← Courage & Clarity
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Steph Crowder
Foreign welcome to the Courage and Clarity Podcast. I'm your host, Steph Crowder. I'm a former sales training director who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn a living doing something they love over the past 10 years. On your journey, you'll need the courage to be bold, to take risks, and to do what looks crazy on paper. You'll also need the clarity, the brass tacks, simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast, we deliver both in equal measure. Oh, and by the way, we've got absolutely no time for bs, gross marketing tactics or get rich quick schemes. Just sustainable business strategies for good humans with big dreams. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello Hello CNC listeners. Welcome to the podcast. So excited to be hanging out with you today. This is episode number 116 and we are talking about the number one objection out there in the world right now that all of you are going to be hearing. I don't care what your niche is, what your subject matter is, who you're selling to, what you're helping them do this. I think I've maybe mentioned this, especially if you listen to my 2025 prediction episode, which by the way was a very popular episode. So go back a couple if you want to hear my personal predictions for what we're going to be seeing in 2025. I believe I may have touched on this in that episode, but I really felt it was worthwhile to do a whole episode not only about this objection pointing out how big of a deal it's going to be for all of us who are looking for new clients this year, but also talking about some tactical ways to reframe it and overcome it so that you can help clients past this objection. That objection is I don't think I can do it. Okay. I don't think I can do it. We're going to talk about all the different flavors this objection might show up as, but it's a really, really big one. So we're going to talk about why this objection is so rampant. I think there are a few big reasons why how to spot it out there in the wild. So, you know, with all objections, I talk a lot in my both my programs, same day sales and sold out group programs about really getting to the true heart of an objection, getting to the objection behind the objection. And sometimes the actual question that someone is asking when they present present an objection can be obscured behind the words that they're saying. Right? So we're going to talk about how to spot this Objection. The different sneaky forms it can take and how you can tell that this is, this is what we're really dealing with. When you hear it, how to reframe it and how to offer hope. This is going to be a big one that comes down to hope and possibility. Possibility is going to be the name of the game. When we talk about the objection. I don't think I can do it. Okay, so let's talk about why this objection is king or queen, however you want to look at it, Right? Why is this objection such a big deal right now? And again, the reason I'm recording this episode is because I literally just coached on this this week. I was reflecting my coaching call for my Mastermind clients. My mastermind is called Sold out Group Programs. And we have been talking about this objection a lot. I have been seeing this objection a lot. I've probably mentioned here on the podcast that in my most recent launch of Sold out Group Programs, it was easily the biggest thing that was coming up for people. So, like, why is that? Why is it now more than it has been in the past? Well, I have a few, I have a few theories as to why. I, I believe the biggest thing holding customers back in 2025 is self doubt. So let's just go ahead and call a spade a spade. This objection is a self doubt objection. I don't think I can do it. What the client or prospect is really saying is sometimes, sometimes they're saying this theoretically, sometimes these are the actual words. Like I have heard these actual words in sales conversations. Sure, you're great. Like, Steph, I think you're amazing. Right? But I'm not sure I can actually succeed. It's not you that I'm doubting. Teacher, coach, mentor, creator, you're great. It's me. It's not you. It's me is another way to think of this objection. The it's not you, it's me objection is actually maybe even a better name for it. Right? So that's what it can sound like. People are believing in you, but they aren't sure they can get the results. This is a huge objection. Again, we're going to talk about why, but what I think is really, really fascinating is the way that all of you, many of you are trying to overcome this objection is not actually getting to the heart of their issue at all. It's not getting to the heart of the issue. Let me tell you what I see most people do when they hear this objection. Or really we could say, like in any sales environment. And if you do this, it's not your fault. This is literally what was taught to us. A lot of us came up in the 2015, let's call it 2015 through 2018 era. At that time, at that moment in time, the be more valuable, be as valuable as you can possibly be era is what it was, right? It was like, hey, if you just give it all away. I was actually talking to a client about this this week who really pointed this out. She was like, oh, wow, this is really kind of breaking my brain. Because, like, I was always taught that we should just, like, give more, more, more, more, more. The strategy behind this method was to kind of try to create the thought for a client or a prospect. Like, whoa, if this is all this person's free stuff, if they're giving this away for free, I can't imagine how amazing the paid stuff is. Like, wow, if they're this great in the free area, in the podcast, in the challenge, in the freebie, the email, if this stuff is free, then, whoa, I can't even imagine how much the paid offer is going to break my brain. That was really the strategy. Okay, but I want you to. I invite you to really consider how throwing more information and more, Another free, Maybe another checklist, another bonus, another this, another, another that. That. That is the common response to really any objection. I see my clients doing that a lot where they're like, well, let me just go ahead and give more. Let me go ahead and put more in my program. Let me go ahead and offer them another call. Let me just keep saying, more, more, more, more, more. But remember, what was the heart of the objection? The heart of the objection was, you're great. Guess what? They already think you're great. Stop trying to make them think you're great. You already did that part. That's not the problem. They think you're amazing. They think you're smart. They know you have all the great information. That's not in question. What's in question is their own belief in their self. So you can give them all of the checklists, all of the lessons, all of the cheat sheets in the whole wide world. But if I don't believe that I can help myself, I am never going to be able to do it. You could give me all the tools in the world. The visual. The visual that's coming to mind for me is like, imagine if I were stuck 10ft down in a hole, right? And you start just, like, throwing me all kinds of tools. You. You throw me a rope ladder. You throw me, like, those Sticks that you punch into, like, stakes that you punch into the side of the wall to try to climb your way up. You throw me a shovel. You throw me all kinds of different things, and you're just like, come on, one of these tools. You have all the tools that you need. But I'm standing there paralyzed in fear, focused on the fact that I'm 10ft down in the ground in a hole, and I. My dominant thought is, hey, I'm glad that you think you could get yourself out of the hole. Maybe I even watched you climb out of the hole because that's how a lot of our prospects see us. They're like, oh, I know that you did it. I know that you're super smart. I know that you're strong, but that was you. I don't believe that I can do it. So I'm just going to stay paralyzed down here in my hole, focused on the fact that I'm stuck in the hole. There's not all the tools in the world aren't going to help me if I don't first have the belief, hey, I bet I could make it out of this hole. I bet with looking at these tools, and if I try enough times, I bet I'll get out. Y'all aren't accounting for creating that belief that getting out of the hole is even possible. That's what I really want you. I want that to land. As we set the table for this episode, that first, someone has to even believe in the possibility. They're standing there being like, no, I'm good. I'm just gonna die in this hole. It's fine. I had a good run, right? I tried to climb out of the hole before and it was terrible. I fell, I bruised myself, and I'm just gonna stay here. You know, maybe. Maybe a helicopter will come one day. I'm not really sure. I haven't thought that far, but I'm. I'm good. I don't need to try to climb up again. That was that. I tried that and it was miserable. Right? So that's a reframe for you and how you think about this. Objection. Here's the other thing. In 2025, we have the wonderful world of information. We have AI like never before. You all don't need me to say that. You already know that, right? Let me be a full disclosure chat. GPT helped me organize my thoughts for this episode. Okay? I. No shade to AI. I think AI is amazing. I think it's the future. I think we all need to get