Overview: Join me in this raw and candid episode as I share the unexpected journey of a major life pivot. From dismissing a crazy idea to embracing the uncertainty of change, I delve into the rollercoaster of emotions and decisions that led to a transformative shift in direction. Explore the challenges, lessons, and moments of growth that emerged as my husband and I navigated through the twists and turns of redefining our path and where we live.
Highlights:
The Catalyst: Discover the pivotal moment over lunch with my husband when a seemingly crazy idea sparked a new perspective on life's possibilities.
The Decision: Follow our whirlwind journey from exploring RVs to committing to a custom-built bus, and the realities that reshaped our plans.
Navigating Uncertainty: Learn how we grappled with unexpected setbacks and the emotional toll of grieving the loss of our original dream.
Finding Direction: Explore the process of reevaluating our options and the pivotal role of resilience and adaptability in crafting a new path forward.
Lessons Learned: Gain insights into the importance of embracing discomfort, adapting to change, and taking intentional steps towards our aspirations.
The Journey Continues: Join me as I share my commitment to honesty, transparency, and empowering others to pursue their dreams, no matter the obstacles.
Embark on this unfiltered narrative of resilience, growth, and the courage to pivot in pursuit of a life aligned with purpose and passion.
Overview: Join me in this raw and candid episode as I share the unexpected journey of a major life pivot. From dismissing a crazy idea to embracing the uncertainty of change, I delve into the rollercoaster of emotions and decisions that led to a transformative shift in direction. Explore the challenges, lessons, and moments of growth that emerged as my husband and I navigated through the twists and turns of redefining our path and where we live.
Highlights:
The Catalyst: Discover the pivotal moment over lunch with my husband when a seemingly crazy idea sparked a new perspective on life's possibilities.
The Decision: Follow our whirlwind journey from exploring RVs to committing to a custom-built bus, and the realities that reshaped our plans.
Navigating Uncertainty: Learn how we grappled with unexpected setbacks and the emotional toll of grieving the loss of our original dream.
Finding Direction: Explore the process of reevaluating our options and the pivotal role of resilience and adaptability in crafting a new path forward.
Lessons Learned: Gain insights into the importance of embracing discomfort, adapting to change, and taking intentional steps towards our aspirations.
The Journey Continues: Join me as I share my commitment to honesty, transparency, and empowering others to pursue their dreams, no matter the obstacles.
Embark on this unfiltered narrative of resilience, growth, and the courage to pivot in pursuit of a life aligned with purpose and passion.
Welcome to Not Made to Be Subtle, the podcast that will ignite the flame within women just like you. The place where we're gonna reject the ordinary, embrace audacity, and step into our unapologetic boldness. I'm Caytie Langford, real estate investor, motivational speaker, champion of women, and your guide on this journey. In a world where societal expectations often tell women, we've gotta calm down, be quiet, be more subtle, we are here to say absolutely not. No more. No, this podcast, this is gonna be your place, your sanctuary for unfiltered conversations with badass women who dared to ask, is this it? And then decided to go after more. I want you to join me as we explore stories of courage, resilience and transformation, but we're not here to just inspire you. No. We are here to propel you into that badass version of yourself that lies within you. So stay tuned for this episode of Not Made to Be Subtle because you, you, my friend, you were never made to be subtle.
