Everywhere we turn, we always seem to hear the words “I’m not ready,” or “I’ll do it when I’m ready.” Steven Pressfield was known for the line “Start before you’re ready,” and Reid Hoffman, the Founder of LinkedIn said, “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” What is it that keeps holding us back to take the dive? That should give you something to think about because there is never a right time. In this episode, host Phoebe Mroczek gets you fired up to take on that next big opportunity and enthusiastically say, “I’m ready!”

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Being Ready: An Illusion or Invitation?

Being Ready

We’re talking about something I’ve been thinking a lot about and that is the idea of being ready. I’m bringing this up partly because I keep hearing, “I’m not ready to do that. I’ll invest in this when I’m ready. I’ve got to do this one thing and then I’ll be ready.” It’s also partly because “I’ve made ready” means something that’s inspiring, and that’s more of the direction that I want to go. We both know the phrase, “Start before you’re ready,” by Steven Pressfield. Reid Hoffman, the Founder of LinkedIn said, “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” Hands up if you can say that you are embarrassed by the first version of your product. If you are with me from my Canva days, I had a Canva Strategy Pack. Just thinking about it makes me so embarrassed. That brings back some funny memories. We had a Facebook ads course and a funnels course. We had so many different things happening. I am very embarrassed by those first versions, but I’m also proud that I launched before I was ready.

If you’ve been following this show for however long, you know that I get inspired by quotes like, “Start before you’re ready,” and all of these whimsical phrases that we see on posters and on Pinterest posts and all of that. I get more inspired by them by asking, “What do they mean to me and ultimately, most importantly, to you?” I love creating new questions from the ones that we hear time and time again, because when we start to see them all the time, they lose their value and they lose the gravity of the situation. I’m going to talk about that in a couple of episodes because I do think it’s important to talk to speak to the alternatives to life’s biggest questions. That’s probably going to be the name of something important. Anyway, I will not give all of that away so you will know how much these questions mean to me and how much thought I put behind them.

If you watched my interview with the US Women’s National Team Olympians and World Cup Champions Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly and Tisha Venturini, you saw me right on the mirror prior to the interview, “I am ready.” That’s part of the video and was a very intentional piece of the video because it’s been my mantra and I repeat it all the time. It’s written on my mirror. It’s written on my window. I have this big window that goes out to my balcony and it’s constantly going through my head, through my mind, and I’m constantly saying it out loud. What does that mean to me? It’s changed and so that’s why I want to bring this up in hopes that it helps you and gives you something to think about.

Asking A Better Question

That’s what I want to leave you. My intention behind this episode is to leave you with a better question than you arrived at the start of the episode with. Rather than using this “I am ready” to propel me forward in my career or giving me a false sense of confidence or even bravado like most affirmations that instead of making you feel a certain way, it highlights what you don’t have and keep you stuck in that scarcity mode of, “I am a millionaire. I am a millionaire.” I’m not a millionaire yet. This mantra, rather than creating more of a chasm, it does two things. Number one, it reminds me that everything that I want to be, do and have in life, I’ve got be it first.

Someone said, “You don’t manifest what you want, you manifest who you are.” If that is not the one sentence that represents who I am as a business coach and a marketing strategist, I don’t know another one that does a better job. I see it as a declaration to the universe or to God or spirit or whoever you believe in that I am willing, able and in, as Abraham calls it, receiving mode. Truthfully, that gets me fired up, cue the rocky music. It’s the, “I am ready, I am ready,” and I see him running up the stairs. I used to say, “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” before big things like speaking on stage or live streaming or even podcasting. What that means to me is that everything that I’ve experienced in my life, learned about, done or achieved has prepared me for this moment and that is motivating. That gets me excited.

Number two for the mantra and this is also the reason for the show, is it invites a new question. Rather than the “Am I ready?” question, I’ve been asking myself a different one. It came to fruition when I was invited to audition for a new TV show on a major network. It is not Netflix yet. Maybe by the time of this release of this show, it will be. In the final stages, after the interview, I asked the casting director, “When would the film crew come to Austin, Texas if it was a go?” She said, “We’ll know in a few weeks if you get it.” The filming could start soon and everything in my body shut down.

