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Laura Nicole: 0:00

Welcome to part two of our interview with our resident superstar assistant academy mindset master, one of my very best friends and also my one-on-one mindset and growth mentor. If you're just popping in and you have not yet listened to part one of my conversation with Jess, I encourage you to drop back to episode 17 and listen to that one first so that you are caught up on the conversation. And if you're coming directly from episode 17, welcome, we are happy to have you and I am going to get us back into our combo so that y'all can learn about how to implement the ladder of believability. 

Welcome to your Virtual Assistant Coach, the podcast for moms who want to make money from home on their own terms. I'm your host, Laura Nicole, a successful six-figure earning VA and coach who replaced my college professor salary in just five months back in 2020 after my daughter was born, and I have never looked back. I'm here to help you build a profitable, flexible VA business that fits into your family's lives, so you no longer feel like you're living just to work. Let's dive in.

Laura Nicole: 1:10

I know well, I don't know. I'm assuming there are probably a lot of women listening to this who might have the same kind of approach to all of this building belief stuff that I do, where it's like yeah, that all sounds great, but like how do I do it?

Laura Nicole: 1:27

Right, and you've already given us some tangible things of being curious about why are you feeling that way, or you know, being aware of your language. But one thing I've heard you share before. I believe you did in our building belief workshop the first time. That's inside of the program, but I would love if you could share for our listeners to your kind of theory of like building the ladder of believability, because I know that that resonated with so many women who listened to that workshop and felt like a very tangible way to do and kind of step into this building belief in ourselves. That feels like very big and very lofty and like almost feels impossible, right. And they're like I just don't even know how to start. Like how do I even take a first step toward believing in myself? Because this is how my brains work my whole life and that ladder of believability kind of broke it down in a very actionable way.

Jess: 2:20

So this is what I mean. We have all heard of affirmations, right, we've all heard, you know, speak affirmations, say affirmations, and people are like that shit doesn't work. I have said it a million times and while I wholeheartedly believe in affirmations, I actually talk about them. People don't use them in the correct way. People think, okay, I'm just going to say this all of the time and then I'm going to believe it, but that is not how our brain works. It is helpful to use affirmations. I think of affirmations as a supplement. Say, you were going to start to lose weight and somebody said, if you take this supplement, it's going to help, you know, aid you in your weight loss. You don't take this supplement to lose the actual weight. You do the work and you take the supplement to aid in that process. It's just supplementation.

Jess: 3:05

So are affirmations. Affirmations are there to help you repetitively think, and when we repetitively think, we solidify a belief over and over again. But we have to actually give some evidence to our brain in order to start that process. So we're not going from zero belief to holy shit, I'm the hottest bitch in the room, I can do anything. That's not a realistic goal and I would never tell. I'm still, you know, 11 years in and I'm still building belief in myself. Am I miles and miles and miles and centuries away from where I started? Absolutely Anybody that knows me is like I don't even can't even recognize you yet. I still have so much more to go.

Jess: 3:37

But it's a process and understanding that it's a process is the greatest gift that you're going to give yourself on that journey to belief and confidence and understanding that it's not always going to be there. The belief is not always going to be present every single day, 24/7. It's just going to be something that you can obtain easier and have an underlying root of belief in yourself and so, in a ladder of believability, it's just creating micro wins. It's seeing throughout your day like what have you done? What have you accomplished? Something that my therapist taught me a long time ago was like you know, you have survived 100% of your hardest days and when we can look at that, that's evidence that we can do shit. Right, if you can do something have a hard conversation with one of your children, that is. That's incredibly difficult, right? If you can do that, boom, you've just built a little bit of belief. So something that you can do and Laura has actually shown me what she does, or what she names it.

