Does Fear Ever Actually Go Away?
On a pasta bar, ten years of teaching, and what actually happens to fear once you stop waiting for it to leave.
A couple of months ago, Susan came to me with a question.
Susan is my COO. She asked me: how do you feel about doing a pasta bar for a customer’s daughter’s graduation party.
And my honest first thought was: what is even a pasta bar.
I had never done one. I did not know what it looked like, what it meant, what people expected when they asked for it. Susan showed me pictures. She told me most families do this kind of thing through a country club, with a whole team behind it.
So I researched. And the more I researched, the more scared I got.
Because if I was going to do this, I was going to have to charge a lot. Not because I wanted to take advantage. Because I had never done it before, and doing something for the first time is work. Real work. Work that takes time just to understand what the client has in their head before you even start building it.
I did not want to disappoint them.
I was so afraid I would not meet their standard, or the picture they already had in their mind that I could not see.
So we gave the family the price for the pasta bar.
And at first, they said no. Too much. They were looking to spend less.
I remember thinking: okay. That confirms it. That is exactly what I was telling myself would happen.
Then a week before the party, they came back.
They said: would you still be willing to do it. My daughter really wants this.
And something in me shifted. I told Susan yes. Let’s do it.
Here is something I know about myself. When someone gives me a real challenge, I do not go in at a hundred percent. I go in at more than that. I go all in, because I want to execute to the best of my ability, every time, no exceptions.
So I started researching every pasta bar offer I could find. And I did not like a single one.
But I had a picture in my mind, and I wanted to make it real exactly the way I saw it.
There is another idea from Alex Hormozi that I think about just as often as the one about sucking at things when you start. He talks about overdelivering, about giving people so much more than what they expected that they cannot help but notice. That is exactly the standard I hold myself to. It is not enough for me to meet what someone asked for. I want to give them an experience they were not even imagining was possible.
So I spent an entire morning just buying decorations and ingredients. I wanted a specific kind of tomato, so I went to one supermarket for that, and then to another supermarket for a second kind I also wanted. I wanted fresh basil, but I needed the plants a certain size, so I went to one place for a bigger plant and another place for a smaller one. I ordered the tablecloths. I ordered the burners. I ordered the containers. Everything.
The only real trouble we ran into was with the power cords. But we figured it out together with the venue, and honestly, they were incredibly helpful.
The one thing I could not get was headbands to match the tablecloths. I had ordered them, and they did not arrive in time. There was nothing I could do about that one. So I let it go.
Everything else, I made exactly the way I had pictured it. The decorations, the service, how easy the whole experience felt for the family and their guests. All of it was intentional.
And it was beautiful. It was a great success. The guests loved it. They left us a review afterward that still means more to me than I can fully explain here.
Here is the part I keep coming back to.
A month later, one of the guests from that party reached out and asked if we would do the same thing for her.
That is the proof I trust more than any compliment in the moment. You can think you did a good job. Anyone can say it was nice. But when a guest becomes a client, that is not a compliment. That is evidence.
And this is what I want you to understand, because I think it is bigger than pasta.
I still feel like a fraud constantly. I felt like a fraud the moment Susan asked me the question, because I did not even know what a pasta bar was. I feel like a fraud almost every time someone asks me to do something I have never done.
But I do it anyway. Every time. And then I refine it.
I do not wait to feel ready or qualified. I take the chance, I do it the best I know how for the first time, and I let the next time be better because of what the first time taught me.
There is a line from Alex Hormozi I think about constantly: you are supposed to be bad at something the first time you do it. Expecting yourself to already be good at it, before you have ever done it, is not fair to you.
I know this because I lived it long before the pasta bar.
The first two cooking classes I ever taught, I threw up from the anxiety. Actual vomit, from actual fear. Not because I did not know how to cook. I did. I know how to make sauces, how to cook pasta, how to build a menu, all of it. But I had never stood in front of a room and taught a crowd before, and that fear made me physically sick.
Now, ten years later, I walk into a cooking class and I do not even remember the menu ahead of time. I do not need one minute of preparation. I just walk in and teach.
It took ten years to get there. The skill was never the problem. The fear was. And I had to be bad at it, terrified and shaking and sick to my stomach, before I could ever get good at it.
So if there is something you have been putting off because you have never done it before, I want you to remember this: you are supposed to be bad at it in the beginning. Everyone is. The people you admire were bad at their first version of it too. The only difference between them and the person who never starts is that they did the first bad one anyway.
I will tell you honestly, it is never enough for me. Even after a night like that one, I am already thinking about what I would do differently, what I would push further next time. I do not know if that ever fully goes away, and maybe it is not supposed to.
And I am so grateful for every person who has ever trusted me with something before I trusted myself with it. That trust means someone saw a version of me I could not see yet. I do not take that lightly.
I hope more of those chances keep finding me. And I hope, every single time, I have the courage to say yes.
Because even when you feel like a fraud, if you try anyway, you might be surprised how much of a fraud you actually are not.
Here is the part nobody tells you, though.
Even now, after ten years of teaching, I am still anxious every single time I have a class coming up. All day. It does not go away. It never got easier in the way I thought it would when I started.
What changed is not the fear. What changed is me. I stopped waiting for the fear to leave before I would act.
I think we tell ourselves a story that courage comes first, and then the hard thing becomes possible. Say the truth, once you feel brave enough. Make the change, once you feel ready. Walk away, once you finally feel strong enough to do it.
But that is backwards. I do not think the strength shows up before you start. I think it shows up in the middle of it, while you are already doing the thing you were sure you could not do.
You do not become ready and then act. You act, and somewhere in the middle of acting, without noticing exactly when, you become the person who was capable of it all along.
There is no shortcut around that. No trick that makes it feel easy first. You just have to walk through it while it is still hard, and trust that the version of you who can handle it is already forming, right there, in the walking.
Whatever it is you have been circling for a long time, waiting to feel ready, waiting to feel brave enough, waiting for the fear to finally quiet down. It will not quiet down first. Go anyway. You have more strength in you than you think, and you will only ever find it by using it.
This week’s question
What is the thing you keep waiting to feel ready for, that you will actually only feel ready for once you are already doing it?
Every week, I write one honest letter from inside the life I am building, the business, the book, and the woman behind both. If this resonated with you, subscribe and come back next Sunday!