#65 Cultivating a Positive Mindset for Business with Breanna May

[TRANSCRIPT]

**0:00:00** - (Carmen): Hi, Bre, and welcome to the Committee creative podcast.

**0:00:03** - (Breanna): Thanks for having me. I'm very excited about all chats.

**0:00:06** - (Carmen): I'm so excited to have you on because I've been a fan of yours for a while now. And, yeah, you're probably, like, one of my most like, one of the guests that I'm the most excited about to have on the pod. So I'm really keen to chat with you today because I feel like you've really helped me in my own business and before I met you and came across your work, I'd been running my business for a while, but I hadn't really thought about the bigger picture in terms of business and how it relates to your mindset.

**0:00:38** - (Carmen): Working with you really got me into thinking about how having a better mindset and working on your mindset can really help to expand and grow your business. But for those of us who don't know you and new to what you do, could you just take a moment to explain who you are and what it is you do?

**0:00:57** - (Breanna): Yeah, of course. I will try to be concise here, but it's like there's so many stories within the story. I am Brianna May, and I actually recently rebranded my business. Used to be. I used to be called Miss Mindset. And that in itself probably articulates and reflects where I've come from and what I do, because for such a long time, I was actually a high school teacher. And before that, the backstory to that is I finished law school and I was ready to be a lawyer, and I got offered this really fancy job in, like, a corporate law firm.

**0:01:31** - (Breanna): And that was the first time as an adult that I was like, fuck, I have built my life around things that other people expected, and I don't even know if I want this. What am I doing with my life? I was looking at other people in the law firm and I was like, I don't really want their life. I'm not sure if this is the right path for me. And so I took some time and I did the very cliche thing of going to India.

**0:01:57** - (Breanna): I went to India, did some eat, pray, love. And in India, I found myself working inside an orphanage, just volunteering. And it was in the orphanage that I was working with these little girls and reading them stories and helping them learn English and learn to speak. And they were so excited to read, and watching their eyes light up made me so excited. And so I came back to Australia and I did a little bit more study to become a high school teacher.

**0:02:24** - (Breanna): And that, again, was amazing and incredible. And I believe I was meant to do it because it taught me that I'm very, very good at teaching and I love people and I love inspiring people. But what I was enjoying in the classroom was not teaching the English curriculum it was helping people to grow. And what I found in the classroom is that when I help my students understand who they are and how to align their mind with what they want on their heart, they started getting better results academically. And then they started coming to me to speak about a lot more than grades. They were talking about really deep things.

**0:02:59** - (Breanna): And again, I found myself being like, I don't want to be a teacher, but I had all of these stories like, far out, Brianna, you've done law and you didn't follow through with that. And I also did journalism, so I have a background in media and journalism, but I didn't want to do that because I didn't want the lifestyle of rolling around deadlines and reporting on really depressing things. So I didn't follow that either. And then I'd gone and been promoted within the education system and I was getting sent to all these conferences and doing well, being a lot of work with teenage wellbeing, and I was like, Far out. Am I about to walk away from something again? I'm nearly 30. What am I doing with my life? I'm going backwards. And I had all of this mindset stuff come up.

**0:03:44** - (Breanna): But at the same time, I had this dream of being able to teach other people what I was teaching kids inside my classroom, which is essentially mindset and how that is the one thing that is going to change your whole life. Because it's the inside work that creates the external results. And so I did. I left the education system and I built an online education company where I started off teaching mindset. And as my business grew and evolved, which was actually quite quickly, I also started to teach a lot of women in business how to grow their business through essentially growing theirselves.

**0:04:21** - (Breanna): And I have my own background of doubting myself and feeling like I was going backwards and scared that I'm leaving this really safe job. I have maternity leave and a promotion, and all of those fears I had to work through too. So I really understand when women come to me and they're either starting up or scaling their business and all of that stuff is actually what's holding them back.

**0:04:44** - (Carmen): Was there like a moment when you were teaching where you were like, I'm done, I don't want to do this anymore, or was it more like a gradual thing?

**0:04:55** - (Breanna): I'd say it was gradual and then there became it's like once you feel it and once you decide that you're ready for something more, there are so many moments that confirm that decision. And I remember it's so interesting. My favorite classes were always like the year eleven s and twelve s, mainly because it was really like adult conversations. And I had this group that was ready to graduate and they were my babies.

