A LOT with Audra

Ep03
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​[00:00:00]

Audra Dinell: Hello, welcome to the third episode of a lot with Audra. I'm so excited. I have to tell you, this is the first episode that I'm recording post launching the podcast and the feedback that I have received so far from the initial Episode has just been so heartwarming and I'm so grateful. This is one of the best things about living in the Midwest.

People show up for each other. And it's funny that I say that because today we're going to talk all about showing up. [00:01:00] Why just showing up is your secret to success. Right now, I'm doing a podcast and I'm public speaking and I'm on social media and hosting events regularly.

But when I first started the thread. I was so scared to start my Instagram account. I grabbed this handle, the thread WLC for women's leadership collective. And I remember the first post being something around my branding or kind of like a coming soon teaser. And I was sitting on my couch in my living room after the kids had gone to bed and I pushed, you know, publish on the first Instagram post

and I remember just being like, I'm gonna throw up. It is so scary to put yourself out there. It is so scary to go for your dreams. And I'm no stranger to social media, and I [00:02:00] wasn't back then. In fact, in 2013, I started a social media company, but then fast forward to 2020 and I'm pushing posts on my first post on my social media account for the thread, this business that I'm so excited about.

I'm so passionate about. And I felt like I was going to puke. I felt completely naked. Couldn't sleep that night. I mean, just the vulnerability is so real. So I share that to start because no matter, I think how much success you're having, always feels scary to take the next step, but the next step is ultimately what is going to bring you the success that you're looking for. So in 2021, as I was building my business, I bought this bracelet and it is [00:03:00] a tiny words project, I think is the name of the bracelet. And I was shopping at a local boutique and it just caught my eye. And it said those two words, it said, show up. And I remember thinking,

that is what I need to hear every single day. And so for almost a year, I wore that bracelet nonstop because I just needed this reminder to show up. It's easier to stay in your comfort zone. It's easier to not go to the networking event. It's easier to be quiet when you have something to say versus risk saying a thing that may or may not be well received.

It's easier to not show up, but when you're doing something like building a business or following your dreams, no matter if that is a business that you're building or another dream you have, showing up is required. [00:04:00] And it seems like such basic advice, but I mean, really think about it. It is hard to show up.

And so many people don't show up. And I will say, I have totally been one of those people before back in high school. I was a competitive cheerleader and Went on to cheer in college. When I was cheering in college, I was not on, let's say the A squad. but I did get an invite from the coach to practice with the A squad, collegiate cheerleading athletes.

And I didn't show up. I remember thinking, eh, I'm one of the better people on the, the B squad. This is super comfortable. I like the position that I have. I don't want to waste their time. I don't want to be the worst person in the room. I don't want to make a fool of myself. And it's just so funny because like thinking back to those thoughts, those are very real [00:05:00] thoughts that apply to many of us today in our professions or whatever dreams we're building, whether it's a professional dreamer or not.

It's so easy to like, let that self doubt creep in and let all the excuses and even make those excuses about someone else, right? Like, Oh, I don't want to waste their time. It's so easy to want to be the smartest person in the room, right? But the rooms that are the most valuable to be in are those rooms where you feel least qualified to be.

So I started out at one college. After a couple of years, I transferred to another college. That's the college where I was a collegiate cheerleader and didn't accept the invite to practice with the A squad. Come tryout time. I totally messed up on my tryouts. I mean, and, and that doesn't happen very often.

I don't get that sort of like stage fright where I just like totally freeze, but I did that time and I didn't make the A squad. So this was, I don't know, however many years [00:06:00] ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago. Wait, how, how long was that? Gosh, 20 years ago, somewhere in there. Fast forward, at least a decade and a half, and I am moderating a panel on stage at my communities.

Location of the Global Leadership Summit. I feel so honored to have this opportunity. The leaders I am interviewing are phenomenal leaders in our community. And I run into the old cheerleading coach and I pulled him aside and I said, Hey, it's been so long. How are you? I have to tell you this. I learned such a lesson from you.

You invited me into this space where maybe I didn't quite belong yet, but you saw the potential in me. You invited me in and I chose not to show up, but I will tell you, it took me several more years to learn this [00:07:00] lesson, but it started with you. And I never not showed up for myself again. I moved back to my hometown.

