Four Ways to Stop Fear From Running Your Business (Backed by Actual Science, Not Vibes)

The Marketing4Notaries family at NNA Conference 2025

I spent five years writing a book I told everyone would take a few months. Five years, arguing with a voice in my head that had zero credentials but somehow still got a vote on whether I was allowed to finish it.

Here is what coaching thousands of notaries since has taught me: almost none of you are stuck on the mechanics. You know how to notarize. You are stuck on the story running in the background about whether you are allowed to build something real. That is the actual bottleneck, and no checklist fixes a bottleneck that lives between your ears.

That is the whole premise behind the Woo Woo Summer Series. And before anyone assumes "woo woo" means crystals and vibes, here are four tools from that series, and the real research behind each one.

1. Name the Fear to tame it

Next time your stomach drops before a big signing or before you hit "post," do not push the feeling down. Say what it is, out loud or in your head: "I'm anxious right now."

That is it. That is the whole move.

UCLA neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman found that simply putting a feeling into words quiets activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain running your alarm system. Researchers call this affect labeling, and Lieberman compared it to tapping the brakes the moment you see a yellow light. You are not fixing the fear. You are taking your foot off the gas before it takes over.

2. Stop trying to calm down. Get excited instead.

Everyone tells you to relax before something big. Take a breath, settle down, calm yourself. Harvard researcher Alison Wood Brooks actually tested that advice against an alternative, and the alternative won.

In her studies, people facing high-pressure tasks, public speaking, singing, timed math, were split into two groups. One tried to calm down. The other said three words out loud: "I am excited." The excited group performed better, consistently.

Here is why that works. Anxiety and excitement produce the same physical response: a racing heart, heightened alertness. The only thing that changes is the label you put on it. Going from anxious to calm is a hard U-turn. Going from anxious to excited is just relabeling energy that is already there. So before your next big ask, whether that is pitching an attorney or hitting publish, do not talk yourself down. Talk yourself into it.

3. Action comes first. Motivation shows up late.

Most people have the order backwards. They are waiting to feel ready before they market, waiting to feel confident before they make the call, waiting for motivation to arrive so they can finally act.

It does not work that way, and there is an entire evidence-based clinical treatment built on proving it. It is called behavioral activation, and a meta-analysis of 26 randomized trials found it performs as well as medication for lifting people out of a depressive slump. The core finding: action precedes motivation. Waiting to feel ready is the thing keeping people stuck, not a symptom of it.

Translate that to your business, and it is blunt but useful. You do not wait to feel like marketing before you market. You market, and the confidence follows the action, not the other way around. Whatever you have been waiting to feel ready for is your move today. The feeling catches up later.

4. Fight your brain's negativity bias with a wins log

You had a great week. Four signings, a new referral partner, a glowing review. Then one lead ghosts you, and that is the thing keeping you up at night.

That is not you being dramatic. That is a documented feature of how your brain works. A landmark paper by Roy Baumeister and colleagues, titled plainly "Bad Is Stronger Than Good," found that across nearly every domain studied, negative events and feedback carry more psychological weight than positive ones of equal size. One complaint outweighs a stack of compliments by default. It is not a flaw. It is wiring that once kept our ancestors alive, and it will just as easily talk you out of a business that is actually going well.

The fix is simple and a little unglamorous: keep a running wins log. Every booked client, every referral, every kind word someone says about your work, write it down. Not because it is cute. Because your brain will not hold onto that evidence on its own, and you will need it on the weeks fear tries to convince you otherwise.

None of this is about never being afraid

Fear is not going anywhere, and I am not selling you a version of confidence where it does. The goal was never to eliminate the feeling. It was to stop letting an unqualified voice in your head cast the deciding vote on what you build.

Name the fear. Relabel it as excitement. Act before you feel ready. Keep the receipts on your own wins. That is the whole toolkit, and none of it required abandoning the no-fluff, research-backed approach this brand has always stood for.

If you want to work through this alongside notaries who are fighting the same internal argument, come sit in on Tuesday Notary Titans. It is free every week. And if you want the deeper version of this work paired with the full 5 Point Marketing System, that is what Marketing4Notaries is built for.