That Sounds Risky with Sara Emmerson

You leave a meeting and spend the next three hours replaying what you said. Meanwhile, there's a conversation you haven't had or a decision you keep putting off.

Sara Emmerson walks through the 3 Levels of Control: full control, partial control and no control. She explains how to own your actions, use your influence without taking over, and redirect your attention when the final decision belongs to someone else.

In this solo episode:

• Full control: own your preparation, words, follow-through and boundaries.

• Partial control: set expectations, ask questions and let others own their part.

• No control: release the final answer while keeping boundaries and backup plans.

• Work through an unanswered proposal using all three levels.

• Choose one action you can take in the next 24 hours.

Chapters

00:00 Where your energy is going

01:21 Full control: own your part

03:17 Partial control: use your influence

06:48 No control: release and redirect

08:58 The unanswered proposal

09:51 Being the person who does everything

10:28 Your next action within 24 hours

11:47 Coaching and closing

Learn about coaching: https://saraemmersoncoaching.com/

What have you been telling yourself you'll do when you feel more ready?

We're talking about how to tell the difference between needing more preparation and waiting for fear to disappear. And how to make a wise decision, even when you feel nervous.

Am I getting ready? Or am I waiting for this to stop feeling uncomfortable?

Try giving the evidence of your readiness just as much attention as the evidence of your fear. What have you already learned? What have you already handled? What resources do you already have? And what would help you take a responsible first step?

What is your cost of staying?

You're allowed to take a step that helps you learn.

Here's a simple way to work through the decision using my risk model.

- First, reveal the decision.

- Second, identify the right risk.

- Third, select the winning strategy.

- Fourth, keep moving through discomfort.

If there's a decision that you keep putting off or a change you wanna make, a business that you wanna grow, or something you know you're ready to explore, I would love to help you through it. That's what I love helping people do.

Contact me to schedule a conversation about coaching. Tell me what you're considering.

You can be ready and still scared, it's okay. You don't have to have it all figured out. And you don't have to take your next move alone.

saraemmersoncoaching.com

Nick Benoit is a filmmaker, writer, performer and director, and the creative director of Wonderhunt, a nonprofit that makes cinematic short films and gives every one of them away for free. He's also my friend, and I could talk to him literally all day.

As a kid, Nick built imaginary worlds and made his friends play in them. He went to college to become a pastor because it was the only picture of a calling he had, and by the end of his first semester he knew the theology debates at the coffee house were not his people. His first speech grade came back with a note: next time, try breathing. Years later, on the floor of his house after a string of failures, he heard something that changed how he saw his whole life: "I didn't put that on you."

We talk about the year and a half in LA that ended in his first real failure, and why that failure gave him a new kind of bravery. We talk about the email he turned down, the road sign in the Arizona desert that changed his mind, and the season at Willow Creek when the risk was to stay. And we talk about the day he resigned with no job lined up and no safety net, and the backyard fire where Wonderhunt began.

In this episode:

• Building imaginary worlds as a kid, and the narrow picture of calling he grew up with

• "I didn't put that on you," and walking away from the only path he knew

• A year and a half in LA, and how failure created a new bravery

• Twelve resumes, a church in San Diego, and a creative director job he'd never held

• The email he said no to, and the road sign in the Arizona desert

• Why sometimes the risk is to stay

• The people and practices that held him up in a hard season

• Resigning with no safety net

• Starting Wonderhunt around a backyard fire, and giving every film away for free

• The one risk everyone should take: own your labels

More from Nick:

Wonderhunt: wonderhunt.co

Instagram: @wonderhuntco and @nickbenwah

Web: nickbenoit.com

Work with Sara: https://saraemmersoncoaching.com. If you're standing at a crossroads and you don't want to take the next step alone, book a coaching consultation. I would love to help you find your next brave step.

If this episode lands, follow the show and send it to the person you thought of while listening. And remember, the three best words you could say are, "That sounds risky."

Alec Takahashi and I go back a long way. We first met at a Christmas concert I was producing, back when he was on the road with Lincoln Brewster. I loved that name so much I later gave it to my son. So it's a full-circle joy to have him on the show now, because in the years since, Alec has become one of the most respected lighting and production designers working today. He's the co-founder of BKD Creative, he's toured with Thomas Rhett for nine years, and in 2023 he won the Parnelli Award for Lighting Designer of the Year, one of the highest honors in live events, and he believes he's the youngest person ever to take it home.

