Sam Vander Wielen: [00:00:00
Some of you might be listening, you’re like, I already started business, but once I get to seven figures, like then everything’s gonna be golden. You know?
Sam Vander Wielen: So I wanted people to know that it’s not going to cure it. I also wanted people to know that there’s actually a much simpler way to build an online business that allows you to have a better life, and I think ultimately make more money just as a side effect.
Nancy Levin: Welcome to the Nancy Levin Show. I’m Nancy Levin, founder of Levin Life Coach Academy, bestselling author, master coach, and your host. I help overachieving people pleasers set boundaries that stick and own self-worth, anchored in empowered action so you can feel free.
Plus, if you’re an aspiring or current coach, you are in the right place.
Nancy Levin: Join me each week for coaching and compelling conversations designed to support you in the spotlight as you take center stage of your own life. [00:01:00] Let’s dive in.
Nancy Levin: Welcome back to the Nancy Levin Show. I am so excited about today’s episode. We have got a fabulous guest, Sam Vander Wielen with us.
And if you have always associated attorneys with words like shark,. intense and cutthroat. You are in for a down to earth breath of legal, fresh air. Sam Vander Wielen is a leading legal educator who’s helped over 150,000 online business owners.
Set up their businesses legally. Sam’s legal templates and signature program, The Ultimate Bundle, generate well over $1 million per year. Making her podcast, On Your Terms a goldmine for not only legal knowledge, but marketing know-how that actually works. [00:02:00]
Sam’s brand new book is here: When I Start My Business, I’ll Be Happy.
Nancy Levin: A practical No BS Guide to Successful Online Entrepreneurship. And in it, Sam presents her evergreen marketing strategies that led to her seven figure success, as well as guidance on balancing building your business with life’s curve balls.
Welcome Sam.
Sam Vander Wielen: Hi Nancy. Thanks for having me again. I’m so glad you’re here and that you’re back.
Nancy Levin: And, uh, what I’ll also share with the listeners is that Sam has also been, for the last few years, uh, she has come into Leaven Life Coach Academy. Once our coaches are certified, she’s come in to our alumni Springboard to actually help our coaches. Be legally prepared for creating their businesses from scratch, and it is an invaluable part of our [00:03:00] program and I personally so appreciate you, Sam.
Nancy Levin: I am grateful to call you a friend, and I also am grateful to call you one of my, one of my teachers. I love learning from you. I always discover something new in any of our conversations, and even simply from listening to your podcast, following you on Insta and all the places, and I’m really excited for our conversation today.
Sam Vander Wielen: Oh, thanks Nancy. I love teaching your community. They’re always the best, so I’m excited to chat with everybody today.
Nancy Levin: Yay. So a few things about your book that I just wanna sort of present for everyone listening, uh, and I love the title. When I start My Business, I’ll Be Happy because it does immediately start dealing with the “when then” situation.
Nancy Levin: And uh, yeah. And we know that, we know that that’s always a recipe for disaster. I [00:04:00] think you call it the “when then syndrome” in your book. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I do. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
And so in this book, you really are offering a very candid, personal experience. Um, you are transitioning from a corporate lawyer to a multi seven figure business owner.
Nancy Levin: You’re dismantling this myth that starting a business will solve all of life’s problems, and instead you really present a very honest roadmap for navigating the realities of entrepreneurship. And in this day and age, when we see all the bright and shiny shit online mm-hmm about making a million dollars overnight.
Nancy Levin: Your book is, honest to God, a refreshing breath of fresh air and reality. Thank you. I really wanna say that. Thank you. Yeah. And you know, we have some of the same mentors or people that we have followed out in the world or been in programs with, and, you know, uh, yes, you’re standing on, you know, you’re standing alongside of them or you’re standing on their [00:05:00] shoulders, however you wanna say it.
Nancy Levin: But I do wanna say that there’s something really different in your approach. And there’s, and really it’s, you immediately show up in a way that has me know, I can trust you.
Sam Vander Wielen: Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. I really wanted people to know both, like you said, like the business, starting a business, growing a business.
Sam Vander Wielen: I mean, some, some of you might be listening, you’re like, I already started a business, but once I get to seven figures, like then everything’s gonna be golden. You know?
So I wanted people to know that it’s not going to cure it. I also wanted people to know that there’s more than one way.
There are many, many ways to build an online business and really drive home this message that there are so many ways you can build it and there are ways that aren’t the most popular and sexy that you hear about on Instagram.
Sam Vander Wielen: ’cause it makes other people a lot of money to tell you that. But that there’s actually a much simpler way to build an online business that allows you to have a better life and I think ultimately make more money just as a side effect.
Nancy Levin: I couldn’t agree more. And [00:06:00] so, you know, in the book you’re really, you know, you are using your own story as a throughline.
Nancy Levin: You’re sharing your journey, you know, quitting law, facing health, challenges of your own. Grieving personal losses. Mm-hmm. And building multiple businesses. So it wasn’t that you went out and the first business that you did struck gold.
Sam Vander Wielen: No, my first one was technically a flop on paper,
Nancy Levin: Which is, I think, important for people to hear.
Nancy Levin: Mm-hmm. You know, and that you really offer a mix of, you know, mindset shift, business strategy, practical steps, which we all know and love, uh, you know, to create a sustainable, thriving online business. And one of the Emphasises, will you emphasize, you know, you emphasized, I don’t know that that, you know, business success requires resilience.