I'm starting this business. I've achieved some success per my own standards. And I've learned so much from you. And now I show up. I think at that time, the bracelet had broken. So I couldn't prove to him how important that lesson was to me of just showing up. But it was

when I was building the thread. It was hard to show up when I got a no, it was hard to show up when I made a mistake. It was super hard to show up when my kids were sick and I was juggling building a business and Being a mom and all the other many, many things that life had in store for me. [00:08:00] It was so hard to show up.

I remember a time where I was launching my first offering and I thought it was so brilliant. I created this email template. So when people bought what I was selling, I got to email them and tell them all the details. And I thought, okay, I'm going to create this template and that way everyone's going to get the exact same information from me and it's going to be consistent, which is something I struggle with.

That's not my gift as an entrepreneur. And so I just felt so genius for creating this template. Well, the first time I sent it out, I sent it out to one person. Her name started with a K and the second time I sent it out, I sent it out to another person whose name started with a K, but I didn't replace that person's name in the intro.

So person two got the same email, including with the wrong name as the person in email one. Oh, cringe. The business I was building was really based on. Development and relationships and going [00:09:00] deep and being authentic. So to call a new customer by the wrong name was so cringeworthy. Dang it. And she totally called me out on it in a fine professional way.

But I remember really wanting to beat myself up and really wanting to be like listening to that voice in my head that said, how can you be successful? If you make a mistake like this, this is such a rookie mistake. You know, those voices in our head that come up. but I said, I'm sorry. And I just kept showing up and I kept sending that email template, except of course I corrected it and took the name out of the line so that I wouldn't make that mistake again.

The point is show up early on in my entrepreneurial journey. I read this book by Emma Isaacs and it's called winging it. Why choosing action over planning wins every time. I might've flubbed the title, but it's [00:10:00] definitely called winging it. And it really was all about choosing action over planning because when you're in planning mode, you can pretend that things will be perfect.

You can pretend that things are not going to get in your way. And listen, I am a planner by trade. I started out my career post college. As a corporate planner for an organization, I then went on to work at an ad agency where I planned all types of community and client events for my many clients. I ended in Honolulu, Hawaii, planning the state's largest job fair.

I am an event planner by trade. I'm a person who likes to plan. I've already talked to you about my obsession with actual planners. You see my calendar on the wall. If you're watching this video, planning is in my DNA. I love planning, but so often in the past, I found myself staying [00:11:00] so much in planning mode and having this perfect world created per my plans that I was deathly afraid of taking action because I was scared to be imperfect.

But here is the thing. Action is going to be imperfect. If it looks perfect to one person, it won't be perfect to other because we're all humans. And so reading that book, Winging It, really helped me overcome my obsession with planning the perfect business. When COVID 2020 hit, I was living in Honolulu with my family, and I had the idea for the thread pretty early on, probably April of 2020.

And so I spent three months creating this business plan for the thread and I did other things. I did some outreach. I did some research. I set up some focus groups, but I spent three full months planning out this. I think it was like 18 pages or 27 pages. It felt very long to me, [00:12:00] a big old business plan of all the perfect ways the thread was going to look.

And then I got boots on the ground in July of 2020 and had to actually take action. There were several months in there where I was definitely still in my head and wondering, is this thing even going to happen? Because I was focusing more on the planning and the perfecting. And I was doing some very valid things.

Don't get me wrong. Planning is a huge part of our life and our business. Very important. I was building a brand. I was naming the company. I did so many really great things in that time, but what was more important than. The planning was the action that I took, the calls that I make. And so one of the things that I did to show up in that season, before I even knew, okay, Audra, you just have to show up.

Some of the things I did to show up looked like telling every single person I met about the thread. This includes. You know, a friend's mom from high school that I ran into at a football [00:13:00] game. This includes the barista at my local coffee shop. This includes every member of my family. This includes literally everyone I'm talking to, whether it be in person or on the internet.

So to me, that was just such a tiny way that I consistently showed up for myself when I didn't have much else I could do except just, you know, tell people what I was doing. If we stay in planning mode, we're likely never to get in the game. We have to cap it at some point. We have to say, okay, this is good enough.

