No Straight Path

i think a lot of people talk about getting to success but not a lot of people talk about being okay with being success and what i mean by that is especially for us black and brown folk some of us may come from backgrounds that weren't the most advantageous right and so when you when you make it quote unquote make it you can have this this guilt of like man why me why why was this opportunity given to me and i had that i struggled with it i i would look back home and see my family and realize that i'm having experiences that they may not have but then i kind of tried to flip that concept in my head and start thinking well okay you're getting this opportunity but what are you gonna do with it what are you gonna show people hey friends hey i hope you're all well and we are back with another inspiring conversation with entertainment attorney thomas russell thomas is my new friend and i am grateful for it his story is just another just very inspiring story and he's an inspiring human all around his story is about grit it is about resilience it is about dreaming it's about chasing your dreams relentlessly and we talk about the pivot we talk about the setbacks we talk about the joy and i just left the conversation feeling really motivated so before we get to our conversation i wanna tell you a bit more about thomas so thomas russell the iii he is a corporate counsel at amazon music where he advises the tech giant on its live streaming video on demand and sponsorship efforts and for the past two seasons thomas led artist and music label negotiations for amazon music live first of its kind weekly livestream stream concert series following the thursday night football game featuring performances by some of my favorite ed sheeran mega stallion lil wayne kane brown and more and this year thomas also advised amazon in connection with nba khan and thomas was recognized by variety as one of the top in house entertainment attorneys for twenty twenty three he is also committed to champion issues for the bi pop community so prior to joining amazon music thomas represented post twenty one a black owned online marketplace in its deal with disney making it the first black owned operating partner in downtown disney yes a big deal he also worked on gt g entertainment in the development of the twenty twenty three sports emmy the winning documentary series thirty eight at the garden and the bernard in shirley ken foundation for art education in the extension of its trail bla art exhibition which is currently on display at sofa stadium in la so if you're in la check it out and thomas is also a member of the ken foundation's board of direct he went to or sinus college in pennsylvania and howard university for law school and when he's not working you can find him spending quality time with his wife ashley and two sons thomas and carter and we learn all about his family life in this conversation all about his about his purpose and i can't wait for you all to hear this conversation so let's get to it alright i'm so excited to have thomas on the podcast i already feel like your family because we have so many mutual connections so thank you so much for just coming on the show and being willing to share your story you're welcome thanks for having me ashley absolutely so yes we met at a dinner with our mutual partner mentor and we started chatting and then we realized that you know all the people i grew up with all of my friends friends who been on the shows shout out to spencer pacing was one of my first guest and you are married to ashley who's also same name also went to law school you guys met in law school and her brother was like my big brother in high school so all the connections yeah this this was bound to happen yeah yeah so yeah i know a little bit about your career and i just wanna know about the beginning so let's get into it let's start with your childhood let's talk about your upbringing can you set the scene for us yeah yeah so i'm from wilmington delaware i'm not an la guy like you were saying my wife kinda brought me to la the story starts in wilmington i was raised by my mom she's a single mom god bless her heart her name's gladys it was just her and growing up from about sixth grade through high school just the two of us figuring it out but my mom was very much a a stick for education so if i wasn't outside playing basketball i was inside like reading or doing something so she was always like pushing me to you know go to college make something on myself and and stressing the importance of education she was pretty strict too so you know i was i was very much on it as a kid i didn't have my father around so you know that that kinda created a different dynamic between my mom and i where you know i i solely relied on her for for everything but growing up she had the foresight to to send me to this local rex center called the police athletic league powell center i kinda spent my childhood in the power or with my mom there was a lot of mentors there police officers that kinda took to the students and the kids and you know tried to show us different things but there was one officer in particular his name was officer wiley who kind of like stepped in to be like my dad in the a innocence you know he he taught me everything from how to interview to how to shake a man's hand you know when you meet someone to how to write a resume so that you can get an internship while you're in high school in a field that you you know that you're interested in so the power center there between the power center and my mom like those were like the strongholds holds in my life outside of others that kind of like started me on the path of thinking like hey i have to figure out what i want to do next in in my professional life simply because like i grew up very humble means you know just me and my mom it wasn't a lot of money she didn't work she had some physical and mental struggles of her own that kinda prevented her from from doing those things so like growing up i was very independent very self motivated always thinking about the next step because i just didn't see all the resources around me like some other kids that i may have grew up next to so always was forward overthinking and and just trying to push it to the next level my mom's favorite quote to me was lights camera action it's showtime basically trying to get me in the mindset of understanding that like you're gonna have to present yourself you're gonna have to speak up for yourself you're gonna have to put yourself forward to get the opportunities that that you may want because no one's coming here to look for guys like you to to give those opportunities too so well yeah i think that i'm just a little bit more curious about your personality so i've i've got the disciplined thomas that you were motivated you were going to create certain life for yourself do well in school your mom like education is important tell me more about your personality and how you showed up as a child man as a kid i actually was kind of like it came off as high confidence but inside it didn't feel that way i'm a firm believer now that i have children that like growing up with your father is like very important because i feel as though that's where as guys that's where we get our confidence from that's where we we get our swag from you know that's where we we kinda learn what it means to be a man and growing up not having that like while i push myself there was some self doubt there there was some like can i really do this can i can i pull off the things that i wanna do can i go to college like will i be able to afford it type thing so like growing up like i was very confident on the outside but on the inside there was some self doubt and my mom always would call it doubting thomas like from the bible doctor in thomas but outside of that i was very bubbly like i was very like a people person everyone on my block knew me because i you know i i will wake up and go outside to start playing basketball and when that the others started coming out i'm not afraid to introduce myself because of some of the learnings i had from the power so like i was always a people's person but like inside like like i was explaining to you i had to figure out a way to overcome some of that that doubt and this wasn't as a kid as much but more so like that high school age when you're starting to think about the next step i had to overcome that but like in high school amongst my friends you know i was a normal kid i just wanted to play with my friends hang out with my friends do some homework sometimes just relax like i said most of my time was spent at the power center i mean that's where i met like a lot of kids that you know i grew up with and still talk to to this day yeah yeah oh i appreciate that honesty too when it comes to just the self doubt because i think we all deal with it at some point in our life and i know that you've had this just incredible career with lots of different pivot and some setbacks and some challenges and so i'm curious about maybe one of those bigger setbacks that helped you perhaps get over that self doubt or helped with some personal growth yeah no so i think going through college high school college and in law school i was a a student so like i had never really experienced academic failure until i took the delaware bar i failed the delaware bar and this was probably like the most challenging but best moment of my professional and personal life because one it was a big failure coming out of law school you got this great job you're gonna be working at a law firm one of the best law firms in the world and you can't just get past the simple test even though the test is difficult but you've done test your whole life so why should this be any different and that's the question i kept asking myself when when i failed the bar but the reason i say it's like the best thing that happened to me because it removed the self doubt and what i mean by that is it put me into a mode of okay i didn't pass the bar i don't know what's gonna happen next with my job because i'm not a practicing attorney now because i don't have the qualification it put me in a mode of like i have to figure it out and i'm gonna hustle and figure out not only like the professional way to get past this bar but at the same time the personal demons inside that that doubt running into that wall made me feel as though like i have to conquer this so that way i can proceed and i can stop doubting myself and after i didn't pass that bar but i did move on to the dc bar past it moved on to the california bar past that as well but like going through that experience of failure was like the best thing that happened because it it just allowed me to there's nowhere else but up from here like that was my mentality there's nowhere else but up from here so anything you do today is only gonna make tomorrow better and then doing that that work waking up every day to study staying up late to study i started realizing like hey man you have the tools that you need to get over some of your personal struggles and personal doubts to get what you want you know out of life yeah no that's exactly it and so inspiring and also the fact that you just kept moving to these other bars listen i was like listen i can't do all that let me just pass this california bar i'm not doing it in another state so the fact that you went on to continue to study and you become a licensed attorney in various places and you ended up practicing litigation which is what i believe is what you wanted to do previously can you tell us a little bit about that journey to litigation yeah so coming out of law school like i was a moot court guy i i was straight litigation i'm a get out of law school i'm going to delaware where i'm a be a corporate lit in front of the court chant you know that was the thing that i was doing and when i came to la i was doing the same thing commercial litigation handling my cases going to trial things of that nature but this is where i say like you think you have a plan but god has something else i thought i was just gonna be a corporate lit or go the partner track route make partner and be a commercial lit the rest of my life but when i moved to la i kinda kept getting asked the question do you do entertainment law do you do entertainment law and every time i say no no i'm a lit i'm a lit i don't do lit i don't do entertainment transactional work but finally like i got tired of telling people know and i i realized that like if the world has come into you asking you for a service maybe they see something that you don't see and the person that kinda helped me realize that the most was spencer pacing spencer seeing him make the transition from nfl to entertainment and writer producer i'm like maybe i should stop saying no and see if i can dabble in this entertainment world and that's exactly what i did through spencer i i met a lot of folks and i was able to get my first client which was hannibal birds we did some great projects together on the entertainment transactional site but i was doing this all while still doing my nine to five litigation work right so i had like this dual practice kind of going on and after i started working with hannibal other started coming through the door and it just got to a point that i started realizing like i'm meant to be an entertainment attorney i am meant to do this work for whatever reason i connect with the folks in this industry i provide a service that they appreciate and i like the work that i do so that's kinda how the transition developed it just started out of pure ask from others and then realizing like hey like if i really wanna get out here and be a partner and and do the things that i wanna do maybe i should see if my skill set can broaden some and it did and it brought in in a major way that i'd never anticipated it happening like i said i was gonna be a lit that that was it but like god had something something else for me yeah and i'm so happy that you were just open to the opportunity finally you know you did say no a few times like many of us do i said no a lot really i said no a lot because the last thing you wanna do is take on work for someone and you don't feel like you're versed in enough to like give them the quality that they deserve and you know i'm a firm believer that as lawyers like our job is to provide a service and they're not here for results well clients are sometimes here for results but they're here for your legal opinion and the best thing i can do is train my mind strong enough and that specific area to provide a good legal opinion yeah and so can you tell us a little bit about that just how did you make that transition when it comes to almost just like a a student perspective and learning the transactional side because it certainly is different from litigation yeah no it varies is it's very much different and that's a great question but like many things in my life i've had to like hustle and we have a joke in our family we call it we say the hustle is so russell and this the truth because in that moment i literally was billing my hours towards litigation like two thousand plus hours a year at the same time at night working on you know my entertainment work but also grabbing books grabbing legal books to like read and study finding other attorneys that i could like learn from and ask questions from within my firm whether they were entertainment focused or not just because i felt as though a lot of this is contract work so i needed to talk to the corporate guys as well so it was just it was just me going out like a student again almost and taking books taking information and just soaking it in and getting on as many deals as possible whether they were my deals that i self generated or someone else's deal to just get that experience and i made sure that like i didn't affect any of my like litigation work because like at the end of the day that's what the law firm i me to do but at the same time if this was something i wanted i have to go get it and like i think that's like the most important thing in my story which is if i wanted something i had to go get it like no one was going to provide me anything especially where i'm from it's not a lot of people make it out and and those that do have to hustle so i just kind of got back into that mode of student and just felt as though learn as much as possible don't be afraid to put yourself out there and then mentally mentally and this was this was a a big switch for me mentally rebranding myself as an entertainment attorney in my head because going out to other people it's very easy to think you're one thing like i'm a lit i'm a little i do this but now having to tell people i do i'm an entertainment attorney and that's like a personal switch in your head to say i'm no longer this i am now this and i'm gonna stand on that and i'll never forget when i when i made the switch the first person i called was spencer and i was like hey man can you meet me for for some drinks and he was like of course so i tell him i was like hey i think i'm explore this entertainment thing full time like do i got your support he was like of course and from that day forward i just put pedal my foot to the gas and pushed the pedal as far as i can yeah wow oh okay so many questions yeah keep them coming yeah so with that switch from litigation to entertainment and you know you said something you said this is what i'm supposed to be doing this is what i meant to do and you connected with the people and then things started to snowball from there some great opportunities you've been able to do some excellent things in entertainment can you tell us a little bit about that yeah the funny thing is like you said it's snowball and it it's snowball bought in a way that i didn't anticipate after hannibal i worked with blair pacing who you went to high school with and her mom post twenty one it's a black online marketplace that features products from black vendors we were able to negotiate the first deal with downtown disney with a black owned operator so basically a black owned store so we were able to put the first black owned store in downtown disney here in anaheim california right outside of disneyland which was really cool from there i started working with a guy by the name of sami hernandez on a project called thirty eight at the garden t at the garden tells the story of jeremy lynn historic run with the knicks lynn sanity it is a a great documentary because not only does it touch on sports and basketball but it also touches on the life of asian americans here in the united states and some of and what that what that lin sanity moment meant for them in the time of when they're experiencing some prejudice and racism as well all of you watching and listening to the podcast can still go watch it on hbo max submitted did an amazing job with his