Facing Your Fears

All right, I'm officially kick off this call. This is the facing your fears call, I'm hitting record right now, Sophia, you're up on deck first. I would like for you to talk about the two biggest things you think are holding you back from achieving your goals. These have to be things that you're doing or not doing, and not what somebody else is doing to you or for you. OK, OK. Well, hopefully that's the fall into line, then went on to ask. So basically, the two things that I kind of deal with, it's really reoccurring. And the first one is whenever I get an opportunity to work with a larger client or maybe even a higher paying client, just something a little bit bigger than what I'm used to. I always get this fear of Messing up, you know, mostly in terms of production and execution. I don't really feel afraid of coming up with good ideas or even meeting with people and sitting down with them and talking about direction or anything like that. But it's production that really kind of gets me afraid of, like Messing up. And the second thing which I think is borders on imposter syndrome is whenever if I were to work on a project. And it gained recognition or something really good comes from it, in that sense I was afraid of. It's kind of strange, but I always get afraid of what if? What if someone looks at the project in that kind of respect and says, oh, you know, this is inadequate or, you know, I get sued for something that I'm, you know, completely unaware of. And again, it's something that's reoccurring for the second when I'm not really sure where it kind of stems from. But those are two things that I kind of battle with off and on again. OK, what I'm going to try to do. Is I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. Right? and I want you to think about it and everybody that's listening in. I want you to see if you can play along, even though I'm not talking to you specifically, I guess I am talking to you. And just take a moment, OK, and try to answer the questions in your mind. So, Sophia. The question for you is this. Have you screwed up before? In production, in execution. Has something happened to give you this fear, either as an employee, as a freelancer, as a student? And if you can't find anything, I want you to dig deeper into your past, into your childhood. Somewhere in your life, I think. Something has happened that is emotionally scarred you, that your conscious brain has gotten over, but your subconscious brain is still trying to deal with all kinds of that question right away, actually. Perfect there's a no and a Yes. So have I screwed up on something? No is there something from my past? Yes when I was an employee contract employee for an agency a long time ago, a couple of years ago, it was. It wasn't the best environment. The toxic. And you know, there was some finger pointing going around, and I was kind of the new person in there and they're like, oh, you know, we seems like it was. It was a very small print run before I went to print. And, you know, I was kind of one of those people that was kind of finger pointed being kind of like, oh, you know, it was who kind of messed up a few critical steps and it wasn't really the case, but I think it's something that stuck with me. Quite a while and still is, I guess, apparently what happened. What were the consequences of screwing up? But it wasn't any. I think it was just, you know, unfortunately, it was just really a bit of a toxic production manager who kind of just went around and said, you know how you kind of discipline that you weren't supposed to do, even though he failed to kind of show me, you know what? What happened? I said, oh, you know, I took care of it, and you can't be involved in this type of work anymore. It was just a very toxic environment. I left after a while after my contract was up on good terms with the bosses and everything. But it's something that kind of stuck with me and kind of at the time really irritated me with a couple of years ago. It's quite younger than I am now, but something that I think I still kind of gnaws at my head, you know, in the background. OK that does not sound horribly debilitating in terms of the consequences. I think what I heard was he ridiculed you a little bit embarrassed you. Yeah, it was kind of it was kind of one of those situations where I just felt I felt very adamant about proving my point. But unfortunately, because of the circumstances, I didn't really get a chance to and it was just it was more of an ego driven thing than something where someone said, you know, really questioned my abilities from a higher up source standpoint. It was just kind of him and me. So it was just that kind of thing, but I think. You know, it was that situation and then coming from a place where, you know, I don't know everything, so if something comes across my desk, I'm not an expert at every single task that comes across my desk. And so I guess there's also a point of being a little bit of afraid of the unfamiliar. And being able to execute in that respect. OK I'm familiar. OK, I have two stories, and then I have some things to share with you, ok? First story is this my cousin who I use a lot in the stories that I share with his, his father's, my uncle and and he can be a tough man. He's all heart, all emotion. But he was very tough on his own kids when he was raising them. And he told me the story, I wasn't there to witness it myself, but I could totally see it happening because I've been in the household before. So he told me one night he's working on homework and he was just getting frustrated that that's all he was doing. And his dad could see that he was getting kind of just. Tired of doing homework. And then his dad asked him, are you tired of doing homework? And it seemed like a very innocent question. And he was like he breathed a sigh of relief. He goes, Yeah. And his dad says, OK, I don't do homework, you don't want to do any more homework now. It was no, I don't. And then he told him, OK, you don't have to do homework anymore. I'm going to give you a list of chores to do around the house. I want you to go and wash the dishes and once you go do the laundry, I want you to clean the toilets. I want you to do all this stuff. Then he realized that his dad was punishing him for giving him his opinion, and it seemed like he was inviting him to do something different. But it was a trap. And this is not an isolated incident, having seen these kinds of things happen repeatedly. It scarred him. It's scarred him in that when you're asking him for his opinion now. He's very reluctant, he's very cagey to tell you what he thinks. It's not to say he doesn't have opinions, but that moment, I think, has messed around with his mind. I could ask him the most innocent things, and then he would turn around and say, well, what do you think? And then he's very now deliberate and very careful about what he says. And so it is also then limited how many things he will try that are new and different and things that are potential for him to fail at because of this incident. I will tell you also that I personally screwed up. I was interning for a professor I really looked up to. And he asked me to do something very simple to convert a file for him using a special plugin. I've never used before on his computer. It was for a giant poster, so I used this plugin to do something, but the plugin messed up since I did not design it, I wasn't aware of what to look for. So when it scaled everything up for the poster, it scaled everything up. But one thing it went to press. It went to press. And then his client realized it was wrong. Then he asked me, did you do everything I told you to do? I said, yes, I did, but I didn't know how to check the file. And it costs him thousands of dollars to reprint, so here it is, I'm an intern trying to help somebody. I really looked up to totally failed. And it felt really embarrassed. Now, luckily for me. He's a kind and forgiving person, and he knew that technical things happen like this, and he took the responsibility upon himself. He told me, I shouldn't have asked you to do this. There's no way you could have known if it was right or wrong. So he took the responsibility so that I didn't have to carry that scar, that emotional scar with me. And so he was a really good boss in that sense. Now you're worried about things. I think that haven't happened yet. And I think a lot of us suffer from these kinds of things. And this is what certain psychologists psychotherapists would say you're living in the future. And one of the key skills in life is to live in the present, so many of us are living in the past regretting things that have happened that we can no longer change or celebrating successes that can no longer drive us moving forward. You see this in a lot of former professional athletes or high school athletes that were superstars. Their glory days, their best days were behind them and they keep reminiscing. They're stuck in the past. In this case, I think you're thinking about a potential thing that actually you have really no real reason to believe that this will happen again. Very true. This is where you're living in the future. And there's a number of. Gurus, yogis, self-help people. Who say something like this fear and a way to remember fear. It's an irrational thought about something that hasn't happened, so fear is fantasize experiences appearing real, bar fantasize experiences appearing real. So in your mind, this is inevitable, it's going to happen. But if you look in the history of the projects you've worked on, it has never happened, say for one little screw up. As a freelancer, and there are many remedies to this, by the way, we do stuff. Believe it or not, that we have no idea how to do on a consistent basis. If you ask Matthew, Greg or Ben. We are constantly throwing ourselves in on the deep end of the pool. Without fear. And the reason why is because we have great confidence in our process. We know that somewhere in this project, it'll get really ugly. We'll get really scared and it'll seem like no options are available to us. But somehow, through the teamwork, research or our collective intelligence, we're able to overcome that every single time. And we emerge out of the chute with a lot of momentum. And it seems like from this point forward, the job gets really easy. So knowing that we have great belief in the systems that are set up and our processes and our procedures that we know, if you give us an input at point a, at some point it will arrive at point B and we're very good at getting there. We know that the process can be messy in between, but we always get there. We never not deliver. So one thing I'm going to ask you to do, and we've talked about this before, is for you to work out a formal process. A playbook, if you will, a creative recipe, a formula for success and rely on that. There's always that friction point in every project where you really don't know what the heck you're doing. That's the part you need to focus on and to figure out how you overcome these things in the past. You can also hire people to help you. This will get to the second point I want to make. You can hire people who are much better than you who are experts at what they do. As long as you don't underbid the project because nobody's going to help