564: The Courage Gap with Margie Warrell
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Welcome to the How of Business with your host, Henry Lopez. The podcast that helps you start, run, and grow your small business. And now, here is your host. Welcome to this episode of the How of Business. This is Henry Lopez. My guest today is Margie Worrell. Margie, welcome to the show.

Great to be with you, Henry. Yeah, we're going to have an interesting conversation. The questions or question that we're going to try to address is, do you tend to hold off on making a change or taking a chance, like maybe with starting your first business or with your existing business to go into that next level of growth?

whether it's personally or in your small business. Do you worry about stagnation? Do you worry about the leaving potential on the table? Do you worry about the fear of failure? You know, all of those things that are very common that keep us from making a change or taking that next step, perhaps to start a business. Well, Dr. Margie Worrell is with me today to explain how the biggest problems, as she explains, don't stem from what we cannot do,

They stem from not doing all that we can do. And so we're going to explore that, especially as it relates to her book, The Courage Gap. But you can find all of the Howa Business resources, including the show notes page for this episode. And to learn more about my one-on-one and group coaching programs, just go to thehowabusiness.com. I also would encourage you to please consider supporting this podcast on Patreon and subscribe wherever you might be listening so you don't miss any new episodes. Let me tell you more about Margie and then we'll get into it.

From the outback in Australia, as you'll soon notice from her accent, to Fortune 500 boardrooms, NASA and the U.S. Congress, Dr. Margie Worrell's insights on leading change, navigating risk, and cultivating courage in ourselves and others have made her a global authority in leadership development.

A best-selling author, global speaker, leadership coach, and women's leadership advocate, Maggi bridges head and heart to empower people to make better decisions and take bolder action.

She is the host of the Live Brave podcast. So she has her own podcast, the Live Brave podcast. And the book that we're referring to is her sixth book, The Courage Gap. And it just hit the shelves and you can find it on Amazon. It just came out here this January, 2025. Margie lives in the Washington DC area. Once again, Margie Worrell, welcome to the show.

Great to be with you. Absolutely. Well, I always like to start at kind of how you got to where you are today. We could spend hours on that, but briefly share to me the very interesting story of how you ended up here. What was your career initially out of university? I'm curious. Yes. So I studied business in university and went and joined the corporate world, big multinational corporations. And

And did that for several years. But in my early 30s, I wanted autonomy and flexibility. I had four children in five years. So that explains it.

I also wanted to do what really lit me up and I didn't want to be bogged down doing a lot of stuff that didn't. And I felt that creating, building my own business was really the best pathway for me. And I've been doing that for a long time with a brief interlude a few years ago where I went back into corporate for a few years, which was a tremendous experience.

And I don't regret it for a second. I was the senior partner in board CEO succession at Korn Ferry and had three and a half years there.

I learned a lot. I grew a lot. I valued some of the camaraderie, et cetera. But in the end, for all the same reasons why I had my own business before, I decided that I needed to exit and go back to running my own show again, which has brought me to talk to you today. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting because I similarly have had that situation where I went back briefly. What did it accentuate for you as to why you must be a business owner? Why you must be the boss?

Because life is too short to be doing things that suck the life out of you. And I felt like my biggest strengths were neither rewarded nor valued fully. And I know this is a kind of a personal aspect of this, but

About 18 months ago, my mom passed away, actually nearly two years ago now. And it highlighted for me, sometimes death does this, my own mortality. And I just remember getting really clear. I'm going to look back one day when I'm 85 and

And I know I'm going to say, hey, you stayed there too long. You got the value, you got the learning, and now you're starting to kind of languish. And I just knew I had to leave. So that's it. I'm pretty purpose-driven, Henry, and I really want to feel like I'm using my strengths and talents in a way that makes a real impact, obviously makes money, but also makes an impact.

And I just knew I wasn't going to get to do that where I was. Understood. Understood. Going back to when you did leave the corporate world, how long had you been in the corporate world at that point in time? About a decade. Okay. Yeah. Thinking back to then, and I know you're conscious of this, and I'm sure part of it covers in the book, but when you think back to then, what was holding you back from

from going out on your own? What was the fear that you had back then? I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea about how do you start, run, operate a business, you know, from the basics of registering a business name through to accounts, to the marketing, to just the whole shebang of a small business. And so that fear of,

just the unknown, just literally the unknown. And of course, all of it's figureoutable. But at the time, it's just like a lot you don't know. You're like, I don't even know where to start.

