Are you being held back by fear? Many of my clients in Courage Driven Latina are held back by all kinds of fear – the fear of failure, the fear of being seen, and the fear of taking a leap of faith. They’re afraid of what the future could hold because they don’t know what that looks like. 

But that’s ok! No one knows what the future looks like! The confidence and certainty come later – when you’re doing it. And even then, you’re never 100% certain. That’s why you should do it anyway. 

This week, we’re talking about how to work through your fears so that your goals are more feasible. You really can do whatever you set your mind to. You just have to let go of your fears so you can actually do it. 

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Podcast production for this episode was provided by CCST.

Episode Transcript:

Erika: Hello, welcome back to this week’s episode of Chingona Revolution podcast. I’m excited about today’s episode because we’re talking all about how to achieve those goals that feel really big and ambitious. Maybe you’ve been wanting to make a change in your life or you’ve been wanting to try something new, but the thought of doing this feels very overwhelming.

So maybe this is landing a new job, launching a podcast, starting a business, Picking up a new hobby like dancing or skating or something like that, or maybe even like starting a coaching business. And I’m going to give you examples of all of them. So sometimes whenever we look to where we are and where it is that we want to go, it can feel so overwhelming that.

Even though we know we have this desire, we don’t even want to share it with other people because what if we’re wrong? Like, what if it’s not actually what we want to do, or what if we give it a try and we fail, right? The number one reason people don’t take action towards their goals and dreams is because they are afraid of failing.

They’re afraid of trying and not being successful, or they’re afraid of trying and then having that that thing not be their thing. It’s why I overthought starting a food blog for so long. It’s why maybe you’ve overthought applying for a promotion, or maybe why you’ve overthought maybe moving into a new industry or a different sector of work, or maybe starting a blog, or posting on social media, right?

Whatever your thing is. So bring to mind the thing that you’ve been wanting to do, but But it feels really big and scary. And it feels like, how is that even possible from where I am right now? It doesn’t feel like I can get there. And I mean, really, if this version of myself would have met Erica five years ago, I don’t know if I would have believed that I am a podcast host, that I run a business that I have over 250 clients at this point.

That I have as many followers as I do on Tik Tok. I wouldn’t have even, you know, Tik Tok didn’t even exist. I would have been like, what is Tik Tok? So I want you to know first and foremost, that change is possible. You can change your interests. You can change your habits. You can change even the person you are, right?

You can go from being a reactive person to really being a thoughtful, intentional person. You could go from having habits that you maybe don’t want to keep. reinforcing to building new positive habits. You can become the person that you desire to become, but there’s definitely a method to the madness.

And I’m coming to you after having gone through a lot of years of overthinking, a lot of self doubt, a lot of fear of failure that held me back from starting my food blog, that held me back from Becoming a yoga instructor that held me back from posting on social media. And then ultimately that held me back from starting a coaching business.

I mean, I’ve definitely had my fair share of like holding myself back and have self doubt, but I will say that it has gotten better and better and better. I spent two years thinking about the food blog. I spent about a year thinking about becoming a yoga instructor, and I only spent a few months thinking about becoming a coach, so it gets better and better.

And the more you practice that muscle of courage, the easier it becomes. Of course, there’s still moments when I’m afraid there’s still moments when I want to play small, but what I want to talk to you about today is how can you take these goals that feel overwhelming and make them more attainable?

So again, this is coming from the perspective of somebody who’s overthought a lot of different things, but it’s also coming from the perspective of the creator and founder of Courage Driven Latina, where I have. supported over 250 women through a program where they’ve taken action on a courage project.

Even the people who joined the program early on, even though we didn’t call it a courage project at that point, they were still working towards a specific goal. So what? What? What? I learned through not only watching myself, but watching so many women go through courage projects is that whenever we look to where we want to go and we see where we are now, it feels impossible.

If the only thing you’re, you’re focused on is on the ultimate end goal and that’s what you’re taking action towards, it feels very overwhelming because We fear the fear of failure, right? And then we fear being wrong. And then the thing that happens is we feel like we need to have a plan to get from point A to point Z.

And this is what I’ve learned. I’ve learned that all we need to do is get from point A to point B. We do not need to know all of the different steps. It’s impossible for us to know all of the steps because we’re going to learn so much from getting from point A to point B that that’s naturally going to lead us to C and then D and then E.