you when there's no money, right? That's a critical part. Is there anything you want to ask me or as a follow up? No, I think that's great. I really like the idea about having a process. It's funny I started to do that towards the end of last year to kind of document that right down. Sure had it somewhere that I can kind of look over and make sure that I'm following it so that I can try to prevent some of these maybe screwing up. And you have some of the fears that come out of that. And so I'm really glad to say that I've been trying to utilize that already, and I really feel like hearing stories that you told me really kind of helps me feel that it's OK to not know everything, and it's OK to kind of come in and and, you know, have a strong process and just try to navigate your way through the project and allow it to unfold rather than feel like you have to control every aspect beforehand. Mm-hmm I think the idea of knowing everything, I think the idea of control. I think the idea of being able to do something perfectly, it's all an illusion and it's illusion that we use to beat ourselves up over. I'm not quite sure if we ever produce a perfect piece, and I've been working for 22 years. I don't strive for perfection. I strive to make progress. And you can only do the best you can with the available information at the time. You had mentioned that you were scared that you might get sued or you might get into trouble for something, and this may touch upon a deeper psychological thing that I have time for right now. But unless you're actively trying to screw up to do something bad, malicious, to steal, to mislead your client, I'm not quite sure where that fear is coming from. You could. I agree. I agree. You do realize that every single day all of us are in a situation where we have incomplete information. Some of us get paralyzed because we don't have all the facts and all the possible outcomes. And oftentimes people in this very group will say, how do I know this will work, chris? What kind of results have you had in the past? They want a guaranteed thing. They're not willing to take the step. Because they're uncertain of the outcome. And so they sit and they wait idly by while other people in the exact same group that we're talking about in this group. Now, here's something not even catch the whole thing. And they'll say that's intriguing, that's different than what I'm doing right now. What the heck, what do I have to lose? I'll give it a shot. And so they do. You want to become the latter, not the former. There are no guarantees. We're all working with incomplete information and using our own self-assessment of our risk tolerance. We need to choose what's right for us. But don't let inaction be your choice because that is a choice as well. I'm going to move on. Ok? thank you so much. You're welcome. Jennifer and Tina did make you the co-host, if you can help out a little bit. Oh, Mr Ben burns is in the room now. OK, Jennifer, you're up. Hi, Chris, how are you? I'm great. Good yeah, I get to see you beautiful. OK, tell me what your fears are. Well, I think the first one I listed there was the making the transition from doing kind of small projects that I have complete control over that I can do on my own. And I'm trying to envision and then take the steps to get to the. The more comprehensive and impactful projects that I want to do. So I can make plans about it and take steps toward it, which I feel like I'm doing, but if when I was reading through some of the questions, I think some of them kind of seem to come back to a similar theme. One of you know, you're afraid that you're going to mess it up and that, you know, but you have to be careful because fear can keep you from doing anything. But how do you how do you grow? Right now I'm growing. I'm taking action like kind of little step, little step, little step. But it's kind of when I back up and look at the whole thing, it kind of freaks me out. And then I go back to doing my little step, little step, a little step, which is maybe what I need to do. I don't know. Thoughts? yes, many. The question for you. I didn't quite hear clearly. I think you were sharing a scenario. But I'm asking you to dive into your soul here a little bit. OK these bigger projects that you want to take on the ones that go beyond your ability to produce by yourself. Mm-hmm What are you really afraid of? Probably trust issues. Trusting it's either not being able to trust somebody else or trusting them too much concern that I'm going to lose control and that I'm going to pick the wrong person to trust to help me do those things. OK, this is very good. This would be my first kind of take on how that feels. Yeah this seems like we're having a therapy session for 30 people in the room with us, and I hope you're OK with that. So what I hear from you is you have trust issues, which leads me to question. Have you been betrayed before in a relationship? You know, I don't know that it comes back so much to being betrayed by somebody else. I honestly, I think it comes back more to trust in myself. I have been angry with myself for. Maybe not striking the right balance with working with people. How do I put? Either, I don't know. Well, I guess, yeah, in work situations like I'll kind of trust too much that they'll be able to do it and then I'll turn around and find, Oh crap, I've got to grab this and do it on my own, or I'll overload myself because I'm just, you know, not willing to give up something. And then I'll I've definitely screwed some things up in projects and stuff. I know how that feels. You try your hardest, you know, and then you and then it kind of goes wrong. And so and then so I probably project that fear onto, well, if I can screw it up, so can they. And what if I don't catch it? And what if I've mainly what ifs which are, like you said, living in the future fearing something that hasn't happened yet? Right? I have some thoughts on this. And I think it's about the way we code in our mind when something doesn't work out, the way we plan, that it's a horrible outcome that mistakes become in our mind, almost like life threatening to the end of the universe as we know it. And I think I'm not trying to make light of it. I really feel that this is real in your brain. It's just like how my kids think. How they think if they have a bad haircut. Their life is ruined. Mm-hmm Or my son, Otto, who's 14 now. He's a very high performing kid, so when he gets 97 out of 100 he is just so sad. Because it didn't measure up to his expectation of what it's supposed to be. And that's one of these problems with expectation is you're setting yourself up for disappointment. A mental exercise I try to do, and you could start on something very small, like going to the movies or having dinner is to try and strip away your expectations. Nothing is good or bad, it's the thinking that makes it so. So when I go to watch a movie, my kids asked me, my wife will ask me, what's this movie about? Did you hear good things about it? I said, no, I don't know. Do you really want to know what this is about? Minutes before we're going to watch the film, why don't we just go and try and experience it for what it is that the three or four of us are going to sit-in a theater together as a family? And we're going to experience something. It may wind up being something for us or not for us, but then we can have this shared experience together and we can talk about it. And plus, there's a lot of artistry that goes into making this thing. So even if the plot isn't your cup of tea, or if the visual effects don't measure up or the acting is a little flat, there are things for us to learn. And you can learn a lot more from a bad movie than you can from a good movie because usually when you go see something really good. You're overwhelmed by how good it is, it seems so far away from something that you could do. You have an incredible cast, powerful performance, incredible lighting. But when you watch a bad movie and characters behave in certain ways and you think, wow, that dialogue could have been tweaked here, the setup and the payoff for the end didn't really correlate with each other. And there were threads that were open that were never closed. And it's really unresolved in my mind, and I wonder why that happened. The lighting was terrible. They should have done x, y and z. So if we look at our life experiences and the things that we do that are, quote unquote mistakes, I actually embrace those as good things when I make a mistake. I realize it's because I'm doing something new, I'm not supposed to be perfect and amazing at everything I try. The very first time. The critical part is just to realize that if you don't learn from it, that might be truly the mistake. But each and every time you do something that's new and that's different. You're not supposed to be good at it. But if you don't give up and you keep at it and you keep working on it, you do get better. I'm a horrible dancer, I'm a horrible singer, but I told them, I told my wife the other day, would you like to go dancing? I'd like to take some dance lessons with you. Now, this is not something I would want to do. Farthest thing from my mind, but I keep trying to expand and move into things that I'm totally uncomfortable doing. I know that's how I grow. Now, let's talk about trust and mistakes and all this kind of stuff. This is a little more practical advice unless mindset stuff. The problem why projects fail when you hand them off to somebody is because you guys don't have. In more academic terms, a shared conceptual framework of what it's supposed to look like. We think other creative beings are just like us, their mind readers. We didn't get a lot of direction from the client. We were able to interpret it and therefore we are able to make this wonderful thing. So we assume that we're not exceptional, that this is just what average people do. What we don't realize is very few people on this planet are creative like the way you are. Even fewer had the guts to go off and start their own business, and even fewer are successful doing it. So now you're putting yourself in a very small percentile. You know, when you take those. Personality tests, and they're like, oh, you're 5% of the population. Well, that 5% means something you need to remember that the people who come to work for you don't always necessarily have the same skill set the drive and intuition that you have. Guess what? If they did, that might have started on company. So what you have to do is you have to be able to help them understand how you make decisions. And your success depends on this. I have three people at the office. Matthew, Greg and Ben, who I count on to be able to act as if I were there and making the decisions with them. I'm literally not there. So what we do oftentimes is we have our little huddles, we get together, we prepare for whatever it is that they're going to do, and we spend a lot of time doing that. So they might get on a 15 minute call, but Ben, Matt and I might talk for an hour beforehand. Be wary of this. Be wary of this. And this is how you answer this, and this is how you embrace and pivot out of that and be ready and get yourself psyched up after the call. They come and they tell me what happened and we reveal it. And it's that process of setting up the expectations, giving them the necessary tools. And then after they try it out to then course correct and continue to coach them up, eventually what happens is they're able to be just like you. Which is a great thing for both of you. You have less work to do. You can build out twice as much now because there's two of you doing the work. And guess what? That person has grown so much. They came in unformed and they're coming out. With all the skill, expertise and the decision making things that you possess, that's what they walk away with, and that's an incredible thing. Now, earlier, Sophia had said this. Her former boss gave her something, didn't give her a lot of direction to the tools necessary to succeed, that person failed as a manager as well. And the last thing I want to say on this. Guys, what we do. It's not open heart surgery. It is not brain surgery when you screw up, the consequences is really it didn't live up to what you had in your brain. No children were unfed. No homes collapsed, no people died because of your design. It's a little self-important, so I constantly remind myself this is just a piece of design, and it too will pass as all things. So this is just a tick in the timeline of my life. And that's all it ever is. So I hope I've given you some actionable things and four things for you to think about in terms of how to reprogram your mind. Cool OK. