Did I ever tell you about the time I went on a coaching retreat and ended up sharing a room with a journalist?
It was a month before I launched Scarred Not Scared. I told her about my surgeries and my scars and how this was my passion project and how I had been working towards it for 6 months I was so excited. While on the coaching retreat, I was going to wear a bikini for the first time!
Her response? “Eh, it’s not really a story. If you lost weight… now that would be a story. Oh and if you do, please get in touch!” I was fuming. I wasn’t asking whether my life was “a story”. I did not go through 15 surgeries to be “a story”. And even so, how is weight loss more of a story than 15 surgeries?! This is why you have to be careful who you listen to. Be careful who you tell about both your exciting plans AND your low moments. The wrong people will dissuade you from your potential successes. The wrong people will utilise your low moments to their gain.
I thankfully had the intellect to ignore her. I wore a bikini the next day, launched Scarred Not Scared the next month. Within 24 hours of posting, Buzzfeed and Daily Mail had reached out and within a week 100 publications had written about me. And guess what?
That same woman reached out and asked if she could write an article about me. I declined. She offered £350. I declined. She retorted that this was a lucky 15 minutes of fame and that I was an idiot for not capitalising on it.
Good thing, Scarred Not Scared was never about money or fame. #ScarredNotScared