We are officially on a count down to the start of nMotion! Now that the kids are out of school, the realization that everything is about to change has set in. I feel all kinds of emotions. Happiness. Fear. Anxiety. I have a constant niggle in the back of my head that I am about to let everyone down. I also feel confident. Whether I have a valid reason for feeling any of these bi-polar range of emotions, I know that what is coming is meant to be. My friend Lee told me “Stacy, you’ve been working towards this your entire life.” I can agree with that.

I was asked recently if I had always been business minded. The question made me think for a while, because I didn’t know how to answer. It was like when someone asked me I was competitive and I said “no” and everyone who knew me laughed and said “You are one of the most competitive people I know.” I do think I have always been business minded, but I don’t think I had the confidence to really act upon it. I have slowly changed that attitude (so if anyone tells you that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, they are liars).

nMotion lasts 100 days. There is a new trend going around called 100 Happy Days. I knew that I wanted to document this journey that I’m about to take and thought this would be a wonderful way to do it because it fits perfectly. 100 days from the beginning of nMotion until Demo Day. 100 Happy Days. Because that is exactly how I should be looking at this. Yes, I know that it is going to be hard, overwhelming, exhausting, testing and crazy. But there can always be an underlining emotion that drives me from the time I wake up until the time I go to bed… the happiness to have the opportunity in the first place. I was given an opportunity to be grateful for, so that is exactly what I plan to be.

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Did you know that the Wizard of Oz was from Omaha, Nebraska? Sometimes I think he was actually from Lincoln and his name was Stacy.

Eventually, it is revealed that Oz is actually none of these things, but rather an ordinary conman from Omaha, Nebraska, who has been using a lot of elaborate magic tricks and props to make himself seem “great and powerful.”

I was at meeting this week where we talked about peer groups and what to talk about during them. My input was simple. Be honest. You go to all these meetings and you hear about the good. The great. The wonderful. You hear about how they succeeded. How they accelerated. How they perfected their trade and are doing great.

Those stories are just like The Great and Powerful Oz. Smoke and mirrors and magic tricks. Yes, those things happened, and they deserve to be celebrated. But damn, do they put some serious unrealistic expectations on the people in the audience who think that the troubles and tribulations that they are going through are out of the norm and no one else is going through them too.

We need to hear the struggles. The ugly, soul sucking, tear provoking struggles. We need to pull back the curtain and look the Oz in the eyes so that we can realize that life is full of hard and you have to go through a whole lot of hard before you reach the good. Even after you reach the good, you’re still going to come up against walls, self doubt, and confidence sucking moments.

I love where I am right now. Most of the time I feel complete and truly fulfilled. But there are days where I look at what I haven’t accomplished, and feel really crappy about where I am right now. There are days where the self doubt is crushing and leaves me desperate. I try to work harder, faster. Those are the days where I feel like a total failure and it doesn’t matter what great and incredible things have happened to me in the last 4 years. None of that matters.

How I feel right now doesn’t erase that 4 years ago, I just about walked away from it all. Called it quits. Looked for a full time job that would put me back into the work force and out of the state that my business had become. It wasn’t that the business wasn’t successful. It was. It left me stagnant and underwhelmed. Without a purpose. It was some even harder and heart breaking events that brought me to the realization that a change needed to happen and sent me on a 4 year journey to where I am now.

Being an entrepreneur is hard. You have good days, and those are the ones that you’ll probably pull out of your back pocket and show to the world when you are asked “How are things going with you?!”. We never really like to admit to others and come off as whiners. As complainers. As failures. Life is never all about good days. Good days don’t make us stronger or teach us lessons or motivate us to do better. Good days do not make us feel like we have a fire under our asses. Good days make us complacent. It is the hard days. The bad days. The no good, horrible, the sky is falling, kind of days that teach us the most. Those are the days that make us real. That break the smoke and mirrors and reveal the secrets of the magic tricks. Those are the days that we need to tell others, so that they know that they aren’t alone in this struggle.

