On the 252nd episode of The Copywriter Club podcast, we dive deep into courage with Heather Hubbard. After some unforeseen events and challenges, Heather shifted from powerful lawyer to powerful CEO of Simple Courage. Heather describes Simple Courage as more than a mantra but a mission and movement to both individual and collective change.
Here’s how it all goes down:
Why the drastic shift from lawyer to Simple Courage movement.
What to do when we can’t get ideas out of our heads.
Making major shifts and strides in the middle of a pandemic.
Dealing with dysfunctional relationships and tragic life events and moving forward.
Saving face and not being true to one’s self.
The standards that are set by society and how to break them.
Why being uncomfortable can be good and bad.
How to choose or recreate your own stories.
The 4 types of courage and changing between each.
The difference between fearlessness and courage.
Showing up brave because you have to rather than wanting to.
How to figure out why we’re afraid of something in the first place.
Why it’s important to stay curious and color your hair pink.
Things we let slide because we think we’re being brave.
Leaning into your values and taking a stand for what you believe.
What we are actually afraid of happening when we have Simple Courage.
How Simple Courage can work in your favor if you allow it to.
The everyday effects of the different types of courage.
Listen to the episode or read the podcast for inspiration on stepping into your own power.
The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Tamara’s website
Simple Courage website
Simple Courage podcast
Heather's program
The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman
Full Transcript:
Rob: What does being courageous mean to you? Is it being brave enough to run into a burning building to save someone? Is it standing up for what you believe in, or maybe standing up to protect others? Most of us grow up with the idea that courage is a good thing to have, but we're not always courageous in the things that we do. Our guests for the 252nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Heather Hubbard. She's the founder of Simple Courage of movement that is helping people embrace courage and change their lives, and we think that you're going to like what she has to share.
But first, before we get to that, Kira is still on maternity leave. This is starting to feel to me like the never ending maternity leave. So I have my special guest hosts to help with some of the comments on this episode, Tamara Glick. Tamara is a copywriter, brand stylist, brand voice specialist, and so many things. She helps us with some of the stuff that we do in the think tank. Tamara, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
Tamara: Thank you so much, Rob. Man, oh man, I am so excited about this conversation. This is the deep meaty stuff that I love. Forget the small talk, tell me about your biggest fear and your deepest secret, I'm a vault. That's everything I want to know. So thank you so much for having me back for this one, Rob.
Rob: You're not getting my deepest secrets, but we'll be talking about some other things on the show.
Tamara: That's okay.
Rob: And also just as a reminder, Tamara has actually been on the show as a guest before, that's episode number 142 of The Copywriter Club Podcast. If you want to listen to what she shared there, all about like style, copy style, all of that stuff. It was really good interview, so check that out. Before we get into our interview with Heather though, I'm going to switch things up a little bit and instead of telling you about The Copywriter Think Tank, which of course is still available.
If you're interested, go to copywriterthinktank.com, but next week we are opening up The Copywriter Accelerator, and this is our 16-week program. We only do it twice a year. This is the last time that we're doing it this year. It opens up next week. It's eight modules, talking about things like mindset packages, processes, pricing, branding, getting yourself in front of the right clients, x-factor, all of the things that lay the foundation for a successful business.
It's not a course, it's a program that you go through with a community of other copywriters and as we'll be sharing in the free Facebook group and in other places, there have been some amazing copywriters who've gone through that program and just done really incredible things with their business. And so if you are interested in hearing more about The Copywriter Accelerator, go to thecopywriteraccelerator.com, get on the wait list. This next week there'll be a webinar all about pricing.
The webinar is free, so you can check the data out, learn a little bit more about the accelerator and see if it's a fit for your business. If you've done anything with us before, you know that Kira and I are into the hard sell thing, but we will tell you the information you need to make decisions, see if this is right for you. So go to thecopywriteraccelerator.com.
If you're listening to this between August 24th and September 1st, the doors are open, so you get yourself in there. If it's before that, get on that wait list. And if it's after that, sorry, you're going to have to wait until next year. So here we go.
Okay. Let's jump into our interview with Heather, with her story and ask her how she became the founder of Simple Courage.
Heather: It's a really long journey and a really long story, so I'll try to keep it brief. I was going through a lot in my life at a point in about, I don't know, 2011, 2012? And I started on this journey of really trying to discover who am I? What am I here to do? And why is my life a complete mess? It looks great on the outside, but inside, internally it's a mess. And so it was on that journey that I really had to start looking at my own fears. And it was during that time that I discovered the concept of Simple Courage for myself.
And I thought, "Oh, that's really brilliant." It was one of those like moments, those like aha lightning moments where I was like, "Oh, this is good. This is really good. This is not just for me." And so I wrote it down, I got a Sharpie and I got a post-it note out and I wrote down, Simple Courage. And I posted it up on the wall in front of my computer and my desk because I knew that it was really, really good and it needed to be shared with the world.
So I just looked at it and sat on it for, I don't know, five, six years, because this is what we do when we're afraid to bring something to the world. I thought it was too big for me, too big for my voice. Recently I was a lawyer, I was a partner at a really large law firm. I was a strategic coach and consultant, and so I thought everyone wanted my brains, and my strategy, and my advice, and that's how I would monetize my life.
I wasn't sure that I could actually bring a mission, a message, a movement to the world. And so it literally sat up on that wall. I kept just looking at it for years and years and years. I guess I was slowly doing just little bits and pieces with it. And in May of 2019, I decided that I was really going to develop a keynote around it because I was already doing a lot of public speaking, and so I did that.
And then in May of 2020 during the pandemic, I decided I was going to stop the podcast that I had, Hustle & Flow and move to Simple Courage. And the pandemic really did a number on my business. I used to do really high in masterminds, coaching consulting, and I knew I had to pivot. And I was like, "Well, if I'm going to pivot, why not go all in on Simple Courage?" And that's when you and I started working together fall of last year, and here we are.
We're recording this now in May of 2021 and we're about to do our founders launch. So it was a six-year journey.
Rob: Heather, when you said your life was a mess or whatever, tell us a little bit more about that. What was so messy? Because being a high-end attorney, leading new masterminds, whatever that sounds pretty great. So what was the mess?
Heather: The mess was that I had a lot of really dysfunctional relationships personally, with my husband, with friends, with my family, with my colleagues, with my bosses. And what I mean by that is I was very much a people pleaser and I didn't have very good boundaries at all. And quite frankly, I let people walk all over me. I don't think I realized I was doing that, but it was pointed out to me from a therapist when I was doing an intervention with my husband. There was a year when literally everything in my personal life seemed to be just going wrong.
My husband was an addict, I had been covering that up for years. My sister died that same year. I was in a walking boot for eight or nine months that year, because I tried to run a half marathon and had a stress fracture. It just seemed like everything was going wrong. And so I was showing up in the courtroom, I was showing up in board rooms being big and brave and fighting, and yet behind the scenes, it just seemed like my life was... Like I was a fraud, like I was a complete mess in so many different ways and yet no one had a clue, no one had a clue.
Kira: How do you come back from that? What are some steps you take when you realize things aren't aligned and I'm showing up one way, my life has a different way? What happened behind the scenes to get to you to the point where you were able to make those bigger life changes and business changes?
Heather: Unfortunately I feel like everything had to fall apart for me to be ready to actually make a change. And I would love to say that I saw it coming or I was being proactive. The truth is I really do feel as though I fell hard on the floor and was like, "Something has to give.