**0:05:21** - (Breanna): They were the kids that I'd taught since year seven and eight. So I'd taught them all the way through and they were getting ready to graduate, and I was like, I'm not ready to lose these guys. I love them so much. I still am in good contact with quite a lot of them, and they were getting ready to graduate. So I was doing this whole champagne. We'd had, like, fake champagne in the classroom. I brought in bubbles and we did a bit of a ceremony, and I spoke to them about just how much I loved them and how much I believed in them. And we had really great conversations.

**0:05:52** - (Breanna): And then one of them looked at me, and he was one of the boys, and he was like because we were talking about how they were feeling, they weren't really ready. Some of them didn't know what they wanted to do with their life, and they were being forced to make decisions, and they were feeling quite pressured, and a lot of them didn't really yeah, it was just quite overwhelming. And one of them said to me, Miss, did you always want to be a teacher?

**0:06:19** - (Breanna): Did you know that you wanted to be a teacher? And my heart dropped because the truth was, I never wanted to be a teacher. I sort of landed here. It was like I was a tumbleweed blowing in the wind and I didn't even apply for a teaching job. It came to me, and then there was so many moments where I was like, gosh, I don't think I've been in the driver's seat of my life. I actually don't. And looking at them and saying, that was a moment, because I really took my responsibility as a role model quite seriously.

**0:06:52** - (Breanna): And then I thought, Well, I'm not even being a good role model because I'm telling them to go out and do whatever the heck they think they were put here to do. And I'm looking at them saying, I never really wanted to be a teacher. It was just a beautiful accident, and I'm so glad I was because they were some really beautiful years. But that was a moment where I thought, I've got to go out and do the things that I actually have on my heart, because I've got young people looking up to me, and I'm not practicing what I preach, and I don't want my students to ever be like, this was the cards I was dealt, and the pay is okay.

**0:07:27** - (Breanna): So I'll stay here even though I'm actually pretty miserable and everyone else in the staff room was miserable. And I was like, you know what? I'm not going to let this be my normal, and I'm going to show the kids that they can do something else. And that was a huge moment for me.

**0:07:43** - (Carmen): Was your vision quite clear at that point about exactly the direction you wanted to move in? Because I feel like a lot of people, they often feel this doesn't feel right. And I'm not enjoying myself, and I don't really like my job, and this wasn't the career that I really fancied, but it kind of just fell in my lap. But they don't really have a clue about what they actually are passionate about and what they do want to do. Do you have any advice for someone like that who probably needs a bit of direction to find their true calling?

**0:08:12** - (Breanna): I love this question, and I love that you brought it in, because I used to be the person too. And it probably is quite obvious when you can see, like, I did law and I did journalism and I did media and I did teaching, and I always led with the story that I don't know what I want, I don't know what I like. That was what I repeatedly told myself and everyone, and I spent my 20s saying I was frustrated. Like, I'm frustrated. I don't know what I'm here to do. I don't know what I love. I don't know what my true calling or purpose is.

**0:08:45** - (Breanna): And when I got my very first coach a few years ago, he said, what would you wish for if you knew that your success was going to be inevitable? Like, if you knew without a shadow of a doubt that everything that you asked for was waiting for you to just ask, what would you wish for? And when I was put into that frequency and that energy of like, well, let's just play with it. Well, if I could ask for anything, this is what I'd ask for.

**0:09:14** - (Breanna): I couldn't stop writing. I just couldn't stop. And it was like, actually, I do know what I want, and I do know what I'm here for. But I was not able to access it because I kept saying, I don't know. And underneath that was I'm actually scared that if I go for it, I won't get it. Or I'm scared that it's not realistic, or I'm scared of what my colleagues will think, or I'm scared that I've wasted all my time and my degrees and I'm not going to use them.

**0:09:43** - (Breanna): Underneath that, I don't know, was actually just a lot of fear. And I do truly believe, and I've worked with hundreds of women now inside of my course who also come and say, I don't know what I'm here to do. I actually don't believe that. I think most of the time we do know, but there's other things in the way that are stopping us from accessing what we actually do know.

