Salome Schillack:

Hello, and welcome to episode number 109 of The Shine Show. Today's episode is called How To Believe In Yourself Even When You're Not Seeing Launch Results Yet. I do want to tell you, I get a little bit vulnerable with you in this one. So enjoy listening.

Giving up your time and freedom to make money is so 2009. Hi, I'm your host Salome Schillack, and I help online course creators launch, grow, and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram Ads so that they can make more money and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you're ready to be inspired, to dream bigger, launch sooner, and grow your online business faster, then tune in because you are ready to shine, and this is The Shine Show.

How do you believe in yourself even when you're not seeing launch results yet? How do you continue to believe in yourself when the results that you are seeing or not the results you hope you'd see? And how do you get up and continue to believe in yourself when you've had a launch and it didn't go the way that you expected, or when you're going on here, two or year three of trying to get your online course launches off the ground, and it still hasn't gotten the results that you want? That's what I want to explore with you today. And I want to explore it from the perspective of understanding and really living in our own worthiness. This has been a theme for me lately. You know the saying, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears," I feel like I have had at least seven different teachers appear suddenly with this message centered around worthiness.

I recognize that even though, for me, maybe that doesn't show up in terms of creating a launch. It definitely did show up around launching online courses back in 2016, 2017, when I was a struggling online course launcher, when I made the decision to stop launching online courses and rather focus on building a Facebook Ads business. So I fully understand this feeling of, "Why am I not getting this right? Why am I not good enough to make this work? What does other people have that I don't have that makes them succeed and that is holding me back?" We keep searching in new online courses, and we keep searching inside ourselves and we go, "Maybe there's something wrong with me." I'm here today to tell you that there's a key to unlocking believing in yourself when you haven't yet seen the results that you feel you should be seeing.

This key is called worthiness. The way that it shows up for you in the way that you feel when you are not yet seeing results in your online course launches, when you do start to see results in your online course launches, that same feeling is just going to show up in relation to something else. So unless you can go on a journey to discover your own worthiness irrespective of your online course launch results, those challenges will just continue to show up for you. It might then show up around your inability to build the successful team the first time around, or maybe your first launch is great and then the second one isn't so great, and then you're back to square one because maybe you connect your own worth to the results that you've created.

When I was in my late teens, I remember hearing this message. I think I heard it in church. It's probably in church that I heard it. So it's definitely inside either in school or in church, but in a Christian community, in a Christian environment where the message that stuck with me was, "There's nothing you can do to make God love you more. And there's nothing you can do to make God love you less." And whether you believe in God or not, the message in that is there's really nothing you can do to increase your worthiness as a human, and there's nothing you can do to reduce your worthiness as a human. I never really fully wrapped my head around this until recently when my seven new teachers appeared that started talking to me about worthiness. But this line's stuck with me. There's nothing you can do to earn worthiness, and there's nothing you can do to lose worthiness.

It's so funny for me that this line stuck with me for so long. I'm 40 now, and I still remember this line. And it's still baffled me, even though I didn't fully grasp it. So at the beginning of this year, I signed up for Rachel Rodgers's membership. It's called We Should All Be Millionaires, and you should definitely right now go out and buy her book. It's also called We Should All Be Millionaires. And, of course, she got my attention because I want to be a millionaire. I am working towards getting my business to the million-dollar mark. I'm not there yet, but I'm pretty close. So yay, let's learn from someone who says we shouldn't all be millionaires.

The clever thing that Rachel does is as soon as I joined her membership, instead of addressing money and business, the first thing she addressed is, guess what? Worthiness. Oh my goodness, worthiness. Okay, so I realized if I'm in a membership called We Should All Be Millionaires and the millionaire that's hosting this membership is telling me, "The first thing you should address is worthiness," then there's definitely something here to pay attention to. I have been working on her worthiness introductory module to this membership for the last four months. And then as I'm working through it, these other people are also popping up in my life, talking about it, which is great. And I know that's because it's something that I have to work through.

But what I want to share with you is what I'm learning and how this is changing the way I want to teach my students, the way I interact with our clients, the way that I'm building my team. It really is a glow-up. It really is a crossroads when you start evaluating your beliefs around worthiness. Because you kind of see, "Oh, hang on, I'm actually worthy as fuck. And maybe I don't always show up that way." So working through Rachel's worthy content, I got to a point where I realized that there is a lie that I have believed. The lie is that if I work hard, I'll make more money. I've heard this a million times, and I have rolled my eyes at money mindset coaches talking about, "Work less, make more." But then I see how hard they work, and I'm like, "Dude, you're hustling your brain out, and you're telling me to work less and make more."