Nancy Levin: Clear planning, a willingness to pivot rather than chasing trends or [00:07:00] believing that financial freedom will automatically bring happiness.
And so, you know, at that point, again, the book’s title is such a powerful hook. When I start my business, I’ll be happy, but you quickly dismantle that myth.
Nancy Levin: We, and you know, you, you bring in, which I love of course ’cause it dovetails so beautifully with my work around shadow and shadow beliefs. Mm-hmm. Overcoming these beliefs that are in the way of us becoming successful in the way we wanna become successful and even defining success individually.
Sam Vander Wielen: Mm-hmm.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. And then, and then, you know, again, in the book, there’s so much real practical
Sam Vander Wielen: information.
Nancy Levin: That I so, so appreciate and I appreciate how direct you are, how insightful. And, um, I do, I’m just gonna say, I do feel this is a must read for aspiring and current [00:08:00] entrepreneurs, coaches, anyone in the online space who really wants to be able to build a business that aligns with their goals and without burning out or chasing the illusions of instant success.
Nancy Levin: And so I really just sort of wanted to start there. And so talk a little bit about how this belief around, uh, when I start my business, I’ll be happy, holds people back from personal fulfillment.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yes, I. Well, there’s a reason I put, I had the, um, cover artist for the publisher, put a little question mark in like a squiggly hand drawing on the cover.
Sam Vander Wielen: ’cause I wanted it to have like an upward inflection. Like when I start my business I’ll be happy. Like we all like hope that that will be the case. But I think there were so many things that came up for me as I, when I thought about this was like. For one that I think there are so many unrealistic expectations.
Sam Vander Wielen: I, I [00:09:00] dedicated an entire chapter at the beginning to unrealistic expectations about not only businesses resolving all your problems, or maybe it’s not the business necessarily, but like getting away from your boss, getting out of corporate changing jobs. Like once I have a different boss, I’ll be good.
Sam Vander Wielen: Once I am in a different career, I’ll be good. But there was also these, so many of these unrealistic expectations when it came to the online business world because of the marketing. And so there were these, I don’t know, like false promises and some, I think scammy tactics that were going on. That made it look a lot easier and faster, and I believe that it’s possible.
Sam Vander Wielen: I, you know, I don’t believe everyone is meant to be an entrepreneur, and I don’t say that in a, like, uh, subjective way. There’s just, there’s no, like, there’s no right or wrong, right? It’s everybody, we all make the world go round. I can’t work in an office anymore. And then there are people that used to work in an office that we need and, and they’re doing really important work.
Sam Vander Wielen: But I do think that it takes for the people even who it’s right [00:10:00] for, it takes a lot of hard work, it takes a lot of time, a lot of strategy, right? And because of what was going on in the online business world, it was really wasted. But this other idea that kept coming up for me as I was writing the book was that I, we also, it’s a lot of pressure to put on your business to make you happy.
Sam Vander Wielen: And that I thought was really interesting. Like. I approached it one way in the book talking about finances, right? That people come into starting a business and they’re like, okay, I need to make $4,000 a month or something like this. And it’s like, whoa, that’s a lot of pressure on a little baby business.
Sam Vander Wielen: Like this is, that’s a lot. Do you understand how much you have to generate in order to be able to pay yourself that much? And like, how are you building your runway? And you know, I talk a lot in the book about how online businesses are. You know, inexpensive compared to if you and I were starting a bakery in San Francisco, right?
Sam Vander Wielen: Of course it’s gonna be way, way cheaper than that, but it’s not free. And so there are investments and there are things you have to pay for and you need to plan out paying your taxes and paying yourself and like building up what I call your business war [00:11:00] chest over time. So you’ve capital to invest and…
Sam Vander Wielen: You know, that’s, that’s a lot of pressure to put. So then it makes sense to me that you come out of the gates, you try to start this business. You were told on Instagram that you could make 10 grand a month in like 30 days, and it’s not doing that. And now you have bills to pay and you’re like, well, this is miserable.
Sam Vander Wielen: This is not what I thought it was going to be.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. So from there, you know, the myth that we’re presented with co-mingling with beliefs. With imposter syndrome, with, yeah, with all of those pieces can be a real challenge for people even allowing themselves to be visible. I, I’m curious if you just wanna sort of riff on that piece about, you know, really taking the steps to visibility, really taking the steps to show up in the world.
Nancy Levin: Yeah.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. It’s like the way that I think of this is that if we have any of these [00:12:00] issues, let’s just call them for, for lack of a better term, if we have, if we struggle to take up space, if we struggle to believe we’re worthy, like all of these things, if any of that stuff is in there, which we all have this from, from some place or another, probably our childhoods, but we all have this in some form.
Sam Vander Wielen: It, to me at least, I don’t know about you Nancy, but like to me, I’m like. Entrepreneurship is only going to highlight that. Like there’s something about entrepreneurship, particularly the way that we do it, where it’s very, uh, personal. So we’re like upfront. We’re the face of it, we’re it’s visual. We’re producing a lot of content that either has our face directly in it or is our writing, you know, from our hearts and our minds.
Sam Vander Wielen: It’s vulnerable to produce art, which is really what we’re doing at the end of the day as content creators and. If you think that, like, you have all that stuff, but you’re just gonna be able to like, you know, it’s kind of the proverbial like throwing a blanket over a bunch of stuff before people come over, something like that.