**0:10:06** - (Carmen): And I think it was you, or I'm pretty sure it was you on one of your podcasts, you said that you go back to what you like to do as a child and how that often you forget that those things that you love to do when you're, like, five years old is actually what you're passionate about. And I know, especially for me, I love to write, even just from when I was nine, I would keep diaries, which I pretty much just wrote about my cats.

**0:10:34** - (Carmen): But I just love writing now I'm a copywriter, but I feel like I followed that path and I knew I had to write in some way. But initially I thought, oh, the only way you can make money from writing is to be a journalist. And same as you went down that path, then realized that, oh, yeah, I don't really like all the negativity constantly. It's very depressing. So that's why I landed here. And I think that was great advice for me because I think sometimes we forget those creative things we used to do as kids because we're so conditioned to do what society tells us to. Which you touched on briefly there, where you're fearful about what are your colleagues going to think, you're changing course again about what you want to do as your career.

**0:11:21** - (Carmen): What if we have those big influences in our lives? Like, often it's our parents as well. I know, especially for me, my parents never outwardly said it, but it was always expected that I would go to university. That was never a question.

**0:11:34** - (Breanna): Oh my God, I feel that. Yeah.

**0:11:39** - (Carmen): It wasn't really a discussion. I would be going to university after school. And so I think we get a lot of that conditioning and pressure from the closest people in our lives. What if that's not aligning with what we want to do? How can we push past that and still find the courage to follow our dreams?

**0:11:59** - (Breanna): I think you just actually answered it. It's so interesting. It's actually courage. Like the only way through or the only way to get through all that is to have courage and to be brave. Because it is it takes so much bravery to go against our own conditioning because ultimately, it feels like we're separating from our tribe, which, as a human, is the most scary thing you can do. Because we need belonging.

**0:12:25** - (Breanna): And so it takes a lot of courage to go outside of your own paradigm. And that's what I have to do a lot of work with my clients on is like it's actually about becoming someone who is brave, becoming someone who is okay to go against the grain, because what you've got on your heart is the most important thing. And I think even there's a step before that where it's even looking at, like, what actually is my conditioning?

**0:12:55** - (Breanna): What is that subconscious programming that I don't even realize has been controlling me. Because once you've got that, you start to see, oh, hold on, I don't even know if that's mine. Is that mine? And you start to ask the question, like, is that mine? Where did I hear that from? Why do I believe that? And you start deconstructing all your own beliefs, and that's when you start to realize that a lot of the ways that you're living are actually not even your own.

**0:13:27** - (Breanna): And so first it's a question of, like, what's mine and what's theirs? And how can I be courageous enough to step forward in the path that feels more like mine and similar to you? I don't really feel like going to university was ever really a choice. Not that it was pressure, like, you will go, but it was more just like, from such a young age, it was like, well, you do good at school, so this is your pathway. And I just accepted that. And it wasn't until years later where I thought, I actually don't know if that was the right move for me, but I did it because it was expected and it was sort of unconsciously suggested, but if I had have known I had the opportunity or the option to go, does that feel right to me? Is that mine?

**0:14:18** - (Breanna): I might have then had a different experience. So I think, first of all, it's just discerning what's yours and what's others, and then having the courage to continuously do what feels like yours and how.

**0:14:31** - (Carmen): Can we discern what's yours and what's others? Because in some ways, I think it was a blessing that you knew so young that even though you'd done these other degrees, but you had the self awareness to be like, I'm not happy at this point. How can I change it up? Some people just plot along and deep down, they know they're not happy, but they don't really address it, and they're not really aware, and they just think, this is just the way life is.

**0:14:55** - (Carmen): How can we kind of start to question those beliefs that might not be our own? And how do we uncover what is ours and what is someone else's that has been inflicted on us? It's a bit of a big question, I know.

**0:15:07** - (Breanna): Yeah, that's a big one. But I actually think it's all very the way we feel is almost like I feel like our soul is trying to speak to us. And so when I have people come to me or even like, you might resonate, or I definitely feel like that feeling of, like, back to it, back to the grind. Better have a coffee to get through this day. I'm bored. I'm not lit up. And it sounds a lot like that, people being like, I'm not lit up, or like, there's got to be something more for me. Or like, is this actually it like another useless meeting, watching the clock go down.

