Episode 11 - The Power of Fearlessness in Business and Life

[00:00:00] Fearlessness, what is it? It's that underlying grit that empowers us to forge ahead even when hope seems distant. It's the courage to walk through those fires of hell, knowing that we will come out better and stronger on the other side. Stay tuned and learn how to get fearlessness.

[00:00:22] I'm your host, Libby DeLucien, and I am super excited for this episode. I'm just going to answer some questions that have been submitted to us, and we're going to get down into what are some of those moments where I excelled as a leader or a business

[00:00:39] owner. So I have a group of about three or four questions that we're just going to run down in this podcast to kind of get a better feeling of fearlessness. What is that? What is it being?

[00:00:55] And how do I get more fearlessness in my life? Because fearlessness is that thing that will popela, prepare, or, or, propel us to the next level. We only need one moment of fearlessness

[00:01:08] to break through the ceiling, to get to the other side, to get unstuck. And how do I get more of that? Because sometimes we can get discouraged as business owners and really

[00:01:20] get in that valley of despair. We can get in that rut. It's really hard to get out of it. It's really hard to get out of it. So I want to share with you guys just a few moments

[00:01:31] in my life like, what did I do? What were they? And what did I do to work through them? So I'm going to get started with the first question and the first question that was

[00:01:43] submitted is, can you tell me a specific time when you learned a powerful lesson when starting your business? So I own several businesses. As most of you guys know listening to this podcast, I own Woopercru, which we do recruiting. They're one of the sponsors

[00:01:59] of our station and I own a service company, a home service company that does professional organizing and cleaning. So I've had so many lessons when starting business. But I think probably my biggest lesson would have been to invest in myself sooner. I have a 25 year

[00:02:20] old, a 15 year old, a five year old, have a husband who's actually eight years younger than me. And it's one of those things where I wish and I keep saying this to them, I say

[00:02:35] this to everybody. I wish that they would learn that now, like invest in yourself now. Yes, it costs money. Yes, it's scary. But the level of which I could grow out ways that

[00:02:51] price. I mean, what I joined a mastermind group and within less than six months, I doubled the revenue I was making from when I joined the mastermind group. I mean, I doubled it.

[00:03:06] There's no amount of dollars in marketing that will double it. It was because I figured out how to get unstuck and change my mindset. So you know, my lesson in investing yourself, invest in yourself with coaches, with mentors, with joining peer groups or masterminds.

[00:03:24] I just started doing this at about five years ago. And the rate at which I've grown, I have added two more companies to that is insane and I would have never gotten there

[00:03:39] because these mentors, they really help you excel. It's like a book. I wish I would have learned to read business books because it's the cheapest coach or cheapest, you know, consultant that you can find because you're learning through their mistakes in that $20 book.

[00:03:56] And so you can skip those mistakes and it's the same thing when hiring a coach or consultant or a peer group. Those mistakes or those roblox, they've already done it. They've already experienced

[00:04:07] it. They know how to talk you through not making that mistake and not doing it again. So it's so valuable. And I think that education goes, you know, it's not, it goes dismissed. It's dismissed

[00:04:20] because education here in the United States, well general education, it's free. So we don't really take it at value. It's free and a lot of, and I'm not even getting into this topic, but with public

[00:04:33] school, we have one of the best public school systems in the world, but because it is free, it is dismissed or it isn't taken at value. But I also think that we've gotten into memorization

[00:04:44] versus learning and teaching. And that's a whole other topic that we can have a colon. But it's one of those things where we don't take learning for value. Now that's what we're doing

[00:04:56] all day long on these phones, believe it or not, even with watching a video or TikTok or YouTube, it's learning something, it's learning something different, it's being entertained. But in that creates, there is information and content which could be valuable. So I think we dismiss the value

[00:05:14] of investing in ourselves for paid learning, paid learning is insane. Like the first mentor I started worth, I think it was like $5,000 to get in. And now I'm up to, and that's like $5,000 for the year,

[00:05:26] I've been in free groups, I'm an EO. It's one of those things where now I'm up to paying, I think $60,000 a year for one of the groups I'm in, not total one. But at the rate I can grow

[00:05:41] and accelerate. And here's the thing we can't stay in the same group forever. We outgrow them and it's an honor and a privilege to see someone that you mentor go on to the next level. So we have

