S1 E-13: embracing fear as a passenger on your journey
It’s the season finale of The Colorful Futures Podcast! 🎉
Thirteen episodes, countless laughs, a ton of learning, and so much growth—I can’t believe we’re already here. In this final episode of Season One, I’m looking back on what’s been a wild, fulfilling, and transformative year and a half with my business and this podcast.
We’re reflecting on the highs, the challenges, and the messy in-betweens of personal and business growth. I’ll also get into how community, intention, and manifestation energy kept me grounded (even when life was a lot because man… was it a lot 😅), and how overcoming imposter syndrome, understanding finances (ugh, but necessary), and why celebrating your wins matters.
Whether you’ve been here since episode one or just jumped in, I’m so grateful for this space we’ve built together. This isn’t goodbye—it’s just “see you later” because Season Two is already in the works 😉.
If you’ve ever needed a reminder that growth, success, and even fear can coexist beautifully, this one’s for you. Grab a snack, your favorite fidget and a cozy spot to sit back in, and let’s close out this season together. 🎧💖
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker: Liora Natania
Hello, my friend, and welcome back to another episode of the Colorful Futures podcast. I'm your host, Liora, career coach, talent acquisition consultant, and the founder of Colorful Futures. In this show, we talk about all things related to careers in business through the lens of the lived experience of marginalized folks, people with intersectional identities, people who have been historically underrepresented in business and in corporate work.
You can expect to hear real stories, tips, and advice from myself as well as other guests on the show. And our goal is to help you build a successful and sustainable career where you can be your authentic self.
So this episode is actually the last episode of the first season of the Colorful Futures podcast. And it's really wild to think about where we started and where we are now. So what has changed in that time period? So much.
And we're gonna talk a little bit today about just kind of reflecting on the first season, reflecting on Colorful Futures as a business. We are now about a year and a half since I started Colorful Futures. And back in April, 2023, when I really made the decision to pour energy into starting this company, thinking about now, which is a little over a year and a half later, it's really weird to think about, kind of just that idea that I had back in April 2023 to now.
Even thinking about episode one and everything that was going on in my life then to now and how I was approaching the business, how I was approaching the podcast and just reflecting on all of those changes. The date that I'm recording this is November 23rd, 2024.
Twelve days ago, we had November 11th, so a big like, manifestation day. And I believe it was maybe a week or so ago that we had the full moon in Taurus, which for me as a Taurus rising was a very significant day. A very big day of continuing that manifestation energy, pouring into setting intentions, manifestations, connecting to my values, my goals, my vision.
On 11/11, I use that date to write out my vision, write out some goals that I have for myself, write out what my dream life might look like and what I wanna do, how I wanna show up, what I want for myself. And that time period was also really significant.
November is a big month. It's been a big month so far. We also have Mercury in retrograde right now. Well, it's like the shadow period. It will start in two days, the actual retrograde period. And so there's just a lot of planetary astrological shit happening that is influencing so many people, myself included, and just amplifying this sort of period of growth, period of change.
Right before 11/11 on November 10th, was the second anniversary of the date that I lost my dad. So that day was also really significant for me, of just reflecting on the last two years. What's changed, reflecting on my business was huge because a large reason why I started this business was because I had the opportunity to do so from losing my dad, from losing my job, from just reconnecting and being reminded of how finite life is.
And if you haven't, there's a whole episode I recorded earlier this season that was about how losing my dad impacted me, specifically around living an authentic life, showing up in the world the way that I want to, reconnecting to my values. So if you want to hear more about that, check out that episode.
Through defining the vision that I have for my life that I did on 11/11. And then doing this really in-depth, like, two-hour full moon ritual that I did for myself during the full moon in Taurus, different things were coming up. I was thinking about how do I build the life I want? How do I pour intention into the goals that I have? How do I manifest them for myself?
And also thinking about the business, we have this really scary and difficult political climate right now. That was also happening at the beginning of the month with election day and just the result of that and how that impacts my community, community of queer folks, how that might impact myself, specifically how that impacts my loved ones and just how important that is for me to support them and support my community.
And just all the implications of that really made me kind of revisit my own values, revisit the values of Colorful Futures, revisit - What does this change? Does it change anything? Does it change a lot? Does it change everything? And just riding the roller coaster of that, reminding myself to stay rooted and grounded in how I want to show up in the world, what's important to me.