But in the end, I just dove in and I, you know, mangled my way through it and slowly figured it out. And I think, you know, my experience is so many people who do want to make a change. They might feel a little bit like I was, you know, just a few years ago where I felt like, oh, I'm done.

I'm not hating where I am. I'm just not loving it that there is this fear of the unknown. And there's something nice about the certainty of a regular salary. It's nice every two weeks to get X dollars put in your account. And it's uncomfortable walking away from that.

Yeah, yeah. And I think also we're, of course, indoctrinated into wanting that or chasing that. The point you make, though, about I didn't know how to do it, I think that that is something that commonly happens.

we can hide behind. Oh, once I learn how to do that, once I get more education, once I take this course or sign up for this program. And I think we have a tendency to hide behind that. The reality is that very few people know what they're doing when they first get started. Yes, you got to learn. Yes, you got to get some help, but then you just got to learn on the job. Oh, you know,

not on the job, but on the ownership, right? You just got to do it at the end of the day, right? Yeah. But you know, there are so many awesome resources out there you can tap into. And honestly, now we've got chat, pop it into chat GBT. You probably get a whole lot of information, but back when I was, it was still dial in. What is it? Analog, you know, like wifi. You could literally take five minutes to get one browser up. So yeah,

I look back and go, there was the ability to access the resources. There was more barriers to it. Now the barriers go down and down.

And there are so many people you can tap into. And my experience with entrepreneurs is other entrepreneurs always want to support those who are just starting out. Yeah, no, brilliant. That's exactly right. When I started my first business in 1991, there was no internet. So I remember physically having to go to the Chamber of Commerce to collect data and demographics and then put together. It was just so cumbersome.

And now to your point, I'm thinking about a related business to start. So I've just been using ChatGPT to kind of guide me through the process and build out this idea. It's amazing the resources that we have available. Nonetheless, that fear comes into play and that's what we're going to talk about, having the courage to move forward nonetheless. So the book that we're going to refer to again is called The Courage Gap. I always ask this question of authors, why did you write it and who is it for ideally?

Ah, it is for anyone who is not okay with living a life of immaculate mediocrity, is for anyone who wants to

live a bigger life than the one they're living, like wants to pursue something that's exciting but also scary. It's not necessarily people who are entrepreneurs. Sometimes people who are maybe working within an organization and they really want to level up and just go to the next level and the next level and the next level. But

But for anyone who's feeling some level of hesitation, they kind of know they're holding back. They know that they are not putting it all on the table. Or maybe they are and they're terrified and they sometimes find themselves paralyzed. But it is this gap, this notion of a courage gap is that often –

there is a gap between what we are capable of doing and what we're actually doing. Like between what we know we could do. Like, you know what? You could step forward and start this business venture, but you're holding back and procrastinating and rationalizing and waiting until you have a perfect plan.

and it's keeping you from taking the very actions you're wholly capable of taking. And that's why I wrote this book, to help people step forward toward what it is they most want, despite the fact that there are risks and they might fall short at times, but that action is ultimately the ultimate antidote to fear. Have you found, or in your opinion, do you think that this challenge of this gap that we face is,

Is it a human thing or is it, yeah, I mean, is it something, do you think it's just part of our makeup as human beings or where do you think it comes from? We are wired for safety. We are wired for certainty. The certainty of income is also something we like. We're wired for control, to control everything. We want to feel like we've got all our ducks lined up in a row. So all of those things,

neurological tendencies, which come from the deep survival instincts. That's what has assured the survival of us as a species. The problem is our brains haven't changed much in 60,000 years. And so we sometimes

feel like we're going to die if we do something like that would just kill me. I failed. I would just die. Like, no, you wouldn't. You would not. But it can feel like that. But it is triggering that emotion, though, that used to mean I might die, right? Yeah, and a physiological risk. Yeah, and not just an emotion, but physiologically. People can be like sick. You know, you feel like, I know at times I felt like a Mack truck is parked on my chest to like this...