[00:05:53] to keep changing our surroundings. If we want to uplevel ourselves, we have to uplevel our coaches, our consultants, our peer groups, our mastermind groups, we have to uplevel them because it's not

[00:06:09] that we outgrow them, we kind of do but that's kind of a, it's not a way to say it. It's just that we need something different. We need to uplevel, we've taken all that information, can it give us

[00:06:22] anything else? And then we have to find the next phase of what that looks like. So my younger self at starting out at the beginning is like stop trying to figure it out yourself, pay for the answer

[00:06:34] because it's out there, it will accelerate that growth because why spend 20 years making a mistake over and over and over if someone else has already made that mistake is willing to sell you the answer

[00:06:46] go and buy it. Read it in a book, hire a coach, go buy that answer, it is worth every single penny in your acceleration. So I'll love that topic. My next question that was submitted is,

[00:06:59] where do they pivotal moments where you felt exponential growth? Either in yourself or in your business love this question. I love all these questions and I'm going to get into this and this is going

[00:07:09] to be more from a female entrepreneur aspect. But I did share this in a group with a couple of gentlemen that I was in and they said, oh my gosh, please tell me more because my wife said the exact

[00:07:21] same thing to me. And so for me, the pivotal moments of exponential growth that fearlessness, how did I get the nerve or time to do the next thing, the big thing, the scary thing?

[00:07:38] And this is going to sound so funny, but there were three moments, three specific moments I remember very, very vividly. And you guys are going to laugh. None of them have to do really

[00:07:52] with business. The first one was allowing my own cleaning company to clean my house that made me just even more fearlessness. Why? Because I thought it forever, I'm like no, I can clean my house.

[00:08:08] I had tied my association to how how how how clean my house was if I did it to my worth as a as a mom, as a wife, as a female. And so I was trying to run a business, the mom,

[00:08:24] clean my house, cook dinner, all those things that we women kind of have in our heads that we have to do to be that great mom or spouse or partner. And it's just how we're raised,

[00:08:40] it's our genetic makeup, right? Minedon typically think this way and it's not a woman against men thing. It's just our genetic makeup. It's how we were raised, it's what was instilled

[00:08:51] us as young kids. We saw our mom's do it. And so the first one was when I let my cleaning company clean my own house gave me this like, oh, feeling of, oh my gosh, I didn't have to do that.

[00:09:10] I didn't have to spend my time doing that. I was able to have it done and I can spend more time with my kids or more quality time in my business to work on the next project. I could be doing

[00:09:25] my 20% of what is the most important thing and that was like the 80% that I shouldn't be doing or focusing on. And that was like a aha moment. It was kind of like, oh, I don't want to tell

[00:09:38] my my mom, my parents, my family, they might think something different of me, what would they say? Um, was one of those moments and that just allowed me to take some pressure off myself

[00:09:52] to then work on better things, bigger things, different things or spend more quality time with my family. And then my next one is when I hired an executive assistant. So I fought this for a

[00:10:04] long time because I'm like, oh, I can check my own email. I can do these things. I can manage my calendar. But as the I added another company to my plate and more responsibility,

[00:10:16] I needed to get rid of things that were taking up a lot of the time. It's the 80, 20 rule. Right? There's 100 things we need to do. But what are the 80 that someone else can help me with?

[00:10:27] And the 20% only I can do right now. And that really gave me some exponential like growth, some fearlessness that I can then instill into the business and be working on those important things. Those $1,000 hour projects that maybe only I can do right now.

[00:10:44] And there's still some of those. They'll always be those. No matter how big the company is, there's something only you can do because only you know the answer until you create it and then

[00:10:54] they can delegate it. But that really helped me. And I struggled hiring the first one. I did not set it up right. It was my fault. I didn't have the proper training and communication

[00:11:07] and I honestly didn't know what I wanted. So with my second one, Marilyn, who she's still with us, she'd better with me forever. I wanted to make sure I did it right. So I have an executive assistant

[00:11:18] in a technical assistant as well. But I wanted to make sure that I did it right because if they fail, they're failing because of me. But that really gave me like a burst of energy to say, okay,

[00:11:34] like I can focus on the things I need to focus on and not get way down by managing my calendar, creating a landing page, you know, managing email. They can do those things because they can do them.

