Welcome back to No Silver Spoons. I'm your host, Sarah Beth Herman, and if you've been here for a while, you know this place is all about talking about the real stuff, the raw stuff, stuff that might be a little bit uncomfortable to chat with someone else about, especially if you work for them or with them.

It's not really the highlight reels, but it's helping you figure out how you can find your own highlight reel. And over the last few weeks, I've been having all of these conversations with entrepreneurs who are saying things like, Hey, Sarah Beth, you have done so many amazing things. Tell me what you do and how you do it.

I'll duplicate it and then I'll be able to be successful just like you.  But the thing is, I have learned that it doesn't matter how much people know about you, it doesn't matter if they know all of your tricks, all of the secrets to how you became successful. I think it's all really irrelevant because there's one thing that helps you stand out from everybody else.

If you know anything at all about small business, you know that 90% of them fail. So nobody talks about the ones that failed. Right? It's the highlight of the ones that have been successful, and those are the ones we're trying to chase to follow, to get to know so that we can duplicate that. But if you don't have the one thing it takes.

To actually duplicate that or to create something on your own to withstand the test of time. If you don't have that one thing, you're part of the 90% that are gonna fail. And that one thing in my opinion is grit. You've got to have grit.  And I think in order to have grit, you've gotta be able to be mentally tough.

So that grit is what comes out. Today I wanna talk openly about something that holds way too many brilliant leaders hostage. And it's not burnout because I don't think burnout is actually a thing. I think when you have grit, you don't even think about burnout because you're like, you know what? I gotta make my rent.

I gotta make my mortgage payment, I gotta make payroll. Burnout's not a thing because I am fighting. For the success line. I know I just lost a client. I gotta get a new one. My customer left me. I gotta go find another one. My team isn't selling enough. I've gotta get them to make some sales. Like burnout isn't something that we're even thinking about as an entrepreneur.

We're not here to make excuses as to why something didn't work. We're only finding solutions, right?  So I'm talking about something that I think. It is holding you hostage, and it's not the burnout, it's not the time. It's not even lack of opportunity in my opinion. It's limiting beliefs, and I've talked about this on a couple other episodes here and there, but in my opinion, it's those quiet, sneaky little thoughts that tell you, you're too much, you're not enough, you can't lead them.

You'll never make it out of this job. You are stuck, and that's just how it is. Sound familiar?  If so, stick with me because by the end of today's episode, we're ripping those beliefs out by the roots.  I wanna start this episode by taking you back to 2012. I was 28, I was working in a town called Franklin, Tennessee.

 I'm gonna refer to this place as the Franklin office. It's the easiest way for me to recall it, say it, and not give too much information out. This place was unlike anything I had ever experienced up to this point. I was overseeing multiple locations, trying to keep my team motivated and steady, all while reporting to someone who wasn't honest about their relationship with our company's owner.

That dynamic made things heavy. It made trust nearly impossible. But what I didn't realize back then was that I was being prepared. There was a season coming, but the season I was in right now was stretching me into the kind of leader who could handle anything,  and it wasn't by accident.

 Let's start here. A limiting belief is a thought you accept as true that limits you in some way. Did you know that? Let me repeat it one more time. A limiting belief is a thought that you accept as true that limits you in some way. Now, in leadership, they often come masked as humility or being realistic, but really it's fear in disguise.

 In 2025, we are in what Harvard Business Review calls the clarity era of leadership where leaders are being asked to operate with emotional transparency, decisiveness, and even purpose, if you will. But how can you be clear with others if your own thoughts are clouded with doubt?  So I have asked some of my leaders, where are you at?

I asked some of my friends, where are you at? I asked on my Instagram stories, where are you at? Here's the common four things that I heard, and maybe I just heard renditions of each of these, and so I just kind of put them into what made sense. Not everybody talked exactly the same, but you'll get my drift.

So the first one was, if I don't do it myself, it's not gonna be done right.  Number two, I'm not cut out for this kind of responsibility. Number three, I'm not as experienced. I'm not as smart. I'm not as strategic as other leaders. And number four, I can't make a move until I'm 100% ready, until it's 100% done.

 Now those thoughts, they're not just annoying. They're not just something you're thinking about all the time. They're costing you money. They're costing you peace. They cost your team progress. They cost your company innovation,  and let's be real. They make work exhausting. They make your job exhausting.