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. You're welcome. Who's next, henry? Well see? So, so mine was just short and sweet, but I think it has to do just like the short and sweet. Yeah yes, it is nice when you design did have an influence in an election back in the day. So just on that. Yeah oops, we lost Henry. And I just turn off your video. I mean, I like seeing you, but your thing is. OK shots or video because you're breaking up. Is this better? So far, Yes. OK, so it's the aspect of just having imposter syndrome, of not being good enough for whatever it is that I do, I've done several discovery sessions. Everybody has said that's been great. That's wonderful. But then there's something within me and like, I'm not ready to start charging for this yet. I'm going to mess this up, and it's just not going to be good. And I think it's the same thing that everybody else has been saying. So just kind of getting over that. OK we talked about this a couple of times, you guys will. I'm not good enough, I'm not ready. You know, you're never ready until you're ready. And it's kind of remarkable when you look back on your life, the things you've done. Well, the first time you did it, it was the first time he did it. People will ask me all the time. When do you first start charging clients for that kind of money? Well, the first time I did it. It can't be the thing that holds us back. You know, what you do is good. The feedback from the group tells you that. The body language, the faces of the people that you're working with will tell you their whole story. So somewhere along the line. You have a mismatch in terms of what you describe, what you can charge for and what you cannot charge for it. And this is fairly common within the creative community. So you think to yourself, if I make something, if I craft something, if it looks like a logo or shape something I was taught how to do, I can charge money for that. But isn't it weird that people will pay me just to hear me talk and to hold space for them to share their ideas? I don't think therapists have any problem with this. And they charge quite a bit of money. One of the greatest things that you guys can provide to your clients, to your friends, to people that you care about. Is to be a great listener. Is to be empathetic. Is to make sure they feel heard because this validates who they are. What I was seeing my therapist, one of the exercises that she had to do was we were supposed to say back to the other person exactly what they said. And you really had to focus to be able to do this because it is not an easy exercise to do. But when you're able to use the exact same words in the exact same sequence that somebody else says, for some reason they feel like you understand them. And we all want people to appreciate us and to understand us, understand me and appreciate me, that is love. So you're doing a good thing, Henry. You just need to get over this idea that this is not worth any money. I'm trying to get over the idea that it's worth way more than I can charge. Just I'm not so arrogant about it. Whatever somebody pays me to facilitate and I run this session, I keep thinking to myself, Oh my gosh, I need to charge triple this because this is what I bring to the table. And so with the help of Ben and Matt, we keep raising the price. We went from doing it for free to charging 5,000 to 10,000 to 30,000 and we make big jumps at it. And now I think we're at 90,000 or 87. I can't remember. I keep goofing up the number. And it seems like the ceiling is so high. And I'll tell you, the ceiling is very high on this because I've seen bids from those large management consulting companies. And they're in the seven figures. So between 0. And over a million dollars, you have a lot of room to grow. Henry and I want you to get over this idea that if you say a number and they say no, that it's OK. It means they do not value. Strategic thinking. It means that the only value things that they can see and touch, and they're not a good fit for you. Yeah, I think for me. So I'm working on my thesis project and people have heard about it and they're like, hey, we come, speak at it, speak about it at this place, at this place. But then there's that always part of me that's just like, you're just not ready, like, you can't talk about this. And I think some of that, as I'm listening to everybody else, it just stems from being Latino. And there's always been this notion of you've got to show everybody else that you're just as equal or better than them. So there's always a thought of performing and doing better. So that way you can be accepted as a full human being. I've had to struggle with that myself, Henry. I think that's a deeper conversation for you and I to have offline. I don't think I have a 10 minute kind of Fortune cookie answer for you there. We're talking about a lot of pain, a lot of acceptance. Our circle back with you on that. OK OK. OK, Thanks very much. Thank you. OK, who's up next? Adam, yeah, yeah, thank you, Adam. Hi my problem is basically with control of a judgment. So I have problem with sharing things or what I put out there, not because of criticism of my work, but because of what I feel in terms of judgment. What will somebody think of me as a person, not of my work? Think of you as a person. Yes, OK. Yeah so it's very limiting because I really can't promote myself. A lot of people will say this that they will say what makes a great artist is somebody who's very passionate, who's very vulnerable, and I think to a large degree it's true. The best actors are the most vulnerable actors, they're not acting, they're reacting. And that's why so many of them have certain insecurities, no matter how famous they are, no matter how many awards they've won. What makes them great also makes some people very vulnerable and they suffer through this. That's why they can't read reviews of their work. Right now, we need to learn to separate ourselves from the definition of an artist because what we do can be artistic. But I don't consider myself an artist. An artist sits in a room somewhere and works on something they care deeply about, and they don't really care about what anybody else says for the moment, and they release it to the world and sometimes it's reviewed favorably and sometimes it's not. What we do is a design service, whether you're in the web space. Whether you're taking photos for people, somebody pays you, they define the problem, or maybe you define it together and you provide a service and you get paid for that. Do it again. Again, it's not about the work, but about what will somebody think of you, for example. OK, so right now there is no separation between you and your work. So you so when they think of when you say when they look at your work and they judge you. You're making that attachment that you are your work, that if anything happens, then it's being reflected upon you, if I understand that correctly. Yes OK. Right so I'm going to ask you something here. And I think where I Excel in my life is because I'm very logical person. I try to think about is the thought that I have in my brain. Is it rational? And where else can I find examples of this being true? And like any scientist, I come up with a hypothesis and a continually to test it. So as long as I find no negatives in terms of it not being true, then I continue to have that thought in that belief. So let me ask you this question then. If your work is you and there intertwine. If I were to sever a finger like, say, the little on the pinkie off your hand. And the pinkie is sitting on the floor, they're bloodied and then purple. Is that you that, pinky? How do you mean? Well, do I say that you are less of a human because I cut the pinkie off and now I can have a conversation with your pinky because that's. Now, the answer is no. The pinky is not. You continue on. But let's make it more severe, I cut off your hand. Is that hand you. So this is a part of your body that's now been separated from your body? And we can continue this exercise all the way through. You have a heart attack, we replace your heart. Yeah, you see that these physical things that we're attached to actually don't make us. So how could it be that something that you make is you? It basically opens up. I don't yeah, do you understand what I'm saying, adam? Yes so what? I make something it is what it is. It's not me. I'm still trying to figure out who I am, like what makes me me. But I know it's not the clothes I wear. The color of my eyes. The hair on my head. None of that is me. That's why I don't really care. If I lose my hands, I'm still me. If I lose my sight, I am still me. So it cannot be that what you make on a piece of paper or on a screen is you. Yeah, it just can't be right. The second thing is. Why do you even care what people think of you? When you're alone and when you're struggling and you can't make ends meet, do those people come out and help you when you have to move from one unit to the next? Do they come and help you move? When you're celebrating the deepest joy of your life. Are those people there? So these are imagine people that you care about what they think about. And I would say that most of us strive to live a life that we feel fulfilled and we feel happy. And so what we want to do is we want to govern our emotional state. Would we ever give anybody the controls to how we feel emotionally? Now, talk about trust issues. I don't trust anybody with those controls. Nobody I want to cover my own happiness, my own direction. Period I. So what we're going to do, it seems preposterous to me. Is we're going to give somebody that we don't know. That we don't trust. The controls to how we feel, how we govern our emotional state. That is a dangerous thing to do. Talk about giving somebody the finger or giving somebody the button, the New Layer button to your mind. I would not give that to anybody. And we OK. Yeah, totally makes me think