Sam Vander Wielen: Like, if you think you’re gonna be able to do that, it’s not, that’s not going to work. So, in fact, I make the argument in the book that I think that [00:13:00] having your own business is actually this like, incredible opportunity to work along with that like. For me, for example, it’s very, very difficult for me to take up space.
Sam Vander Wielen: My mom was a malignant narcissist. The world was like, I mean, she was bigger than the world, and my whole life, my existence growing up was just being her little servant. That’s what she used to call me, and that was my nickname from her. And so you could imagine that as an adult, you grow up and you’re very used to being, you know, behind, right?
Sam Vander Wielen: In the, in behind the scenes. Now you start a business that you chose to start and you put your face out there, you have to take up space if you wanna do well. Right. I have to act like I deserve to be there. I have to, yeah. Really put myself out there and own my stuff and that’s, it’s very difficult to do.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. And you know, so everything you’re saying, of course, is a, you know, is an integration into, into my work and working with these, you know, these beliefs and commitments. [00:14:00] From childhood, the roles that we were put into play and how we develop our sense of packaging ourselves to be palatable to those around us.
Nancy Levin: Really that the beliefs come down to some version of I’m not worthy. And then yes, overcoming this to take a stand and to stake my claim in the world. And you know, right before we hit record. I was asking, how’s the book launch going? And you said it kind of feels like planning a wedding. Mm-hmm. And you know, similarly, I think that, you know, I’ve told people before that whatever issues you have as a couple before you get married, marriage will only magnify them.
Nancy Levin: And I think the same as what you’re saying about entrepreneurship. Anything we’ve got going on with ourselves personally, professionally, in any way is only going to get magnified when we, when we are willing to put ourselves forward. And to that piece, you know, I wanna talk a little bit [00:15:00] about business entrepreneurship as a vehicle for self discovery, because you talk about how entrepreneurship.
Nancy Levin: Forced you to confront your own fears and limiting beliefs. So how can new business owners use their journey as a tool for personal growth instead of just financial gain? And this is something that for me personally, I also doubled down on, and I’d love to hear about it from you.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, this is a great question.
Sam Vander Wielen: So I think there’s two ways you can go about this. One is more of the like offline approach that my business, for example, generates not only enough revenue for me to pay myself, but also gives me the flexibility and the lifestyle freedom that I sought to take the time to develop myself. So like I don’t always have to use my business to develop myself.
Sam Vander Wielen: Like I think that’s a, a common thread throughout my book is talking about how like, your business can be your business and it can be your job, and that’s okay. Yeah. I actually think that’s quite [00:16:00] healthy. And then it’s like inadvertently my business allows me to develop myself. I think my business provides me with tons and tons of opportunities where I’m like, oh, like that.
Sam Vander Wielen: I see that coming up, right? Like, um, last week I was in New York City to record the audio book for my book and. someone said to me, someone in just in conversation referred to me as a writer and I was like, I’m not a writer, I’m a lawyer. And then I caught myself being like, you just published a book with a big five publisher.
Sam Vander Wielen: I don’t think you can stand here and say anymore. And that was my instinct of being like, oh, that’s too much. Like, that sounds big. Yeah. That sounds like braggy to me to say I’m a writer. Like that seems so serious. Right. And I feel like writers like deserve to be called writers, and I didn’t. And, and that, I don’t know why I had the story in my head.
Sam Vander Wielen: So that was kind of an opportunity like, or an example, I guess, where my business had provided me an opportunity to say, Hey, I know this about myself and this is something I wanna work on, and so how do I balance this? And like come back and say, yeah, you know what, [00:17:00] I guess I am, I’m gonna have to, I, I made a joke that like, yeah, I’m gonna have to get used to saying I’m an author now.
Sam Vander Wielen: You know? And, and get used to it. Yeah, exactly like that, like
Nancy Levin: Taking that ownership and standing in that as part of your identity now. It’s huge. Yeah.
Sam Vander Wielen: It’s uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable, but I think that they keep, the business kinda keeps providing that for you. I, I guess it also depends for the listeners too, like what feels good from a content perspective for you.
Sam Vander Wielen: Like I, obviously, I love writing, so I wrote a book and, but I love writing like to my email list for example, it’s like my number one favorite thing and. As we sit here now, I have like 46, 47,000 people. My email list, somehow it still feels very private. I dunno why. And so when I write those emails, like they’re very cathartic.
Sam Vander Wielen: I think a, a tip I would love to pass on is that like my business is not my journal and it’s not my therapist, right? So I don’t need my business to like deal with things in real time, like working my [00:18:00] stuff out on my business kind of thing. I love sharing from a place, what’s the, the phrase of like, not from, from the scar, from scars, from the scar, but not
Nancy Levin: the wound.
Nancy Levin: Yes. So
Sam Vander Wielen: I definitely share from scars often, but I use those scars as metaphors, and I always make the metaphor make sense for the business or for the business owner, like, this is why this, like maybe I would tell the story about me being in New York and saying, I’m not an author, I’m not a writer. Mm-hmm.
Sam Vander Wielen: And how that was uncomfortable for me. And that I start, I’m starting to learn that I have to take up space. I want to take up space and I wanna own this process. And I want to be proud. I’m looking for all these other people to be proud of me about the book, but I need to be proud of me about the book, right?
