I am intentionally staying scared

I am Tiffany Sauder, and this is Scared Confident.

So season three, we turn the page to a new chapter together. And as we look forward into this year for secure, confident, there's a couple of things that I want to do. One is, I want to ask questions out loud, the things that I'm really seeking to learn the like new places I'm looking to go in my life. And frankly, the challenges that we're having as a family and the things that we're looking to like learn and grow.

I want to ask those questions out loud and share those, those conversations that people that we reached out to, and even conversations with my girls. The other is I'm in this place of like just a place of reflection as my role is changing in a lot of different places. I really want to like, make sure that I grab hold of the things that the last 17, 18 years have taught me.

And so we're also going to dive deep in to some of the conversations, the people that have spoken into my life in a way that has created. A world that in many ways I never even dare to dream of. And this idea of daring to dream is a real thing for me in the first years of all that it took, I kind of didn't dare to believe that it would be successful and so to stop and sort of grab hold and to be sure that.

I thank those people that I kind of verbally document the journey. And in many ways, I think relive it in a way where I'm paying attention in a different way. So that's what season three is going to look like. You know, I'm learning this idea of a podcast is a big dose of intention.

And then also just being present for the creative journey that is content creation, and also making sure that I'm listening well to what your questions are so that I can dig into my experiences and share those in a really vulnerable and candid.

As I start the season, there's three lessons I want to share and kind of journal for myself, I guess, audibly through this podcast about what 2021 taught me. And I think I'll continue to take forward into life. with element three with the agency. So that journey is like 16, 17 years down the road.

And we have been through a lot of different stages of growth as a company I've shared that we went all in on EOS about three years ago, started to really bring some structure stability and just like communication, cadence, clarity, and what people's roles were a really well articulated, envisioned future.

And a lot of these are like, You know, stuff you should have, but we didn't, and I didn't totally know how to do it. And so there were years where it was harder than it needed to be in 2021 really gave us a gift of like all of the work that we had been doing, kind of clipped together. It was like the Lego blocks snapped tight.

Our financial performance of the company was like the strongest that it's been, you know, years, our employee net promoter score, which is like a score that says like, how happy are the people who work for you is like the highest it's ever been. Our client satisfaction score, highest it's ever been. And my role at element three is like, It's the best it's ever been.

Like, I just feel like it's so much energy from it. And what is so interesting as I was living in the season of it working, is it, it's very difficult for me to accept it. It's very difficult for me to accept that it's working. It's like I was almost more comfortable when things were hard. And so it's been a really interesting observation for me to like, see.

That I am almost more nervous that it's not going bad. Isn't that strange? And I want to say this out loud to myself in some ways to say like, it's okay to believe that things can be good. And I think that sometimes when you've been through something hard, when you're used to like the fight. Being the normal, I think there's a sense of self sabotage that can almost set in because the struggle is more comfortable, which feels so weird to say out loud.

But I've observed that in myself over this year, that as things have been going in some way, The way we planned, like that is the promise of clarity. That is the promise of people who are engaged. That is the promise of like, if you do these things fundamentally, then it will work. That is the point. But I was very uncomfortable in all of that.

And I don't know if anybody connects to that idea that when it's hard, when you're in a fight, when you're. When things are dark and heavy, it can almost become more comfortable. And then when the sun shines, it's like, you want to put sunglasses on because you're not comfortable in it. So I think it's a process of, for me accepting that things can be good.

And what responsibility comes in that stage of a project that stage of a company that stage of a relationship. What responsibility comes when that is the case, because you do have energy to give in other places when you're not kind of burdened or overcome with a lot of really hard things. So I feel very thankful for that.

It's not lost on me that, that not all businesses have experienced a height, a heightened place of itself in the last couple of years, because business has been really strange. I'm really grateful for the team. I'm really grateful for. This place in the journey. I'm really grateful for almost 20 years of that company.

Like I'm really, really, really grateful for it. And I want to work to be able to be as comfortable in delighting in its fruit, as I am comfortable and sort of fighting for its existence.

I think fear still uses the same. Like general narrative of when I feel fear most acutely it's when I'm focusing on myself and not the world around me. And that is my fear that I will focus on myself and the world around me. And so when I feel myself close in and I lose energy and I like lose just like the speed.

Of like execution. Like I just know there's like this rhythm in my life when I just know like I'm in the groove and when that like starts to slow down, I'm like way overthinking everything. I, I like begin procrastinating in a way that sounds like. Everything has to be perfect to get started. And that's just not my natural state actually.