differently a little bit, OK. I basically just think what I think and that's it. Yeah, you have to make the decisions that are right for you in your circumstance. And then you have to act upon those decisions that you make that are good for you. You have to get rid of the things that are not. Caring about what other people think is, in my opinion, something that you don't want to do ever. I was having a little conversation with Schiavone a couple of days ago, I think, via chat text message, and she said, hey, I really like your voice. I said, wow, I can't stand my own voice. She was why is that? And I remember when we were first working on the show, when my editors were working on it, and they would edit it in the open room, as soon as I walked in the room, I would tell them very forcibly turn that off. If you see me around, you, put it on mute, put on your headphones, I don't want to hear my voice because it's so horrible to me. But I do what I asked you guys to do, I started to think about this in my own mind, started to think and what I did was I would play the audio and I would have my wife listen to it in the other room and I would ask her, please tell me, does that sound like me? And there's no surprise there she'd come out of the room like that's it sounds exactly like you. So I was thinking, boy, I always thought I sounded cooler than that. So that means that everybody in every interaction that I have, here's that same person in that same tone that way. And they still want to talk to me. So all of this was kind of, in my own mind, self-imposed thinking that I'm such a horrible person because of this voice. But all along, unbeknownst to me, that's how everybody hears me. So I said, this is an irrational fear. You're having an irrational reaction to something, because if you're as bad as you think you are, then nobody will talk to you. So I got over it. And these are the kinds of things that I do all the time when I think what's holding me back right now? Let me do some tests. Let me check this out. Let me think this through. I don't want to walk away feeling something and not examining it for what it is. Some things are right. I'm like, yes, that is a rational fear or a thought. Most of the times they're irrational. And then I just kill that thought, and I move on. OK all right. Thank you. Thank you. Before I move on to the next person, which is Diana. I want to take a brief. 2 minutes here. And as you guys, how you feel about the conversation so far. Anything I can do different, better, longer, slow or faster something, anything, feel free to turn on your mic and tell me whatever you think. Or not? I love it so far. Thank you. Thanks uh-huh. I agree so far, so good. The only be tougher, rougher. Versus OK. It's perfect. All right. OK, well, I guess I don't need the two minutes I'm going to move on then. Yeah so we want to say something. I was just thinking it must be challenging when you've got like 10 minutes of somebody and itching to go really deep and sort out their stuff. Yes, but it's great so far. All good. Hold on. I want to talk to you. So you're saying we have 10 minutes and we're going deep and it's what was the challenge? The challenge is that you probably I don't know if, if, if I were you, I'd probably want to go even more deeper and explore all the different issues and figure it all out and help them sort of move on their new journey, essentially. Yeah so here's the reality of it is this is that some people see a therapist for years to work out their issues. I am not trained to do this. This is just me playing amateur therapist. I'm a little nervous about doing permanent damage to you, so I just want to share some insight, maybe point out a direction that you can explore on your own. The cool thing about this should something touch a nerve in a positive way, it might warrant you to further explore this, either in a book, a video or to actually speak to someone who's qualified to do this. I think that's where some real work can be done. I talk about my therapist quite often, but I only saw her probably like under a dozen times. But this is the way I work and every lesson that she taught directly or indirectly, I learned as fast as possible. And I apply to the next person. So I felt like I don't need to see her anymore. It's not that I needed this year, but I didn't have other things to learn. But I'm feeling like if we're going to do more of these things, I need to book some more sessions with her and ask her, please teach me more what you do and how you do what you do. Especially if it's something you're feeling called to. But either way, I think that the information that you're sharing, it's something that we all glean from each other. So you, you know, no matter what, what others are going through, we're going through something similar. So taking snippets of it, we're able to sort of catch our own lives. Yes OK, let's move on to Diana. Dan, are you ready? I think so. Go ahead. Oh, well, I'm going to read what I wrote there. I'm afraid I've been delusional about building a design agency because I'm basically freelancing now and I'm raising my daughter alone and I don't live in my country, so that's the first one I wrote. The second one is I'm afraid of not learning to sell my services ever and never walk to the next level. Right now, I'm afraid of exposure of what other people think. And I feel super fake and lacking of any confidence because I'm self-talk and. Yeah, my background is in fine art, not design, even though I've been doing this for like 10 years now. Mm-hmm Well, that is a lot in there. Yeah, I think and to be honest, I have I have found some answers in other people. Review already talked so OK, let's use our 10 minutes wisely. Then what's something that you feel is still unresolved? That is a fear that you have what's holding you back. That I haven't already addressed. I don't know if insecurity specifically, because imposter syndrome is something that has to do with that and trust. I don't know. I was feeling like my questions are or my what I wrote is redundant. I've been taking notes and I already feel like I gained a lot from what you you've been talking. OK so yeah, and I think we're going to experience this more as we go deeper into the calls that the issues that you guys are raising hover around a few core themes that I've already answered and talked about. So this is a very natural thing. So here's what I'm going to ask. The rest of you guys to do is go look at your question right now, and if it's already been discussed and you want to go deeper, ask the deeper question. We're not going to be slaves to what we wrote. You're human being. You have your 10 minutes with me and we can talk about whatever you need to talk about. But I do hear a couple of things that you're facing denim. You're a single mom raising your daughter or daughter. Yeah, you're raising your daughter in a foreign country and you have massive imposter syndrome on a number of levels because you didn't study the thing that is what you do today. Yeah and you have dreams and ambitions of building an agency, building a sustainable lifestyle to provide not only for you, but for your daughter. Yeah, those are a lot of challenges. I want to get into the mindset stuff mostly. You chose to live somewhere else other than where you were born, right? Yeah and why did you do that? Because it's a better opportunity for me and my daughter. OK, so there's more economic opportunity. Yeah OK, so you're doing all the right things to protect yourself and your daughter. And I don't look at that as a negative like I'm a foreigner in a foreign land. I look at it like I'm a strong, independent person willing to. Jump into tremendous adversity. Because there's something much bigger than me that I'm working for. Your your daughter's life and your livelihood depend on the decisions you make, so you're a very brave person. To be able to step into that. And that's how I potentially that you were born to be an entrepreneur to. Because an entrepreneur doesn't run away from risk and possible failure, they run towards it. Now you just need the fundamental skills, so that is not a mindset thing that's just putting in the hours, right? You will feel more confident as a designer, as you learn more about design and you practice it more. Luckily for you, there are a ton of resources out there for you to learn. So you will just have to figure out something how to manage being a mom and a professional and spending enough time in personal development towards this career, this life that you want to have. And you can get there. The thing about transitioning from being a freelancer to an agency owner is this is you can lay out a roadmap. And a timeline of what needs to happen when it needs to happen. And the steps that you need to take. And just do them. This is not like creating a work of art that people say is a masterpiece for which the steps are unclear because if it were clear everybody would make their masterpiece. But in terms of the steps that you need to take to acquire work to be able to hold your own in a business conversation. Those are pretty clear. So what I don't want you to do is this too many people? Are you concerned about where they need to be and where you need to be in your mind is I want to have an agency. I don't have x number of employees in this kind of office making this kind of money, doing this kind of work for these kinds of brands. And then you kind of look down at where you're at right now, like standing there in a certain space and you say, wow, I am so far from being in that agency spot. So it becomes overwhelming. It becomes daunting. You're intimidated by that because you just can't see that happening. But like all things, if you just take small, measurable steps and continue to move forward. One day. Instead of looking at your feet where you stand and you look up, you realize you're in that agency. That staff is surrounding you. And they were doing that work that you thought you would be doing. Charging the money you thought you'd be charging for the clients and the brands that you always wanted to do. But it can be very frightening if you constantly focus on that end thing. This is how you do everything in life, in my opinion. You take a big thing that's hard to hold. Think about it like a giant pumpkin. Your mouth is only so big, and the only way you could eat that pumpkin is if you cut that pumpkin into pieces. And if you keep eating, you'll finish the whole pumpkin now you'll be. You know, they have other issues if you eat the whole pumpkin, but that's the idea. Take every big goal that you guys have and chop that sucker down until you can bite down on it. You want to break into bite size pieces, ok? Yeah OK. You got this. You're in the right place. You're in the right community at the right time in terms of the timeline of the universe. There has never been a better time to be alive. Awesome OK, let's move on. You're welcome. Christian hey, How's it going? Good, good, I'm ready, man. All right. My first problem was that just I tend to focus too much on what I can't do, and I'm always trying to like, learn and very scatterbrain because of it. So, I mean, I think the learning is positive, but I'm always jumping from thing to thing. And I never feel like I quite have all the pieces together. why