on board. There's no point resisting it. But I'm just pointing out that AI, Google and social media have made information plentiful and free. Okay? Information, it no longer holds the value that it did before. Right? And like, by itself. Just bear with me. I promise it's not bad news. It's not bad news at all. It's just that, you know, in 2015, when the strategy was like, give it all away, give it all away so they see how valuable you are, it was a totally different landscape. Trust me when I say you don't want to be trying to compete with AI. You don't want to be trying to compete with Google or social media, okay? We're not going to have infowars. We're going to let the robots have the information. They win. Like, hands down, they win. Okay? But here's what AI, Google and social media can never fix. They will never be able to create possibility. They will never be able to create belief. That is a human skill. It is a conversational tool. It is a connection based tool that has to come into play in order to help people past doubting themselves. Contrary to popular belief, all the information in the world will not help you stop doubting yourself. All of the information in the world is not going to get you to believe you can do it. All of the information in the world is not going to get you to take a damn step. Your clients and prospects may think they need more information and they'll say that. So you're gonna be like, but Steph. But they, they say they want more. They say they need another checklist. They say they need an. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. That's what they think, right? But there's a difference between what they think they need and what is actually the truth. Okay, so let's talk about how we spot this objection in the wild. And then I'm gonna help you solve it. This is one of my favorite objections to solve. My clients are always like, what is wrong with you? When you talk about how you love overcoming objections. I love overcoming objections because I love understanding people and I love getting to the bottom of like, what is somebody actually thinking and what is the boulder that is in their way, the big fat obstacle? Like, an objection is nothing more than an obstacle. Someone is standing on the path. They want to move forward. That's another thing that I see a lot of folks getting wrong. They're like, oh, oh, they threw up an objection. They don't, they don't want to move forward. You know, I want to respect them. I Want to respect. Look, they're standing on the path. If they book a sales call with you, they're not doing it for their health, right? They want to move forward, but they are standing there and there's a big fat boulder standing or sitting stuck in their path, and they're on the phone with you, they're emailing you, they're dming with you. Because they're like, even if they're not saying this, they're hoping that maybe you can help them get the boulder out of the way. So I look at object overcoming objections and clearing objections is some of the most sacred work I do as a coach. Because if we can help overcome an objection, we can help clear the path. It's like we can just clean it up for them and help them finally take a step on their journey. It's some of the most important and I think amazing work that any of us will do when it comes to getting clients. So other flavors of this objection is, I've tried this before and nothing worked. Okay? I've tried it before. Nothing worked. I did it all. I hear this one a lot, right? I was in a coaching program, I was in a group, I took a course, I had a coach. Nothing worked, right? Another version is I don't think I can follow through. Lot of people talking about accountability in 2025, right? I tried. I buy stuff and it just sits on my computer, right? I don't believe fundamentally I'm the kind of person who can follow through. And that ties into the I'm too blank. Insert your limiting identity of choice. I'm too disorganized. I'm too tech averse. I'm too old, I'm too shy. I'm too busy, right? It all goes back into the same self doubt. A lot of you all are misunderstanding, by the way, the I'm too busy objection. Lots of my clients love to believe that one. When their clients tell them that when their prospects are like, I'm too busy, y'all are like, okay, look, they. Hey, they said they're too busy. I don't know. They know their calendar, right? I nev. I love you all so much if you have a sales call with me. But I never believe that right off the bat, okay? I never take any kind of objection like that at face value. I ask questions and I may walk away being like, damn, okay. They really have no time in their calendar, fine. But when somebody says to me, I think I'm too busy for this, I got nothing but questions, right? I'm like, all Right. Well, what does busy look like to you? What are you doing? What's going on over there? Right. What? Busy doing what? And I've really tried to get to the heart of what that actually means. It's really fascinating that I'm too busy often translates to I am out here throwing so much spaghetti at the wall, I can't even stop to consider doing something different. Right. Or if I stay busy or I stay in motion, I don't have to consider myself doubt. I don't have to overcome my self doubt. I don't have to try again if I'm too busy to try, even though I desperately want the result. Okay? So when you hear these, we've got to uncover the real fear. Remember, they're not doubting you. I. I can't say that one enough. And I need you to really let that land. They're not doubting you. I see so many people taking objections so personally. They're like, they don't like my program. They don't think I'm smart enough. They don't think I'm a good enough coach. They don't think I'm good enough to do this. Okay. That is not what they're saying. Remember, it's the it's not you, it's me objection. Right. They're not doubting you. They're doubting their own ability to succeed. And in a lot of ways, the more amazing they think you are, the more it's highlighting their own insecurity. Right. They're like, oh, you're so amazing. I could never be that. Right. They're not doubting you, they're doubting their own ability to succeed. Another thing to consider with this, that this one has been really helpful for me is assume everyone at this point has been in another program that sucked. Just go ahead and assume that if you're a business coach 100%, you need to assume that maybe there's some other niches where people haven't been in programs online or they haven't taken courses. But for a lot of us at this point, after 2020 and the great rise and not fall of courses, but like the big swell that we had of people being on Zoom and people taking, you know, having extra money to invest, assume everyone has been in an online program. I think it's a good assumption because when you assume it, then you're not going to be sideswept or shocked when they tell you that for any number of reasons, they felt let down by their last coach or the last container they were in anticipate that and be like, yeah, okay. And I want you to avoid the temptation to have the thought like, oh, well, if they thought that last group was bad, what if they think my group is bad? Right. You are not that person. And that's where you've got to make sure your doing the work to build up your own belief and have some swagger with it that they are not you. Right. So that's an important thing to. To have in your mind as well. And it's also important for me to point out that this objection, the it's not you, it's me objection, often masks as budget issues or time constraints, but fundamentally, they don't trust themselves. Okay, guys. It's always easier to hide behind money and time. It can be a phenomenal hiding place. And that's because most people know that that can be like a conversation ender, Right? And they don't have to have the inspective conversations where they're actually looking at themselves. If they just say, oh, no, no, I don't have the money. Right? I don't have the money, I don't have the time. Okay? So when someone is standing in front of you telling you that they want a result, you have to take them at their word. And I choose to, like, if someone's telling me, I don't know about spending the money, or I don't really know if I have the time. But they've also told me, because they filled out an application with me that says, I want to grow in my business, I want to make more money, I want to have more clients. I am much more interested in that piece than whatever excuse they've been holding onto to keep themselves safe. Right? Okay. So that's kind of spotting this objection in the wild. And I'm willing to believe that all of you have heard some flavor of this objection at this point. So here's the big shift that I think is key and core to overcoming this objection. I want you to think about shifting from info dump, info dumping to belief building. We are going to shift from info dumping to belief building. This alone is going to blow your mind, because I watch my clients go, oh, my goodness. They enter a totally different headspace when they are selling. So we have to talk about marketing that prioritizes belief building versus information dumping. And I want to say this piece loud and clear as well. Confidence in 2025. Confidence is a bigger currency than ever before in your sales process. Confidence is the currency. When people say, I don't have the money, I want you to picture them