When You Bank True Confidence Anything Is Possible
[Music]
so
when i was choosing the cover design for
my first book
there was really no question the version
with my face big on the cover
was the one that stood out the most plus
it fit so well with my message
and more than anything i wanted to
connect with my readers
but everyone in the traditional
publishing world
told me not to do it they said for this
kind of book the cover should be
all text maybe a small illustration
much like the tim ferriss malcolm
gladwell gary vaynerchuk books it was
associated with
it would be unbelievably
scary to not listen to those experts
and instead listen to myself
trust me especially as a female
entrepreneur
not only was i scared of being
criticized or of people thinking i was
vain
or full of myself but you might be
surprised to hear that
until pretty recently i was also
painfully camera shy
so i almost didn’t do it
but i did and i had the guts to do it
because i spent
years doing something that i call
banking confidence and i want to tell
you
exactly how i do it so that you
can do it too
at first it was accidental stemming from
just
a strong desire to do everything
my way like many of us when i graduated
from college
i wanted to save the world
as long as i could do it my way and
i didn’t see why i couldn’t
i had graduated from a top school with
an economics degree
i founded a non-profit in micro finance
i taught a class on the subject
i even did a fellowship in social
entrepreneurship
i imagined throwing huge fabulous
fundraisers
hobnobbing with the rich and famous
raising massive amounts of money for
enterprising women in developing
countries
and i wanted to be
in charge i wanted autonomy
i wanted freedom and flexibility to be
respected
and well paid
but turns out
shockingly there were no open positions
for a queen bee boss of
everything entry-level
ceo well
if i couldn’t get the perfect job i
wasn’t going to settle
so instead i offered my services to a
non-profit for
free just so i could run the whole
project
exactly the way i wanted while i did
that
i was trying to get my own social
enterprise off the ground
and since doing these things my way
didn’t pay literally
i also hustled nights and weekends as a
bartender to support myself
and make it happen i
didn’t know it at the time but this
was the first time that i took
a leap when you
ignore convention and instead
go towards something you really want
and take a leap with no clear path
to success you start
banking something really game-changing
but i’ll admit between you and me
initially that whole no clear path to
success peace
really got the best of me but by this
point
all my friends had a leg up on me in
their fields either
in their first year of law school or
business school
or they just been banking money and
experience in
whatever career they had chosen and i
felt so behind
this is usually when people start
questioning themselves right
but i was banking something
too i just didn’t know it yet
i was so ready to pounce on my
thing i started scrolling through job
listings on craigslist for ideas and i
came across this cryptic post
i couldn’t tell what the job was but it
hit some key points
be your own boss make your own hours
unlimited earning potential
plus the office was three blocks from my
apartment
no commute i scheduled an interview out
of
pure curiosity the next day i met with
nick
who made a great case for why i would
crush it so what was it
real estate i knew nothing about real
estate
wasn’t that interested in it frankly but
when he explained what the job entailed
i thought
yeah i could see myself getting pretty
good at that
i just loved that i would succeed or
fail based solely on my efforts
so i jumped in with two feet pretty soon
i was showing ten thousand dollar a
month apartments
hustling for sure but also making fat
commissions
now and then until
2008 happened
what i know now is that when you
have banked enough confidence
because you have taken enough leaps
big external threats like
great recessions won’t easily undermine
you
but back then i didn’t have it
yet in fact back then i tried all kinds
of things
i helped open a cafe pizzeria i produced
theater i worked for a small tech
startup i even lived off of selling
art on the street in manhattan for an
entire summer
but meanwhile it seemed like everyone
around me
knew what their mission in life was
except me
i wondered am i just being stubborn
insisting on doing everything my way
and for what i felt like i had
nothing concrete to show for it
but i was wrong
and i want to tell you a story about how
it took a breakdown on a beach
in paradise to make me see what i
really had been banking that whole time
by 2010 i was ready to take this whole
my way thing to the
next level i wondered what’s better than
being a ceo
being a retired ceo i mean don’t we all
just want to live on the beach and
enjoy our lives so when my fiance steve
and i
heard about a farm in the british virgin
islands that would let young scrappy
people like us
work in exchange for food and
rent in paradise it sounded like a great
opportunity to see if
maybe we could bypass this whole system
maybe we could move straight to paradise
enjoy our lives skip the career and not
even need money
we had no idea what to expect
we had only exchanged a couple one-line
emails with the farmer before we went
our instructions when we arrived were to
exit the airport
walk to the end of the road and then ask
someone
on the beach for aragorn
and yes the farmer’s name was actually
aragorn
so that’s what we did sure enough the
first person we found
pointed to this welding art studio hut
down the beach
and there he was and despite the fact
that within
hours of arriving we were covered in
unbearable bites
by these invisible bugs they call flying
teeth
and the fact that we had no electricity
no internet
and we literally had to gather sticks to
build a fire
for every meal we ate it really was
paradise
after just a couple of hours of farm
work each morning the day was
ours to hitchhike around the island and
do whatever we wanted
and despite the flying teeth it was
nearly perfect here i was with
the love of my life zero responsibility
no need for money and all the time in
the world
to just read and think and be
i had everything i wanted
i had everything i thought everyone
wanted
so it was a shock when one day
sitting on one of the many private
beaches
with the crystal clear water and the
sugary white sand
and the perfectly placed palm trees
all around us i started to
sob uncontrollably
i thought i would feel different but i
didn’t
i felt empty
and i know this is a cliche but it was
so poignant
in that moment sitting on the hot sand
it was like i had been in a desert
desperately trying to get to an oasis in
the distance
only to find out when i finally got
there it was
a mirage it didn’t
exist
we all believe we are going to arrive
one day on the mountaintop and then
have everything we want and be
the confident and successful people we
want to be i was sobbing
because i was mourning the loss of that
idea but
when it disappeared it’s like it cleared
the way
to see what i really had been doing
that whole time i
had been taking leap after leap into
unknown territory and with each
experience
banking more confidence in myself
that i could take on
anything everything
it was so obvious how come i hadn’t seen
it before
i’m here arguing that the more
confidence you
bank the more opportunities you open up
for yourself in the future
and you do this by taking leaps
even when the outcome is scary
or unknown or when there’s
no clear path to success
while other people were banking money
i was banking confidence
the kind of true confidence you cannot
use
the fake it till you make it strategy to
get
and now i can go after
what i want in life with my foot
all the way on the gas because
i have a little secret when you make it
true for yourself that anything you try
will bank more confidence
you cannot make a wrong move
and my business is really a
manifestation of this
as a branding studio in brooklyn we
named our company something that would
make
anyone uncomfortable worst of all
design i charge
audacious prices and i make my clients
pay
in full up front i’m
okay saying a lot of things a lot of
people don’t like
and i push people to do a lot of things
that make them
very uncomfortable and people always ask
me
where do you get the confidence to say
that
to charge that to do
that this
this is how i get it it’s not because
i’m some
business genius and it’s certainly not
because i was born with it
i have experienced that taking
leaps is the only way to
bank true confidence
when i had to make the decision to face
my fear
and put my face on my book cover
i was ready i had been
training for that moment and
if you google me now you’ll laugh
because my face is everywhere
and by the way i care so much less
about the judgment now
i want you to imagine what you could do
in your life if you took the leaps
you don’t take because you’re scared
things won’t work out the way you want
them to
and instead took them because taking
leaps banks confidence no matter
what happens i
dare you to try and no matter what
you will have done something so
valuable for yourself
you will have freed up unlimited
possibilities in your life
and i don’t know exactly what you will
discover
in your revelation in paradise moments
but i promise it’ll be something amazing
something only you will discover if you
take a leap thank you