[304] Get in the Room (Your Confidence Will Catch Up)

Some weekends don’t just feel fun, they snap you back into yourself. After the Fredericton Women Show and the She Leads women’s panel, I walked away with that buzzing reminder that confidence grows faster when you’re surrounded by women who actually want you to win.

I’m sharing behind-the-scenes from the quick road trip, the magic of meeting “internet friends” in real life, and the contrast between glitter-goggles energy and the very real reality of coming home to mom life. We also get into why watching women entrepreneurs share their products and stories is so motivating: it turns the half-formed ideas in your Notes app into a simple question you can’t ignore anymore. Are you going to bring it to life?

We talk about building community on purpose, including why I created the Selfish Sisterhood as a community in your pocket, plus the Moms Club and our accountability group. If you’ve been craving encouragement, connection, and that “OMG that’s so cool” kind of support, this is your sign to stop waiting for motivation and start finding your room.

Then we go deeper: the versions of ourselves people never see, my Barbados chapter, and what it means to thank the past you who started before she was ready. If you need a nudge to do the thing even when it doesn’t make sense, press play, then subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review so more women can find this kind of confidence.

Join the Self(ish) Sisterhood: $33/month or $333/year.

Thank you for listening to Self(ish) Confidence! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or on your social media and tag me @jess.clerke so I can personally thank you for helping spread some confidence + love!
 
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Transcript

Welcome To Selfish Confidence

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Selfish Confidence, a place where we can connect and be real about hardest to be your damn self. My name is Jess, and my goal is to help you build confidence and belief in yourself to live any life path you want, even if it's unconventional. It's time to flip off societal pressures and connect with women who've also felt on the outside by their life choices. We're here to encourage you to grab the mic and speak your truth. I know it can be scary, but we're in this together. Let's get started. Hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the Selfish Confidence Podcast. It's Jess here, and I'm just so excited to be sitting down and chatting with you today. I'm actually chatting with you in the middle of the day because I have a friend babysitting for a little bit. I'm sipping on some Sierra Greens and just enjoying a moment to hang out with you and chat about the amazing experience that I had this weekend at the Fredericton Women Show. If you've been around for a while, you probably know that I am a girly who loves going to events. I love being in these rooms with incredible women from all over North America, all over different places, like traveling for events, um events locally, right in my own place, like events that I've hosted, events of all different kinds where I know I'm going to walk into a room and the energy is just different. You know the ones. Maybe I hope you know the ones. If you don't, we gotta find you one because you need to experience this energy. But it's so different than walking into maybe even like a high school classroom where you walk in and you think everyone turns their eyes and they look in your direction, and you're just like, ooh, this is not a welcoming space. It's not that. It's a room of women who want to see you thrive, who want to see you grow, who are excited for you. And this event in particular, walking into it, it had booths and vendors from all over. And I love being in a room with entrepreneurs who are hustling and trying to get things done and sharing their magic with the world. Like there's nothing more inspiring than watching a woman work with her product, with the thing that she's brought to life, with the thing that she's passionate about and sharing it with the world. I think there's so many of us who have these ideas, myself included, these energies, these ideas, these thoughts, these things that we have in our pocket. Maybe it's in the notes section of your phone. Like I keep all of my stuff in the notes section of my phone. And it doesn't always come to life because we have these ideas, we have the things we want to do, we're inspired, especially in these spaces, but we don't always take that next action to bring it to life. But the women in these booths had brought their vision to life. They had brought the pieces that they had wanted to bring and share with the world. And I just thought that was the most inspiring thing to see. And if you're new here, and I just met you this past weekend at the Fredericton Women Show, hello, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. Now you know I am a person who just loves to be in these rooms around people just like you. Because there's just something about these rooms that has that energy, that buzz, that feeling. And I've worked really hard to be surrounded by that energy as much as possible that I almost have found like that's my norm. And then I realize that that's not the norm at all. I'm delusional to thinking that that's what the rest of the world looks like. I call it my glitter goggles when I put my glitter goggles on, and it just like everything looks sparkly and