Through all of this, I'm also reevaluating my business. I'm reevaluating, does what I have to offer make sense for what this community needs? You know, my community, the folks that I want to support, through Colorful Futures, are queer folks, are neurodivergent folks, are neuro queers. The result of this election deeply impacts that community, some more than others, but it deeply impacts them.
So I was checking in with myself of what is my responsibility as someone who does have privilege? What is my responsibility as someone who has a business who serves this community? How does that translate to what I'm offering? Is what I'm offering, does that make sense for this chapter that we're entering, this kind of destabilizing, scary chapter.
With all of this and through all of this, I leaned on my community. I leaned on my friends, my loved ones. I leaned on the CF team. The thoughts I was having about it, shared the concerns I had, shared everything that was going through my mind of, do we need to pivot? How do we pivot? What does that look like? Again, just rooting myself in my personal values and the values of CF.
Because this is really so much bigger than me as an individual. And it's important to me to remind myself of that, that it's not just me, it's the community, that we are in this together, and kind of finding a sense of comfort in that solidarity. It also inspires me to use the privilege that I do have to further serve the community, to support the community, especially in times like these.
Through this, we're also entering the end of the year and I'm looking at next year as a business owner and I'm looking at strategic planning and offer planning and I'm seeing how much our team has grown. So to put this in perspective, when I started my business, Spring, Summer of 2023, it was just me.
I leaned on friends to provide feedback, to send them resources and say, can you like, look at this, make sure there's no typos, make sure it makes sense, you know, and then at some point about a year ago, a little more than a year ago, I brought on a virtual assistant, Kristina.
Kristina is a close friend of mine. We've known each other for years and I needed help with some stuff. So I brought her on. We worked together for several months and that was a slight adjustment of, okay, I don't have to do everything on my own. I'm leaning on this person to help support me in the tasks that are draining my time and energy.
Back in June of this year, about five months ago, is when I made the decision that I was going to start the CF podcast. I had reached out to a prior client who had offered a month or two prior to help support me if and when I decided to start this project, to start the CF podcast. We talked and we decided to work together starting in July.
The idea, or I think it was starting in August, and the idea is that I record in July, and he would start working for me in August. And when I started the pod, if you've been here since the start or if you've listened to episode one, Do It Scared, I felt so much imposter syndrome around starting this show. I felt so much imposter syndrome of recording the first episode. It was really hard for me to get started.
The only reason I did was because I knew that I had hired an editor. I had hired Dev and I needed to get him footage. So I was like, I guess I better press record and like, whatever happens happens. Whatever I say is what I say. That to me was a pure definition of imperfect action.
I had made the decision to start the project. I had connected with someone else who was going to help me bring that to life. And really that connection is what provided me much more structure and more accountability, more accountability to actually do the damn thing, no matter how it turned out.
And if I go back and I look at that first episode, you know, my, my setup wasn't really cute. I had a blank wall. I was using my webcam. It looked like we were like, chatting on the most boring zoom call, but I did that. And I recorded a few more episodes and Dev and I worked together to improve my setup, to improve the quality of the show, the content of the show.
And now looking back, this being episode 13, I look at the show so differently. I feel so much more positive and optimistic and confident in the show and how I show up in the potential for this podcast and the potential of CF by allowing myself to try something. I had had a podcast before. I was doing all the work myself.
I maybe did a few episodes before I gave up and I gave up that business as well. So that was also sort of this inner script of like, you don't want to do the same thing. You want to take this seriously. You want this to succeed. And allowing myself to make a decision on making this project come to life, on taking imperfect action, even if things weren't the way that I wanted them to be.
If the aesthetic wasn't right, if I was shaky, if I, you my asthma was, was acting up. And so even my voice in that first episode, I remember just really having a hard time. I let myself go through all of those messy beginning steps that were kind of uncomfortable, going through the messy middle and coming to now where we've had a full season, 13 episodes. We've had two guests on the show.
We have more guests that have been recorded for season two, more to come. We're talking through, you know, the potential for the podcast, the potential for CF as a whole. And it's just really magical and very exciting to see this vision and be able to hold my fear and remain excited and confident in the future.
