Courage & Clarity

"The hardest thing about earning a living doing something I care about is how deeply I care about my mistakes."

"The hardest thing about earning a living doing something I care about is believing that I'll actually figure it out one day."

"The hardest thing about earning a living doing something I care about is believing that I'm one of the lucky ones who 'gets to'."

Maybe you're listening to this podcast because you're not currently earning a living doing something you care about.

Perhaps you're in your car right now on your way to the job that you hope to leave. I've been in that driver's seat, listening to podcasts about people who are walking their kids to school and creating cool things, being completely in charge of how much they make.

And I know how badly you want that to be you.

 Or, maybe you're already in this thing. You're trying to figure it out.

You've got a website, you're working on building your audience and you're trying SO hard to find your people and grow your tribe.

And it's so challenging at times, you wonder if this is all worth it.

Maybe it would be easier to go get a job that could pay the bills so you can do your thing.

Or worse, maybe you're so burnt out on your thing that you're not sure you want to do this at all. And you want to give up.

And I get that… because this is hard.

 It is not easy to have meaningful work in your life. And once you find it, you gotta work to keep it. It's not an "I found it and now I'm set for life!" So that's where this meaningful work series comes in.

 I want to talk to you about why having meaningful work in your life is worth it. I want to draw a contrast between a life that has meaningful work, and one that is resigned to the mundane.  

So in the Meaningful Work Series, we're going to get into the tactics for earning meaningful work, and keeping it in your life.

We'll talk about a two-part strategy for NOT giving up on your work.

These three episodes are the very foundation upon which the entire Courage & Clarity podcast is built. I seek conversations with brave people who are fighting for meaningful work, and I get them on the show to reveal the VISION they cultivated, as well as the PROCESS.

 I'm breaking this episode down into five parts: 

1. Why our current understanding of "work" is broken (and what to replace it with)
2. What is meaningful work? Is it worth it?
3. How to recognize YOUR perfect opportunity to do meaningful work 
4. The two big keys you need to earn a living doing something you care about
5. The biggest obstacles people face as they go after work they really love 

That's a WRAP on Season 2! I can't believe we did it -- 10 guests, 20 interviews, 2 bonus episodes, and a whole lot of love and connection with you all. I hope you got as much value out of the wide array of talent on the show this past season. 

Now, it's time to answer your big questions from Season 2 (and life in general)! 

I received such awesome questions this time around, and it was so fun connecting with you in this way! 

I definitely saw some themes in the questions this time around, and that actually confirmed my desire to create the Meaningful Work Series on the podcast over the next couple weeks. Eek! Stay tuned, I'm majorly excited about this month. 

Here are just a few of the answers I'm hitting you with today:  

• How to make decisions when you feel stuck between two options
• My strategy for killer podcast interviews 
• What to do if you're scared you don't have enough expertise, you've made too many mistakes or you're not far enough along to teach others 
• How to choose between "being responsible" and "chasing your dreams"
• How to manage time when you feel like your work keeps bleeding into your life
• What to do with old blog posts when you're embarrassed by where you started 
• How to turn more inquiries into sales!

SHOW NOTES:

• Season 1 Clarity Guide
• Fizzle - Try 5 weeks free
• The Lively Show
• Jess Lively's Intuition Writing Exercise 
• Rachel & Kristen of Clarity on Fire - Courage & Clarity
• Nicole Lapin, author of Boss Bitch - Courage & Clarity 
• Skype Recorder 
• Christina Scalera, Legal Essentials (Clarity)
• Amanda Boleyn, She Did It Her Way - Courage
• Tsh Oxenreider - Courage & Clarity
• Katie Proctor - Courage & Clarity 
• Clarity on Fire Passion Profile Quiz
• Minimum Viable Income
• Blair Staky - C

After throwing it back to the days of depressed Netflix binge-watching and cubicle panic attacks in our Courage episode, I'm so excited to dig into the Clarity episode with Rachel East & Kristen Walker! After all, their website & business is Clarity On Fire and they definitely live up to the name in this episode.  

 I've heard from so many of you that you just want to find a way making a living doing something you actually care about. In truth, that mission is the entire premise of this podcast. And so, having Rachel & Kristen dive into this topic where they both shine so brightly was a true treat for me, and I hope you get as much from this conversation as I did! 

Here's what you'll learn in this awesome episode:

• Why it's so hard to find our passion in the first place
• Why many of us get so stuck choosing between what we're good at and what we actually like
• How to make working feel more like living
• The one question Rachel & Kristen would ask you if you're feeling guilty about changing your career path 
• Why finding your passion is kind of like looking at a giant buffet, and how to figure out what the heck to put on your plate
• The 3 things you absolutely MUST know about passion to help you find yours!

SHOW NOTES:

• Freshbooks - get 30 days free!
• Courage & Clarity Q+A - submit your Q's here
• Clarity on Fire 
• The Passion Profile Quiz 

It's the grand finale of Season 2 of the Courage & Clarity podcast, and I couldn't imagine two more perfect guests for playing us out with a bang. This week I'm joined by Rachel East and Kristen Walker of Clarity on Fire, two incredible career & life coaches for millennial who feel stuck. 