And, but that's just fear doing what fear does. It's not rational, it's not logical, and it's very short-term focused. So I want to jump forward to the framework that you put forward in the book. I think it might be good to talk about that. So would you introduce that, the five-step framework to braver action, as you call it? Can you introduce that at a high level? Yeah, absolutely. Well,

There are five key principles that really leverage the key ways that we can change behavior, which is cognitive, like what we're telling ourselves, how we're thinking, behavioral, what we're doing, and physiological, how fear shows up in our body. And so levering those key principles based on research, I came up with five key steps.

And I'm happy to go through them, but just quickly focus on what you want, not on what you fear, which is really about your intention, putting your intention on what you want, because often it's focused on what we don't want. Secondly, re-scripting the narratives that we're living in that keep us stuck or stressed, selling ourselves short. And that is so much about our belief systems because all behavior is belief driven.

The third, breathe in courage, is about resetting fear at the ground level. Like often it embeds in our bodies and we walk around really anxious about everything and nothing. And it helps us connect into the presence of courage that lives within us. It is absolutely within us and tapping into that and also building a support network around us of people who also embolden us.

The fourth is stepping into discomfort and making peace with being uncomfortable as the admission price for you to achieve whatever it is you most want and to change the things you don't want. And breaking that down into like looking at it through an experimental lens of like, just give yourself permission to try things, even though you're not 100% sure. And the fifth step is find the treasure when you trip down.

And that is all about learning and growing even when we mess up and fail and fall short because we are human. We 100% are going to fail and fall short and get it wrong. And sometimes our inner wimp wins out and sometimes our best efforts just don't land what we want. And often we fail to learn the lessons of

We over-personalize our failure and we shame ourselves or we brush it away, deflect it, blame it on other people, both of which fail to serve us because we don't learn the lessons and we aren't able to pick ourselves back up and go, okay, now what is it I need to do that little bit wiser than before? Let's talk about that for a little bit more because it's such a key part of it, I think, and we hear this in business too.

or at least it's become popular in more recent times. You know, failure is good. You learn from failure, fail fast, all that kind of stuff. The reality is that we hate to fail. I hate to fail, right? And even though I know all of this and I'm aware of how you learn through failure, it's still incredibly painful. So there's a part of me that tells myself that, but then there's another part that says, yeah, but you don't want to fail, right?

So how do you reconcile those two things? How do you help people reconcile those emotions, if I'm making sense? I don't like to fail either, Henry. And find me someone who likes to fail, like likes it, like goes, whoa, that's great fun. No one likes it. And the goal is clearly not to fail. But there are so many, if you look at incredibly successful entrepreneurs, I mean, let's just talk Jeff Bezos, right? Mm-hmm.

He says he makes decisions based on 70% of the information he'd like to have, which pretty much statistically means you're guaranteed not to get your ideal outcome. You're launching a product, you're tweaking a system, you're recoding something. It's not going to get an ideal outcome. But because you're embracing technology,

as part and parcel of what it takes to iterate and improve on what you're doing. You're failing regularly, obviously fast, but here's the thing. When we hate to fail, often it's not so much the failure itself. It's what we make it mean about us. I am not good enough. I'm not worthy. I'm a bit of a loser. I'm not as successful, smart as, clever as, entrepreneurial as in

Steve Bays or someone else, what will people say? Oh my gosh, I'm going to make a fool of myself. It's why we often can be even less willing to fail as we become more successful. It's like the more successful you are, the more your identity often is rooted in how good you are. I'm a successful business owner. Yeah, you know, and I'm like, hey, I'm Henry. I've been an entrepreneur for 30 years. Like last thing you want to do is have some failure right now. I'm like, no, I want to be the winner. You know, I had the failures in my 20s and 30s. And so...

So much of it is about resetting our relationship with failure so we don't over personalize it, but that we mind the lessons it holds. And I actually just recently ran a program for a group of entrepreneurs in Washington, D.C. And one of the guys that was there said, you know, Margie, I hear everything you say and I know that you have to fail. But my last venture was really, really painful.

He said, sure, I lost money, but I thought I had a really solid plan. I thought I had done the work. I thought I had the right people and partners and distribution set up and product testing, beta testing. You know, we had a good go to market strategy. He said, and you know what? One little thing here and one little thing there and multiple little things.