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I thought if they come soon, I’m not going to be ready in that time. What that did for me was to highlight all of these insecurities that I had. What I jokingly said to her was, “Great, what you’re telling me is I should start dieting now.” The fact that that was my first response, if you have any body issues or you can relate to this at all, you know what I was thinking. I also want to invite you, if I said that same thing to you right now, that a film crew was going to come to your house, what’s the first thought that pops into your head? Is it, “I have to clean my house? What if my kids are rowdy?” Whatever the insecurity is, we’re going to put a big pin in that.

For me personally, it was 100% about, “I don’t know if my body is TV-ready.” The camera adds ten pounds. I went into this whole thing jokingly, but ultimately I was serious. I say all of this and I can joke about it now, but that’s because I recognize this as something that I need to work through. It still feels wrong, a little bit embarrassing and hard for me to even talk about, but because you and I are friends now, we’re going to go deep real quick. As I was talking to her about this, she was laughing and I was laughing. I’m like, “Yeah, diet.” I got off the phone and I was like, “I’m going to be working out twice a day and I’m going to do this,” and all story started happening.

I was in a tailspin for a good two days after that conversation. I remembered a conversation that I had with a good friend of mine a few months ago, Pat. He was staying here while he was in town. He was doing a photoshoot for his fitness site. I remember seeing a couple of photos fly through my news feed and it was him completely ripped with abs and big muscles and all of this stuff. I thought, “Wow.” I had no idea that under his shirt, that’s what he looked like. When he was in town, I joked with him and I was like, “How many push-ups did you do? What was your workout routine? How did you look like that all of a sudden?” He said something to me that I will not forget. He goes, “I’m only ever a week away from that photo.”

 

The reason I remember that so clearly was because I thought to myself that that’s some serious self-control and we’re going to get into it. What that spurred for me was this question, which is what would it look like to be ready or a week away from ready for that next big opportunity, for the thing that I wanted? If the thing I wanted was abs, what would it take to be ready? What would it take to be a week away from ready? Maybe it’s a successful business. Maybe it’s better relationships. Maybe it’s something along the lines of my spirituality.

The question is, how does this relate to you? That’s ultimately who I want to be helping and serving on this show. I want to ask you and we’re going to start with business first because I’m assuming that you either have a business or want to. Would you be ready if we turned on your funnel or a crazy traffic source tomorrow? Would you be ready if I handed you, five brand new clients, that each wanted to pay you $20,000? Maybe, so think in your head, what comes up for you when I’m saying this? Would you be ready if I asked you to speak in front of a room filled with your ideal clients? Would you be ready if I asked you to speak to a room filled with none of your ideal clients?

That’s a great question. Would you be ready if you met that right person now, if you’re single? Maybe you’re in a relationship and you want to get married. Would you be ready, whatever that means to you, if that person proposed or if that person said yes or that you want to get married or you want to have kids? Would you be ready if I called you and invited you on the show? If I said, “I need someone to fill in for me. I’m not going to be able to record because I’m going on holiday somewhere amazing. Could you fill in for me?” What comes up when you hear that? Would you be ready if I was bringing a whole entire film crew to your house to film a show that was going to be put on a major TV network?

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What comes up for you? I don’t say any of this to scare you or to make you doubt or worry about where you are now. We’re just paying attention to the thoughts, the feelings, the fears, the doubts and the excitement even, everything that’s coming up. It’s these alternative questions, these life’s biggest questions. That’s the benefit of having this because we’re so used to saying, “What do you want? Who are you really?” When I’m asking you these very specific questions relating to you, your business, your health, your relationships, your spirituality, your social circles, anything like that, what comes up? This is not about having a plan B or covering all of your bases. Rather, it’s about getting clear on what plan A looks like and all the reasons that you’re not going after it now because I could talk to you personally for hours about this one. There’s one single point, getting clear about what plan A looks like and all the reasons that you’re not going after it because I guarantee it’s not the reason that you think. You’re not doing the thing not because it’s too hard or complicated, you’re not smart enough or you don’t know the right people.

