EPISODE 237 WITH LEAH REMILLET: LESSONS IN RESILIENCE AND REINVENTION FOR ENTREPRENEURS

Ready Yet?! Podcast with Leah Remillet: Lessons in Resilience and Reinvention for Entrepreneurs

Transcribed with Descript

Erin Marcus: All right. All right. Welcome to this episode of the ready yet podcast where my guest today and I, okay, I’m as soon as you corrected me. Now I get it wrong. Leo. You got it. Yes. I, I freeze when I don’t know. Cause I feel so bad. It’s like, say people’s names correctly. Leo remily remily. It’s nice. And I can’t roll off my tongue and it’s, it’s got a ring to an evidently, I have no melody,

Leah Remillet: but fun, fun secret about that.

Leah Remillet: It’s actually my middle name. So it’s not my, it’s not my, my surname. When I first started my business, my, my first entrepreneurial. adventure was actually in the world of photography. Not anything that I do today. And we went on a road trip. We were visiting friends and we, we had everybody vote. Should I do it as Leah Remmele or should I do it as Leah Stimmel, which is my actual last name.

Leah Remillet: And everyone, it was unanimous. Go Remmele because it sounded so much more artistic. It’s beautiful. Right. It’s a little tricky on a URL. Let’s just be honest, but that’s why people can go to balancing busy. com instead, but it is beautiful. It does have, it does have a great ring.

Erin Marcus: Good job, mom. Right.

Erin Marcus: Good job mom. That’s right. Very pretty name. So I agree. They voted correctly.

Erin Marcus: I’m excited to have this conversation with you. We were started in the quote unquote green room. I want to have this conversation with you because I’m excited about how transparent it was when we were just having it. And it’s not what you see out there, but I think it’s so important. And then we’re going to add in your personal experience and your subject matter expertise to, so people can take what we’re going to talk about.

Erin Marcus: And like, you can’t prevent this, but you can edge your bets. Yes. And the thing that I said to you as we were catching up before we got started is there’s a shift, you know, where there has been a shift, a metaphysical shift, if you would. And I’ve been talking to so many people that all say the same thing, that 2023 was mired in reaction mode, doing things that look beautiful on paper and then didn’t work, even though you did everything right.

Erin Marcus: And that there’s now this. feeling of being back in creation mode. And, you know, one of the things we said was people don’t share enough of this story that you could do everything right. And it doesn’t work. It just on paper, it was gorgeous. The plan was gorgeous. And I know that your whole business is about creating processes that create space and opportunity to have a better business, better life.

Erin Marcus: What happens when you have all your processes in place? And the outcomes just aren’t there.

Leah Remillet: It’s a tricky one. It’s really hard. Like, let’s just acknowledge and admit that You can do all the right things sometimes, and you won’t get the results that you were hoping for. And you sit there and you look at it and you say, on paper, this makes sense.

Leah Remillet: I mean, ultimately, I often look at business things and I’m like, look, it’s a numbers game. If you have this amount of people who are seeing your stuff and you’ve got a good offering with good sales copy, with a good funnel, it should work. Translate to being able to bring in X amount of People and dollars and sometimes all of those things are in the right places and it just doesn’t happen and you’re asking yourself What is wrong?

Leah Remillet: What is happening? And I’m gonna say that I’ve asked these questions I have had the experiences where I’m doing the conversion rates in my head. I’m looking at everything and I’m like this Should have worked. What was wrong? So what we do in those scenarios is number one, we check in with ourselves because I, I really do believe that sometimes things don’t work to protect us from ourselves.

Leah Remillet: 100

Erin Marcus: million percent. Like, right.

Leah Remillet: I mean,

Erin Marcus: and it does not feel that way in the moment. Oh no, not even a little bit. I mean, at the moment

Leah Remillet: you’re devastated and it’s okay that you are. Right. You’ve put in so much work, you’ve given so much of your heart and your soul, and it’s not working, and you’re just aching, wondering why you’re not good enough, what you did wrong, like, there’s a lot of emotions and feelings around there.

Leah Remillet: We cannot detach ourselves when we’re entrepreneurs. It’s just not possible. Like, you are gonna have emotion in this process because you are giving so much of yourself. So, sometimes, it really is. That you’re being protected, whatever you believe, universe for me, higher being, absolutely. There are times when I feel God protected me from me because he saw what was coming.

