Hey welcome back to the podcast. I am super excited to introduce you to one of our amazing guest speakers at this year's success summit uh, michelle poehler, author of a book called hello fears and, and i'm bringing you in because i want everybody to understand. Having fears is normal? What would be horrible, though, is that you allow those fears to control your day-to-day activities and kill your passion, kill your joy, kill your fun and kill your performance, so listen up have fun, and i can't wait to see at the summit. So michelle welcome to the show, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me very excited absolutely so, as i mentioned right, you're gon na be one of our wonderful guest speakers this year at the summit and everyone that knows me knows, i am just a huge believer in creating awareness about who you are, what you're All about, and if you can identify that fear that thing that stops you and go after it right, then you can truly create greatness in your life. You can have that feeling of being truly alive and that's why i'm so inspired to talk to you today. So so maybe for the people that haven't read your book, hello fears, which you all should check out today, um or they don't know about that extraordinary 100 days of fear, challenge that you took on help. People understand a little back story.

You know who is michelle and then how did you get to this place? Wow. That's like a huge question. I know i know, are you wait? Are you afraid? Are you afraid of this question? Yeah big questions are scary. Yes, so where do i start? I was born in venezuela yeah.

I should start all the way in 1988. Yes born there. I lived there for my the first 19 years of my life before i moved to the united states to go to college and when i moved to the united states, i realized that i had more fears than the rest of my peers because i was so used To living at home being raised by my parents, my mom actually is a is the daughter of holocaust survivors, so she was raised with lots of fears. I was raised with lots of fears, but i didn't realize this until i left my home, my home country and i started living with roommates, and then i realized that a lot of my choices were based on fear like most of them.

Even the way that i dress up, where i go, what i order like where i go on vacation, like everything, is based on fear like what's the most comfortable option, and then i would always say no to whatever is a little bit outside of my comfort zone And so, and i was still achieving the things i wanted to achieve - i mean i graduated from college. I found an amazing job in advertising. I got married. I was doing the things i was expected to do, but one day i started wondering if i was actually happy because i was i'm like i live in a really nice building.

I have the perfect husband. I have a really good job. Am i happy is this? What happiness is all about like i've been dreaming about this moment, my entire life? Finally, i checked all the boxes. I don't feel happy, i feel comfortable, and so i had like that realization.

I started going to therapy at that point because i was like. I need to figure out what makes me happy, because if it's not this, then what is it? And so i started. I realized that one of my dreams always was to move to new york, and i put that in, like my the back seat and i never actually um pursued the dream of moving to new york and in therapy my she was. My therapist was like.

Wasn't that your dream and i'm like yeah, it was my dream and she's like why don't you pursue the dream and i'm like no new york and i started coming up with all these excuses. Why new york is so expensive? New york is so so much competition and all these things right that we tell ourselves and we convince ourselves not to do the things we actually want to do, and so she helped me like bring down all the barriers that i was putting up myself and then She's like go to new york, and so i convinced my husband, i was 23 24 years old at the time and um he was 25 26, and so we moved to new york too, and i i went to do a masters in branding. I realized that branding was my passion, not advertising, like i thought and so moved to new york and in new york. I was still playing it safe.

I was still in my comfort zone, so i was not enjoying new york to the fullest and one day i got really frustrated and i realized that i was not really living. I was like alive, but i was not experiencing my life to the fullest because i was always avoiding negative things like i was avoiding failure, avoiding rejection, avoiding um heartbreak, anything that could cause me harm in uh. You know not even in a physical way uh, and so that day i was like. I need to start doing something about my life.