For the last 100 days of my life, I spent immersed, up to my eyeballs, in the accelerator life style. I’ve been asked what it was like, what I took from it, what was the most important thing that I learned.

1. Get over yourself. It’s not about you.

Your business idea is not about you. Stop thinking that it is. It is about customers who have pain points. You assuming you know exactly what those pain points are, without ever talking to a customer, is bullshit. Before you sit down and write even a single line of code, talk to 10 customers about your idea. Ask them open ended questions. Do not lead them to the answer that YOU want to hear. Let them lead you to the answer that YOU need to hear. Once you start seeing a pattern to the answers to your question, change the question to answer a new question. Talking to customers is never a waste of your time and if there is ever a moment that you think it is, well you’ve already lost the war. Validate the hell out of everything. Draw out mock ups of the software on a piece of paper and ask a customer to pretend to use it. Yeah, it seems silly but the customer will be thrilled you asked and you will find at least something useful to help you create a product that truly hits your customers true pain points.

I wish I had known this at the beginning of my 100 days. It would have saved me a lot of angst.

2. Suck it up buttercup. Vultures eat the introverts out here.

Its hard to be in the startup world as an introvert. I know because I am one. I meditate before social networking meetings and between people I have to take a deep breath and balance myself so I can move onto the next hand shake. You have to do it though. You have to suck it up and do it. Not just for your business, as that is important, but you need to do it for you. Figure out what tricks help you. Utilize them. Remind yourself that the more you do this, the easier it will get. It does get easier. The last event I went to I was able to introduce myself to those around me without prompting. I’m determined. You should be too.

3. If you have kids or significant other, paste a picture of you on the fridge so that they can remember who you are.

I’ve written about my inner struggles on moving from being a full time work at home mom to a mom who was never home. It was hard. This summer was hard. I would come home and my kids were 3 inches taller. My son asked me if next summer is going to be as crazy as this one. Everyone went through a transition that was hard. But we made it. My kids are still happy, healthy, wonderful. They don’t hate me. They actually think I’m kind of cool (but not cool enough to be seen looking at them when their friends are around).

4. Find your tribe and chant with them often.

This year, I had the pleasure of going through the accelerator with two of my friends, Jenn and Jill. Jenn was in the same accelerator as me and Jill was in a different one. The bridge between all of us was Amber and Patti. We were (and are) some intense women to be reckoned with! I love these ladies. Hell, I would hug these ladies and I am not a hugger (personal bubble folks). We worked together, practiced pitches together. Laughed, ate, drank and were introduced to Yiddish curse words together. Spouses and significant others supported us (Thank you Eric, Ben, Ryan, Rob and Kurt). Your tribe will be the most important think you establish in your life. Don’t take them for granted and find a way to embrace them in the most supportive and caring ways.

5. Don’t f*** it up.

Okay, so this is the second time that I’ve written about Paul Jarrett with Bulu Box. I like Paul because he says things like “Don’t f*** it up” to encourage you to do the best damn pitch you can do. After demo day he came up to me and I said “Paul, I didn’t fuck it up!” and I can honestly say that I was proud to say that. To me, this reminds me that we need to take ourselves seriously, but not so much that we lose sight of the fact that you can’t be serious all the time. We know that this is serious. We know that we need to take it seriously. We know that we need to do a great job. Enough with the pressure! Now, go out there and don’t fuck it up. Easy peasy.

6. Entrepreneurship is hard.

On demo day, my 16 year old nephew shadowed me for his high school class. He knew a little bit about what I did and was doing, but hadn’t really had a chance to see it all happening. We picked him up at 7:30 a.m. and he was there with us until 8 p.m. He watched as we practiced our pitches. He saw the stress on our faces. He watched the pitches. He then watched the parade of people coming past our booths as we answered questions and shook hands and answered questions and networked. He watched as we put our stuff together. He saw just one day out of 100. When I asked him what was the biggest lesson he had learned that day by shadowing me was this.

Being an entrepreneur is hard.

