Have you ever found yourself on the edge of starting a new adventure, afraid and excited at the same time questioning if you have the power to succeed?
It’s like when you’re a little kid and it’s the first time that you jump off a diving board or that first time that you skied down a very large mountain.
Maybe you are fueled by your strong desire to follow a dream and pursue something you have always wanted to do or maybe you want to do something less conventional, more exciting which allows you the freedom to live fully a life you truly want.
It’s that crazy feeling of excitement and terror at the same time and all your confidence that you had leading up to the event somehow drains temporarily from your body when presented with actually pulling the trigger and taking that final step to launch.
Recently, I started a podcast which has been a long time in the making. While I was very good at figuring out the processes and knowledge needed, when it came to actually taking the steps outside of the planning to make it happen, that’s where I got stopped over and over and over again.
By not taking action, I diminished any expectation I could ever be successful.
Whatever your encore career may be, whether it’s a podcast, a retail store, the next greatest gadget, the brainiest marketing concept, the newest health product, diving into the consultant business….it doesn’t matter…. If you stop yourself before you get started you will surely never succeed.
On March 10th I launched my podcast A New Golden Age with 5 episodes and I thought to myself I am not really ready, but if not now, then when?
So I took a leap of faith and I jumped into the pool of the podcast world and I’m now onto my 18th episode.
Mind you, those marketing experts who say it is a simple process I assure you have probably have never done it before or certainly not on their own. It’s more than doing the interview, posting your episode and having the website up at the end of the day. I know enough to be dangerous about a lot of things and I am not opposed to learning outside of my comfort zone but whoever said that it’s easy was probably born post digital age. For anyone that’s over the age of 50 that has not been required to learn those skills, it is not that simple. Everything that I had to learn was absolutely brand new to me.
Let’s break this down………You have to learn the technology from social media platforms and SEO to podcast systems, equipment and audio and video and website development and email campaigns and marketing and newsletters and show notes and interview questions and all of those moving parts that are required if you want to do it as a successful business.
And even if you have the ability to hire someone that can help you with all of these elements you still have to know the basic fundamentals of each one of those concepts and how they all play together.
Recently, for no apparent reason other than allowing fear to creep into my mind, I got really, really scared and I thought Who Am I, who am I to try to put this message out there with no background nor experience in the business aside from being an avid podcast listener.
Who am I, do I know enough, have enough area of expertise in interviewing and then I thought to myself you’re right, “Who am I?”
After talking myself off the cliff I realized these things.
I am ambitious. I am intelligent. I have amazing life experiences and have led a life of being fierce and independent. I have incredible work experiences and I am self taught from the ground floor on how to launch this business and mind you there’s not many people in their midlife that would even consider doing this particularly if they had no background in it…..so I have guts.
And I thought to myself, I am somebody….. kind of like Steve Martin in the movie where he finds his name in the phone book and he realizes that he really is somebody because his name is in there.
Because of that one little thing where he sees his name in print he begins to believe he is important.
So this article isn’t about me….It’s about all of us who have a dream and desire to do something you never felt you were good enough to pull it off.
We all have these incredible amounts of knowledge, insight and intellect in us and I think we often think we are not enough.
We put ourselves in a box believing that we are simply not smart enough or attractive enough, or we don’t know the right people or whatever it might be that we think we don’t have, to be successful.
It has taken due diligence and hard work, financial commitment, sacrifices and putting personal things on hold for quite some time to get this up and going. My work is just getting started. The transformation of the idea to paper to conceptualization to content is happening.
If you really truly want to follow something that you’re passionate about then put your big girl (or Boy) pants on, stop complaining and wishing things were different and go to work because that’s what it’s all about.
Hard work, diligence, persistence, personal sacrifices and a willingness not to give up!
So good luck with whatever you’re dreaming of doing because here is what I do know.
If you wait for something to miraculously happen you’re probably going to end up at the end of your life asking “What happened?”
Cheers to living your best life!