Saying I don't have the confidence. Okay. When you have the belief, suddenly it. Not every time, believe me, I. Look, I always feel the need to say this. I'm not saying that there's no such thing as a financial objection. Not what I'm saying. There are absolutely situations where I do think it doesn't make sense for someone to invest. What I am saying though is that when we replace self doubt with confidence or belief, it's pretty funny how all of a sudden people are like, well, maybe I could, right? Or maybe I. Maybe there's a way, maybe I can move some things around. Maybe I can deprioritize this other thing I was going to spend money on. And spend money on like everything comes onto the table when you have confidence, right? So confidence is the currency in this conversation. Okay, so here's the old way. Let's talk old way and new way. Thinking specifically about your sales process. The old way is throwing more tips, ebooks, course modules, checklists, you name it. Throwing more and more and more at them in hopes of convincing them. Convincing them that you know what you're talking about. Convincing them that there's a magic bullet. Convincing them that they don't have the right information. Just like trying to be more and more and more and more informative. Thinking that that's going to turn the tides. Like if you just say the right thing, if you just give enough away, it's going to create confidence. That is so huge for you to hear. Giving more stuff away does not create more confidence. We're going to talk in a minute about what creates confidence. Okay? So the whole giving it all away to make yourself seem super valuable, we're going to go ahead and leave that in 2015. Okay, look, and I want to also say, because I think this is coming up for me as well. I'm not saying don't be valuable. I'm not saying don't help it. I mean, I'm sitting, I'm sitting here recording this podcast and I'm pretty sure this is pretty valuable, right? I'm just saying that when you are like if, if we think about that model of selling the currency, there is information or tips or steps or strategies. That's what it is. Strategy. Used to be a lot of people mentally would think like strategy was the currency, people are buying the strategy, right? But if you were to shift into thinking that it's confidence, confidence is what's going to pave people's way and help them catapult into the future belief and confidence, you would act Totally different. Also, I love thinking about this piece. Overloading people with content can really backfire. Okay. More info does not fix self doubt and in fact it can make it worse. So I'm often telling my clients when we, and we're going to talk about this in a minute, we're going to talk about sales of sales events like challenges or webinars. Let's talk about challenges in particular. A lot of times I see my clients, they'll send me in my program, I help you build a really impactful, high converting five day challenge. If you want to, you can do a challenge or a webinar. A lot of people do a challenge. I've done challenges and when I first review, I'll review it for you and I'll help you make it better. And when I first review people's challenges, it's way too much information. I will typically take someone's challenge from what they send to me down to 25% of what they're planning to teach. Why do I do that? Is it because I want you to hide the good stuff? Is it because I want you to hold back and make them pay for the good stuff? No. Nope, it's not that at all. It's because if you have your people drinking from the fire hose, you're blasting them with that high power fire hose and they're just trying to drink and they're getting their face blown off by all the amazing information, unfortunately, especially for someone who's coming to you with self doubt, any level of self doubt. By the way, self doubt doesn't have to be like really dramatic. It can even just be like a little. The thing about self doubt is it's, it's insidious. It's like the littlest drop of it will poison the whole well. Okay, so it's a sneaky thing. It's not necessarily people being like, I can't do any, I can't do anything. Right. It's not, that's not even necessarily what I'm talking about. Talking about people coming to your things, being like, yeah, I'm gonna learn from this person. But like I'm not gonna invest anything because like I just, I can't invest in anything else right now because I always, I never open the things I invest in. Right. Like that's more of what we're talking about when you blast them with the fire hose and then it's your five day challenge. And by day or two, by day two or three, they have fallen off, they have fallen behind. Their thought is now, see I knew I couldn't do it. Like, I can't even keep up with her free stuff. If I can't do her free stuff, there's no way I can go into her paid stuff. Because I know her paid stuff's going to be amazing. I know her coaching program's going to be incredible. But, like, I can't even do a five day challenge. Look how busy I am. Look how busy I am. I knew I didn't have time. I knew I couldn't prioritize it. I knew I had too much going on right now. I'm gonna invest later. Cause I can't even do her free stuff. Right. Versus let's look at the new way. If we think about the new way, I want you to think about. In my programs, I talk about something I call the window of possibility. And how any good sales event, be it, be it a challenge, a webinar, anything else, in any good sales event, you are cracking open the window of possibility. Okay, how do we do that? So if you think about challenges, webinars and emails, for example, again, going back to the example of a challenge, and my number one focus is to help you take a baby step. Like, I actually, in my challenge, you came in and you didn't have blank, and by the end you actually did something. Your reaction to that is like, look at that. I did it. Dopamine, right? I checked it off, I got a result, I took action. And those baby steps build their confidence because you know, what thought that creates. If I was able to take a step and actually see, see a change, do something different, you know, it can be the smallest thing. Right. I've talked a lot about how in my Selling made Simple challenge, I have people pick one person, isolate one person to kind of represent the type of client that they would want to help. And I have them name that person and identify what qualities of that person constitute, like, the type of person they want to help. And then I help them write a before and after story for that person. It's the whole challenge takes five days, right? And people actually do it. People actually get it. And by the end of the week, people are saying, I feel more clear on who I'm supposed to be helping and what they actually want than I ever have before. And when I first did this challenge I had, it was loaded with stuff. I just kept breaking it apart, breaking it apart, breaking it apart. I told my clients this week, your challenge should almost feel dumb to you. Okay? Not that your people are dumb, far from it. But, you know, the Material so well, it's going to feel really, really simple and really, really basic because you're the expert. But remember, these are folks who are even just trying to get onto the board in terms of making progress, right? And what happens when somebody watches themselves take a step, just one step, then suddenly there's possibility, right? They think to themselves, if I was able to do this in her free challenge, I wonder what I could get done in a year of coaching with her, right? I've never been able to get anything out of a free challenge, but I got something out of hers. There's something different here. Suddenly you've created contrast between yourself and all of the other crappy programs or crappy challenges that just sat on their desktop being full of information, right? But they couldn't digest it, they couldn't sink their teeth into it, so they just buried it in a drawer. So I want you to think about possible possibility over pure education. So much more important to to think about that possibility. So anytime you use stories, small wins and baby steps, you are going to build their confidence. You're going to crack open the window of possibility. I wonder what would happen for you if during your sales events you stopped focusing on trying to be so smart and trying to seem like the best expert and trying to seem like you even have the, you don't even need to have the best strategies, right? What if that wasn't your focus? What if your focus instead was in on cracking the window of possibility? What if your number one objection or objective by the end of your sales event, be it a challenge, webinar or something else, your number one objective was, I'm gonna make people start to believe that maybe this is possible if they were to work with me, that maybe they could do this. How would you approach it? I'm guessing that you would approach it totally differently than you have been so far. Okay, now we're gonna talk a little bit about practical ways to address the I don't think I can do it. The it's not you, it's me. Right? So I've shared some already, but we'll just kind of put them all in one place. So the first one is sharing micro wins. Micro Micro wins. Highlighting quick results or small client stories. Right? Here's an example. Jane landed her first paying client after a single call. Okay. Notice it's not Jane made 500k in my