Hitting A New Roadblock

There’s something else, something bigger, standing in your way. You haven’t known how to remove it and it’s not your fault. It’s totally okay. We’re just not trained to understand this stuff and I guarantee even if you’ve done all the personal development work, we’re always going on a new level, new devil. We’re always going to hit a new roadblock. There are always going to be reasons why we’re not going after it and usually it’s not the reason that we think. This whole thing is not about completely changing your life, though it might be. Maybe when you hear these questions, something comes up in you that’s like, “I’ve always wanted to be on a TV show, but I thought I had to have X in order to have Y,” or “I thought that I had to have this many years of doing this in order to have that,” which has been my story for a long time. I’ll be totally honest with you, I always thought that I had to have several years of experience. I had to be bought out by a company. I had to either be acquired or buy another company in order to be a business coach, in order to speak on larger stages because I thought that gave me some clout.

I realized, do I work with business owners all the time? Yes. Do I add a lot of value to a lot of different people? Yeah, and sometimes it’s not always the thing that I want to talk about that I ended up talking about because I’m nervous that if I talked about the thing that I wanted to talk about, which is personal development, that nobody’s going to take me seriously. That’s been a big story of my own. I’m saying that because as a coach, your clients will only go as deep as you’ve been able or willing to go yourself. I am here laying my cards out in hopes that you do the same and that you see my own thought process behind it to help and invite you to start getting curious about what plan A looks like. It’s not just about creating all of the plan Bs, all these contingency plans that if this happens then that has to happen or “Here’s my next plan,” and then we cloud and murky the waters. It’s not just about saying yes, but rather understanding what a powerful no looks like and why it has to be a no.

 

This all comes from knowing what plan A looks like, being super clear, doubling down and taking action. It’s realizing that someday we’ll never get here unless we put some action behind it. If you deep down know that there’s something that would need to change before you could do, be or have the thing that you want, you’re either not clearly-defined in your vision or you haven’t clearly identified what’s standing in your way. There is one other option available. If you know deep down that something had to change before you could be, do or have this one thing and your response to that was, “I’m a perfectionist. Maybe I need to lower my expectation,” I would ask you, “Really? Is that what it is or is there something else at play here?” I invite you to consider that you might not know the real answer yet because you haven’t asked yourself this question.

Why do you believe that something needs to change in you before you’re able to be, do and have that thing? We all know that behind clarity needs to come action. However, the clarity mixed with the habits and the action and all of those things, the beliefs, the stories that we’re telling ourselves create the action. Unless we clear up that middle bit, then our actions are going to be taking us in a direction that does not lead to where we wanted when we were playing in clarity. I see three bubbles in front of me. On the left-hand side, it’s the clarity bubble. In the middle, it is the beliefs, the stories, the patterns, the roadblocks, all of those things. In the third bubble, on the right-hand side is the action.

Taking A Bigger, Bolder Action

Unless I can stand in the action bubble and see clearly through the action, belief, stories, all of those things into the clarity circle, then something needs to change. Even if our stories are taking us 1% away from our ultimate goal at the end of the year that’s 365% away, it’s more than that because it’s compounding. Whatever that looks like, it is that many times or percentages away from the things that we want. I want to ask you, what would being ready look like for you? Maybe it’s a matter of solidifying what that looks like and then going after it. Maybe it’s accepting that you are ready now and it’s time to go take bigger and bolder action. Either way, in conclusion, it’s time to go after what you want because you are ready, whatever your response was. Whether you feel like something needs to change or you feel like you’re ready and you’re just not taking the action, I totally get it and I hear you. I’ve been there and I am there. It’s messy, ugly, fun, exciting, creative and all of the wonderful emotions that we can feel, but there’s a reason that we’re not at the place that we want to be. It’s because we’re focused on the past or the future.