Leah Remillet: He sees around corners and I don’t. And he knew, Leah, this isn’t going to be a good time. You’re, you’re going to need some more space. In fact, at the beginning of 2023, I was experiencing some of that where I’m like, why? Is this not working that well? And I was doing something that’s very different for me.

Leah Remillet: So I really love all things automated. I love systems. I love to remove me as much as possible. Now, I’m still, of course, going to be there for my clients and give them that personalized, but I’m also looking for how do I save me more time? Well, at the beginning, Leveraging all your

Erin Marcus: resources.

Leah Remillet: Yes. At the beginning of 2023, I was trying something different and I was like, okay, I’m going to give a lot of me much more than normal.

Leah Remillet: But that’s going to be okay because it’s just going to be for the first quarter, just a little bit past the first quarter. So I was, I was okay with this. I put it all out there and I’m just shocked that it does not perform the way it should. I mean, I, I know my sales funnels. I know my sales copy. Right.

Leah Remillet: Cause what

Erin Marcus: we’re talking about here is not, I’m new to this. This is, you vetted your offer. You have an audience. This is your, Your ball has been rolling.

Leah Remillet: Yes, this is, I’ve been in business for 15 years. I have run six and seven figure launches. I know how to do this stuff. And I am sitting there going, in the world.

Leah Remillet: I’m doing

Erin Marcus: all the

Leah Remillet: work. Why is it? Yes, yes. February 3rd, we had a house fire. We had a explosion in our home. And it shifted. everything to where we are displaced. We can’t live in our house. We’re trying to figure out where we’re going to live. We’ve, you know, trying to, to fix what we’ve lost and what we need right away.

Leah Remillet: And we were out of our home for 10 months. We didn’t get it back into our house until just a couple of days before Thanksgiving. And I can now see, I am so grateful. That that didn’t work because I couldn’t have managed everything that was happening in that time frame, right? And so there are times when that’s the case, when you are just being protected.

Leah Remillet: And there are also times when something was off. That’s just the honest truth. So, and I think, and

Erin Marcus: that’s where I really appreciate your approach because I’m like, I agree with you. We might call it different things. The, you know, the phrase I picked up from, I heard it, this from Kelly Roach, the redirection is for your protection.

Leah Remillet: I love that.

Erin Marcus: I love how she says that. It took me a long time to really see how that works. But. Sometimes it’s not internal. Sometimes the market shifted. Sometimes the economy shifted. Sometimes there was a war that started. Like, there’s so many variables. Yes.

Leah Remillet: And that’s

Erin Marcus: because you have no

Leah Remillet: control over it.

Leah Remillet: And that’s that second part, right? Like, Kate, in one form, you may not have control because, as you said, something shifted. In some, in some place, something has shifted. And then there’s other times where we need to go back and we need to look and we need to say, Okay, what can I learn from this? What maybe wasn’t quite right?

Leah Remillet: I often find that sometimes when something doesn’t work, It was out of alignment with my core values. Like what I say matters to me most, what I say I want, what I say my goals are. And then I go jumping on some other bandwagon and I’m like, Oh, let’s give this a try. And. It doesn’t work and it’s like, oh, because that was not in alignment with my core goals and values.

Leah Remillet: And other times I’ve looked back and, you know, with enough time that gives me that perspective, I look back and I go, Huh, I was leaving a lot of holes. I was leaving a lot of unanswered questions. That perhaps was the problem. You know, it really can be as simple as sometimes, The name’s not right, the copy’s not right, you’re not clear enough on the problem and the solution.

Leah Remillet: You’re not positioning in a way that says, here’s the very obvious problem for this very obvious type of person, and now here is the solution. So sometimes it’s that, and sometimes it really is, you have done all the right things, and it just

Erin Marcus: doesn’t work. And so, the story I shared with you is, the first quarter of 23, okay fine, but the second quarter By the end of the first quarter, I had what I thought was this amazing plan for the year.

Erin Marcus: I was so excited about it. I saw the adjustments we were making, the iterations we were making to the business, the people who were involved. They’re fantastic. I see their genius. And on paper, like you said, it was absolutely It was all in didn’t work right did not work the way that I had anticipated it for a variety of different reasons.

Erin Marcus: And I have, you know, hindsight did the whole debrief and autopsy and took what I knew I need to do better job at. Okay, great. But it took me from November 1 to about February 1. So it took me a good three months. Of I don’t know, you know, I’m sure I went through a bit of a depression and confusion because it’s not my norm to not know I want to do is not normal for me, but I will tell you what I finally visualized and put together.