And by the time we get to Z, Our whole goal can look completely different. So when I started the food blog, there was this idea of creating this massive food blog when really all I needed to do was start posting on Instagram, which was the platform that I was using. But I did end up investing in a website, and I didn’t even know what to write on the website because I literally just ended up copying other food bloggers because I didn’t know.

So that was me jumping from point A to point like D or E, and I just skipped B, C. Which made it so much harder for me than if I would have just gone from point A to point B Which is what I teach my clients now. So inside of Courage Driven Latina, we have a strategy. It is called the Courage Ladder so the Courage Ladder is We are at the bottom step of the ladder and it’s almost like the way that I want you to visually imagine this You know those little spiral staircases that keep going up That’s pretty much what a courage ladder is because the courage ladder actually never ends.

Every time we take a step, there’s a new step to get to, but it’s constantly evolving. So it’s like a spiral because it’s a circle and we’re constantly evolving and learning so much more. But the way that I put it inside of the courage project plan, just because for visual perspectives, right? It was just, straight up.

So it was a ladder that just goes straight up. And what I have clients do is I first have them identify where they are right now. And then the next, the first step on the ladder is what I call, this is a concept inside of Courage Driven Latina, it is your ghetto first draft. It is the most simple version of your ideal project of the thing it is that you want to create simply so that you can verify that it is something that you want to do.

Because Honestly, I didn’t need to start a whole website for my food blog in order to realize that I actually didn’t even want to do that. If I would have just started by posting on Instagram, I would have quickly learned that it wasn’t my thing and it wasn’t what I wanted to keep doing. So before you go invest a bunch of time, energy, and resources, I have clients work on their ghetto first draft just so that they can test out this thing that they believe they want.

But we don’t know if we want it or not until we try it. People want certainty before they take action, but the truth is we have to take action and that leads to certainty. That leads to clarity. And the thing is, certainty is actually not even real, right? Like nothing is certain. Nothing is promised.

Tomorrow’s not promised, right? We didn’t know the pandemic was going to happen. We didn’t know zoom culture was going to blow up. I mean, there’s so many things that we couldn’t have predicted. And we don’t have control over what’s going to happen. We just have control over us, our thoughts, our mindset, our habits.

That’s literally all we have control over. so once you begin to take the first step, what I call your ghetto first draft, you’re going to gain a lot more clarity after that. But people are waiting to have a hundred percent clarity to take any action. And again, we just, okay. There’s no way of having a hundred percent clarity.

That’s why the courage ladder works so well. And that’s why the ghetto first draft, which is literally the first step works. So let me give you examples of how this works, because I know just telling you the concept might not land that well, but the reason that the courage ladder works and the reason that the courage ghetto first draft works is because instead of it being an overwhelming project of like, Oh my gosh, how am I going to.

Start the podcast. How am I going to become a paid coach? How am I going to be good at kickboxing or skating? Or how am I supposed to do, you know, X, Y, and Z? Instead, you’re just focusing on what the immediate next step is and allowing yourselves to collect, allowing yourself to collect simple, sorry, I’m gonna say that piece again.

And you’re allowing yourself to collect wins as you go. So let’s say that you want to launch a podcast. So if you were looking at the courage ladder, the bottom part of the ladder is going to be where you are right now. And then there is. The first step of the ladder, which we call your ghetto first draft.

We call this, that’s what we call it, Insight of Courage Driven Latina. And then your ultimate goal, which is the top of the ladder, is to have a podcast, right? A podcast may be on all platforms. So how I would have you select your ghetto first draft or the first step is, okay, right now you simply have a desire to run a podcast, to start a podcast.

You don’t really know exactly what the name is going to be. You don’t know any of that, but instead of overwhelming yourself in all of that decision making of what colors are we going to use? What is the cover going to look like? What’s the name of the podcast? How do I edit? How do I put like, that’s a lot of stuff to figure out, right?

So what I would actually suggest as your ghetto first draft would actually be Instagram lives or Tik Tok lives. Can you go live either giving advice, telling stories, if it’s going to be a solo podcast, if you’re going to bring on guests, can you bring on guests to do Instagram live interviews?

 Why is this the first step? So the reason is because you don’t have to go buy a microphone. You don’t have to go figure out how to edit podcasts. You don’t have to make a decision on a podcast name. You’re simply testing it out to see if this is something that you want to do.