He is right on the money and if I was his teacher, I would give him an A+. Him and I talked about what I thought was important. Don’t go to a mentor and simply ask what they can do for you, find something that you can do for them. Work hard. Stick to your promises. Do what you said you were going to do. Understand that crappy things happen to good people and that no one is ever going to just give you success, you have to work like hell to get it. Most of all, never allow the past to dictate what you can do in the future. That the kids who have had it the hardest can and should strive to be great. They deserve it as much as the kid who had it easy. And most of all, surround yourself with the people you want to be like. If you want to be lazy and untrustworthy, then fill your tribe with those who have the same qualities. If you want to be a hard worker and trustworthy, then you better get out there and find them.

7. The toilet dress is your salvation.

I mentioned Kurt earlier. Kurt is a great story teller. During one of our get togethers I was bemoaning a situation that was in front of me. It was a sucky one. It made me feel defeated and pretty crappy. Kurt started telling us a story about a student who, during a competition, had her dress dunked in the toilet by her competition. She had an extra outfit to wear, which was besides the point. The point was that something super sucky happened to her. It could have made her feel defeated and crappy and she could have given up. When she was asked if she was going to report this juvenile act of sabotage she said that she was not. She stood confidently and said “I’m just going to go out on stage and win”.

People do crappy things. They let you down. They put you into impossible positions that you did not deserve. You will lose sometimes. Others will do things to sabotage your success. How you decide to handle these situations is totally up to you. However, standing confidently in the middle of the chaos and saying “I’m just going to go out there and win” says a lot about you. You can not control others, but you can control you, so do it the best way you can possibly do. The toilet dress is not the curse. Giving up because of it, is.

Our lives are built on wins and losses.  My friend Penny (and maybe I have said this before) once said that what constitutes a win is different for each person.  In their eyes, they lost, but in the eyes of others, it is an obvious win.  For each person, there is a threshold of what burden they can carry to obtain that win.  I have met people who crumble under the smallest of criticisms and others who have carried unbelievable hardship that the mere fact that they are still standing is a true miracle of faith and courage.

This last week our news feeds filled with the message that Robin Williams had passed away.  Suicide.  I watched the messages filled with sadness, anger, disappointment, disbelief.  For many, his death was proof of the structure of win or lose.  He lost.  It was a loss.  How could someone who was so talented with an amount of wealth that many of us would delight in having, be so deep in despair that he would take his own life.

We will never have answers to the questions that are asked.  We will never be able to quantify the burden that he carried in his life, and how all those other envious qualities simply did not balance it out.

So I sit here tonight, thinking about what burdens I carried.  What things were dragging behind me, tied to my soul, weighing me down.

In the bedroom next to me, a 7 year old boy sleeps, no longer mad at his sister who antagonized him before bed, which rattled his over tired, 3rd day of school, out of schedule temperament and sent him into a temper tantrum.  Tomorrow he will wake up and stretch and smile at me as I say “good morning” to him.  And my heart will be full.  It will untie a burden and I will give him his morning hug with a smaller burden to carry.

In the bedroom across the hall, a 12 year old girl sleeps. She went to bed early tonight, and yesterday.  She started 7th grade, and she is so brave and loved.  She is so relaxed and she knows that she is beautiful.  In the morning she will come downstairs and do her routine, with no complaints.  I will stand, leaning against the kitchen counter, and stare at her, amazed at what she is becoming.  She will catch me at some point, and give me that look and roll her eyes.  And my heart will be full.  It too will untie a burden and I will have an even smaller burden to carry.

At some point, I will look in the mirror.  For a brief second I will have a moment of self doubt.  Of self reflection of what burdens still face me today.  I will let the losses outweigh the wins.  I will forget the last 2 years of personal success and I will dwell on the losses that seem so overwhelming right now.  It will just be for a moment though.  Because my life, those surrounding me, those who are helping me carry my burdens, is a win.

I win because I have the courage to dream.

I win because I have the courage to try.

I win because I have worked as hard as I humanly could.

I win because I am a stronger person today then I was yesterday.

I win because I will learn from my mistakes and will never ever, ever repeat them.

I win because no one else, in this whole entire world, can tell me that I lost because they can not apply their structure of win or lose and make me live by their evaluation.