I'm like totally fine and chaos, but I suddenly get into this like strange control place. And it took me a couple of weeks actually, as I was like, getting ready to flip on season three, to be like, you are just scared actually. Like fear is totally back in your head. And that's why you haven't pushed record.

And I had all these like external factors that I was saying in my mind about why I had it, but the truth of it, it was, I was just like a chicken. I was afraid. And the minute I named it, it like disarmed it. But as long as I was like going through this charade, it was bananas. It was totally bananas. It was like, okay, yeah, let's start in January.

And then it's like, January was coming to an end. I'm like, oh yeah, we'll definitely start like the beginning of February. And then the beginning of February started and I was like, I don't know, happy new year in Q2. Like, what am I doing? And so we picked this random date, February 17th or whatever it is that we're going to drop the first episode.

And I think it was like such a lesson. I think there's a bigger picture of like life and all of that, where you kind of wait for these like perfect moments to like stage gate, new things, new adventures, new things you're going to take on new habits, whatever it is. And it's like, no, like the secret is just start.

And I know that like rationally, but yeah, fear totally got ahold of. The second area of my life, I would say that was sort of created in 2021. Is this role of being an investor? I would say in an active investor, this is really interesting to kind of move into this phase of my professional career, where I have a little bit of.

Excess time. Um, a little bit of excess resource to be able to put towards projects and people that I'm really excited and passionate about. And so Jr and I have put some financial resources and some time towards two projects in particular, the first one is share your genius. So some of you may have seen this, but share your genius is the company that produces this podcast.

So somebody other than me, which you already knew that like, you know, makes the audio sound good. It takes out the ums helps think through what is the, you know, what is the point of the show? And like all of these episodes and stuff, some helps me with all of that. So share your genius is the company. Does that, and over the course of the last year, that the person who runs that her name is Rachel, the president, she and I developed a relationship, really, I think because I connected to her per like story.

She's a young mom, she's just wickedly talented. And I could tell really early that she just has a real talent for storytelling and. Kind of keep that capability close to me. And I offered in 2021 to say, just like, Hey, if, if, uh, if I can be helpful on your journey, Just be a mentor to you. I would love to share my experiences and the things that I learned in growing element three and having young kids and being married and all the things that come with all those things happening at the exact same time.

And so through that relationship, she shared with me that there was an opportunity for there to maybe recapitalize the business, come in and to S to bring in a different owner. And so through those conversations, long story short, my husband. Uh, bot share your genius. And so it's been really cool to step into that role of, of owner and to really put my money where my mouth is and this idea of if I want to advance more female leaders and more female CEOs, what better way to do that than to invest in one.

That I really am excited about and a business that I'm already participating in. The other opportunity that we invested in is sand Pathak, who was on my podcast in 2021, talked a lot about just race relations and what I learned in that journey and working really closely with him when he was at element three, he.

Left element three and 2021, and started to pursue a lifelong passion of his to become an entrepreneur, a business owner. And also, I would say somebody who puts together a tech company and sells it, and he's got these big dreams to create opportunity for his family and for his employees. And so element three made an investment in.

Company. And again, another example where our stewardship and our success element three, had a chance to make an investment in two black founders that have. An idea and a product that we think that can make massive change in our communities and in our young people and helping them find what it is that they're passionate about.

And in those two investments and kind of this next stage for me as my professional life, my, my observation in those two investments is that I think the place that I can create change is in the micro and not the macro. And what I mean by that is if, if I believe that there should be more. Diversity in business ownership that the business landscape should be filled with people who look differently who think differently.

Then the best way I can do that is to help make one tip, to help put resources and relationships and advice behind people and products that I really. I'm excited about, and I know this is not a new idea. Like I'm not the first person to roll out of bed and do this, but it is new for me in this way. It is new for, to, to begin to see that the experiences I've collected over the last 20 years.

If every single female business owner helps make one other one that we will have twice as many. And if each one of those help create another one, then we will have twice as many again. And, you know, if I can help be a catalyst for sand and then he can help be a catalyst for another one, it's like it really perpetuates itself.

And I get wildly excited about that when I look at our country and this summer, Things that were in, it can be a little bit discouraging. And I, I just, I think I got a renewed sense of clarity for myself that I can create a lot of change and impact in the micro. And so. My question, I guess, and challenged, each of us is what are the things in our worlds that we can really touch and change.

It's easy to sit back and complain about some of the macro trends, but if we each invest our time, In creating one more of the thing that we want to make more of. I actually think that's how real change happens.

I think fear told me, honestly, that when it came to being in a advisor investor, like, you know, who are you like? You haven't really exactly done this perfectly. Tiffany. And I think as I've stepped into it, I have come to understand that it's actually, and I know this, but I forget it like the most relatable part of it all is I haven't done it perfectly, which is why I paid attention so well to the lessons is because I know what it feels like to like almost lose it all.

