Stop Waiting to Start Doing: A Conversation with Professional Speaker, Alexa Carlin

What are you waiting for? Alexa Carlin hopes your answer is “nothing” because the longer we wait, the less we get done and at the risk of losing precious momentum. Momentum is critical to barreling towards challenges with a mindset that turns the commonly asked question, “Why did this happen TO me?” into “Why did this happen FOR me?”

Senior year of college, Alexa battled for her life with a 1% probability of surviving. Her fight to reclaim power was the catalyst for a movement of women on a mission to become authentic leaders that won’t stop for anyone or anything.

Women Empower X (WEX) is a leading platform event series for empowering diverse women in the entrepreneurial space. WEX hosts large events around the country and is currently building out its online platform to provide in-depth knowledge in starting, growing, and scaling a company. The community supports each woman in discovering her fullest potential — trading competition for collaboration. Ample tools aside, WEX provides the space to show up authentically so that women begin to identify less with what they do (or don’t) and lean into who they truly are as a person. Growing a community of empowered women starts with emboldening the individual. Alexa’s story is one worth exploring.

Alexa launched her first business at age 17. She sold jewelry, and a percentage of the proceeds went to help build schools in Africa. Driving meaningful impact has always been her priority, and entrepreneurship is her chosen method of execution. The jewelry business morphed into a blog dedicated to nurturing confidence in young and adult women. Four years later, Alexa could have never anticipated resonating with her own teachings like she did when her body began to fail. Bacteria invaded her bloodstream, killing her organs, and she was placed under a medically induced coma with a 1% chance to live.

Alexa was eventually diagnosed with an autoimmune disease — an invisible struggle with no cure. Simple tasks were impossible, and the dreams of a young woman were stolen; but not all was lost. Alexa couldn’t magically eradicate her body of disease; however, she could strengthen her mind. “When you have no hope, what do you do? I realized this had to happen for a reason — I had to survive for a reason. Instead of looking for hope, I focused on curiosity. I was so focused as to what may happen if I didn’t give up.” By refusing to lose momentum and meeting challenges with curiosity, Alexa continued down a public speaking path that led to Women Empower X.

While exchanging her story with countless others, Alexa has learned one thing for sure: we all face challenges. The universal tendency is to “feed our obstacles and starve our opportunities,” she says. Psychologically speaking, negative associations are much more salient, and it takes intentionality to shift perspective to what’s positively occurring in our lives. Alexa is by no means a proponent of ignoring challenges; she just encourages people to spend less time indulging limiting beliefs, and more time taking real action. She is calling for us to stop waiting for fear to subside, proper credentials, or whatever holds us back. Alexa hopes to remind women that “you don’t have to be an expert to inspire people or to create a successful business… you can be going through your challenges now and still pursue your dreams.” Many women wait until they feel ready; WEX helps women stop waiting to start doing.

On November 14, WEX will host it’s first full-day virtual event. You can learn more about WEX and register for the event at https://womenempowerx.com/.

Check out Alexa’s website (https://www.alexacarlin.com/) to discover FREE resources!