The line that named this episode is his, not mine. Comfort zone kills growth. Alec has lived that sentence since fifth grade, when a teacher handed him the light board for the cafeteria talent show and told him he might do this for a living. He started cold-emailing production managers at fourteen. He chose the road over college and graduated high school six months early to work full time at his church. And at the end of 2016, with nothing lined up, he walked away from that steady job to see what the road held. That meant couch-hopping, living out of a suitcase, and sitting in a Nashville Starbucks at six in the morning with his luggage, not knowing where the day would take him. A few years later he started a company in the middle of COVID.

We talk about the risk that scared him most recently. A month before rehearsals for a Thomas Rhett tour, management pulled a truck of gear and the whole design fell apart. Instead of fighting over the truck he couldn't control, Alec flew to Chicago, walked the storage floor of his lighting vendor, and redesigned the entire show in four days. It became one of his favorite years. It's the clearest picture I know of the three levels of control, full, partial, and none, and of pouring your energy into the part you can actually change. We also get into why he refuses to be the smartest person in the room, why human connection can't be handed to a chatbot, and the risk he's taking right now that he honestly dreads.

In this episode:

• Why comfort zone kills growth, and how to keep choosing the uncomfortable thing on purpose
• The fifth-grade talent show that started a career, and the teacher who spoke it into existence
• Cold-emailing tour managers at fourteen, and the connection that came back around a decade later
• Choosing the road over college, and graduating early to go all in
• Walking away from a steady job at Christmas with nothing lined up
• The Nashville Starbucks at 6 a.m. with a suitcase and no plan
• Starting a company in the middle of COVID
• The truck that got cut a month before rehearsals, and the four-day redesign that saved the tour
• The three levels of control, and why he only spends energy on what he can actually change
• Treating stress as your body equipping you, not breaking you
• Never being the smartest person in the room, and why he still seeks mentors and becomes one
• Protecting human connection in a world of AI chatbots
• The risk he is taking now that he genuinely dreads

More from Alec:

BKD Creative: bkdcreative.com

Instagram: @alectakahashi and @bkd.creative

Email: [email protected]

Work with Sara: https://saraemmersoncoaching.com. If you're standing at the edge of a risk and you don't want to take it alone, book a coaching consultation. Helping you find the next right risk is my favorite thing to do.

If this episode lands, follow the show and send it to the person you thought of while listening. And remember, the three best words you could say are, "That sounds risky."

Olivia Curry walked into a Muay Thai class above a 7-Eleven in Evanston because the student rate was forty dollars a month and she had just watched a martial arts movie. She was not an athlete. She describes herself as a dork who happens to be stubborn. Fifteen years later she has fought twice for a middleweight world title and is ranked fifth in the world.

In this episode she tells Sara what that actually costs. The eight-week camps and the weight cuts. The pro and con list she made before turning professional, where the whole pro column came down to one half-joking line. The fight she took against a woman who was 12 and 0 with 11 knockouts, a weight class above her, on a card with twenty thousand people watching, where Vegas had her knocked out inside four rounds and she went the distance instead. The world title fight in Atlanta that was cancelled at the weigh-in after six weeks of camp, with her mother and sister already in the arena.

She also talks about her father, who had ALS and died this past spring, and what he taught her about being scared and going anyway. And when Sara asks for the one risk everyone should take, her answer has nothing to do with boxing.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome, and who Olivia Curry is01:53 A $40-a-month gym above the 7-Eleven in Evanston04:23 "I just kept moving the goalposts"10:14 Her dad, ALS, and where the mental toughness came from12:53 The pro-and-con list that said "Eternal glory"16:08 The man in the arena, and the 20,000-person card22:04 Inside an eight-week camp29:12 Walk-out music, and "If I die, I die"33:45 Ranked fifth in the world, and making peace with it49:49 Atlanta: a world title fight cancelled at the weigh-in57:14 The sweetest win, and four ringside tickets01:03:18 Rapid fire, and the one risk everyone should take

Find Olivia

Instagram: @oliviarosecurryWeb: oliviarosecurry.comDirecting and editing: picturenorth.com

Find Sara

saraemmersoncoaching.com

Anna Powell spent about ten years as a publicist, which is a job about telling other people's stories well. The one she could not tell was her own. The night before her very last final exam in college, she opened an email from one of her professors confessing an obsession with her. She took the exam. She graduated. She moved to Chicago, started her career, and put it behind her. Almost two years later, to the day, she started seeing him. On her commute. In a store window she walked past. And then at 5:30 in the morning in the gym of her own building, because he had moved into it.

