Episode 40: Embracing Entrepreneurship, Motherhood, and Facing Fears: The Start Rising Podcast Returns

Welcome back, Start Rising podcast listeners! I'm your host, Caiti Courtier, and I am beyond thrilled to share my journey after a longer hiatus than planned. This season, we'll explore the beginning stages of entrepreneurship, life as a new mother, and facing our fears together. One of my biggest challenges this season is stepping outside of my comfort zone by inviting guests onto the podcast, inspired by none other than the queen of doing things when you're absolutely terrified, Elise Myers.

In this exciting and nerve-wracking journey, I'll update you on my personal life, including the birth of my son, Oliver James, and share valuable insights from our guest interviews. Together, we'll walk through the beginning stages of entrepreneurship and learn from each other's experiences. So buckle up as we rise up to be the best versions of ourselves, confront our fears, and grow together in this incredible adventure that is the Start Rising podcast.

Connect on Instagram @CaitiCourtier

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:03

Hello and welcome in to the second season of the Start Rising podcast. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Katie Courier and we are back for the second season After a little bit of a longer hiatus. Then I was intending but hey, that's life, i'm back, let's get to it. So last I left off was, gosh, the end of 2023. Hey, everyone, katie here, from the future, i meant to say 2022. So, whoops, clearly, baby brain is a real thing. Let's get back to it.

Speaker 1: 1:41

I was just about to take a trip to Australia for the month of December to see my family and was going ahead to basically sort out the ins and outs and the details and the potential for what was happening with the birth of my son. And well, i suppose when we left off, when we left off, we did not know boy, girl, what baby was. We did get the chance to do a sex reveal in Australia with my side of the family, which was fantastic and very sweet and filled with a lot of tears and emotion and kind of a little bit of an intuition to know that I was carrying a boy. It is now the end of May and, getting back into it, my intent had been to start back up with the new year, but with all of the different aspects of logistics as far as should the baby born here or baby newborn in Australia, we had a lot to figure out and a lot to do. So I had to give myself some grace and know there was only so many plates I could spin at once to be able to find out what the best path forward was. So if you listen to the end of last season, you'll catch up with a little bit of bits and pieces about where I was at, where my head was at, where we were, as far as all of the pieces in regards to having family, that's half in America and half in Australia. But anyhow, coming to you now after the birth of my son, oliver James and yeah, he's an absolute joy It's been a very humbling experience as far as becoming a mother, and even the birth itself taught me an awful lot about surrendering, because best made plans don't quite happen the way you want them to happen.

Speaker 1: 3:41

So it's been an interesting lesson and just dialing you back to the very, very basics of asking okay, well, what are the things that's an absolute must for me to do? and clearing out all the extra fluff and other stuff that we get wrapped up in the day. So my plans for this season, let's get stuck into that. On the plane ride to Australia for those who don't know, so flying from Iowa to Sydney, australia, on a good connection flight you'd be looking at about 24 hours worth of fly time layover in all of the in-betweens. So on the flight from Dallas to Sydney, it's about 16 hours just on one flight. So I was very focused, very pumped, very inspired, so I didn't watch TV at all on the plane and basically just had my laptop out. Was it a listening to podcast that I downloaded previously on my phone? Or I was actually typing up my plans for season two?

Speaker 1: 4:45

And in the essence of levelling up, of rising up to be the best version of yourself that you can be, i thought, based on where I would like to take this end, basically what would scare the shit out of me and what would cause the most growth within myself and stretch me? because if you're not growing, you're shrinking. If you want to be very, i suppose, definitive, you're not growing, you're dying. If you're, basically you're moving forward, you're. And then I thought to myself well, what's the point of doing this podcast. If I'm not stretching myself and leading by example and hopefully giving you maybe a beacon of this, is what someone else is doing who's currently in the beginning stages. So The way I separate myself, i suppose, is I want to share with you the beginning phase of entrepreneurship, the beginning to the medium, because we all know those people who are at the top of their game, who have been very successful already. I want to be the person that you can journey along with, we can walk together. I may be one or two steps in front of you, but I have the ability to walk with you and share and give you those little breadcrumbs from the beginning stages through to the medium and then onwards from there. So, very inspired on the plane Typing up like plans for what I want to do with the podcast for this season, and I thought you know what's going to scare the shit out of me and make me really nervous is going to be having guests on the podcast, but me being the interviewer.

Speaker 1: 6:29

So I do enjoy I really enjoy being guests on other people's podcasts and being able to be the interviewer kind of scares the shit out of me because I know it's something that's outside of my comfort zone, and so that's the direction I'm going in this season is I will start to bring on some guests that hopefully their stories and their experiences will resonate with you So that way you can kind of see the aspects of their challenges reflected as well. And the person that inspired the basically having the shit scared out of you as far as what you're doing, as far as stretching and things like that is seeing Elise Myers on TikTok and then seeing her also on her YouTube shorts and those kind of things. Basically, she I will, i will deem her the queen of doing things when you're shit scared. She does it anyway, but she's also talks about it publicly being shit scared. I think a lot of the people we look up to and we see they are likely shit scared but they don't tell you that in the moment, they don't show that. But Elise is great in the fact that she will tell you to, will share that. She is, in fact, shit scared at the things she is doing and be very transparent with that And I think that's really it humanizes this entrepreneurship journey, it humanizes stretching and it humanizes that we're never done growing And there's different aspects for that for us. So I will put it out there and be incredibly vulnerable with you all right now. I would absolutely love to have Elise Myers as a guest on the podcast On my Word document that I was drawing up on the plane and coming up with like what questions I want to ask or like what type of direction would I take things in?