**0:15:47** - (Breanna): That, to me, is a soul being like, this is not the path for me. And so that in itself, like, how people are feeling in their everyday life is to me, the very first invitation to go. You're living a life that is not your truth. And that is where it's like, okay, what would feel good to me? And how did I end up here? How did I end up here? Because just alone, that feeling of this, isn't it? It's not.

**0:16:19** - (Breanna): I've heard before, people have said your desires are on your heart for a reason. And it's like we stopped listening to them because we listened to other people's beliefs and expectations, but they're always going to find a way to come back. And usually it's going to be through feeling stagnant, feeling frustrated, feeling like you need to numb out from your own life. That right there is the starting point. And I think if people can be, again, brave enough to look at what they're not happy and know that that's actually the starting point is to know that you get to change it, that's it.

**0:16:56** - (Breanna): It's all in how you're currently feeling. Absolutely.

**0:16:59** - (Carmen): And speaking of change, like you mentioned earlier on in the podcast that you went from Miss Mindset to Brianna May with the rebrand. What were the motivations behind that rebrand that drove you to change it?

**0:17:12** - (Breanna): There was a few. It was very much I got married, actually, and it was very funny. Like, a lot of people like, oh, you're not Miss Mindset anymore. You're Mrs. Mindset.

**0:17:24** - (Carmen): I didn't even think of that.

**0:17:26** - (Breanna): Very true. Very true. But also I created Miss mindset because Miss was so reflective. Like, I was called Miss for years and I still have messages and DMs all the time. Miss, how are you? I miss you, blah, blah, blah. So I very much was Miss, and that was tied to my teaching identity. And I'm no longer in the classroom. I still identify as an educator, and I think I always will. But Miss felt like it was still hanging back to that old identity.

**0:17:55** - (Breanna): And in the last few years, through my business, I have evolved so much. I'm a different person in some ways and still the same in my essence. But I am more than just mindset now. Yes, mindset is always in everything that I do. But I also work with people in business. I do a lot of business mentoring. I do a lot of helping people to find their voice and write authentically and speak authentically. And there's so much more to me than just mindset. And also I've transcended being Amiss and being a teacher.

**0:18:29** - (Breanna): So I felt like the rebrand in just becoming Brianna May gave me a lot more room to expand and let my business grow with me. Beautiful.

**0:18:40** - (Carmen): And well done for you, realizing that and owning it and changing it. Because I know rebranding can sometimes be a little bit scary.

**0:18:46** - (Breanna): Oh, man, it is a little bit of that. But it's also just a huge, like it's a huge workload and it's a lot of tech. As you probably might have guessed, I'm not really a techie person. It's not my forte. Luckily, I've got the best. Yeah, I've got Man's, who is my absolute unicorn. But yeah, it's a lot of work to rebrand. But it felt right.

**0:19:10** - (Carmen): Yeah, absolutely. So teaching in the classroom your high school students and teaching adult women is predominantly women. Do you work with any men at all?

**0:19:20** - (Breanna): Have a few. Yeah, I do have a few. Over the years, a few men have come in and funnily enough, every round of Level Up, which is my signature program, the women always ask me, can you do something like this for men? I always get asked, Would you please? Because a lot of their husbands end up doing the work with them, which is really interesting, but it's predominantly women.

**0:19:46** - (Carmen): So are there many differences between teaching high school girls and boys and women, grown women not really fundamentally the same and have that come up time and time again?

**0:19:59** - (Breanna): I honestly do believe it's, honestly. Because when you think about it, all those teenagers just become adults who are in older bodies. Unless we really do a lot of work. I feel like I was probably still in that teenage consciousness until I was a bit older because I was still just following whether we know it or not, if we're still following in other people's footsteps or whatever, it's peer pressure or being like, oh, I don't want to leave because what would my colleagues think? Or what would my husband think? Or la la, la.

**0:20:30** - (Breanna): We're still succumbing to some extent to, like, peer pressure and fear of judgment. And we call it peer pressure when we're teens and then when we're older, we say it's fear of judgment. There's still the same issues and until we do a lot of work and a lot of internal investigation and transcending all those things, we've got the same. And a lot of it is that a lot of the women I work with, we're overcoming a lot of wounds and mindset issues that were created in high school or school. Like, a lot of our stuff was created when we were kids and so there's not a whole lot of difference.