As I've been planning out the future of Colorful Futures and talking with my team, that's another thing too, is that we have more team members now. So a year ago, it was just me and Kristina. As of August, it was me and Kristina with Dev about to start. Now we have more team members.
We have a part-time Admin, Nicole. And because Kristina needed more support, as CF grew, as my responsibilities grew. We actually brought on my Executive Assistant, Lina, and Kristina moved into an Operations Manager role. And so now is in a more strategic position, is helping me manage all the projects and manage the folks that we've hired.
I've brought on other freelancers as needed, other contractors as needed, to support my client work as well. In just this season of the podcast, there's been this shift from me being a solo business owner with a little bit of support to being a fuckin business owner, where every week we get time card reminders and payroll reminders. And it's still so surreal to me every Wednesday when Kristina reminds the team to put their time cards in, I see that message and I'm like, damn.
If only past me, who pressed record on episode one, who felt so unsure if this was the right move, felt so unsure if all of this would be worth it, if only she could see me now. So much change has happened in the last few months that has allowed me to step into this new role, that have allowed me to step into my true authentic self.
Now I can navigate the world, navigate my business, navigate showing up every day in a way that is truly aligned with my vision for my life. It's aligned with how I want to show up. It's aligned with my personal values, my business values. And that's been really beautiful for me to experience.
I, you know, I sometimes get too zoomed into the day to day, the details of the day to day that I forget to celebrate my wins. I forget to really reflect on how much we've achieved because I'm just, you know, focused on the next thing.
Even when the podcast was launched, Kristina had to remind me to slow down and take a moment to celebrate that. And I really appreciate that. We all deserve to have people in our lives who will remind us when we aren't acknowledging our achievements and accomplishments because you deserve that. And that's something that I've been really working on practicing and I've suggested to others that they do the same, of taking a moment to write down what you did that day.
Write down what you did that week, that month. If you're going through a period of transition and you're reflecting back on maybe where you were last year, maybe you moved and you're figuring out what did I even do with this move? Did I do anything? Is my life any different? It's just really reflecting on that and writing down all the things, internal and external, that have shifted for you. And I'll bet you that you'll find more than you think.
And day to day, that could be things like writing down, I contributed to this idea. I reached out to this person. I made this plan. I texted back this friend. I prepped food. I made myself breakfast. I drank enough water. I took a walk. All of these things are important. And all of these things help support you living your authentic life and living within your values and taking a line to action.
What was really exciting for me was right before I did my full moon and Taurus ritual, I was again inspired to think about what the next year looks like. I was inspired to think about what do my offers look like? What does the community need? And, you know, I had created sort of this plan, this strategy for the rest of this year, for the start of next year.
And as we kind of were experiencing the election results, and I was trying to stay tuned into what my community needed, something started shifting and that left me feeling really unstable. My autism was like, wait, we're changing the plan? This is scary, you know? And so I sat with that and I ran some numbers and I checked in with the state of the business.
Now there's a couple of ways that I track the finances for the business. And the main way right now is I compare month over month revenue. So that means I look at what did the business make in revenue and sales. This is like before taxes are taken out and expenses and everything. So what was the revenue, for example, of October 2024 compared to October 2023?
And I'm not going to lie, my friends, I wasn't doing great. My month over month was low compared to last year. And I was worried. I was worried and that's, there was a lot of pressure that I put on myself of this needs to change, of what do I do? I need to make more sales. I need to make sure I'm growing.
So right before Full Moon and Taurus, I was sitting down and I was like, there's a different way for me to calculate where we need to be. There's a different way for me to calculate where we've been and where we need to be. So I started running projections and I'm not gonna get into all the details of that. You can DM me, email me if you're curious, but honestly, most of how I learned to do this was through Googling and using tools like ChatGPT to help me build formulas.
So I run the projections and I saw that based on the last year and a half of sales, that I actually was meeting the projections. And that was such a huge mindset shift of like, okay, this one way that you're tracking your business month over month, this doesn't feel good. This feels like there's a lot of pressure to change this.
But then if I change it to what are my projections, what's the trend of how much I should be making, of how much I will make in the future, I realized that I was doing a lot better than I thought. That in many ways, I was at least remaining stable. And I sent voice messages to my team that I was almost giddy of just like, wow, this actually completely changed my mindset.