do you why do you focus on the things that you're not good at? Um, I guess it would be like to avoid problems in the future or I worry about, you know, mistakes happening or something like that. Yeah do you think if you worry about the things that you're not good at, that gives you a better chance of not making mistakes or a worse chance? I think it might help you avoid some things, but I think it also distracts you. Yeah, I believe in having a happiness advantage that when you're feeling good and you're feeling confident that you perform better. And I'm going to tell you that the things that you face in life from a personal level and a professional level, they're going to be very challenging and I want to be armed with as many tools as I can have to take on the day, every single day. So I know that if I focus on the things I screw up in, like whether or not I spent more than I need to buy a product or if I somehow forgot. To do something on a project. I don't beat myself up over this kind of stuff. I don't need more negativity in my life, I need more positivity. Because it's hard every day, it's really hard. I think the thing that you're dealing with right now is that you need to learn. How to focus on what you're good at versus what you're not good at. So have you ever sat down to make a list of the things that you are really good at? Yeah, I've done. I started asking myself different questions at the end of the day as far as like what I've done well, what value I've created those types of things. So I do that like towards the end of the day. But still in the moment, sort of, I find myself getting sidetracked and those sorts of things. You've used this word sidetrack. What does that mean to you, like when you're trying to do something? Tell me more about this sidetrack. Like, I recognize that there are main things I need to focus on, but then I'll start looking into other areas of expertise. I'm not necessarily an expert in to, you know, try and learn more about them and what things I might be missing. OK and you feel positive or negative about that. I felt there some positivity to it, but I think it keeps me from, you know, I see people who are more confident in what they do and they get a lot further with less skill. and how does that make you feel? Like, I should be doing that. OK these seem they might seem related to each other, but I don't know if they are. So let's kind of break these things apart. OK oftentimes, when I'm doing something, I use it as an excuse to learned something new. This is how I grow as a human being. That sounds like something that you do. Mm-hmm But I never looked at it as being sidetracked. I never looked at it as I'm focusing on what I don't know. I've always programmed it in my brain to say, wow, I'm going to learn this new thing and it might take me away from my original path, but my life is going to be richer every day forward that I know this new thing. So I use projects. I use conversations like with you guys to learn more about myself and to grow as a human being. I never looked at it like. I'm focusing on what I'm not good at. So perhaps you judging it that way. Robs you of the full experience of what you're doing, if anything, I tried to drive in 2 my staff whenever you're doing something that you don't know anything about. Go really deep on that. Learn as much as you can. Ask yourself more questions. Have that insatiable curiosity never be content, keep learning, keep growing. Keep pushing yourself. And that's how you grow. Is that OK for you to think of it like that? I think to an extent, I think there needs to be limits on it because what I've sort of noticed is the more like I learn one thing and then something else is always right behind it. So it's almost like maybe in an avoidance thing or I see, you know, it's like, this is for you to avoid doing something that might even be the scarier thing for you to do. Yeah OK. Do you feel like your skills are where they need to be from a technical point of view, from a technical point of view, but not to my second point. It's like from the social aspect, not as much. What do you mean, social like? Sometimes in social situations, I can freeze up and like mine goes blank, all that sort of stuff, and I've been practicing more and getting better at it. But still, it's like in larger groups. It's a problem and not all the time, but sometimes and then it's also unpredictable. So I never know how it's going to be, which is a crazy thing about human beings. Yeah so it sort of gives me pause to really jump in certain areas like networking and things of that nature. OK, so I think again, we're thinking too much about where we want to be versus just where we're at right now. If you're new to the call and if you haven't done this before. I highly recommend practicing talking to strangers, having deep conversations with people nothing about. Get used to building rapport with people with no agenda other than to get to know who they are. I try to do this all the time and there is a wonderful benefit to this. There really is, you guys. Now I've been practicing this for some time, but I've made it more intentional in the last few years and now I don't have to practice it so much because it just becomes a natural part of who I am. And if I were to look at the beginning, it was awkward. Uncomfortable and super self-aware, and I'll give you an example. My uncle owned a liquor store, and as a kid, I had some issues. We're talking to people. And one of his employees working behind the counter as from time to time would come and visit him, he would welcome guests coming in the door, customers like, hey, How's it going? How's life? He would just have rapport with people, and I was thinking to myself, gosh, how does he do that? How he able to do that? So he had social skills already. And then fast forward to today. These are things that I've worked on for quite a bit. I mean, I was looking at people who do this and I just study them. What phrases are they using? If I can just mimic it? I wonder what kind of results I would get. And of course, the first few times you do it, it's very uncomfortable. It doesn't feel natural. But like everything, the more you do it, the more that muscle memory, if you will, develops and you're able to do it pretty easily. I still have yet a long way to go, because I, as I grow and change myself, I'm around people who are even more sophisticated. But what I'm doing is I use those social situations kind of like reconnaissance. Gosh, that guy or that person was very captivating. They told great stories. Very charming. What are they doing? Are they holding their hand in a certain way or are they using a certain phrase? Are they smiling or are they looking at people? What are they doing? And I just want to study. And then I want to do it. The important part is just doing it, so when you're out in social situations, Christian. Mm-hmm Don't worry if it's not perfect, it's totally OK. The thing that the tip that I'm going to give you is this. Figure out a way to get into a conversation. And more importantly, figure out a way to get out of a conversation. This is the trickiest part. Because you'll get into a small group and you'll be chatting it, some social function, and some person who is not that interesting. It's talking about themselves the whole time. You've got to get out. And you don't know how, because they keep talking and they keep talking, right? They don't even care if you're there because another person walk up, they'll talk to them. So you have to figure out how to get out of these things. Do you have any things that you use today that are effective for you to get out of a conversation? Not really, no. Yeah here's what you do. You ready? Yep you just say to them, I got to get another drink. Do you want anything like nylon or whatever? And you don't have to add the last part? Or you can just excuse me for a minute, I have to say Hello to a friend. Once somebody has allowed Mike Anthony muted. OK, OK. How to get out and you can figure out two or three things, what I would do is as you walk into any kind of room social function, kind of map out what the exit points are. How are you going to get out of a conversation because you can get stuck in a horrible conversation? And I think your goal is to find people that you connect to and to find as many of those people that you like as possible. So don't get anchored down by one person. OK all right, cool. And then work on your opens because the transitions in life are the things that matter. Getting in and getting out. OK all right, I don't know if I exactly talked about the thing that you want to talk about, but I think we've covered a lot of things in the previous questions. I hope that's OK. Yeah, thank you. OK, you're welcome. All right. Let me see where we are right now. We're to Kyle. You do. Hey, am I going to see you in ireland? And you will you are. I am in Dublin, right? Yeah OK. Do you know what it's going to be or what's that? Do you know how much it's going to be? There's no prices on the. I think it's free for members of IDI. I'm not a member of idea. And then there's very limited tickets sold. But if you want to go, if you want to go direct, messaged me later, I'll get you a ticket. Don't worry about that. Awesome I don't have that many friends in Ireland, so I'm going to make sure it happens ok? Awesome and I have something for Chris, a good exit phrase that we use in Ireland a lot. Go ahead. When you get a conversation, you say, I'll let you go. See you later. I like that. I'll let you go. He's like, no, no, no. I'm good. I'm good. Yeah, you say it. When you're on the phone, you're like, all right, I'll let you go see it. But does it work in person? Yeah, Yeah. I don't know if the culture is different here, so I don't know if I know it's a good route. No, not at all. Let me see. Let me think I'll let you go. I'm sure you want to talk to other people. I'll talk to you later. Yeah, Yeah. It's kind of puts it on to them. It's like, I'm holding you back, so I'm going to leave. Sorry, I didn't mean to take up all your time. I'll talk to you later. There you go, Christian. There's three exits right there. Variations? awesome. Thank you. Yeah all right, Kyle. Fire away, man. Cool and. Right some of my first thing. I can't even remember what I said. Well, you've kind of gone through them, but I'm curious to see what you say about what I've said anyway. It's kind of a revolving door of issues and. So I'm afraid of actually getting work and not being able to execute on it because of time constraints. On my schedule, because I do a lot of. I have a lot of stuff to do and join the club, man. Then there's some stuff outside of my control that limit the amount of time I can dedicate to work as well, which I'm. I know what I need to do to make sure to limit how much those things affect me, but that's just going to take time. Yeah and so, yeah, like I said no to a job like a couple of weeks ago to design a book. And I was really angry at myself because I just didn't feel like I'd have the time to dedicate myself to. It's a skill set that I'm not familiar with. I'm just never designed a book before, so it just didn't feel I'd have the time to learn how to design a book. What's holding you back? What's holding you back, man? And my living situation? What