Erin Marcus: As wonderful as last year’s plan was, this feels so much bigger, more impactful, will have a further reach, not just for me, but in who I’m able to serve, who I, how many people I’ll be able to help, like it was going back to the redirection. Right. None of that, three quarters of what I can see now, would never have been able to be possible from the previous plan.

Leah Remillet: Right. What if. All of these things. What if none of it is happening to you? It’s all happening for you. And what if the whole reason that that wasn’t working was because you were playing too small? And there were bigger, more amazing things for you to do. Ways that you could serve the difference and the impact that you are meant to make.

Leah Remillet: And so you needed to be pruned down. You needed to be, Pulled back and stopped so that you could re evaluate, refocus, and be given that greater, bigger vision. And now, let’s just pause and admit that there, that, if we’re being honest in our human selves, we’re all saying, Well, couldn’t you have just shown that to me at the beginning?

Leah Remillet: Oh, yeah, believe me. Like, why do we even have to go through this? And I

Erin Marcus: always, a catalyst is never fun. You ever noticed that? Like, a catalyst is never fun. The thing that I had to go through to get to where I feel I could be, and it’s not over. It’s not fun, because if it was, you know, happy and breezy, we would just stay where we were.

Erin Marcus: And I think the other piece of this is, is the action, right? You, I watch too many, it’s one of the, and it’s not really, it’s not the metaphysical world’s fault, right? But there’s too many times I watch people not take action because they’re talking about, well, if this was the plan, it would happen. Well, not without your participation,

Leah Remillet: right?

Leah Remillet: Oh, absolutely.

Erin Marcus: So, all right. I want to back up on something. How do you go from photography? Because I have my own version, right? I, I said my life and my jobs feel when you take them one at a time, very segmented. But now that you look back, you’re like, Oh, I see how that happened. So how does, how does this happen to somebody?

Erin Marcus: Because I think there’s a lot of people doing things they’re good at that they love doing, but it’s not quite the right fit for them. So I’d love to hear how that happened. Right,

Leah Remillet: they’re maybe feeling this feeling of like, I think I’m supposed to pivot, but that is really scary. That’s really weird. It’s weird.

Leah Remillet: Yep. So I started well, let’s go back actually even before photography. I had the opportunity to work in my dad’s company, and he gave me the incredible, incredible blessing and opportunity of saying, go ahead, give it a try. So he let me take over a division. He let me take any ideas that I had and go with them.

Leah Remillet: And I got to see massive results by this. I got to see incredible growth in our profits. And where I had really focused was on experience. So my very first job as a 15 year old was I worked at this little chocolate shop. This just darling little chocolate shop. It was 52 a pound for chocolate, which is like 30 something years ago at this point.

Leah Remillet: Oh my gosh, it’s longer than that. Ugh. Okay, anyways. It’s a different conversation. Yes, so, And I remember recognizing and realizing you could go to the grocery store and you could buy, I don’t know, Snickers or Hershey’s or whatever, you know, for, okay, 50 cents at that point. Or you could walk into this chocolate shop and you’d be spending about two to three dollars for a piece of chocolate.

Leah Remillet: And people did it. And I noticed and started paying attention to, it was about the experience that they felt. It was about buying the chocolate as a gift for a client because it said something a lot more than a Hershey’s bar could. It was about walking in and indulging and, you know, just, there was just a different vibe.

Leah Remillet: And I saw that and I recognized it. And so, In my dad’s company, I’m looking at this specific area his company worked with yachts. So, I’m looking at this specific division, and I was thinking about the experience of when the owner comes back to the yacht, and when the wife comes, and how do we get more buy in from the wife, and how do we make sure that this experience, so I started thinking about this, and creating these different experience touch points, and implementing them all.

Leah Remillet: So I got to do that for a while. Then I got married, started having babies and I thought, Oh, I’m going to be a stay at home mom. That’s what I’m going to do. Well, I, right after my third was born, I had this moment where I just, I missed entrepreneurship. I missed business. I missed brainstorming, adulting. I, I, I missed, I just missed being, being in a business.

Leah Remillet: And so I decided, okay, I’m starting a business. What should it be? And I start looking around, like, what could my business be? And I decided, I saw someone doing photography. I thought, I think I could do that. I had no reason, literally none, to think that I could do it. I had never ever I’m still the same way.