production company gt g entertainment and they were able to win a sports emmy me this year so i've worked on some really cool projects i also represent what represented the kin family the kin family has one of the largest collections of black art in the country and they have a gallery going on exhibition going on right now at so stadium it's been going on for a like the past two years i negotiated the extension of that deal at so stadium and i currently sit on the kin foundation's board of directors so i have been able to work with some really cool people on some really groundbreaking projects and the cool part about my projects is that they focus on our community they focus on the black community i always tell people when i moved to la la show me so much love i think that's partly to do with the fact that like i had ashley and tied to meet you know and make friends through but even in making those friends like they didn't have to do business with me they didn't have to do those things so i always say like my community especially the view park community here in la like they got behind me in a major way and it really pushed me to do great things and i love the fact that it was for like my people and for for us because i always joking and say like my people and my neighborhood made me partner that if it wasn't for those guys and gals like it would never happen so all these cool projects are great but like they're testament to not only the work that i do but like the work that these people are doing day in and day out to grow their businesses and to provide good content to the community at large yeah wow i love that emphasis on community because you've certainly we've all heard it like you have done you did the work you did all the work required you hustle and it's so impressive but with success you need community and everything right and you don't do anything alone and i think it's so beautiful that you've had the black community the view park community specifically being from la so i just love that and you mentioned something you said they helped make you partner tell us about that because i believe you were quite young when you may partner i think you did that for a little bit i looked at your linkedin and i think you transitioned to corporate counsel in your own varieties top list so tell us a little bit about this those pivot yeah i've learned that success doesn't look like this it's it's a lot of up and down and maybe some circles too and the listeners can't see us so you said success is essentially not a straight line right yeah it's not a straight line it has a lot of ups and downs so with that being said i was able to make partner at my prior law firm simply because i started bringing in business and there wasn't a traditional entertainment practice group at that time so i was one of the few in the firm that was actually doing entertainment work and you can only pitch people so much as an associate before they're like hey like who's the partner that's gonna be on the work and i'm like well it's me and thankfully because of the work i've done at at the firm you know i was able to make partner in the newly found entertainment group which was nice however a pivot was on the horizon that i wasn't anticipating i got knock on the door from amazon music and you know at that time a lot of my practice was focused on tv and film you know i did some music work as well but i didn't realize another aha moment i didn't realize how much i like music i like everyone else enjoys listening to music in the car enjoy planning in my house you know when i'm just kicking it but to get an opportunity to work at in music at amazon music it wasn't something i was anticipating nor did i know what it would exactly entail on a day to day basis but when when i got the opportunity it kinda seemed like something i wanted to do something i wanted to explore it seemed like you know it had a high visibility high deal values and just overall like a good opportunity so i took it and for the past year and a half i've been at amazon music as a corporate council and handling live streaming and v for all of amazon's live streaming and v efforts specifically focused on rotation which is our hip hop and r and b group so i do deals with everyone from on behalf of amazon from meg d stallion and little wayne two chains at sheeran you name it and the cool thing about my job is i've been able to not only like do music but connect my prior experience with sports and sports related projects in this i specifically work on our thursday night football amazon music live concert series where after the game after every thursday night football game there's a concert show and i'm the legal behind that show so every week i'm doing a different deal with a different artist so they can perform at amazon and it's just been such a cool experience to have because it's challenged me intellectually to work in high volume sitting across from very good attorneys on the other side and trying to you know represent my client amazon music in the best way possible but because of some of the high visibility of these deals and this my short time here at amazon only been a year and a half i was named to varieties top in house entertainment attorneys for two thousand twenty three just kind of based on the work i've done over this year for thursday night football all of the festivals that we do here at amazon where we live stream festivals like p rivera which was like our first our first european festival that we've live stream so i've been able to work on some like really cool deals get some high visibility but at the same time do work that i enjoy like it it's at a point now ashley that it doesn't feel like work it just feels like fun i tell people i get to go to concerts every week my kids know like oh it's thursday daddy's he's not coming home he's gonna be at a concert i wish we ago but they're too young of course i'm at this point in my career what and it took me a long time to get here a feeling as though i am having fun with what i'm doing i'm enjoying what i'm doing i get to bring my village and community with me because like i said i'm always a hustle i'm always thinking about what's the next step but i'm not just doing it for myself i think about my community so like is there opportunities that i can present to guys based on my network you know for projects that they're working on like i'm i'm always trying to service those in my community even if i'm not their attorney at the moment yeah i think that's such a great story and i think you also said something that was important there too that it took you a long time to get here and i think that's important to recognize because there's so many different seasons and i know that just and you even did we didn't talk about this but it's didn't consulting so you did litigation you've done consulting then you transition to partner and entertainment now you're transitioning to corporate counsel now you in a space where you love what you do and it doesn't feel like work but it took so many different steps and i'm curious about what you've learned thus far throughout these different steps so there any kind of lessons learned that you can share with the audience yeah one of my biggest biggest advice would be to be patient i i was that was very hard for me because you think you're doing everything right and you think you're meeting all your debt deadlines making you know trying to get towards your goals and then something happens and it throws you off right so in those moments i had to learn to be patient that my time was coming that like if i keep putting in the work and keep focusing on the day to day of getting to my goal i will get there so the first thing is to be patient the second thing i learned is that you have to have grit i think ashley and i talk about this with our kids a lot that like we think the most important skill set that we can teach them is to to have grit because life's gonna knock you down and like like i told you i started off in a single parent household that to most people is considered a disadvantage i felt as though i had struggles with the bar i had struggles with the career but like the one thing that got me through is that i had grit you're not gonna beat me this is not gonna stop me this is not gonna stop me from chasing my goals relentlessly and then finally this one is i'm still working on but i think it's it's something that's important to you have to have some form of self love and what i mean by that is you have to be gentle with yourself because society will always make you think you have to get there right now you have to be there today that you're not doing enough you are and you are the person that will know whether you are or not right but like i think if you can practice some form of self love and give yourself grace in those moments where man i should be here or i should be at this pinnacle in my career or my personal life i give yourself some care realize in some grace realize that you're working that you're trying and to keep chasing your goal relentlessly but not to the detriment of yourself or your mental health yeah and i think that last point too not to the detriment of yourself or your mental health which is so challenging to do i think we all over work we all have stages of burnout i haven't met someone who has achieved their goals and said oh i had all this piece the entire time and i did all of these you know i lived a healthy lifestyle and but it's so good to try to do that do you feel like you've been able to kind of achieve your goals and do all these different things in a healthy way or did you have challenging times with regard to that it was challenging in times i think like it initially especially when i was making the transition from delaware to dc to california that time period it was difficult and i really had to teach myself these lessons that i just kinda described earlier and still remind myself to this day so it no it it was definitely challenging but i really always go back to community i had a really strong wife who supported me through all of this without ashley a lot of the support and love that i needed to get through these times i wouldn't have so i always come back to like family village community because that support system is what allowed me to get through those challenging times even when i didn't think i had it in me to keep going you know one of the most challenging things that happened to me and my career was my mom got sick my mom got pretty pretty sick i wanna say like right around the time i was studying for the delaware bar which may have contributed to you know mentally me being not being there during that test time and her health struggles were both physical and and mental health as well and it required a lot of my time and that was very hard for me because it was a a change in in our relationship i'm no longer just the sun i'm kinda now becoming the caretaker parent and that moment it was kinda revolutionary for me because it forced me to see outside myself in a way that i had him before and to start organizing my life in a way that i could provide for those around me not only my family and ashley and the kids but also my mom so without community without love and support i wouldn't have gotten through that moment either so it was definitely some challenging turns i think you know a lot of the times for me it was the personal impacting the professional trying to navigate making it out my neighborhood having survivors remorse about that getting to a point of not being okay with being successful i think a lot of people talk about getting to successful but not a lot of people talk about being okay with being successful and what i mean by that is especially for us black and brown folk some of us may come from backgrounds that weren't the most advantageous right and so when you when you make it quote unquote make it you can have this this guilt of like man why me why why was this opportunity given to me and i had that i struggled with it i i would look back home and see my family and realize that i'm having experiences that they may not have but then i kind of tried to flip that concept in my head and start thinking well okay you're getting this opportunity but what are you gonna do with it what are you gonna show people it's all well and good you feel guilty like you you made it out but like are you gonna do something about it and i think once i started shifting my my mindset to what can i do with my platform i started incorporating ways of showing people something different especially back home so like being able to say like hey i'm from here and i did it too and here's how i did it it's just so exhilarating for me to to give that to people it just makes me feel good and it it helps me to like not have that guilt because now i'm for like i'm leaving people to the lake is there a choice if they drink or not but like i'm leading you there wow yeah thank you so much for just kinda opening up more there and sharing some of those personal struggles and everything with your mom too and how that has impacted your perspective and and just the sheer amount of support that you've had from your wife ashley and i think all of that is beautiful and just even the shifted mindset taking the guilt and really turning it into purpose and i what you've said i can't personally relate to that but you know my husband says things like that you know you come from a place where you were just doing a lot better than your community but that can be really challenging and it is it's it's that shift because where you are you deserve to be where you are and so it's like what do i do with this opportunity and i think that that's really beautiful and i'm so curious about family life because you've mentioned being a father you've mentioned being a husband and ashley is someone who has a very successful career as well and so you guys are juggling and you got the kiddo and i think that you coach right you coach one of their teams yet tell us about and i won't use the word balance but i'll use the word integration tell us about work life integration in that family life yeah that's a great work because it's not a balance it is an integration me and ashley we met in law school at howard we've been together since about twenty eleven we got married in twenty sixteen and we have two children two boys t j six and carter who's four and the way we look at it is our family comes first but we do have these aspirations you know like you said ashley is very accomplished in her in her own right she heads the west coast business development for paul weiss which is a major law firm international law firm so she's very very busy she's actually in new york right now while i'll do this podcast but like because we have the benefit of coming out of school together and literally growing together we've gotten to see the different iterations of ourselves over the years and i think from a family standpoint her and i growing together and continuously choosing each other in these moments so us growing together and having the opportunity to enjoy each iteration of each other over the years has allowed us to integrate our lives together and not be like bogged down by work and trying to figure out family like the kids just are apart like we bring our kids to work we bring our kids to like our work events so that way they understand like this is possible like you can live this life too without us and we just try to integrate our life in every way like ashley will say hey like when i was at the law firm if she met someone oh you should meet my husband he's a partner such a such firm you should work with him kind of thing and i will do the same when that when opportunities come up in music or an entertainment in sports you know i'll say hey like let me know if any of the partners from your firm wanna come you know kind of thing like we work off of each other we and that's not just in the family in the house but also in business too ashley is and my kids are like the focus they push me there the reason i i get up each day to keep pushing and going after my dreams and my goals but like i really don't feel the need to have a work life balance like in the traditional sense because everything is so integrated my friends are my business partners my wife is not only just my wife but like she's my cheerleader i'm hers you know what i mean so it's just like everything is integrated the kids it's so funny after every counselor the kids take my wrist band and they'll wear on the school kinda thing like that's how integrated my work life and my personal life are and i just tried to think of myself as a whole person and not tried to like have one life here in one life there like no it's just one life and never let the professional never let the professional dictate the family because the family is the center and my story always it always comes back to the village in the community that was around me to help me get here and if you neglect that then everything else falls to the waist wayside so ashley and i we we try to focus on one another because if we focus on our relationship and everything from there kinda just spans out and will be successful and if it's not we can figure it out as a team yeah another one i love that too and i think that it reminds me of something that my parents told me i remember i was so curious when i was younger and i asked them i said do you love me more mom than you love dad and she said listen it's just different she said dad and i have to be at our our best selves together for us to love you the best way that we can for us to pour to you so dad and i always gotta keep this relationship at first god but she's like then it's dad data me and then we love you and it all kinda trickle down and i remember it at first feeling a little offended i was like what i'm not number one but it's certainly true and it's it's something you know my husband and i don't have kids yet but that is certainly aligned with our values and the way that we move through life and so and i think it's very effective and i love the way that you're able to integrate all the important things in your life these concerts keep us young ashley and i always laugh going into these shows we kind of like we're like are we in a mid midlife crisis because we're like always at a show like but it's it's been great because it's like it just allows us to connect in our busy days yeah i remember i was talking to you i don't know a couple of weeks ago and like yeah we were just at this concert i say y'all are young like y'all are just living and i am not even living like that so you inspire me to get outside get to the concerts we're trying we're trying and we're trying so just to dig a little bit deeper from a personal perspective and perhaps a self development perspective is there something that you struggle