[00:11:50] They can actually do them better than I can. So that was the second and then the third was hiring a house helper. So in all of this, you have to make sure that every time you delegate something

[00:12:02] off, right? Having the house cleaned, having an executive assistant, then having a house helper, if you're going to call him a house manager, house helper, you need to make sure that your the time you're getting back, you're filling it with productive revenue generating tasks.

[00:12:18] You can't just sit around and watch Netflix on the couch. You're getting that time back, and because your time is so valuable, and return what you're doing with that time, we can't just

[00:12:28] do nothing or we're going to drain the company and yourself of money because this stuff costs money and it's a risk when you first take it. It's a risk because of the offset, right? Of the offset.

[00:12:41] So if I'm hiring someone to help me do these things, it's going to cost me money, but in return, if I'm working on $1,000 an hour ideas or tasks, you have to make sure you are doing those.

[00:12:55] You are completing them. You're not just, you know, jack and around with our time and not doing anything because then it will not be productive. It's counter-intuitive. So hiring at house manager,

[00:13:08] I struggled with this as well. I fought it for a while and finally my husband was like just do it. And I was really nervous because I said, okay, if I'm getting this time back, I have to figure out

[00:13:16] what am I then doing with myself because it's kind of nerve-wracking, right? It's you're bringing someone into your house. It's not cheap. And then what am I doing? It was so funny because my 15 year old said, you know, I said, hey, you know, I hired a house helper.

[00:13:33] They're going to come in. They're going to help maintain some of the outside of the house because we have some living areas outside, where in Florida we have she's going to help with certain

[00:13:43] things in the house. The things that I would have done or Chris, my husband would have done. She's going to help with that. I mean, Taneit, she's going to cook. I do some mill preps for us because we're

[00:13:52] trying to make sure we eat right and healthy. Stop eating out. She's going to help me with, I mean, Taneit like laundry and my, uh, some things that I travel from home Maryland as my schedule,

[00:14:03] but she's going to help me with packing or unpacking. And my son goes mom, seriously, you got a house helper. And I said, yes, we don't worry. She's not touching your room or your bathroom

[00:14:16] or your laundry. And he's like, why? And, um, you know, one, I wanted to make sure that my kids didn't grow up to be tensuous little kids. But, um, you know, that for Austin was like, oh my gosh,

[00:14:32] my mom is really a professional. She really has a job and she doesn't just work from home and plan on a computer. But it was, it was one of those moments that it was such a great feeling

[00:14:41] because we even though, you know, I may be the CEO of a, of two companies, I still work. I still sometimes need to work till five. I have projects, I've meetings, and the fact that the house

[00:14:53] is taking care of the dog, Yaya's homeschooled. You know, we have a great neighbor that helps his homeschooler but picking her up, you know, doing activities with her afterwards maintaining our laundry. The

[00:15:04] at five o'clock when I'm done, I have to do absolutely nothing in the house. Nothing. Our house is hotel ready. That's what we say. Hotel ready. Um, for me was like this, aha moment, like I can

[00:15:17] work without that anxiety, without that little voice in my head saying you're, you're less of a mom because you worked till five. You're less of a parent because you, you didn't cook

[00:15:30] the dinner. Like, you're less of a parent because, you know, you didn't walk the dog or take Yaya to the park today. Yaya went to the park but when I'm done at five, I can be done like

[00:15:40] done done and it was such a great feeling. And it took quite a bit of time for me to talk myself through this process. Like, what is my family going to say? Like, I was wondering what my mom was

[00:15:53] going to say when I hired one, a house helper and, you know, at the end of the day, who cares what anyone says. Hiring these things were all a personal kind of thing to me directly, but what

[00:16:08] we saw the business do? The change we saw in the business was so exponential because it takes brain capacity. Like if you're struggling with a teenager, who maybe is acting up or getting

[00:16:22] into trouble and you own the business, whether you're a man or a woman, that takes up the capacity in your brain. You can only handle so much, so much going on if your brain can only think of so

[00:16:36] many things or worry about so many things. So getting that extra help, right? Whether it's having your house cleaned, hiring executive assistant or hiring a house manager really, really propelled our businesses because it helped me focus on the important and be a better leader and then work

[00:16:56] on myself more, right? Eating right. Maybe a little bit more time for exercising, a little bit more time for learning or reading helped me be a better leader. So in turn, we saw the businesses

[00:17:09] really explode. So I thought that was a great question and it's so weird how I had those three exact moments in my mind. I know exactly what they were when someone when that question was asked.