This was such a shift of how I was thinking because before I was really questioning my abilities as a business owner, I was questioning, am I offering the right things? Do I need to add more stuff in? Am I even doing this correctly? Like, am I fucking it all up?
And after I rerun those numbers and I looked to our projections and then I looked to our goals, I really became intimately familiar with the numbers of my business and what I had to make, especially now that I have a team. I have a team that I love that I don't want to lose. I have a team that I want to make sure that we're earning enough revenue so that I could pay them.
And I want to make enough revenue that I can give them raises and pay them what they very well deserve so they can earn a thriving wage, not just a living survival wage. If you've worked with me for business coaching, you know that I always say to not run away from the numbers. It's scary, especially in the beginning. It's scary to see, what are you spending? How much do you have to make? How much does your business have to make for you to earn what you want to make?
That's terrifying. It reminds me of like, in my 20s when I wouldn't even want to look at my bank accounts or I wouldn't want to look at my credit card statements because the idea of it was just so terrifying that I just wanted to ignore it. I was very avoidant. And what I've learned throughout owning a business is that the more you let yourself see the numbers, the less scary it is.
Even if the numbers seem a little out there, even if you're like, I don't know how I'm going to make this much money. I don't know where this revenue is coming from. I don't know, you know, there's all this unknown, it feels better because you're not ignoring it, you're not avoiding it. And that is an important step of business ownership. And just really honestly, even if you don't have a business, that's important to not avoid the numbers, because the more that you get familiar with them, the more in control you feel, the more comfortable you feel.
So I was looking at the numbers and I was looking at the projections and I was writing out all of the expenses that we have. I was looking at, what did we spend last year? What are we spending next year? I was calculating the raises that I want to give my team and how much revenue we'd have to earn for that. And I came up with the numbers and it's way more than we've ever earned.
It's actually, I'm positive it's eight to ten times what we've ever earned. And it was exhilarating. It was so exciting to see that and say, okay, well, if I'm meeting the projections and I set these goals and I know the actions I took to earn the revenue I did in year one. And I already know the opportunities that I had to earn even more revenue.
I really know where I started backing off. So many times I would create a program or I would relaunch a program. I would set some dates, I would set a marketing plan. I would kind of implement the marketing plan in the beginning. I would start maybe getting busy, getting tired, and I would kind of back off.
And then towards the end, I would ramp marketing back up again. And I wasn't meeting my sales goals. I wasn't meeting my enrollment goals because I backed off. Because I would start to put myself out there. I would start to talk about the program and then I would second guess myself where I would see the momentum pick up and it would almost scare me and I would back off and be like, whoa, okay. Okay, wow. Like this is actually working.
People are enrolling. People are interested. And there was just something that kind of made me pull back a little bit before it would be the last few days of enrollment and I'd be like, I need to get in as much as I can. You know, we're almost, we're almost at the home stretch. So I know that that middle part where I would start to back off, where I would be afraid, where I would, I was, it was almost a fear of success.
A fear of like, my gosh, all of these people are actually interested. They're interested in working with me. They're interested in this program. This could really help them. It was a fear of that success of like, what does it look like when I actually meet my sales goals? What does it look like when I'm paying myself and my team what they deserve to earn?
And as I said, I think in my first ever episode, oftentimes we don't know what that ideal life, what that success feels like because we've never had it. It's almost like if you always have an endless to do list, if you always have clutter in your house, I know I do. I don't know what it would feel like to have a clutter free home.
I know that I desire it. I know that it, it sounds so good to have a clutter free and a clean and tidy home. But if I think about myself in that space, it's scary because I have no idea what that feels like. I've never had that experience. And it could be beautiful. It could be magical. could be, it could light my soul up and allow me to open myself up to so many other things I want to do.
But that fear is still there. And something that's been coming up lately in different aspects of my life is the idea of fear being a passenger, not a driver. Fear will always be there. I had someone tell me that they don't hear me say that I'm scared. This person was, they're in the early stages of building their business. And I talk often about how fear will always be there and like you, you just have to kind of accept it.
And he said to me, I don't, he said something along the lines of, I don't ever hear you say that you're scared. And I'm like, I'm scared every day. I'm scared every day, all the time. Especially as my business evolves, especially as I evolve as a human being. And as I enter new chapters of my life, as I enter new stages of business, new fears come up.
