R255: Overcoming Fear with Ruth Soukup
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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. This is Henry Lopez, and welcome to this episode of The How of Business. My guest today is Ruth Sukup. Ruth, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. Looking forward to it. This is a topic, of course, that's relevant to everybody. In fact, I think it's the biggest reason why people don't

don't take that leap of jumping into starting their first business. And even as existing business owners, what holds us back from growing and expanding and doing the things that we need to do to build our business, and that's fear. All fears are not created equal. So we're going to look at it a little deeper than just fear at a high level.

And so by identifying the specific types of fear, you can experience a better ability to address those fears, to overcome those fears. And that's what I loved about this topic and why I wanted to have Ruth on the show. So let me tell you a little bit more about Ruth and then we'll get into it. Ruth Sukup is a New York Times bestselling author and she's dedicated to helping women overcome fear.

and create a life that they love. Through her blog, Living Well, Spending Less, which reaches more than a million women each month, she encourages her readers to follow their dreams and reach their goals. And her latest book, which is Do It Scared, Finding the Courage to Face Your Fears, Overcome Obstacles, and Create a Life that You Love.

And so once again, Ruth Sukup, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. All right. So when did this focus and wanting to learn more about fear and the role it plays and how it holds us back, when did that come into focus for you? Well, do what's scared has always been sort of my own personal mantra and my own personal motto. It's

It's something that I've, you know, struggled with my whole life is feeling afraid or feeling like I don't know what I'm doing. And especially after I went through this terrible depression that I've alluded to. And I've pretty much at 23 or 24 years old thought my life was over. I thought I had ruined my life forever. You know, I had filed for bankruptcy at that point. I had gotten divorced. I had dropped out of college. I had...

really like lost all my friends and didn't even know how to even have a life from there. And so I, I started blogging.

basically slowly putting back the pieces of my life. And it was one step at a time. And every step of the way, it was do it scared, do it scared, do it scared. And I felt like starting my business was the exact same thing. Every step of the way, it was, okay, you don't really know what you're doing, but it's okay to be scared. Just do it scared, do it scared, do it scared. And taking risks and trying new things. And the whole idea behind do it scared is not that you don't ever –

feel afraid because we all feel afraid. It's that you take action even in the face of fear and you continually take action because ultimately action is the antidote to fear. And then the, what encouraged me or inspired me to write the book is actually that

I've noticed that fear is such a huge part of so many people's lives. And it is the, it is the thing. I mean, you, you talk to business owners here on this podcast and you probably see it all the time. Like it is the thing that holds us back. And sometimes we don't call it fear. Sometimes we call it anxiety. Sometimes we call it feeling stuck. Sometimes we feel it, call it feeling overwhelmed or being too busy or what any other number of names or

or excuses that we can come up with. But underneath it all, there's this fear. And I noticed it coming up so often when I would talk to the people in my community, both at Elite Blog Academy and at Living Well, Spending Less. And it just made me want to dig, dig deeper. And I started asking questions and that sort of unleashed this whole research study that we did. We surveyed more than 4,000 people on the role of fear in their lives. And it was so much data that we had to hire a whole team of researchers. And what,

ultimately came out of that was just like it was incredibly fascinating but it's been so so valuable for so many people yeah now i couldn't agree with you more this is why i was so excited to have you on the show ruth because i of course couldn't agree with you more that that's what holds us back and then specifically and i often use that very word courage courage is not about not having fear it's about having fear but nonetheless making us taking a step forward doing something

And in doing so is where we develop confidence that then allows us to continue to do more things, right? So that was just, that's why it's resonated with me so much. But then what I really loved about it that I want to get into, and of course, this is what you cover in the book, and we're just going to touch on some highlights here.

you've taken it and broken it down even further which really helps us with that taking those first steps that action so I'd like you to start by introducing the the seven fear archetypes and then we'll go from there just at a high level of you could introduce that concept oh for sure so the

The really big thing that we discovered within doing all this work was that fear is not the same for everyone. The way that we experience fear looks actually very different for all of us, but there are some very distinct patterns, which we call the seven fear archetypes. And the reason that that is important is because sometimes

so much of this fear happens subconsciously without us even realizing that it's fear. Again, sometimes we call it other things. Sometimes we just think it's the way that we're wired or the way that we are and we experience it as truth. And so understanding your fear, your specific fear and the unique way that fear is playing out in your life

is so essential because that is, that is only, you could, that's the only way that you can start to overcome it. You have to make it not be subconscious anymore. Yeah. And if I can interject, there's such a great point though, you make there Ruth, as I think sometimes people think, oh, those people who do businesses, they're just fearless, but that's not the case at all. Absolutely. And, and fear looks very different for each one of us. And so people that

appear fearless, and we'll talk about that in a second. I'll go through the seven fear archetypes, but even people that appear fearless actually have a different type of fear. It's just manifesting in a different way. So the seven fear archetypes, I'll go, I'll run through them really, really fast just to give a point of reference. The first one is the procrastinator. Procrastinator is really just another word for perfectionist, but the underlying there, the fear for the procrastinator is a fear of making a mistake.