program. Right? Because what's gonna happen when you read that story if you already have self doubt? You're like 500K. I can't even make $50 or you know, $5,000. Right. So somebody that actually your amazing, incredible big blowout success stories are actually potentially aggravating someone's self doubt. It's increasing the chasm between where they are right now and where they want to be. They're like, that's great for Jane but I have no idea how to do that. I don't believe I could do that. Right. So the difference between Jane made 500k and Jane landed her first paying client after a single call. What does that do in your brain? It makes you be like what she, what did Jane do on that call? I could do a call. What do you mean? Got her first paying client. I want to get my first paying client. Right? So it's the small, the, it's the scale, right? So it's a small micro win. It's a quick result. And also I say this all the time and I'll never stop saying it. It's specific. I always say, I've been saying it for years. Specificity sells specificity over general. I see a lot of people's testimonials are like, it was great, she was great. We were all great and great. It was great. Doesn't sell. Okay. The specific here is something that happened that is what gets people's wheels turning. And they go, they might. But listen, hearing Jane landed her first paying client after a single call doesn't immediately take away all my self doubt but it does make me say how'd she do that? And listen, if your prospects have questions, you've got them exactly where you want them. You want them being curious about you. That's the first step in the window of possibility is getting somebody to be like, maybe this is different than something I've seen before. Once you're in the maybe this is different. Now we're talking curiosity and now they're paying attention. Okay. That's one of the big problems in 2025. A lot of people are going to walk right by because they've seen it all before, right? They're like, I've been, I, I've, I've, I saw this movie, I got the T shirt. I don't need to read this email until you can help them have the thought maybe this is different than what I've done before. That is also one of the biggest antidotes to the self doubt. Okay, so sharing micro wins number two. And we talked about this one. But just to really hammer it home, offer safe spaces to test and try. Offer safe spaces to test and try. This is where that Challenge or workshop approach broken down into teeny, teeny tiny pieces will really create that safe, padded room. Okay? We're not going to go, like, if we're talking about, like, becoming a ninja, there's no knives in this room. Nobody can hurt themselves, okay? Because if they cut themselves trying before, they don't even want to go in the room anymore because they're like, I can't risk that again. Right? So how do we make it safe? How do we make it a test lab? We make it teeny, teeny tiny, okay? And we help them experience success without a huge commitment. Absolutely huge in terms of helping them see that maybe this could be different. Right? So that was number two, offering safe spaces to test and try. Number three is really using that window of possibility concept. So letting the seeds of progress be the evidence they need to believe that this time can be different. So what I mean by that is, if they do the challenge with you or they go through a workshop and they do something different than they have before, they see it differently. They actually put their pen to the paper, they complete the task. They close the loop. They actually do what you told them, and they're like, look at that. Right? Look at that. I actually did it. Let the seeds of progress, tiny, tiny progress. Be the evidence they need to be like, maybe with this person's help, I could take a step. Maybe I should fill out that application. Maybe I should just Let me. I should just see. Okay? That's all we need, is cracking that window of possibility. If they come to you with that window shut tight, how do you just crack it? Is what the visual is in my own brain, as I'm always asking myself, what would it look like to create a window of possibility for somebody? Okay. Also, I want to talk just for a moment, about willingness. Willingness. What a lost art. Being willing. Right. Willingness alone can be enough to spark action. Remember, clarity comes from action. A lot of your people who are giving you the I don't think I can do it, they're like, I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna wait until I. Like, I don't. I'm gonna wait is the sister of I don't think I can do it. They go together. I don't think I can do it. I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna wait until I feel more sure. I'm gonna wait until I feel more clear. Well, you and I both know the problem with that clarity comes from action. So how are you ever gonna get clear if you don't take a step? So we have to start with willingness. How do we help people feel willing? It's like you got your heart broken and it's time to start dating again. Right? What's that moment when you become willing to post your profile on the dating app or to be set up on the blind date by your friend? There's gotta be a willingness there to say, I'm ready to try again. Yeah, I bought something before and it sucked. Or I bought something before and I did nothing. Or I tried before and it failed. Okay. The first step before they're ever gonna be a yes is willingness. So that's also what you're creating with the window of possibility. Okay. The final thing to think about with the window of possibility and this. This to me is what I like to do on my sales calls is playing the tape forward, having, like, with your. With your prospect, having them go to, like, the fast forward button, right? So kind of getting to the bottom of what would make it worth it to try again. I know that you don't think you can do it or you tried before and it was terrible. You're terrified of investing again and feeling like you wasted it and having the shame of that. But what would make it worth it? Let's just say you did plunk the money down. Fast forward to a year from now, however long your program is. My. My programs are both a year, so I talk in years, right? What would make it worth it? We're sitting here next year and you pay this money. What would you have to be able to say to be like, I'm glad I did that? Okay. That's the first thing is, like, even getting them to identify, well, what would make it worth it then? Can you present a doable path to actually getting there? Right. For me, I like to reverse engineer. Like, if somebody's like, you know, I just need to make my investment back. Okay, well, let's do the math. How many clients is that? Get out your pen and paper. Let's figure this out. And usually, once we come up with that, people look at it and they're like, all that's left is fear. And they can see that. They're like, I can see that it is totally feasible that I could get two clients in the next year. So the only thing keeping me from saying yes is just plain old fear. And a lot of people aren't willing to be held back by fear. Right. Once they see that, they're like, all right, maybe I can ride with fear. Because most of us entrepreneurs know that, you know, we're going to have to be scared sometimes. Okay. And the other thing to get people thinking about in the window of possibility is how might it be harder to get there on your own? Okay, so like thinking back to being stuck in the hole 10ft in the ground, and you're like, yeah, I just, I don't know. I tried to climb a ladder before, fell on my ass. I didn't like it. Okay, well, what's the plan for getting out of the hole, my man, my girl, my dude? Like, what is the plan for getting out of the hole? And when you ask that question, a lot of times it makes them realize that no plan is actually terrible plan. Right. You're gonna die in that hole. They're like, well, I don't know, like, maybe a helicopter will come. That's all I got. Okay. It's like waiting for a unicorn, Waiting for a miracle. Sometimes when you help people, like, what's the alternative? Is one of my favorite questions. Sometimes people have an alternative and that's great. Like, cool. I tell people that all the time. I'm like, look, as long if you're not gonna work with me, it's no problem. As long as you have something that you're doing, don't be out here doing nothing, right? Cause then you're gonna call me in a year and be like, I, you were right. I should have just worked with you. Cause I, I, I just took 10 steps backwards last year all by myself. Right? So how might it get harder or be harder to get there on their own? Right? Friends, I've thrown a lot at you in this episode with the it's not you, it's me objection. Huge. Huge. In 2025, we talk about it all day, every day, inside both of my programs, same day sales, which is my foundational sales training program that helps you build the skill of getting a sale whenever you want one. And then in my mastermind sold out group programs, I help you scale that initial sales traction into your sold out offer. But just remember, for right now, and by the way, you can go to stephcrowder.com get on the wait lists for those programs. We got stuff coming up. This year we're going to be opening enrollment. All the good things. But for this episode, I want to tie this up by just reminding you that I don't think I can do it is really normal. If you hear that objection, you