I win because I am blessed.

I win.

You are the only one who gets to define your win.  You are the only one who knows what that win means and how much it is worth to you or how hard it was to accomplish.  To one person, getting out of bed and facing the world is just a daily routine.  To others, it takes every single ounce of energy, will power, endurance and courage to push back the blankets and put their feet on the ground.  We as society, do not get to quantify that win.  Ever.

I wrote about a speaker, Chase Jarvis, at the 2014 Big Omaha earlier this year. One of the key things he felt that everyone needed to help them unlock their creativity was to “Find Your People”.

We have all had our people in life.  Some come and go and others are there through the years.  Some we outgrow, outneed, mature from and realize that they aren’t the safe environment that we thought they were.  Every single one though holds significant value on how they impacted our lives and helped us to be a better (or worse) person.

I met Stacy in 8th grade.  I don’t remember exactly how we came to be friends, I just remember that we did.  I was the new kid in school, knew no one, wore dirt poor clothing and was never created for the “in” crowd.  Some how, her and I found each other in this big middle school and we clicked.  Stacy and I have gone through a lot, both as individuals and as a people.  I’ve watched as Stacy was given a burden of pain that no girl should have to endure with the illness of her brother.  I stood at his funeral and my heart ached for her.  I didn’t know how to help her because all I wanted to do was to make this… this horrible, painful, heart wrenching life altering event, to not have happened.

We met our husbands and were in each other’s wedding.  We stood by each other as those marriages crumbled into pieces.  We would go months, even years, without talking, and something would bring us back onto the same path, and it always felt like we were never apart.  There were times when we hated each other.  No… hated was the wrong word.  We were so incredibly hurt by actions each side had taken.  But we got over it.  28 years after we met, she is still a part of my people.  She is my compass.  My home.  My constant.

I met Jennie and added her to my photography people.  Her passion for photography clearly outweighs mine but we make one heck of a group together, as we each go for different angles on same subjects.  I like her people photography much better then my own.  She knows how to capture the warmth of her subjects.  Me.. I just want to take pictures of bugs.  Jennie is also on my fashionista people.  She is the one who gets 42 text photos with the words “what about this one?” regarding the next outfit I tried on.  I secretly think she wants to accessorize me 

I have a business people.  I met Amber and Jill through Ladies who Launch.  Both of these ladies are acutely aware of my social networking issues and they have gone to great measures and consideration to find opportunities where I could continue to build confidence with life lines.  Amber knows that if it is a Q & A type of meeting, I’m totally comfortable speaking in front of people.  She knows that sitting me at a table full of strangers would leave me mortified and looking for the door.  Jill has sat with me many times when I am sure all she wanted to do was mingle.  I am forever grateful for what they have done.  They push me too.  They do it with encouragement and positive excitement.  You CAN do this.   They never leave me totally in my happy place, because they know that I need that gentle reminder that sitting still gets you no where.  Along the way, we have picked up more folks to our people.  Patti has to be one of the nicest attorneys I’ve ever met.  She also has the most beautiful smile and her love of music is one that equals mine.  Jenn constantly delights me with her sarcastic banter and no bullshit attitude to what needs to be done.

Find your people.  Surrounding yourselves with them.  Realize that you need them as much as they need you.  Always find ways to make their lives better, because they are always there trying to do the same for you.  Don’t neglect your people.  Nurture them.  They are wonderful things and the only people out there that don’t care if your overweight, socially awkward, unfashionable, highly sarcastic and a bit of a pessimist.  They don’t care about that crap…

My husband left me last week.

For the last 18 years, my husband has been a huge supporter of my crazy “work for myself” attitude.  He has moved 15 times with me, from Kansas to Nebraska to Texas, to New Jersey and then back to Nebraska.  He hasn’t blinked an eye at any of these moves and jumped in, eyes wide open, holding my hand, into every single adventure I decided we needed to go on next.  He has watched as I made a living in web and graphical design, lead development engineer, e-commerce business owner and now software company owner.  He has put up with long nights, me putting me first, expecting him to pick up the slack, tending to sick kids.  He has taken the city bus to and from work while we scrimped and saved money and had only one car.  He rode a bike in 2 feet of snow to get to the bus stop.  And he never complained.  Ever.