rainbows and beautiful and fun and exciting. And I'm just like, oh yeah, this is it. This is the world I want to live in. And then I go somewhere like Walmart and I'm like, oh, JK, this is this is not everyone's norm. This is not everybody's reality. I need to come back into the world for a little bit. And I almost choose to just live in that glitter goggle world a little bit longer because it's real fun there. It's way more fun than the real world. But the energy of these empowering events is kind of where I want to live at least 80% of the time. I watch a lot of Sesame Street with my son, and I often think like, I want to live on Sesame Street. Like they are kind to their friends and they are patient and they're sharing and they're, you know, happy and having fun and trying new things and learning new things. I'm like, this is the energy of the world I want to live in. And I know it's not the reality when we walk out those doors. And I think sometimes that's the hardest part. We have to go back to our real lives. It's like that when we leave retreat. So any of my retreats that I've done, it's like we have these three to seven days of immersive fun and connection to self and space and rest and like not having to care about anything, not care about, not having to worry about like cooking and cleaning. Like, you just get to be taken care of for a few days, and you're like, oh crap, I gotta go back to my real life. And sometimes that's devastating to go back into that reality, to go back into your day-to-day, even today. So excited to see my son because I had to travel this weekend to go to this event. It's about a four and a half hour drive from my house. And so even coming back into reality, so excited to see my son, but then he was cranky and you know, not eating and throwing his food, and I'm like, oh right, this is what I this is my reality, this is my normal every day. I almost forgot because when you get 24 hours away to sleep uninterrupted and you know, not have to worry about forks being thrown at you or books being thrown at your face, like it's just really nice. It's really nice, and sometimes you forget that. So I'd love to know what it was that you tapped into this weekend, what was in like inspiring to you, whether you were at the women's show or just in your regular life, and you know, you did something that just felt really good and inspiring. I want to know what that is. Send me a message and connect with me because we need to tap into that energy as much as possible. Even though it's not our 24-7 reality, it is still a part of our reality in some place. And if we can bring that to life into more than just a smaller piece of our day, like bringing it into, you know, start to bring it into 10% of your day and then 20%, it really will change the way you look at the world and the way you look at yourself. And I think that's the most important piece. So let me just give you a little behind the scenes of this past weekend because somebody had messaged me, a friend of mine was like, You are gonna do a podcast episode on this, right? And I said, Yeah, I'm actually about to go sit down and do it right now. I get a small window of time where I can actually sit down and record, and I wanted to make sure I prioritize that above anything else today. So I traveled there. Uh thankfully it was a drive. So I've traveled a lot of places to speak before, but this was just a short drive. So when I was asked to come and speak, I was like, oh, easy peasy. Like I can drive there four hours. That's not a big deal. So I picked up my very good friend Jamie, hopped in the car, and we made a little girls' weekend to get out and to go see somewhere new and to eat some new food and to have dinner with amazing people and just make a really great experience out of going to Fredericton for even, yeah, 24 hours. Whatever we had, we were going, we were gonna go for a couple days, but then my little guy was sick this week, and so we just condensed it down to one so that I could be home a little bit longer. And it was a really beautiful quick trip. We were able to get down there, go and check out the vendors on Saturday, and we got to go out to dinner with a few very good friends that I have met through the internet, and they pointed out to me, you know, we have never met in real life before. And I was like, wait, what? It just has felt so natural. We chat all the time. Like, what do you mean we've never met? But I've been in my baby bubble that I didn't even totally realize that these are people who I've been following and connecting with and chatting with online for a couple years, and although they live in my city, we never met in real life. And I love those friendships that you can just like pull up in your car and say, get in, get in, girls, we're going shopping, and it just feels so natural, and I think that's the beautiful place of the internet. I know sometimes there's some dark corners, more than corners, right? But this girlhood energy, this fun energy of like, yeah, literally, I met you in real life for the first time, but it feels like I know you. You know, I've done podcast episodes with you, like I know you and I know the work you do, and I know who like it just feels like home, right? When you meet those girlfriends that just feel like home, that's like such a great feeling. And I just, yeah, I don't know if if you're listening to this and you're like, I actually don't know what you're talking about, Jess, we gotta find that for you because it's a