didn't do anything wrong. In fact, you did everything right. You're getting to the heart of their true objection. And that's a beautiful thing. Everyone feels this way at some point, right, real transformation starts with them daring to believe that they could succeed. You have nothing without that. All right, my friends, if you enjoyed this episode, I would love to hear from you. You can respond to any of my emails or just reach out at. Hey, Steph Crowder on Instagra. And just remember, when someone says, I don't think I can do it, they truly are simply missing that last spark of belief. If you provide that spark or help them find that spark within themselves, you're on the path to truly helping them and creating the clients that you're ready to have this year and helping again. Going back to that visual of helping clear the obstacle out of their way. They want to keep walking down the path. Okay, let's not have them give up when that boulder is sitting there. If we don't help people clear objections, we're basically saying to them, yeah, I think you're right. I don't think you can get around that boulder. You better just go home, right? So help get good at helping people overcome objections, just like this one. Okay, friends, that's all for today. I am wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love. Hello. Hello, CNC listeners. Welcome to the podcast, episode number 117. Thank you for being here. Thanks for spending part of your day with me as usual. I'm so excited to be hanging out with you. And for today, kind of a special episode. This is going to be a little bit of a personal episode, a bit of a life update. And I. I've gotta be honest, I don't have a super prepared episode for you today. I've got some thoughts for you. I've been, you know, mentally sort of organizing what I want to share regarding my life updates and how I think it applies to you and how you can benefit from some of the lessons that I've been learning through my personal life recently and some big updates that my family has made to our lives. And so this will be a little bit more of a, I guess, like, intimate, sort of cozy episode, not one of my more structured, like, do these five things kind of episodes. But, you know, I was talking to my good friend Claire Pelletro about doing this episode, and one thing she said stuck with me. She said, everybody likes a life update episode. And I think that's true. I do think that's true. And also, as I was brainstorming what I want to talk about, I think that in addition to it just being interesting to hear about, you know, someone's life that you follow their podcast for a long time and you watch them grow. And I know. I love those episodes too. But I do think that there have truly been some gems to come out in the past couple weeks and months that are super applicable to business and entrepreneurship in addition to being really helpful with your life. Okay, so we're gonna. We're gonna unpack. Literally and figuratively, we're gonna unpack. Because you may or may not already know this. If you're on Instagram and you follow me and you watch my stories, then you definitely know I'm at. Hey, Steph Crowder, by the way, that my family has recently moved. We've moved house. We've gone from one house to another house. We have not left the area where we live. It's a very, very close move, literally across the street to a different neighborhood, essentially. So, you know, my kids are still going to the same schools, but we have moved from one neighborhood that we've been in since 2017 into a different neighborhood that is literally a three minute drive from where I was before. But it has a very, very different vibe and is a bit of an atypical move, I think. So I want to share what precipitated this move because it. A lot of people in my life are like, I didn't even know that you were thinking of moving. And the truth was, I wasn't. Exactly. And so this materialized really quickly. So I'm going to talk about the process of how we got here, but then we're also going to talk about the why. Because in the intro that you just listened to my intro, little music in my opening sort of words that I share every single week. One of the things I talk about is having the courage to do what looks crazy on paper. And there have been certainly multiple points in my life where I have done just that. And this is another example. I'm going to share what I mean. But this move is different, very different than other moves that my husband and I have done together. We are not first time home buyers. I think this is our fourth property that we've purchased together. So I don't know if that makes us veterans, but we're certainly not beginners. And this move was different than all of the rest. And it actually reminds me a lot of the moment that I left my corporate job. And we'll talk about why. I mean, those seem like two very different things, but there's a bit of a theme that I want to share. But first, just a word of caution, word of warning. I shared this with my clients that when if you've been through my Year on the Wall workshop, by the way, you can go to you're on the wall. Com if you want to check it out, you can still get a ticket. And this is my process that I teach every year to my, my listeners, my clients, my audience. Anyone who wants to come can just buy a ticket and join. And this is my process that I teach to help people put these giant, giant calendar pages up on your wall that reflect your goals and everything that you're doing in your business and in your life. And the way we get there, we don't just start like there's this sticky note system. If you haven't seen it, it's this color coded system and visualizing your whole life. But we don't just start slapping up sticky notes. We have to do a bit of work, a bit of pre work to get super clear on what you actually want in your life in the coming year. So I call it looking before you leap. Right? So getting intentional about like, what am I actually trying to do this year? And I have a number of really powerful exercises that I always go through myself as an individual human being and business owner before I teach them in Year on the Wall. So I stress test, I literally do my own process and then I teach it. And this year when I was doing this process, I, I teach this system. I've mentioned it on the podcast called the Life Buckets system where you really go through, like if your life is a department store and you have the different sections like your relationships, business, health and fitness, spirituality, et cetera, Most of us have six to eight Life Buckets or departments and when. And I teach this exercise where you get really clear on what you're trying to cultivate, what you're trying to create in each of these areas. And for me, sometimes you will find this too. My dear listener, if you, if you try this, some things will come up that you were not expecting. And so I was doing this back in November and I was writing about my home life and I saw us moving. And I have to tell you how bizarre this was because if you followed for a long time, you already know. In 2021, my husband and I had an opportunity to build, be built, our home. You know, we obviously we were, we worked with a builder, right? But we had this, we lived in this neighborhood, we kind of had the stars aligning moment and we found ourselves under contract on a home that had just been framed. There was enough time to like make some floor plan changes and choose all of the finishes and all of the paint and all of the, like, personality of the home. It was an amazing experience. It was really fun. It was a bit of a creative spark awoke inside of me when I got to sit down with a designer and figure out, like, what I wanted this house's personality to be like. And so we went through that process, and it felt like a big leap. I mean, that was a big developmental moment for me because, to be honest, my business that I've worked so hard on for almost 10 years now helped us build this house, and we were so proud. And to be honest, when we moved, I saw it as our forever home. My husband, I believe, told me I'd be burying him at this house. He was like, we are never moving. And I think, as my daughter is now reminding me, she's eight. When we moved before, she said, you know, she. She reminded me of this recently because moving's been a little hard on her, even though it's a close move. She said, you said in the last house we were gonna stay there. Lessons abound. I don't say things like that anymore, but I. I suppose I. I believe her. I probably did say that because I believed that when we moved into that house. And so I. No one is really more surprised than me when conversations started popping up between my husband and I about what a different home could look like for us. So when I was doing this exercise, this Life Buckets exercise, I started to just have this. I guess you could call it a download, like a mental download. This clarity around the different feeling I wanted to have in a house. And in our previous neighborhood, it was a more urban area where the yards are super small on purpose, and it's got much more of like a you can kind of high five your neighbors kind of feeling. And for the first time in my life, I saw us with some land and a yard and nature. My husband and I are kind of like self. We self identify as city people. We lived in Chicago together for eight years, and that was really, like, where we grew up together. And