And so the way that plays out for the procrastinator slash perfectionist is it could be analysis paralysis, a fear of moving forward, a fear of commitment, but really, or even like over planning and over organizing everything. But there's what's driving that fear is just this underlying anxiety when it comes to the idea of making any mistakes. The next one is the rule follower archetype.

And for the rule follower, the underlying fear there is this sort of unhealthy fear of authority. So we probably all know a rule follower, somebody who always reads the instruction manual. And I would guess, have you taken that assessment? I did, yeah. I was going to say that here. I did take the online assessment and encourage everybody to do so as well. I'm curious what yours was. So when I first looked through the summary of it,

I thought I checked off the procrastinator and the outcast. Okay. The assessment categorized me as an outcast. Gotcha. Gotcha. That makes sense. A lot of entrepreneurs are outcasts. So I'll get to that one in a second. So the rule follower is, yeah, just very afraid of stepping outside the lines, likes things to be very laid out, likes there to be a...

specific system or process for things and has this almost like sort of vague feeling that somebody is going to crack, somebody somewhere is going to crack down on them if they don't get all, don't get everything right. And then the people pleaser is really the underlying fear of being judged or what other people think of them. So a good way to look at the difference between a procrastinator and a people pleaser is that

The procrastinator fears making a mistake. Well, the people pleaser also doesn't want to make a mistake, but they are more afraid of what other people would think about them if they made that mistake. Yeah. And then there's the outcast, which is yours. It's also mine. So you're in good company. So yeah, it's, it is, it's the fourth most common overall for the general population, but it is probably the most common for entrepreneurs and business owners. And really what the,

what the outcast fears more than anything else. It's the most ironic of all the seven archetypes because on the outside, you can actually appear to be a little bit fearless and

and to appear like you don't care what anybody thinks, but really that's a protection mechanism because the outcast fears rejection. And so often the way that that will play out for the outcast is to reject others before you can be rejected in return. Yeah, and just to add to that as I fall more into that category, and again, I think even within a category, obviously there are nuances, certainly.

What you're putting forward here is some generalization so that it helps us further identify and then we can work on overcoming that now that we know a bit more about the type of fear that is holding us back. But for me, it's specifically it's that rejection from people that I know and that I know well and trust and respect that.

not, you know, the public at large. And of course, a lot of it comes in, which we'll get into here, my issues with my father and not getting enough, you know, in return from him and acknowledgement. But it's also because I look at things from an entrepreneurial perspective as creating things. And so when I create or build a business, it's a personal expression. And

Just like it is, I'm sure, when you write something or when you just wrote this book, you're putting a piece of you out there that you are afraid might get rejected.

Yes, yes, very much so. And that's very different than people pleasing. So outcasts, there can be, and of course these are all on a continuum and most people have one or two that are most prevalent, but you can have more than one or two that are prevalent and they all interact and work together to kind of make up your own fear fingerprint. So if you find yourself relating to more than one, that's definitely, that's definitely a possibility.

Yeah. All right. So the self-doubter is next. Self-doubter is next. Yep. The self-doubter is the underlying fear of not being capable or not being enough. So the self-doubter struggles with just a lot of insecurity. And the way that often plays out is hypercriticism, both of themselves and of other people. They can be hypercritical of the people in their lives, which can really negatively impact their relationships as well. But often that comes from just this place of insecurity with themselves. Yeah.

then there is the excuse maker. And this excuse maker fears being blamed or being held accountable. And so we can probably all think of an excuse maker in our life, somebody who we just cannot pin down. They're like masterful rationalizers. They are able to rationalize everything to the point where you can almost go,

wait, am I crazy? Like, was that even a thing? And they're also the one who, if you're going out to eat, they will never pick the restaurant because they never want to be blamed in case.

And then the final one is the pessimist. And the pessimist is usually somebody who has experienced a lot of hardship or sometimes trauma or tragedy in their life. And it's brought them to a place of where the underlying fear there is a fear of more pain or adversity. And so it gets them to a place where they're stuck and feel like, why should I even bother? Because I'm just going to get hurt again. I need to like close in and protect myself. Yeah.