Or maybe this plan isn't fully baked, but it's 50 percent there or it's 70 percent there, or it's 25 percent there. And I'm going to take action to get the ball rolling because showing up is taking action. And taking action builds confidence. So pretty soon as I am building my business, I'm in the first six months to a year. I start to attract other [00:14:00] women who are interested in launching their own things. And that would always be the first advice I would tell anyone. Half of the work is showing up. And then this theme came back to me this week.

The week I've launched the podcast and multiple women in my community started conversations with me about showing up. One friend sent me a reel on Instagram that said entrepreneurship is 5 percent idea, 5 percent timing, 10 percent talent, and 80 percent not effing stopping. I'm laughing because this is definitely a clean podcast, so I have to say effing, but 80 percent not stopping, That just means showing up. I was having coffee with another friend this week, and she's in her mid forties. She's an executive director. And she said to me totally unprompted, the older I get, the more I [00:15:00] believe that most of success is just showing up.

So I want to leave you today in this short episode with this question, where do you need to show up? Where do you need to show up for yourself this week? Can you show up for yourself by getting in your journal every day? Can you show up for yourself by having that hard conversation that you need to have? Can you show up for yourself by getting curious instead of reactive? How can you show up for yourself this week? So in this process of me building my business, I started to learn what my values are.

And I will say before I started my business, I had a short list. I had five or so. Values that, I claimed were most important to me and that I wanted to live my [00:16:00] life by, but one of them really shone through. And that was the value of courage. I realized every time I showed up in a room I didn't think I belonged in, on a stage that I was scared to be on, in a conversation that felt a little over my head, woof, those things were scary and they took courage.

And I realized, Oh, that's my North star. If I can be courageous and live courageously, I will feel that I have a life that I'm so proud of, no matter what it looks like. If I can be courageous, if I can embrace courage. Now that was on my list of five values. And we'll talk more about values and other episodes because I'm, I'm big on creating a values based life and all of our values are so unique to us and so different, but for me showing up.

Helped shine a light on what was one of my true values. I wonder if it'll do the same for you. And I would be so curious. [00:17:00] So this week, as you are thinking, how can I show up for myself? I want you to write it down, write it down and stick it on a post it note. Use my trick of having that bracelet where I was constantly reminded to show up.

Write it down somewhere. You're going to see consistently. Maybe you're in sales and you don't want to make all those calls you need to make, or maybe you're nervous to offer a product to someone, but you never know, you know, how much value you could really add to their life unless you show up. Write that down wherever you need encouragement.

Maybe it's after the workday is done and you've given so much of your energy and you're exhausted, but now you're parenting, you're onto your second shift and you really want to show up for your babies. You really want to be present. You want to be connected with them. You don't want to check out. Write it down somewhere you can see.

All [00:18:00] right. I hope you all have a wonderful week of showing up. I know when this episode. launches. I will be celebrating a home day with my kids. It'll be Martin Luther King day, and I will likely be focusing more on mothering my children than running my business. I'm going to take my own advice and I'm going to show up so well.

I'm going to show up so well for my kids that day. And then I'm going to show up so well for my business the rest of the week. And I'm going to show up for myself. I'm going to eat well. I'm going to move my body. I'm going to get good sleep. Those are some of the ways that I'm going to show up for myself this week.

If you think about it, I'd love to hear from you on social. You can find me mostly on Instagram. My handle is Audra Donnell, A U D R A D I N E L L. You can also find me over at The Thread, W L C. I'm mostly on Instagram. I'm also on LinkedIn. You can find me at Audra Donnell on [00:19:00] LinkedIn. If you want, I'd love to hear in a DM.

How are you showing up for yourself this week? All right. Thank you all for listening to the third episode. I'm so, so grateful you're here. If you haven't already, would you please subscribe to the show? I'd also love if you enjoyed the show. If you would leave a review, my podcast guy says apparently that is helpful.

Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for reviewing. Thank you for sharing this. I feel so grateful that this gets to be something I get to spend my time on. So thank you for being here. Looking forward to hearing how you show up for yourself this week.