do you mean? Means that I can't? Get work done in the morning. I'm used to getting up at 6:30 seven AM. And before I get open at work straight away and working on stop until 12:00 1 o'clock and then I'll probably take a 2 or three hour break and then work nonstop until maybe 11:00 11:30. That used to be my schedule and I used to get more work back than I'm getting now. Can't you do that now? Because my mother staying with me. She's downstairs, so I can go down, make my coffee, have my breakfast. Usually I'd sit at the table down there, so now I just kind of sit on my bedroom. I wait for her to wake up at like 9 9:30. Why can't you go down there? Because she's in that room? Yeah, she's asleep downstairs. Yeah oh, so now I wait for her to wake up because I can't, I don't know. I just wait for her to wake up. Are you taking care of your mom? Is that the problem? Yeah, and then I walk dogs from 11 to 3. Because I need the money. I work in a coffee shop. Saturday some days. Yeah, it's hard to keep up with my design stuff now, it's just like these things have been compounding altogether. OK well, Yeah. Yeah so that gives me a few hours in the evenings work. All right. So when I asked this question, what's holding you back? I want it to be an internal thing unless an external thing. And so there's this all external stuff, right? Things that you can't control. The thing that you can control is what you do and what you think, what you say. So if you're more productive from six. To 12 or 1 or whatever. Can you go somewhere else? Well, I'm moving out, and she's going to take my place in the house here. OK and so that will be solved soon. Hopefully, you have a timeline on it. Well, that was really tough. Yeah, the renting situation is tough and Dublin at the moment, so if I can find somewhere, then I'll be OK. The renting situation is tough because there are a few places to rent or because it's so expensive or what's tough about it. Both this time of year, very tough to find somewhere you're usually better off in September, when. Yeah August, September, October is like the better time. Nicole, what do you doing, by the way? What am What do you do, what's your area of expertise? Web, web design? Web design? Yeah well, I want to transition more into the digital tie into my second fear. So to just focus more on strategy and we're framing and the actual UX and less on the design because I don't enjoy it as much as I enjoy the earlier steps in the process. And so my second fear is. Hiring someone. One fare in that is hiring the right person. Some of that's actually going to deliver. I don't want that person to be judging me. I have a fear of you coming over in March and then being around the design community and being judged by everyone there because I don't know any local designers and I'm not in any community. I'm not proud of ID because I'm a fine art. Person who moved into design, and I'm a complete outsider. All right, lots of things to unpack here like maybe more than I have time to. Yeah don't you get a lot of money or do nothing? No, no, no. It doesn't matter. I'm thinking here. Thank you. Here's what I hear. There are a lot of you guys that are on these little islands. And you think, Oh my gosh, I'm stuck, this is what I got to do, I'm on a little island and is all I can do. I have no resources. The islands getting smaller, the tide is rising and I don't think you guys realize this. There are over 200 people in this group of varying skill sets and pain points and challenges. I honestly feel if you sat down and talked to some of the people in this group, you'll realize somebody getting web work, but they struggle with the strategy and the White framing part. And for not a whole lot of money, relatively speaking, they could hire you and you can do a great job, enjoy your life and never worry about taking it from that point forward. Tons of people. And then there's sitting there thinking, gosh, I wonder if somebody else would just take the wireframing and make the design because I don't enjoy doing that part. I'm not that good at it. And then somebody excels at that part. And then there's a developer who was like, I could make anything, but I just need something great to build. This is where I think you guys don't realize the power of communities and networks. But you're just living on the island thinking, I wonder if something's going to come today. I do not have the time to manage that, to broker those relationships, because I don't know each and every one of you as well as I'd like. But I'm going to suggest once again that you reach out to this incredible, powerful community that exists here for you. And take advantage of it. I talked to people offline sometimes, and they say, wow, I would take more work if I knew I can trust somebody to do this part of the job. The cool thing is, this is not a homogeneous group. We're all from different places, different. Time zones, different skill sets, different price points. And if you guys learn to work with each other, you guys can do really, really well. I am going to see you in March. I'm not going to judge you. I know you won't see your face. Why would I judge you? What am I doing here? I'm just there to see a friendly face. I'm there to help people. I'm there to help you, man. I just want to shake your hand. That's all I want to do. OK, see, that'll happen for sure. Now there's something that happened when I went to Toronto and I got to see so many lovely Canadian people. And I don't know what it was, but maybe this is one of the problems of modern, the modern age that we live in, that you see me on a screen, I see you on a screen, but we just feel like we don't know each other. But as soon as we sit down and break bread, it just feels different. I think and we're able to connect and relate in different ways. Maybe I feel less reptilian in person than I do online. I don't know. But I wouldn't worry about that kind of stuff. So I think I hear an immediate need, this is not a mindset problem, this is just I got to square up my business so that I can get work so I can work smarter, not harder, so I can earn more relative to the time that I have to give. So don't have to do this miscellaneous jobs. That's really what that is, right? Yeah Yeah. Now, if some of you guys watch the episode with Aaron Atkinson yesterday on farm design, you will see that guy came from a broke background and he was able to figure it out. My criticism of him is what took you so long, but that's just me, that's all. So you guys have a chance. I definitely encourage you to watch it because we do drill into some really meaty stuff that will help you. His mom had him when he was 15 or when she was 15 or 16 years old. His brother and he are just barely nine months apart, just barely. And they grew up with nothing, no running water, no indoor plumbing. And that guy was able to figure it out, so you guys, you guys can do this. I believe in you. But you have to do the work, you have to get out of your comfort zone, you have to reach out to people, whether online or at social events. OK all right. That wasn't so much a mindset thing. So that's more like I need to give you an action plan, but I can't do that on this call. That's cool. No worries. OK all right. Bogdan I imagine. And you're kidding me. Of course. Hi, can you hear yourself, maybe because I'm on speaker, so. I can hear you. I don't hear myself, no echo. Go ahead. I always about the air. OK, so let's start this. This is a bit longer. So right now, I'm afraid of not making enough money to support my goals for 2018 because I like the stuff I wrote was like, I want to go to Italy, to Sweden, to Japan, to see you in Montenegro if you come and like. That's to accomplish all of this. It would take like thousands of dollars and that at this moment, I have no idea how to make that much money. And like to write on that point. I figured out, like every time I get this quote unquote critical point with money or with something, someone magically appears out of nowhere and like, just hands me this project and it's like, it's like saves me for a month or something. So I've developed this kind of weird feeling that something out there is kind of writing out my life like a screenplay that we're destined to speak right now, like you and me or something like that. So that got me thinking, like, are these girls maybe not meant to happen? Or I don't know. OK, so what I heard from you were goals. I heard some challenges surrounding work and workflow, but. To try to refocus and reframe this conversation about your mindset. What is it about the way that you're thinking about things, what's holding you back? But you have these ambitious ideas in these plans, but what's holding you back right now? I kind of like reality, maybe. But that's external. Oh, you mean, like internal? I know like these two things that I've written out were connected, I didn't want to tell both of you at the same time, but maybe like maybe now it's be a good time to introduce the second. OK, go ahead. This moment, like Chris and I realized that like 90% of the time that in life you should strive for to have fun in it because otherwise life is kind of meaningless. And I have managed to make my fun, make my life fun every day. But this kind of stops me from doing stuff, which I know for certain that will be boring, like accepting some role games or going to some set some certain events or maybe like moving places because I did move places a few years ago and it was horrible and not fun. So that question is like, should I keep myself in this bubble of fun that I built for myself for? Like, should I risk boringness or potentially even more fun? Ok? how old are you again? 