They make your company exhausting. They make getting up and going to work, exhausting.  Looking back now, I realized something powerful that happened when I worked in that Franklin office. I started to obsess in the best way over the idea that every moment could be an opportunity. Even in chaos, even in dysfunction, I began to look at every interaction, every conversation as this possibility for growth.

That shift, it changed everything in me because I stopped focusing on the toxicity around me and I started focusing on the kind of leader that I wanted to become. One who made people feel seen, feel valued, feel safe, feel like they could come to me for anything, that I was their cheerleader, I was their support.

You see, I don't ever wanna be part of the drama. That's not fun for me. When I'm in a circle, I can kind of tell when that's like not my vibe, and I back away and I go where I'm actually supposed to be.  I wanna talk about grit for a minute.  I know some of you are not new to leadership. You're not green.

You've been in this for a while, and maybe you're just tired.  Grit is defined by psychologist Angela Duckworth as passion and sustained persistence applied toward long-term achievement.  So let's bring that into our language for a minute. Grit is staying in the room when the room gets hard, but there's a nuance here.

Grit doesn't mean staying stuck. It means staying faithful to the calling of leadership. Not the title or the position, but the calling.

 Let me just say this directly to everyone listening.  You were called to leadership with a purpose and for a purpose on purpose. That's not motivational fluff, that's actually real. Your grit needs to serve your calling, not your comfort. And let me tell you, being 28, 29, 30 years old, navigating personalities like that, especially in leadership, it takes more than professionalism.

 When I worked in that Franklin office, learned what mental toughness really was  because it took me knowing that I wasn't the problem, even when the atmosphere tells me otherwise. When it's just like pure chaos around me and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, leadership is failing. Oh my gosh, this team is all chaos.

I wasn't the problem. There was other contributing factors, but what I could control was me. I couldn't control all the outside factors. I can't change people's minds. I can't make people a certain way. I can't choose to change a situation. I don't have that willpower. We feel like we might, and that's why we try to become controlling these control freaks that are like, no, let me do it.

No, I'm going to do this. I got this. Or when it all fails, I didn't have this. I screwed up. I was the problem. But the reality is, I had to learn mental toughness was understanding what I can control,  what I can contribute,  what I didn't know then.  Was that this experience was actually equipping me for something much greater, bigger and harder than I would ever have to face.

This was like a baby position  because later I worked in a much larger company where the same kind of behind the scenes relationship drama existed.  By that time, I had learned how to lead without bias. I had learned how to protect the team and the standards and the company. No matter what kind of personalities were in the room, I understood that whatever was happening behind closed doors, if I wasn't in the room where the door was closed, none of my business, my business was growing the brand.

My business was being the best leader I could be. My business was leading a team.  Let's go deeper. One of the most destructive, limiting beliefs that I see in leaders, especially in women and in multi-business entrepreneurs is this, if they don't follow me, it must be because I'm not worth following. But the truth is that's trauma.

That's trauma that you have not dealt with.  Sometimes people resist leadership because they're afraid of growth. That change. It doesn't seem like a mountain they're willing to climb because for those that don't have grit, they don't wanna put a lot of extra effort into something that's annoying. That's too much, that's hard.

Why not just keep it the same so I can just do the same thing day in and day out, and I don't have to worry about all that?

 People are not following you, or people are resisting change because they are afraid. Not because you are failing. Well, let me say that again. Resistance is not a reflection of your readiness and let's call it out as a leader. When you're trying to move people forward and they drag their feet, your internal dialogue starts to spiral.

And if yours doesn't, mine certainly does, and it sounds something like this. I must be doing something wrong. I should have said it differently. I'm probably being way too much. They're going to quit and it's gonna be all my fault.  These thoughts will stop your influence before your team ever does, and a fresh lens for you is this.

Leaders don't move people perfectly. Leaders move people intentionally. Your words won't always be polished, but if your intention is purpose driven, you are on the right path. People in that Franklin Tennessee office. They started coming to me after about seven, eight months saying things like, you are a breath of fresh air.

 One of my team members who was 56 at the time, and I was in my late twenties, she said, this is exactly what I had hoped for when I took this job. That meant more to me than any other title or recognition. We were in the middle of a situation that wasn't easy. But as a team, we chose to rise above it together.