really special feeling when the internet becomes part of your reality. I get it, that broadens that inspiring energy that we're in and almost like makes that glitter goggles that we have come to life. And then on Sunday morning, Jamie and I we went out for a nice breakfast and then we headed over to the event for the women's panel. It was a She Leads women's panel with a variety of different entrepreneurs, some who had booths at the market, some who were local, some were who were, you know, had inspiring stories and just were there to share pieces of that with them. And it's just like a really I could have just sat and listened to the panel. Like I just enjoyed listening to these women speak about what they were passionate about and the light in their lives and the jobs and the businesses that they had, and it's just like wow, like really, really cool, inspiring women, like really, really cool in the stories. It's just like a really beautiful experience. And when I look at events like this, I the number one thing that always comes to my mind is community. Like, how do we create this community? How do we find these people in our everyday life? And I know that that's why. Not even I was gonna say I think, I know that's why I created the selfish sisterhood and then brought it back even after closing its doors, because we needed more spaces where we could be a part of energy like this every single day. Every single day. Like, not just once a year when this event goes on, or not just when we travel to a state somewhere to experience this kind of energy, like the once in a while, like I can't have this energy be a once-in-a-while energy. I needed it to be something that was in my everyday life, and I think that's why I also feel like my glitter goggles are just becoming more and more permanent every single day, is because I live in this world of women's empowerment and community and friendship and love and support as much as possible because I created a community that's in your pocket that can go with you. It's called the Selfish Sisterhood, it's a place where you can come and meet new friends and share what's going on in your life and ask advice on things. And I also created a sister uh component to it called the Moms Club for my moms to be able to come and ask questions. And then even this month, we created an accountability group because some of the sisters are like, hey, I think I need a little bit more. I'm trying to get my health back on track. Like, can we create a little accountability squad? And we did, and it's just this beautiful space that you get to experience every single day without even leaving your house, because that can be sometimes the hardest thing to do, is just getting out of the door and getting out somewhere and going and yeah, driving four hours to get to something like this, or even driving a half an hour, finding childcare to get to it. Like it can be really difficult. There's so many things that can get in the way. So imagine having something like this in your pocket whenever you want it. And I saw this weekend I didn't get a whole lot of time to just check in because I was either driving or at the event or driving back home, but I noticed my phone was blowing up uh with the notifications and things going on in there, even without me being in there, which I love so much. These women are incredible. And there was one message from one of the sisters, Angela, and she had wrote, Jess, I have listened to every single one of your podcast episodes. I know you're gonna crush this. It's going to be absolutely amazing. And I actually haven't responded for her to know that this actually set the tone for my whole day. It solidified the energy that I needed to sit into. It was the reminder that I needed a one. I was like, who has listened to every single podcast episode? Like, that is absolutely wild for one and two, like just that kind uh energy, that encouraging energy. Like that is something that I literally have in my pocket every single day. What an absolute gift. So thank you, Angela. Thank you so much for writing that because it really did set the tone and set the fire that I needed for that day. Because, like, all right, I have a purpose. There's a reason why I'm here, there's a reason I traveled all this way. Jess, like, don't doubt it. Just be present and have fun. Right? Those are the things. And I I really tried to set in my mind too, whenever I'm anxious or nervous or afraid that you know, maybe I don't belong or don't fit in. I often remind myself, like, even if I impact one person, right? If only one person showed up to the talk, and then that one person is me, and I impact myself, it that's all that matters. One person. It doesn't need to be millions and millions and millions. It could be, and that's cool if it is, but all I need to do is focus on one person, and I just remember like playing in my head a lot to be like, and that one person can be me. Because this is my first time getting back on stage since having my son all over last January. So it's been about 14-15 months since I've had my son, and before that, I haven't spoken since my event, actually, in October of 2024. Uh, and I was just like, wow, like it's going to be a great opportunity because it's my favorite place to be. To be on a stage is my favorite place to be. I just love it to be in person and to speak and to share what I'm passionate about is just so much fun on a on a stage. Just like it's where I like I love it. And second best is sitting here on