Sam Vander Wielen: And so I would tell this story and I would parlay that into like, that’s what you need to do. You know, you need to be this in your business, right? How can you do this this week? So always making it like a valuable lesson. For them. And that kind of like, I don’t know, that marriage of like being able to write has been very cathartic for me, but also remembering I’m a business owner at the end of the day and people look at things and want to know how it’s applicable to them.
Sam Vander Wielen: And so I try to [00:19:00] translate my experiences to how that might apply to their life.
Nancy Levin: I love that. And I will say that, you know, I have made, I have made a practice over the past year or so to really, um, to really. unsubscribe from a lot of things that I don’t read and that I don’t need. And you are in my very small handful of emails that I read The Cut every single you did make the cut and, and there’s, you know, there’s a handful that I really read because I also happen to know the people behind them.
Nancy Levin: And I, and I know that they’re coming from a place of truth, authenticity, genuine desire to help and support instead of sort of that, that bright, shiny picture facing forward?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. Yeah.
Nancy Levin: Yeah.
Sam Vander Wielen: And you probably know that too, because they’ve shared stories along the way that are personal. They’ve been vulnerable.
Sam Vander Wielen: Right, exactly. They’ve opened themselves up. But sharing from that vulnerability of [00:20:00] like, I’ve worked through this now, so I’m, now I’m gonna share the lesson, versus like using you as my journal to be like, exactly, I’m really struggling with this thing. And like, my husband never listens and it doesn’t take the trash out.
Sam Vander Wielen: Like people don’t wanna hear that stuff. Exactly, exactly.
Nancy Levin: So I mentioned, I mentioned, uh, you know, a little bit ago that you, so you first transitioned out of law into health coaching. Mm-hmm. And then to, uh, to what you’re doing now to legal templates Yes. And the business you’ve created now. And I’d love for you just to share a little bit about your experience of the pivot.
Nancy Levin: You know? Yeah. And I have to say that I loved on your Instagram story when you were recording that, you said, I got to say pivot like Ross on Friends and I, and I got a big, I got a big chuckle out of
Sam Vander Wielen: that. I was very happy about that. I was recording my, my audio book last week, and one of the subheadings to one of the chapters is Pivot and I.
Sam Vander Wielen: [00:21:00] You have like all these people in, I’m just telling everyone else like, you have all these people in your ears, you know, telling. And so my producer Finley, she was in LA so I couldn’t see her, but I could hear and I said to her, uh, I was like, oh man, I wish I could read this heading like Ross Keller from Friends..
Sam Vander Wielen: And she’s like, go aheads your audio book. I was like, really? I was so excited. I love that. I was very excited, cracked, excited. Yeah, I cracked up. Got. You have to make it fun. But no, I, you know, it’s funny. Talk about like, when I start my business, I’ll be happy I thought, I mean, I was classic for this. I was like, okay, I leave.
Sam Vander Wielen: I hate the law. Everything. Everything in my life that’s a problem or that I don’t like or that’s causing me stress is all because of my boss. Uh, the, the mean people who run the firm, being a lawyer, having to do this work, the annoying clients, like everything was everybody else’s fault. And so I thought, okay, you just remove that external stuff.
Sam Vander Wielen: If it’s all their fault, then everything is gonna be fine. And now I go to start my own business and I’m like, oh shit. Like, I think I might be involved in this because I removed everyone and I still feel the same way. [00:22:00] But I also thought just not being a lawyer, you know, was going to resolve it for me and.
Sam Vander Wielen: It was hard work. Like I, I write in the book, and I’ve talked about this a lot on, on Instagram and to my email list, that like, sometimes there are things that you want, that you want the outcome of it, but you don’t want to do the hard work of it. Yeah, to get there. And so I was somebody who I was like an OG blogger, blog reader and all this kinda stuff.
Sam Vander Wielen: So I loved food bloggers and I wanted, my health coaching business was around people learning how to cook. And so I just wanted to be a successful food blogger, but I didn’t want to do any of the things I had to do right, to get there. And so I had that very like naive wake up call.
Sam Vander Wielen: It was like, wait, you have to record all this stuff and take videos of every step you are cooking? And like that’s gonna create so many dishes and I just wanna eat it. Like I just love cooking and, oh, actually what I love about cooking is that it’s the thing outside my job and it’s what allows me to unplug from my job. And now I’ve made it my job. So that actually made me really miserable and I, [00:23:00] I then put so much pressure on this idea of like…
Sam Vander Wielen: I’ve made a huge pivot. I love being a lawyer. People judged me left and right for it. I judged myself, and now I’ve gone and done this thing. Aren’t I going to look like a flip-flopper? Like I don’t know what I’m doing. Like I’m just flopping around. I’m throwing my life and I can’t commit to anything like that.
Sam Vander Wielen: That was a real fear for me. So it held me back from shifting into the legal business for a while.
Nancy Levin: That, and it’s such an important point to make instead of, you know, it’s really a different approach than, you know, do what you love and the money will come kind of way of looking at things.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. You know, I don’t know endorse it.
Sam Vander Wielen: I think about this like, I’m like, I don’t know that your passion has to be right. Your job. And I, as I sit here today, I’ve. I, I run this business. I, I’ve had my legal templates business since 2017. It’s super successful. I don’t love legal templates. I don’t even love legal stuff. I love what I get to do though every day.
