look at the listing, I recently, a few weeks ago, drive past it again because I happened to be parked in the parking lot that’s on the end of the street that it’s on, so I had to drive past it to leave the parking lot.

And when I drove past it, I thought to myself, let me just give them a call and find out what the story is with this building. It’s been sitting here for the better part of a year for sale. Let’s find out what the story is. Let me just call them. Let me just take step number one.

So it took me a freaking year, guys, to do that. So I finally took step number one, called the realtor, had a great conversation with her, found out more about the building, why it’s been sitting, buyers that have come in and then walked away, what the seller is looking for, all of that, and became even more interested.

And so, I said, “Screw it, let’s see it.” So I’m going to go, let’s go with the realtor into the building and check it out and get the full history. And I did that a few weeks ago, and the next thing I know, I’m sitting down with a banker, and the next thing I know, I’ve put the building under contract, I’ve made an offer, it was accepted, and I’m purchasing the building.

And on this very long journey to renovating this old historic building in downtown Greensboro and turning it into Hello Seven headquarters, where we will host events for women entrepreneurs, have offices for my team and who knows what else we’ll do. We’re considering having apartments in there and just kind of short-term housing for when people come to our events, and other things.

But here’s the point that I’m making; it took me a year of driving past this building to even make the phone call to take the first step. And I think I was waiting for perfect conditions. I was waiting until, I just bought a house last year, just had a baby last year, I’m working a very busy and successful business, launched a podcast, maybe I’m doing enough. Maybe I don’t need to add any other excitement to my life or any other big projects.

So everything about my life says no to purchasing this building, to renovating it, to dealing with the fact that it’s on a historic register, which adds like 17 layers of complication to it, and it needs renovation. Like, I could have bought a building that was already renovated and done and move-in ready, but that’s not the case with this project and it barely ever is, because of course, I’m not interested in a building that’s, like, perfectly done already that I could just walk into. That would be too easy for me. You guys should know me by now.

But the point that I’m making is that it took me a really long time to even say yes to the first step, and I was looking for those conditions, like when I have a bunch of money in the bank, when I’m ready for real estate investing, that’s not going to be until a few years from now. All of these reasons, I had millions of reasons, very good, very legitimate reasons, and I think that’s the thing that gets us is when we think about it and when we reason to ourselves why we can’t or why we’re not ready, those reasons always sound really good.

We are smart women; we are very good at convincing ourselves that we are not ready. We are very good at it. And one of the things that one of my clients says that I love – shout-out to Radiah Rhodes from Evók Life. Check out her business. She’s amazing. I’ll link it up in the show notes. She’s an incredible executive coach. And one of the coaching questions that she loves to ask is, what is it that you are fighting for?

When we’re trying to convince ourselves we’re not ready to take another step, we’re fighting for that. We’re fighting for that. We will argue with you. We will argue you down about why we are not ready, about how we need more money, how we need more time, how we need more skills, how we need more expertise, how we need more experience, how we need more of all the things and we can’t possibly be ready right now. And we will fight for that.

And so, Radiah likes to ask, what is it that you are fighting for? Are you fighting for your dream not to happen? Because that’s what it sounds like right now. I think it’s a great question to ask yourself, when you are fighting for waiting and not making moves and not taking the risks that you need to take to accomplish the things you want to accomplish in the world, to fully live out your purpose, there are going to be risks, and you cannot live out your purpose without them. So you’ve got to get really, really comfortable with making them.

Okay, and I speak this to you as much as I speak it to myself. And so, I finally made the move and now we’re starting this process, no we’re in the process of finding an architect, and then it will be the next step after that and the next step after that. And it’s an enormous project and it’s just one little baby step at a time, but you’ve got to take that step one and then you’ve got to take that step two.

And then you start to build up that momentum, and then you go, go, go, okay. So do not fight for all of your reasons why you can’t do the thing you want to do. I have a million reasons why this is a bad idea. In fact, I had a conversation with my husband where my husband was like, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

And we had a whole full conversation about it and he laid down the reasons, like here’s the litany of reasons why maybe this is not the best time. But here’s the thing; the market is not going to wait for when I’m ready. Like, that building will be gone at some point. If I waited another year, that building would be gone.

It could be gone in the next three months if I hadn’t put an offer in. So at some point, you’ve got to make the move. Market conditions change. I remember when I taught a marketing strategy to a group of my clients a few years ago and a lot of them took advantage of it, they jumped on it, they get a bunch of clients, they got momentum in their business, they built their audience and it was really working for them.