Before i become a parent, i want to become a braver person, and so i embarked on this project and we can go more into detail. But i embarked on a project called that i called 100 days without fear where i decided to face one fear a day for 100 days in a row and that project completely changed my life. It changed your life in more ways than like five right, so so, first of all courtney, when you, when you hear all that and i'm just curious like from a female perspective, do you think it's different from a male perspective like how like how does that message? Resonate for you like do you, can you relate to that? Do you feel that same sense of fear or like? Oh? I really should, but i don't oh 100 yeah and i'm kind of curious too like were you, did you already have 100 fears written down or day by day? Were you coming up with a new fear that was like? Oh, this is something that i am fearful of, so it was really hard to come up with a list. I thought it was going to be the easiest part and i'm not at all, because i was like.

Oh i've been avoiding fear my entire life. It should be easy to write down 100 things, but i only wrote down 25 and then i had no more ideas. I wrote like the obvious ones, for example, i've always been afraid of driving at night. I've always been afraid of dogs and cats, and animals in general.

I've always been afraid, so i started writing the things that i've been carrying with me. My entire life, like trying new food, for example, oysters getting a brazilian wax getting a piercing um things like that. They're very did she just say brazilian wax on. I just love that that's see that i can't relate to that at all, but yes yeah, but you should be afraid of that and then and then did you reach out to people that could help you like overcome those fears.

So what i did first is i i was worried that i only had 25 things before starting, and so i put it on facebook, uh, 2015 or yes, 2015 at the beginning of the year, and i put it on facebook, and i asked my friends and family: Hey, can you suggest things like fears that i can face and nothing, and that was really the key of my success of the project, because what i did without realizing it is that i started building community around a project, a personal project and people were like they Wanted to follow up, they wanted to see if i faced the fear that they suggested and when the project went viral, they were so proud that they felt part of it because they're like yeah, i suggested that she crush a wedding and she did it. She tried this crazy indian thing and she did it, and so they feel part of it and they started spreading the news and they started like they helped me grow this movement into something bigger um, so that was really useful and so for some fears. I asked people like helper to join me, but it was mostly me, for example, when i crashed the wedding, i asked a comedian friend and she's. She was just really like popular, and i'm like do you want to come with me crash a wedding at the pierre hotel in new york, very elegant scenario like setting and she was like yeah.

Let's do it and i thought it was going to be fun to have a comedian with me that day and it was the opposite. She was way more nervous than i was. She felt horrible being there not being invited she was like we need to leave and i'm like we're, not leaving we're staying i'm facing a fear. I need footage of all of this because i was also recording every year and i was putting this on youtube every day, so i could share it with people, so i was like.

I need good footage, i can't leave yeah and she was freaking out and at the end of the day my husband and my brother decided to join us. So we were four people crashing a wedding. Even the photographer took photos of us and then we put it on youtube. It was like one of the most popular videos and then the groom and the bride found out and they threatened me and i had oh for sure, yeah the fear got more real yeah.

Then it was a real fear right. So so what point? And i love that question courtney like at what point and i've heard i've you know i've watched a bunch of your stuff and like so so i i have context for it. But at what point did it go from hey? This is fearful to okay. I'm gon na face this it's fearful, but i'm like i almost can't wait to do it like it almost becomes like addiction, an addiction to get over.

The fear walk us through that process because i imagine like it was like at 39 or 40 and listening to one of your videos where, like all of a sudden like it just snapped. Well, i don't i don't. I don't know if i was addicted or that i was eager to face any of the fears every single day i would wake up with horrible stomachache. That's where i process my emotions, i'm nervous from being nervous, very nervous, very like i'm still like i wake up.

I'm like i'm awake and then i'm like oh another day. I need to face another today, a tarantula on my hand, oh boy, here we go. I i always thought that the next fear, like the fear was facing next, was the worst one. So i was always like okay, i thought yesterday was bad, but this is going to be horrible.

No and then every time you do it, you realize it's never as bad as you have it in your head. Never like not even one time i was like it was worse in my head. Actually, one thing that, and it's because expectations when you expect something to be easier, and it's not that's when you realize it's worse than you had it in your head, for example, skydiving you're not expecting that to be easy or comfortable you're like terrified or holding a Tarantula, so when you do it, you're like it wasn't that bad, because if your mind was like huge but for example, when i did trapeze, i thought it was going to be fun. I was like that sounds fun, not like scary, but not that scary.

