Imagine this:
You are a stay at home mom with three kids.
Your husband has a great job as an electrician, but he works looooong hours outside the home.
And during the past few years, several major life changes have rocked your finances:
- Having a third baby
- Moving cross country away from all of your friends and family
- Realizing it’s best to enroll your older two kiddos in private school.
This was Chelsea Ouimet’s life. And in late 2022, she realized she had two choices:
- Live in a world of financial and emotional swirling, marital stress, paralyzing fear, and a whole bunch of limiting beliefs…
- Or, live in a world of taking action, showing up no matter what, solving problems, overcoming fear, and reaping the benefits of consistency, consistency, consistency.
WHICH LIFE DID SHE CHOOSE?
Not to spoil the ending, but we both know this wouldn’t be a very interesting story if Chelsea had sat and swirled.
But let’s go back and look at the bigger picture for just a minute…
Everyone else is doing it, so why can’t I?
Chelsea’s entrepreneurship journey started 8 years ago when she was pregnant with her oldest daughter.
She knew that returning to work as a nurse was a no-go as she didn’t want to leave her baby.
So Chelsea turned to MLMs (multi-level marketing companies), network marketing, a clothing boutique, content creation, and social media to try to earn income from home.
While none of these business ventures turned out to be winners, she a) learned a lot, and b) she didn’t give up trying out different business models…
And she most certainly didn’t give up on herself.
In September of 2022, Chelsea came across the 15 Day Business Builder Challenge…
And she completed it like a BOSS!
But then she waited.
She waited and waited and waited…
And she watched as lots of other people, perhaps what felt like “EVERYONE” in her feed, were making money online!
Yet there she was, still just waiting and watching…
Her hang-up was simply building the systems needed to run her business on autopilot.
That TECH stuff, yeesh.
It paralyzed her.
Fast forward 4 months to January 2023.
Things were getting pretty bad financially…
There just wasn’t enough money to pay the bills at the end of the month.
“I was like, this is it! I am done. I’m going to do something about it. I’m just going to make it happen for our family because I’m watching everyone else do it, and I’m no different.”
Did you catch that?
Chelsea finally decided to just frickin’ do it.
Keep in mind, she failed a lot in the beginning and made tons of mistakes.
For example, after she thought her systems were all set up, it turned out her funnel wasn’t working.
Then there was a problem with her email autoresponder and people weren’t receiving her e-book.
She surely missed out on several weeks of messages due to these tech problems…
MAJOR hurdles in reaching her audience!
Hurdles that could’ve caused anyone to give up and throw in the towel.
But she didn’t quit, she persevered.
Because she had committed to “figuring this thing out” and nothing was going to stop her.
Roadblock of the Day
Self-doubt was and continues to be a challenge for Chelsea, just like it is for many other entrepreneurs.
At first, she worried that she’s so bad at figuring out technology stuff, she simply wouldn’t be able to build the systems she knew she needed.
So she did nothing for MONTHS!
Once she had her epiphany that no one else was going to do this for her, she set up her systems AND they started working for her.
But then her self-doubt morphed into different types of negative thoughts…
Questions like, “Will this success last?” and worse, “When is this going to end?” creeped into her head.
And she’s not alone! These limiting beliefs plague business owners in all types of industries.
For Chelsea, the key to overcoming self-doubt was simply to take the idea of “quitting” off the table.
“I tell people, the only way you can fail is if you stop. If you just keep going, you will succeed. It might take months or even longer, but the ONLY reason this (online business) doesn’t work is if you give up. If you just don’t do it.”
Some folks might say to “Burn the boats!” so that you really can’t go back to your old way of life.
And while that might be a bit extreme for some…
…there’s also beauty in committing to a new way of life.
(NOTE: WE DO NOT RECOMMEND QUITTING YOUR 9-5 IF YOU HAVE ONE!)
In Chelsea’s case, her old lifestyle was NOT comfortable!
No one likes to be under such stress that it dominates your thoughts, becomes the only conversation you have with your partner, makes you cry every day, and takes your focus away from your children…
So she finally implemented the training that she’s taken months before, and made the decision to show up online 3 times a day, every single day.
And that beast called self-doubt?
One way Legendary CEO, Dave Sharpe, suggests overcoming self-doubt is to simply “act as if” you’re already successful.
Which is exactly what Chelsea did:
“I had it in my mind that I’m going to post as if I had already made X amount of money. As if I already have X amount of followers. And I’m just going to keep showing up even though nobody’s there.”
If you think about it, this is what brick-and-mortar business owners do, too!
Let’s say you open up a coffee shop.
You have a space, equipment, inventory –
To even open up your doors, you’ve already invested a LOT of time, energy and money.
And gosh darn it, you’re going to open your doors every day even if zero people come in at first.
Not only that, you’ll continue to turn on that “open” sign, market your business, and get your name out there in hopes of attracting customers to your coffee shop.
Not just for days or weeks, but for MONTHS.
Because it can take that long (or longer!) to establish a following, a customer base, and a good flow within your business.
The only differences between opening up a brick-and-mortar and an online business are 1, it’s WAY cheaper to start an online business!
And 2, your “storefront” is virtual instead of a physical place people can go.
That’s it!
Now don’t get stuck thinking that starting an online business will be easy, quick, or immediately successful…
Because every “overnight success” you see out there most likely had something in the works for years.
Eight years for Chelsea!
But one of the most amazing things about starting an online business is that if you can make $1 online, then you can make $100, $1,000 or $100,000.
The process is the same.
And as Chelsea shared, once you learn the process – once you set up your systems and commit to working a little bit every day – your success is INEVITABLE.
Take it from Chelsea: if you want to be successful in your online business, you can absolutely do it.
You don’t need a lot of time, and you don’t need a lot of money.
But you do need an open mind and a willingness to work.
Your business will ALWAYS be a work in progress, so treat it that way!
Just keep going, one step at a time. Keep iterating. Keep experimenting.
Obviously, Chelsea chose “option number 2” (a life of action and taking control) when she was faced with a decision to make…
And now she’s inspiring hundreds of others to do the same.
The truth is, everyone has self-doubt and limiting beliefs.
And everyone has responsibilities that pull them in different directions each day.
So what’s the one thing that separates successful entrepreneurs from “wantrepreneurs”?
Mindset. It’s all mindset!
Successful entrepreneurs DECIDE to invest time and effort into their business every single day, and then they go do it.
When Chelsea finally decided to make the move from spiraling the drain financially to actually doing the work needed to be successful…
She completely transformed as a partner, a parent, and as a person building the life of her dreams.
What’s stopping you from doing the same?
To hear the full interview with Chelsea Ouimet, catch the replay here or search for it on your favorite podcast platform. Be sure to tune in to Wake Up Legendary with Dave Sharpe every single weekday at 10am eastern for more inspiring stories about ordinary people achieving extraordinary things through their online businesses. As always, Be Legendary!