All came together and it failed. And he lost money. Ouch. And it shook his confidence, it sounds like. It really rocked his confidence. And he said, you know, so don't think I haven't had failures. He said, I've had them. But, man, I'm really, really reticent about going back out there and doing something else, he said. Yeah.

The thought of working for someone, he said, honestly, you know, like I'd rather, you know, shoot myself in the foot. But I'm really nervous and I'm really, I'm so gun shy on this. And I said, you know, let's just call him Steve. Steve, who you are now is not the same guy you were two years ago. You've been humbled. You've learned some lessons. Whatever you do moving forward, you are humble.

more informed. You can see now in hindsight a few gaps, things you didn't think to do, people you didn't trust that maybe you should have, people you did trust that honestly you look in hindsight and maybe you should have verified. Like I'll guarantee if we sat down and did a full analysis

post-mortem yeah we would find a bunch of things there were yellow flags along the way that you yeah you know and he said oh you know it's funny you say that margie i had this intuitive feel about someone and he said and my wife said you know and he said and i pushed forward because he was a good guy to kind of have on my my kind of team because he came with some pedigree of

that won some trust and got us some money from investors. And he said, but I had a funny feeling on him. And that was one of the things, like trusting his gut on people. And he kind of didn't trust his gut on this somebody went with what kind of looked good and sounded good. And so I said, there is an example. And we just didn't even scratch the surface of the learning there was for him.

And so for anyone, several years back, I actually got to meet Richard Branson, another entrepreneur. Wonderful. And we talked about, I actually was asked to interview him for a group of entrepreneurs that gathered on his private island, Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands. And-

You know, what people often forget when you look at a Richard Branson or, you know, other people that are really successful is not everything they tried turned to gold. Now, there's some people you can look at them and go, well, they look like they're doing, you know, Bezos, whatever, Musk, whatever. Like, you know, they're not doing too badly. Right. And I wrote about this in The Courage Gap. Like Henry Ford, he had this massive, huge failure just before he went and founded then Ford Motor Company. Right.

Branson, he launched Virgin Cola. They did massive publicity campaign. You know, he came into Times Square on a crane hanging in the air, all of that stuff. You know, like him, you know, using publicity as free marketing for the stunt and it was this huge, huge public failure. And he said afterwards, he said, you know, he had to lick his wounds.

Because that wasn't his image is that, you know, massive failure as entrepreneurial endeavor. He said, but we spent a lot of time looking. We're like, we do not want this failure to go to waste.

And he said, I was so clear I would not be defined by this failure. I would be defined by how I was going to define myself by how much I learned from it and the actions we took after it. And that would be worthy of the failure. I made the future actions. I made that failure one that was really worthy of what I did with it. And so...

I do think, yeah, failure hurts. I don't like, I've had failed endeavors too. And honestly, same thing as the guy, Steve, trusting people I shouldn't have trusted. And then when I had the gut and I'm like, you know what? I don't think this is working. Continuing on with the losing proposition. And so. Because that's such a hard thing though, for business owners to determine, listen, I talk about this often. If the business model is broken, right.

more time is not going to necessarily fix it, right? If something foundationally, fundamentally is wrong, you've got to stop, pivot, or get out. But it's hard to do because that is that admission of failure. This didn't work. It's why I disagree with that quote by Churchill, you know,

Which I understand. Never give up. He said, yes. Yes. And there was another one. Courage is holding on a minute longer. I sometimes think courage is actually saying no. No. Yeah. We're quitting this. Like it's not working. It is that. And it is that. And just recognizing, and I often write about the biases that derail us and those blind spots. And one of them is that sunk cost bias, which is continuing to invest in

in a losing proposition because of what you've invested into it, because you poured, you know, your money into it. You poured two years of your life into it. You got people to, you got other people to invest in it. People you knew, people you love, family members. And you're like, I've got to make this a success. I've got to, I've got to. And you keep on and you keep on. And, you know, if you're in a hole, stop digging is the first thing.

like at least do an assessment here. Like just step back before you invest more because every day you continue investing in something that's not working is a day that you're not investing in something that's good. - It's an opportunity cost of nothing else, right? But it is so hard.