so when we moved here to Louisville, Kentucky, we loved this previous neighborhood we were in because it had this, like, urban feel. My husband had no desire to maintain a yard, and that was such a good fit for us for, like, seven or eight years, this. This neighborhood. So it was incredibly surprising and exciting, but also a little bit destabilizing to suddenly find myself craving something I've never craved before. And in fact, the neighborhood. I'm recording this podcast in this home of a neighborhood that I swore up and Down. I would never own a home in. It's a suburban neighborhood, y'all. It is a 90s nostalgia suburban neighborhood where the kids ride their bikes and, you know, the homes are colonial style. I never saw this for myself. And so I have to start the story here because I. I warned my clients, kind of half joking, like, be careful. Be careful when you do your year on the wall process. Be careful what you write down. Because I wrote that down. And I thought, God, that's weird. Like, I'm craving a house that is, like, opposite of what I have now are. You know, my husband and I have really only ever lived in, like, super open concept homes. And I found myself, like, I was on Pinterest during this phase. I was on Pinterest all the time. This is what happened next. So I was writing how I wanted to feel in my new home, and I kind of saw a visual in my mind. And so then I turned to Pinterest. If you're a visual person, you might be like me, where I started needing to, like, picture it. And so I started just pinning any interiors that I was vibing with. And I just. And I literally have a board on my Pinterest. This is for me that I called Fall 2024 vibes. I think I said I wrote vibes, Fall 2024 vibes. And I just started pinning, pinning, pinning and pinning. And a lot of these images had roaring fireplaces and bookshelves filled with books and just like super cozy kind of modern, vintage interiors, which, again, so weird and opposite of my brand new build that was more like modern farmhouse, like, very wood. I still love, like, wood interior, but just very modern. I would say rustic modern, but. But modern and new finishes and wide open spaces and crisp and clean and kind of white. And everything I started looking at and vibing with was like kind of if you're on TikTok, you may have been seeing. If you're anything like me, I get. Maybe it's because of my interests, but I get all this content about, like, the Nancy Myers aesthetic, which Nancy Myers is, you know, involved in films like Father of the Bride and It's Complicated and I think the holiday where when you watch these films, there's kind of like more cluttered interiors, like lived in, lived in kind of vibes. And that is where I felt my heart and soul kind of pulling me. And so when you write something like this down and you start creating pin boards, it follows that in December, I remember I was teaching year on the wall, so it had to have been the First Monday in December, I was in this house. This house came on the market, actually, I suppose it was a Friday. I think I taught. Did I teach year on the wall on a Friday this year, I must have this house. So my husband and I, we. We identified the neighborhood we were like. And both of us, for our own reasons, which I'll get into more. I've shared my reasons. My husband's reasons are similar, but a little different. His is the financial side of things, which we're gonna get to. We identified this neighborhood and we thought, let's just keep an eye. Like, there's no inventory. There's never really. Houses that come up for sale. People tend to stay. And so on a Thursday afternoon, this house came up for sale. By Friday morning, we were in the house and making an offer. And so I went to my year on the wall training having made an offer on a house that, like, a couple weeks ago was not even on my radar. It was so crazy. And luckily for me, I've been through cycles like this enough to just trust the damn process because, you know, it was. Again, it was destabilizing. I was like, why is this happening? Like, why, why. Why am I, you know, outgrowing this home that I thought was supposed to be my forever home? It's like when we moved in, I was in this state of, like, I can't believe this is my life. Like, this is everything I ever dreamed of. And then here I am feeling like I live in a house of a person. I'm no longer the same. I'm not that person anymore. I'm going to get more into that. And so when I. When the download started coming through, instead of, like, resisting it or being freaked out about it, I just decided to embrace it. And I said, okay. It's kind of weird, but I've been through this process enough times to just trust and believe that I'm being led by whatever you want to call it, God, my higher self. I happen to believe it's all the above and just go with it. Just go with it and believe that I'll know and that I'll have a sense of knowing. And that's exactly what happened. I think I even shared on year on the wall. I said, hey, be careful what you write down. Because, like, I was just standing in a house that I put an offer in on, and I had. Didn't even have moving on my radar until a couple weeks ago. And so, long story short, we got the house. We ended up listing our home very close to Christmas, which Was, you know, again, was that the plan? Absolutely not. That's not when you buy and sell houses. But it all worked out and here I am on February 10 and a week ago today we, we moved into the new house. And we are very much under a lot of boxes still in the clutter of getting settled, but really happy, really really happy with the change. And I've been reflecting on this change because I've already hinted and mentioned that this move was unlike any other move that we've done before this house. So like I said, we had this kind of flashy new, like brand new, you know, new construction home. And now I'm sitting in a house that was built in 1994, so it's 30 years old. There's got, it's got stuff, it's got some issues. It has, it's outdated in a lot of different places. Um, we immediately had to redo the floors. We had to paint the whole thing. We had to have it deep cleaned. We've got some issues in the basement. I mean there, like this house is a bit of a project. I mean, you had to have a vision for this kind of house and back to the idea of things looking crazy on paper. This is the first time my husband and I have done a moo. Every move we've done has been a bigger, more expensive, quote, unquote, nicer step up than the previous that came before it. And this was the first time that we. I don't know what word you want to use, you could say downsize, downgraded, traded down. I mean, the house that we bought is almost half the market value of the house that we just sold. And this next part won't be for everybody. So I invite you to take what you need from what I'm about to share. I'm not saying everybody should do this. I'm not saying that you should do this. But I am going to just openly share what it's felt like in my thought process. There's been a bit of, there's, there's multiple layers to it. Number one, if you've been following me and hanging out with me for any amount of time, you probably have picked up on the fact that I've been on a pretty hardcore self healing, growth, development moment. I mean, I'm in my late 30s. I think that probably tracks as far as being like a quote unquote midlife woman, right? But I know I've shared about my, my journey of, of stopping drinking, my vice of choice, my numbing mechanism of choice. And now that I haven't drank for 550 days or something. Uh, I've had to face a lot of things that were not quite right in my life. Um, turns out when you're covering up your feelings, you don't have to face a lot of things. You actually can find out that you're a different person completely than what you thought. And that has been the case for me. You know, I'm someone who had a pretty serious era of trying to be the most fun person in the room, of trying to be the sparkliest personality, and honestly, trying to be the kind of person who's just up all the time, who just feels good. There was definitely fear of discomfort, fear of negative emotion. I was doing a lot of running that I wasn't even aware of because my drinking was very social and very normal and was not drinking every day. I was, you know, drinking on the weekends. But I was drinking to feel nothing or to feel happy or to, you know, change how I felt or to turn off my emotions. Probably the most accurate was to just kind of turn off my emotions and turn off the, you know, the. The gnarly, grizzly parts inside that are asking you to look at them. When you take away whatever you're using to not feel those things, you're kind of left with the truth of it all. And I have grown in so many different ways. I mean, the miracle of all miracles to me is that my husband John has grown right along with me. Shortly after I stopped drinking, because he was a partier himself, he said, you know, I'm down, I'm game. And he doesn't drink anymore either. And, hey, that could have gone a totally different direction for us in our relationship. Two kids who met in college who were basically, you know, king and queen of the. Of. Of partying and being fun, quote, unquote, right? He's gotten super into Ironman triathlons. That's not my cup of tea, but I've gotten into my own fitness journey. And the two of us have just gotten into other things and sort of gone through this