with that you've been working on in addition it seems like you've overcome a lot of things which is great but as humans i think we are continuing to grow and you are in this point in life where you have made it arguably made it like we talked about and you are successful according to i think your own definition but even society's definition and so is there something that you are trying to work on personally or something that you struggle with yeah yeah i have a good friend from law school his name is rust brown he's works at davis polk and needs great attorney as well and one of the things that we talk about and i and is like with my story so much of it came out of survival that like the need to survive the need to overcome the need to get past your current circumstance i'm no longer operating from that space i have accomplished some of the things that i want to accomplish so now i think the challenge that i'm working on is to not operate from my place of survival and i have to hustle and i gotta make it but to operate from a place of stability and a place of comfort to continue to pursue the things that i wanna pursue and that has been a struggle simply because like you're not operating with a chip on your shoulder you can't be the under i'm not the underdog right now you know so like i have to operate from a different place and ultimately i'm learning that place love i always try to i view myself like and you're gonna you may laugh at this i view myself as like a generator of energy and it's my job to get that energy into other people because as a lawyer like we're not the ones coming up with the cool idea we're servicing the idea we're helping the idea grow so like i always view myself as a generator of giving that energy to other people and i think that energy is love and by giving more love and operating from a place of love which is a also a place of comfort and stability i am now trying to re shift my mindset to operate from there versus trying to have a chip on my shoulder and be like i gotta make it i gotta do this i gotta survive like no you're surviving you're thriving actually now how do you operate from a place of love to to get even more out of that to get even more creativity even more opportunities and and ideas out of that so i think my biggest struggle right now is just teaching myself to operate from love and comfort and stability at all times versus the need to survive i think that's so beautiful i love that i love that so i think i can probably predict perhaps bits and pieces of what you'll answer this question with or how you like answer this question oh yes shout out to cas she one of my best friends and she works with thomas that's with so many connections between us yeah this was bound to happen but i'm curious about your purpose life purpose career purpose talk to us about that think they're all the same i don't i don't view them as life or personal versus professional my purpose is to inspire i think god put me on this earth to show people that difficult things can be done and difficult circumstances can be overcome one of the things i personally like about my story is i never quit and that i quote on unquote started at the bottom and now have worked my way up but i think my purpose is to tell this story especially like everything from my mom to the career struggles to finding success at a young age you know i'm only thirty six so i think i have to tell that story to inspire others because it's so funny you never know what people are thinking you never know what's going on in someone's like truly and the more i share my story and i've been sharing my story more over the past few weeks people just come up to me and say hey like man i'm going through that too and like you know i'm trying to figure it out thanks for sharing it because like i didn't have people share with me some of their ideas and struggles that they're they're going through and how they overcame them for me to use as an example to get where i'm going so like i feel like my greatest life purpose is to inspire and is to inspire others to chase their dream relentlessly a lot of the work that i do focus on like high school kids and children because i feel like those those are critical ages to start developing that mindset so if i can aspire one black boy or black girl to chase their dream relentlessly that's it that's the mission for me yeah and you're certainly doing that and i can even just see how your child shows up in that mission because of the work that you did with pal growing up you also you talked about just like sharing your story and the power of storytelling and helping people feel seen that's exactly how i feel that's what i think my purpose is in life and if you have any final thoughts to share with the audience i'd love to hear it yeah yeah i i think my final thought is this that you have to find your tribe and what i mean by that is those people in your life that will support you through the ups the downs the all around that will be there to lift you up because no one gets to your alone you can't do it by yourself whether that's your family whether that's your spouse whether that's your close friends you know you need people in your corner to support you and as i think back and as we're talking about my story right now i think about all the men and women that helped me get to this point starting with my mom starting with the officer wiley starting with the basketball coaches of the world like all those people played a part in shaping who i am and so i feel as though that's something that's transferable for everyone you need people around you that can help mold you you need people around you that can see things that you don't see in yourself and when you start surrounding yourself with those type of people success becomes so much easier to obtain whatever version of success depending on how you define it it becomes that much easier to obtain and for me the success was not so much making these lists and being like considered a great lawyer it was more about proving to myself that like i can do it that this is possible like this is something i'm interested in and i could do it but i couldn't have done it without all those people around me that boosted me up and i think that's the beauty of my story that there was a village behind me then and now that i'm not doing this in a vacuum and i'm so thankful for those people and i pray that our listeners find those people for themselves and that they continue to trust in themselves trust in their dream chase that dream relentlessly and do it in a way that they inspire others in their village and surrounding area to go do the same in their life yeah and that's what you're doing thank you again thomas for coming on no straight path this has been yeah amazing no no problem thank you for listening to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows and the lessons learned remember to share the podcast with friends and family and my hope is that these always help you navigate your no straight path journey if this content is adding value to your life and i hope it is please take a few minutes out of your day to read the show and write a review you can click the link in the show notes to write a review it helps other listeners find the show and i just really appreciate it have a lovely week embrace the journey and remember you're not alone

hey everyone this is ashley men papa your host and resident storyteller and welcome to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows and the lessons learned no straight path is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals we are digging into the human stories behind success and my hope as always is that you leave the conversation inspired motivated and excited about your journey so if you work through establishing you're in a setback and you embrace the discomfort and you gain the intel that you need you get to move into phase three which is explore this is the most fun phase because it's non commit you're just playing with what's possible you're turning to your community to test out ideas you're tapping into your superpower and you're kind of mapping out some ideas of how you're gonna move forward hey friends hey i hope you're well today we are talking about one of my favorite topics which also served as the inspiration for the podcast and that setbacks but before we get to today's guest i wanna tell you about another podcast that explores this thing as well and that's thank you for saying no podcast i just love this title really fascinating guests from all walks of life share the gratitude that they experienced after being told no or saying no and the lessons learned from those experiences it's such a good podcast you can listen to thank you for saying no on all streaming platforms and on youtube and so you should definitely check it out and today we're going to actually delve into the science and research behind setbacks i had a wonderful conversation with usa today bestselling author journalist and marketing consultant amy sc throughout her career she has worked with some of the world's largest brands from pro and gamble to google providing strategic marketing guidance and helping shape their brand narratives blending her marketing expertise with her formal journalism training amy approaches storytelling as since making and as a top contributor to forbes women and harvard business review she shines a spotlight on those who have been historically underestimated yet are doing work to solve society's biggest problems years of interviewing hundreds of leaders from politicians to peloton instructors fashion icons to founders just starting their journeys inspired her best bestselling book the setback cycle which offers a framework to help people persevere through triumph over setbacks so as you know this is the theme i love i love to talk about this and it was really interesting because amy gives a high level overview of this framework and it was so helpful and it really shifted my perspective on how we think about setbacks i definitely think i had one specific view but it's actually more nuanced than that so i'm definitely gonna take her framework and advise as i move forward in my journey and i just can't wait to learn more from her book which is also in the show notes and i actually can't wait for you y'all to hear this conversation so let's get to it alright amy i'm so excited to have you on the podcast as you know just the work that you're doing is so aligned with the work that i like to talk about and so thank you thank you thank you for just coming on the show thank you for having me absolutely and so i know we're gonna talk about your work but i do like to get to know the human behind the work first and so i just wanna know a little bit more about you about your story can you just tell us how you grew up tell us about how perhaps your childhood self or even it fits your high school self or college self how that shows up in the work that you're doing today yep of course i grew up in the suburbs of new york city and i always wanted to be a writer so i'm like pretty consistent throughout my gym do adult life i remember being at summer camp when everyone was doing like gymnastics and water slides and swimming and all kinds of like really fun stuff and i was walking around with my little notebook trying to interview people so i have always been like this very curious about people wanting to know their stories and wanting to write their stories i actually major in journalism in college and i did public relations for a tech incubator on campus that helped student entrepreneurs kind of you know birth their businesses from their dorm rooms and i was going around and interviewing them and i wanted to find out their stories so i could put it into more of like a press release format and then we could send it to the media and then one of the people that i interviewed during that time is went on to become the founder of squarespace so that's my fun little college fact so my career interviewing founders and leaders and entrepreneurs who are doing innovative work started very early on not only as a little kid in camp interviewing people but certainly in college interviewing again like date so much today's most prominent leaders straight from their dorm rooms and when i graduated college i went into marketing because it is very hard to you know i had student loans i wanted to move to new york city and get my own apartment it was very hard then to make a living as a journalist or a writer of any kind it's even harder now so i went into a career in marketing which i am so glad i did because i have since paid off my student loans i mean it took a long time but i did it and i was able to you know have a career have a life support myself now support my family and i always continued writing as a freelancer so i would contribute to different publications here and there in earl i think it was twenty sixteen or seventeen i started contributing to forbes and when i had my daughter in twenty eighteen that's when i was sort of sidelined from my marketing job because marketing isn't like super friendly to mothers or women over forty and i am now both and so i didn't really ignore the signs that that was coming i knew i would need some sort of backup plan and you know to process what i was going through i turned to writing i started asking really intense questions of the people i was interviewing hey like what did you go through to get there what kind of setbacks did you encounter what obstacles did you overcome to build what you built and they started candidly sharing their stories which made for very good articles and through that my freelance writing career took off a little bit i got a little more visibility i was given the opportunity to interview even more high profile people i was you know asked to speak guarantees stages and at conferences and you know talk more about my work that's what led to the book deal that's what led to me coming up with the idea that like there is something more than just like learning from our mistakes and post traumatic stress like everyone kinda goes to the same cycle what is it who's talking about it how can we name it and i didn't find anything so i went and i started interviewing experts and that's how i came up with the setback cycle i love that i love how you're able to literally go from your childhood to this get back cycle in this span of three minutes because you all connected it is it is all connected to just your child self interviewing people and then having that amazing opportunity in college and also talking about the practical aspects of that i love that you did that as well and said hey i really love journalism but marketing made sense and it's there's certainly a lot of overlap there with p marketing journalism but it was a way for you to support your family and then that transition and i think i feel that very reflected in my story as well it's like i was looking at journalism too and my professors said hey if you don't come for money maybe the law school and you know we're still doing it on the side and always doing that work and i think that's incredible and so it's led you to this past today where you're on this podcast with me chatting about the book and so i wanna get to the book tell us a little bit more about the setback cycle and tell more about that story of course like i said i kept interviewing people for the articles i was writing and i kept seeing a pattern and every time i would interview somewhat they started really lighting up and getting excited to tell me the part of their story when they encountered some sort of obstacle something that bumped them backwards and they were talking about how they were able to work through it and it just always seemed like the same formula you know from the biggest celebrity the most prominent founder to the earliest stage startup founder just getting their feet wet into the world of entrepreneurship and i was like why is this happening why am i seeing the same themes and so like i said i i went a research mode i started reading all the business psychology books and all the like everything i could find on positive psychology and post traumatic growth and resilience and all the things that you hear about but no one was touching on a concept that spanned all of it you know because not every setback is a trauma not every setback is a mistake you made the actual definition of a setback is a reversal or check in progress so it is when you are moving forward on some path whether it is you know career a business a relationship some sort of forward momentum and you are unexpectedly bumped backwards and so it could be a trauma it could be a mistake but it also could be neither of those things and so i saw the reversal in progress for all of these people and once i came upon the definition of a setback i was like that's it that's what i am seeing and then i went on my okay i am seeing this theory let's see what the experts think and i went and i interviewed a couple of psychologists a couple of executive coaches a neuroscientist scientist because i said if this is so common it must be biological or something like that you know and and i was right the her name is chant tal pratt she wrote the neuroscience of you and i read the book and then i interviewed her and she told me that she was able to prove in her lap that people who have worked through setbacks are better at problem solving reasoning and creativity and those are all the traits of a successful founder and leader an innovator you know yeah no i love that i love that and so you actually change my thinking a little bit on how we even conceptualize what a setback is and so i'm curious about an example where the setback isn't necessarily a trauma it isn't necessarily a mistake can you tell us a little bit more about perhaps this positive connotation that is maybe associated with the setback i don't know that a positive connotation is associated okay setback it's not like we're gonna it's not like you're gonna read the bug i mean it's great if you have a deeper understanding of an experience that you have had or will inevitably have and that's the purpose of the book to understand your own life experience and to give you the tools to work through it but that doesn't mean that when you encounter your next setback and things aren't going well or you're bumped backwards in a big way or a small way it doesn't mean it's gonna be a positive experience it's still not gonna be great it's still gonna feel and that's part of going through the cycle to embrace the ic actually phase two is called embrace and so you have to kind of soak it in and understand why it's happening or why it's impacting you so much in order to work your way out of it really and so the book does not glorify pain or suffering or tell you that you're gonna walk into your next setback