All right. Well, so thanks for introducing that. And again, the book gets into the detail and other things that you offer, other services you offer that we'll get to. But again, the key takeaway though, Ruth, here in our summary conversation of it is that that is the first step, just like anything else,

that we're challenged with in life, we've got to break it down into its components so that we can become, we can begin rather to overcome it, right? So that's part of the idea here is generally we say, oh, it's fear. How do we overcome the fear? But by understanding it in more detail, now we can apply some tactics to,

and some strategies and, and some, as you call it, principles to start approaching that and not let it hinder us. Right? Yes. Oh, exactly. So once you have the diagnosis, then you can start working on the cure because again, you're bringing it out into the light. All these thoughts that were happening, happening subconsciously are now happening consciously. And then you can start to do something about them. And so exactly what you said, the next step is to start working on those thoughts and replacing those

those negative thoughts or those thoughts that were happening with a more positive set of core principles or core values that I call the principles of courage. Right. And there's quite a few of them, obviously, in the book. I just want to interrupt here. There's a couple that stood out to me that I wanted to ask you about in the essence of time. One is always own it.

as you say, because you are in complete control of the choices you make. So that one stood out to me because it's one of my big

things that I focus on and I help others with is to become successful in business, you have to be accountable. You have to be responsible. So talk to me about that one because that one really stood out to me. It is so, so true. And also the most empowering and freeing thing that you will ever do, I believe as a business owner and as a human being is to take complete

Complete ownership over everything that happens to you and it's something you know, I really work to drive into my kids every single day It's like so much to the point where they like roll their eyes and repeat it back to me all the time Mommy, you're in control of your own choices because that's what I say like you can't control what happens to you You can't control how people treat you there are so much in your life that is going to be out of your control But you always get a choice about how you can how you respond and what you do next and so

Own that part. And when you do, it's freeing because you know that you don't have to really depend on anyone else for your happiness or for your success. You get to be in control of that. And it's also very easy to blame others and circumstances. And yes, there's no doubt that things like you experienced happen to us or we experience things.

that create challenges, but we do have mostly the capacity to overcome those things and stop blaming others for our challenges, if you will. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, so, so important. All right. The other one that is curious to me is balance is overrated, you say, because everything is important or if everything is important rather than nothing is. So talk to me about that philosophy.

Yes. You know, I've worked with so many women and I do a survey every year of my audience. And one of the things that I always ask is, what's your goal for the year? What's your word of the year that you're going for? And

without a doubt, the top answer is always balance. We have this idea that balance is like the ultimate goal for us, that we should be striving for it, that we should always be going after it. And that if we're not perfectly balanced in all areas of our life, if we don't have this work life balance thing, like all perfectly figured out and our house isn't perfect and our business isn't thriving and all of the things aren't going right, then somehow we're failing at all of them. And so we drive ourselves crazy often.

feeling like we're failing when the reality is that we're not really called to balance as humans. I don't think my personal opinion is that we are called to purpose and it is your job to do a mediocre or subpar job in some of the areas of your life that you don't care as much about so that you can do great things.

Work and change the world and the other places in the other parts of your life like you nobody can do everything And so if you can give yourself permission To not be good at everything and to do some things badly so that other things can be great That's okay. And that's actually like one of the most empowering things that you can ever do. So

Part of that, I've got to think, Ruth, is that we harm ourselves by trying to compare ourselves to these supposed perfect people that we either see on social media or we read about. Is that part of why we're challenging this? Oh, social media is like such a death trap sometimes for that. And we forget that all we're seeing there is the highlight reel of the best media

best moments of people's lives. So of course their lives look perfect, but that's not reality. And, and yeah, I'm, I'm just as guilty as the next person of getting sucked into it. I find that sometimes I have to just turn off Instagram and stop, stop looking because I will start to feel like everybody, you know, I follow all these other fellow entrepreneurs and I feel like everybody else is rocking their business and why are things going so bad for me? And that's really not the case. Everybody has ups and downs. Everybody has,

has hard days and great days and challenges and things that they're doing. Some things that are going great, some things that are not going great. And it really is important to stop comparing and just give yourself a little grace in that area. Yeah, agreed. All right. So what I want to move to next is to highlight

the action part of this, as you highlighted already, it's, it's the taking action, which as you say, is the antidote to fear. And you lay out a seven step, what I call it a process at a high level that, that you take or utilize,

or you recommend that I approach to tackle my fears and overcome my fears? Is that what you would call it, a process? I would definitely call that a process. Yes. So we don't have time to go through all seven. I'm going to highlight them here quickly and then there's a couple again that stood out to me that I'd like you to expand upon. But number one is to claim your target, what it is that this big audacious goal that you have.