Sam Vander Wielen: [00:24:00] Like I love the content I get to make, I love the customers I get to work with. I like designing digital products. I like all the marketing, my podcast On Your Terms.
Like I love writing this book. I love what I get to do. So I think sometimes we get that like a little twisted.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. Right. I would agree. I would definitely agree.
Nancy Levin: And then we try to essentially fit around, you know, around peg in a square hole around, around that and like you said, mm-hmm. Then the very thing that you feel passionate about becomes something that you dread.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, yeah. It’s not so fun. And then when that thing’s like not performing well, it’s now you’ve taken a passion and you’ve like…
Sam Vander Wielen: Metric, find it, you know? Right. It’s like, I, I don’t wanna look at stats for how many people viewed my video about some recipe that I just had fun making. So it’s like, why now? I’ve, now I’ve made this annoying. That’s the way I saw it.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and, and again, what you’re really talking about overall is, you know, values and [00:25:00] lifestyle and, and the importance of taking those into account as you are building your online business.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. You have to be really clear on that though, before, like you can’t let the business dictate that, right? And so I think that’s, again, going back to those expectations of like going in and thinking that the business is gonna resolve this for you or something like that. It’s like my business is just like one piece of me.
Sam Vander Wielen: It’s not. People always say like that. They hope that their weight is the least interesting thing about them. And I mm-hmm. I think about this, like, I think about that with my business where I’m like, I, I hope that my business is actually the least interesting thing. Like if you got to know me as a person, there’s so much more that I have going on in my life, or I hope that there’s so much, like sometimes it’s been an invitation where I’ve realized my business is the most interesting thing about me, and that’s a call for me to make some shifts.
Nancy Levin: Mm.
Nancy Levin: So it’s so interesting. I was having a conversation with a friend last night, and you know, I [00:26:00] am, I’m very grounded, practical, uh, I’m very driven. By, you know, doing what’s in front of me. Mm-hmm. I, from my own childhood experiences really disowned fun and play, and so there’s been a big reclaiming of that, that I have been resistant to.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. But it’s happening. I was saying, I said something a friend said to me, something like yesterday, well what if you do this? Just ’cause it’s fun? And I said, I don’t know that I’ve ever chosen to do anything in my life just because it’s fun. Yeah. And I really sort of went to bed last night, marinating in that and marinating in, you know.
Nancy Levin: This, the whole piece of, you know, what, what creating a business makes possible for us when, when we’re willing to act, when I’m willing to actually let my life, let [00:27:00] myself have a life outside of my business to really give myself permission to grow my life outside of my business, which up until now, I have actually really prided myself on being so focused in my business, because I don’t have a partner, I don’t have kids, it’s really easy for me to say like, well, my business, this, this is my thing.
This is my relationship, this is my life. And it’s only been in the past, you know, maybe even, I would say six months that I’ve really been willing to look at, you know, what happens when I give myself real permission to infuse play and fun.
Nancy Levin: And looking at it from the perspective of, of different kinds of desires.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. It’s hard. It’s hard to do. It’s hard because you love your business and I, and I can 100% relate to that. Like I, I love what I do. [00:28:00] I guess I reset and think like, I want that to be a piece of what I love to do. Right, right. Like that, that could be the whole thing.
Sam Vander Wielen: But I, maybe it’s also the Scorpio in me, but it’s like it satisfies this part of me that’s like started, especially as my business got bigger and there were more eyeballs on me and a lot more feedback with eyeballs comes feedback. So like, be careful what you wish for, but, but, um, another part of thinking that your business is gonna make you happy.
Sam Vander Wielen: Like people think when it gets big enough you’ll be happy. I’m like, oh, wait till you get. Facebook trolls. Um, and so. I think there’s this like Scorpio part of me too that loves having some privacy of like, I do all these things and have all these things in my life that nobody online would know about, you’d have to talk to me to know about.
Sam Vander Wielen: And that helps me stay really grounded. I think, uh, as my business has gotten more successful, that I’m just kind of like, yes, like just what I do for work. And then it all let my head get too big. Because also what we do online is, has this like weird, you know, all these like metrics and social metrics and stuff like that.
Sam Vander Wielen: Um, but [00:29:00] also. I think it allows me to healthfully, detach. Yeah. And say like, I write in the book like you are not your revenue. And I mean that whether or not you make a dollar per month or a million dollars per month, it doesn’t make you a good person ’cause you make a lot of money. It doesn’t make you have a good business necessarily.
Sam Vander Wielen: I’ve seen lots of really poorly run businesses that make money and uh, and vice versa. And so yeah, I think that’s important to keep in mind as people are growing their businesses and doing this early on. Like this is not one of those things that you’re like. Okay, I’ll hustle really hard right now, but when my business gets to a certain point, then I’ll develop myself.
Sam Vander Wielen: It’s like, no, you, you do this all along the way. And actually, I think I would argue that it helps you to grow your business. Yeah, I would absolutely
Nancy Levin: agree. I mean, in my book, Worthy, the subtitle is Boost Your Self Worth to Grow Your Net Worth. Mm-hmm. And I do think that there is a strong interconnectedness between.
The way that, the way that you are working with yourself and doing the inner [00:30:00] work, that is going to significantly impact the bottom line.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And if any of you like to write, it’s gonna give you lots of stories. Yes, exactly. I write in the book a lot about how my mom always used to say, you have to be interested and interesting.