He did the dishes, took out the garbage, and always had a smile on his face.  He loved my dry, witty, sometimes over the line kind of humor.  We would laugh at our drama free crazy kind of life and hardly ever fought.

For 18 years, he was my rock.  My Skippy Pops-Alot.  My sweetie pie sugar plum.  He was the butter to my peanut.  The ketchup to my hamburger.  The bacon to my everything.

But he left me last week.

He got in the car and he drove away.  As the tail lights filled the void of darkness, the realization set in.  I went to work feeling alone.  I came home to an empty house.  Trash overflowing, dishes in the sink, no dinner to be found.  As I laid down to sleep, I came to the realization that I had, at some point, become that person.  The one who couldn’t live without her significant other.  I couldn’t sleep.  The bed was to big.  Cold.  Lonely.  I didn’t want to cook for one.  It seemed so… so…. depressing.  I got up early, went to work, came home, lived in my bedroom, rinse, repeat, despair.

I spent the days thinking about the years we had shared.  He was the one who changed my IV drip when I was so sick during my first pregnancy.  The man who went out and bought me anything that I craved, knowing full darn well that I wouldn’t be able to keep it down.

He was the one who picked the peas out of my salad, because he knew that I didn’t like them.

He was the one who cried when each of our children were born.  He held them in his arms and he took on the full time responsibility of being “dad” to the extreme.  Letting those kids down wasn’t something he was going to do.

I was in a sad state of disrepair.

But then, like a knight in shining armor, riding on a black stallion, he rode back into town and back to me.  He got out of the car and told me that he missed me and that he never ever wanted to be gone away from me for that long again, and I agreed.

So the next time he takes the kids to his parents for a fun 1 week vacation filled with swimming and shopping, I can’t use the “I’m to busy working” excuse and must go with him… because lets face it, I have grown to kinda like him.  Welcome home Eric!  Hope you enjoyed your vacation!

 have been running my e-commerce business now for almost 9 years.  In those 9 years I have seen a lot of competition come and go.  I have been compared to them.  I have been mocked by them.  I have been beat by them.  I have won over them. I had a very incorrect opinion of the swarming current that competition creates in the industry channels.  My head is clearer now though.

With my new company, DigiWidgets, the decision was made pretty early that even though I could keep the technology exclusive to my e-commerce business, it would not be.  There was a month or two where I sat down and thought of how incredibly crazy that decision was.  The conversation played out in my head.

“But, we would have the upper hand!  Why would I spend so much time, energy and money, to create a software that someone else could use?! “

The answer was simple.  Because I can and because it is the right thing to do.

Recently, Tesla Motors announced that they would not sue anyone else who utilized their patents in good faith.  This is unique because most company spend millions fighting other companies who have infringed on their patents.  Tesla said no more.  They did it because they realized that competition was going to benefit them.

Carter Driscoll, a senior tech analyst at investment bank MLV & Co., told HuffPost that Tesla could be trying to entice innovators to build battery-powered cars that are compatible with Tesla chargers. Doing so would help Tesla become the industry backbone and expand its network of power stations without building them itself, he said.

So, if more companies build battery powered cars that are compatible with Tesla chargers, Tesla gets advertising from the other companies.  The companies win because they don’t have to reinvent the wheel and they save development dollars.  Tesla would not need to be the only one spear heading the network of power stations by themselves because now all the car industries who are using the Tesla chargers will be helping to build the network as well.  The more electric cars that were made decreased how much advertising each company would need to do to educate the public on the importance of those kinds of cars.  Electric cars would become the norm more quickly because all the players in the industry worked together.

I read this article “Why Competition is Good” and the clarity it provided me was mind boggling and it quickly firmed up what I already knew.