**0:21:07** - (Breanna): And funnily enough, when I started my business, I was working with teenage girls. And I could only get so far with these teenage girls before I had to end up working with their mothers because where are they learning it from? Like, where are these kids learning their behaviors from? Where are they learning their self talk from? Where are they learning all of their patterns from? It's usually from their own mum who is their role model?

**0:21:32** - (Breanna): And I had to do work with the mums to be like, wow, there's a lot of, for example, anxious thought patterns that I can see in both of you that needs to be addressed. And so a lot of the time it's the same thing and it's just a different age.

**0:21:47** - (Carmen): It's frightening. Like, as a mum of two girls myself, I know they're constantly watching me and mimicking my how can we be a positive role model for our children and not let them? Because I just want them to be happy, right? That's ultimately what any parent wants their child to be. How can we nurture them so that they can choose a career and a path in life that is true to what they actually want to do, rather than what we went through, feeling like they have to go to university because that's what's implied that it's the right thing to do.

**0:22:23** - (Carmen): How can we kind of foster that self belief and help them to follow their heart?

**0:22:31** - (Breanna): I just want to say I love the fact that you said, I just want my kid to be happy. And you also said maybe that's what every mother wants. But honestly, sometimes a lot of parents say that. But what they're actually implying is they want their child to be smart or they want their child to be liked or they want their child to be pretty or like they say they want their child to be happy. But then when their kid comes home with a bad grade and then you yell at them, do you know what I mean? It's really beautiful that you're leading with I want you to be happy. And that's so awesome.

**0:23:06** - (Breanna): And the second piece to that is you role model it. You role model like, is Mum happy? Does Mum go and do her own? You have to be the embodiment because the thing about kids is they're not paying attention to what you say, but they're watching what you do. They're watching how happy you are. How do you respond. Like if you're getting stressed, do they watch you grab a wine or do they watch you go for a run?

**0:23:35** - (Breanna): If you got angry, which is normal and human, if you got angry and flipped the lid and had a bit of a snapped at them or yelled, they're watching how you recovered from that. Are you saying, I'm really sorry. That was not okay. I shouldn't have said that. And this is why. And I should have done this. It's about how you role model and communicate and make your own happiness. Because if they start to see that mum gets her happiness from dad or Mum gets her happiness from whatever, they're going to learn, that's how you find your own happiness. So for mothers, it's like you need to find what makes you happy and you need to just role model it.

**0:24:14** - (Breanna): And that might mean chasing a career that you've actually always wanted or having the courage to build your business because your work actually sucks the life out of you. You're not doing your kids a favor by staying in a job that drains your life force energy because the kids get the second best version of you and they also see that our own happiness doesn't matter. And so I really do believe that role modeling is the answer in everything. And that doesn't mean you have to be perfect, but it means you can embody what it looks like when you make a mistake as well.

**0:24:50** - (Carmen): And I think it's a nice reminder because as mums, we tend to give everything to our kids. But it's a nice reminder that if they're watching us, that's not necessarily a good thing for them to feel that all we do is everything we do is for them. But if we're taking time out for self care and our own hobbies and that kind of thing, we're actually modeling them to them that that's a healthy way to live.

**0:25:12** - (Carmen): And that lessens the mum guilt, in a way, for doing the things we actually want to do.

**0:25:17** - (Breanna): Exactly. I think it's so important and I just think you want to think about like do you want your daughter to be someone who prioritizes herself, who says no to other people, who is not willing to abandon her own needs for everyone else? And if that's what you want for your daughter, you have to want that for yourself. And so I just see how it's so important, actually. And this is why I love working with mums because I believe that my job. And I got really sad about leaving the education system. It was quite hard because I adore my students, I adore my kids. It was the best.

**0:25:57** - (Breanna): But working with mums means and I get this feedback all the time. I've had so many mothers in my programs who have said, brianna, my kids have noticed how much happier I am. And my home is a nicer place. And that's where I feel like I get to still impact the kids because I'm empowering the mums to go after their own happiness. And then what happens is their kids get to be the beneficiary of that and husbands, like everyone gets to be the beneficiary. And I think it's our number one duty. I really do see it as a duty in life, is to find what makes us happy, to fulfill our own potential to do the things that light us up. Because when we're lit up, everybody else gets to be lit up just from being in our energy and they get to be inspired. And nobody's inspired by a martyr. Nobody's inspired by somebody who has no energy.