What we spend most of this hour on is not the six years. It is what those years did to her faith and what she did with them a decade later. Anna stopped being able to ask God why and went and studied the book of Job instead. She calls that season divine therapy, and she means it kindly. The book started in 2014 as non-fiction about suffering, got shelved when she found out she was pregnant, and sat untouched for eight years. What restarted it was a Christmas card. She had nothing to put for herself, so she wrote that she was back to pursuing her dream of writing a book, mailed it to everyone she knew, and could not take it back. Then her husband Dan asked her one question about her intention that turned the whole thing into a novel.

In His Sight came out in March, told from two points of view, Piper's and the man following her. Anna finished it before she turned forty because she decided it was now or never. Here is the part I keep thinking about. She survived the thing. Surviving it was not the risk. The risk was handing it to strangers and letting them read it. If you are sitting on something you have been carrying for years, this one is for you.

In this episode:

• The email the night before her last final exam
• Two years later, and he was living in her building
• What being followed does to how you see yourself
• Losing her faith and going looking for it in the book of Job
• Divine therapy, and what suffering built that nothing else could
• Leaving a ten-year PR career, and the identity crisis on the other side
• A son born with a rare heart defect, and letting the work go
• The Christmas card that made the book real
• The one question from her husband that turned non-fiction into a novel
• Two agents, one shelved manuscript, and ten years to a finished book
• Who actually shows up when you put something into the world
• Now or never: finishing it before forty
• The question every reader asks her about the love interest
• Rapid fire, and the one risk she thinks everybody should take

More from Anna:

In His Sight is out now, wherever you buy books.

Anna's site: anna-powell.com

Instagram: @theannapowell

Work with Sara: https://saraemmersoncoaching.com. If you are sitting on something and you want someone in the middle of it with you, book a coaching consultation.

If this one lands, follow the show and send it to the person you thought of while listening.

Tim Timmons and I go back about thirty years. He played at my wedding. He worked alongside my dad, Stan, for years, and somewhere in all of that he became one of those friends who changes how you look at your own life. Twenty-five years ago he was told he had five years to live. Stage four, incurable, tumors that are still on his liver today. He is still here, he is still writing, and he will tell you plainly that he is not celebrating cancer. He is celebrating the perspective it handed him.

What we ended up talking about is the space in between. Tim has a rule for it. He is trying to use more words that end in I-N-G than words that end in E-D. Not "I learned this," but "I am learning." Not "I figured it out," but "I am figuring." Not healed, but healing. That one small change is the whole posture of his life, and you can see it in the biggest calls he has made. Walking away from a church job he held for fifteen years. Funding a record on Kickstarter with no safety net. And then deciding he would never open a door for himself again. No schmoozing. No pushing his way into rooms. He has kept that for fifteen years, and in that time he has signed record deals, co-written a Grammy nominated song, and watched Milo Ventimiglia play him in a movie.

He also talks about the failure, and he does not soften it. A church called The Following that he and a friend built and then talked themselves right out of, until forty people were meeting in an Orange County motel alongside the people who lived there. It fell apart. He calls it the greatest failure of his life and the three years he grew the most. His new song Between is out now, and he says it is the most personal one he has written. If you are sitting in your own in between right now, waiting on an outcome you cannot control, this hour is for you.

In this episode:

• The grammar rule he lives by: more words ending in I-N-G than E-D
• Quitting a fifteen-year church job, and why he says working for God sucked the life out of him
• The Kickstarter that no label wanted, until every label wanted it
• Five years to live, twenty-five years ago, and what that does to how you spend a Tuesday
• The experiment he has run for fifteen years: never open a door for yourself again
• Surrendering the outcome, and why he had to stop being the CEO of everything
• The Following: the church that failed, and the three years he grew the most
• Why the biblical word for hope has almost nothing to do with outcomes
• Watching Milo Ventimiglia play his hardest moments, and finding compassion for himself
• Why we are so good at moving past grief and so bad at actually grieving
• The X he writes on the underside of his wrist every single morning
• Cancer is the dumbest. The perspective is the gift.

More from Tim:

His new song "Between" is out now: https://al.ffm.to/between.MXO

His book, Waking Up Again, is out now in hardcover and on Amazon.

timtimmonsmusic.com

Instagram and TikTok: @timmonsmusic

The 10,000 Minutes Podcast and the 10,000 Minutes nonprofit: @10kminutes

I Can Only Imagine 2, with Milo Ventimiglia playing Tim.

Work with Sara: https://saraemmersoncoaching.com. If you are standing in the middle of something and you want someone in the messy middle with you, book a coaching consultation.

If this one lands, follow the show and send it to the person you thought of while listening.

Annie Aiello grew up the youngest of six in a Chicago Italian family where the currency was academics and athletics, and the artist in her got quietly shushed. So she took the safe route. Business degree. Art minor, because that was allowed. Ad agency. Then an MBA, because she wanted something with more meaning in it than a widget.