Caytie:
Pivot! Did you just hear that in the worst Ross Geller voice ever? I hope that you did. Listen, you are not a tree, and you can absolutely move. Today I'm going to be talking about a huge shift that I've recently made in my life, and what exactly my shift, my pivot, my change in direction could mean for you. In October of 2023, Shane and I were having lunch one afternoon and he looked at me and said, Hey, I have this really crazy idea. I think we should go on a road trip. I looked at him and said, are you absolutely crazy? I'm not living in a van. I'm 43 years old. 43 year olds do not live in vans. But for some reason, this idea really captured me. I started thinking about the possibility. I started thinking about. all of the experiences that we could potentially have. So that afternoon we went to an RV dealership. I had only seen the inside of maybe two RVs in my entire life. So we walked around and we talked to the sales guy. Two weeks later, the RV show was in Dallas. And so we decided that we would go. Within the first three minutes of walking in, we found this incredible bus. And I call it a bus because it was 40 feet long. It was actually a diesel engine and it sat on a freightliner, which in case you don't know what a freightliner is, a freightliner chassis, a freightliner chassis is actually the thing that, um, big tractor trailers, right? The stuff that delivers all of our food and all of our stuff that we purchase. So we thought, okay, this is really cool. We really like this. We walked around the RV show, we checked out some things, and we went home thinking, wow, this sounded like a really cool experience. About a week and a half later, we put our deposit down on that exact bus. We were going to have to have it made because, of course, what we picked out, It's not available. I mean, that's like the story of my life. You have to have it custom built So in october we started the journey of having our rv built so the RV was supposed to be delivered the last week of February. We had about a two week buffer for us to pack, gather up our belongings, put everything else in storage, and then we were hitting the road. We were going to travel for six months in our new home. Well, the bus was delivered to Dallas. We started having conversations and something kept pulling us to the fact that things weren't aligning quite the way that we wanted. Now, here's the thing. I'm a Southern gal, so I don't talk about money a lot. However, I raise money for real estate deals. And one of the things that I am working on doing in 2024 is getting better aligned with money and getting better aligned with. Talking about it. So people ask us. Well, why didn't you buy the bus? Here's the truth. We didn't buy the bus because as entrepreneurs Sometimes it's harder to get financing because we don't have a W 2. Now part of me is cringing because, oh my gosh, what are you thinking about me? Do you think that I don't make money? Do you think that I have terrible credit? I don't know. I don't know what you're thinking about me. But the truth is, is that as entrepreneurs, we try and write off as much as humanly possible to reduce our taxes. And it's one of the greatest parts about being in real estate. With that said, the banks that we could use, including our own, they wanted to finance less of the bus for us. Now, of course, hindsight is 20 20 and we should have asked all these questions back in October, but we didn't. So lesson learned, ask as many questions upfront when you're making a big pivot and a big change as you possibly can. So we didn't ask the questions. And they want us to write a pretty sizable five, almost six figure check. What we realized. As real estate investors, as entrepreneurs, is that we didn't want to put money into a depreciating asset. Just like your car, the minute we drove the RV off the lot, we were going to lose money. So we decided that wasn't what we were going to do. However, the challenge in this entire story is that we had been planning for months and months and months. We had a whole itinerary, we knew where we were going, we knew where we were staying. In fact, for Christmas, we asked our families to get us things for this RV. Y'all, I have a collapsible colander and bowl because I thought I needed it to save space in the RV. My mom got us RV for dummies. So we had this entire plan and what we realized is that it wasn't going to happen. We had six days to create a new plan. Of course, if you look at my social media, you're gonna see pictures of us smiling, of us being excited, talking about this new adventure. But I want you to know that from the time that we decided that we were not gonna do this RV trip, to the time that we actually knew what we were going to do, I was stressed AF. It was not easy. It was hard. Why was it hard? Well, I was grieving the fact that I wasn't going to have this experience. I've talked about grieving before, but I think it's a really important lesson for all of us to embrace when we talk about our lives. Grieving doesn't just happen when we lose humans or pets. Grieving happens when something for our future changes. Maybe it is leaving a job. Maybe it is leaving a relationship. Right? There's all these different times in your life that you grieve. But yet, we don't really give much credence to it. We think, oh, you can only grieve if someone close to you dies. I'm here to call BS on that. As you know, I'm never going to sugarcoat things with you. When your life changes and you have to pivot, when you go in a new direction, it is absolutely normal for you to start grieving the loss of what you thought was going to happen. So for those six days, we didn't know. We didn't know where we were going. We didn't know where we were staying. We didn't know what was going to happen in our lives. The only thing that we knew is that we had a lease on the place we were living that completely expired. It was coming to an end and we had to figure it out. We talked about going out to Phoenix or Scottsdale. We talked about should we just go east and keep going to where we were wanting