pumped about it okay or not unrealistic here what it will do is give you the tools to work through it and i do think that once you understand your own like as you said you're kind of seeing your own life experiences maybe through this lens now that we're talking about it it's nice to understand that oh i've been through that so i can get through it again yeah yeah and are there any particular stories that stick out to you that you'd like to share one of the things that i learned through a lot of this research and a lot of the stories was that it's very common for people to like not even realize that they're encountering a setback and they're like willingly walking into it so one of the people i interviewed one of the peloton instructors her name is kendall tool she is boxing and cycling instructor on peloton and when she was in college she had a very extreme mental health episode and she you know she was a straight a student a cheerleader leader she did all the extra extracurricular all the things her anxiety was manifesting as perfectionism as end over performance and i think that's so many people hers got so extreme that again you know she had a very severe mental health episode she had to work her way out of it she went into intensive therapy she went home to live with her parents for a while she had to like take some time off of school and she you know remembers that her parents said to her at this time or her dad said to her like we don't you know you can get knocked down but we won't let this knock you out that became her motto and sure enough she turned to physical fitness she turned to boxing to really like get her mind focused on something and away from the anxiety and away from the perfectionism really so she found this really great outlet it was helping her so much she became a teacher fast forward and she you know was recruited to go work at peloton and now she really candidly shares her very vulnerable story with like millions of people who are working out with her and so she's become such an advocate of mental health awareness and seeking help when you need it and all of these great things but you know her setback guess she had like one specific episode that that was very impactful but she really was sort of drifting into it slowly you know without even realizing it because she was ignoring her pain she was ignoring her suffering and again she was using these outlets like over performance and signing up for all these extra extracurricular to sort of like run away from her setback and of course you know that it when you run away from the discomfort it comes up in a big way hopefully again not as dramatic as hers but this is what tends to happen and so many of us really sleep walk into these setbacks and that's why phase one of the setbacks cycle is establish because you have to establish the moment you're in in order to work through it phase two is embrace because you have to now once you establish it you have to feel the discomfort and you have to like absorb the data you to absorb the information so that you understand what clues you're getting from this and so you can move forward in a way that's maybe somewhere different than where you were going before you don't rinse and repeat and find yourself back in a setback immediately you know take the clues clean the data and use it to inform your next step you know you talked about phase one and phase two and now i'm just curious can you tell us about three and four i can so phase one and two are the hardest frankly phase three and four are way more fun so if you work through establishing you're in a setback and you embrace the discomfort and you gain the intel that you need you get to move into phase three which is explore this is the most fun phase because it's non commit you're just playing with what's possible you're turning into your community to test out ideas you're tapping into your superpower and you're kind of mapping out some ideas of how you're gonna move forward and explore is really just that playful phase again you don't have to blow up your life if you realize you're in a setback like you realize oh i'm i'm not engaged with my job anymore i have to leave immediately you don't have to leave immediately take some time figure out what you like and don't like about it and figure out what you might wanna do moving forward and just start to dip a toe perhaps in another industry perhaps we'll learn some new skills maybe talk to some people who are in a different industry or a different field that you might be able to learn from you know i don't want people to be like i made a setback let me just go totally pivot without a plan like i don't want people to be without health insurance or without you know the ability to pay their rent there's no need to do that you can stay in the explore base for as long as you need to figure out the path forward that's when you get to phase four which is the final phase of the setback cycle emerge and that's when you come out of your setback now emerge is not all you know sunshine and roses there are some pitfalls you can fall into when you get there like all the planning and all the absorbing of information and all of the plotting can be exhausting so when you get into a emerge you might just need a moment to relax to rest to take a pause before you pivot and so then you can sort of shed your cocoon and emerge with your glorious new wings and you know fly away as as the meta is complete yeah yeah and i'm curious if you have any examples that stuck with you for the three and four phase for the exploring phase from your book is there anyone that sticks out sure one of my favorite stories is that of norma kamala she's a very well known fashion designer she's now in her seventies and she is still just like absolutely rocking it and i just spoke to her like last month and she is just innovating as much as someone possibly can so she has not slowed down but when she was first starting out it was i think like the nineteen fifties or sixties she was in relationships she's was married and she let her husband run the business i'll do the designs he'll run the financials well he ran the business into the ground he cheated on her it was like he was out partying she was doing the work and one day like one of the women he was cheating on her with came into the shop went into norma back you know workstation started talking to her and normal was just like what is going on and at that moment the ceiling of her workstation just totally crashed down over her and she said if there was ever sign to leave this is it so she walked away she left everything she said i completely want to cut ties she left him the business i mean there was no one designing clothes so what was the business at this point but she walked with ninety eight dollars to her name and a few years later you know she started asking for hulk she was very worried obviously because she had nothing she had an apartment with no furniture and she just started asking for help she asked for a sewing machine she asked for some material she was normal molly so she started making clothing again and she rebuilt her business and she renamed it i believe three years later as o m o on my own and only a few years after that i think it became a multi dollar business global brand and she has been innovating in the fashion industry for over fifty years you know she got there because of a setback yeah this feeling literally crashed down over her workstation i mean and she said you know there's always this moment that you're so grateful for because it gives you the power to walk away well i love that story so much and can i tell you i'm wearing norma ka pants oh my god right now that's amazing yes they are the most because i'm also pregnant right now and so they're chic but then they show off my belly bumps so well so i love that and i didn't know her story so i'm so happy about hear i remember her story in the book like it's much more detailed i just kinda gloss over you know that big dramatic part but there is she is so fascinating so incredible and yes she is the best clothing she's always been sort of celebrating women's bodies at every stage of life in this way so i love that you're talking about how they're super comfortable but also flattering while pregnant so yes i feel very chic right now so very but i can't wait to read your book because i wanna learn more about her story and all the other stories that you tell and really just the research as well was there anything particularly interesting or surprising from the research that you've done for the book well i found it so surprising that so many people don't realize that they're entering into a setback like that's why it came up with phase one is established because like i couldn't believe it you know and then once i learned it i realized that i have done this you know i have walked into a setback thinking like oh it's fine it's fine like other people have it worse i can handle this and i actually recently you know i share my story in the in the book about how i was i don't wanna scare you because times are different now but i was very much sidelined in my career when i came back as a mother and it didn't go very well i was removed from an account that i had worked so hard to build while pregnant and i was my responsibilities were were diminished on another account and so i just felt like my job was so minimized when i came back and i had less responsibility i was responsible for less business and there was no discussion of it it was just these decisions were made based on assumptions not by conscious choice your replacements did a good job we'll let them continue on but no discussion of what that meant for me and i saw that as oh you're right like they really did do a good job they they did that's totally true and i agreed i said yeah they should get this opportunity you know let them continue to run these accounts that's great and everyone around me said this is so great for you because you have a new baby at home you should have less responsibility at work this is such a gift and everything that people were doing and saying everyone had such good intentions and everyone was trying their best but it was not congruent with how i felt inside i was energetic i was excited to bring that energy back to work but what happens when you sideline an ambitious woman or a mother yeah she turns her energy and ambition elsewhere and that's why my freelance writing career took off the year after i had my daughter yeah i turned all my ambition there but i didn't see it until years later when my coworker who worked very closely with me on my team said to me i'm leaving the agency because i wanna be a mother one day and i saw what happened to you when you became a mother you were a great leader and you were prevented from leading and i was like what it's like oh my god wait number one you saw what happened to me and it wasn't just me that's so validating but number two how could i let this happen how did i not speak up for myself how did i not think about the impact i was making on future parents or people who were watching what happened mean i felt awful but it woke me up and what i realized in my research was how many people really are unconscious about the setbacks that they are willingly walking into it was not just me and one of the reasons i wrote the book was so people could wake up earlier than i did and so people could understand that even if it's fine and other people have it worse and you could keep going you don't have to you can acknowledge the moment you're in without removing any of the you know acknowledgment of any level of privilege or any you know the fact that maybe others have it worse of course that might be true but it could still be a very personal setback and the sooner you wake up from it the sooner you can start working through the cycle i think that is so true i think that's such a gem because you don't wanna invalidate your experiences because you can say that by just being born here in america are being able to live here in america what i think is important is that when we are looking at our lives it's how can i be the best version of myself with all of the privileges that i have right like it's not just because i have these privileges you know some people say i felt so guilty if heard people in the podcast and even i've talked about this and my own personal experience when you're perhaps in a position that everybody else would want at a friend come on the podcast who is an nfl player height of his career doing well went to the super bowl unfulfilled inside everyone's telling him this is amazing goes on to write because that's what's inside of him creates a hit show and is giving you know the impact that he wants to the world making the impact that he wants and so i think that despite whatever level of privilege you have we all deserve to be happy we all deserve to be able to tap into our gifts and i love that you talk about that in the book that you've recognized that in your own experience and i'm curious about what advice you would give to someone who is perhaps in your position right now i know the workplace has certainly gotten better and every institution is different but we a long way to go we don't have paid leave you know no federal pay paid leave for parents you talked to a lot of people they say the workforce in america isn't still built for parenthood and so for an ambitious woman or human that is working in their career and they perhaps our family planning or just had a child or maybe me yeah you know what advice do you have for that person well number i mean i have so much advice but also g like number one it really just depends on you and your situation and what you want and being honest with yourself i think in a way that i it took me a really long time to realize what i truly wanted and needed in that moment and i pretended that everything was fine for far too long i would just say try to really tap into your true needs and what your values are and what you stand for even if the outside world is telling you you should be a certain way or you should be grateful for this moment because that can be true while the other stuff is true of course i was grateful for the position i was in in the you know having less responsibility while having a child at home and yes other people have it worse i think it's so much worse if you go back to work and you face blatant motherhood discrimination or blatant pregnancy discrimination i had none of them that i had well intention coworkers who we're just a little bit thought you know and didn't ask me you know what i might need and i don't know if i would have even been able to answer at that moment because i was very confused think about the impact you're having on those around you that's really my biggest piece of advice because i think if i had considered that a little earlier i might have i don't know woken up or been more vocal when i was alerted to the fact that other people were paying attention to my setback that i was working through i became more vocal about it and i talked to my manager i said hey this wasn't cool and like don't do this with the next person who has a child it was an uncomfortable conversation but i had it you know when i you know a couple years later i was caught up in a round of lay from that scene firm i stayed i climbed back up the mountain i built you know myself back up and then i was caught up in a round of layoffs years later when i was laid off i had already started consulting on the side i had a few clients i had my llc formed i had already written the book i submitted my final manuscript for the setback cycle forty eight hours before i was laid off and when they offered me a severance package that was ready i had worked there for eight years they gave me eight weeks severance that was their first offer when i asked for them to increase it they said we will only increase it if you give us the right to see what's written about us in the book and for us to weigh in on it and edit it and we will only increase it and we'll only pay you anything if you edit it to our liking i walked away from severance i said that is an inappropriate amount of control and you're also like being so sting with the amount of money you're offering me for that level of control that like this is just not worth it and so i now have the power to share my story in the way that i think other people need to really hear it yeah because my setback was not dramatic it was slow it was subtle it was from someone with all the privilege i was a senior level you know white woman manager and still this happened to me so what does that mean when you go down the spectrum of marginalized communities like it's not good and people need to at least be aware of it so that they can plan for it taking on all those you know freelance writing gigs and saying yes to all the speaking engagements and writing a book while full time employed like doing all these things on the side that all became my lifeline when i was laid off so i didn't have to accept that severance package i didn't have to muzzle myself or you know sort of sanitize the story of being sidelined after maternity leave because i had planned ahead once i woke up yeah i'm so glad you woke up i'm so glad that you're sharing your story this is definitely very helpful for me and very inspiring and i also think you said something a little bit earlier too which i do wanna highlight because i think it's important is that we can be grateful as well at the same time so i think that these things aren't mutually exclusive you can be extremely grateful for your life and still work towards things that they'll better aligned and so that's a message because no i'm a huge gratitude person i have a my gratitude journal but that doesn't mean you know not changing things up or not getting out of that setback thank you for all of the gyms i always in the podcast with final thoughts so if you have any final thoughts i'd love for you to share them well i just wanna say to anyone who is working through a setback right now or if you've been listening and realize that either something you experienced was a setback or maybe you kinda just woke up and realize that you're in one right now know that you will emerge from this with a sense of all you are capable of and all the possibilities available to you this is a book about difficult experiences but it is an optimistic book it is not toxic positivity level optimistic but it is realistic and it will just give you the tools you need to gain that understanding and see your experiences through a new lens and emerge with a level of confidence and capability that you probably never thought was possible so you've got this that's my final thought you've got this thank you for listening to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows on the lessons learned remember to share the podcast with friends and family and i hope at these stories help you navigate your no straight path journey if this content is adding value to your life and i hope it is please take a few minutes out of your day to read the show and write a review you can click the link in the show notes to write a review it helps other listeners find the show and i just really appreciate it have a lovely week embrace the journey and remember you're not alone