Leah Remillet: Oh, never had held a professional camera. I mean, I went to my husband, I said, I want to do this, I really think I can. And would you be willing to sell your laptop so I can buy a camera? Now, my husband’s a graduate. Yeah, or actually no, he’s an undergrad at that point. So he does, he does this for me. He lets me sell the laptop.

Leah Remillet: And that means we don’t have a computer. He has to like, he, well, he doesn’t have a computer. He has to now spend all his time in the library so that he can use their computers. And I buy on Craigslist, I buy a camera and I literally had to Google how to turn it on and how to like work it and how to use it.

Leah Remillet: And I started working to build this business. Well, within 18 months I’m making six figures and I focused on that experience business model. I was like, I know how I can differentiate and I know where I can really excel. And I’m going to be honest, I didn’t even take the best pictures. Like they got better over time.

Leah Remillet: But let’s just be honest, they weren’t, they weren’t, they weren’t amazing at the beginning. But that’s

Erin Marcus: such a marketing truth that it’s not always, you know, there’s people who will tell you that they don’t, that they hate the Starbucks coffee, but people like the Starbucks experience. Like, yes.

Leah Remillet: Absolutely.

Leah Remillet: Exactly. A hundred percent. So I focused on that experience. I built this business. Well, I had this crazy little idea as I started my photography business. It was very hard to find information. This was in 2008 when I’m trying to start a business. Blogging was very fresh and new and I decided I would start a blog to document it.

Leah Remillet: My process of going for pro, that’s literally what it was called, go for pro of going for pro because I was having such a hard time finding any information out there and I thought, surely I’m not the only one, so I’m just gonna, when I find something amazing, instead of waking my husband up at 2 a. m.

Leah Remillet: because I’m so excited because I just found, you know, something, go tell the

Erin Marcus: world instead,

Leah Remillet: I’ll, I’ll tell, yeah, I’ll tell the interweb and maybe it will help someone else. Well, that really started growing and I started getting people commenting saying, okay, wait, could you please back up? How did you do that part?

Leah Remillet: And they’d ask me something about, how are you doing your pricing? How are you doing your sales? How did you, how are you doing your marketing? How are you doing? the contracts, right? And so I would, I would start explaining and I started offering these different webinars and they would each cover a different thing.

Leah Remillet: Like, okay, here’s how to do the sales. Here’s how to do the marketing. Here’s how to do the pricing. And I was sitting there going, I wish so badly there was a way that I could connect all the dots for them that I could but here’s how they’re all connecting. And then I was actually on my way on a trip. I was on a flight and I just had this download where I saw everything.

Leah Remillet: I saw exactly how I could do this whole thing. And so I created my first course. It was called The Thriving Photographer. This was in 2012. You guys, Courses did not exist yet. Right, so it did not exist. You hear that today and you think like, Oh, yeah, of course, everyone has a course. No, there was not a single platform that had been invented.

Leah Remillet: Courses were not a thing. And I’m sitting there going, okay. And by the way,

Erin Marcus: to that point, that meant you were probably using seven different platforms to deliver your product. Oh, absolutely. Because this is way before all these all in one programs. Oh yeah, no, no. None of this. Like, none of

Leah Remillet: this. None of that existed.

Leah Remillet: So what I came up with is I said, okay, I know my audience. I know my target client, the person that I am so desperate to help. She is a busy mom. She does not have time to sit and watch videos. So I’m going to make mine. I’m gonna make this audio. So I recorded all the tracks. I came up with this workbook to work ’em through.

Leah Remillet: I, you know, came up with all the components of what I thought they’d need. And yes, they were all on separate things because there was no such thing as a course platform. There was no

Erin Marcus: HubSpot, there was no high level was not

Leah Remillet: a thing, right? And it, it was amazing that that course turned into a seven figure course for me.

Leah Remillet: I got to teach masterminds. only for members of my course. So the mastermind retreats that I ever offered, they’d be these three days, all inclusive, super high experience, because obviously, clearly I love me my experience. And, and I got to do them all over my, like, my favorite one ever that, you know, I got to go international even to do them, which was so amazing.

Leah Remillet: And then there was this moment where I started to feel that there needed to be a shift. And I. I had, when I started my business, I just did it wrong. I didn’t know any better. I was working all hours. I had no boundaries. I had I had some systems, but I used them just so I could work even more. Right?

Leah Remillet: Right.