Jess: 4:37

I call it just like a journal of your wins, like just documenting wins in every single day. And Laura has shown me hers on her phone in her notes section with this so perfect. It says of course she did, and then listing all of the things that you've done. And so when it comes especially to building a business online and especially in VA work, you want to document every single win. You do that day. If you reach out to somebody, if you stayed in a conversation even though it felt uncomfortable, when you replied to a DM, when you didn't wait hours to open it because you were too afraid of what it was going to say, or too afraid of what you were going to say, or when you sent a message and didn't delete it or resay it you know a bunch of times or overthink it. Those are all incredible wins that you can bank every single day and pour into your belief chart. That's where you have to start. You have to start by the little wins and stacking them, just like you've stacked all of your failures and your mistakes over all of the years that you've been alive. Now we need to do like reverse psychology and stack only the wins and focus on those and understand that the more we do that, the greater that we start to believe in ourselves. And it's not some shift that you're going to see overnight, it's not just the oh my God, today I believe in myself. You're going to see it when you take action where you used to hesitate before, and then that becomes an even bigger win. Then that goes into, you know, your winning journal your of course she did journal, where you're like “oh my God, I used to, you know, think so long on this” or “I couldn't even do this before” and like look at me being able to show up a real life scenario for myself on when I realized I built belief.

Jess: 6:13

I have been speaking on calls for five years, but my very first one I like wanted to throw up. And then my second one that I was asked to, like sweaty palms, like I want to puke. This doesn't feel good. Why am I doing this? Although I loved doing it, it was getting to that point and I did. I never backed out, I always did it.

Jess: 6:32

And then one time I was just like I don't even get scared or nervous anymore because I've learned as a public speaker. My greatest fear is that I'm going to say the wrong thing or my brain is going to go blank, and then I'm not going to know where to go from there and I found myself saying no, but you always catch yourself. You're so good in that time because you always just think of another thing to say and I remember thinking so this is what positive self-talk looks like. Oh my gosh, this is. I actually believe in myself. Is this what's really happening here?

Jess: 7:02

And I had been using that without realizing that. I was using that because I was just banking that win on every time I get on a call, I deliver. Every time I get on a call, that that feeling in my stomach goes away. Every time I get on a call, I do show up and I can. And I was banking that over and over again, improving to myself. So it's not about being able to look at yourself in the mirror tomorrow and know that you are just the most incredible human being in the world, which you are, but you're not going to get there for a very long time. It's just saying at the end of the night, when you're washing your face and you're staring at yourself back in the mirror like I did good today. I did some good things today and I actually have evidence. Let me pull this out and read it before I go to bed and understand that I did do good things today and I overcame a lot. And the more you do that, the more of that belief is just going to build in you.

Laura Nicole: 7:51

Yeah, and I think it's so smart to write them down because they're so easy, like in the moment right, like you might feel proud for a second, but it's also very easy to forget. It's very easy to forget about the win and forget about, you know, feeling proud of yourself in that moment. But if you take the second to go jot it down, there's times that I go to add something to this list and I'm like whoa, there's a lot of stuff on this list. You know what I mean. But if I didn't have them written down, it'd be so easy to forget all of these things that had happened prior. But then it's like that visual reminder.

Jess: 8:28

It's not even just so much forgetting, it's almost a block, right, because we're so trained to see the opposite that we literally can't even see what's in front of us. And so if you're not writing it down and making a conscious effort to see it on paper and there's something to be said about, like typing the words or writing the words that as because you read them, as you write them right, and you're solidifying it, because you're focused on what you're writing and your brain can only focus on that, and so it's like you, finally, are giving that attention that's owed to that thing of like this is what I did good today. And so you're like, oh wait, holy shit, I did like. That was. You know, I did overcome something here, because our brain just naturally, in the world that we live in and this isn't just, you know, specific to you and I think that that's the biggest thing for people to understand that nobody is really out here just starting with belief, right, they pretty much all started with zero and they had to learn how to believe in themselves at some point in their life, and so this isn't just tailored specifically to you. You're not alone on this Island of like why can't I just believe in myself, understand that I've talked to hundreds and hundreds of women and this is a huge thing for every single woman. And so just retraining your brain and this is how you do it by seeing the words, by writing them, by reading them, and don't just stop at writing them.