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retelling that story, not taking it personally. However, you got to balance that against accountability, personal accountability, right? So, and I think you've spoken to that is how do you respond to that? But, but talk to me a little bit more there. How do you help people if on the one hand that failure, I'm, I shouldn't take it personally, but at the same time, I don't want to point fingers. It was my failure.

How do I not allow myself then to not take it personally and have it drain me and keep me from moving forward again? Yeah. Well, I think that's the over-personalizing it. And I want to just say here, because I think it's so important. If you want to be an entrepreneur...

man, you got to know how to pick yourself back up. Like if you don't pick- I think that is the key measure of an entrepreneur, right? If you don't have that, then you need to go back to the corporate world until you do develop it. Yeah. If you do not have the tools, the psychological mental tools to pick yourself back up when you don't get a good outcome, when you fail, when you make a mistake, a poor investment choice, etc.,

then you really are not going to be successful because you've got to be risking wrong steps all the time to get the right steps. And so firstly, let me just say here, failure is an event, not a person. And often we internalize it and we treat our failures as our identity. I'll also say this, which some people don't like, particularly when they're really successful is,

You are also not your successes. Like your worth as a human isn't because you have built a billion dollar business. And it's also not because you failed or you lost a million dollar business. Like who you are is innately worthy.

You've got to start from that place that my worth is not defined. And let's face it, we all have egos and a lot of us get caught up in our whole identity as our stature, our status, our bank account, our wins, our, you know, the award we got as entrepreneur of the year, 30 under 30, 30, 50 under 50, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But I think as soon as your identity rests on all of those accolades, man, you are in a very vulnerable place all the time. But it's so hard, Margie, because that's how society keeps score, at least our society in the United States, nonetheless. Yeah. You know what? And so you've got to have a measure for success that enables you to keep picking yourself up and moving forward, even when you don't get the wins. Yeah.

And so just coming back to the failure piece and not over personalizing it, Marty Seligman out of UPenn said, you know, it's the way we explain our failures. And a couple of key things.

failure isn't permanent. I tried something in this moment in time and I failed at it. My business failed, my strategy failed, my marriage failed, my, you know, something failed. But it is, yes, but this doesn't mean I'm a failure. It just doesn't mean I couldn't have a successful business in the future or a successful relationship, or I can't manage my money better in the future. But at this moment in time, this hasn't worked. So it's not permanent. It's

And it's also not personal that who I am, isn't it? So how can you explain a failure? This is something I've experienced now and framing it with language as temporary and as the event. And so I've had many times where I have failed to do what

Yeah, I had a failed effort. I didn't get the outcome I want. I failed as a person. Last night, I was grumpy at my husband. He said, hey, you know, that was rude. I said, I apologize. That was rude. I did not manage my emotions very well. I'm sorry. And I'm going to do better. You know, and you can fail as a business owner. You can fail as a boss. It's like own it, apologize, clean it up, do better. And that's how we grow.

But I think this concept around failure, the thing is, if you are willing to give yourself permission to fail as you move forward to your bold vision that's backed with a big why that gives you meaning, then you're

You can't fail you if you're measuring yourself by your effort and how much you're applying the learning as you go along. Exactly. Yeah. I call that enjoying the journey. And that's something that I tried to learn better for myself a few businesses ago, because I found myself, it was a business that we had started, a new concept we had started, and I found myself

We immediately leaning towards, well, the only way we're going to have success here is if we have 200 units and we're doing this much in revenue. And I said, wait a second, those things might happen. I'm going to work towards them. But the, the wins are going to be that I've created this, that I have the opportunity to do so the things I'm going to learn along the way. So enjoying the journey is what I call it. A couple of other things though, to bring in here that I want to get your thoughts on. I have come to learn and accept that sometimes we need a little bit of luck to

You know, sometimes it is out of our control. Something happens. COVID being, you know, a major event that happened that we could not have predicted, right? I opened a business in the middle of COVID. So we got to realize that sometimes we need a little bit of a break and then we don't get that. That's okay. It's not that I'm not, it's not that I'm an unlucky person. It's just that that was one of the factors. Now I can't point the finger entirely to that, but that's part of it. And the other thing that I always say is, listen,

If people much smarter than me with significantly more resources, room fills of PhD can make mistakes, who am I to think I can't make mistakes, right?