Others waited and said, “Well I’m not ready to make that marketing move yet. I’m not ready to execute that strategy.” Well, guess what, two years later, that strategy no longer works because market conditions change and what works today may not work tomorrow. The opportunities available today may not be available tomorrow or three months or six months. We may not be available in three months or six months or years from now, right?

We don’t hope for that, we don’t want that, but the reality is that we’re not going to live forever and if that doesn’t motivate you, I don’t know what will. So I waited a year for perfect conditions, and guess what, they still haven’t arrived and so I’ve put that offer in. And lucky for me, that building was still available when I finally made the move.

But I want to motivate you guys to move faster and be willing to take risks faster. Build up that muscle, because if you keep sitting around and waiting, you may find that your opportunities are going away and I think you’ll also find that it gets harder and harder to take risks as you continue to wait.

And here’s one of the things that helped me a ton when I was younger, another little quick story. When I was a college student – I believe I was 19 years old – I had this opportunity to do a semester in Washington DC. And so you go to DC, you get an internship, you live there with other students who are also doing the Washington semester.

It’s a really exciting opportunity to experience where government happens in our country. And so I applied, I got accepted, it got an incredible internship for Hillary Clinton when she was a junior senator for New York. An amazing opportunity, right? And I remember, I was super excited about it. I did all of the preparation, you know, packed my bags, went to all of the sessions to prepare to go that they had for us and I remember the night before I was supposed to leave, I was taking the train down to DC from New York.

And I remember, the night before I was supposed to leave, I was literally in the shower crying in very dramatic fashion, okay. And my mother comes in the bathroom and is like, “What the hell are you crying about? What is going on?” And I told her I was scared, that I was really scared to leave home, this was my first time leaving home, leaving New York, I was going to live with people, have a roommate – shout out to Roxanne from Romania, she was my roommate – and people I didn’t know.

And I was really scared and just thought, like, what if it’s a total disaster, what if I’m not good enough as an intern, what if I hate my roommate? There was so much uncertainty and it made me feel really uncomfortable and I was really toying with the idea of not getting on that train and not actually going.

And my mother said to me, “Listen, if it’s terrible and you hate it, you just get back on the train and come home.” And I was like, oh, I could just get back on the train and come home if it’s terrible. Like, it was like this most eye-opening moment. And I always think about that and I always say that to myself when I’m scared, when there’s risk, I can always get back on the train, I can always go home. I can always go back to safety.

You can always find another job that you hate. You can always find another job that you hate. You can always fire that employee and get your money back. You could decide not to close on that building. You could decide not to hire that person after interviewing a bunch of people.

You could decide, “This strategy doesn’t work for me anymore,” and stop using it. You can always go back to safety. It’s not set in stone. If you take a risk, you’re not there, stuck there forever. You can always close that business and go back to working a full-time job. There’s always the option to return to what is safe and comfortable.

It’s not the end of the world. So when you think about, “Oh I’m taking this massive enormous risk,” actually, you’re not in a lot of ways. It’s really not as risky as we’re making it in our heads. We’re really working it up.

And I was making DC mean like the point of no return, and that’s actually not the case, right? I could get back on the train, no one was stopping me, and go home at any time. So that gave me the courage to get on the train the next day. And of course, I went and had an amazing time, learned a ton, and then at the end of my internship, I actually wound up getting a job and staying in DC for a year and a half.

So it wound up being a really powerful time in my life and I learned a ton of things that were really crucial to me becoming the person that I’ve become. And so you’ve got to be willing to take those risks because there’s magic on the other side of it too and, you know, the safety net that I want to build in that my mother gave me that I want to give you is that you can always go back. You can always go back. It’s not set in stone.

So, I want to talk to you about how to mentally prepare for taking those risks and for taking imperfect action, because really, we think, “Oh I need to prepare by gathering as much money as possible, gathering as much knowledge as possible,” and we think of all of these physical things, you know.

We think, “Oh I need to prepare by getting physically fit.” We think of all of these things that we need to do to prepare, but I think we don’t mentally prepare, and that’s the only preparation that actually really matters. So I want to give you a process that you can use to mentally prepare yourselves to take risks.

And I will tell you too, the more that you do this, the easier it becomes. So when I take risks, when my friends who are running businesses similar to mine, similar size as mine, we all take risks on a daily basis and it’s not as scary because we’re used to it and we’re calculated. We have a whole history of taking risks that panned out and worked for us.