the microphone too, alone in my well, I'm not alone. My dog's here too. But you know, there's a different energy when you're speaking in a room with people and when you're speaking in your office with your dog. There's two different energies. But I visualize you're here with me, okay? So it's like you're here in this room with me. But that impact, I really needed it to be myself. It was like firing up my purpose again, taking off my mom hat for a few hours and putting on, you know, whatever hat, whatever hat I had in the car, honestly, and just stepping into the version of me that I love so much. And I love the mom version of me too. I love all versions of me, but this one is the one that just feels the best, feels the most fun, and getting to sit on stage and to hear other women speak and also to share my story myself is just it's just the best. Like it's just the best. And if you're listening to this and you have opportunities for speaking too, and like please share with me, because it's just my favorite, it's my most happy, fun piece of my job is like just getting on stage and hanging out and connecting and being in these rooms because it's really, really magical. It's really magical. Anyways, point of my story was to say that I have this in my pocket, and it's been such a great tool to have because we don't have a lot of this in our everyday. So the selfish sisterhood is an awesome place if you're looking for community and connection and engagement and like just enthusiasm in your life. You're looking for someone to say, like, oh my gosh, that's so cool. Because maybe you don't have that, we are gonna say that because it is so cool. Everything you're doing is so cool, even if we're just like, I just walked my dog, and we're like, Yeah, yeah, you did. That's awesome, sister. I love it. But if you've never been in a space like this and you're listening to this podcast episode, I challenge you to find somewhere. There's gotta be something, even on a smaller scale, in your local community. And if there isn't and you're craving it, maybe you're the person who needs to create it. I know. Did your stomach just sink a little bit because you're like, oof, no, I don't want to do that. But you might be surprised. What can come to life? I actually signed up for an event, like, I don't even remember who put it together. I gotta find it in my email, but it's like a notebook painting workshop. And I was like, you know what? I need to get into more rooms with women who are fun, who are looking for creative outlets, and I'm just gonna randomly sign up for this event to paint notebooks. I don't know anyone there. I don't know who even is running it. I can't even remember the name of the event. All I know is I signed up for it so that I could get into a space with other women who are looking to do cool things like painting, painting notebooks, right? There could be something like that. Even a book club, anything, there might be something like that in your local community that you haven't even realized is there because you haven't been looking for it. But now you're looking for it. I want you to find it. And go then go, right? Again, like saying earlier, it's like having these ideas and putting them in the note section of your phone, but then actually also doing them. It's the same thing with events. You found this group online and you're like, oh my gosh, that's so cool. You also gotta sign up for it. You also have to go. Those are like the two things. Same with a selfish sisterhood. You sign up for it, you also have to partake in it. If you're a little fly on the wall or you never open the app, it's not gonna do anything for you. You really need to be a part of it, to send one message. Like, I'm not saying you have to have a massive chat every day, but like send a message a week, be like, hey, I'm still in here. Or even if you're just there liking everybody else's comments, that works too. It's just about also participating, bringing some of those things that we want to have in our life to life. And I also wanted to note too, I just made like a few notes here on the side that I was like, oh, I really want to touch on that. It was like, do the thing even if it doesn't make sense. Right? Whether that's a a local community event that you're like, I kind of want to go to that, but you know, it's a harmonica class and I don't have a harmonica or you know, it's a ukulele lesson and I have never played before, whatever it is, I want you to like go anyway. Like, even if it doesn't make sense. So for us this weekend, we were joking about this in the car. It's like, who's gonna come from away? We're talking about a different event. Who's gonna come from away and like you know, drive all that way just for an afternoon? And I looked at my friend Jamie and I'm just like, girl, we just did that. We just did that. Going to Fredericton didn't make sense for you know an hour panel random session. Like, it didn't make sense. But we went anyway. Right? Do the thing even if it doesn't make sense. If you can make it happen, make it happen. If you can get childcare, you can get, if you can get, you know, the money, whatever it is that you need in order to make something happen, make it happen. Even if it doesn't make sense, even if you're like, oh yeah, I've never painted notebooks before, I've never even painted before. Why would I go to something like that? Just like if it's in your heart, it's in your gut and you want to go, go. And don't talk yourself out of it on the day