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When we live in the present and we can see through bubble number two, into clarity and we can see what that big picture looks like, we can construct the path to get there. When I was doing my Master’s in project management, we talked all about the critical path. That’s pretty much the majority of the things that I remembered from my Master’s program. The critical path is what is the best quickest way to get from point A to point B. If I say to you, what would it look like to be ready to have the business that you really want to have? What do you need in order to have what you want? What would being ready look like in that scenario?

If you and I are sitting down for a coffee or a cocktail and you were like, “I feel like I need more clients to hit that $250,000 mark.” Maybe you’re saying, “I need one person to believe in me this month and then pay me some money so I can get on track, quit my job, whatever it is.” If either of those are you, turn it back around and say, “Do you need this client to be paying you, to be believing in you or do you just need to be believing in yourself?” I know that sounds hokey, crazy, wild, weird and you’re like, “Okay, Phoebe, next.” The reality of the situation is that until you believe it in yourself, you can’t help others believe in you.

No Need For Validation

In my meditation the other day, I’ve been doing some interesting things creatively that have been helping me go deeper in my meditation. I’ll share that at some point as I have been structuring it out and testing it out on a couple of my clients and a couple of my friends, but one of them is I wrote down, “You can’t help others find their gift if you don’t believe in your own.” That’s amazing because I talk about it all the time. One of my greatest gifts is seeing the person for who they are, not who they think they are. I can see straight through all the BS and be like, “She’s a winner. He’s got it right. He’s going to be huge. This is amazing. This business idea is great.” I can see through all the noise because I believe in the person. I believe in the who.

 

There’s no way that I would have been able to capitalize on that. I would never have been able to understand, embody and believe in myself and what I’m able to do if I didn’t believe in myself. You can’t help others find their gift if you don’t believe in your own. I remember thinking that is so true. How many times do we operate in business with the assumption in business and in life that we need one more person to validate this idea, this feeling, this relationship, this experience that we had? You get that validation and you’re like, “I need another. Maybe I need somebody else to validate it.” You don’t need any more validation. There’s no more validation needed.

You are ready and to help you understand what’s in the way, ask yourself, “What would being ready look like?” Your homework from this episode is to go back through this episode and ask yourself the question, what would being ready really look like if you felt 100% prepared? How do you become that? What do you need to unbecome so that you can truly become the person that you need to be in order to have the things that you want to have and do the things that you want to do? It all starts with being that person. The Paulo Coelho quote and the reason that I started this show was maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t you so you can be who you are meant to be in the first place. If we take that to heart, what are the things that you need to let go of? What are the things that you need to unbecome in order to take action towards the thing that you want? If you don’t know what you want, I have so many solutions for you. I have so many exercises because I get this all the time, “I don’t know what I want.”

I will record an episode in the coming weeks all about that question that will help you clarify what it is that you want and who you need to be in order to have the things you want to have and do the things that you want to do. Thank you. Remember that it is time. You are ready to go after what you want to solve the problems you want to solve, to help the people that you were created to help. There’s nobody else like you out there. We all need to hear your voice a little bit louder. Let’s turn the volume up on you. Let’s give you the microphone. I want to hear back from you what you thought about this episode if any of it rang true or resonated. If you like the show, please subscribe to it so you don’t miss any of the episodes.

I have had a couple of people say they didn’t subscribe and then came back to me and were like, “I didn’t realize I was missing all these shows. Life just got in the way.” There’s a solution for that. Subscribe to it so you don’t miss an episode. Share this specific episode with a friend or a bunch of friends that are hesitating on their dreams. I promise they’ll thank you for it. If somebody recommended this show to you, I want you to call them and thank them. Know that they care about you and are doing everything that they can to make sure that you get that win, that you feel inspired and that you are going after your dreams. Thank you so much for being here on this episode. I appreciate you. I’m so grateful. Please do your homework. What would being ready really look like to you? Take care and I will see you soon.

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