I've been following Rachel & Kristen for a long time now (I mentioned them a while ago on The Fizzle Show as one of my very favorite emails I get each week -- and I'm only subscribed to a few!) 

I was excited to "meet" Rachel & Kristen, but what I couldn't know in advance was how much fun they were to talk to and how effortlessly we connected via the airwaves. It was kind of magical, guys, and I hope you can hear it too! 

In this Courage episode, we're digging into how these two best friends started a business together in the first place, starting all the way back at the beginning for each of them individually. 

Some of the highlights you'll hear: 

• How to assess whether you should go into business with your BFF - or anyone else for that matter! 
• Why your reality might not be completely true, and the way your current circumstances may be playing tricks on you
• What happens when you challenge the way you've always seen the world (hint: amazing transformation!)
• What it's like when you know this can't be it, but you have no idea what to do next (aka, feeling totally stuck) 
• How being young & naive might actually be a good thing sometimes
• Why Rachel, Kristen nor I have no interest in being a #girlboss (and what we're all doing instead!)

SHOW NOTES: 

• Submit your Questions for the Q&A Episode!
• Clarity on Fire 
• "Confession: I have no desire to be a #girlboss"

In this week's Clarity episode, I'm welcoming Allison Schaaf, founder of PrepDish, back to show!

You’re going to be so inspired by how EASY it can be to be successful. You don’t have to go and spend tons of money acquiring crazy skills -- instead, Allison shows us how we can create something incredibly simple based purely on a customer's needs.

We're diving into: 

• Understanding Customers Better: The number one thing to keep in mind that keep your product beautifully simple 
• Connecting with Customers: The number one question Allison asks to get tons of customer feedback -- and thus provide the solution that people gladly pay for 
• Building a Team: Allison's take on when to hire, and what 2 questions to ask to decide what you need to hand of
• Productivity: How to uncover exactly where your time is going, and shift towards more time on your favorite tasks 

"It’s more often the entrepreneur who’s thinking it needs to have all these bells and whistles, and that can just confuse your customer."

“I could make this fancy app and it might make me appealing to some people, but it would make me more appealing to my core customer?”

SHOW NOTES:

• Freshbooks - grab a month for free
• Allison's service, PrepDish - 2 weeks free!
• Survey Monkey
• Hubstaff 
• Infusion Soft
• The Clarity Jump-Start Guide

This week I'm pumped to welcome the founder of a service I use myself (and am obsessed with!) I've got Allison Schaaf, the founder of PrepDish, a subscription service offering handcrafted gluten-free and paleo meal plans week after week. 

Aside from loving PrepDish as a customer, I wanted to have Allison on the show for a very specific reason:

Her product is incredibly simple. Like, "can this actually be a business?" simple. It's a PDF.

I hope these episodes with Allison challenge you to strip away all the scary beliefs that you need to buy course after course to figure out how to launch a business. 

Allison's the master of putting the customer's needs first, and getting laser-focused on what people actually NEED (hint: it's not a crazy app or 35 module course.)

In this Courage story, we're exploring how Allison got here via her Personal Chef business. I love that Allison started out with a service-based business, and how she worked out the kinks in her workflow before launching a digital product.

Through perfecting her process in people's kitchens, she was able to create a hard-hitting digital product that nails a specific need. 

Here's what we're getting into in this episode: 

• Getting clients: How Allison got her very first client as a personal chef (spoiler: it's not fancy) 
• Refining your services: How to figure out what makes you unique -- and how that translates to your offering
• Networking: How the hard work you do in the beginning may pay off later in surprising ways 
• Idea validation: How Allison's Personal Chef business actually served as the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for her digital product, PrepDish
• Batching: How Allison shifted to a year-long or season-long view of her meal plans, and how she gets more done with less effort 

“I figured out what was unique for me — I was not only a chef, but I was also a dietician.”

“I just had to stop doing anything except the process that I wanted to do. I know you want me to cater your party, but I can’t — this is the one thing I want to do. It really was a decision, this is the way I do things, and I’m only going to work with clients THIS WAY.”

SHOW NOTES:

• My Clarity Jump-Start Guide -- grab yours free
• Special PrepDish offer for C&C Listeners 

After Sarah's Courage story, now we're getting down to business and talking about some real grown-up stuff: making better decisions in our businesses. 

If you feel like a crazy person, jumping around from thing to thing without accomplishing any one task, this episode is for you. 

If you can't summarize what you do in 5 words, this episode is for you. 

And if you're drowning in emails and you find yourself saying "maybe" when in your heart you mean "no", then yep, this episode is for you. 

We're digging into: 

• What startups and pregnant women / mothers can learn from each other
• Why understanding what you do (and don't do!) is absolutely critical to your ability to make decisions -- and exactly how many things you should be doing 
• Where to turn if you have a hard time describing what you do, if what you do doesn't work, or if you feel crazy busy all the time
• How to find your business "North Star"
• The 4 categories of business decision making: Delegate, Defer, Automate & Delete 
• Why you should strive to be a little bit bad at some things (like email), and why it's okay to "break stuff" in your business 

Some favorite quotes from Sarah: 

"Just because somebody has put something on my task list doesn't mean I have to decide to do it." 