You’re going to test out if you even like interviewing people. If you even like showing up like this, it doesn’t require you to set anything up because you’re leveraging an existing platform. Showing up, leveraging the same kind of skills to see if it’s something that you like. And then after you have maybe five or 10 interviews, then you can really start to identify, you know what?

I really like interviewing moms. I really like interviewing moms who are also pursuing, uh, going, going up in their career. Like they don’t have a desire to be stay at home moms. And what we’re gonna talk about is like how different women. balance being mothers, but also being career women. Like that would be an awesome freaking podcast, right?

I’m sure one like that exists. I don’t know. I’m just literally making it up on the fly. And then after you’ve validated that, the next step would be, okay, you know, we’re going to call the podcast. Um, let’s see, working I don’t know. I’m literally just making something up right now or mamas trabajadoras if you wanted to make it bilingual, which literally means working mothers.

So then you can decide on those different things, but it’s so much easier to pick a name once you have tested out your idea. So with the courage ladder, the first one would be again, where you are now, the first step, which is your ghetto first draft would be the Instagram lives. And then the next step I would say is start creating the material for the podcast.

And then the next step would be interview like five people and then select a release date and then release it and then you can, and I would even start with just like those little Apple headphones. I wouldn’t even get a mic yet. Like I would really do it as scrappy as possible, like the most ghetto way of doing it, you know, channel your inner.

Like underprivileged community self and be resourceful. Let yourself do things in ways, ways that might feel ghetto because there’s nothing worse than investing. I can’t tell you how many times people want to start a podcast and then they go and they buy a microphone and they buy software and then they do nothing with it.

I want to say 90 percent of podcasts don’t make it past episode three. So as long as you keep going, that’s a freaking success. But I think sometimes we just already want instant results. We just want things to be. Like, our, we want a top performing podcast when the reality is there’s so many podcasts out there.

What’s better, like, the reason that you should want to start a podcast is because you want to record podcast episodes. Because you want to teach people about something, share a message, impact people. Like, that would be the correct reason.

Another example that’s super common inside of Courage Driven Latina, a lot of people are working on becoming coaches, confidence coaches, wealth coaches, boundary coaches. I mean, we have an amazing group of people and then they end up coaching one another. It is, it’s really an incredible community. But let’s say that you wanted to start a coaching business.

People think, okay, I want to start a coaching business. So the first thing I need to do is like, figure out what my, what my business name is going to be, and then start a website, and then go get a certification, and then like start taking paid clients. And people think, Oh, once I get the certification, I can then start taking on paid clients.

And while you can do that, that is not what I would suggest using the courage ladder strategy. What I would actually suggest using the courage ladder strategy is that we start, okay, where are you right now? Right now you have a desire to start a coaching business and maybe you don’t even know exactly what kind of coach you want to be.

So I would actually suggest for your ghetto first draft, which. Also, the Ghetto First Draft is the first version of your Courage Project. So it’s like your Courage Project version one. Rather than saying, go get a certification, go start a website, go do these other things, I would actually say, tap into your existing network, offer three clients free coaching, And see if you even like it.

Can you imagine going to go get a certification? Because people, this is the narrative people have. People are like, oh, once I get the certification, then I’m going to be confident coaching. No. Action teaches you the confidence. The more you do it, you’re going to feel more confident. Think about the first day that you showed up at your job.

You were not confident. Now think about when you’re in two years in confidence comes with practice. Confidence comes with time and so does clarity, right? You’re not going to know if you’re going to like doing this until you actually start doing it. It’s like I saw a post the other day and it’s like you can’t learn to drive in a parked car.

And that’s what a lot of us are doing. Your ghetto first draft is about taking the action in the most scrappy way. doing it in a way that’s low energy, low cost, simply to validate if you want to do this or not. What happens after you take on a few free clients? you will start to gain clarity. You will start to see if this is something that you even want to do.

And if it is, then you can move on to the next step of the courage project or the courage ladder. You can take the next step. So for a coaching business, what I would suggest as the next step after taking on free clients, it would be gathering testimonials from your free clients, start posting about the results that you’ve gotten your clients, how it is that you worked with them and start making offers for people to work with you in a paid Container.

Notice I did not say certification. Notice I did not say website. Because the thing is, once you grow your business, once you’ve made money from your business, once you’ve already validated this is what you want to do, you’re going to know what to put on the website once you get there. Obviously, if you have something like a product, like I have one of my clients, Melody, she sells candles.