hey everyone this is ashley men papa your host and resident storyteller and welcome to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows and the lessons learned no straight path is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals we are digging into the human stories behind success and my hope as always is that you leave the conversation inspired motivated and excited about your journey i've been told this by mentor and i also like rep rephrase their words someone who hasn't been where you're trying to go can't give you directions for how to get there and i just actually just made that one up on a spot and let try to say it again no i get someone who hasn't been where you are trying to go cannot give you directions for how to get there now they can teach you how to drive they can tell you ten to follow the speed limit you know like you know only pass on the left side like they can they can still guide you they can still give you advice so i'm not saying you shouldn't listened to someone who hasn't done exactly what you wanna do but in terms of the exact steps for how to get there they're only going to be able to take you as far as they went on that exact hey friends hey i hope you are well i hope you enjoyed part one of my conversation with doctor fermi o this conversation had such a profound impact on my thinking and in part two fair army offers so many gems of wisdom from turning your passions into your professions to drafting a life mission statement aimed at helping you make the impact that you wanna make in the world but before we get to families meaningful advice i wanted to delve deeper into his story he shared the various challenges he experienced throughout his journey and his advocacy for mental health but i was curious about his own mental health his mental state and he took me back to the accident i'd say that immediately afterwards many people expected that i would be depressed right i went from all american athlete orthopedic surgery resident to in a hospital bed unable to manage my own bowel and bladder unable to roll myself from side to side unable to then put food to my own mouth and i think many people thought how can you keep on living how can you keep being positive now i don't take personal credit for this at all right because i don't feel like i did anything to feel the way i felt and in fact i had a my roommate and rehab almost exact same age he was married had a similar injury same level or sort of impacts were the same at that point and he busted his butt just as hard as he could in therapy just like i did and i regained function and he did not that had nothing to do with me doing something better than he did right and he once again would be perfectly fine with me disclosing this he was very dumb and you know his relationship fell apart he and his wife divorce he talked about suicide he didn't see the point in going on because he was not able to do the things that he thought he was gonna do in his life i do not feel like i did anything to not have that mindset but i just know that i never had that mindset for whatever reason and people would come visit me and would be coming to my room to talk and you know after fifteen minutes they would be crying because they're talking about what struggles they have in their life and they're like wait i'm supposed to be here to support you and i like i'm i'm fine like i'm not going anywhere so you can sit and talk as much as you want but i was in a mental space that was fine and i think that actually scared many of my close friends and family because they're like he's just not it's not processed yet he's not really letting this hit him yet me and this gonna be the day where it's all gonna come down he's gonna realize it but right now he's either masking it or he's trying to hide it or he hasn't let it sink in but no i i never felt down i never asked like why me and i never was depressed but i wanna be clear that i i don't think that i'm better than anyone for that reason i don't that i did anything different it's just that every one of us as i said us on this continuum so depression is not just sadness because you can have everything in your life that seems to be going great and be depressed right depression is a actual it's like diagnosis right it is not just a state of being and so for whatever reason while i did have many reasons why someone could think i would be depressed i wasn't depressed and i tried to sort of talk to my friends and patience about that because they then feel down about themselves when they see good things happening in the world yet they still feel down right and they say well why i don't have any right to be depressed look at all these amazing things yet they still just don't feel happy or positive they feel hopeless and helpless and worthless and so i think that that's an important thing to recognize but to be directed in answering your question mean my my mental state at that point sure i was grappling with what the future is going to be i had lots of questions as to what access i would now be given myself what am i going to do am i gonna be able to stay being a doctor i goal but it was never a woe with me this has the end of the world this is the worst thing that could ever happen i actually and maybe this maybe i would say this more clearly now than i would said it that day but i know that the lord has a plan for every single one of us and at that time i was just thinking god i don't know what your plan is but you must have something a door because i wouldn't have asked for this this is not what i would have asked for but i will stay faithful and seeing where i am now almost eleven years from that time some would think that it was written that it was supposed to be that way the work that i do now in disability almost seems as though that was supposed to be part of my journey because one i don't know if i would be doing this work without that and two i don't know if i would've have seen this community without that and if i were in this work without having that injury myself i don't know that i would've have been able to have the same level of impact because i do think that there's a certain lived experience that helps to inform the work i'm i'm careful when i say this because i'm not saying that you have to be disabled to then be in this work but i do think that it it provided me with a perspective that has allowed me to have the opportunities that i have now i don't take credit for that being the confidence that i had but at at no point was my mental health or anything that was of concern to me yeah you know what i love about your story i feel like you just dispel a lot of assumptions about things and you show that as humans that we aren't monolith in whatever identity we may occupy you know i think it's interesting how society has had certain expectations of how you might feel or how things might be or various points in your life but you're like no actually it wasn't really like this and let me tell you how it really was i think that's gonna be extremely helpful for broadening people's perspectives and you talked about just saying god i don't know what's next but i know you got a plan in his plan was great it is great and it is continuing to be great and so i wanna pivot to your career i wanna pivot to the entrepreneurial mindset that you have talked to us about that because you're someone who has given me some of the best career advice i think you're so wise and so i want to talk about where that comes from yeah so first i've been very very fortunate to have sponsors mentors that have helped me sort of along my journey but to give the snapshot of the career and then to to get into some of the detail so did the orthopedic surgery residency had the accident went back to the indiana or where my family has lived since and i wanted to do something to continue stimulating my mind as i was doing my rehab so at that point i was doing an outpatient rehab and i was in my third year orthopedic surgery residency but was without able to be a resident right then at that time so i ended up getting a masters from not dame in engineering science and technology entrepreneurship and so that degree is what i give credit to the way that i now think about problems i'd say that i saw problems before and you know like man that's that's too bad right there's a problem there but now when i think about a problem i almost automatically think about our what can we do what thing can we create how can we get around it so i no longer solve problems as a barrier right i just saw problems as something to then to solve in a way and that was where the entrepreneurial sort of mine kicked in now during that masters i actually did return to residency so i finished a family medicine residency in south indiana before then coming to the university of michigan where took my first faculty appointment as an assistant professor of family medicine and physical medicine and rehabilitation so i tell people that as a family physician i took care of cradle to grave so i delivered babies took care of kids adults and who worked in the nursing home right so add anything that you can imagine in that spectrum of humanity was what i did as a as a primary care doctor who is bringing my orthopedic background into it because then i mu skeletal care is a large part of that so anyway finished the residency took a faculty appointment but when i started i also started as the director of medical student programs in the office for health equity and inclusion so that is where sort of my my passion for access and equity was able to be baked into my role as supporting sort of diversity for the medical school now i've taken multiple sort of different paths along that journey and now i'm an assistant professor of family medicine physical medicine and rehabilitation ur neurology and orthopedic surgery here at michigan medicine and i'm also an adjunct assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at ucla but then the primary sort of title i have at the university of michigan is i'm the director of what's called student accessibility and accommodation services which is really just a long title to say disability services so i run disability services for the over fifty thousand students that we have here at the university of michigan which is made up of our services for students with disabilities office our two testing accommodation centers so students that need accommodated testing whether it's extended time or a reduced distraction environment or screen reader technology if you're a blind or low vision that is our testing center that provides that so think of it as a prom metric testing site but for individuals with disabilities we then have something called academic support and access partnerships which is our team that provides executive functioning skill support and really supports our neuro diver and newer diverse students and then we have the adaptive sports and fitness program which is something that i founded here which is providing equitable access to sports and fitness for individuals with and without disabilities so those are the the academic titles that i have and then i've got a consulting company that i started my llc i'm about to be embarking on a venture capital sort of thing that we can talk about first quarter next year that we can't discuss it as much right now yet but that's something that's a a exciting new venture so the thing however that i feel so help me to get here is that i love so many things right i told you i played basketball soccer across track i saying i danced i acted and so i've always been interested in lots of things and that was something that could have looked like i was just as scattered in my life as i am in this podcast but what helped me was that i ended up writing a mission statement and i wrote a mission statement that said this is what it is that i hope to do and everything that i want to do from now on has to fit within that mission statement and so it has to be sufficiently narrow so that you're not just saying yes to everything but it has to be appropriately broad enough to encompass sort of the various aspects of who you are because i did not want to be pigeon hold as just the disability person right i didn't want to be pigeon hold as the diversity person i didn't want to be pigeon hold as the black person right and so i ended up saying that my goal was to provide equitable access to physical and emotional health and wellness for individuals with and without disability so i wrote that in two thousand and fourteen two thousand and fifteen and every decision that i've made since then i've looked at it and i said how does this impact equitable access to physical and emotional health and wellness for individuals with and without disability so it's not just the disability community that we are serving right and equitable access is a broad topic right and so that is what i did because the second thing that i tell people has to fit into that mission statement i tell people to find and follow your passions and make your passions your professions and by doing that is where i now sit in this space where i feel i the best job in the world with the opportunity to interact with students across this institution and across multiple institutions i have the opportunity to travel the world and give talks trying to get people to see disability through a different lens have the opportunity to then teach the next generation of physicians who are going to then go off and be the ones taking care of my family my loved ones myself as i continue to age and so i feel i've been blessed with this unique opportunity to be positioned at this intersection of multiple spaces where all of the experiences that i've had sort of contribute to the way that i'm able to then to teach to provide access to give jobs and so that's something i just talked about earlier today is that if you've never hired someone right i'm not gonna say you can't feel this at all but the way that you can feel when you give someone employment right when you realize that you are the one providing them with an opportunity to pay their bills get health insurance take care of their family have a roof over their heads like that is something that i do not take for granted it's something that i've seen plenty of people who you may think should be fine but because of lots of things happening in the world that you don't know about struggle in a way that most people don't talk about and so the ability to then give employment it is just it's such a blessing and so having a chance to to have an office where we have now we we went from when i first started as an interim director here there were seven people in this work and we now have over twenty seven professional staff with student staff and temporary staff as well and every single time we make another hire it just it feels like that's another piece of access given to someone who you don't know what access things have gotten somewhere else so the career is somewhat complex and and busy at the moment but as i said i think to whom much is given much as expected i love that journey and just all the advice that you provided and you know i think it's interesting when you said find your passions and then make your passions your profession and i can just tell that that's certainly what you've done you light up when you talk about your career i know that you love the work that you're doing and it's really hard to find that it's really hard to do and i get a lot of people come to me with this question because i have this podcast about finding your passion and making that your profession and i know it's a privilege to be able to even do that but i'm curious how do people even start that process like let's say you're talking to younger you or younger me and we're working hard and whatever in our respective fields and we're ambitious but we haven't found that thing that lights us up yet that passion do you have any advice for someone like that the first thing i'll say is and i will i'll borrow from your own language there is no straight path so i think that one thing that is reassuring to people is that if you feel as though you haven't found that thing that lights you up in your twenty five thirty five forty five don't be discouraged right i mean i know that there's some more practical things that people might wanna make sure that they've got you know a job but if you're in something that you still don't feel like is your passion yet it's never too late right so that's the first thing because i think people can get very discouraged because they feel as though they've already fallen off the track and it's gonna be way too hard to get onto to that track so i think giving people sort of the grace and the permission to say even if you haven't found it it's okay but then when i say is try to shed all societal expectations and say what do you like what do you like because you know we talked about early played all these sports i mentioned that right talked about what i saw my parents doing using their mind and their hands and affecting changing people lives those things could come together in lots of different ways right like my son he sees his father as a physician he plays sports as well he's also a musician he wants to be a vet he wants to be a vet in a professional baseball player right and the fact that he sees those two things as things that he can do right that he doesn't say well because i wanna be a vet i can't be an athlete or because i wanna be an athlete i can't be a vet he he doesn't think of it that way and so when we get down to sort of the the nitty gritty for people of course they'll have to be decisions that are made but at this point of finding and following your passions do not limit yourself don't limit yourself to what you think society expects that you have to do because you can absolutely make a job out of something that has never existed right and if it's what you're passionate about it is going to be easier for you to continue doing it now i know that all that nigerian parents listening to this podcast are gonna say of course you have to be a doctor lawyer and engineer and and then need to know that's kind of a unspoken rule you have to be a doctor or an engineer maybe a lawyer and that's because they all want us to be successful and they know that those are paths that can lead to that so i have sort of shifted in how