Sam Vander Wielen: And, and it was like, you know, you have to work on the interesting part ’cause you have to make sure you’re unique and like some people try to do. What I would consider kind of silly, unique things to stand out, like doing something stupid on social media, but like, I, I really mean it. Like I think if you are genuinely unique, like what’s your, like, I don’t know, the weird thing about you or this funny thing, like no one knows that you’re obsessed with Pokemon.
Sam Vander Wielen: Right? And then you find this thing out about you and you’re like, wow, I had no idea. I think it helps.
Nancy Levin: Yeah, it does. And I do think, you know, I know that when I’m, that, when I’m sharing different things with aspiring authors, you know, it’s also knowing the difference between personal and private. We can really share personal details and yet we still get to [00:31:00] keep what’s private.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, for sure. I went this past year in 2024. At the end, very end of 2024 on in October. I spent the whole month of October in Norway and then in Menorca, Spain, and then I spent the entire month of December in Patagonia and I didn’t tell anybody, so it was like awesome. I love that.
Nancy Levin: That’s so amazing.
Nancy Levin: I love it so much. Yeah. All right, so I wanna talk just a little bit. You know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve emphasized that, you know, this is a very down to earth approach. That it’s real, that it’s true. It’s not gimmicky, it’s not, it’s, it’s really about creating sustainability. We have an allergy to sort of that.
Nancy Levin: Those, you know, online business gurus who are telling aspiring entrepreneurs, I’m just gonna say lies. Mm-hmm. Yeah, sure. I’m just gonna say it right.
Sam Vander Wielen: Mm-hmm.
Nancy Levin: And so that whole piece sort of combined with you [00:32:00] now, I would say, you know what, a heart centered entrepreneurship. Mm-hmm. You know. The struggle with the sales and marketing or the struggle with not wanting to feel pushy or slimy.
Nancy Levin: So it’s like we see these gurus and we see the shininess, and then there’s like a disconnect with, okay, how am I gonna do this and be, have impact and reach people and be able to get attention without me feeling like I’m slimy and that I’m collapsing into something that I don’t wanna be. Yeah. Just whatever comes up around that.
Sam Vander Wielen: I, I’m a big believer in allowing your audience, the people you’re trying to attract, to have agency, do not disempower them. So you are not holding their credit card down at gunpoint and forcing them to purchase your program. You are offering value, something of value if they choose to purchase it.
Sam Vander Wielen: Because they need it, presumably, uh, then that’s on them. That’s kind of the way that I like to think about sales in general is like, first of all, working I guess [00:33:00] strengthening my muscle of knowing that my product is really valuable and that it’s good and that it helps people. And so like that’s first and foremost is working on that.
Sam Vander Wielen: And if you can go to bed at night knowing that you’ve created something really good, that really helps people, then you have to allow those people to have agency and empower them to say, if they’ve chosen to purchase this thing, it’s because they wanted it. So you’re not doing anything wrong. By making sales or anything like this, as long as you’re not, you know, false promises or like offering bad information or something like this.
Sam Vander Wielen: Like if you’re, yeah, I just think the more that you work, I’m feeling really confident about what you do. It helps to relax. Like you have to keep coming back to this. Like people have the ability to decide. They’ve decided they want to join or work with you or whatever, let them do that and then let them decide if they don’t want it anymore or they’re ready to cancel or whatever the thing is.
Nancy Levin: So we touched on earlier that, you have been building your business, um, while also experiencing personal crisis. And so you share and have [00:34:00] shared very transparently about losing both of your parents in a very short window of time. Mm-hmm. And not only that, you were faced with brain surgery when you were beginning your business, basically.
Nancy Levin: And so I’m, I’m curious for you to share a bit about managing grief, healing and managing business at the same time and, and how I think there aren’t enough voices speaking out about. What it’s like to be still running a business that needs you mm-hmm. While you are also needing to give yourself time and space to grieve.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. It’s a really good question, and I, I mentioned too, I did a interview yesterday where I brought up this idea I feel like no one talks about, it’s like. I couldn’t afford to not [00:35:00] work. Like so many people were just like, oh, why don’t you just stop working for a long time? It’s like, uh, I have like bills to pay and I have a life.
Sam Vander Wielen: Like, I, I don’t understand. People were like, I would get some kind of hate sometimes. They’d be like, oh, you should stop working, and like, I can’t believe you’re hustling. I was like, first of all, I’m not hustling. Don’t, like you have no idea how much I’m working or not working. But second of all, I like, hello.
Sam Vander Wielen: It’s a job, like if you’re, if you worked a, a quote unquote normal nine to five job, you can’t just stop working. So. You would get your time off and then you’d be back to work. So it, it’s just, it’s interesting to me that, I don’t know, maybe we feel some of that pressure of sorts, but I think that, you know, so similar to everything we’ve been talking about, that losing both my parents back to back really for one reset my, you know, priorities and values if I didn’t already have them straight, I do, I did now.
Sam Vander Wielen: Um, but it also pushed me to streamline things even more. So it really stream like. My job day to day is marketing. I’m like the chief marketing person, you know, and so I, I created [00:36:00] digital legal templates, uh, you know, eight years ago now, and they’re pretty much the same. I update ’em all the time, but they’re pretty much the same thing that I’m selling now.