If you're not afraid of heights and i'm not afraid of heights - and it was so scary so scary that you know my expectations like play against me at that point, and i was - and i did that with cbs sunday morning, so they were there. I was like you know mike all over and then i'm supposed to like jump. No, no. I was freaking out okay, so this michelle this is.

This is exactly like the people that are listening right now are entrepreneurs, they're sales people right and and all of them face. Fears, like i literally started, making up a list: rejection failure letting go or delegating making phone calls asking for the business hiring someone that they know they should hire writing a book. Putting yourself out there doing a speech creating video investing in something asking that person out like there's, so many fears that my group is like we all like. I can relate to you right.

Everybody can relate to it um, but you i was watching a video. You did where you really talked about like a process of like how you were able to get through the fears. Would you share a little that process yeah? So i really said every day because i started identifying patterns as i was facing my fears and i was studying branding so in branding you're, all about identifying trends and patterns and things, and so i was very aware of the process i was experiencing and so at One point i was like um every day is exactly the same process, no matter the fear. So first is the discovery stage and the discovery stage is when you realize that you are afraid of something or that something is outside of your comfort zone, something that maybe you haven't thought of.

For example, if a friend calls you and tells you hey, do you want to come with me? Do paintball and you're like pimple? Do i want to? I don't know if i want and then it's like discovery you're like maybe i am. This is outside of my comfort zone, so you just discovered something that makes you uncomfortable and then we go into the denial stage and the denial stage is when, like immediately, we start coming up with excuses. Why we shouldn't do that thing? We're like no i'm that maybe it's too expensive. It's too far.

I'm i don't i'm not running, i don't know i'm not good at running or what or shooting or whatever it is and so uh you just come up with a lot of excuses. Then you go a lot of people just stay there in that, and that's it you forget about it. You say no, thank you, i'm fine and that's it. We do that most of the time.

But if you want to continue the process, then you get into the determination stage and that's when you convince yourself that this might be a nice experience or a good opportunity, maybe to network with that person or collaborate or whatever it is, and so when in that Determination stage you make plans and you're like okay. Maybe i should buy a ticket to go to africa for the summer or whatever it is that it scares you or maybe i should buy a ring to propose to my partner right. So we make plans, we put dates, we buy things and then, before going into the action stage, that you would think is the next one right. You have a plan.

You take action. No before there like right before the action stage. There's the i call it. Wtf am i doing stage, and so that's when you're like freaked out and you're like wtf, it's a spoon that says wtf i knew this was coming, i'm like and by the way for the people.

Listening, it's the where's tom ferry stage. No, you see that i needed that spoon everything remind myself. Yes, you're doing this, so that's when you freak out you're like right. No, this was such a bad idea.

What was i thinking, for example, before my my last fear, number 100 was to speak at ted. Tedx right the platform and so minutes before going on stage i was shaking. I was regretting my decision to be there because i was in the wtf. Am i doing stage and so, and i start considering, how can i leave how what excuse can i use so? I don't have to present i'm freaking out and so at that point a lot of people just stay there and they cancel their plans and they say i'm sorry.

I can't i actually, and you know something came up whatever uh, but if you want to continue, then you'll get into the action stage, and so that's where i focus like how to go from the wtf stage into the action stage. That's what i want people that see me present or that read my content, feel empowered to do and, and i'm so proud that so many people, like thousands of people, already have gone through. You know from one stage to the other through my content and so after the action stage. That's when you actually go, you do it, you travel, you say yes, whatever it is, and then uh you go into the celebratory stage and that's pretty special because i don't think i ever was felt proud of myself before i started this journey um.