i feel about it because as a younger person many of us felt as though our families were trying to push us towards something right and they didn't value sort of the arts and creativity and what other roles could still put food on the table but i think that now what people demonstrating is that it's intellectual curiosity that is what's going to put food on your table and you can have a job that pays the bills but not be happy in life because you're actually not doing something that you're passionate about so the way that i talk to a young person is one i would reinforce that education is something that can't be taken from you now does that education mean you have to get a phd or a jd or an md or a d not necessarily right but the pursuit of information and the pursuit of academic excellence is something that will take you wherever is you want to go so that is the first step about knowing that but then two you just look at what is it that provides you joy what do you enjoy doing and then let's figure out what aspect of that we can then turn into a career because it doesn't mean that every single thing you enjoy doing is going to be able to be your career and so i'm not just i'm not unrealistic about that aspect of it right but when you start with out of the high level sort of conversation i try to not put barriers as i said when we get to talking and after i have a couple sessions with someone we can get to the detail but at first release that burden you have of what's expected of you right and then truly say what is it that you enjoy doing and then we can go from there i think too often people are they're trying to get to the end before they even figure out where the starting in line is right and then they're trying to then chart the direct path to get there and i'll tell you the direct path might be great right and i would love for you to be able to have a direct path but what's it's more important is that you know there may not be a straight path but as you're off of the track that other people think you should be on they may not realize that that's actually gonna be so in a fast track till you get into where you would have been because i've been told this by a mentor and i also like rep rephrase their words someone who hasn't been where you're trying to go can't give you directions for how to get there yeah and i just actually just made that one up on the spot i'm gonna try to say it again so like it someone who hasn't been where you are trying to go cannot give you directions for how to get there now they can teach you how to drive they can tell you ten to fall the speed limit you know like you know only pass on the left side like they can they can still guide you they can still give you advice so i'm not saying you shouldn't listen to someone who hasn't done exactly what you wanna do but in terms of the exact steps for how to get there they're only going to be able to take you as far as they went on that exact journey and then if you start to go to different direction they might try to take you back to where they were but that's because they want you to be successful and they think that where they've gone is where you want to go if you wanna go somewhere else however and even if you wanna go to the same place that they want it may not follow the exact same path and they may not be able to then help you with that since they and tit that same route so that's the other part of it that's tell people is i don't want you to look at my life and think this is how i will do it but i hope that you look at my life and see that there are many ways that it can be done yeah no i love that inside insight it as as well and i've noticed now that i've entered this podcast podcasting space i'm starting to find the people that i want to be like and i know my journey will still look different but i think it's given me permission to have a multi hyphen career you know we think about multi hyphen careers in the context of entertainment but i think as professionals we can have multi hyphen careers as well because i realize but i love this podcast i love storytelling but i also enjoy corporate i enjoy affecting change in corporate spaces i think i can excel there and so how do i do both and i've been able to find people and i know you're not necessarily in corporate but i think you're also just a good example of someone who is a multi hyphen in it doing lots of different things even though you come from a more traditional background and so do i being a doctor and a lawyer but i think this generation we're starting to think about possibility and think about success and think about career in a different way and i'm curious about how you define success so i started off with the last one saying sort of shed what society expects of you right and i will continue along that thread because i'll get back to some the disability conversation in that community to give this answer so i was a all american triple jumper right so that's a very random weird event but it takes some coordination in your legs to be able to then do this hop this step in this job so i feel like it's actually somewhat ironic that it wasn't like i was a sprinter or mean like i was this weird event that then the ability to not just walk or run or jump but to kind of do all of them at the same time at full speed was odd to be the person that now does not have full use of my legs one could say that the way that i thought i was going to be successful is clearly not the way that i am going to be able to be successful now right so i start with that to say that there are metrics for success that may change throughout your life and so not looking at it from this able list lens necessarily but saying we all have the capacity for success and even in the same individual success might look different at various points in your life and so if you then say that having impact in some way is what success is right if you then say impacting others lives in a positive way is what success is if you could say that providing access or opportunity for others is what success is that is the lens through which i see it now because i know that for me what i hope is that after i leave a room i hope that i've left someone in that room better than they came in and so i tell people that the past may not be your fault but that the future will be so what is it that you can do to make someone tomorrow better than there yesterday now because that's the way i define it i may not always know if i'm being successful because if i go give a talk at ucsf department of orthopedic surgery i don't know necessarily how many of those people are going to take the words that i shared and then go impact change elsewhere right so the other part of success that's important is you have to then have it for yourself you have to define for yourself what that is going to be and you also have to recognize the external world is going to then define it for you and you can choose to accept that or not so that's why i said that with respect words of affirmation i have been blessed with a lot of reinforcing words that say that i have been successful right it doesn't necessarily mean that i agree with what it is that people then say because for example there are times where people will then drop into let's say for example they'll drop into a third one country they'll do this pop up clinic they'll do amazing work for this week and then they'll bounce right mh someone may like that was so great of you and look at what you did that clinic was so successful right now i personally and i'm not trying to to to knock on humanitarian work but too often what we do is we've just expose a community to something that they're not going be able to continue to have right unless you then make an investment in going back there regularly that might have done more harm than good and so the external metric for success that other people put on you you may be able to accept part of that but for you i want you to decide if i'm able to then have this conversation where i educate a community on something that i think they need to hear that can be success right that opportunity has been provided the access was given the information was sort of dis that is the way that i view it at this point right now it is absolutely touching when someone comes back and repeat something that i said or someone finds me and says i heard you do x y z and then because of that i was able to start this or do this or have this conversation when you see a student that you taught that then comes back and is now one of your peers as a faculty member right so i think that success for me now to be specific is having the positive impact on the world that i hope to have and that positive impact can be on the micro level it could be on the macro level but i don't think that one is more important than the other and so i tell people that you do what it is that you can do within your sphere of influence and your sphere of influence might be your household this sphere of influence might be the street you live on your sphere influence could be the city the state the nation in the world and no one of those is better than the other and they're all needed and all of us have an opportunity to then impact those spheres of influence in some way i'll borrow phrase that one of my friends used it's a it was listed as an african prove but when you look it up online it will say african prove i'm sure someone said this but one of my colleagues used it in one of our presentations and i've now promised it i will credit herbert at my see it so doctor doctor e the thing is if you think that you were too small to make a difference then you've never spent the night within a mosquito that is what i tell people now is you don't know the impact that you could have and no matter how small you are whatever it is that you do could have a huge ripple effect right now too often people associate mosquitoes with spreading disease so i don't want to then use this analogy is if it's like your spreading disease but just think about what the little sort of impact some people may think that thing can make but think about it from a positive standpoint of how that can spread and how that positivity can spread and how you in your little sphere of influence can absolutely make a difference in other people's lives yeah another one i love that insight as well and thinking about the different spheres of influence and how no impact is too small and i think that's true and it's interesting because i certainly agree with that way of thinking but i think sometimes it could be mis because of this kind of podcast i'm like human agonizing success and it's people with big brands who have done these interesting cool things but i also like to have my family members on i talk a lot about my mom who was a stay at home mother and the huge impact that she's had on my life and her community and the church and i bring my dad on it was a profit work and so i certainly agree with that and sometimes i get a little nervous about the message that i'm trying to share about success and and impact because of the guest that i have on but i think it's important to acknowledge that you and i struggle with that a little bit so i appreciate you sharing that because no one is better than anyone else no one's impact is better than anyone else's is it's just that we have a platform due to privilege and people like you are who are emphasizing that message is extremely important and valuable the other thing that i like to talk about when it comes to just defining success for ourselves too is that it can be part of it is career but as i've gotten older it is the impact that i have on family and friendships and all of the things outside of career and so i'm curious about what brings you joy outside of work because it's interesting this conversation we've had has been the most you know intellectual and lightning conversation we've ever had i feel like we always have you know fun conversations what i know you in college and you were this very greg scariest person you still are you know it parties and hanging out and and very popular for was very popular everyone at stanford so i'm curious about who you are outside of the work that you do and what lights you up in that way the interesting answer to that is going to sound like a cop out but i'll use my example so my twelve year old son alexander o d g he has had an opportunity to see his dad's life he was born that day graduated med school so i did not have a disability at that time but he was just born right so the majority of his life he has known me to be in a wheelchair now he has vague memories of when i wasn't but that's he was way too young member i'm bringing him up though because the fact that my son sees disability now in a way that i didn't see disability when i was twelve so when he sees a wheelchair user in the community one of the first like maybe i can't say the first thing anymore but there was a time where what he would see a wheelchair user the first question he would have is what sport do you play because all of the individuals that he has then had a chance to spend time with by being close to me had been para beans and wheelchair rugby wheelchair tennis wheelchair basketball so he's seen these adaptive track field athletes with you know prosthetic legs that are jumping high and winning gold medals so he has seen a lot of the disability community and he no longer and his mind sees disability as inability so what brings me joy is the fact that as part of my job and that's why i say a comp we're embedding adaptive sports curriculum into the public schools of our community but so now when i go around there are kids in this community that know me as xander goes by za now as za dad right but za dad is that cool dad with the standing frame wheelchair or worth the scooters that go really fast or that bring the sport chairs to our school so we can play wheelchair basketball together right and so it is about the time i get to spend with my son right and showing him a world that will hopefully be better for him tomorrow than it was for us yesterday and so we go to his sporting events right so he plays travel baseball travel soccer he plays piano he plays the drums we just had a band concert last night so getting a chance to be there so i think that is the part that brings me julie is spending time with my son and seeing the young man he is becoming through the things that we're able to then provide for him and the perspective that he is having because if i just did this work nine to five monday through friday and then i just shut it off saturday and sunday and my sunday and see of that i wouldn't actually feel like i'm making the type of impact that i think we need to make but the joy part of that is seeing who he is turning into because of the community that he has been raised in because of the sort of perspective that he has been provided that's probably the thing that brings in most really now of course i like traveling all over the place and so i travel to see friends and family i don't find a lot of time for like watching tv much anymore but i do get a chance to place in games with friends like to to nerd out a little bit settlers of cat tan is something that i was introduced to in the past couple of years and so just kind of relaxing and turning off the rest of the world and playing a board game with friends and family and going to my son's sporting events those are the things that bring me joy but as i said it's a cop because a big part of that is the access piece and when i see people able to you know have access to live an active healthy fun life in whatever way they can and i see individuals of all disability types and abilities doing that that is my job right that is my job to provide that access to sort of be an advocate for the disability community so it sounds like work but to tie altogether when you find and follow your passions and you make your passions your professions it doesn't feel like work right and i know i need to do a better job of carving out vacation time and if you ask my son i do a much better job of that now than i did several years ago and part of that is because i have reduced my clinical effort down to zero now so i don't see patients in the office or in the hospital i started talking about cradle grave i don't deliver babies anymore i don't do see sections anymore i don't do inpatient work anymore i don't do outpatient work anymore but what i tell people is that every single one of us is someone's patient and so while i might not seem like a traditional physician in the way that you see me in the office or in the hospital in the operating room or in the emergency room i still have work that then has a clinical impact on people's lives i say i'm doing patient care every single day just not in the traditional sense so but that removal of traditional patient care has given me more time to be able to be with my family has given me more time to be able to be someone who can turn it off a little bit you know i'm trying i'm trying to be better at that i appreciate that reflection and you know and everyone is different too so it is okay know it's not necessarily a cop out it is okay to have your work be part of who you are especially because it's such purpose driven work and i hope what i try to do with my message is show different people with different personalities with different missions and some people it's like i'm a multi hyphen in it and i do a nine to five that is great and it works well but i'd i do my passion work outside of that some people it's like my work is my passion and so that's gonna infiltrate into the joy that you experience in your personal life and it's okay to have both you know and the diversity of experience i think is important to highlight and so i think sometimes our society we do a little bit too much of the should in every environment and this should go to the on this linear path or entrepreneurs are like you should go on this no straight path but really you should do the things that are aligned with who you are and who you want to become and so i love that you're doing that work i just have loved this entire conversation i usually end with final thoughts so if you have any final thoughts that you wanna leave with the listeners please share first i will thank you ashley for the opportunity because you know what you're doing is you are giving people a platform to be able to dis a message that there is no straight path and so while i started by saying sort of shed whatever you think society believes that's what you're doing by doing this because by people hearing these different stories and allowing themselves to see that they may not have seen themselves in someone else that they see as successful right you know i didn't talk about this on this but i could have also talked about the fact that at one point in my