Sam Vander Wielen: And I, you know, so my job every day is spreading the word, finding new people, finding new leads. And so I think losing my parents then caused me to say. Where am I spending my time? And really simplify, like, okay, I need lead channels and I need nurture channels, and, and then I need to convert those people on those channels.
Sam Vander Wielen: So like, where am I spending my time finding leads? Um, I, I was fortunate enough to have built up a lot of a business war chest, and so I invested a lot of that in ads because ads was the the fastest and easiest way for me to get leads without me being around. And I already had a funnel by the way, that was converting extremely highly organically.
Sam Vander Wielen: So like that’s the only time, in my humble opinion, that ads make sense. So I, you know, I was able to pour it in there and then like, okay, where was I nurturing people? I was nurturing people all over the [00:37:00] place. And so that got me to like focus and say I want more long form content, less what I call toilet content on social media, where as soon as you put it out, it’s spooky down the drain and, and it’s over.
Sam Vander Wielen: And when I do show up, I only show up with evergreen calls to action. So it’s always leading somebody somewhere in my business that makes sense. And so it helped me to like really streamline that. But. I mean, boy, after my dad died, especially like my dad had leukemia, uh, for anybody who doesn’t know and, and so like when, and it was my best friend.
Sam Vander Wielen: And so when my dad died. I’ve never felt a pain like that before and I, I couldn’t work for a while, you know, and I had, so I had all my stuff kind of running in the background, but I really didn’t know what to do. So talk about like, sitting in that safety of, or, or the discomfort of what it felt like. A lack of safety.
Sam Vander Wielen: Of being like, if I don’t show up, this whole thing’s gonna go under, or people are going to forget about me, you know, people will move [00:38:00] on. Or I’m probably missing all these emails or people asking questions, and then they’re not buying stuff and just sitting with it and being like, you know what, it’ll all work itself out.
Sam Vander Wielen: I don’t know how, but this is all gonna work out.
Nancy Levin: Hmm. I mean, it’s such a testament to when we take care of ourselves the way we need to. To, you know, give ourselves permission to put ourselves first. Mm. Uh, it, it actually is in support of everything else falling into place as well. It seems counterintuitive, but it’s actually the right medicine.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, for anyone who’s listening, who knows anything about grief, you know, too, it’s so, it’s so much more physical than you anticipate. And so like the physicality of it, and I remember I was struggling really badly and talking to one of my friends who’s a Grief Therapist in New York and she was like, I was like, I don’t understand what I should do.
Sam Vander Wielen: Like maybe I should go to a retreat and maybe I should do this and maybe I should do that. And she’s like, are you drinking water? Are you eating three meals [00:39:00] a day? Are you getting sunshine? I’m like, let, let’s like, are you sleeping? Like let’s just go, let’s go back to the basics. Super basics. Yeah. And I wasn’t doing those things, you know, not.
Sam Vander Wielen: On purpose, but like you’re, you, you just go through a lot. And so yeah, even just sometimes just getting back to a little bit of square one and saying like, this is as much as I can do right now. And so maybe also I’m not in the period of my business where I’m extreme like expansive growth and, uh, publicity and all that.
Sam Vander Wielen: Like I was like. Keeping things on deck, like I was just keeping things afloat. That’s it. Yeah.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. One of the other things that I wanna hear you talk a bit about is this sort of legitimacy track.
You know, you talk about your dad, um, saying, you know, not, not validating. You leaving law and going to, you know, going into online business, you know, the whole piece about where’s your briefcase and Yeah.
Nancy Levin: All of this and you know, and then the clothes and the whole thing. Right. And, [00:40:00] you know, I get it, uh, that we, we tend to think that online entrepreneurship may not be a real career or a real business, and there’s a lot of skepticism. And I’d love to hear a bit, you just talk a bit about your experience with that and, and.
Nancy Levin: What you share, you share a lot in the book about that too. The breaking free of the external validation, how we can really confidently own our own unconventional paths.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, I call, I coined him, uncle Larry in the book. I don’t have an uncle Larry per se, but I call, like I always say we like, we have to stop convincing Uncle Larry at dinner that like our businesses make sense or our, you know, career moves make sense so that you can talk to people on Zoom and make money.
Sam Vander Wielen: Like we don’t need to convince all these people. It’s like we’re convincing the wrong, the wrong people. But I think what I’ve learned about online entrepreneurship is so interesting Is that I see like actually as an industry, we don’t accept ourselves. Like I think we, we treat it as [00:41:00] if it’s not a real business and then we expect everybody else to, so I think like it starts at home and I find that very interesting is like that why do we….
Sam Vander Wielen: I don’t know, like when I get hate, for example, on running an ad or something and I’m like, that is so funny to me that I’m getting only those mean comments from other business owners. Right. So it’s somebody who wants to have conceivably, wants to have a business like mine. Do you write Target and to, and complain to them that you see their ad on tv?
Sam Vander Wielen: Do you write Target and say, I saw your billboard three times when I drove back and forth to work today, and I’m pissed off about it. Right. Target doesn’t close its doors. When big things are happening in the world, there’s no demand for them to not speak. Their commercials don’t stop running. Like, I don’t understand the like inequitable pressure on online businesses from ourselves.
Sam Vander Wielen: And that I feel like is, would be like my first thing if I was president for a day in the online business world, that would be my first move would just be like, I don’t understand. We have to accept ourselves. Yeah. And so I’m like, that then helps to stop looking to [00:42:00] our parents, our co, our former coworkers, our friends.