process of getting to know who we are beyond that whole cult. It's not just the alcohol, right? It's the whole culture of it. And how we socialize has changed dramatically. And when that's the number one way that you spend your time on the weekends and then you take it away, you kind of have to figure out, well, what else am I into? So I've gotten really into reading and exercising and, hey, getting sleep and taking care of myself has become like my Other full time job besides parenting and running a business. And so what ended up happening was I found myself living in a house that belonged to a person whose. Not here anymore. The person who built that house, she's. We. We've shed her, right? Like that is an old skin. And that I'm not saying, and I want to be clear about this, I'm not saying that if you go through a huge transformation person personal growth era, that you need to move. That's definitely not what I'm saying. But in my case, something was off. I. The things that I valued, which when we moved into this neighborhood that is honestly chock full of bars and restaurants and kind of like social clubs and nightlife, again, these are all things I don't do anymore. The number one appeal of being in a neighborhood like that was just sort of not there anymore. And so I've had to ask my question like questions like, well, what do I value now? Those are my values before is being, being fun and being rowdy and going out and you know, making a lot of friends that way. And there's no shade to that. If that's your jam, that's, that's great. That was my jam for like 17 years. But I'm just like in a different chapter now and exploring what this chapter is all about. And I've had to ask myself, you know the question like, what. Who, who is this person? What's super interesting is I've been reconnecting with the version of myself I was at 17 years old, right before I started ever having alcohol. I actually feel more like her than I do the person I became in my 20s and early 30s, which is so wild. I've had to like, it's the real me. It's, it's honestly the real me. And that's not to say if you're listening to this and you happen to have been my friend through my 20s or early 30s, it's not like I'm a completely different person, but I'm just more of my real self now. And it turns out my real self has very different values. I actually am someone who really likes some slowness. I work my ass off and I can move very fast at work and I work out very hard in the gym. I also really love moments of slowness. I love coffee and sitting outside and having a fire and reading and chilling. Turns out I love what they call glimmers. Right? Have you heard of this concept of, of glimmers? Looking for the glimmers, like the little sort of moments in life that are joyful and that spark, joy, and just those little in between moments that I couldn't see and I couldn't experience before because I was either drinking or hungover, you know, good 50% of the time. And so now that all of that is out of my system, quite literally, yeah, I found myself living in this house where the house is fine. It wasn't, you know, there was definitely some great things about it, don't get me wrong. And my kiddos are still missing their old house, which I think is, you know, par for the course. But the idea of, like I said, having, like, I have nature, I have this creek that is facing west in my backyard. So the sunsets are just, like, out of control. If you follow me on Instagram, I share them. You can. You can check them out. But it's. It's an incredible difference and craving living in a house that flows differently, that has defined spaces. So I realized that one of the reasons I was numbing myself with alcohol was because I was very overstimulated all the time and very triggered by life with children. And instead of dealing with that, I turned to turning off those feelings. So for me, having an open concept house where everybody is on top of everybody all the time. My former home, it was just like one big room. The dining room, kitchen, family room were all just one big square, no defined spaces. My husband and I both started really craving a closed concept house where there's. The kitchen is. Is its own room, and there's a dining room that's its own room and a family room. It's its own room and a living room. And if my kids are in a different room, I can't see what they're doing. You know, they're getting older now, so I don't need to be on top of them all the time. And if they want to be, play hide and seek and be loud, they don't have to be, you know, in my space when I'm trying to put together a family meal. Right. And so that change is a huge one as well. So that brings me to the part of this that's like, okay, so fine. What. What part of this looks crazy on paper? There's also a bit of, in my previous neighborhood, this feeling that new and bigger and. Yeah, new. I guess new is like the primary word that's coming to my mind. New and bigger and next level. And like, what's the next thing that. That's always better. And I could see myself sort of falling into that where it's like I had One house. I owned one house. When we first moved here. We owned this one house and we had the opportunity to build. And that's like a thing that ends up happening where people just kind of keep like, sort of house hopping, right? Like building every few years and feeling like they need to keep upgrading and upgrading and upgrading and going to the tippy top of your budget. As your income grows with your spouse, if you're, if you have a partner, you just keep like filling that budget with like, more house. Right. And so my husband and I looked at each other and we were like, what if we didn't do that anymore? And what would it be like? We started just like, look. So the area that we're coming from was very in demand from a real estate perspective. So I recognize this is not going to be everybody's situation, but just, just hear me out, because you never know. We realized that we could sell that. The house that we built has appreciated in value quite a bit from when we bought it, from when we built it in 2021. So we started doing the math and we were like, hold on, hold on. You're telling me that we could achieve our goals, that I already talked about having some yard, having a different floor plan, having a house that feels like I wanted that sort of 1990s, like, nostalgia coziness over brand new super modern light and bright, like, just different vibe, as I already mentioned. But we were like, you're telling me that even with the interest rates where they are here in the United States, we could have the opportunity to maybe cut our mortgage in half or down by, you know, 30 or something? Somewhere between 30 and 50%. And yeah, there's going to be projects and yeah, we're going to need to address some things in an older home. But, like, the math started really making sense. But the catch with that was kind of putting your pride aside. Right. Like, again, this is the part that looks crazy on paper is like, when you have this, like, I mean, the number of people that would tell me, like, your home is beautiful, like this beautiful brand new house, and then we're moving into this house that, like, quite frankly needs work. Yeah. That takes a. Like I said, it takes a vision. It take. And it doesn't. It doesn't make sense to everybody, nor would it be a good fit for everybody. Okay. And there was a part of me that just wanted to opt out of the track I was on. And I recently heard this quote that goes, oh, how does it go? I don't want to mess it up just because you walked through the wrong door doesn't mean you should stay in the wrong room. Just because you walked through the wrong door doesn't mean you should stay in the wrong room. And my God, if that doesn't apply to your living space, your marriage, your relationship, your job, your career, I mean, look, how often do we do that? We walk through the door? Nobody thinks it's the wrong door, by the way, when they walk through the door, everybody thinks it's the right door. And in the moment, you know what? I would even say maybe it was the right door at the time. Okay, you don't have to beat yourself up for having walked through the door. That moment has passed. But the moment you recognize that you might. Hey, hey. I think it's. At first, the voice is so quiet. It's like, hey, I think we might be in the wrong place. Oh, and a lot of us, myself included, just want that voice to go away because it's so inconvenient. You're like, oh, come on. Like, when I first started wanting to move, I was like, my husband, he. He looked at me, he's like, oh, my God, this is. We're gonna do this, aren't we? There was a little bit of dread. It was like, because moving sucks. Okay, it sucks, right? Getting a new job, taking a risk, going through a divorce, like, terrible, terrible. Absolutely. No one wants to do that. Transitions are so hard. But don't let the transition be the price of you staying in the wrong situation. And maybe you're afraid of people's judgment. You know, that's what is making me remind, like, remember? And it's incredible. It's 10 years ago this April, 10 years ago, I left my high powered director level stock options corporate job at a tech company to become a part time customer service specialist with a company run by three dudes who lived in Portland and had their business on the Internet. Okay, Crazy on definition of crazy on paper. You know, my dad, God love him, look, trying