20 to 19? OK, you're 19. Yeah you know what you are? Let me tell you, you're five years older than my son. Yeah I just want to put this in context. Was that I thought he was 11. I have an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old. Oh, nice. Yeah so you're like barely five years old, my son and you're talking about traveling the world and doing all these things. Yeah the thing is because I figure it out like a better I gotta head start than most people because, you know, most people figure out that in their 30s or something. Yeah, I purposely distance myself from any bad influences or stuff like that. You know, that's why I didn't proceed to faculty because I realized that there the mindset of people would be ruining to my own mindset. So I decided to, like, finish it with high school and become freelance. I will say this year. Nobody can ruin your mindset. Only you can. But they can influence it, I think. And they outside the. That environment shapes you. You don't. It can. It can, but if you it's really kind of up to you. For example, if let's just assume I'm not making any judgment, OK, let's just say that you don't believe in doing drugs and you go into a drug den and everybody is shooting up heroin, sniffing cocaine and dropping speed balls or whatever they do. Yeah are you going to start doing drugs? No, I'll just remove myself from that environment. Yeah, if it feels uncomfortable, you just move out or you sit there like, oh, this is kind of interesting. Now I can see people tripping out. Now I know why I don't do this kind of stuff because this is where it leads, right? Yeah OK. So I want you to know that you have more control over who you are, what you think, what you do, then you think you do. Actually, you have 100% control over the things you think and say. It's your choice. So let's not put it on them. I think you could go to school, you can be in a corporate environment, you could be amongst freelancers, you can be amongst wolves, literally wolves and not act like a wolf. That's your choice. It's all of your choice. Now I want to share something. What's that? I guess the peer pressure is a thing. It is a thing. But just know where your compass is and follow your direction. You're not a 13-year-old kid anymore. I mean, you're still pretty young. You're still technically a teenager. So you might be under the influence of other things, more so than if you were a little older. I get that, but you seem like a more mature, self determined person than your average 19-year-old. So with that self determination is to decide what you want to do with your life and how you want to think and behave. You're probably the youngest person in this group right now. Yeah, I think right? And you're showing up every single time. So you're taking the action that you need to take to succeed. So I decided that I'm cutting you off, but I've developed some set of maybe a dozen goals daily goals that I will strive like, like learning German for maybe 15 minutes or making a new poster every day, something like that, you know, to keep moving forward in bit-sized pieces, I guess. You know, the thing that you talked about earlier? Yeah, good. So I think as young people are and I have many young people who work for me, they do have this mindset that they're supposed to have fun in their life. I'm not saying that. That's my philosophy and I'll share something with you that has worked for me really well and are related to the live stream we did yesterday, ok? And then I think I need to move on. My father told me that your life is long. The time in which you have to work is short. Now, if you decide to chunk out the time that you work across the whole span of your lifetime, however long you're going to live, you will not achieve much in your life. But you take all those pieces of work and you stack them towards the front. You work really hard at the beginning of your life and you get to enjoy it towards the middle to the end of your life. And that has resonated with me, and it's a guiding principle of my life. I don't think a lot of the things that you need to do as a human being are going to be categorized as fun. They're going to be boring. They're not sexy. They're actually frightening. But those are the things that you must do. This gets into the whole three little pigs. The first pig builds his house of straw so he can go and play. He's having fun. The second pig builds his house of wood. He's done quickly and he goes and plays the third pig very diligently builds a house of brick. You know what happens to the first two pigs? Yeah, and the third pig is the only one who survives this thing. Answer the same way. They're remarkable creatures. They work all spring and summer and prepare for the winter. Yeah and then I kind of like the question like, is it worth to survive? Is it what is it worth to survive? That's up to you, and I will answer some things right now for you to think about. I had Aaron on the show yesterday. He wanted to surf in Costa Rica. He wanted to party in Spain, and he did that. And believe it or not, he's older than I am by a couple of years. One day he realized he is broke, totally broke. All the clients are gone. He's doing work that stale and stagnant. No more trips to Costa Rica. He's starting to sell things. In the Meanwhile. I'm not saying I'm coasting on easy street, but I'm just consistently doing the work. It goes, Christian, you should have fun, you should travel, you should see the world. But I did the work. And now I'm traveling, and now I'm seeing the world. So it's just a matter of focus and prioritization, and I'm in a place. Finally, where I have financial independence, financial freedom, I'm surrounded by great, intelligent, talented people. I get to do whatever it is that I want for the rest of my life. I only work now because I want to. I don't have to work anymore because I need to. So you make that determination, you want to work now, you want to work later, it's up to you. What kind of success do you want? How high do you want to go on that mountain? Entirely up to you? You pick whatever makes sense. But if you're asking me, my philosophy is do the ugly, boring, mundane work that has to be done for you to grow? Nobody wants to do that. And I asked my friend Aaron yesterday off the air. He said, hey, man, you don't read much, right? He goes, no. I said, here's my book list. Have you read any of these books? He goes, no, I suggest that you do, because what he's doing. He's spending most of his free time working out and training for the Spartan race, which is good for his body, but not good for his mind. But that's fun. It's exciting. It's sexy. No lie. It is, but while he's doing that, I'm reading, I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm sharing. I don't think it's going to take a genius to figure out who's going to get to where they want to be and who am I not? And that's a decision you need to make. So he said, Chris, I'm going to buy the books. You got to do the work. OK, I'm going to move on. Thank you. You're welcome. I think I'm going to do one more call before my time's up here and I have to check my calendar, so we're running a little bit behind. I'm sorry for that, you guys. Michael Michael, I'm here. OK, fire away, man. What's holding you back? Let me get this. Sorry, I didn't know I was up next. I think you are. Let me, let me double check. I don't think I am. Bogdan went, and you're Michael, right here at 9:30, OK, sorry. OK, so my fear is getting a crap job and losing my freedom while I build the business I love. Good I like that. Yes and when you say a crap job like a full time job. Yeah, but I prefer part time. Right now, you put a term on that and the adjective you put on it was crap, like, it's no good, it's lousy, it's bad for you, but it's a strange way to call something. That enables you to pursue the things that you want to do. You have to take a job that will pay the Bills. So that you have the freedom to study or work on the things that you want to do, whether it's your illustrations or whatever else that you want to do, right? Right, I just look at it like it's like eating spinach or Brussels sprouts for time in your life. You hated doing it, but it made you strong. OK OK. So you get to control everything that you do outside of work on the weekends, after hours before work. And I think if you choose to spend that time wisely. It's a nice way to have a little insurance, to take a little of the financial pressure off you so that you can do what you want to do without fear of like, hey, I can't pay rent this month. So is that an irrational fear, or is that a real fear? I think it would be real because it is real. Mortgage is real. That's what you are. But that wasn't your fear. Your fear wasn't not being able to pay rent. Your fear was taking a crap job and losing the freedom to do what you want to do. So freedom has a cost. Homeless people are very free to do whatever they want, but they don't have a home. They don't have running water. They have nothing. That's a lot of freedom. Conversely, prisoners have no freedom, they wake up when they tell you they do what they have to be and they have no freedom, so somewhere in between we could be OK. Right, right. Like, I take on work that sometimes is not financially rewarding, but creatively it's very rewarding. So I do it. Realizing at some point I have to pay this price, I get to do something fun. I didn't make enough money on the job. That means somewhere down the line, some boring financial institution thing I got to do. I realized that job paid for the other job, and I'm OK with that. I'm not bitter about it. I take on that job saying to myself, thank you for giving me this opportunity, because the money I make on this will be the money that I pay my guys to do the things that we love to do that the other clients have no money for. Can we see it like that or no? Yeah, in fact, when you first said something about taking the crap job and it freeing me up to do these other things, I never associated that with freedom. Mm-hmm Like Kyle, he's walking dogs. He's working at a coffee shop on the weekends. But that allows him to continue to try to pursue his dream. Ideally, you would do a fun job that paid you well while allowing you to pursue your dream, but that's not always what's in the cards for you. but that's OK. It's an exchange, it's an exchange for your time and your talent so that you can pay rent, which is very real and sometimes it's not sexy. Do you have another question? Another thing holding you back? Go ahead. I'm afraid that this strategy, branding graphics is not really me based on the work play that I've enjoyed doing since 2009. OK this strategy say that one more time, the strategy brand graphic. Yeah the strategy and branding that we're learning through your school and core isn't really for me since I have all this illustration and fine art that I enjoy doing and have had some success with it. OK this is a good one. I want to end our coaching call on this very real issue that you're having. Let me just break this down. So there's something that you've done for a long time that you're very good at that you've received money for and feels very comfortable for you to do. You're talented at it. You have put in the hours to do it. You have proof of product. You don't have to sell it as hard and it's there. Then there's this new thing that you learn that feels foreign, that you haven't done a whole lot of. And you're not quite sure how to onboard a client or if you can even pull it off. So there's this resistance. And this is very much with the laws of inertia. Right? bodies in motion tend to stay in motion and bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. So the motion is all the things that you've done in the past and they keep moving. So to be able to do something different out of your comfort zone requires a tremendous amount of willpower and effort on your part to make happen. But the idea is this is you just have to ask yourself this one very important question. If I continue down the path that I'm on today, doing the things I know how to do. Do I see a future in that for me or not? Is that future getting better or is it getting worse? Just think about that and realize something what you did before should have, in my opinion, no precedent on what you do in the future, because otherwise we would be resigned to doing the same thing forever. If you grew up poor, it should not mean that you have to always be poor. If you had an uncomfortable relationship with money, it should not be that you always have that same relationship with money. The wonderful thing about people and this incredible complex brain that we have is we can will ourselves to do the impossible. We can put ourselves on another moon, on another planet because somebody thought, let's do it. We're carrying diseases that we never thought were possible. We're exploring all facets of our world, internal