to go through Louisiana and Mississippi to get to the Alabama coast and on to Florida. And then we started talking about Austin. Austin was a place that we've both visited numerous times, we had a lot of friends that went to Texas and we visited them when we were at school. So we thought, wow, maybe we should go to Austin. Maybe we should go someplace that's only a three hour drive from Dallas. So it's not too far. But it's enough away. I don't know how you grew up. I don't know where you're from. And I don't know where your future lies. But I know this about myself. I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. In fact, the last place that we lived It was only three and a half miles from the hospital that I was born at. It was about five miles from the high school that I was at and about nine miles from the house that I grew up in. A lot of people think it's crazy when people are born and raised in a hometown that's really small and they don't leave. But for some reason, when you are born and raised in a big city, it's kind of normal to stay, but the truth is the world is so much bigger. The United States is huge. Why should we just stay in a place that someone multiple generations picked for us? We didn't pick Dallas. I share that with you because I see so many of us who lean into choices that we didn't make. We lean into choices because of our circumstances. We lean into choices because someone in our family made them for us. Or maybe a boss made them for us. Some circumstance that is not a decision that we made. Well, here's what we did. We called every single real estate investor that we knew that may have a short term or midterm rental. And in fact, we are staying in some of our friends from one of our real estate mentorship groups that we're in. We're staying in Bridget and Blue's amazing, beautiful, beautiful home. short term rental. They have several short term rentals here in Austin and I'll actually tag those in the show notes because they're really cool and if you come to Austin you should stay in one of their places. The thing that we continued to lean into that we continued to lean on is that everything in our past has always worked out for us. Does it mean it was always easy? No. Does it mean that we didn't face challenges? Absolutely not. But you have made it through your worst days. You have made it through your hardest days. You have made it through change that was inevitable that you did not want to go through. And so did we. We just decided that rather than stressing out, rather than spending time pitying ourselves because one plan wasn't going to work, We were going to embrace it. So as we go into this journey that we're about, Three and a half, four days into, I want to tell you that I'm going to be honest and transparent. I'm going to tell you what it's like to make big shifts and big pivots in your life. In fact, this isn't the first big pivot that I've ever made. If you've been following me for a while, you know that in 2015 I was crying in my corner office as a c suite executive at a non profit. And on a Monday I decided that I was going to quit and Thursday I did. That has been a completely. different challenge that I'm sure I'll share on a future episode. But here's what I know when you make big change. Here's what I know when you make big pivots, you are going to get responses from people that you may not want. Some people are going to tell you that you are absolutely batshit crazy. They are going to question you. They are going to doubt you. They are going to put their lens on your situation. And sometimes their lens is not coming from a positive place. As I've shared before on this podcast, the people around you, they love you, but they only see life through their lens. And so it's not that they want to stop you from going out to experience great things. Although some people might. Many people, when they put their challenges on your situation, it's because they love you and they care about you and they are nervous and scared for you. So you're going to have the people who think you're crazy they're going to tell you, do it anyways. Do it anyways. You're going to have people in your life when you make big pivots and changes that are going to be so supportive. They are going to cheer you on. They are going to be like, oh my goodness, that sounds amazing. Hold on to those thoughts. Hold on to their well wishings, their good vibes, their prayers, whatever it is that they're offering you. But here's the thing, do it anyway. If not one person cheers you on, for making a pivot or change in your life. Do it anyway. If only one person does and the other 99 people in your sphere of influence tell you you're nuts, do it anyways. You see, no one is going to live life through your lens. Never, ever, ever, ever. You are the only person that is ever going to exist in human history that is going to be you. So you have to live your life based on what you experience, you see, and what you want. what your goals, what your dreams, what your visions are. I've said it before and I will say it again. No one has ever been blessed with your vision. No one has ever been given the gift that you have for seeing what you want for your future. I have three more lessons that I want to share with you that we've learned so far on this journey. Number one is Even the best made plans are going to change. Now, I want you to stop and I want you to think about your own life. Recall back to a time where you knew where you were going. You had a plan. You had steps. You knew. And then something changed. Perhaps it was a job. Perhaps it was a relationship. Perhaps it was some big adventure that you were going to be a part of. I don't know what it is for you. I mean, I certainly know that I had a plan to become a CEO of a nonprofit. That was where I was going. And then one day that plan fell apart. Then I created a new company, a women's personal and professional development company. And that was going to be my legacy. And I put all my eggs into that basket. And then that plan fell apart. I bet that you have a plan