Or have failures along the way. Yeah, absolutely. And honestly, a mistake is okay as long as you're learning from it. Exactly. That's the key. The problem is there's a difference between living the same year 20 times and 20 years of learning. And let's face it, we've all met people who just came to just keep going around and doing the same thing. But to your point on luck.

Yes, of course. Some people find themselves in situations that are just unlucky. You opened a restaurant in March 2020. You know, when we could go on and on. Sometimes it works the other way. But I would also say this. Luck isn't just about chance. It's not just some people just got lucky. There is a lot to be said for luck.

the mindset that we're bringing and the work ethic that we're bringing and the number of shots that we're taking. You've got to put yourself in the way of luck. You've got to put yourself out there. Otherwise you won't get lucky. Right? Exactly. I actually wrote a Forbes column on this, just this St. Patrick's day about exactly that. Well,

What do you need to do to put yourself in the places where you can strike it lucky? And I know for me over the years when I've got lucky, it's because I did a hundred, like I took a hundred shots. I showed up at a hundred events. I put myself out there a hundred times and missed risk rejection a thousand, you know, all these times. And a ton of them didn't land anything. And every now and again, one happened.

Not the ones I always necessarily put so much work into, but sometimes the adjacent ones, like the ones that I hadn't, but I still, you know, did something. And that one turned into something amazing. And I'm like, who knew it would be that one? But I was doing, you know, like I planted a hundred trees and the ones that went into the prime stage,

you know, soil. Some of them didn't take off at all, but the one over here, man, that one keeps just dropping, you know, the, the, the, the a hundred dollar bills on my feet still. And I'm like, huh, but you just don't always know. So I would just say to people, um,

The more shots you take, there is a certain level of statistics in this. The more shots you take, the more chance you're going to get one in, right? Agreed. Agreed. All right. Let me rephrase it this way, the whole fear thing and the courage gap, because it's often how people will explain it. The imposter syndrome. I suffer from it. Everybody does.

In small business in particular, it might be, you know, you've got to now do sales or you've got to do a speech or you've got to do whatever, or you've got to be something that you don't feel like you're prepared for. How do you apply the framework or other tools to help in particular small business owners overcome that paralyzing imposter syndrome that can creep in? You think about imposter syndrome, which is essentially...

this low-grade lingering fear, anxiety that at some point people are going to realize we don't know as much as they thought. You're a fraud. We're less worthy than they thought. We don't deserve to have the success we are. Yes, we're a fraud. It's fear-driven. It is totally coming from that place of us not being able to internalize our own value and success and worth. And we focus so much on

what we don't know and what we haven't done versus what we do know and have done or how other people gave us a helping hand versus that we worked our butts off and that's why we're here.

And so to anyone who struggles or ever has that, I want you to know you are not alone. And the good news is it is not the domain of low achievers. People who don't aspire to do anything with themselves don't struggle with imposter syndrome. Good point. Good point. Say that again because I think that's so key, right? That imposter syndrome is not the domain of low achievers. It is the domain of high achievers. So if you ever have those thoughts of, oh,

Someone's going to cotton on to the fact that I'm not as good as they thought. Just know that you are in the company of extraordinary people, extraordinary people, the best in the business of acting, in science, in every realm, those who have also had moments of imposter syndrome. And the key

is not to let the fear of being found out keep you from going to the very places, onto the center stages, behind the microphones,

Where your fear doesn't want you to be, where you are exposed. In fact, go exactly to where you're exposed. Go further out on the limb because that is how you overcome it over time. I actually just today, ironically, was at the US Capitol where I ran a leadership program for congressional chiefs. I grew up on a small dairy farm in rural Australia, a long way from...

the capital of the United States of America. And as I was walking in there, and I've done these now for a couple of years, I have the same little voice that pipes up on my head that says, when are they going to realize that you're just this girl from the country that doesn't know that much, you're not that smart? Yeah.

And yet here I am. And I'm like, well, make my connect. The mission is bigger than the fear. Like I'm here to serve and to help these people lead better, make better decisions. And that's why I'm here. Whether or not there's things I don't know is beside the point. There's stuff I do know. And there's a mission. You do know when you have a point of view and a perspective and an experience that you're sharing and you know that has value. And that's what I would encourage every entrepreneur to focus on.