[00:17:25] So our next question is, you know, reflecting in my journey, could I share an experience that was most proud of while running our businesses? And I think I have a handful in my mind

[00:17:42] that I was the most proud of. And because you know, fearlessness, it's that courage to push ahead, it's that courage to say, I'm going to do this and you do it no matter how many mistakes,

[00:17:56] how much money we blow, you know, how many mistakes I've made with money? I mean, but we just keep doing it because no, it doesn't come out better every time on the other side, but there's a lesson

[00:18:07] to learn. So, you know, what's what I'm in the most proud of, there's a couple. I would say the first one is, so Debbie Sardone, she is known as the mop free millionaire. She is the owner of cleaning

[00:18:22] business fundamentals. So if you own a cleaning company, she is your go-to coach or a community. I am a coach in her community, but she has this milestone that if you reach a million dollars

[00:18:37] in revenue, you get a green jacket. She brings you up on stage and she gives you this green jacket. And I did that in my first, not my first company because I owned a bar of owner restaurant

[00:18:50] of one of some other things, but my first company on my own, not attached to a spouse or a partner anything, reaching at that million dollars in revenue to get that jacket and had a gone through

[00:19:02] COVID to get that jacket was like a very proud of moment for me because I made so many mistakes. I mean, I remember throwing so much money at marketing trying to just get the million dollars in revenue.

[00:19:18] Jale, I say, I had very little profits certain times because I was just trying to hit a million dollars in revenue. And that was okay because Chris, my husband still had his full-time career

[00:19:28] and I could do that. Now I can't do that just through money at marketing or whatever to grow. But I mean, I remember one night I was trying to run my own Google Adwords in and it's like

[00:19:39] four years ago. I set up some budget, went to sleep woke up and it had went through, burned through like two and I got a ton of leads ton of clicks but nothing relevant to my industry so they

[00:19:51] were all worthless and I remember crying in the garage before I walked in the door that day and said, well hell, like that was dumb. And I'm like crying because I think I probably couldn't

[00:20:06] barely make payroll because I had blown through two thousand dollars just on Google Adwords overnight. Not to mention the other stuff I had going. Just sitting there in the garage crying, like

[00:20:17] glaring that lesson and I think my husband was still traveling at that time for work. It's just being utterly alone and having to walk in the house to my kids, knowing that I had made such a dumb

[00:20:28] mistake. But let me tell you what, I learned my lesson. Oh my god, did I learn my lesson in that in that scenario. But you know, that journey getting to that green jacket was so painful. So painful

[00:20:40] because I took the cleaning company from zero to a million and three years. It was so painful. And then my next one was, and these are an order, was hurricane Ian. We were hit with

[00:20:55] by hurricane Ian. So I'm in Fort Myers. I live here at another house in Georgia but I've been full-time here in Florida and my home service company services for it Myers. And hurricane Ian was like

[00:21:07] probably like one of the worst days of my life because there are many reasons but you know, it was one day where like you are just leveled. You are just flattened to the ground.

[00:21:20] The world fucking stops and I you know, apologize for cursing about not but they just stopped and one reason also hard is because I wasn't here when it happened. It was supposed to hit Tampa.

[00:21:33] I got on a plane. Left my kids here with my mom. I got on a plane to go do a keynote in Vegas which I wanted an award for like this speaker in a ward of the year. I think because I spoke

[00:21:45] so much passion because I spoke the day the next morning after the hurricane hit, I spoke on stage. But you know, I had gotten on that plane because it was supposed to hit Tampa and I looked at my

[00:22:00] mom and I said, how maybe I shouldn't go. She was no don't worry it's supposed to hit Tampa. You'll be fine. Got on a plane because you know, it's three hours different but time to get there

[00:22:10] over to the hotel. My husband came with me and we went to sleep when we woke up the next day and they were like it's stalled overnight and it's had a straight to Fort Myers. Oh,