She’s on Etsy. But if she wanted to go start a website and sell directly from her website,

 I wouldn’t advise her against that. But the thing is, she’s already done her ghetto first draft. When she was in Courage Driven Latina, she was in the second round of Courage Driven Latina. And now she’s in it again, so she rejoined. She’s in the new version of Courage Driven Latina. But when she first joined, She started making these candles at home, and then she just had a Google form that people would fill out, and then we would like Venmo or Zelle her money, and then her packaging got better after she started making money, and then her Etsy page was put up, and then after her reviews, she has like a ton of five star reviews.

Then she was able to raise her prices a little bit. Then she was able to really order things in bulk, and it all was step by step by step. She couldn’t have started with where she is now at the beginning. It’s impossible. It is impossible.

All right, let’s move on to another example. Let’s say that you want to learn a new hobby. Let’s say you want to learn dancing or maybe kickboxing or maybe skating. If you follow me on Instagram, then you know, dancing has been my thing. So has kickboxing. But before I made the investment in, so like, here’s the thing when people are like, okay, I’m going to go learn to dance.

They go buy dance shoes or if they’re going to learn kickboxing, they’re like, okay, let me get gloves. Let me get wraps. Let me get all these things that I need. 

And then they show up and maybe they like it and they keep doing it, but a lot of times the gloves just end up sitting in the closet, the shoes just sit in the closet. So if you wanted to start a new hobby, here is what I would suggest for your ghetto first draft for the first version of your courage project.

The first thing I would suggest would be going to a class that is either a dance class or a kickboxing class. And if you’re going to a dance class, don’t worry about the shoes, right? If you could rent some great, if you’re going to kickboxing, you could totally rent gloves and wraps and stuff at different gyms.

And then I would test out. out the gym to see if you like it. And if there’s another opportunity to test out another gym, I would at least go to like four or five and see which one you like. Same thing with dance classes. If you could find different dance classes, see which ones you vibe with. Once you’re like, okay, I really like this place and I want to keep coming back.

Then you can consider investing in the actual material so that you can perform this hobby. But a lot of people are like, let me go buy the stuff and then I’m going to be ready to go. Right. Or it’s like, Oh, let me go buy new workout clothes. And then I’ll work out. And it’s like, no workout. And then go buy the new workout clothes.

So it’s just about getting all of the obstacles out of the way and allowing yourself to go straight into action so that you can test if this is going to be something that you want to keep doing, or. So I feel like those were all pretty good examples, right? That cover kind of like life and business. Oh, dating, right?

Like, let’s say that you will just, I mean, yeah, a lot of people are actually working on dating projects after they have already completed a confidence building project. So let’s say that you’ve decided, okay, I think I want to go date. And. You’re like, well, let me go talk to a matchmaker then. Okay, well, let’s not get ahead of the game here, right?

A lot of times people are like, okay, I want to date because I already want to get married, but that’s jumping from the bottom of the courage ladder all the way to the top. There’s a lot of factors that go into dating. So even the way that you’re approaching dating, I suggest leveraging the courage ladder.

Instead of going on a date and saying, okay, is this the person I want to marry? How about you just ask yourself, do I want to go on another date with this person? All right. Yes or no. Do I like them enough to keep getting to know them? If there were no major red flags, yeah, maybe this person’s not six foot, but they’re taller than I am.

And that’s good for me, right? Which I can’t tell you how many times clients put these like strict restrictions on their dating apps when it’s like, what if we just stay a little open to possibility here? So rather than immediately making your first step, working with the matchmaker and trying to find your life partner.

What if you just allowed your friends to introduce you to people and you removed requirements for a little bit just so you can get to know people and get to know more about what it is that you’re looking for. And again, just seeing if you want to go on another date with this person, not rushing to see if like, okay, this is exactly the person that I want for the rest of my life.

So in summary, the best way. To reach a goal that feels big, that feels scary is by breaking it down. The number one reason people don’t take action is because they’re afraid of failing because they think they need to go from point A to point Z and that is not true. They also feel like they’re not allowed to change their minds.

You are allowed to change your mind. That’s why we suggest the ghetto first draft because after that We can decide if it’s something you want to keep doing or not. And if we decide it’s not something you want to do, that is a win. It’s not a failure. That is a huge, huge win. Because remember, you wouldn’t have known that this wasn’t something you wanted to do unless you tried it.