And to this day, I still talk to some of those people. We all remember how crazy and chaotic and toxic this office was, but more importantly, we remember the choice that we made to stick it out, to be leaders, to grow the business, to not focus on the drama, not focus on all the things that were going on.

Now, I'm not saying that we just ignore people who treat us badly or that those toxic behaviors are something that we should just entertain,  but the more you feed into something, the larger it gets. And when you don't pay it any mind and you just let it die out and you don't give it attention, and you keep your focus where you need to go, where your energy needs to be, it changes everything.

 This goes for any situation. You don't even have to be dealing with some sort of infidelity situation amongst the business that you work in. This can go even as far as when you don't have sales, and when you do have sales,  sometimes in business, bad stuff happens, but you can't lose traction. Your grit needs to stay in control and consistent.

 I wanna separate two words, the word performance and the word purpose. If you're performing to earn validation, you'll always be exhausted, but if you are working from purpose, you'll be energized even when it's hard. This brings us to that word, burnout. At the beginning when I said I don't think burnout's a thing.

When you've got grit and you gotta work and you gotta get it done, you're going for it. You were probably thinking Sarah Beth, you're crazy. Burnout's real. I've experienced it. Believe me. I have been exhausted too, but that's because I was performing at a validation. You see? I'm always gonna make people upset 'cause I'm not a perfect human.

I'm not asking you to be perfect.  But I am now working from a place of purpose. Some people say to me, Sarah Beth, you have so many things going on, you must be so exhausted. But I know when that person said that to me, that that person really means they're exhausted.  Sarah Beth, I'm exhausted  because I'm not working from the right place.

I'm not energized. but they might say something like, I love my business, I love my company. I love what I do every day. Huh? Do you? Let's get you in the right mindset. This is especially true if you're leading while battling your own stuff behind the scenes. Imposter syndrome, grief, family, chaos.

Business pivots. Life doesn't pause for leadership. But when your why is bigger than your what if you find strength to keep showing up?  If you're the journaling kind, the kind that wants to just get in your thoughts, get in your mind, and then get it out on paper. I want you to ask yourself a question this week and actually write it down on a piece of paper.

Here's your question, am I performing leadership or am I practicing it?  You know, what changed the game for me in those three years that I worked at that Franklin office?  Learning to start my day on purpose. I began setting the tone every morning with a few simple truths.  I'm not here by mistake and I don't have to prove anything.

I just have to lead. Well today, that was a grounding affirmation for me, and as I practiced that more and more, I learned how to lay down what wasn't mine, the gossip, the dysfunction, the drama, the trauma. And pick up what was mine, the vision, the joy, the clarity, the peace, the ability to lead from love.  It changed everything for me.

So what affirmation could you hold onto that could remind you? You can borrow mine. You are not here by mistake. You don't have to prove anything. You just have to lead well today.  All right, friends, it's time for our, that's good moment. Our space to breathe, to reflect and to remind ourselves what really matters this week, today, the rest of this year.

You don't have to believe every thought. You think leadership is not about being perfect. It is not about having the most organized and well thought out path. It's about being persistent with purpose. Grit doesn't mean staying stuck. It means staying true. Your voice matters even when it shakes just a little and your ceiling isn't real.

The ceiling you are seeing, it is made up of thoughts that were never yours to carry. You were not handed a silver spoon.  You were handed fire.  And fire forges leaders who don't just survive, they shift things.   So if you're in a place right now that feels like your version of this Franklin office, I want you to remember this.

Nothing is wasted. That season may be stretching you, but it is also shaping you. One day you'll look back and you'll realize it prepared you for rooms and roles you haven't even walked into yet.  Keep showing up. You are becoming the kind of leader who can handle more than you ever thought possible. If this episode spoke something to you, I want you to share it with someone who's battling their own invisible ceiling.

Screenshot it, send it. Start the conversation.  If you're ready to keep walking this leadership journey, the real raw, without the fluff, be sure to follow no silver spoons wherever you listen to your podcasts. Check me out on Instagram. Everything is linked in the show Notes below.  I've got more coming that you're not gonna wanna miss.

 And if you're looking for a mentor, a group, a place where you can belong and learn how to get past all those limiting beliefs, I would love to have a conversation with you. No pressure, just a conversation to help you step into the role you were always meant to be in. Until next time, keep walking like you were called because you were. I'll catch you on the next episode.