Nancy Drew
There were times I was so overwhelmed with what to do next I felt I couldn’t do a thing. I was dazed, paralyzed with shock, fear and grief. What I learned – and how I transformed my life from that dark place – shaped my destiny and I hope will inspire you to take control of your own.
The first step is the hardest. You feel it when you try to get yourself out of the house to the gym, to pick up the phone and call that dream client, or be the first to say I’m sorry when you’ve made a total ass out of yourself. As an international speaker and business coach I realize it’s the number one reason we fail, we simply can’t get over ourselves to take the steps that need to be taken.
Sometimes the best action is to take the next step even though you can’t see your path clearly. Inaction causes pain and fear, making the choice clear – you must move forward.
As I take the steps to share with you the story of my own life I still have that feeling of resistance, but I also hear my own voice telling me, “Get the hell out of your own way. The reason you succeed or fail is you. Success and failure boil down to a decision: to take the steps that need to be taken – or not.”
As a business coach I see a lot of heartbreak in people’s lives. Typically, I get the call when things are spiraling out of control – business, relationships (due to the stress of the business), finances – and it’s all about crisis management. Especially as recent economic woes have brought companies who were around for centuries to their knees. There is a lot of uncertainty in our world today and what is needed is a strong results-based action plan with a supportive and strong partner who can help you turn it around.
In my work I share my own personal challenges of why I am telling my client to take specific actions and how I know the outcome. Therefore, the very part of me I’ve kept hidden has come to light; in fact, much to my surprise, as a shining light of inspiration for others.
This has become a mantra for me, as I move forward to tell my story, a story I’ve kept hidden for many reasons; embarrassment, fear, judgment, and the wish that I could forget about it. I did not grow up with a silver spoon. Like many other families, life was very modest. I never felt anything missing, even though we didn’t have a lot of luxuries. There were a lot of Kraft dinners mixed with hotdogs. Mom and Dad both worked – in fact Dad worked day and night, but we had a home, a clean bed and safety.
My big happy childhood memories include my first bike. It was a green mustang with a white banana seat and colored streamliners on the handle grips – I LOVED it! However, I succeeded in falling off the bike hundreds of times, landing in the hospital on so many occasions my parents were fearful the authorities would become suspicious. Of course that changed when you could clearly see how happy I was – even when I doubled my hospital visits as I started my quest to fly – using my own inventions – and started to jump from high locations to test my contraptions. The irony never escapes me – after falling on my head so much as a child I grew up and climbed the corporate ladder to the top of a Fortune 100 company reporting to Wall Street – brain damage… possibly?
My ‘never give up’ attitude has been helpful throughout my life, as l have continued my quest to fly and am now a student pilot working on my private pilot’s license.
My parents felt the need to try to teach me that as a cute little girl I should be spending more time on the ground in an upright state doing safe activities. With this in mind, I began modeling in my teens. My career and my ‘anything is possible’ attitude helped me to open my own modeling agency when I was 18 years old. I progressed to taking over, and selling for a substantial profit, an international modeling agency in my early 20’s. Early twenties, model, owner of an international business, life was a dream… until it wasn’t.
I sold my modeling agency once I became pregnant and planned to devote the first two years of my daughter’s life to being a stay at home mom. I fantasized about how we would spend our days as she grew. Her father and I lived together until the day I came home from the hospital and he was gone – along with all of the money from the sale of my business, leaving my baby and me with thousands of dollars of bills solely in my name. The reality of the nightmare hit home when he informed me that due to my new status as an unemployed single mother, who in his opinion was no longer a model, that I had no chance of keeping my baby should I attempt to recoup the money. I felt like I couldn’t breathe as I listened to his voice on the other end of the phone, staring at my sleeping newborn and trying desperately to grasp the situation.
Life had changed quickly and dramatically, but I didn’t realize the worst was yet to come.
I may have thought I’d experienced the worst moments when two weeks after giving birth I was on my hands and knees scrubbing caked urine off the bathroom floor from a hellhole of a house. I worked as a cleaning lady as my daughter lay behind my feet on my coat wrapped in her receiving blanket. Or it could have been when I did a photo shoot on the roof top of a building with my baby in a basket at my feet quietly watching me, or the many trips I took to the park to collect cans and bottles for money. I would do whatever it took to pay off the debt I had been left with and dig us out of the hole we were in. I was working four jobs all at once; bill collectors called continuously as I tried to pay down the debt as fast as I could. But still the worst had yet to come.
That worst night came when my baby and I were forced to hide and spend the night in a shopping mall. We had nowhere to go and no money to pay for a hotel. I say we spent the night there but I can assure you there was no sleep happening. I was trying to make things right, I was trying to be a good mother to my child, and yet here we were. I felt like a complete failure. It was cold and I was hidden in a corner trying to keep her warm as the tears were silently streaming down my face onto her little head. I kept wiping them away trying to keep both myself and her silent so no one would discover us.
I was scared. I was afraid we might not make it through the night without getting raped or abused. Every noise made my body tense and my stomach want to be sick. I couldn’t believe I had allowed this to happen to my child. I couldn’t believe this was the life I had provided. I was so ashamed. No one even knew this was the life we were leading as I hid what was going on with excuses and lies of us doing OK.
I didn’t want to lose my daughter due to not being a capable parent. Did I do the right thing? It sure didn’t feel like it. But I did the only thing I knew, the only option I could see I had. I knew all those other moments were nothing compared to the fear and shame I felt that night. It was the longest night of my life, and by far my worst moment.
The short story is that I paid off all the debt within a year, by creating and working a step-by-step plan that quickly moved my daughter and me to one of the best neighborhoods in the city. I established a life that she was worthy of; a life that included food, a bed and safety. People are shocked when I tell them that in my eyes I got lucky. I got to be the mom I wanted to be. She got to have a mom and we stayed together. I created a way to take the steps I needed and created a system I now teach to entrepreneurs and Fortune 100 corporations. Just like I couldn’t see the steps in front of me but knew deep down that I had to keep moving forward, now everything my company does is a step-by-step system. Coincidence? Absolutely not!
Lessons Learned
- We undervalue what we bring to the table and often overvalue what others bring. In business this can be applied to our competition. Know your competitor is also undervaluing their expertise. Take the steps to believe in yourself.
- Get over yourself! The reason we succeed or don’t is based on our emotions and what actions we choose to take. Life is a result of the decisions we make. Keep your eye on the facts and move past emotion.
- Recognize where your results are coming from and continue to do what gains you the biggest impact. Stop wasting time – go where the results are, then dabble on the side with new options when you can afford it.
- Big change takes all-out massive action. Don’t fool yourself that little changes, or temporary changes, will generate the big results you need – getting serious is the only answer.
- If you don’t believe in you it will be hard for anyone else to – you may fool some of the people some of the time, but you won’t fool all of the people all of the time.
There is no better feeling than knowing you stepped up and accomplished something worthwhile – keep going and don’t look back.
 |
Bio: | Nancy Drew is Founder of Drew & Associates, an international firm that supplies proven success strategies through training to help you manage your time, boost your sales and create authentic and productive relationships with customers. They have been helping business leaders, organizations and entrepreneurs around the world. Their workshops, tele-seminars and one-on-one coaching programs will ignite your passion for your business by providing you with the tools for successful business setup as well as creating money and revenue generation. |
| Website: | www.drewandassociates.com | |
[...] the Showcasing Women website to read an intimate version of Nancy’s life story. You’ll gain amazing insight into the challenges Nancy faced and discover how you can find [...]