So that's never really stuck with me. But the piece that did stick with me is when I looked at the results in my life, I looked at my goals for 2021, and I realized, "Well, hang on, I am, at the moment, I am working my tail off, and I'm tired." I'm catching myself becoming resentful about doing things that I feel are violating my boundaries or doing things that I feel, "Well, I shouldn't be doing this," or "I should be handing something off," or "This is something I don't want to be doing anymore," which shows me that the results I'm getting are results of working more. I can see in my life that I am working more because I have set higher goals for myself. So the evidence of the belief, if I work hard, I will make more money, is undeniable.

I was like, "Oh, dang it, I can see the evidence of this in my life so therefore, I have to explore this belief." So what I did was I hopped on a call with a coach from the Life Coach School, which is another membership I'm in that I love. I started this conversation with the coach around worthiness. Because she said, "Well, how do you believe that you are not worthy of making this money unless you have worked your tail off for it?" And I was like, "Oh, snap, that's true." Okay. So then I stayed to her, "But the whole concept of worthiness is so abstract for me. How do you even wrap your head around you are worthy just because you are? How do you even wrap your head around you cannot be more worthy and you cannot be less worthy? It is so abstract I don't know how to work with it. I don't know how to unpack my thoughts about it."

She said, "Well, how about we use a different phrase to describe it?" And she asked me, "What phrase would you use if you think about worthiness in the context of launching online courses or worthiness in the context of building a business or worthiness in the context of what is ultimately the purpose of why we launch courses and why we build businesses, which is making money?" She said, "When you think about making money, how would you describe worthiness or lack of worthiness?" I immediately knew, and for me, the words were good enough or better than. I remembered when I was a teenager, there was a kid in our school whose parents had significantly more money than most of us. My dad was a lawyer. My mom was a teacher. I grew up in a very middle class, maybe possibly upper middle-class suburb, and went to a middle-class public school in South Africa. But this kid, his parents were loaded.

I remember thinking, "They think they're better than us." That line came up in my head. "They think they're better than us. We are not good enough for them." I know it's something that someone must have said somewhere along the line when I was a child that had just stuck with me. But when the coach from the Life Coach School asked me, "What are the words that come to mind when you think about worthiness and you connect it with money?" I realized that it is better than or less than or good enough. I identified that there's a judgment around that that I have been walking around with. And that judgment is that if I'm in the middle, if where I'm at right now is worthiness or if the measuring stick of worthiness is money, and I think about someone who has more as better than, then the sad truth is that the opposite of that needs to be true as well, which means someone that has less than is not good enough, which is why you put yourself in different scenarios and compare yourself to other people. And instantly either you measure up or you measure down. And that is such a wicked, wicked, wicked judgment because it's a lose-lose situation.

I had to suddenly face quite an ugly part of my own mind, quite an ugly part of my own humanness where I realized, "Yes, I do feel less than. Yes, I do feel that people who have built bigger businesses, people who have succeeded in areas where I would like to succeed, people who have done things I haven't yet been able to do, there is a feeling in my head that they think they're better than me, or that they are better than me, or that in some way, shape, or form, I am less than, I am lacking, I am not yet good enough," which also makes the opposite true, that in my deep dark yuckiness of being a human, which I don't want to admit to, but I will because we're all girlfriends here and we share the good, the bad, and the ugly, is that if that judgment exists inside my hand, then somewhere along the line, I also have to admit to feeling a sense of pride. And I don't mean pride in the good way, I mean, pride in the, "Well, then I must be better than someone else because that person hasn't been able to create the success I've created. In some way, shape, or form, I must be better than because I have made more money than someone else."

I'm sitting here sharing this with you, and I'm thinking, "Oh my goodness, that is so ugly." A part of me never wants to admit to that, but there's no way that we can uncover the judgments that exists inside us and only look at where we feel we are being judged without realizing that the judgment has to exist inside of us. It's a measuring stick. And there's two ends to that measuring stick. That measuring stick is a dichotomy that only exists inside our heads. And so, if we are going to feel less than and use money or launch success or business success or Instagram audience size, you name it, insert here the thing that makes sense you feel insecure, then we also have to admit that we're using that same judgment to prop ourselves up falsely, to falsely think that we are in some way, shape, or form more worthy because we have created those things.