Find your why. Then again, I'm going to just be touching on these at a high level. You really have to read the book and learn more about it. Create your plan as to how you're going to get there. Form your truth club, as you say, which I do love, which are the people that are going to hold you accountable. Number five is stop comparing, which we just talked about actually.

Six is eliminate those excuses. And seven is stay encouraged, keep enjoying and keep getting that motivation to keep going. So the two that I wanted to touch on, although I just realized we were just talking about stopping comparing, that's a big one. So let's move on to eliminate excuses and tell me a little bit more about that and maybe how you've, how you managed to do that. Because when we were talking about back to the archetypes, I think even though I don't fall in that

category necessarily of making excuses. I think we all do, don't we? Because it's kind of how we at least intellectually or mentally justify why we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing. So

Tell me a little bit more about that action step of eliminating excuses. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny that those were the two that you highlighted for the action steps. And those were sort of the counterpart to the two principles of courage that you highlighted. So definitely you can tell that those ones stood out to you and resonated a lot with you, which is what I've found that most

readers of the book find is that one or two just really resonate. And it's not the same ones for everyone. It really depends on what your fear archetype is. But as far as eliminating excuses, yes, absolutely. It's really about deciding, deciding and deciding every single day that you are not going to accept excuses for, for anything that there, that you are going to have that mentality and that you're going to take full responsibility and full ownership for the

everything that happens in your life and in your business because you can and because that's what's going to get you where you want to go. And I share some stories of a few friends of mine in that chapter about

who have had legitimate hardships, really hard childhoods, grew up in poverty and abuse and all these horrible things. And two people who could have very easily just said, it's never going to happen for me. I didn't have a good education. I didn't have parents who loved me. I didn't have all of these things.

And nobody would have blamed them. It's not, if you're looking for an excuse in your life, you will always be able to find one. And it is not that hard to find an excuse there. They are everywhere in ample supply and, and, and people will let you off the hook. That's the thing that we don't realize like excuses work. People will let you off the hook.

But where does that get you at the end of the day? It gets you nowhere. It does not get you to where you want to go. The only way to get to where you want to go is to say, no excuses. Doesn't matter what's happened to me. I am going to, I'm going to keep going.

It seems to me as you were saying that, and I think sometimes when we share those hardships with people, things that have happened to us, we get the response we're expecting. Oh, poor you. I understand completely. No doubt. And it's almost like it reinforces us using it as an excuse. Yes. Yeah, it totally does. And I have people that come to me every day in my program and say, and will have reasons of why they haven't launched their blog yet or why they haven't launched their product yet or why they haven't done whatever. And

At the end of the day, like they can give me all the excuses in the book. And sometimes they're very legitimate. Sometimes they had cancer. Sometimes it was, you know, something really horrible happening and I can be sympathetic, but if I let them off the hook, then I'm not helping them either. I'm not the right coach for them because at the end of the day, you have to choose that despite everything that happens, I'm still going to keep going and I'm still going to make this happen.

An excuse that I often see myself using and that I hide behind, and I see now more where it's really a manifestation of fear, is that I need to learn more. I got to do more analysis. I got to put together a better proforma, right? Oh, spoken like a true procrastinator. Of course. Yeah, that is the ultimate procrastinator slash perfectionist approach.

excuse because there's the constant need to plan and to do a little bit more research and to get a little bit more prepared. And the reality is that there's like, you have to be okay. If you, as an entrepreneur, especially you have to be okay with doing things imperfectly. And one of the ways to work through that as a procrastinator is to practice, practice making mistakes, practice failing in small ways so that you actually build up your immunity to it.

Yeah. And then it makes perfect sense, the title of the book and your mantra, Do It Scary, because what we're searching for is the absence of fear, which does not exist. What we have to learn to do is to do it despite the fear. Exactly. That's it. That's in a nutshell. Wonderful. Oh, I can keep talking about this forever, obviously, but we'll start to begin to wrap it up. And again, the book is fascinating and fascinating.

It's something you must read. And the assessment is free. So tell me a little bit about that and also the services that you offer beyond the book and the types of clients that you look for. Summarize that for us. Yeah. Well, first the assessment that goes, it goes along with the book or you can just go and take the assessment. It's on our website at doitscared.com. And it is free to take the basic version that gives you your top archetype. And then there's also a premium version, which right now you can get the premium version when you purchase the book and get our book

bonuses. So that's a really great way to do it because I think the premium assessment is normally $15 and the book on Amazon right now is $14.99. So save a penny and get free stuff. What's better than that? Living well and spending less. That's right.