Jess: 9:47

Put an alarm in your phone that says like an hour before bedtime where you have to read it before you go to bed. And that is the most potent energy right before bed, that like of seeping into your subconscious, because you're on that barrier of consciousness and subconscious and unconsciousness of going to sleep, and so like the you know veil for lack of better term is really thin of just like being that switching mode. And where do we want to imprint this stuff? In our subconscious, because that's where our beliefs live and so the closer we can get to that. That's why bedtime is key to thinking those thoughts. So if you read them, then you can lay down, close your eyes, think of all of those things you just read and then fall asleep, and that's going to help the process go quicker, especially in your subconscious.

Laura Nicole: 10:31

I love that. I love it. It's all so good. It's just all so good, it's so good. Thank you so much. There's so many more things. I feel like you and I could sit here and talk for like literally hours on end about all of this stuff, but we have a lot of busy mamas listening, so there's so much goodness in here that they can take away so many actionable things. I would love to hear from y'all whatever stood out from you, you can always send a text back to the show in the show notes, send me a DM and let me know. Better yet, send Jess a DM over on Instagram. She always has her DMs open. She loves to chat. Like she said, she truly, genuinely, really enjoys her conversations with all of the women in the Superstar Assistant Academy world. So, Jess, if you want to tell everybody where they can find you, how they can reach you.

Jess: 11:30

Yes, so we. I will give Laura my email subscriber list. That is where. That's where a lot of fun happens. Follow me on Instagram. That's where I'm super active, you can DM me, talk directly to me. I will answer your message. I will chat with you for a second.

Jess: 11:39

I love it. That gives me energy. I love being able to connect and especially knowing what hit for you. Like that is what fuels me. It's more than money to me. Like that is what people love. Like they think I want abundance in dollars and I'm over here. Like I want abundance in knowing that, like I delivered something to somebody. Like it genuinely fuels me. So find me there. But also an email list. We have a lot of fun over there. I literally get feedback from people that are like I love being on your email list. I say I give a lot of free coaching, a lot of really good nuggets. It's not just me selling to you. It is a space where I'm like going to deliver what I coached a one-on-one client on that could help you that you know, always something. That's where you can take something away from it and apply it to your life. So email and over on Instagram @jess.schmenk, and we'll drop that in the show notes too.

Laura Nicole: 12:30

Yeah, absolutely yeah, the emails are fire like they are. They're just through and through, like what you get here is what you get in your inbox. A million percent.

Jess: 12:42

Oh, and I have, I forgot, sorry. I have a private podcast where you can just hear me yap, and they're short and sweet, but it's usually me out walking my dog in the middle of nature, just talking away on whatever is on my mind or my heart or what I heard and, they're just like little tough love truth bombs. So come knowing that I always deliver in a tough love tone and it's just meant to help you grow. But yeah, we'll put that as the link and you can subscribe to my private podcast and it'll drop you into my email subscribers too.

Laura Nicole: 13:17

Amazing. Yes, we will put all of the things down in the show notes so that y'all can get as much of Jess in your life as you want, which I'm sure is a lot. Y'all need it. Okay, you hear me, you need it. You need it. Take advantage, because it will help you level up a hundred percent. And then also, just as a little teaser for the SAA women that we do have listening, we're going to have some more Jess being brought to you inside of SAA soon. I will be dropping more details in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for that, but y'all already get a taste of her inside SAA, and now she is going to be a full-blown member of the team and bringing insight and impact and power and perspective to you guys throughout your entire process of becoming a VA, and I literally cannot wait. It's the best thing ever.

Jess: 14:11

You can't see me right now, but I'm dancing. I'm literally so excited. When Laura came to me with what she's talking about, I was like, yeah, like science he'll deliver. Let's fucking do it. Absolutely. I'm honored and I just, I just am like picturing the women that are already in SAA. They're just, they're going to I know they're going to freak out because it's going to be something that it's going to serve you on a whole new level and it's actually quite brilliant to have as a part of this course.

Laura Nicole: 14:39

So I'm excited. Me too, I am so excited, and you discourse, so I'm excited to know how that is going to be. Me, too, I am so excited, and you guys will get more details soon. 

Thanks for hanging out with me today on your Virtual Assistant Coach. If you loved this episode, be sure to share it with your best friend, your sister or even your favorite coworker, who you know wants to start making a flexible income. I'll see you all next time.