of. That's the other thing, right? We sign up for these things and then we're like, I don't want to go. Believe me, I know come that day, I'm gonna say, I don't want to go. I'm really tired. But I also picked this event because it started at 6 30. It's like a 6 30 to 8 30 thing. That's a great sweet spot for me. I can handle that. Like anything past 8 30, I probably would not sign up for right now in this season. I'm in bed by nine, but I can make that work. So if you can, make it work, even if it doesn't make sense. Drive the four hours to go to a random event to meet random people that you're just like, I don't even know if this is gonna be worth it. It doesn't matter. Just go, right? I think so much of our life is we're trying to make sense of things when in reality, like we could just try it. We could just go. Like things don't have to make sense. Honestly, does anything in this world right now make sense? No. Right? It doesn't. Nothing makes sense. We are all so confused. Everything, like, we do not know what tomorrow is going to bring, and we definitely don't know what a few years down the road is gonna bring. So do it. If you can do it, do it, even if it doesn't make sense. And before I wrap up this episode of just kind of like some of my thoughts of walking away from this weekend and reigniting the speaking version of myself, which again I know I sit on this mic every week and I hang out with you and I speak all the time, but it's different again in person, and it's different getting back on a stage, and it just yeah, it reignited, and I'm really, really grateful for an opportunity to speak and to have that fire relit when I needed it to be because I feel like we're going into a season that really needs some fire, and I'm really excited to bring it to life. It also reignited some goals that I had this morning. I was journaling and writing a few things down that I was like, oh yeah, these are like the two personal goals I really want to focus on right now. And then I made a list of all the professional things that I needed to get into line and figure things out, and you know, obviously next up we have Barbados retreat in a few weeks, which really, really, really exciting for, and just yeah, a few other things that I got some tricks up my sleeve that I'm really excited to bring to life, but some personal goals I think are also really important and a priority of mine right now. And one of the questions that they asked was a version of you. What was a version of you that people in this room might not know anything about? And I think there's so many versions of all of us, right? Imagine you met your best friend just a year ago, right? And you don't know anything about the life before that. I think I made an episode of that not that long ago about my son and him only knowing this version of me as a mom, right? We don't know the versions of our parents before we get to be whoever we want to be for them because they only know this version. They only know right now. And so sitting on a stage of people with people who Probably don't know any of the versions of me. It's like I could have gone in any direction. And I chose to go back to the version of Jess who lived in Barbados. And if you're new here, go back to the beginning. It was uh 2021. We moved there. Essentially, my husband, Glenn, was offered a position to work on the airport runway in Barbados. In we started in November of 2019, and I was going to go back and forth. It was, I was working online anyway, so it was easy for me to live this life two worlds, right? Hannah Montana style, live the life of Canadian and live the life of Barbadian, and like just enjoy both experiences. But COVID happened, and we had to decide which experience we wanted to live out. And we ain't no quittas, we say that. We ain't no quittas. We wanted to see this project to its fullest. And so we decided to pack up our lives and to bring our two cats to Barbados. And what I thought was going to be one experience turned into something very different with the pandemic, but also with just life and all of the pieces that fell in that season. And I really didn't I really would never be able to visualize. Oh man, I feel really emotionalized to think about this. I would not be able to visualize the Jess that's sitting in this chair right now. One with a baby, but also just podcasting for, you know, almost f four years. Trying to think for a second there. I think it might be four years. And this version of Jess that's, you know, sitting in front of you today who plans retreats back to Barbados, and who's sitting here with her dog. That's from Barbados. Like just the version of me here. If I could have gotten a glimpse, then I wouldn't have believed it. There's just no way, Jess, who was in the world of network marketing then, and you know, the visions and the dreams and the goals that I had are very different than the visions and the dreams that I had a couple years ago. And then again, very different than the visions and the dreams I have now as a parent. And it's just been wild to see that come to play. But that's what I wanted to bring them back to was that version who hadn't even started the podcast yet. The one who thought, oh, no one's going to listen to my voice. No one is going to listen to my podcast. There is no way any people any people are going to come and listen to me speak. Because we think that we are not enough. We think that we're just a speck in this world, and we are, but like a glitter speck, like a magical