Courage Comes Before Confidence
I used to pray for confidence, but now I pray for courage.
When you’re a heart-centered entrepreneur, what you do matters to you. It’s personal. You care about others. You care about your calling. You care about how you’re showing up in the world. You care about doing your best and making a lasting positive impact in the lives of those you come into contact with.
And that’s hard work. It’s scary. It’s taking a valuable piece of your heart and putting it out for the world to see.
It takes courage to do that. To come back, day in and day out, and take the action to build your business. It takes courage to share your voice – which is so needed right here and right now in this world – and do it when you know there will be haters. But there will also be lovers. And make no mistake, there will be lives transformed because you have the courage to show up and do your work.
Confidence comes from experience. Experience comes from action. Action...
A Little Bit Every Day
It’s been a ride lately.
I don’t like to complain about things because I KNOW that I am blessed beyond measure. But the last five years have been personally Intense. And there are a lot of BIG things going on in our world today that are also intense. And my greatest desire in life is to show up well to the things that I’ve been called to and do something that makes the world a better place for everyone.
Lately, God has been putting some new dreams in my heart. And on top of everything else in life, they feel huge, and big, and overwhelming.
A few days ago, on Brett’s birthday, our plan had been to head into the Smokies and take the boys on a short hike to a lesser known water fall with a good swimming area, but as days around here have a tendency to do, things got a little busy and we ended up opting to head to a closer swimming hole instead and skip the hike altogether.
Brett and the big boys were still swimming, but Decklan had gotten cold, so I carried...
The Green Bean Method for Getting Stuff Done
*This post by Melanie Ethridge originally appeared here on her company GrowthAdvance's website.
“But I don’t like green beans” my three year-old recently complained to me as he eyed the healthy pile of the vegetable on his plate. “I can’t eat all those. That’s a lot,” he said.
After stifling down the nearly automatic responses rising up in me including, “but there are starving children in Africa!” and “You will clean your plate! [said in my best drill sergeant voice],” I thought to myself, “Yeah kid. I get it.” I mean we’d all rather have crackers, or, you know, Krispy Kreme, but in this household, we are going for those 9+ servings of fruits and vegetables each day and in order for the little fellow to hit the target, he was going to have to eat some green beans. Trying to pull up a little empathy from the three-year old me who had to eat all sorts of foods I didn’t love, I took a...
Choose Today to Create Something Meaningful
When I launched my first business back toward the end of 2004, the world was a surprisingly different place. It’s amazing how quickly things have changed in the last decade. Back then, Facebook was in its infancy—not even outside of specific colleges and universities yet. Contacts still existed in desktop rolodexes or if you were particularly technologically advanced, in the brand new, hand-held Palm Pilot type devices. Receiving an email was still exciting. Cell phones still flipped and were, by no means, smart. Although Internet Marketing had been around since the early to mid 90’s and we had moved beyond the dotcom bust, this space was still dominated by major corporations with big budgets. Google AdWords was in its infancy and Facebook ads wouldn’t even come around for four more years. Things that are normal conversation for entrepreneurs today were barely in existence then.
I love how many of the changes we have experienced over the last decade have...