DigiWidgets was going to be software for the masses.  Not one site.  No exclusiveness.  No special treatment.  It was being built to solve a key pain point that all my competitors have, and if we could resolve that pain point, the barrier to bringing on new customers would be drastically lowered.  In order to make sure it had a chance to reach as many customers as possible, we needed a village to raise this child, and that is exactly what we are working to do.

I’ve been reaching out to my competition lately.  It has been pretty incredible talking to like minded ladies who have gone through the struggles that I have had for the last 9 years.  It has been nice to simply say “hello” and to do so without feeling guarded or worried that they were “out to get me”.  It was nice to have some very isolating walls be torn down and to start building a relationship of mutual respect and to share the same desire to find more ways we can help our industry as a whole.

Thank you ladies for opening your doors and saying hello back.

I read an article the other day about the CEO of PepsiCo and her philosophy that you simply can’t have it all.  You can read the article here.

I don’t think women can have it all.

I read this article with a level of appreciation that I most likely would not have had a year ago.  I started reading and expected the same wax poetic BS that I’ve read in so many other articles about women in the workforce and I walked away from the article agreeing with everything she said.  We can’t have it all and the fact that we carry this incredible burden on our shoulders that says “YES YOU CAN” is just that, a burden.

For the last 9 years I built a business in my home.  I thought I had it all.  It was my safe harbor.  It was where I could be an introvert, control the amount of contact with the outside world, and allow myself to never be let down by making bold and crazy dreams.  I love the business that I created during these 9 years, but I did not like the person that grew from this foundation.  Her lack of confidence, courage, and resilience was not the person I wanted my daughter to emulate.  Yes, I was rocking it as a mom, but as a person, I was letting everyone around me down.

Making the decision to start a second business, outside of home,  was a huge life change  for not just me, but our entire family.  I was about to turn our lives upside down.  My children were going to go from a life where mom was home 24/7 to a mom who maybe got home to tuck them into bed.  They were going to go from a mom who could volunteer for all the school events to a mom who would sometimes pitch hit it to dad since he gets paid vacation time.

You know, you have to cope, because you die with guilt. You just die with guilt.

There are still moments during this journey that the guilt Nooyi talks about creeps up and makes me question every single decision that I have made in the last year.  When my son looks at me and asks “will next summer be this crazy?”  or when he hugged me before bed and asked if I could just please stay home tomorrow.

I have my own coping mechanisms.  You have to have them.  Whether they are BS coping mechanisms or true logic driven ones, we have to have them to get through the day.  When the children spend the week going from one grandparent to the next, I tell myself that they are getting the benefit of building a relationship that they wouldn’t have had if I was at home.  As I get more confident in myself, in my businesses, in my belief that the dream is real, I tell myself that my children will echo this same confidence in themselves and that my son and daughter will grow up thinking “I can do whatever I set my mind to because my mom showed me that anything is possible.”.

But there are always moments, where I get scared and think “In 20 years will I wake up and realize that I made a horrible mistake?”

So to that, my answer is this.  You can’t have it all.  You can, however, have what you have and make sure that you are as invested as you can and make smart, wise choices so that your decisions, no matter how selfish they may appear to be, leave as little of a negative impact on those around you.  My children know that every Sunday, I am there, 100%, focused on them.  They know that I am always a phone call away and that one way or another, their dad or mom will be there if they need them to be.  They know that they are safe.  Loved.  Cared for.  Admired.  Adored.  But they also know that their mother is her own person a small percentage of the time.  And that she is doing some pretty crazy things in an industry that doesn’t always embrace women doing crazy things.  They have watched as their mother grew out of a self imposed shell into a person who has confidence, self worth and a healthy level of ambition.

You can’t have it all.  But sometimes not having it all has so many more benefits then having it all.

Fun fact… kool aid was invented in Hastings, Nebraska.

We are in day 35 of the nMotion program and it has come to my attention that I have drank the kool aid on several concepts that are taught in the program.

I believe if you have a question, you need to validate.  If you and your co-founder have a question and a different assumption for the answer, validation is even more important. Yes, one of you is going to be wrong, but that doesn’t matter.  What matters is that you no longer have a question.  You have an answer.  You shouldn’t build on questions.  You shouldn’t build on assumptions.  You should build on answers.