speck, a speck that is going to have impact on many people. And that's what we're here to do, right? Support the collective, love the collective, and help the world in some way. We need to be caring for each other and helping each other through this. And so if you could look back to a version of yourself that maybe I don't know, or maybe, you know, you maybe don't even want to go back to that version of me who had no idea what was about to change and what was about to happen. She did something really scary. She put herself out there and she got the microphone and she started the course and she put it all together and she started podcasting. Like that's freaking cool. I'm so proud of her for doing that. And there's going to be a moment that I look back on this version of Jess, this weekend's version of Jess who went to Fredericton, who spoke of this event. There's gonna be a moment when I look back and I say, Wow, that first time I got back on stage after having my son, in my eyes, as a completely different person than the person who started this life and speaking, and then the person who, you know, started the podcast, right? Like there's all these versions of us that deserve to be celebrated and admired and thanked. And so I really felt like that this weekend as I went back to that version of Jess who lost everything living away. And by everything, I just mean myself, right? That identity piece, that piece of, you know, I had no access to my finances or a car or really anything. I just had to trust that my husband was going to take care of me, right? That's a really scary thing, too, as someone who's just used to having a lot more independence. So coming home and knowing that I had this idea, so st still so shocked. I wonder if I would have been strong enough to do that now, but so shocked at this version of Jess who was so broken and so sad. And she just started and she didn't care what people were gonna think anymore. That I think is just the coolest thing. And sometimes I don't even resonate with that version of me anymore because I do I'm scared of so many things. So yeah, I'd be really curious if there's a version of you you want to thank today, there's a version of you that you just want to take a moment and sit with and be like, oh my gosh, like that person showed up. That person is me, and I showed up in a season that I just never ever thought I could have. Like, I'm so proud of you for that. And celebrate that person who did the thing that you can sometimes even just be like, I can't believe I did that. You know, left the marriage or started the business, or you quit your job and started something new. Or maybe you even uh went to that harmonica class and you started to learn how to play the harmonica. You started the YouTube channel playing the harmonica, or you stepped out and started to move your body a bit more, took your dog for a walk, right? Like these moments that we think are so small can be some of the biggest and life-changing things. And they asked me too about the year of confidence. It's like that was to me such a silly and insignificant project when I first started it. It just felt like this like silly thing that I just said I was gonna do and it became the thing that changed it all. And I've even been thinking about that a lot with my birthday coming up in a few weeks that maybe it's time for like a a next, a big next version. Not even big, I don't even want it to be big, simple, small next version that needs to come to life because there are two personal goals that I really just need to tackle and want to tackle. And sometimes you just need that push off the cliff to make it happen, right? So leap in the net will appear. They asked me too a lot about like starting before you're ready. It's like I literally everything in my life is started before it's ready, like nothing is ready ever. Even sitting down to this microphone right now, like nothing, nothing is ready. But I'm gonna do it because that's how I do things. I act and then I think, right? I act, I say yes to going to a Fredericton Women show, and then I think, oh, maybe I should figure out all of those other details, right? Oh yeah, how are we gonna make this happen? Oh, okay, we made it happen. Easy. But that's always how I do it. Act and then think, and then evaluate, and then teach people from those actions. That's how it works for me. So thank you so much for listening today and reflecting with me on this opportunity in a space that I I didn't even know I needed a little bit of light in. So I hope that you have something in your life to celebrate from this past weekend or even just anything or the prior version of you. Sit with it and think about it and send me a message because I love to know what you're celebrating and what you're loving on right now. So I'm so grateful you're here and I'm just so grateful that you're a part of this community. I will put all the information for the Selfish Sisterhood in the show notes. If that's something that you're like, I need a space like this in my pocket, yeah, you do, because there's nothing better than having incredible women at your fingertips when you need them. So I love you so much. I can't wait to talk to you soon. Bye. What's up, sis? I am so glad we could hang out today. If you love this episode, send it to a friend or share it on your social media and tag me so I can personally thank you for helping me sprinkle some confidence in the world. And don't forget, you are magic. Let's show the world your shine.