Focus on what you are there to do, the impact you want to make, the people you want to serve, the information you want to share. It's your ego that's getting you all scared and nervous and everything. What do people think of me? I hope they think this. I hope they don't think that. You know what? Take the focus off yourself first.

and put it on what inspired you down this path in the beginning. You love to add value in this way. You're passionate about, you know, whatever it is you're passionate about, you know, building widgets, you know, decorating cakes. You know, for me, it's like helping people step fully into their own gifts and brilliance and make the impact they're capable of making. And so whatever it is, put your focus on that. And I think when we get it off ourselves and self-interest,

which is, you know, where our fear is, you know, in this self-protective mode and put it onto what's the impact we want to make. And yeah, would you like to make a sale out of it? Sure. Of course you would. And that's okay. But focus on the impact you want to make. Because my experience is when we're focused on maximizing our impact and we do that with humility, but also with passion and commitment and courage and

You know, we ultimately meet with success and we find ourselves in lots of places where good fortune comes our way. Agreed, agreed. And the point you made about humility, I think is important because if I will take that approach of I'm not coming in here trying to pretend to be

the be all, know all. Maybe I am. But if I will come with it with that sense of humility, I'm not putting myself in front of you as someone who knows it all. I have my knowledge. I have my experiences that I'm going to share with you. But I'm open to the fact that you might ask me a question that I don't know the answer to. And that's okay. That's okay, right? That doesn't expose me as a fraud. And it's okay to accept that, right?

I'm assuming this part of what you're talking about here goes back to that first step in the framework on focus on what you want, right? In part? Yes. It also is in that re-scripting. Okay. All right. Because often the story we're telling ourselves, like I'm not good enough, when are people going to realize? It's like I am for me, like, but for you, I'm wholly worthy of being here.

I have everything it takes to figure this out. I don't need to know all the answers, but I have everything it takes to figure it out as I go along. Like that's a different narrative. That's a very different mindset than I have to know exactly what I'm doing before I start. So re-script what makes you more scared

And less brave. What's siphoning your confidence? And so the story you're telling yourself, because all behavior is belief driven, like I said earlier. So what is it that you would need to believe for you to launch, to grow, to scale the kind of business that excites you and inspires you and makes an impact for others too?

Okay. Before we move, I want to go back to then, I think it was breathing courage. What was the third step? Yeah, that is breathing courage. So explain that to me again. So if we follow in this example, a business owner who's struggling with making a decision or to get started in their business or to take an opportunity to grow or to put themselves out there and start doing sales, how does it apply there in that context? Give me an example if you would. Yeah, you're about to go in to do a sales pitch.

You're about to pitch your business, your wares, whatever. And you're feeling really nervous. In fact, you're feeling kind of, you've got that sick feeling in your belly. And you know that when you get a bit stressed, you talk too fast or you just, you don't show up as your best when you're super nervous and stressed. And so I would say just, if nothing else, just take a breath, just stop and take the deepest breath you've taken all day.

So it's literal and figurative at the same time. Yeah, like literally, like breathe and then breathe in courage, breathe out fear. But that literally helps to reset your nervous system. It's called a nervous system for a reason. It is a nervous system.

And fear lives in our bodies. It's a physical thing. It's not just in our head. So sometimes it's like we just get wound up. And if you're really wound up and you're about to go to a meeting, you're not going to go into that meeting in the same way. So one, focus on what you want. I want to add a lot of value. Two, tell yourself, I'm here. I have everything it takes to add a lot of value. And I totally deserve to be here. And people need what I have to share. I know I can help solve their problems. That's the key. Yeah. I know I have value to share.

Take a breath. Put your shoulders back. Stand tall. Did you know that when you stand tall, I can just put your shoulders back and how you hold yourself. You're literally your physiology. Our brain is interpreting our posture, how we're holding ourselves, even putting a little smile on your face. I'm not saying look like a clown, but just put a little quiet, quiet, confident smile on your face. That signals to your brain. I got this.

And people who practice what's called postural expansiveness, they found this at the Kellogg School of Business, it literally shifts their own perception of themselves. They feel more agency and more powerful, but it also shifts how other people perceive them. Absolutely.