Erin Marcus: That’s a big, right? That’s, I think that’s the first system people create. Is the system that let them work more instead of a system that lets you work less. Exactly. Exactly. I see it all the time.

Leah Remillet: So that’s what I had done. And I got to the point where I had to stop sleeping in order to get all the work done.

Leah Remillet: My, we’ve gone from my husband being an undergrad to graduate school, right? So it’s been about four or five years. And I mean, Everything looks incredible. I am making incredible income. I am our sole provider. I am, I’m doing all of it. I get to, you know, go host these amazing things. I get to, I’m asked to keynote and speak at these amazing conferences.

Leah Remillet: Like, I mean, it just looks incredible. And I’m stay at home mom. I’m doing it all. But in order to do it all, I stopped sleeping. So I would put the kids to bed at, you know, seven 38. And I would work often till 5. 00 AM. And my, It was, it was horrible. My head would literally, on some nights, I guess mornings, hit the keyboard because I just, Basically, like, collapse.

Leah Remillet: And then I’d drag myself to bed, the kids would wake up at 7, and I’d do it again. And I would do this for 3 4 nights in a row, then I would take one night where I knew I had to get 5 6 hours of sleep, and then I would do it again. And I was doing this and doing this until I literally collapsed. I had Taking the kids to the zoo one day, we were in the alligator exhibit, I can still, like, I can still smell got to be horrifying.

Leah Remillet: It was terrifying. Everything just started closing in. I, my hearing was, was, you know, leaving me, my vision was closing in. I could feel that I was about to collapse. I was trying to get us over somewhere where I, like, would at least collapse maybe onto a bench or something like that. A bush. And I woke up.

Leah Remillet: Yes. Yeah. And I, I woke up on a stretcher being put into an ambulance with my three little babies being left alone at the zoo as their mommy is being taken away in an ambulance. And that was my moment where everything had to change. I would not sacrifice my health, my home, or my happiness anymore. In fact, I was willing to walk away from my business if I couldn’t fix it.

Leah Remillet: Which was terrifying because I love animals. Entrepreneurship, like if there’s a day and everyone’s gone and people are like, what are you going to do today? I’m like, I’m going to work on my business. Well, so

Erin Marcus: here’s the thing though, because I think. It’s so interesting how people get to that point, because there’s some people who get to that point out of desperation, there’s some people who get to that, like, you can get to the burnout, overwork, not always from I don’t want to say a negative place, but it’s not always.

Erin Marcus: Oh, it was absolutely a negative place, and I agree. It doesn’t have to be that way. But it doesn’t feel like it. In the moment, it felt like you were successful, so you were being successful.

Leah Remillet: I had those moments, though. You know, if I look back, And I’m being totally honest, there were so many nudges. There were so many nudges that said, Leah, you cannot do it this way.

Leah Remillet: This is not worth it. Like you are sacrificing too much. And I just kept pushing through because honestly, I thought I had to, I thought. Everything would collapse without me. I was gonna say there’s

Erin Marcus: always a fear. What’s the fear underneath? Yes, I just wrote a I just wrote a post last week that a lot of people replied to about white space Like I went to I designed classes when I got my journalism degree and they talk about using the white space So your thing will stand out, you know When I was doing bodybuilding and power lifting the white space the rest is when you get better And yet in our businesses We ignore white space.

Erin Marcus: Not only do we ignore it, but we say we want to create it, but then the second we have a little bit, We fill it. We either fill it or we feel like we’re doing something wrong. Yes, no, that could possibly be how that is.

Leah Remillet: Exactly. And, and so every time I had up until this point, every time I had created a little white space, I saw it as an opportunity to build as an opportunity to scale as an opportunity to do more.

Leah Remillet: More so I literally had to untrain this hustle harder mentality, this more mentality that constantly said, if you can, you should and shift. Everything. And so that’s what I did. I changed everything. I started obsessively studying, because that’s kind of my personality, everything about time management, productivity systems.

Leah Remillet: I mean, I literally studied McDonald’s extensively. So you’re like

Erin Marcus: crazy. So my, this is random for you. My. I did a deal when I was in commercial real estate for an entity called the Center of Excellence, and they are the logistics arm of McDonald’s. I love that! And they can tell, it’s like, it’s kind of its own company within the company, and they can tell you where every straw, every napkin, they are the logistics arm of the McDonald’s world.