[00:22:20] I mean it's a category five and I was like, oh my god and I couldn't get out and it was one of those moments where I was watching it on my phone, on my cell phone like

[00:22:36] through the local Facebook groups, the new station. And I remember the moment that the entire social media news, everything went black. Absolutely pitch black for a couple hours and you couldn't

[00:22:50] get a hold of nobody. You didn't know what was going on. All you could see was the water rising our office had flooded. Like you're seeing people stuck in their homes. Elderly people that couldn't

[00:23:00] get out, our employees were stranded and it was like one of those, like that day like, oh my god being helpless. But my lesson was, you know, I had really coaching your team having this documented

[00:23:17] because we went through a hurricane five years prior of how to handle it, how to coach your staff, how do you talk to the customers, how do you talk to the employees? They could not have done it

[00:23:26] any better than I did. Like documenting that and then I returned on Sunday, right? It was on Wednesday. I spoke on Thursday. I could get, I got back on Sunday. I couldn't get back any sooner.

[00:23:42] Sunday morning, I got back. Making the decision to reopen Monday morning was a hard but pivotal thing. What, this was probably the biggest learning. Was I had expenses? Have a multi-million dollar cleaning company? I think we were running over like right at a $2 million

[00:24:01] or a run rate or over. And seeing nothing on the schedule. Having our customers, there was no sell service because all sell targeted. There was no internet. They were emailing us. They were trying

[00:24:14] to text us but it would go through and it wouldn't go through. But having customers like say, hey, I need to cancel my service because I don't have a house. Hundreds of customers. We

[00:24:25] served a thousands of people here in France, South West Florida and making that decision as the owner to say, okay we will reopen on Monday. But how do I do this without looking

[00:24:38] insensitive? Just like money driven. How do I do this and still look empathetic to our customers to our employees who like lost their houses? How do I do this? But I just knew that

[00:24:54] I had to do it because if I used any excuse, any excuse, we were 100. If I used one of them we may never reopen. How long till you get power? How long till you get internet?

[00:25:07] And so what I did was I thought in my head and I said this to a friend this literally just this last weekend, he goes that should be a t-shirt. And so what I did was I said okay we're we're going

[00:25:17] to reopen Monday morning. We had one house on schedule out of hundreds of customers. We served one house and it was opening that and saying you know what if I use any excuse, Google AdWords doesn't

[00:25:27] care that I don't that I got hit by her king. Like my CRM doesn't care they they need their money. So I froze every account like that's my go to freeze your accounts because I have two things

[00:25:39] that I care about. When we're hit with like a tragedy, learn this during COVID, freeze the accounts because I don't care if like Facebook ads get their money all I care is about my family

[00:25:53] and my employees. Like that's it, freeze the accounts because I want to make sure my family sitting in care of and my employees are taking care of. So I froze the accounts and

[00:26:02] I said okay I can't use any excuse because if I used one excuse we could be close for weeks and I could never it would detrimental to our company. So I said because we had no water,

[00:26:16] no power, no internet or self service like we were running on mobile hotspots from our cell phones for for almost six weeks. So I said okay I don't need power to clean a house.

[00:26:29] Like I don't need power to clean an F in house. So guess what we're going to open on Monday and we're going to clean. We're going to clean anything we can, we're going to help customers

[00:26:39] in any way we can and I learned that there's no excuse great enough to stop, to stop, doing what you're passionate about. Yeah we made just clean houses but we did so much more than

[00:26:51] that during, during Hurricane Ian. We cleaned our community. We were we were Florida strong right hundreds of my fellow business owners donated money. Then we gave that back to the community so we could do free cleanings and it paid for my employees. They're paid, covered their hourly wages

[00:27:13] with the donation, with the money that was donated to help clean up South West Florida. So I learned that I learned no matter what like you keep forging ahead. You have no idea what's

[00:27:25] on the other side. What you do is right morally and you do what's right when it comes to integrity and what's in the best interest of your company, your family and your employees and your customers.

[00:27:38] Who cares what anybody else says? It was a biggest lesson I ever learned. I was so scared to tell our employees that we were going to be open on Monday because I was scared of what they were going

[00:27:47] to say but it's how you deliver it. And I worked on that delivery. I rehearsed it. I wrote it down. I practiced it and they were like on board cheering with us that we were going to make a difference.