I believe that in another life, I was a 12 year old boy.  This becomes forever present when we are in a very serious discussion with a very serious person and the discussion goes to market penetration and all I can do is snicker and say under my breath “she said penetration”.  Yes, apparently I really am 12.

I believe that there is one question that you can ask every single mentor and it will throw them off, even for just a few seconds.  After they are done giving so freely of their thoughts, ideas, and experience, after they have given so freely to you, ask them, with the truest level of honestly and conviction “What can we do for you?”  Most of the time, they will smile and tell you that you’re busy enough, you don’t need to add to your to do list with things to do for them.  Sometimes, you get a mentor who has something you can do for him.  Share their post, support the community, use the software… They never ask for anything astronomical, but they do ask for a need that they see either in their business or in our community.

I believe that building a business requires hours of debate, sometimes fierce, with your co-founder.  That without that, you can not get to the core needs of your business and the needs of your customers.  You need to be able to compromise (not always so graciously) and you need to be able to say “I was wrong, I am sorry”.  You need to be able to shrug off the little things, and sometimes the big things too.  You need to be able to be kind and leave everyone you come into contact with happier then when you met them.  Say thank you, and please, and have a great day.

I believe that 1 hour in nMotion time is equal to 3 weeks in human time.

But most of all.. Brian Ardinger is always right.

It is absolutely no secret to my roster of friends that I am, by nature, an introvert.  If I can get away with it, I am the one skimming the edges of the crowd, trying to blend in to the walls and enjoying the opportunity to watch and listen to the conversations of others.  I am a thoughtful listener and tend to learn a lot just by being on those edges.  However, I know that life is not lived by blending into walls, so more often then not, I have become a reluctant extrovert.

I have a moment in my life that I use to gauge how I am doing being a reluctant extrovert.  I suggest that all introverts who are trying to expand into the extrovert world do this as well.  Think of one moment in your life where you anxiety, fear, angst, terror was so overwhelming that it prevented you from doing something you really wanted to do, and then use that as your gauge.  Here is mine.

In 2013, I attended my first Ladies Who Launch meeting.  It was their first meeting ever, in The Celler here in Lincoln.  To get there, you needed to go through a restaurant, down a flight of stares, through a small room into the bigger room.

7 days before the meeting… sent my RSVP and told myself that this was a GREAT opportunity!

6 days before the meeting… changed the event status on Facebook from Going to Maybe.

5 days before the meeting… changed the event status on Facebook from Maybe to No.  5 minutes later, after the huge dramatic argument I just had with myself in my head about how I had nothing to fear, changed the status back to Going.

4, 3 and 2 days before the meeting I purposely forgot that I was going to go.  It was easier that way.

1 day before the meeting, the anxiety started.  Back and forth I went on if I was going to go, I wasn’t going to go, I was going to go.  I would go through the pros and cons in my head and talk myself into going then talk myself out of going.  Yup, it is slightly manic in nature.  Not the “commit me now” kind but enough to just drive you a little bit crazy.

The day of the meeting.  I spent 62 hours picking out what I was going to wear (ok, it was probably only about 2 hours).  This was a process of trying on a shirt, looking in the mirror and saying to myself, “Nope, to red”, take shirt off, throw it on the floor, pull on the next shirt, look in the mirror and say “Nope, makes me look to frumpy” and so on and so on.  I finally picked out a shirt, blue jeans and my birks.  Having worked at home for the last 8 years, this was my arsenal of working outfits.  I thought I looked pretty damn good for a work at home, own my own business, trying to take over the world lady.  I did my hair, slapped some makeup on and confidently walked out the door.

As I drove, my confidence got sucked out by the forces that be.  I started doubting everything.  Was my hair ok?  My makeup?  My clothes?  Would I say something stupid?  Will I know anyone there?  What if I didn’t know anyone there?  Who was I going to talk to?  Who was going to be my safe place?  Would I have anything in common with them? Would they say that I wasn’t a real business owner because I owned an e-commerce business?  What if they laughed at me.

