How It All Started
Going back about ten years, Stephanie was teaching 5th grade making roughly $20,000 a year. She ‘thought’ that is what she was supposed to be doing and her whole life was really based around following the rules. She was barely making ends meat and just thought that was they way it was ‘supposed’ to be because someone else was giving her a paycheck and paying for her benefits package. What more could she want?
Looking back, however, Stephanie can see how genuinely unhappy she was. She was struggling with stress dreams and while she was only contracted to work 30-35 hours per week she generally found herself working closer to 50 or even 60 hours per week.
Around the same time Stephanie married her husband, whom was in the process of starting his own photography business. During the wedding planning process he would occasionally slip in a logo he wanted her opinion on and because she was deep in ‘decision-making-mode’ she would quickly answer, not thinking much about it. It hasn’t occurred to her that he was hoping she would join his business. Eventually she realized she could provide some value in this business and began assisting in the process.
In 2015, Stephanie lost her teaching job and financially they were stable and she had replaced her income, had landed them amazing opportunities to photograph all over the world, and secured them space in top publications and magazines. But at the same time something was holding her back. She suddenly couldn’t seem to secure new bookings and didn’t know why. The reality was, she was only doing things that she knew she could do. Anything that could result in a possible rejection, she wouldn’t follow through with.
This was what self-sabotage looked like through her lens. It looks different for each of us but for Stephanie, she believed that if she overfilled her schedule and then started with the easy stuff she would eventually build up momentum to tackle reach the hard stuff. It wasn’t working and she never actually followed through. Those tasks just got moved to the next day. So every day there would be 4-5 things that never got done and would again be moved to the following day. All of these tasks revolved around sales and marketing activities. She had become so focused on what her peers might think of her that she forgot about the bigger picture, realizing they weren’t her ideal clients in the first place. The good thing is Stephanie learned how to turn that around in the future.
Stephanie’s mental health began to struggle during this time more as well and she began having daily panic attacks, until finally it all came to a head. One day she was so anxious about a conversation with her husband that she passed out on the stairs. At that point, she realized she had a problem.
Now, Stephanie uses her personal experience to help others achieve their breakthroughs. She firmly believes that breakthroughs are a foundational element in each of our personal growth and that sometimes part of breaking through is breaking down. What she learned was if you're going to have a breakdown, you might as well make it into a breakthrough.
Stephanie has also become a firm believer in the power of journaling. She started by simply pouring her heart out and getting all of her emotions onto the page. She eventually started having ‘ideas’. She could see hope, began setting goals, and began writing about what she wanted in her future, rather than about the pain in her past. She began creating results for herself relatively quickly and rebuilt their business to over six figures in only four months.
It wasn’t until someone reached out to her asking if they could pick her brain over coffee did she really begin to see her future coming together. It was her dream job, and despite not knowing what she was doing or where it would take her, she was all in. Stephanie truly loves working with clients and cares about the art form of coaching.
From here, she began to build her business, and began getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Stephanie learned that changing her thoughts and changing her feelings it would change everything. She has built a life they absolutely love, and don’t need a vacation from.
Stephanie leaves us with this thought:
“Know that you can have the results. You don't have to follow conventional wisdom necessarily to get the life or the results you want in your business. You can get it the way that you show up best that is possible for you. You can have whatever income level you desire, and have a lifestyle that you personally thoroughly love and value.”
Thank you for joining me again this week beautiful friends! Until next time, keep doing it your way.
Insights:
“Being an entrepreneur is 80% mindset and if you’re in the right mindset we can be in the right state to get into action and create the results we want.“
“She firmly believes that breakthroughs are a foundational element in each of our personal growth and that sometimes part of breaking through is breaking down.“
“If you're going to have a breakdown, you might as well make it into a breakthrough.”
“Know that you can have the results. You don't have to follow conventional wisdom necessarily to get the life or the results you want in your business. You can get it the way that you show up best that is possible for you. You can have whatever income level you desire, and have a lifestyle that you personally thoroughly love and value.”
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