We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sarah Raw. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sarah below.
Sarah, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.
I believe that self esteem and confidence are a skill, not something we are born with. I have read many books on just understanding what self esteem really is in the first place. Self Esteem by Caroline Myss and Worthy by Nancy Levin were both very helpful in properly defining self esteem and self worth for me. When it comes to confidence, that is more of an action based concept for me and I feel it when I am disciplined towards whatever goals I may have rather than the “win” or milestone itself. I develop confidence by doing – even if I don’t know what I am doing and the results aren’t perfect! Just the idea that I can figure something out that I have never done before gives me the confidence to do it again better.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I love learning and teaching – all forms of it and I have made my business around that one core value. My agency has evolved many times over the last 10 years so that I can stay passionate about helping other business owners reach their business and marketing goals.
I had left corporate in 2014 after feeling overworked, confined in a niche that I had outgrown, and feeling captive to the safety of the bi-weekly paycheck. I wanted to be free and so I did the “Jerry Maguire” and had 1 client come with me (and they are still with me to this date!) When I first started my marketing agency, I was catering to physicians with a surgical specialty, such as oral surgeons, cosmetic surgeons, and laser eye surgeons because that is what I knew and excelled at that time as a former practice manager and surgical tech.
In 2015, I started cycling as a hobby then and grew my Instagram from 0 to 10K in a very short period of time without really knowing what I was doing, which was creating content to market for the cycling brands that I loved. I remember thinking at time, “only if all of my problems were about bicycles, I would be a happy as a clam.”
In the years to follow, my content creation process had a life of its own and other cycling and wellness brands began reaching out to me for help with their businesses. My services offerings started to morph from medical marketing to social media marketing and later, athlete relations. My agency pivoted to exclusively serving cycling, triathlon and wellness companies and thus my daily challenges were indeed about bicycles and bicycles related sports. It was dream come true.
While I will always be passionate about cycling and triathlons and the wonderful brands that continue to make those sports accessible to all, my primary focus now is helping passionate people like me find their own voice in the entrepreneurial world. I want everyone to be able to do work that is meaningful to them like I did. I want everyone that feels trapped in a “9-5” to know that they have options and that it is completely acceptable to do work that they love, excel at, AND is lucrative. So that birthed Passion2Purpose, a membership program that I am creating that teaches people how to have their own “Jerry Maguire” moment with a solid game plan and like minded peer support. Passion2Purpose takes the 10 years of learning, fumbling and finally finessing the self employed realm in a step by step actionable plan so that they don’t experience all of the turbulence I did. I am so excited for this program, which will be open for registration on March 1st, 2024 – I truly feel that this is the culmination of the the last 10 years of business and life lessons that was meant to be shared for those brave souls that are ready to take the most important leap of their lives.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. Understanding how we think, speak to ourselves, and how we describe the world and circumstances around us. Words have so much power, for the better and for the worse. If we can change the way we speak to ourselves and the way we describe what is happening around us in a way that differentiates thoughts versus feelings, we can navigate our day to day with much less resistance.
2. You have everything you need to get started RIGHT now. Whether it’s business or sports, if you have a pen and paper, you can get started. If you have shoes, you can start running, and you absolutely can do a triathlon with an old beater bike. Don’t wait for the fancy gear/tools to show up so that you can get started. When I first started my business, I only had a tiny Acer Chromebook and had no car, which is what started my cycling journey – both as an athlete and as a business owner. When you create momentum, you magnetize opportunities to yourself. DO IT NOW 🙂
3. When you get the urge to consume, CREATE instead and you’ll feel so much better. I know so many of us consume to escape tough situations, thoughts, and feelings, however we become emotionally and creatively constipated when we consume too much of anything – food, drinks, social media, shopping, excessive busyness, etc. For me, my biggest avoidance/isolation tactic is to go to the couch and TV with sugary snacks and zone out when I am overwhelmed by my to-do list. When I feel myself getting close to the “burnout zone”, I catch myself by slowing down and thinking on paper, thus creating a “clarification document” that I can print out. This is where I take the ONE thing that that has me hemming and hawing, which is energy draining and emotionally taxing, and break it down in the smallest possible steps. Creating this “clarity session” document almost always gives me hope and energizes me to take action.
Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?
Having real life role models that you can actually relate to and get to know, even if it’s just a small glimpse of their lives. Being a witness to their success has helped me dream bigger than I could ever imagine and helped me to raise the ceiling on what I myself can achieve.
I have been very fortunate that from a young age, I have met many women that I really looked up to and could receive counsel from.You don’t have to figure everything out by yourself. The greatest challenges and milestones require the wisdom of many and that can come from the community you choose to be a part of.
DBT – Dialectal Behavior Therapy & the teaching of Abraham Hicks. So often, we do not realize that our thoughts are not our feelings and that our thoughts are not who we are. Our thoughts are is simply the words we use to describe the circumstances around us and if we can change the narrative, we can change the way we feel about what we are thinking. Being in your own head shouldn’t feel like a battle zone – learning observe the thoughts that play in our minds, identifying what is fact and what is not is an essential foundation for everything, not just business.
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