Speaker 1: 8:19

Who would I like to have? And she was at the top of my list as far as people, because I feel like that's someone who is bringing you along in the journey And that's something that I aspire to do as well. So that's kind of the direction that this season will go in. So you get to walk alongside with me, as I am shit scared doing things, as I was bringing people on which, realistically, when you think about it, people are just people and you're there to connect with them, and there's no lines on tigers and bears or my that are going to jump out of the computer screen at you and cause you any type of physical harm. I mean, the most you might do is maybe sweat through your shirt. So I would be strategically planning a darker colored shirt or something that's a little bit loose around the armpits, so I don't show the pitting out that I'm sure that I will do TMI. I know now you get to know a little bit more about me and my nerves, but, yeah, that is essentially the direction I'm going to take it with. So you get to come alongside with that journey Now to take it a different direction. So it's been very interesting journey from November of 2020 to now.

Speaker 1: 9:35

The growth level as far as my mindset has been, it's been very, very different and different in a great way. Different in a way that now, using that power of awareness, i am catching myself and noticing things in a different way than I did before. And the biggest thing that I'm noticing as far as like, i'm feeling the potential and the possibility of things that are entrepreneurial based, making income outside of a JOB, and I'm seeing that there is opportunities everywhere as far as what you could do, and I'm using that as proof of concept, while the things that I'm seeing are very like. For example, walked into a just regular store. There was just like a little gift-style store with my mother And it was like I think it was something like fairy dust. Or there was something that was like fairy wish. It was a tiny little glass vial with little cork on top like really cute with little sparkles in it and a little note about what the fairy dust does, and that itself, that little, tiny little vial, was, i think, about $6.00. And I said out loud to my mum because she's also doing the her basically self-employed thing separately I said, look, you can make money anywhere. And I said that out loud to acknowledge but also to help reinforce for her that there are opportunities everywhere and ways to. People will pay for anything. There's a fishing hole and a price and a product for everything. Really, if you've got something that can solve a problem for someone or make something easier for someone, people are willing to pay. And that was just a prime example of it. And there's been other things as well, but that's the one that kind of sticks to my mind right now. It's as much as training ourselves to look for those opportunities or looking for that proof of concept that I think in the beginning first couple baby step stages, that's what we're looking for. We're looking for the proof of concept to know that we can take that first step and we have enough direction to take that first step. And then, once we take that first step, the second will appear and the direction will appear.

Speaker 1: 12:03

I heard a great phrase, or basically gosh. I wish I remember his name. I should have written it down, but it was a guest on Mind Your Business podcast, which is a podcast that's hosted by James Wedmore, and it was one of James's students and the phrase and the quote that he was referencing that he shared with his business by design students was you can't move a parked car, and I thought that was fantastic, that was hey, that's worthy of putting on a wall, on the post-it note or something like that. But you've got to move forward before you can do anything to change. And I think that's the part where a lot of people get stuck is you're trying to, you're preparing, you're trying to do all this preparation, preparation, preparation And nothing happens. Until you take that first move, until you put that car in motion, nothing can happen. You cannot move that parked car.

Speaker 1: 13:06

So I thought that was a wonderful metaphor as far as us and our journey and the first steps, because it's hard to plan out 50 steps in advance and you feel probably more comfortable if you have the planned aspects out, but entrepreneurship flips that on your head, like you're not able to plan out that far in advance And if you did, you're spinning your wheels, you're wasting your time and you're not actually getting anywhere and you're not impacting the people that you want to be able to help. So there's those pieces of it. So that's my takeaway for the first episode. Back, i've got a whole host of things to chat with you about and to discuss, and I'll certainly share more about my experience with the birth of my son and what takeaways and lessons and all of those things that I've had since then. I'll bring you along on the journey and how things are going. But as far as my drive and passion for doing things, and especially like getting business of business, of entrepreneurship up and running and proving to myself and now proving to my son what's possible, we're in a unique situation with family in the US, in family in Australia, and I want nothing more than to be a role model for my son so he never has to have that choice of an either or, and for myself too, i never want to have to choose either or because of limitations by a job or limitations on the location. I want to be able to make those choices and the best way for me to be able to do this is to be my own boss, impact people the best way I can and use the skills I have to improve the life of other people. So that's where I'm at right now. So we will catch you back for the next episode of season two.

Speaker 1: 15:19

Thank you very much for listening along with season one. Now it's a great time to go back and listen to those episodes, and I'm a podcast binge listener. Once I find a podcast, i'll binge it and I'll go back and revisit episodes. If that is you, feel free to go back and listen to season one. Thank you for the people who have left reviews and have reached out to contact me. I appreciate it so much. If you're interested, instagram handle is at KatieCordier and if you would like to review the podcast, it's on Apple iTunes. If you're a podcast, i've found your feedback is greatly appreciated. Have a fantastic day night, whenever you're listening. I will catch you in the next episode. Bye.