And we have a few blips on the map that didn’t work out as well, and all of that gives us courage. Like, we’re still standing even though we’ve had a couple of failures, we’ve had things not go the way that we planned and here we still are, still making great money, making an impact on the world, doing the work that we love.

So, if we have that history, we can rely on that and that makes us feel more comfortable and we’ve built up that muscle, that risk-taking muscle, and that’s what allows us to be able to take more risks and be comfortable with it.

So let me talk to you about how to mentally prepare to take a risk. So, the first step to getting yourself mentally prepared is self-care. Yes, it’s always going to be self-care. And here’s what I mean; it’s not just going to the spa. I don’t think of self-care as going to the spa.

I mean, take care of yourself at like a base level of quality, okay. And a lot of us, as women, don’t do that because we take the lion’s share of the work around the house, we also have jobs. We take a lot of the childcare on and the responsibility for taking care of parents or siblings or whatever. And so we tend to, you know, not take breaks, not eat well, not play well, not rest well, and so that’s why self-care is the first thing on this.

Because here’s the thing, if you want to take a risk, you can get yourself very triggered and very stressed and really feed into that feeling of, like, this is scary, let me drive myself insane and get into this really heightened emotional state where nobody can tell me nothing. You’re not accepting any sound advice when you’re in a heightened triggered emotional state.

And self-care takes you out of that, so that’s why making sure you’re resting and sleeping, making sure you’re having time for play – you need to go have some fun. Remember when Susan Hyatt was on the podcast a couple of weeks ago and she talked about how important pleasure is, so make sure you’re building pleasure and play into your day every day. We need to have fun every day, not every month or every six months.

Make sure you’re eating well, eating for fuel, okay, and giving yourself rest, mental rest, actual sleep. And also, moving your body, moving your body is really great. If you’ve got this energy pent up in your body or if there’s something, a move that you’re really wanting to make and you haven’t made it yet, a lot of times, that sort of builds up emotionally, so exercise, moving your body is a great way to process emotion, so going for a walk, getting on your Peloton if you have one, you know, exercising in any way that you feel comfortable.

It doesn’t have to be extreme exercise. You can go for a slow stroll, it doesn’t matter what it is, but moving your body, really in any way, helps you to process some of that emotion. It will take you out of a triggered state and just put you in a much better place where you can prepare yourself mentally to take a risk.

So, number one is self-care. Number two is write down your vision for how you want this to go. Where will you be in a year? Write that down. Really take the time to just journal about your vision and really imagine it. I do this sometimes before I go to bed. I will literally lay in bed and just imagine, what do I want to do with this building? What would it feel like to welcome women into this building, to host events there?

You know, I’m picturing lots of light, so that means I’m going to talk to the architect about tearing out all the walls and having windows on three sides on the second floor and I could see that as a beautiful event space. Maybe I want a grand staircase that leads up to the event space. I want a terrace of some kind so we can have outdoor space.

You know, I want inspiring offices there. I’d love that there’s a retail space that’s part of this building that I could rent that out to an amazing coffee shop or restaurant. So I start to envision, what is it that I want this to look like? What do I want it to feel like? What colors do I want? Really allow yourself to envision this, and that’s what I do a lot of times as I’m going to bed. It’s almost like part of my prayer practice that I pray and then I also just have these visions of what I want to create in the world and then ask for the help that I need to make that happen.

So that’s part of what I do, and that’s part of it, creating that vision. So, create that vision, visualize it, write it down, what does that look like? What does success look like for this project, this thing that you want to take on? What is it going to feel like in a year if you take that risk now or in the near future? So that’s your step number two is write it down.

So, step number one is self-care, step number two is write down your vision. And then step number three is talk to people who are doing it, who are taking similar risks. Community is essential. Community is extremely important as part of this process of taking a risk. And I think it’s funny the way that we prepare. We try to gather all this knowledge, we try to gather money, we just try to think about these things all day every day and what we don’t do is go find people who are already doing it and talk to them.

Studies have shown that your peer group greatly influences who you are as a productive member of society, as an entrepreneur, and there are even studies that have argued that there is a correlation between your network and the level of success that you can achieve. I’m going to say that again; there are studies that show there is a correlation between your network, the people that you are interacting with on a regular basis and the level of success that you can achieve.

So, if you up-level your network, you up-level your own success. And that’s why community is incredibly important. That’s why I build community into all of my coaching programs, because interacting with your peers who are out there doing it, who are in the arena, is incredibly important. And you want to share your vision. So once you write down that vision, share it, and share it with your peer group. Share it with people who are out there taking risks.