career i failed a a high stakes exam i filled one of the exams that you need to take to then get your medical license that's not something that people often talk about right so i think i wanted to thank you for what you're doing because that is i think a take home point for this because i'll be honest right before we got on so i'm closing on a home in twenty forty eight hours my house is getting packed up right now is the end of the semester for school my son got concussion last week and then got sick yesterday so there's a whole lot of my little mom just landed in nigeria to go spend christmas with my grandfather because it's the first year without his wife who passed away earlier this year so there are so many happening in my life in world right now not to mention what's happening in gaza and so i didn't even wanna do this this afternoon right i was ready and i was like i've no desire to sit and talk for the next hour about this i'll be honest but what you were doing and how you've done this has allowed me to kind of open up in a way that i did not realize that i needed and what you're doing is giving other people an opportunity to then hear something that they may not even know that they needed or to say something that they may not know that they would have said so the takeaway at point is this type of thing is what all of your listeners could then do by forgetting what society thinks you're supposed to do by taking a chance and doing something that you're passionate about right you talked about the things and the different elements of your life that you were interested in and that's one of the reasons why you did this so for anyone the take home point is don't limit yourself in terms of what it is that you think you can do and it's a broken record in terms of finding and following on your passions but life is too short to stay on a path that you are not excited about this is not telling people to quit their jobs today and what i'm saying if you think critically about what it is that you're doing you ask yourself what it is that gives you joy and you do whatever it is that you can do to try to then online those that is i think what will make things better for each of us as individuals and each of us as a society because there are too many things that are happening in our world right now that do not reflect anyone's ability to then live a life of joy mh and i know easier have been done and trust me even within sort of the institution that i am i know it's not easy to get the things done that you want to get done but i know that at the core of every decision that needs to be made there's a human be and when we connect with human beings when we recognize our shared humanity when we see the fact that none of us is op potent infallible right all of us will then fall short alright my faith is the thing that drives me the most right so i don't beat people over the head with that but it's important that that is something that's core to what i know and what i believe and the opportunities i've had is based on the lord's plan for me and his grace so that's important but then the practical what do you do day to day about that is just look across the camera across the room across the street there's another person there and what is it that we can do to make someone's tomorrow better than her yesterday that is something that i think whatever that means to you whatever you're good at whether you're a plumber whether you're a physician whether you're a physician or a lawyer whether you are a caregiver in the home no matter what you're profession whether it's paid or unpaid you can make a difference in someone else's life and not that you do things for what you get back from it but i think that that can make you feel fulfilled regardless of what society says about your success if you are impacting other people's lives in some way shape or form by whatever it is that you do then i think that's it i will end with this and this is not my own there was a little boy that was found and they made a whole bunch of remix about this now but this little boy years ago was recorded saying thank you for sunshine thank you for rain thank you for joy thank you for pain it's a beautiful day you heard that song yet i haven't you need to look it up and my voice is a little ras right now so i'm not gonna sing it everyone's gonna make fun of me because my voice is gone right now okay but the little boy goes thank you for sunshine thank you for thank you for joining thank you for pain it's a beautiful day it's a beautiful day thank you for listening to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows on the lessons learned remember to share the podcast with friends and family and my hope is that these stories help you navigate your no straight path journey if this content is adding value to your life and i hope it is please take a few minutes out of your day to read the show and write a review you can click the link in the show notes to write a review it helps other listeners find the show and i just really appreciate it have a lovely week embrace the journey and remember you're not alone

hey everyone this is ashley men papa your host and resident storyteller and welcome to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows and the lessons learned no straight path is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals we are digging into the human stories behind success and my hope as always is that you leave the conversation inspired motivated and excited about your journey hey friends hey i hope you're well so we are actually celebrating the two year anniversary of no straight path this week it is officially this friday march twenty second i cannot believe it i wanna thank you all for your support i sincerely appreciate you thank you for tuning in sharing the show and just for sharing your thoughts with me it really means so much and when i joined the hubspot podcast network two years ago i had no idea where this journey would take me all i know is that something inside me told me to say yes to the opportunity and i'm just so grateful that i did so to celebrate two years of storytelling we are gonna do a special two part episode with someone who em all the things that no straight path represents honesty vulnerability compassion self awareness intellectual curiosity a commitment to excellence resilience purpose and faith and that is my friend doctor bear o his full name is actually a fair o and he has affectionately known as doctor o but i met him and know him as fermi so fermi and i both ran track at stanford and he has always been a natural leader having the opportunity to sit down and talk to him about his life and career journey since we met in two thousand seven was such an impactful experience he helped me inter my thinking on various topics and challenged assumptions often perpetual by society with respect to disability mental health and so much more but before we get to part one of this really thoughtful conversation i'll tell you a bit more about fermi he is a speaker advocate and physician leader dedicated to proving diversity equity and inclusion and inspired by the belief that disability does not mean inability he is currently the director of student accessibility and accommodation services at the university michigan and he is dedicated to providing student athletes with disabilities opportunities by creating and leading the adaptive sports and fitness program at the university of michigan fermi has just done so much to further this mission including serving on president biden counsel on sports fitness and nutrition and in part one of this conversation we learn all about fermi fascinating journey and his fresh perspective on d issues i think you're gonna love this conversation so let's get to it alright bear thank you so much for coming on the podcast i'm just excited to have you thanks for having me ashley and good work with all of this thank you i appreciate it yeah you've been like big brother from stanford track field i literally thought we were on the team together but actually i met you at my recruiting trip for stanford but you've always been a leader and a role model to the stanford community to the stanford track and field community so i'm just excited to be having this conversation with you well it has been a delight watching your journey from that recruiting time to then being a student athlete to now j as doctor men z baba day so it's honor and privilege to be able to join you thanks for having me absolutely so i'm excited to learn more about your journey and i love to start from the beginning so you can you just tell me how you grew up tell me about your family you're upbringing for sure so i was born to two physician parents in nigeria several years ago now and my family started nigeria but then came to this country because my parents were going to pursue postgraduate education so when they got here the united states didn't recognize the training they had in nigeria so they both had to redo their residency training and pediatrics at howard university so both mom and dad did pediatrics residency over again and then my mom did her pediatrics intensive care fellowship that johns hopkins and my dad did his neonatal intensive care fellowship in georgetown before they then moved to indiana where my family had been sort of based ever since then but for me i bounced around after that so i went to a little private school in indiana from fourth grade to eighth grade went to a boarding school in western massachusetts deer academy for high school and that's at that point i started sort of getting involved in lots of things i saying i danced i acted i placed sports i was a leader and so i continued that onto to stanford where i then ended up being a student athlete at stanford ran track and field all four years was captain my last two years consider taking some time off to train for the olympics but my immigrant parents had other plans went straight to medical school at the university of michigan and then we can sort of get into the professional career after that but you know the upbringing was i tell people i was raised in the united states but in an nigerian house so while we may have lived in america the values sort of the expectations everything that was there was certainly from our nigerian and upbringing and education was paramount respect for elders respect for self and so some would say that we had a a strict upbringing but i felt as though my parents had rules that made sense and they were giving us an opportunity to make sure that wherever we ended up in life the education was something that nobody could ever take from us i say us because it's my sister and i just the two of us which is somewhat small for an nigerian and family but i think that that's that's like enough of kinda like the the baseline of where fermi came from nigeria come to the states and then also over the place for education here we are now yeah that sounds great and i definitely can well i can't certainly relate to it but i a lot of nigerian friends including my husband so it sounds familiar and i'm curious about your personality as a child so how would your friends and family describe you and do you think that your childhood personality is reflected in who you are today this is an interesting question because i would like to say that my personality has been fairly consistent but if i think back i can remember in seventh grade this is a weird little story and seventh grade we went on a cruise with our family and i was just old enough that i could do sort of the cruise things on the boat by myself right it didn't have to be with my parents the entire time old enough to be able to be on your own going around and i remember coming back from that cruise and i felt as though he was the first time that i had sort of my own identity outside of what any sort of pre notion may have been right had an older sister who then came before me and everything that they did and so they knew the little brother or my parents were you know either in the church or in the community and people would know who we were but on this cruise it was my i guess my chance to create for myself who i thought i was unbeknownst to me that translated into when i came back home and people said you're you're different you're acting different and so i guess seventh grade is where my personality that i think of it as now being sort of an outgoing greg bulgaria talking to person i think that was seven great was that transition because prior to that my my parents would say i wasn't the most talk kid i wasn't the one that was knowing myself i'll put it out there i wasn't the center of attention right and i think that i pivoted in someone not even pivot i just kinda of grew up into someone who i admit i sought out opportunities to be a leader i sought out opportunities to be very visible and that wasn't my experience prior to that i would hope to say that as i've gotten older that seeking out those opportunities has been centered around providing opportunities for others and it's less so about me and it's about having a platform then serve of others so this is me being very vulnerable and saying if you would talk to people that know me younger me quiet you know maybe be a shy seeming person teenage to sort of college age me people probably call me a little extra i had a lot of energy it was all over the place i would like to think that i was still grounded at that point but as i said this is being able to reflect in my years now to say perhaps it came up across as being all about me and even though i don't want to say that that was my intention i could absolutely see that that was the impact of a lot of the decisions i made are the actions that i took and now i'd say that it's to whom much is given much as expected and the goal of leveraging whatever opportunities network resources visibility that that i have to be able to then open a door for someone else or provide access for others given the fact that i know what opportunities i have been afforded and it wasn't necessarily that i always did anything to earn them myself right i was born into a a family that i was given opportunities and other people don't always have that so i think that that kind of sums my childhood personality and what part of that i think still exists in my adult personality i love that i love that reflection and i appreciate that honesty and just you know thinking about intent and impact which is a lot of the work that you do now so we're gonna get to that but i also just love this self awareness and it's all about personal growth you know where we all go through those phases in life so it's amazing that you can reflect upon that and how you're just using your platform to help other people and let's talk about how you got this platform talk to us about your journey i know you've had several pivotal moments in your life and that's informed the work that you do today so let's talk about that yeah so i always knew i wanted to be a physician but that was know i had my little kid dreams of wanting to be an astronaut and a paleo epidemiologist but being a physician was always one of those things and having two physician parents some would think oh what you were forced to do that we did have a choice i'm an older sister she went into law she grew up in the same exact household have the same expectations same opportunities same exposure and she chose a different path and i saw medicine and i was given an opportunity to experience with my parents did and i enjoyed it right the opportunity to use your mind in your hands to effect change in someone else's body and not to be sort of a savior complex type of thing because my parents made it very clear they are not the reason why someone survives right they're merely vessels through which the lord acted and for that reason if they saved the life they never took credit but similarly if a life was lost and they did everything that they had and their power didn't be able to do it is not their fault that the life was lost just meant that it was that that individual's time and so i think i had a perspective on medicine and the ability to impact lies and that appealed to me and i always liked sciences going up too so that was the decision to to go into medicine but i was very very interested in sports right at i played sports my entire life my nigerian and family however did not want us to focus on sport but sport was something that they allowed me to do and i ended up being fairly good at the sports that i played and had an opportunity to go to college to play a couple of the different sports that i was in at that time so i played basketball soccer across tennis golf track but track and field ended up being the one that sort of objectively i guess i was better at right it's it's something that you didn't need to have a bunch of you know recruiting videos to show as a jumper it was a an objective measurement of how far have you jumped right if i were a sprinter how fast have you run and that's something that you didn't then compare across schools across counties across states so i was what was called a recruited walk on and him once again i'll be vulnerable admitted here i was not a ashley men coming in already intrigued probably had like four california's state titles before you came to us but i was known to the program but was not a recruited athlete that they were seeking it out and i went to stanford for school but knew that i was going to have an opportunity to write track as well so i say this is a long winded way to say i have had opportunities to have access to sport access to medicine many people that are interested in medicine don't have parents or aunts or on uncles or cousins or friends especially people of color people from my backgrounds that they can look at and see what that life would be like and so i say this because i recognized now how privileged i was and so the path that i took to get to where i was was a path that had already been chart for me in a way i've been given the opportunities i've been given sort of myriad ways to see how i could then be successful and interestingly i was talking about this earlier today we're talking about sort of work languages and love languages right the work languages doesn't exist like i i sort of coop the love languages to then translate that into a working environment because just like the love languages and you need to know how people respond to certain things and what people prefer if they don't as a boss of an office you need to understand your employees in a way as well and they understand you so i was talking about this earlier today in that i don't feel like i need the words of affirmation as much but that's primarily because i have been affirmed throughout most of my life right despite the very specific times where people may have been discriminating for various reasons