And I learn so much by other people, like giving me their time and talking to me is how I process and learn and like understand other people's like their lives and the vignettes that are playing out. It's how remember. And so, I don't know, I just got to the place where I was like, it's selfish of me to not step into this.

And the worst case scenario is I'm bad at it. And I hope I have the humility to like, recognize that before everybody else so that I can just stop doing it if I'm bad at it. But it's been such a, it's been such a gift. And I think we all want to bring. Purpose to our story and like purpose to like almost like redeem the things that we've messed up in our lives.

And so I think this idea of, you know, being an advisor, being an investor of being actively involved in helping other leaders to grow into form spending. Like redemptive in some ways for me,

the third thing that I'll take forward with me, I think for the rest of my life from 2021 is this whole journey of scared, confident. I remember so vividly sharing with my friends on new year's day coming into 2021 that I thought I wanted to do a podcast. And I knew they wouldn't make fun of me, but I was sort of afraid they would.

But I knew they wouldn't, but that's what fear was telling me. I just knew I had to go through this journey of understanding fear. It just, just knew it. And to have gone through the fear journey, to experience the fear interview, to have had this launch party, that was really a thank you to the people that had played such an important role in.

Helping me uncover and discover my talents and the world and learn about business and relationship. And like, it was such a profound experience for me and having this conscious understanding of fear as almost being this like thing I could hold in my hands, instead of it being this thing that overwhelms my being has been just a very powerful life experience.

I can now see and speak to fear in a way that I didn't have an understanding of how to do that. And my fear statement of like I am for others. I am not for myself that has really, I think helped me see the world in a different way. And I think I'm also learning. Th it's this exercise of living life authentically and also living at consciously in a way that you're watching for and observing the lessons that like everyday life is trying to teach you so that you can share them with other people.

It's a really interesting way to like, view the world. It's just like brought a lot of things into more consciousness or. That has been a really rich experience.

It fear has been telling me to play small. What is the real cry of my heart? Like the real like fabric of what I feel like I was made to be. And I kept coming back to this idea of it really is the courage. To own more ans in my life like a N D and I used to think there's no way I could be a mom and have a career like that was too far for my brain to stretch.

And then I did that and I started to want to also like be Tiffany and married and have a job. And. Have kids and like, as new opportunities have opened up for me, like, and I'm a board member and I'm an investor and I'm a business owner actually fear for a long time told me that I. I think don't deserve more ans I don't deserve that.

I, who are you to like, want those things in your life? And so when I talk about. Courageously pursuing a life of, and you'll begin to hear that narrative across scare confident. That's what I mean, I'm not talking about like running yourself, ragged into the ground to like, try to impress your friends and neighbors.

I'm saying like those things that you really, really want to do it doesn't even have to be like, work-related. There's like these decisions that life brings to you, like kind of proactively on a conveyor belt, like getting married, going to college, having kids where you live, like those are like kind of like natural functions of our society.

And then you get to a place where most of those, what job you're going to be in, what career is like, most of those decisions are like kind of set and you're managing those. And then it becomes, will you proactively choose to have more ans in your life? Not because other people want them for you, but because it's actually a pursuit of your heart.

Pursuit of your being the thing. There's a season where once some of those natural decisions, those natural ans have come into your life, it can become easy to just manage those decisions and to become complacent in your own sense of adventure for the life that you want to really purposely create for yourself.

And my experience in my own life is it wasn't that I actually didn't have the time. It wasn't that I didn't have the resources. It, because fear was telling me. I didn't deserve those adventures in my life that I had enough. And so I should just like sit down and be quiet, but that's not really what I wanted.

And as I've understood how to sorta like push past and peek around fear to see what else life can offer when I can live free of that. It becomes really exciting and fresh and a totally new way. And so my commitment is to continue to living my own journey out loud. And my invitation is that you would consider this for yourself.

Like, is it that you have all you've dreamed of, or is it that fear is telling you to be quiet and to be content and not to see. Or search for more.

So those are my, like, I'd say three big takeaways from 2021 working to accept when things are working and not to feel more comfortable in the pain and struggle to understand that I think real change, at least in my world, I think actually happens in the micro. And not in the macro. And the third is a reminder that fear really does want to quiet the best in each of us.

It's never going to spend its time on the thing. That are the weakest in you. It's trying to quiet the best of you. And those are three things I'm going to take into 20, 22. As I continue to like unwrap what it looks like to live a life of .

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