Erin Marcus: It was crazy to watch how they do that. Isn’t

Leah Remillet: that amazing? I mean, what’s incredible about McDonald’s is You know what to expect, no matter where you are. And I, you know, I’ve had the incredible privilege of traveling the world, and I can tell you, Tokyo, Sydney, anywhere, anywhere, I can tell you, like Yes, I’ve had the same

Erin Marcus: experience.

Leah Remillet: Yes. Yes. Like it’s, and so, so I started studying all this and here’s what I learned. A lot of the tips and strategies that are out there, honestly do not work if you work from home. If you are a woman, if you are an entrepreneur, I mean there, there are a lot of those strategies were built for someone who gets to leave the house, go to an office, close the door and has eight perfect hours.

Leah Remillet: Okay. That is not. That’s not my experience as a business owner. And yet, I needed to find a way that worked for me. for me. So I started implementing all these different automations and systems and workflows and time management strategies. And it was shocking. It was absolutely shocking. My hours went from, I don’t know what those hours were.

Leah Remillet: You don’t track when you’re at work. All the hours. Yeah. It went from that to three days a week. Easily, easily three days a week, and I did not lose a penny of profitability. And here’s the thing, revenue is vanity, okay, let’s just call it what it is. Profit is sanity. And when I looked and sat and saw this, and I’m like, oh my gosh, like I’m in all my, I’m volunteering in all three of my kids classrooms, I am like, I have time to go out to lunch with friends, I have time to take a nap if I want to, and.

Leah Remillet: My business is still running fabulously. My clients are still incredibly thrilled. And so that, that shift, I started realizing I can’t be the only one I have. If I can help any other mom, any other woman who is going through what I went through and is, Praying and pleading that work life balance does actually exist when we see all the time everyone’s saying it doesn’t exist.

Leah Remillet: I remember seeing that and just thinking there’s no hope, right? If I, if I can help then, then I had to do that. But this has been such a long, long answer to get to your original question. But I want to say that like pivoting was terrifying. Because I was known in the photography industry, right, like, I had a good, I had a good thing going, you know, like, I had a seven figure course, I filled my masterminds in days, I mean, I would put it out in less than 48 hours, oh, it’s sold out, it’s gone, I’m being asked to speak at all these conferences, like, it was terrifying for me to say I’m going to walk away from that entire industry.

Leah Remillet: I’m going to go into an industry where I know no one. I have no, what’s the thing that allowed you to do it? Cause I have a,

Erin Marcus: you know, I left corporate, I left me, I had a very, very high paying, great, extremely visible job. I was known in the industry. I was working for the big fish in the industry, amazing experiences.

Erin Marcus: You know, so, same but different, like, what is the thing that allowed you to say, yes. I’ll walk

Leah Remillet: away. But. It was, for me, it truly was, alignment. It was the fact that I believe in happy families more than anything else. I genuinely, with every fiber of my being, believe that we can solve a lot of the world’s problems by focusing on creating more happy families.

Leah Remillet: It can start in, in rescuing communities and then Countries and then just in so many places. So I believe that we as women are needed in two places in a vital way, the first place, and always will maintain as the number one place is at home. It is okay when when we are We, we do a job that no one can do the way we do, and when we can be present and intentional and have enough of us left over at the end of the day to have something to give because we’re not so burnt out and exhausted and drained, that is important.

Leah Remillet: I also believe that our voices are needed in the world that the impact that we’re meant to make that the, the passions that we have that that that thing that is on our hearts that it’s there for a reason it’s on purpose, and we’re supposed to share it. I saw those two things and how much they felt like they were in opposition, in conflict, just constantly like I’m trying to be the best version of me here at home, and I know I’m meant to make an impact and make a difference.

Leah Remillet: And how do we do these together? And so, Well, 90

Erin Marcus: percent of what you see out there would tell you, you can’t. And then you have to choose that you have to choose that if yes, you know, you can have everything just not at once or you know, every, I don’t know how old you are, but every movie from the working girl era and the baby bootleg was all about the powerful working woman who gave it all up.

Erin Marcus: To be a mom. It never showed someone doing both of those things well and happily.

Leah Remillet: Right. Right. And, and that was, that was ultimately when I realized that there was a way to have both. And it, it may look a little bit different. Let’s be honest. I’m never going to be a billionaire. Okay. Like I’m never going to probably be able to scale.

Leah Remillet: Maybe I will. I mean, hey, let’s, let’s call it in, but, but you know what I’m saying? Like. There, there is. That’s not. I think. But that’s not my goal. And I don’t need that. And the

Erin Marcus: human brain, no. And the human brain with this all or nothing. I’m either Gary T or I’m a failure. Really? Right. There’s nothing in between.