in your life that you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was going to happen and then it didn't. Here's the thing, no matter how much you plan, no matter how much you can see the vision, sometimes things are going to fall apart. And that takes me to lesson number two that I've learned that I want to make sure that you are leaning into. And that is that when the uncomfortable happens, when the plan falls apart and you start to grieve and it starts to be stressful. I want you to lean into that because here's the thing I know about life. Something hard is coming your way. Something uncomfortable is coming your way. Something stressful is coming your way. It's going to happen. I think that every single one of us can say beyond a shadow of a doubt, after we lived through COVID that there are things that happen that are completely out of our control that are stressful and hard and we may worry about and be anxious about and we don't know when the next one is coming. But the more that you can lean into the feeling when you are uncomfortable, the more that you can relax into that, just like if you were in the ocean, just like if you were swimming and you're going with the wave. When we lean into the uncomfortable, it actually becomes more comfortable. You're not going to be able to control everything. And in fact, I didn't even plan this, but one of the things that I want to give you, if you are listening to this episode, in the show notes, I am going to give you one of the tools that I have used for, gosh, almost 20 years now. One of my old bosses taught me this. And it's called the Circle of Control. It is literally when you take a piece of paper, you draw a circle, you write everything in it that you have influence or control over. And everything that you don't, you write on the outside of that circle. And then that shows you exactly where you can put your time and energy. And I have one of those. I'm gonna let you download it. Listen, I have stacks of those printed out. So that when I come to those uncomfortable, stressful situations, I can. Take a minute, I can see where I need to put my time and energy, and I can focus right in on that. So go to our show notes, download the Circle of Control, and give it to one friend that you know that stresses out when control is out of their hands. Now, the third thing that I want you to do, the lessons that we have learned so far, and I say we because I am so freaking proud that I have Shane Langford on this journey. It is amazing. Now that's not to say that if you don't have a partner, a spouse, a significant other that you can't make big change in your life. You absolutely can. Right now on this journey, I'm very lucky, to have him. So here's what I want you to do. If you see something in your life that you want to make happen, you might think, Oh, I've got to put a plan together. I do. I want you to put a plan together. But more than putting a plan together, I want you to start taking steps. You see, back in October when we decided, yeah, we need to get out and see more than just Dallas, we took steps. We went to the RV show. We bought a new map. We started researching where we could go. We started telling a few people. Right? So no matter what it is that you want to do, and maybe the timing isn't right this minute. Maybe it's going to take you six months. Maybe it's going to take you a year. Maybe it's going to take you five years. But if there is something that you want to do, don't just think about it. Don't just dream about it or vision about it. Start taking steps. Take one small step, then the next, then the next, and then the next. Because when we just sit inspired and don't actually take action, Nothing in our life is going to change. So if you want to start a business, if you want to invest in real estate, if you want a new job, if you want to get out and get that dream relationship again, I don't know what it is that you vision for your life, but I know because you're listening to this, that you are not subtle, that you are not made to be subtle, that you have big, bold goals and dreams and that you want to do something. I know if you just sit here feeling inspired and not actually taking steps. Not a damn thing is going to happen. So start taking steps. Start leaning into the uncomfortable. Move. Take action. Stop staying still. Life is too short to be miserable or unfulfilled. To settle for anything less than everything you want to be, do, and have. As I've said before and I'll say to you again, you get to do this thing called life once. I want you to live your dreams, live your goals. And so remember, as you are moving towards your vision, number one, know that even the best made plans can change. Number two, lean in when you're feeling uncomfortable. The more you lean into the scary, uncomfortable. The more that it will become the comfortable and number three, if you want something, take a step. Promise me, seriously, shoot me a message. Say that you are going to join me in taking a step. Listen, lady, I don't know where I'm going to be next week. I think it's going to be in Austin, but we'll see. Follow me on my Instagram and my Facebook as I continue to share more about the journey. And remember that while you are on your journey, while you are working on achieving your big, bold, audacious, amazing goals, that I am right there with you cheering you on.
Thank you for joining us on today's episode of Not Made to Be Subtle. Remember, we're not just a podcast. No, we are a movement for women just like you. And if today's episode resonated with you, please don't keep it to yourself. I promise that there is a woman in your sphere of influence who also needs to hear this message. Also, I would love for you to hit that like button hit subscribe and please give us your feedback by leaving a comment. Your feedback is the fuel that helps us in our mission to bring you content that you love, that you want, and that you crave. And until next time, I want you to stay fierce, stay badass and always remember that you, you, my dear, were not made to be subtle.