and external, because somebody thought, let's do it. And you're an incredible learning machine. You just have to unleash it and move forward. I personally saw the demise of the business that we were in and we had to change. We made the biggest, hardest pivot we've ever made in our 2002 year history and we've made many. But by making that, we've transformed a company and in the process of transformed myself. I'm not saying that doing this strategy stuff is for you. You have to figure out if it is for you. But it's been the single most transformative thing that's happened in my life thus far. Soon to replace. Yeah, soon to be replaced by what I'm doing with you guys, right? But that opened the door for us to have this conversation. If I didn't learn that, if I didn't agree reluctantly to appear on camera with Josie, if I didn't let go of all my fears of trying to teach and talk to a piece of glass, the one that I'm looking at right now that has no soul. You and I would not be having this conversation. So the rewards, at least to me, seem to outweigh the risk that you take. Now, I want to dovetail it back into your skill set. You are quite good at illustration and you have many, many styles. I suggest you find a style that's a little bit more commercial. It's in you. You already have it. That's that's a little bit more applicable to more things. So it's not so narrow when you make fine art. It appeals to a few people, and that's cool as long as you have rich patrons to support you. Life is good, but if you do a style that's a little bit more commercial, you open yourself up to many more buyers of that work, and it'll be a lot easier, I think. Now I look at I think it's Anthony, it's Anthony banks, Yeah. And he did this little graphic design, La hand lettering illustration that I'm sharing and I plan to continue to share it, and I was just brainstorming with him. I love the notes that he takes. They're very visual and there should be a market for this in a number of different ways, I said. Have you thought about becoming an Illustrator for book covers? Imagine reading a book and illustrating the best points of the book. That's pretty cool. And he said, I never thought about that before. So he found potentially a commercial application for a skill set that he's quite good at. And it's a hobby that he does, right? So what I've asked and I can see he's on the call right now is for him to share a couple of more with me, and I will post it to my Instagram account, which I think I'm up to about 27,000 followers. And he's sure to pick up a few hundred, I think, because it's really good. So he's gone through and done the hard work of cleaning out his Instagram account. He's got one more thing to make for me and I'm going to share it. And I think it's beautiful and I was thinking even myself, I was like, shoot, maybe I need to hire him to do something for us. So when you find something that you're good at and a commercial application that is a little bit broader, I think you can hit a lot of people and have quite a bit of success. Now comes the hard work of getting people to know you for that thing that you love to do. OK, Michael. OK I think you also have a lot of talent. I see your drawings and you try many different things. Now, outside of the fine art world, I think you just need to find. A commercial application, and I think things will happen for you, and when you're facilitating and you're doing discovery with your clients, you can do little drawings and explain complex ideas with drawings. I have done that a lot. I didn't realize that the facilitating part was a bigger piece of the pie. Yes now I'm going to say this part. No, I'm not going to say this part. I'm going to hit Stop Recording and then I'll say this part that I'm about to say. But now it's 10 o'clock, guys. I want to do some review and reflection, and of course, we'll get through as many people as we can get through. But I do want to make sure that you guys are aware of the next big challenge because it's going to take time, and I hope you're aware of the next big challenge. I'm asking my company to do the same. I'm asking you to do the same. So many of us go out there and we learn things, but then we don't do anything with what we learn. It's kept up here and it's valuable to you and only you. So what I want you to do is I want you to learn with a different level of intensity, with the idea that you have to share what you learned. I have a sign up sheet. I said, pick your favorite Ted talk, not pick your favorite 15. Just pick one. I don't really care. Pick one. Watch it with intent to teach it. What we're going to do on our whenever that date is and it's going to be coming up really fast. You guys are going to teach us with no slides, no notes, no lifeline. You're going to share what you've learned. And I think I want it to be as engaging as and as dynamic as the Talk talk that you saw. I don't want it to be this very pedantic lecturing kind of thing. You can make it personal. You can share stories about what you got from it and how you've applied it, or something that is parallel in your own life. I want you to become a great storyteller, so when that sign up sheet goes around, your time is up. The camera is going to be on you and you're going to just teach us everybody understand the challenge there. I sure this is frightening for many of you. It was for my staff. Challenge accepted. Looking forward to it. Yeah so learn your Ted Talk. OK, now the Ted Talks are usually about 18 minutes in length. I'm thinking our things should be about five minutes with a little Q&A afterwards, and we'll just cycle through people. I want to see what you guys learn because some of you guys are learning a lot. Some of you guys are not learning that much. OK, now time for us to reflect. We've been doing these coaching sessions, the lightning coaching 10 minutes where you ask a question and I answer it. But I kept coming back to this thing that there is something that's holding you back. Most of it's internal. It's a belief system that you have. And if we can change that mindset, you can do incredible things. But believe me, I promise you, you have all the tools to succeed already inside of you. If you just conquer the daemon that's holding you back, you will do incredibly well. Any thoughts and reflections on the call today as opposed to the previous two that we've had? Anybody? I'll go first. Go ahead, man. From what I call actually, I was able to relate a bit to show up a bit late there, Bogdan and as well as Michael there. I feel really like I can connect to them in the regards that I'm finding myself in a situation, doing something I'm really good at, but not finding passion from and/or are not getting paid for and having to really kind of strap on the boots, get it and get in the game. So I kind of understand that I have to do that. And then Bogdan, the same thing where every once in a while, I get to that point financially, where there's enough money that comes down the pike, let's say just at the last minute to just barely keep me alive. And I have really no choice but to accept it. Like it's kind of one of those like a project or a client I shouldn't take. So I was able to relate to the two short calls I was at. And when I saw the original listing document, I thought, oh, this is fantastic, and I couldn't come up with exactly what I wanted to ask or what might I can think of as a fear until, oh, last night around 6:00 PM Eastern Standard and I went to fill it out. Of course, it's filled by that point. And so I'm hoping that there's an opportunity to perhaps maybe do this again or partially in the next call like we did previously. But it's really neat hearing these stories of similar situations where even car, for example, it was like a matter of his situation where he's in a screwed up situation. He can't get out of where his mom's downstairs and it's like it's quite literally putting a barrier to his ability to work. And I'm going, you know, I've got two barriers to my ability to actually physically function until those are resolved. I can't really do much other than plan and think and educate and inform. So it's good to be able to relate to the people and whatnot. So even the three short ones that I did here, we're informative or even like an observer. So Thanks for some of you guys. The question of what's holding you back is the thing that's holding you back. Like, it's hard to know what it is that's holding you back. And you can tell in the kind of conversations we had today that it's not that easy to look inside your own brain and to know yourself, to know why you're not where you need to be. Some of the people who have had a little bit more life experience were able to touch upon that a little bit more clearly, but it's a tough thing. Because I guess presumably if you knew what was holding you back, you would have already fixed it, right? Anybody else want to share any thoughts or kind of point out any differences or anything that you want to talk about related to what we just talked about? Kind of share something quickly. Yeah, go ahead. I have the same experience with the guys like I always the past three months take projects I hate just to pay my rent and like a last call. Like we said, OK, I'm going to try this. I'm going to reject any project I don't enjoy, no matter what I know. So I know my rent is coming in. A couple of days. I accepted a project last week, which is design a brochure, which is something I hate the most. I need only branding projects. Yesterday I went to the client. I told them, you know what? I'm not going to take it. I'll return the money back. I returned the project back and I said, what's going to happen? And today I received a branding project 200,000 or 300,000. So I'm going to meet the client tomorrow, which is what I'm encourage. People just leave that thought where the universe will back you up. Don't worry, and don't be scared to do what you love. Thank you. Glad that worked out for you. Anybody else? Hey yeah, who's that? Go ahead, Hello. Go ahead. All right, so the thing is, I realize that sometimes persons search for something to be afraid of when there's nothing really holding us back. And that is what is actually holding us back. I was trying to find time to realize what is it that's holding us back when there's actually nothing. That's something I realized in my own practice. That is deep, dude. Well, the truth is, there is nothing holding you back except for you. I don't know if this searching for the thing that's holding you back is it's holding you back. It's just. It's you're afraid. You want more assurances. You don't feel like you deserve it. I don't try to find something that's holding us back, but it's probably ourselves. Another thing is that I, I think I'm slightly afraid of priming the pump and then not managing what's going on afterwards. That's a very common thing I hear. Yeah very common because you're afraid of being successful, that you're going to get too much work. And now you don't know what to do with yourself, right? That you can't deliver too much, too many projects. Too little time. Well, while still in school while still in school? Even tougher. OK, I'm going to hit Stop on the recording. Yep, no problem. All right. Thanks for tuning in. You guys hit the Stop button right now.