[00:27:59] And we were just some piddly little cleaning company in South West Florida. And then my third one is honestly the day that I bought out my partner and our software company in what recruits. It was

[00:28:14] a pivotal moment. One that I had enough money to do that. And two, just to learn that it's okay if stuff doesn't work out. It's okay to try that partnership. I have another partnership

[00:28:26] with a great set of gentlemen that we own service cart with. That's one of my other companies. But it's okay that it doesn't work out and that you can do these things on your own.

[00:28:39] Like, don't give up. If you're passionate about it and I'm so passionate about recruiting, you guys know how I feel about recruiting and culture in companies. I'm so passionate about it.

[00:28:48] And I know that I will, I'm going to change. I am changing the way the service industry recruits. And the fact that he didn't feel that connection is okay. I took it really hard at first.

[00:29:00] I took it in a negative saying like, what did I do that someone didn't want to work with me anymore? It was a hard, it's like this mind battle. I was having with myself, mental battle.

[00:29:11] Is there something wrong with me? What I do. And that was really hard for me. It was a learning moment to say like, I need to give myself a check. And I need to make sure that I'm grounded and

[00:29:21] that I'm not just operating from emotion or without logic. And it was hard, but it was such a proud moment. So it was Hurricane Ian, right? It was a learning moment, but it was

[00:29:35] I was proud to be open on Monday. How do you do that, right, without seeing insensitive? What, with this one, same thing, I was proud to take this company on by myself.

[00:29:44] But I was scared at the same time. But I made sure that I had a great network around me that supported me. I'd chew of my babs, right? That it were around me that helped ask me how I was doing.

[00:29:58] I kept telling me you got this. I had a great COO fractional COO that would check on me every day saying, you know, how's it? And I made sure I had that in my husband as well. I had that around me,

[00:30:09] because we can get on our own heads. But I was so proud of that day signing those papers that I now own a SaaS company by myself. Who would have thought? It was like one of the products moment.

[00:30:20] Who would have thought? I'm not formally educated, right? I went to high school. I did well. I played sports. That's how I got through it. You know, I'm just some half-native American, half-Mexican girl who somehow has stumbled upon having two SaaS companies in

[00:30:37] a service company now and is literally changing the way. People are running their businesses and I'm so proud and so happy to say that. So that was like one of my proudest moments

[00:30:50] is to own that software and I really want to teach our young people about SaaS companies, a SaaS is a service as a software. They are so amazing to own and to run. It is so different.

[00:31:03] But you don't need formal education, right? You just need the want to build out an idea and use technology to accelerate it. I'm a professional organizer or was still on the company. I'm retired

[00:31:16] from that but software is nothing but a process that we've applied technology to. It's all it is. SaaS is or software is a process that then a technology is applied to. So super proud. I have so many

[00:31:31] more ideas in my mind that I'd loved to create but first, you know, I got to take over the recruiting world and change the way we recruit. But hopefully you loved this episode. If you ever have questions

[00:31:42] on what I'm doing or how I'm doing it, I think that there's so much here to be taught and I'm so passionate about helping entrepreneur women change their mindset about can I still be a great mom?

[00:31:58] Can I still be a great wife? Can I still be a great friend partner? And still be a great entrepreneur and leader. My answer is yes, you can 100%. So I want to thank you guys for joining me on this podcast.

[00:32:15] You can always follow me and anything I'm doing on my social media sites. I'm the only Libby delusion in the world. We'll put the handles in the comments which you can also visit

[00:32:24] LibbyD. That's libbyd.com to listen to more episodes of our podcast or find out more information about the businesses that I currently own. So that's a wrap guys on today's journey into the heart of Fearlessness. You heard it from me. I know when we're interviewing other people,

[00:32:42] it's typically about them and you we don't share I don't share much about me trying to be a good host. So I thought this would be a great episode. So remember, every step we take

[00:32:52] moving towards every step we take moves us towards that strength in that courage that we need to keep forging ahead. So keep walking through those fires because on the other side lies a version of yourself that is unstoppable. I'm LibbyD reminding you to embrace your Fearlessness

[00:33:10] until next time. Stay brave, stay strong, stay bold.