Twenty-three years into a marriage she had promised herself she would never leave, she left it. She walked out of ministry into a corporate job that doubled her salary and made her miserable, and found herself a single mother trying to get two teenagers to college.

What she built out of that is Always Olivia, a national Olivia Newton-John tribute show. She started it because she needed joy and she needed money and she had exactly one skill nobody could take from her. She funded part of it with the proceeds from the house she had to sell.

This episode is about the mechanics of that. How she found the people who already knew how to do what she needed to do. Why the wigs, of all things, were the place she almost quit. What it took to walk out on a stage in a 1970s wig with her whole family in the audience, certain she was about to be laughed at. And what it costs to become a beginner again in public, twice, once on a stage and once, at fifty-something, back in the dating world.

Annie Aiello. Mother. Creative Voice. Singer. Songwriter, Lead singer of "Always Olivia," the Ultimate Olivia Newton-John Tribute, Producer, Child of God.

In this episode:

- Why "desperation breeds creativity" is not a consolation prize, it is a method

- The rule she runs her life on: when you do not know how to do something, go learn it from the people who do

- Flying to Vegas to meet a Cher tribute artist, Bob Mackie's understudy, and the woman who costumed Olivia at the Flamingo

- Choosing to put the house money into the show instead of into retirement, and finding an investor for the rest

- The wig that nearly ended it before the first show

- Standing backstage thinking "I am going to be so interpreted as a joke," and walking out anyway

- Giving a portion of every show's proceeds to the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre, after losing both parents to cancer

- Throwing out perfectionism when you lead a band, because every crowd is different

- Being a beginner again at fifty-something, on stage and in the dating world

Sara's frame that runs underneath the whole hour: we only do things if we want it enough or we need it enough, and the best intersection is when both are present.

More from Annie:

alwaysoliviatribute.com

annieaiello.com

Instagram: @alwaysoliviatribute and @therealannieaiello

Catch the show live: Taste of Melrose Park in September, Australia in October for the Wellness Walk, then Florida and North Carolina in November.

Work with Sara: https://saraemmersoncoaching.com. If you are standing at a crossroads and you want someone to sit in the messy middle with you, book a coaching consultation.

If this one lands, follow the show and share it with the person you thought of while listening.

Emily Bache and Abigail Breslin have been best friends since they were eleven, grew up sharing one closet, and never actually chose their own name. A street photographer shouted "there's those WanderLust Girls" at them on a sidewalk, and it stuck. Fifteen New York Fashion Weeks later, they've styled for Playboy, Macklemore, Bloomingdale's, Jack White, and Major League Soccer.

In this conversation they tell Sara how a college blog started because one of them owned all the tops and the other owned all the pants, how they cold-emailed their way into 65 shows at their first Fashion Week with no credentials and nobody to vouch for them, and how a client's offhand comment sent them across the street into a bank to ask a stranger how you start a company. They also talk about the lunch invitation they almost turned down that became a Playboy job, the day they showed up in thigh-high boots and boas to what turned out to be bootcamp, and the SNL emergency that proved who was actually in their corner.

The thread running through all of it: every time someone advised them to tone it down and look more normal, it cost them. They tried it once, wore blue jeans, and watched followers leave. The thing that makes you weird is usually the thing people came for.

In this episode:

• Why the weird invitation is usually the one holding the door open

• How to ask for something bigger than you think you're allowed to

• What happens when you tone yourself down to be more marketable

• Why you don't have to feel ready, you just have to ask the embarrassing question

• How being wrong alongside someone makes risk survivable

• Why a $100 job is still a relationship, and how small gigs come back years later

Follow Emily and Abigail at @wanderlustgirls and thewanderlustgirls.com.

Ready for your own next step? Visit saraemmersoncoaching.com and book a coaching consultation.

Interior designer Johanna Lyle didn't start in design. She went from theater performer to video producer before a COVID-era reinvention turned a paint-splattered DIY Instagram into a six-figure design business. In this episode she tells Sara how she took a humbling pay cut to learn the craft, launched her own firm during a cross-country move with a husband about to hit zero income, and ran a Chicago clientele from Boston because that's what actually worked. She gets honest about the client she had to walk away from, the gut feeling she ignored, and why saying no is sometimes the bravest thing a business owner can do. It's a story about being willing to go backward to go forward, and trusting yourself when the timing is never right. Named a "Next Wave Designer" by House Beautiful, Johanna proves the greatest opportunities usually start with something that sounds risky. Follow Johanna: joelyleandco.com and @jo.lyle.design. Work with Sara: https://saraemmersoncoaching.com