"Don't defer it if you really mean NO. Because that's actually mean."

SHOW NOTES:

• Sarah's website
• Startup pregnant 
• Clarity episode with Adrienne Dorison 
• Sarah on Instagram 
• Steph on Instagram

In this week's edition, I've got Sarah K. Peck on the microphone with me! Sarah is an author, startup advisor and yoga instructor based in New York City. She's the founder and executive director of Startup Pregnant, and at this point in her career she's written around 700 essays.(!)

Guys, I truly love and adore every single episode of this show that I've had the privilege to produce. Maybe it's the exact place I'm at in my own life right now as mama to a one year old, but I am really in love with this conversation.

I hope it inspires you, challenges you and lifts you up all at the same time, because that's exactly what happened to me. 

A few big points we dive into: 

• How to find and understand your core identity -- aka, who you really are, in just a handful of words
• The time Sarah broke her foot in college, and the huge lesson that applies to business 
• Why a "just this once" mentality will screw us up, and leads us to a path of excuses 
• The two habit muscles we are always strengthening -- and which one you definitely want to be focusing on 
• Why "waste" and "rest" are not the same -- and how rest is actually an investment in our careers
• How to stop feeling guilty about doing things that feel good to us 
• Why Sarah will take her shirt off and shake her boobies around (wait... what?)

Some of my very favorite quotes from this episode: 

“The true test of perserverance and resilience, the people who make it through their 20 mile march are the ones who look at that moment when they COULD make an excuse and they say I’m choosing to do it anyways” 

“You’re either strengthening the muscle that makes excuses, or you’re strengthening the muscle that does it anyways” 

“The person who wins, the person who makes it happen isn’t the person who has some magical better circumstances than you” 

Then, in the Clarity episode, we're talking about a precise process for way better decision making in our businesses & our lives. Can't wait for you to hear this! 

SHOW NOTES:

• Sarah's website
• Startup Pregnant 
• Sarah on Instagram
• Steph on Instagram

In the second half of my conversation with best-selling author and former CNN & CNBC anchor Nicole Lapin, we're getting real about finances.

You might be itching to become an entrepreneur because of all the perks, but what about the cash? Do you have enough to make it on your own?

As Nicole tells us in this episode, the best entrepreneurs are scrappy. It's easy to fantasize over investors throwing cash at you a la Shark Tank, but that kind of start-up money means you basically have a boss. 

So what can we do to bootstrap this thing on a budget?

In this episode, we're diving into exactly that, plus:

• How to prepare for the un-sexy parts of entrepreneurship (including exactly how much money you should have in the bank) 
• Why "Do it now!" might be the exact wrong advice for starting your business
• Nicole's 3 "E"s of budgeting, and how much money you should have for your essentials, end game & extras 
• The simple (yet brilliant) daily habit Nicole used to pay off her credit card debt (I'm stealing this one!) 
• A precise method for determining whether you have a business idea or a party trick 

Let's go to the show!

SHOW NOTES:

• Freshbooks - get a month for free
• Nicole's website
• Boss Bitch 
• Nicole on instagram
• Steph on instagram 

In this week's edition of the show, I'm sitting down with the energetic, sharp and no-BS Nicole Lapin, author of Boss Bitch, Rich Bitch, host of the television show Hatched, former CNN anchor -- let me summarize: she's pretty freakin' cool. 

Many of us have lots of memories of being cheered on by people who believed in us, hearing reassuring messages that we can just "be ourselves", that we are "special" and born to "stand out". 

But once it's time to grow up and start #adulting, it's so common to be met with an entirely different message -- especially when, like Nicole, you enter an industry full of standards, rigidity and a "this is how we've always done it" mindset.

As an aspiring new anchor, Nicole felt that familiar pressure. Appear older. Wear shoulder pads. Speak with the "news anchor voice". She even had a professor proclaim that, in order to be taken seriously, she should cut her hair short into an "anchor bob".

Once you hear from Nicole in this episode, you'll realize she isn't your typical news anchor (even though she was the youngest anchor at CNN & CNBC, ever -- seriously, she was just 21!) Her hair is long, she speaks like a normal girlfriend over a cup of coffee, and she's no longer on a mission to disguise her age.  

To be it plainly, Nicole stopped trying to overcome herself -- and her audience can't get enough.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• What to do when you're actually an imposter -- aka, so far outside your comfort zone, you feel as though you're learning a whole new language 
• How to stop overcoming who you are, and leveraging your true self to find success instead 
• The importance of money transparency for our professional lives (and how weird it is that we'll tell our girlfriends just about anything -- except our salaries)
• How to look at failure, and why Nicole is happy it took her a decade to publish a book (with at least 5 rejected ideas along the way)

SHOW NOTES:

• Fizzle - grab your free 5 week trial!
• Boss Bitch
• Nicole's website
• Rich Bitch 
• Hatched 
• Nicole on instagram
• Steph on instagram