And you're a little clunky and awkward and everything. I'm like, okay, this guy's like a little clunky and he's just, just started over 25 words. Okay. Okay. But if you walk in and you can just look me in the eye and give me a good handshake and give me a smile and say, Hey, great to meet you. And you're comfortable in yourself. And you're just standing there in a way that's like this person, they own their space. That's going to put me at ease. Absolutely. Yeah. One of the things that I've done sometimes it depends on the scenario. Even Margie is say, listen,

I'll be honest with you. I'm a little nervous here because this is important for me and I have a lot of value to share. And sometimes it disarms it if we just accept it, whether we verbalize that or not. Yeah, it's okay to be nervous here. That's okay. But how am I going to deal with it? And so the physiological process of breathing and having the right body posture signals differently to us and to the other person.

Okay. Brilliant. Brilliant. Thanks for sharing all of that. We can go on for hours and hours. The book again is called The Courage Gap, but it's available now. I highly recommend it. You also have some other resources on your website. I think a courage quiz you had referred to it. Tell me about that briefly. And where do I find that? Yeah, great. Head over to my website, margieworrell.com. And yeah, my name, so hajimargieworrell.com forward slash the courage gap.com.

Obviously, you'll see lots of information there about my new book, but there is also a courage quiz there. And I encourage you, yeah, take that quiz. Honestly, it'll be about five minutes max. You'll get a whole little report back and scoring. And the reason I created it is sometimes people think of

fear is like, oh, I'm not afraid because we think of it as knee-shaking trepidation. But sometimes it can show up in our reticence to have the brave conversation. Sometimes it can show up in us being too agreeable or too humble. It can show up in different ways. So I try and help you identify what are your courage gaps? So as you read through the book, you're like, yeah, these are the areas where actually you

fear is holding me back in a way that I didn't even realize. Got it. And by understanding it and acknowledging it, I've always found that helps me to act anyway, to have the courage to move forward anyway. Yeah. Well, you know what? You can't fix it if you don't even see it.

And so we've often got blind spots. So it's helping people identify those blind spots. Excellent. All right. I'll have a link to that as well on the show notes page. If you're not where you can write that down and you can always find that on the, on the show notes page for this episode at thehowabusiness.com.

Hi, Moggy, we'll wrap it up here. What's one thing you want us to take away? If I'm someone who's thinking about starting a small business or an existing small business owner that's dealing with all of these things as we all do, what's one key takeaway from this conversation that we had? Give yourself permission not to have all the answers.

But to figure things out as you move forward and when you're dealing with a lot of disruption and uncertainty and change, it's okay. Just take a pause to reassess like what's the best step forward. But don't stay in that place because even in the midst of uncertainty, it is forward momentum that's giving you feedback, that's putting you in a better position to

down the road. So action is ultimately the very best antidote to uncertainty and to fear. And most of all, finally, I would simply say, just trust yourself that you're capable of a lot more than you think and back yourself and not your doubts.

Beautifully said, you know, and all three of those points very quickly, you know, not having all the answers. I think that's something we can easily hide behind, especially if we're looking to start our first business. Oh, I just don't know enough about that. I don't know enough about the accounting. I don't know about, you can either get the help or bring in someone to help you with that. Or of course you got to do some level of learning, but nobody is a hundred percent at any of those things when they first start their business. So you have to move forward. And then moving forward that we talked about before, uh,

You're only going to get lucky if you're doing something, if you're in the field of play. Otherwise, nothing will happen if you don't take action. Life rewards action. So brilliant, brilliant.

All right, where do you want us to go again to learn more? Yeah, just head over to margieworrell.com. I'm also on social media. So if you're on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, just Twitter, connect, whatever, connect with me there. I love staying in touch and just continuing to share videos and inspiration to help you show up with the courage that you need to show up with to be successful as an entrepreneur. Agreed, agreed.

Margie, thanks so much for being with me today, sharing all of this knowledge and information. And again, for the book, thanks for being with me today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. This is Henry Lopez. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Howa Business Podcast. I release episodes every Monday morning, and you can find the podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts, including my YouTube channel, the Howa Business YouTube channel, and at my website, thehowabusiness.com. Thanks for listening.

Thank you for listening to The How of Business. For more information about our coaching programs, online courses, show notes pages, links, and other resources, please visit thehowofbusiness.com.