That fear as a passenger with me on this journey, so often wants to reach over and grab the wheel and turn around, wants to like press on the invisible brake that's in front of them. Have you ever been driving and like someone you're with is like a little bit of a, they're a little scared and they'll like try to press the brake even though they're not driving or maybe you've been that person too.
Kind of like the Driver's Ed teacher who like, has a second set of pedals. Like the, my fear passenger with every new stage, wants to just pump the brakes. And so if you remind yourself that they are not driving, they're gonna be with you.
Fear is gonna be with you, you're gonna be scared. Every day there's gonna be, there might be something new that you're afraid of. It's important to accept that fear is part of the journey. Feeling scared is part of the journey.
Just like imposter syndrome, which to me in many ways is a different form of fear, fear of being perceived, fear of not getting it right, fear of making mistakes. That's gonna be with you the whole time. It's what you do with it, it's how you accept it.
Whether or not you let it drive, whether or not you let it make decisions for you is up to you. But once you can accept it and accept that it's part of the process and accept that you have control, you can move forward with your fear. You don't have to let fear hit the brakes and stop you. You don't have to let fear reach over and turn the car around because you're the one in the driver's seat.
And so when I look at my numbers and I look at my vision that I set personally and in my business, when I think through, I'm getting chills, when I think through the potential for Colorful Futures, the potential for this podcast, the potential for my life, that energizes me.
And fear, she's in the front seat sitting right next to me, screaming her head off, telling me to drive more carefully, telling me to slow down, telling me to turn around. And I just get to look at her and laugh and be like, girl, it's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine. Put some trust in me as the driver. Put some trust in all the other parts of me that know that this is my truth, that know that in me living my authentic life, in taking a line to action, in focusing on this business, on Colorful Futures on the podcast, that is in service of community, that is in service of the folks that we support, neuro queers, that that's all that matters.
If we want to support people, if we want to make an impact, and almost every person that I support in creating a business, it's not about the money, it's not about the sales, it's about being in service of others and supporting others. Stay tuned into that, and it'll be so much easier to not let fear drive you. Because for me, possibly for many of you, whether you have a business or not, whether it's about business or it's about how you live your life, how you serve your community, how you go about your day, how you connect with others.
My therapist said something the other day that was, I had an emergency therapy appointment after the election and she reminded me to control what I can and what that could look like is, how do you talk to your neighbor? How do you talk to the barista at the coffee shop that you go to? How do you show up for your loved ones? How do you hold space for people in pain? How do you hold space for yourself? How do you treat yourself? How do you go about your day?
These are the things that we can control. And when you are rooted in your personal vision, your personal goals, the goals that you have for how you show up, the goals you have for your business, the goals you have for your career, when all of that is rooted in your values, it's so much easier to hang out with fear and not let it drive you.
It's so much easier to look at the potentially scary things like your numbers, your projections, your sales, your expenses, your budget, to look at the steps that you have laid out in front of you, the unknown chapters, the unknown future, and accept it and move forward anyway and do it scared.
I'm so grateful to have you with me on this journey, for you to listen to this podcast, to watch the podcast, to share it with your friends. To be tuning in, to giving me feedback, to supporting me and supporting the show. And I'm very excited for what season two can bring.
Like I said, we have a lot of ideas and plans. So if you have feedback for us, please let us know. You can send me a DM on Instagram. You can send me a DM on TikTok. You can email me. You can go to our website and find my email. And we would love to hear from you. I think even on some of the platforms, you can write a comment.
Whatever way feels accessible to you, I'd love to hear from you. What were some of your biggest takeaways from this season? Was there a guest that you really enjoyed listening to? What do you want to hear more about? Is there someone that you want to hear from that you would like to have as a guest on the show?
We've got a lot in store, both through the podcast, through CF, and I can't wait to share it with you. We will be taking a break. We'll be coming back after the new year and I hope that you also get a chance to reflect on your year and look to the future knowing that you've made it this far. You've survived every day so far and you will do so again.
And everything that you've achieved in your life so far in this year, in this month, in this day is further proof that you can do anything you set your mind to. You can do anything you set your mind to, especially when it's rooted in who you wanna be, how you wanna show up and your values. That's all we have for this episode. And that's a wrap on season one. I love you.
Thank you for being here and we'll see you next season.