Erin Marcus: Right.

Leah Remillet: Right. And so honestly, the, the feeling of like, I can help. And if I can, I have to, because I genuinely don’t, don’t think that anything else matters as much as, as this. gave me the courage, but it was really scary. And I, I mean, I can distinctly remember this moment of the house was empty. I was by myself and you know, I’m, I’m grappling with this cause I could feel that I was supposed to shift, but I did not shift as fast as I should have.

Leah Remillet: I mean, I took months of drawing it out cause I was so scared. And I remember having this moment where I just like, I was like in the kitchen and I just kind of. started to cry and I just sat down on the floor and I literally just sobbed because I was so scared. But in the end, I just, you know, sometimes all you can do is you just take that first next step.

Leah Remillet: That’s all you can do. And I just committed to, I’m going to take the first next step and, and we’ll see what happens. And I’m, I couldn’t be more grateful. I am so grateful for what I get to do today.

Erin Marcus: And I think that’s a really good take the first next step. I think people get paralyzed by thinking they have to figure it all out.

Erin Marcus: Yeah. And you can’t. Like, the analogy I always stick with is it’s a spiral staircase. You just don’t know. But you’ll never get there if you don’t do something. Yes.

Leah Remillet: That’s exactly. And so we might not be able to see the whole path. In fact, I think that’s really normal. And we think there’s something wrong with us because people make it feel like they’re seeing the 15 phase 100 step plan all at once.

Leah Remillet: And it’s like actually a lot. Sometimes that happens. I have had those experiences. They’re rare though. Most of the time. I can see a couple of steps and then I take those steps and it illuminates, you know, if you think about us with a flashlight and I’m in pitch black, I put that flashlight in front of me on the path and I can see the next three or four steps.

Leah Remillet: But then when I’ve made those three or four steps, it illuminates the following three or four. And that’s really often what taking a new A new risk in, in our entrepreneurial journey or honestly, even in life, that’s what it looks like.

Erin Marcus: And I think for me, the one thing I’ve learned to do is don’t worry about all the steps.

Erin Marcus: Just have that ult, you know, have a feeling and a vision of the ultimate outcome. Yeah. Otherwise you start wandering around in circles, right? So there’s this huge gap that I don’t worry about, or I try not to worry about. Or I try to worry less about, depending on the day, depending on the day, we do better, we do worse.

Erin Marcus: But the goal is for me to maintain the vision so that I’m always walking in the direction, to your point, in alignment, and yet not worrying about more than a couple

Leah Remillet: steps. That no, that is, that’s exactly, and, and I know as everyone is hearing this, you know, they’re like, okay. I get it. But. What does this look like?

Leah Remillet: Where do I start? And for anyone who is feeling especially overwhelmed right now, they’re in that place of, I don’t feel like I can ever catch my breath. And so they love the idea of getting these different systems in, putting these different things in place that are gonna save their sanity, but they’re like, I don’t even know where that fits.

Leah Remillet: If you would like to see a sample of my actual systems that are in my business, what I’m actually doing, I would be so happy to share that. That’d be amazing. And you can just go to leahremillet. com, which I, she’ll have it in the show notes for you, but if you happen to be able to text yourself right now, L E A H R E M I L L E T.

Leah Remillet: com forward slash gift. And I will let you download an entire resource pack and show you guys. My systems, you can see some of them be like, Oh, okay, and steal them, take them, use them, save yourself some time. And yeah, hopefully that’ll help.

Erin Marcus: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, and I’m assuming the website is also the best way to get ahold of you to continue this conversation and Oh, yeah,

Leah Remillet: absolutely.

Leah Remillet: So I’m on Instagram. I am. always sharing things on our Insider Newsletter. I have my podcast, which is called Balancing Busy. So if you loved this episode and you are feeling like, I think I like her, yeah, you’re already in your podcast. So go over, do a quick search, Balancing Busy, and scroll through, pick an episode, take a listen.

Leah Remillet: And yeah, that’s another awesome way.

Erin Marcus: Love it. Thank you for spending your time with me today. I know that’s the one resource you cannot you can only do so much with. You can’t get that back. So thank you for sharing your time with me. This is amazing. Thank you. Oh,

Leah Remillet: it’s been so fun. Thank you for having me.