Create The Future You Want With This Simple, Daily Habit

​A Conversation with Michelle Royal and Joseph Warren

Michelle Royal is a good friend of mine and a successful speaker, consultant, and entrepreneur. Now that she's found serious career success in these areas, she wants to write a book. Like most of us, she wants to share her experiences and wisdom with the world. She wants to make people’s lives better!

Michelle's problem: every time she sits down to write, she can't. She doesn’t know what to say. The responsibility to speaking to thousands of people is overwhelming. The complexity of the project paralyzes her.

Not too long ago she asked me how to overcome this writer's block. She knows I’ve written books and hosted hundreds of speakers and authors on my podcasts. But overcoming writer's block is often a mindset issue, not a "how to" issue. I could have given her a complicated calendar of deadlines. I could have shared some theory on what it means to structure a book. 
 
I didn’t. 
 
All I said was, “Open up your Facebook live every single day, press record, and say something. What you say is going to suck for six months, you’re going to tag me on each post, and the goal is to suck less each and every day.”
 
Simple. Show up and suck less each and every day. ​

Stop wanting, start doing!

​Michelle took my advice and ran with it.
 
“Now I remember that [first] day with intense gratitude,” says Michelle. “My morning didn’t go quite as planned. I ended up going on a morning run, and I was on the St. Petersburg bay looking for dolphins at sunrise. I opened up my Facebook live, and I thought “What am I going to call this” because it said I had to put a description. I’m going to call it Suckapalooza Day One. Then I started.” 
 
What a name! But it was this humble attitude of embracing imperfection and failure that allowed Michelle to overcome her analysis paralysis.
 
Michelle says, “At the end of the video, I said… I have no expectation that anyone’s going to watch this, that they’re going to listen to this, that they’re going to learn anything from it. I have no expectations that this is going to change the world, but I hope to God it changes me. And that was incredible because for the first time I started this process. This is a journey not just about self-discovery, but self-strengthening. It’s about when I show up when no one else is watching.”
 
This daily “showing up,” no matter who was watching, changed Michelle’s perspective on writing. She no longer had to have all the answers or the perfect phrases. Now she can sit down and write without pressure.

Start your own Suckapalooza!

Startup Nation, do you want to scale your business? Do you want to create an online course? Do you want more clients?

Why haven't you done it yet? Are you paralyzed? It's time to develop your own daily habit. 

The basic steps for a successful Suckapalooza:

1. Set a goal
2. Create a daily task
   1. A task you can do in 30 minutes or less
   2. A task that you can't get perfect
3. Find accountability partners
4. Do it every day

​Again, here's Michelle's process:

1. Goal: write a book
2. Open Facebook Live and record a daily video
   1. Takes about 5-10 minutes 
   2. She can't pause or edit. Live video only!
3. She has a Facebook audience (even her mom) who knows when she doesn't post. I told her to tag me in every video, too.
4. She's recorded a daily video for months.

The personal benefits of showing up

Suckapalooza helped Michelle reach her professional goals. She's well on her way to finishing her first book by the end of 2020. More importantly, showing up helped her grow as a person.

By showing up, Michelle learned to trust her inner voice and intuition. She doesn’t give her self-doubt the same power it used to have. She recently entered a fitness competition and her training has been more effective than ever before. She is still in the process of writing her book, but she’s making progress. Her daily Facebook posts (The Daily Mine) have generated hundreds of great writing ideas.
 
And in learning to trust her inner voice, she confronted inner fears. Her personal fear was sounding stupid. 
 
“I didn’t want you to think I didn’t have the answers,” she says. “But guess what? I don’t have all the answers. That’s impossible. And yet if I don’t share what I do know, there’s no way I’m going to get the richness of what that could possibly be or become. And isn’t that powerful?”
 
Startup Nation, let me encourage you. Like Michelle, you’re not the only one struggling with self-doubt, procrastination, and low motivation. Your big, faraway goals can be conquered. But you have to conquer them one step at a time. Be diligent. Be consistent. Show up every day. 

Key takeaway

As Michelle says, “When there’s nothing left in the tank, even just showing up is enough."

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Startup Nation, do you need your own Suckapalooza? Do you want a tangible, 30-day regimen to get you to your goals? Schedule a Spiritual Clarity Call with me where we can talk about a simple set of action steps. It’s free with no future obligation. What do you have to lose?
 
Check out Michelle Royal’s First 100k episode here.