Sam Vander Wielen: Right. I’ve lost friends. I’ve had friends judge me for what I was doing. I still get comments all the time, like, oh, I saw you on YouTube. Like, that’s so funny that you do that. I’m like, it’s not really funny and it makes a lot of money, but Sure. Um, and so I’m like, it’s just, but I also don’t need them to take it seriously.
Sam Vander Wielen: Right, ’cause I take it seriously and I’m proud of it. Yeah.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. I mean, two things that I’ll just add to that. You know, one of the things is when we’re fearing external judgment and criticism, all it means is we are already in judgment of ourselves. Mm-hmm. And so once we have worked through that self-judgment and we are no longer in that self-criticism place, we don’t, that’s when we don’t have the Velcro for someone else’s criticism or judgment to stick to.
Nancy Levin: And we can easily say, yeah, like it’s cute that you think it’s cute. It makes me a lot of money. You do you. And then the other thing is, I always, I always think about this, um, Reid Tracy, who’s the president of Hay House, my publisher Yeah. He always says, you, you haven’t made it until [00:43:00] you’ve received a one star review.
Sam Vander Wielen: I bet, I bet. I’m not looking forward to that Nancy.
Nancy Levin: Right. But then you’ve gotta think who are those people who are leaving the one star reviews? Who are those people who are trolling? Like no one. No one who’s doing, no one who’s going about like good solid business in the world with good self-esteem is leaving those reviews.
Nancy Levin: Yes. And so we also have to, you know, look, look at it where it’s coming from.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. As Brene, I mean, I always come back to that quote from Brene Brown. Yes. About not being in the arena. ’cause it’s just Yes. That’s So much of this applies where you’re just like, uncle Larry’s not in the arena. Your friends, that’s right are probably not in the arena. None of these people are doing it. The bad reviews. The bad comments. Like they’re not, they’re not doing it. I mean, I’ve even thought about that a lot with the book because I got the book deal the day that my mom died.
I got it at like three o’clock in the afternoon. I know my mom died that night.
Sam Vander Wielen: It was a horrible day. I wasn’t even, I was like, yay about the book. I didn’t even care. Obviously, and, and then I go into, you know, [00:44:00] once they work out all the kinks with the contract in only a few weeks, I, they’re like, okay, you can start writing. And I’m like, what? What? I can’t even function. So over the next year, I’ve just lost my dad.
Sam Vander Wielen: Now my mom got killed. I’m now sitting in a library like staring at a blank cursor, like, how am I gonna pump this book out? And so I’ve worried like, Was this my best work? Was this exactly the way I’d put it today? Was there maybe some clouding, like I was upset, I was angry probably while I was writing this.
Sam Vander Wielen: Did that come through? Right? And I have all these judgments about myself, and then I’m like, well, what if people then don’t like it? But I have to sit there and be, first of all, self-compassionate for myself to be like, how many people do I know who could have written this book under these circumstances?
Sam Vander Wielen: Like as my therapist said, essentially under duress and you know. And I understood what was going on. And once I read the book and you know, luckily I got to do the edits much more recently and had a fantastic editor and then did the audiobook, I [00:45:00] was like, actually this book is really good and I think it’s really valuable and it’s gonna be really helpful to people.
Sam Vander Wielen: And I’m looking at it through like such a critical lens, but I also know that I understand and I’m really proud of, of having created this thing.
Nancy Levin: I love hearing that. I love that you’re giving yourself so much grace and trying, you know? Yeah. And again, you know, the book is, the book is so real, so down to earth so true.
Nancy Levin: It, it really has a lot of heart. I really appreciate how you are willing to shine a light on yourself for all of us to be able to see your journey and find ourselves in your story also.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. I hope people feel really inspired to know that you can go through anything and build the business that you really want.
Nancy Levin: I love that. Yeah. So again, the book is called When I Start My Business, I’ll Be Happy. A Practical No BS Guide. I like that [00:46:00] Huddy just gave a little Bark. He’s welcome to a Practical No BS Guide to Successful Online Entrepreneurship. And it is out right now. You can. Get your copy right now, and I encourage you to listen to Sam’s podcast On Your Terms.
Nancy Levin: Follow her on Instagram, sign up for her newsletter, all the things. The best place to go is your website, I’m assuming.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yes, go to san vander mail.com/book for the book. Yes, that would be great. Yes. And you can get bonuses. I, I’m giving everybody a free email list builder course, how to add 2000 people to your email list in the next 30 days.
Sam Vander Wielen: And also a seat at my book club. So for anybody who can buy the book right now, you can come join my book club live in May. I’m gonna host four live sessions to walk people through each section of the book.
Nancy Levin: And I’ve already signed up because I already bought my, I already got my copy of the book,
Sam Vander Wielen: So you can come see Nancy there too.
Nancy Levin: Yeah. Sam, I really, I adore you. I appreciate you. I, [00:47:00] I love to learn from you and I just, I just think you’re all around a wonderful woman and I’m, I’m really, I’m really happy for the work you’re doing in the world, so thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. My pleasure.
Alright, and uh, to everyone listening, I’ll be back here again with you next week.Nancy Levin: Thanks so much for joining me today. I invite you to head on over to nancy levin.com to check out all the goodies I have there for you. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a rating and a review. I’ll meet you back here next week.