**0:26:52** - (Breanna): So I feel like the best thing you can do for your kid is whatever's the best for you.

**0:26:57** - (Carmen): Yeah. That's so beautiful.

**0:26:59** - (Breanna): I love that so much.

**0:27:00** - (Carmen): And I love that there's such a knock on effect to all the people in their lives. It's not simply changing their life, but the people around them. Is there like a common pain point that these women have when they come to you that you see time and time again? I mean, we've probably touched on some of those issues already, but is there like a certain point in their life where they reach out to you?

**0:27:23** - (Breanna): It depends. For Level Up, which is like my biggest program, the pain point is usually either I don't know what I want or I thought I did, but. Now I'm not happy or I just want more. There's that feeling of, like, this isn't it yet? And I'm a bit sick of my own shit. Yeah, that's kind of the pain point there. And in business with more of my business offers and my business coaching, there's usually a sense of, like, women, they're not yet truly speaking with authenticity and owning who the heck they are on their socials, and they're not yet fully embodied in what it is that they want to do out there in the world. And there's usually something holding them back that is probably, like fear of judgment, not really knowing how to market in ways that feel authentic to them.

**0:28:18** - (Breanna): And a lot of people, when they come to me, they've done all the strategies that they've been taught by everyone else. They've followed the three part process. They've done all these to be honest. Yeah, different strategies that people try. And then they come to me, and we work a little bit deeper than that. We go to, like, okay, let's look at what's yours again, like, what's yours and what's something that this business mentor told you once that you never actually felt good for you.

**0:28:46** - (Breanna): And we make it all a lot more personalized to people finding their own unique way of doing things.

**0:28:56** - (Carmen): And like your own journey on social media, because do you get most of your clients through social media marketing, or how do clients find you?

**0:29:05** - (Breanna): Yeah, it usually is. I find it's either through my podcast or through Instagram.

**0:29:10** - (Carmen): And when you first started engaging with social media, like, when you quit being a teacher, did you feel like it came naturally for you straight off the bat, and it was like you were being authentic straight away? Or did that take a little while to develop your own kind of voice and style?

**0:29:28** - (Breanna): That's a really cool question. It's interesting because I feel like yes and no. It came so naturally to me because I've always loved media and writing and speaking. And that's just like, Oprah was my role model when I was a kid. I loved Oprah and a little bit of Britney Spears. I was, like, a bit of a performer, but I loved writing, and I loved all of that. So, yes, it came very naturally, and I felt like I was being authentic.

**0:29:56** - (Breanna): But the more I went into my own development of really knowing myself and what it is that I'm here for and developing my own voice, I feel like the more authentic, the more me I became. And I did have to shed a little bit of a layer of, like, am I allowed to say this? Am I allowed to swear? Because for so long I was a teacher, and it was like, gosh, it did take a little bit of time for me to become comfortable with this whole new identity that I was able to create.

**0:30:26** - (Breanna): So, on the one hand, yes, it felt natural. It always felt like something that I enjoyed and loved. But on the other hand, the more work I do, the better my social media and content gets because my social media is a reflection of my own growth. And so the more I know myself, the more my voice comes across. And you would know as a copywriter, my copy just gets better the more I know me. So I always prioritize knowing myself.

**0:30:53** - (Carmen): Yeah, that's so true. And you can hear from listening to your podcast like, you're so passionate every time you speak and I think that really shines so a lot. What if there's someone who they're maybe changing direction in their business or they've just started a business but they feel nervous about going on social media? Or they perhaps aren't prioritizing it even though they know they will get a lot of business through social media because they're a bit wary of the image they're going to put out or they just feel uncomfortable about it. What kind of advice would you give that person?

**0:31:26** - (Breanna): I would look at underneath, like, what's underneath that resistance? What's the core what's the core belief and fear. Because there's some sort of fear and it's usually fear of judgment or whatever it is. And then that's the work to be done, really. It's not about social media. And this is why I think in business coaching, I am not the most what would you say? I'm not really like a lot of other business coaches because I'll look at that and be like, it's not about social media. There's something else that we need to work on and that's what I would get clients to look at. And the next piece to that is, again, courage. You have to be nobody is like, confidence is something that you earn through being courageous and being a student and being okay with getting it wrong and having training wheels and doing things time and time and time again. And you would know at one point both of us probably would resonate with being great writers, confident writers, right?