You know. I graduated i got married, i did all these things, but i never actually experienced that feeling of being proud of myself. I did those things because i was expected to do that and it was easy for me to do like yes, i went to college and i graduated and i had fun and it was awesome and that's it, but i feel proud of myself. No, i was not facing a fear.

I was not. You know overcoming any real challenge, but when i started to overcome this real fears, the things that i've been afraid of my entire life and then i'm like, i did it and i don't feel that bad and i don't feel that i'm afraid anymore. I started to feel really proud of myself. That's a big decision.

We talk about it. So much like you know when you overcome something or when you make the phone call, you do need to celebrate. When you get the appointment, you make the sale etc. I want to go totally different direction, you you know you, you create this movement or i should say you document your own experience and from that a movement begins, and i would i just i'm curious, like what have you learned about building your own brand building, your Own movement like really creating your tribe and and making that come alive every day, because because that's something like every person listening and watching right now, they want to do that.

Whether it's with a hundred people in their database or a thousand true fans like kevin kelly's work, like everybody, wants to have that sense of belonging right that they they've created something they belong to something, and people want to be a part of something. So what have you learned in that experience? Because there there had to be a few fears in publishing a book creating a speaking career right like most people would rather yeah. Most people rather die than speak in. You know in front of people or film themselves or film themselves exactly so.

How did you overcome that and just kind of maybe share with us? What were some of the lessons you learned along the way? I have to say that the thing that i created that makes me the proudest proudest like more than the book more than my speaking career, more than anything more than going viral with a project or a youtube channel or whatever it's the community, the hello fierce community That i have, i have on instagram over 130 people at this point: um. 130. 000 people. I say you have a more than 130.

Yes, you have 131, i'm not with numbers. In english, 130 000 people on instagram uh organic right, because a lot of people have that amount of followers because they paid money together. But this was very very like i earned this and it was very organic. And so what i learned is that it happens when you make the decision to share all of your self like all of your process, not only the success if you're there to only share with people when things go right when you're having a great day when you're Getting you know when you get a yes, you know it's.

Okay, people will celebrate you and follow you, but if you're there also to share when you get rejected, when you learned a lesson when you know when you failed, when you made a mistake, when you regret something you're also there when you, when you're, having a really Bad day, you're there to put yourself out there, that's when you create a community that really really roots for you, believes in you relates to you and gets empowered by you and that kind of relates back to real estate professionals. When we talk about creating their profiles like showing all aspects of your life right right behind the scenes that it's not always pretty - sometimes it's 11 30 at night and you're working on your business and people are like. Oh, it's so glamorous to sell houses. Yeah! Oh yeah, this is really glamorous yeah hanging out with your family, seeing like right, every aspect of your life, not just what you do as a profession and i think that's kind of how you build community right.

You were vulnerable and you shared a huge part of your life and what you were fearful of and people were like, hey me too right. Yes, if you think that people engage with you when you share something that you did like something you're proud of wait till you share something that where you screw up or where you like yeah, you know, got rejected. That's when people really connect. Those are my most popular post, the ones where i decide to be very honest, authentic, despite the fear and when i, when, whenever i'm about to post something - and i feel fear, i'm afraid to do it - i know it's going to be successful way more successful than Any other post out there, people are not used to reading truth behind social media, normally they're more used to seeing a glamorous life, and i want to show all of it.

Yeah, and i think so and to your point. In so doing, you do create tribe, because because people can all relate to that yeah, we like we all get up and things don't always go our way and, like you know, we get, we got our butts, kicked left and right, like that's just the truth of It so i love it all right, so i have to ask uh. I have two boys they're, 20 and 22.. You have a baby, there's no fear in having a child how's that working out.

That was one of my biggest fears to write a decision. To start a family, i've been married nine years before we actually decided to have a baby um. We we decided it a long time ago, but we were working on it for this long. We took the time to build something before we get to that stage.