So if someone else can be better than me, more worthy than me because they have money or success or friends or a community or a following, then someone else can always be less than because they don't have that. That is a very shitty thing to be confronted with. So I have committed to writing lists of worthiness dichotomies, measuring sticks where I go and identify beliefs where I feel I am not worthy or where I then perhaps judge someone else for not being worthy. Because at the end of the day, when we do the work, we realize that we could never earn our worthiness. Our worthiness can never be attached to money, launch success, Instagram followers, having friends, having clients. Our worthiness is there because it is there. We are good enough because we're good enough.

And so I want to share with you some of the things that are on my list. Because we got to break it down and make it practical and go, "Okay, if we have these abstract judgments, if we have these abstract beliefs, then how does it show up in our lives?" And so I want to read to you a little bit of the things that I have put on my list, my list of busting the dichotomy. Let's call it the busting the dichotomy list. I know that's a very cerebral name for it, but it comes down to this. It comes down to identifying where we create contrast, where we create judgment, where we create right and wrong, where we create good and bad, where we create not good enough or better than dichotomies because we are all worthy already. Our businesses, our launch sizes, our bank balances, our Instagram followers, none of that has any impact on our worthiness. None whatsoever.

And if I can help just one of you sit down and create your list and free yourself from feeling in any way, shape, or form less than because you're not where someone else is or because you haven't yet created the success someone is or because your launch failed or because you're not making money yet or because you're not hitting a million dollars yet or because you're not hitting $10 million yet, if I can help you shake off any of that feeling of not being good enough, then we can all get back to work, and we can all get back to joyfully serving the world with our knowledge and with our online courses, and do the best job we possibly can to serve as many people as we possibly can in the best way that we know how. And that is good enough.

So let me share with you a little bit of things on my list. And then I want to challenge you to write your own list as well. "I am not more worthy when I finally make my first sale. I am not less worthy because I haven't yet made my first sale. Someone else who posts they've made $1 million revenue in their business is not more worthy than me. Someone who posts they just made a $100,000 course launch is not more worthy than me. I am not less worthy when I take selfies in public because I need content for my Instagram. I am not less worthy when no one shows up for my webinar. I am no less worthy when I'm having tech issues, and it feels like I'm the only one having that problem. I am no less worthy when I've launched a few times and my launch has hit a plateau. I am not less worthy when someone says something mean to me on social media.

"I am not less worthy when one of my students steals my content. I am not more worthy because my sales page converted like crazy and I see Stripe notifications popping up all over the place. I am not more worthy when I finally hire a VA. I am not less worthy when my ad account gets shut down. I am not less worthy when no one on my email list buys a ticket to my workshop. I am not more worthy when I hit my first 100K month. I am not less worthy because I decide to quit something I've been committed to figuring out but it's just not making me feel good anymore. I am not less worthy when I have a student who behaves in a way that is inconsistent with my values and I have to ask them to leave. I am not more worthy because I have created a profitable launch. And I am not less worthy because my launch wasn't as profitable as I hoped it would be."

Those are some of the things I wrote down on a list when I was brainstorming different ways in which I see this showing up for me, for clients, for students, for anyone in my community. I see it all the time. Now that I'm so aware of it, I see it all the time. I'm on a journey to making sure I learn or unlearn, unlearn how to attach my worthiness to my bank balance or my launch results or the size of my team or any other thing. I am worthy because I am. There is nothing more I can do to be more worthy, and there is nothing I can do to be less worthy. What I want to challenge you to do is to sit down and make your list. Sit down and make your list of things that make you feel less than, that you're ready to give up on, things that you are ready to say goodbye to, things that you are ready to declare that you will no longer use that as the measuring stick for your own worth so that you can get back to joyfully doing the work of launching your courses to the best of your ability and showing up and serving your students.

My hope is that this episode will help you discover your own worth as well, that it will help you in your next online course launch focus on who you're becoming instead of what's going into your bank account. I wish you all the best. I can't wait to hear your feedback. Let me know on Instagram, send me a DM. I'm salome.schillack on Instagram. I want to hear what's on your list. Have a wonderful week.

Thank you so much for listening today. And remember, the Launch Lounge opens on the 29th of July. The Launch Lounge is the membership that's going to give you the fastest way to get to a six-figure online course business, that gives you the freedom to hire a team, get your time back, and scale your launches with confidence. And if you're on the waitlist, then there will be a special bonus for you. To get on the waitlist, go to www.shineandsucceed.com/tllwaitlist. That's TLL for the Launch Lounge. So shineandsucceed.com/tllwaitlist. I can't wait to talk to you again next week. Bye.

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