**0:32:23** - (Breanna): But we had to learn that we were in year three going, oh my gosh, I don't know how to spell, oh my gosh, I got it wrong in my spelling test. Like, I don't understand how to write an essay or like whatever it is. We all got to where we are through practice and that took a little bit of not feeling confident first. So it's actually just being okay with yourself that this feels pretty average. This feels really not great.

**0:32:46** - (Breanna): But I'm going to choose to be the person who is courageous, not perfect. And if we can really let that be the thing that leads us and we start small and we just take consistent action with courage, over time, we earn confidence. And that's something that I have a real I speak about this a lot in my programs. Confidence is usually earned. And there's all these confidence coaches out there that are just like, just be confident, just fake it till you make it. And it's like you actually need to do the work. And that takes bravery.

**0:33:19** - (Carmen): It's getting over that fear of failure. I mean, no one ever fully gets over the fear of failure, but I think the more you fail, the quicker you fail and get up again, the easier it gets and the more progress you make. But sometimes it's those first few times that you make those big failures that are the hardest. But then once you get over those hurdles, it suddenly becomes a bit easier and a little bit easier and then you get more confidence.

**0:33:44** - (Carmen): But I think some people just feel if they're going to fail, it's going to smash their confidence. But I think actually, it can help grow your confidence in the long term.

**0:33:52** - (Breanna): Right? Yeah. And this is why I used to get such a be in my bonnet about taking away the education system. And society as a whole has become quite like snowflake. Like, we don't want anyone to feel bad and let's give everyone a participation badge and let's take away the main. I've heard of schools where it's like, we're not having a main character in the school play because everybody gets a role and it's like, Wait, hold on, real life?

**0:34:21** - (Breanna): No, we need to be resilient people and we need to know that failure is and even I don't even really use the word failure, but for context, failure is actually a part of life and it's a part of success. It actually is a part of success. And so I really do feel like we need to be more resilient humans, and if we can't handle a bit of like, oops, I stuffed that up, or, wow, that was really bad, or, wow, nobody bought that.

**0:34:46** - (Breanna): If we can't handle that, we're actually not going to succeed in business. It's that simple. And so rather than try to avoid failure, try to be someone who runs into it and goes, there is so much for me to learn here and nothing's going to stop me. So as long as you keep getting back up, business is going to feel really fun.

**0:35:07** - (Carmen): Very true. And, I mean, you've given so much good advice, but my parting question to you would be if there's a woman out there today who is really excited about an idea, but at the moment, it's just an idea. And she's currently in a job that she's not fully passionate about. Feels like it doesn't align. What kind of guidance would you give her to make that first step towards making that idea a reality?

**0:35:31** - (Breanna): I would look at a few things. Who is in your world or your life that has already done something that you? Because the thing is, and I've never come across a single person who's got this idea that has never been done before. We're putting men on Mars, literally. The idea of starting your side hustle is like, yeah, there's so many people that have made success from that, so you're not even asking for much. It's like find people who have done it who can role model and that you can have in your awareness, whether that's a mentor, a coach, somebody that you look up to on the internet, a podcaster, whoever it is, find people and fill your mind with evidence that it's not even possible. But normal, like normalize it. We need to normalize it. And this is what happens when you're in a job you're not in. Like, I remember being in the staff room and there's nobody to normalize, hey, I think I'm going to leave.

**0:36:31** - (Breanna): I think I'm going to leave actually halfway through the term that's not normal. And to talk about like, I'm going to grow this business and I'm going to teach online, it was like what? Everybody's response would be, you're crazy. What are you talking about? That's crazy. La la la. So we need to normalize things so that it no longer feels so scary to us. It just feels like, oh, well, that makes sense.

**0:36:50** - (Breanna): That's normal. So there's that normalize. What it is that you really want to create. And then the next thing is actually just take a little bit of action every single day or every single week, whatever that action is. It's like you don't know where one action can lead. And I found that to be so true. I didn't know that by getting a business coach as an example, I would then be offered a job inside of her business as the resident mindset coach. And you've just got to take one step in front of the other and let that lead wherever it's going to lead. But you got to take the action and let the universe move to support you.

**0:37:29** - (Carmen): That's good advice. I'm just not.