I would, I would still be thinking about the food blog if I never gave it a shot. I’d still be thinking about being a yoga teacher if I never went down that path.

if you’d like my help with reaching your big goal or figuring out what your next big goal is, then join the waitlist for Courage Driven Latina. The doors are going to be opening very soon on July 29th. Time is flying by. So be sure that you join the waitlist so that way you are the first person to know when we open doors.

We will help you identify your ghetto first draft as well as the entire courage ladder. We will help you if you have all these interests and you’re not sure exactly which one you want to do, but you know, you’re ready for a change. You know, you’re ready for something different. You energetically feel like you’re ready to level up.

Even if you don’t know exactly how to get there or where you want to go. We will help you do that within the first two weeks. You’re going to know exactly what it is that you’re going to be working on. And within the first 30 days, you are going to be different. You’re going to feel a lot more confident.

You are going to be taking action. We’re also going to help you overcome the fear of failure because inside of the program. We do something called the failure challenge, which helps you look at failure as an opportunity for growth Instead of quote unquote failure because failure is nothing more than redirection It’s a teacher the more you allow yourself to fail the more you grow and we’ve learned this inside of courage driven Latina and the community Aspect of it between the failure challenge and just working on a courage challenge Project, which is different steps.

The courage project is different steps inside of the courage ladder, but doing it with a community of other people who are also taking brave action, who are also experiencing failure, but also experiencing wins. It is the most incredible supportive community. You’re not going to feel alone. You are going to feel validated.

fully supported. You’re going to be surrounded by other women who are driven and who want to become a better version of themselves. And I cannot wait to support you. This program is now a year long, but even the women that were in this program when it was only 12 weeks have gotten so many Results and I mean, we’re just getting to the end of the first year of the program for the people who were in it for the whole year and the amount of transformation and the amount of different projects they’ve worked on has blown me away.

Be sure to join the wait list down below. And if anything from this episode resonated with you, be sure to let me know. I read all of your messages. We also now have an Instagram page for Chingona Revolution.

So you can either tag Chingona Revolution or my personal page, which is the Erika Cruz. We also have a page for Courage Driven Latina. Look at all these Instagram pages. See, I wouldn’t have started this on day One, actually, let me tell you a little bit about the ladder with the context of courage driven Latina.

So when I knew that I wanted to become a coach, I knew that I wanted to be a seven figure coach, like a million dollar coach, a multimillion dollar coach, because the more that I had success, the more in people I was going to be able to impact, I was going to be able to donate to causes I care about, right?

There was going to be, there’s just so many beneficial things about having a coach. Um, money about having the ability to do and the freedom to do what I want with my time with my money. So that was always my end goal, but my ghetto first draft for Courage Driven Latina was no website. Literally just went on TikTok and Instagram and was like, Hey, I’m launching this program.

It had no videos. It had no worksheets. We did not have a courage project. It was literally a 12 week program where every week we would meet and talk about a topic and then I would give them homework and then we would meet the next week and sometimes I didn’t even know what I was teaching that week until we’ve showed up.

The program has evolved so much. Now we have a website. Now we have, I mean, so many results, so many testimonials, and now we have the Courage Project Plan, which the Courage Ladder is inside of the Courage Project Plan. Now we have a template for the Courage Project. Now we have, videos. Like the moment you join Courage Driven Latina, you get instant access to over 25 trainings that you literally would get results just from the videos.

But then we also meet weekly, right? So now we have weekly coaching calls. And now these coaching calls aren’t trainings because you could go watch the trainings on your own. Now we just help you with whatever it is that you’re getting stuck on the calls. We also now have monthly business coaching calls, which is something we didn’t have last year.

So even Courage Driven Latina has coaching Followed the courage ladder strategy. I even followed the ghetto first draft. The first people who joined the program, I didn’t even know how to charge them. I think like one person paid me through Venmo and then I ended up creating like a PayPal account and then people would pay me through PayPal.

I didn’t even have an LLC until like a few months in and it like, I, I don’t think I realized how much of my own philosophies I was already following until I look back now. All right. With that being said, friends, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode. That was a little bit more strategy heavy.

I cannot wait to work with you. Be sure that you join the wait list for courage driven Latina, and I will see you next week.