But my business overall is really dedicated to providing practical solutions for home and business to help people create a life they love. So we do that primarily in four different areas. Now we have our lifestyle division, which is living well, spending less, as I talked about before. It's really about providing solutions for the home, just things to help you spend less time doing all the stuff

that you have to do so there's more time and money to do all the things that you want to do. Then there's business. I help people create successful online businesses through my program, Elite Blog Academy.

And I have over 11,000 students in 60 countries worldwide. It's, it's, I teach a very step-by-step process. So I have found that rule followers really do well. If you, if you find out your rule follower and you need a process to follow, um, you'll do really well, well in the program. And, um, I have a planner company called the living well planner, and I teach a time management system called think big, plan small. And then finally, um,

the motivation arm of our company is do it scared, which we talked all about today. That's right. That's right. So if you go back now and we think about from your personal perspective, personal characteristics that have led to your success, we we've touched on some obvious ones, your determination and persistence, that being driven once you get onto something and

You don't let go sometimes even to your detriment until somebody says, hey, let go, Ruth. And there's that independence, right? It seems like from early on you had that need to be independent. You worked through college. You said yourself you're not a quitter. Are there any other or is there any other one or two characteristics that come to mind that you think have been key to your success?

I'm competitive. So focus is my top strength. Competition is my number two. And I'm not competitive necessarily in a way that's like, I want to beat everybody else. I'm competitive in a way that I want to beat myself. Like I want to win. I, I find myself saying that a lot of times, in fact, to the point where sometimes my husband will say, okay, honey, now like what is winning right now? You have to actually define that. So, you know, when you, when you've won, uh, but I do, I, oh,

always have this and that I think helps my drive because I always have this this desire to win and also my children and my husband are very competitive too so being night in our family is like very cutthroat I can imagine okay well good that makes sense thanks for sharing that

All right, so we've talked about your book, which again is Do It Scared. The full title is Do It Scared, Finding the Courage to Face Your Fears, Overcome Obstacles, and Create a Life that You Love. And that's available now. You can find it on Amazon.com.

Is there another book, especially in light of what we've talked about that you've read recently or in the past that you would recommend? Yes. I am such a voracious reader that I have a hard time narrowing it down to recommend only one. So if you want multiple recommendations, I'll give you those too. But right now, one of my favorite books that I've read recently, and it was so, so good, and it actually –

connects really well to this issue of fear is by my friend Todd Herman and it's called the alter ego effect and it's just such a good way of thinking about how you can push past fear by creating basically creating an alter ego for yourself and so practical and helpful and and I just found it like really

such an incredible book. I've recommended it to so many people. And I've also used some of those same strategies that he talks about in the book, even with my kids. My daughter was having trouble at school with some bullies and I gave her a few tips from the book and it was just really, really, really helpful. Wonderful. Great recommendation. Thanks for that. We'll have links to that as well as to Ruth's book on the show notes page for this episode at thehowabusiness.com.

All right, let's summarize it here, Ruth. What's one thing you want us to take away from this conversation we've had about fear and overcoming fear? Really that it's possible, that fear doesn't have to hold you back, that if you have been, if there is something...

And some reason that you're not moving forward, if there's something in your business where you feel stuck, or if you haven't started your business and you're just trying to work up the motivation and the courage that like, know that there is actually an answer. There is something underlying there. That is the thing that is probably holding you back. And it is as simple as naming it and identifying it because then you can do something about it. And so take the assessment, just

find out, diagnose yourself, and then you can start working on the cure. Yeah, I agree. And that's what I liked about this so much is that it breaks it down because I think also what consumes us, and again, is another manifestation of fear, is that overwhelm, as you mentioned at the beginning,

And if we have now a formula, as you spell out, to break it down, I can take those small steps at a time to overcome my fear is the way I look at it. Exactly. All right. Where would you tell us again? Where would you like us to go online to find out more? Yeah, go straight to doitscared.com. That's the easiest website to remember.

Wonderful. Ruth, this has been insightful. Great conversation. I could go on for another couple hours. Hopefully I can talk into coming back at some point again, but thanks for sharing and for being with us today. Thank you so much for having me. It was so great to be here.

This is Henry Lopez, and thanks for listening to this episode of The How of Business. My guest again today was Ruth Sukup. We release new episodes every Monday morning, and you can find us on Apple Podcasts and other platforms, as well as at our website, thehowofbusiness.com. 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.