So we could get to this stage feeling a little bit more confident proud of ourselves. You know that and invested into this experience. Um. Definitely one of my biggest fears - and it had has proved me wrong in every way, because i always thought i was going to have a terrible pregnancy, terrible like giving birth experience.

All that, and it's been all the opposite. That's why i actually ended up transforming one of my instagram accounts, my personal one, into talking about motherhood, because i do want to encourage other women that feel just like me that are terrified of motherhood to let them know that it can be also wonderful experience, and It's it has been the best thing in my entire life, i have to say yeah, so i was thinking about. First of all, thank you for sharing that, because it i mean you know having kids like i get it and by the way, just for the record. It does get more terrifying as they get older my 22 year old, coming home at four o'clock in the morning.

What it happens, sorry, michael really cute - i don't know about - what's next, yes, yeah not trying to plant any. You know seeds of fear here, michelle um, but you know, if you, if you think about just you know, fear right fear of rejection, fear of loss, fear taking action, walk us through the process. One more time give us the give us that, like i thought it was awareness, but you had a different word for it walk us through one more time. So it's this and then you go into denial.

Give it to us again. So it's the discovery, denial determination, wtf and then action, and then i'm also curious to you mentioned early on that you kind of came to this realization through therapy. Throughout this whole, entire process was like your therapist, helping you through it and encouraging you to do so, or was she kind of more or were they more involved in like the action phase of it um i, it was really helpful to go to therapy to figure Out what what was missing in my life like so i could actually listen to me and then she gave me the courage to take action on my my dreams right. But the moment i moved to new york and - and we worked together in overcoming the fear of moving to new york because it was like huge fear for me to live in that city.

But once i moved to new york, no more therapy - and i started going through this shock therapy - i think sure, facing my fears day to day, and that was my therapy and also um, and then i started posting about and blogging about it once the project was Over and i think that was my therapy every time i write a post, i feel it's very therapeutic yeah. Then i went back to therapy when i turned 30 - and i had this like uh moment where i was like. I should be having kids i'm 30. You know, but i'm not there and that's when i started going back to therapy and it was really great because that's when i started writing my book and i ended up involving my therapist a lot in my processes of writing my book.

So my book has a lot of like deep concepts and it goes a lot into more therapy. You know material yes outstanding. Well, i'm i'm super pumped about having you at the summit this year. I just think you are just a breath of fresh air, and so many people face these fears and and like it's such a fear of such a broad word right.

So so hello, fears and hello michelle this year's success summit. I so are you gon na get everybody to get up on stage and like dance and like? Are we gon na go crazy because you know i'm all about that? You haven't. You haven't been to one of my events, i'm all about that. When i see you dancing, i'm like yes, i'm so looking forward, i mean i've been dancing in my living room for the last year and a half doing a spiritual event.

So now doing it in person. Seeing people you know live, stand up and dance with me. It's just i don't know this is the best thing ever so. Yes do you have a go-to song? Yes, what is it daddy, yankee anything from daddy yankee but duda? That's what i used at the beginning, and now it's called tirapalante, because i just need a good.

Like rhythm, so yeah yeah, yeah yeah, so by the by the way we may have just talked a bunch of people out of going to the summit they're like wait a minute, i have a fear of dancing, i don't want to dance tom. I just want to sell more houses, everybody should start practicing. Yes, yes, yes, i concur. I concur well, listen, uh! I thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

I know we're all you know jam and busy today um, but we can't wait to see you at the summit. We have a ton of fun, we're gon na explore all these concepts yeah and look again for everybody listening. You know me well enough to know like i can give you all the tools to be a better marketer to be a better sales person to be a better leader. This tool of getting over your fears is the tool that's going to move us all the next level and that's why we're bringing michelle in so yeah.

Thank you so much for joining us today and i know you're going back to uh some parenting activities. So we will see you uh see in a few weeks in dallas. All right see you soon thanks so much michelle good one bye, everybody take care, you.