to look out for me was like, oh, you can't do that. A lot of people were like, what are you thinking? And frankly, I knew that there was a 50, 50 chance that I would end up back on the Chicago job market. But I had to know because I was in the wrong room. And I thought, this other room. Then I was listening to podcasts of people who were running their own businesses. And I thought, I'm not sure if that's the right room for me, but damn, I gotta walk through the door and find out. And now here I am, 10 years later. And I cannot believe what I've been able to create. But it required me doing what looked actually insane on paper. Totally crazy, right? And there was no way of knowing. There was no guarantee. But the moment you know, you're in the wrong room, it's really time to ask yourself, what do we want to do? Right? Life is so short. I've been reminded of that in the past week. There've been a number of tragedies in my community. And I've been really thinking, life is just way too short to stay in the wrong room just because you walked through the wrong door. Don't make that the reason that you stay in the wrong room. It's a huge, huge lesson. And so I also wanted to mention that for those of you I know, a lot of my listeners, or at least some of my listeners, are familiar with my concept that I call MVI, minimum viable income. I've been talking about this for 10 years, since my fizzle days. And the idea of minimum viable income is reducing your expenses to the point where, especially if you're in the early stages or you're just not making that much money in your business yet and it's feeling really tight, ask yourself if there's any way to, like, can you think outside the box? Right? We. We are so quick to accept, well, no, no, I've got these bills. Like, no, no, I've had a mortgage. I have the car. I have the country club. I have the this, I have the that. Private school, like, whatever the case may be. And look, I'm not. Again, I have to say, I'm not telling you to move. I'm not. If you love your house, if you love your neighborhood, if you love your life, then this is. This message is not for you, okay? But maybe there is a part of your life that you could get creative in the name of lessening your living expenses. Because I got to tell you. Can I tell you one of the best feelings that I have felt personally for my nervous system, one of the best feelings I've had in my adult life is having money, having leftover money because I didn't buy a house at the top of my budget. And no shame, if you're listening to this, I'm probably triggering somebody. And look, I want you to know that every house I have ever bought up until this point in my life has been the tippy flipping top of my budget. And this time, we just got to play a different game where, like, we can afford to have a leaky basement. Like, it's Not a problem. It's not fun. But like, we can take care of it. Our son, you know, it needs a different school environment. No problem. Right? Again, it's not the most fun money in the world to spend. But like, I have to be honest, a big reason we made this move was because the numbers made sense, right? And, and there's a bit of like, okay, this house is going to be imperfect. My bathroom desperately needs a renovation. We're going to have to wait on those things. But like, if it means that I'm no longer, that I've created a little bit of breathing room in terms of my living expenses, it's a pretty amazing feeling. And look, I understand this might not be feel like practical for you right now, but I just encourage you to ask yourself, like, am I truly thinking outside the box? I've had clients move back in with their parents. I've had clients move from the city to the suburbs. Um, you don't have. But again, it doesn't even have to be moving. Right. I've had clients pick up part time jobs just to take off a little bit of the pressure and keep working on their business until they're at a point where it's really more comfortable to leave the part time job. Just if you're finding that you're accepting status quo, you know, I can't do that. I got kids, I got this, I got that. I just gently and lovingly, if it's available to you, if it feels aligned, I invite you to take an honest look at how, what you're set up and ask yourself if I. This question I love, it's a terrifying question, okay? But if you had the chance to wave a magic wand and do it all over again, would you be in the same place? Would you choose where you live? Would you choose your partner? Would you choose your job? Or would you be looking for something different? And look again, especially when it comes to partnerships, like, I'm not saying, hey, like leave your marriage just because you think maybe there's somebody else out there. That's not that. My point is like, maybe that reveals the work you need to do in your relationship. Not saying leave, but like, maybe you and your partner have an opportunity to love each other better, right? Like if you had the opportunity, a magic wand to like rewrite it, to pick something different, would you live in this country? Would you go somewhere else? Right? Would you be schooling your kids the same way? Or would you make a different decision and hear me loud and clear? I'm not saying it's all this, this simple. And maybe it's not accessible to you for any number of reasons and maybe it's not going to happen tomorrow. But not asking yourself this question and having the courage, and it's takes courage to answer this question, right? Would I, am I, if I could have it my way, if I could make a decision again, Am I living the way what I would pick? If I were on Pinterest, if life were a Pinterest board, Is this what I would choose? Or is it something different? And if so, what, what, what, what is it that I would choose? And again, maybe it's gonna take you some time to walk out the door of the room that you're in, right? Maybe you gotta think on it. Maybe you need to be spend a couple weeks or months pinning images like I did because you just were cooking on something and you didn't know really what the hell was going on in your psyche, but you knew that something was brewing. Let it brew. Have the courage to let it marinate. Have the courage to listen to your whispers. If you're getting whispers, listen. Don't be afraid. They can't hurt you. You don't have to move you. Just because you listen doesn't mean you have to make a change. But make no mistake, that is your inner guidance. That is your highest good. It is trying to deliver the message. Stop plugging your ears and start listening. And if you are in a situation right now that was once your dream and it just doesn't feel like the dream anymore, and something else is pulling you and something else is. Feels more aligned and it's uncomfortable. I sat in my pantry at my old house and I cried on Voxer to my good friend Claire Pelz. And I said, I feel like I'm grieving the person I was. This was her house. This was her house. This was her dream. And she's not here anymore. Like she, you know, she, she, she, she evolved. She turned into somebody else. And like, I wouldn't change it, but it's a little painful, it's a little raw, it's a little weird, right? And I'm very much like this whole thing has brought up so much emotion. I mean, I've had some shame around, like, especially with the move and being so busy moving now. I'm like, why did I do this to myself? Because I could have been focused on the business. I, you know, I have. Do you know how long it takes to move and unpack and like the distraction it creates, the disruption it creates. Like, I've looked at myself and said, why did you do all this? But at the end of the day, there's a trust there that you have to have for yourself when you are aligning with the environment. Like, if you've grown, it's okay if you shed your outer layer. It's a beautiful thing if what you thought you wanted, isn't it? That's okay. That's the whole point. So, yeah, that's me. That's what I got going on over here. Buried in boxes, obsessed with this view out my window of this creek running through my yard. Helping my kiddos who are missing their other environment adjust to something new and different. Dreaming of the projects we want to do, embracing the sort of like, you know, like a newborn horse, like a cult who's trying to get its legs. It's kind of wobbling around all over the place. And one day, it's going to be running. But today's not that day. Yeah. Yep, that's where I'm at. And so there's your episode. Bit of a life update, some lessons. I'd love to hear if something resonates with you. Whenever I do an episode like this that feels a little vulnerable, nothing means more than to hear from you. I had shared a little bit on Instagram about this, like, slowing down and going against the grain that I'm doing in my life, and I got some really positive responses. So maybe this episode wasn't your thing, and that's totally cool. I. I get it. But maybe you loved it and you heard something. You heard some mirror that resonated. I'd love to hear. So please hit me up. You can reply to any emails that you get from me, or if you're on Instagram, you could just shoot me a dm. I'm. Hey, Steph Crowder. I'd love to hear your thoughts. So that's it. My friends, I absolutely am wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love. To have the courage to do what looks batshit on paper. Bet on yourself. Bet on yourself. Don't stay in the wrong room. I'll talk to you next week.