Share it with people who get it, because if you don’t, if you share it with the wrong people, people who don’t believe, people who are working their nine to five and don’t really see beyond that, then they will kill your dream and they will get you in a bad headspace. So make sure you’re sharing it with people who get it and who are out there doing it and surround yourself with those people. Have conversations with them. Talk to them about the risks that they’re taking.

And you’re already doing it by listening to this podcast. And you could take this a step further by joining my free Facebook group, Hello Seven, which you can find on Facebook. I’ll link it up in the show notes, but that’s another great community of women entrepreneurs who are out there doing it. So if you want to connect with other women, that is a great way to do it.

Okay, so that’s step number three; create community and talk to people who are doing it and taking those risks. When I started my law practice way back when, I spoke to about 13 different lawyers. I cold emailed them, asked them if they would talk to me, booked 20-minute conversations with all of them, a few of them it was an email exchange because we just couldn’t find the time or they were too busy.

But I got data, so much valuable information from those conversations that really shaped my business. So gather information from people who are out there doing what you want to be doing. And then, once you have built that community, shared your vision, the next step is to map out the first three steps.

And this is super important. Map out the first three steps because what I find is a lot of times, I talk to women who are mapping out the next 24 steps. And here’s the problem with that; you get overwhelmed. It’s scary. When I think about, like, just to get to a place where we can close on this building, I have to hire an architect, I have to hire a structural engineer. I have to do an environmental survey. There are so many things that have to happen with this building that I’m buying before I can actually even close on the building and then actually begin the work.

So, there are 1000 steps between me walking into my beautiful space that I’ve built and welcoming women into it, right? There are many, many steps before I get there. If I think about all the steps, my brain is going to explode. So instead of doing that, instead of getting myself into a place where I’m scared because there’s so many steps and I’m overwhelmed by it and so I make no moves whatsoever, what I think about is the next step is I need to hire an architect.

What do I need to do to hire an architect? I need to meet them at the building. I want to get three different architects to go through it and hear what they have to say, get their proposals, and then make a decision. Okay, great, now once we’ve got the architect, now we move to step number two, and just one step at a time.

So, that’s why I want you to map out the first three steps and nothing beyond that. What are the first three things that have to happen for you to start to make a move? And honestly, by step number three, you would have built up some momentum and you’ll be ready to map out steps four through 10 then. But let’s just map out steps one through three.

So, map out the first three steps of the moves that you need to make, and then set a date and time to take step number one. And my recommendation is no later than Monday. I don’t care what day of the week it is; make sure the move that you’re making, if you’re going to make that move, make it by Monday.

If you need to call someone and gather information, make that call by Monday. If it’s Monday, okay, then you have next Monday, but you’re never more than seven days away from taking that first step.

That first step can’t be six months out or seven months out or 12 months out. It can’t be three weeks out because that’s how it gets eaten up and goes into the ether and never happens, okay. So set a date and time.

And here’s a way to even better improve that; set a date and time when you’re going to take step one and then share it with those members of that community that you built up. That’s the pro way to do it so that you can actually be held accountable.

Okay, so let’s go through this one more time. Your homework is to mentally prepare for that next risk that you are going to take is, step number one, self-care. Make sure you’re sleeping well. Make sure you’re playing well, getting rest, moving your body, and eating well. That’s step number one.

If you’re not doing that, it’s going to be hard to do anything that involves a big risk. So take care of yourself is step number one. Step number two, write down your vision for how you want this to go. Where will you be in a year when you make this move, a year from today, if you make this move right now?

Step number three, talk to people who are doing it and taking those risks. Make yourself a part of a community of women who are doing it and share your vision with those women, share your vision with that community. And then, step number four, map out the first three steps and set a date and time to take the first step. And then, pro tip, bonus, share the date and time that you’re going to take that step with that community that you’ve become a part of.

If you do that, I promise you, you will be ready. That’s all you need to do to get yourself ready. All of these other things that you think you have to do, all these other hoops that you think you need to jump through, trust me, you’re worthy right now. You’re smart enough now. You’re powerful enough now. You’re fit enough now.

You don’t need to wait for the perfect conditions. You’ve got it. You can do it. So go out there and make it happen. Take imperfect action, take those risks and create the magic that you need to create in the world. I’ll talk to you next time, bye, guys.

Thanks for listening. Now, before you go, it's an incredibly exciting time here at Hello Seven. That's because my new book, We Should All Be Millionaires: A Woman's Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power is on bookshelves now. You can pick it up from Amazon, Target, Barnes and Noble or your favorite Black owned independent bookstore.

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