In the parking space.  Deep breath.  Look in the mirror.  Tell myself YOU CAN DO THIS.

In front of the event venue.  Take another deep breath.  Tell myself  in a smaller voice “you can do this”, open the door, walk in.

Go down the stairs.  I can still do this.  Get into the small room.  Dead stop.  Terror.

All these well dressed women.  Beautiful hair.  Beautiful clothes.  Big smiles, wine in hand. None of them I know.  None of them dressed like me, in blue jeans and birks.  I can’t do this.  How do I get out of this.  Some are looking at me now, standing here like an idiot.  I need to get out.  Now.  Grab my phone.  Pretend to be answering a phone call.  Take one last look around the room in defeat.  Walk back up the stairs, out the door, to my car.  Sit in the drivers seat and know that I was just defeated by myself.

Yup.  That is my moment.  I believe that everyone, introvert, extrovert and everything in between, have these kind of moments at some point in our lives.  The most important thing about all of this is that I took my moment and used it as an example of what I would never do again and it gave me the motivation to find ways to make sure that it never happened again.

The next meeting, I asked a friend to go with me.  I told her that she didn’t even have to sit with me, or even talk to me, I just needed a safe person in attendance.  She gladly went with me and I reluctantly had a good time being IN the crowd instead of on the edge of it.

Over the next year, my confidence grew and I learned new tools to make things easier.  I found little ways to really give the finger to my inner introvert.  From volunteering to speak at different meetings around town, sitting in the front row of Big Omaha (on purpose) to pitching at Jumpstart Challenge… these are all things that I would have never of done before that first Ladies Who Launch meeting.  When I have a really bad day and every inch of me is screaming that I don’t want to do a social gathering, I think back to that meeting and remind myself that I can do this.  I have done this.  I will do this.  I will be thankful that I did do this.  Most of all, I take a lot of deep breaths.

My best advice is this…

Find coping mechanisms.  Before any social meeting I take a few minutes, by myself, and listen to a playlist of songs that I know inspire me.  I have about 4 songs that always get me to thinking about where I have been and where I want to go.  I close my eyes and let the music do what it does and breath.  Build a foundation that reaffirms that this social event will not kill you and that positive comes from it.

Learn the way to start a conversation.  I research people.  I try to know at least one thing about them because its nice and because it helps me when I talk to them again later.  It never has to be anything huge, but it does need to be something that you are not fake about talking about.  I don’t talk about sports because I know nothing about sports.  I do remember children, and wives and hobbies or other things that the person holds dear to them.  If you don’t know them, asking them “Are you from here? is a great starter, or get even more general and ask about the weather.

Suck it up butter cup.  Sometimes you just need to walk up to a total stranger, reach out your hand and confidently say “Hello, my name is Stacy Carlson and it is wonderful to meet you”.

Surround yourself with love.  I love my friends and family.  I have people who will give me constructive criticism and others who keep me grounded.  I have some that are my go to person on business and those that are my “never talk about business” person.  All of them have one thing in common; they are positive.  Surround yourself with positive people.  I’m not saying that they have to be positive all the time, but by nature, they need to be positive.  Introverts already deal with a huge onslaught of self doubt (warranted or not).  What we do not need is someone who feeds that self doubt.   It sabotages everything that we are working to accomplish and demoralizes us in ways that we do not need.

Allow yourself to recharge.  This is a must.  After Big Omaha (a 2 day social networking event where I was surrounded with hundreds of people at all times) I needed to take an entire day to recharge.  So, the day after I did nothing but consume mass quantities of tv.  No thinking.  No processing.  No socializing.  The longer I do this, the shorter the recharge time has gotten, but I know that I need this otherwise I will get to a point where I shut down for long periods of time, which I can’t afford to happen.  Understand that you need this.

I don’t think I will ever be a true extrovert.  I think I will always enjoy being on the edges of the crowd more then being in the crowd.  And that is okay, as long as I don’t ever go back to my moment and relive that ever again.