i've been given access won awards i've been given leadership roles and so i feel like i've have had an opportunity to be successful because other people have seen that and put that on me have given me that opportunity where it's not everyone else has that and so i'm trying to then provide those words of affirmation for others now i'm getting off upon of super wild ting i haven't really gotten back to what my actual job is i love that nova also i'll just stop you really quickly because i do love that because i'm am actually a words of affirmation person and i think it's extremely important in leadership to have people and i know it can be quite annoying to some people but have people take those personality tests ask people what is your working style how do you like to be supported if i do it with my husband all the time we're very different he doesn't care about affirmation i needed every day right and so you wanna do that with your team so that you can empower people and inspire people and a lot of leaders don't even think about that what often happens in leadership is you're really great at your job you just keep getting promoted and then all of a sudden you find yourself in a position where you're leading people because you're great at a specific skill set you haven't really thought about the personalities and you haven't really thought about how am i going to inspire people to do their best work and what are their superpower and what are their strengths and what their weaknesses and how can i actually support them so i love that you have this whole work languages thing going on in your practice because i think it's extremely important so we can get back to your story but i love that so no i look this is our time so let's make it as much of a conversation because otherwise you know when i give my talks i say this very thing i start off by telling people that i don't like giving talks and i stop when i say you know now anyone that knows me is gonna say that's a bold phase live because you love talking and i say well i didn't say i don't like talking i said i don't like giving talks when i like to do a start conversations but then i say however i am perfectly comfortable and able to then talk for the next forty five minutes and so unless you interject i may just go and go and go so please feel free to jump in cut me off otherwise i might just go on my own path and and it will be no straight path but i will speak properly so you know the interesting part about this and it reminds me of this analogy that i've often use that i hope you probably resonate with i credit my track and field career for the type of leader that i am now because i tell people as the captain so i was voted captain of the track team my junior year and my senior year now i tell people that he as a junior my primary event was the triple jump i was not the best triple jumper even on our team my junior year right and so you don't necessarily have to be of the best person at what you do to be a good leader and then on the track team the track team is made up of sprinter jumpers distance runners throw right i'm not out here telling the shop put how to throw the shop put i'm not the captain of the team because i can tell them exactly how to do their event well but i would like to think that i was voted captain of the team because i found a way to then make sure every individual on that team felt like they had a place right it was actually something that we came up with back then that you know i doubt that we do the same thing anymore but we go to eugene oregon for for a meet and it's probably gonna be a primarily sort of distance event there right they're gonna be people all over the world that are coming to them run the five k to ten k fifteen you know they're gonna come to get you know world record times to qualify but then there might be a handful of decent sprinter there maybe be a couple jumpers but you might win the long jump for example with a mark that is not even the olympic big b standard and your teammate might get eighth place in the ten k and they might have crushed the a standard right just because of how difficult the competition was if you don't understand that difference and you just walk around puff in your chest because you've got you got first place you're not able to truly recognize what your teammate did because you don't really understand the times you don't know the place so what we did is we created a standard that says that if you say they want big a standard as a hundred the b standard is seventy five we then take everybody's marks right and then you make essentially make them standard deviations away from what those standards are and we assign a score to everyone so you may win a long jump and have a score of fifty two and your teammate may get eighth place in the in the five k with a score of ninety six right and that puts into perspective what your teammate just so that was one of the things that i was doing stanford to try to get people to recognize what their peers are doing even if it's not what you do to then have some respect to to be able to appreciate the efforts that your teammates sort of went through because that's a big sort of decentralized team we practice at different times we eat at different places we have different regiments with but everyone needs to realize at their part of a team you and even if you go to a regional event where there's no like team winner anymore right and it's there for your individual sort of qualifying for nationals i still thought it was important for everyone to then recognize that team element and that's what i say to my teams now i say look i'm not here to be your boss because i do your job better than you right i'm gonna empower you to do your job as well as you can but please let me know what resources we can provide to do that and know that your colleague down the hallway that does something different is there to support you as well even if you don't do the same work and so that's it's the example that i use for why feel as though we can have these diverse teams and you can have a leader that may not be equipped to do every single person's job but respects and appreciates everyone's work enough that they can sort of bring the team together and that's i think my led background and specifically tracking and field is a reason why that that's something that i've been afforded to do yeah another one i do love that as well and your right track field is a unique example and a perfect example of leading diverse groups right because on other teams you're going to have more similarity in the roles and you have a better understanding is for example basketball the basketball team is quite different from a attract team but that is really challenging to kinda understand what people are doing how great they're doing what level they're doing it at and that's certainly reflective and transferable to workplace and so i love that insight we gotta get back to your career though we're taking our no straight path journey through fermi career so let me talk about you became a doctor let's go from there yes so finished undergrad went to med school matched into orthopedic surgery residency that at the time i felt took my athletic background my desire to be a physician my love for sports and kind of was a career that i felt as though i could help with restore function to my patients and at that time i thought i wanted to be a pediatric orthopedic oncologist so dealing with children with sort of mu skeletal cancers so matched into orthopedic surgery residency at yale and was my thought was well on my way to doing what my parents were doing and using my mind and my hands to affect change in people's lives and in my third year of my orthopedic surgery residency i dove into a pool and ended up breaking my neck becoming paralyzed from my chest down having very minimal use of my upper extremities at the time so i was rushed to the by my own peers that took care of me was operated on by some of the faculty and my colleagues and had two surgeries at yale and then return to the midwest where i did my inpatient rehab apple was then called the rehabilitation institute of chicago it's now called the shirley ryan abilities lab and so i had several months of inpatient rehab and during that time i started to regain some motor function and i moved my leg for the first time which kind of changed the trajectory of my recovery but it was still you know the first time that i started to recognize something i hadn't seen all my life prior to that being an athlete my entire life being the son of two physicians i saw disability often right i saw injury often yet i didn't recognize how inaccessible our world is i didn't recognize how inaccessible the health care system is and so at that point i was thrust as i'd call it onto the other side of the stethoscope where i then realized how i had been unintentionally comp to this sort of world of able in which we lived and i often j able and racism for people that don't know able ism racism we are all understand it is the belief that there is a race or some race that is better than other racism and we assign value based on that we give resources access opportunity on that basis and we then do not provide it to the race that we think is lesser than able is the fact that people believe that there is a certain standard of body or mind that one should have that is what should be strive for and that is how we build our society that's when we put resources and so able is the reason why there are things that have to be retrofitted to make them accessible to the disability community is that we don't build with disability in mind and those that have disabilities have to come afterwards to then fight to then get access to certain things so as a physician i didn't realize the world that my patients were living in i didn't realize how we were per some of that able even in health care and so that's appointed in my life where it gave me additional perspective i think that oftentimes people use that as this singular thing that has that created sort of the roles that i have now and i'd say that yes that was a a significant change in my life right while i did start to regain some function i'm still a proud wheelchair user that's how i did around day days and i made no wheelchair but i also have a twelve year old talk who has born the day i graduated from medical school and that changed my life right i also have a sister who who has had some some of her own in interesting journeys that has also impacted my life i have a father who i lost a suicide a few years ago which has been a significant change in my life there have been lots of things that have contributed to who i am and where i am and i think that primarily because of the stigma that it's involved around disability people assume that that one invisible thing that you can see right i went from six one two forty walking around to you know six one two forty five sitting down and that's the only difference to me but to everybody else that it's a huge difference and the way that i've have been treated post injury now as a wheelchair user completely different than when people saw me standing and walking into the room yeah yeah i appreciate you sharing all of that and just sharing just the complexity of your humanity and all the different things that make you who you are even though there is one thing that stands out to everyone else and so that's why i'm so happy that you come on the podcast to really share your story because i certainly want to delve into all those topics and that's where why we're making this a part one in part two and you've really helped me inter my thinking about this issue as well when we had a previous call and i said bear me i want you on my podcast or so inspiring and we talked about the word inspiring and how that is a complicated term for the disability community and i remember sitting in discomfort when you were talking to me about it because i wanted to initially say no i didn't mean it like that i mean like you're inspiring because you're a black doctor like there's not that many blackmail doctors in america which is true but also yes i do think my initial was thought was he's inspiring too because he overcame this challenging time in his life and is moving through the world in a different way and so can you talk to me a little bit about the words should we should be using the thinking we should have what does using disability mean to you yeah and i'll first start by saying i don't want you to to feel as though you said anything wrong right because one of the things i tell people is that when you've met one person with a disability you've met one person with a disability and so just like the black community is not a monolith the disability community is not either and so while i will sort of speak about my end of one experience and i do know that there are other people that feel this way i don't want anyone to think that there's one way to refer to someone or that there are certain words that just you know this is what they mean to everyone but what i do like to do is get thoughts out there for people to that at least inter what they think right so not to be critical of you but to hopefully offer you a perspective that i acknowledge i did not have myself until as i said i entered life on the other side of the stethoscope so i trademarked the phrase using disability trying to demonstrate that disability doesn't mean inability now this goes back to why i gave some of sort of the background of my life and access i've been given because i recognize that i am where i am due to constellation of factors and that the reason why i have a lot of access i have is because of what privilege i've been provided beforehand right however i now navigate this world as a wheelchair user people look at me and make assumptions about what i can and cannot do based on their pre notions of disability and it's because of the resources that i had prior to my injury that i was able to then sort of get back onto a path faster than maybe the average individual without the same opportunities that i've been given can do after a spinal cord injury right but what i've tried to show people is i am not actually special i am not any different than any other individual that may either enter this world with disability or that then acquire a disability as they go through their life the differences that i had a certain level of access before i now see what i've been able to do with that and i think about the people that did not have that same level of access and the barriers that are unintentionally and unintentionally placed in the way of vigil with disability and so the reason that we talk about inspiration and why some people feel like that word is challenging in the disability community and it's actually something i don't take credit for there's a woman by the name of stella young and she had a tech talk that she called i am not your inspiration and she coined a phrase inspiration porn now stay with me before you then asked what what's the matter about to talk about she talked about a story where she was with her parents in the grocery store and someone came up to them and said you know just it just so inspiring and her parents are like for for what she didn't make her bed this mug what what did she do this inspiring i think what happens is that people look at individuals with disabilities and they expect less from them and so that when they're just doing monday mundane and everyday things you feel like you just want to tell them probably just can't imagine how difficult it must be for you to be in the grocery store today and i'm just so inspired by you for you being here and then i'll say i i i just needed some eggs i i i don't know why this is inspirational now but what i hold on to is i say wait now if you get to know me and you see what i do in my life and you then feel inspired by something that is inspirational that's okay but i think people make an assumption and they are now inspired by something that you would not have been inspired if someone without a disability to the same thing and it's really because we have to go back to track technologies we lowered the bar will lower the bar for individuals with disabilities such that they are not expected to do as much but that's also because the world does not provide them with the same level of access such that it takes it's a much higher hurdle to then jump to then do something if you have a disability merely because of the barriers that have sent there so there are multiple facets of sort of this world that we need to address this from because there's the stigma of disability itself that people don't want to identify with this ability they don't wanna say it they don't wanna think it when you're a kid and told not to stare at the person in the wheelchair mh but we need to teach our kids that no you can talk to the person in the wheelchair because they are a person just like anyone else and as a child those are sometimes the best time to then learn you ask questions you don't know but when we tell them not to that's why we're creating sort of this rift that exists between sort of the disability community and those that aren't because we're not able to ever investigate and inter our beliefs and explore things because we create this sort of taboo no no don't talk to them over there and so that's a a long winded sort of response to that but disability is not inability and i think that we can demonstrate that in various various ways and that is kind of what has led to where i am in my career because i started off as a physician i am still a physician with my degree but i've done multiple things since then that have led me to sort of the body of work that i now did yeah yeah no i appreciate that and i did not feel like you were being critical it felt like a teachable moment just so you know i think it was just very helpful because i think that when we're learning and we're growing that is often accompanied by some sort of discomfort and it's okay to sit in that discomfort and learn and grows i i actually think it's a moment that i'll always think about and then i went and actually listen to that ted talk that you suggested and it was eye opening and very helpful and you know i wanna use some of this time also for you to help and educate us a little bit more because i think it's very helpful for me because i often in view myself as someone who's quite informed about d issues but things are changing different perspectives it's extremely helpful to just kinda stay up and informed and you said something that really stuck with me you said you were treated very differently before the accident when you're standing at six two over two hundred pounds and then sitting at the same height but and same weight but post accident and that that treatment was so different can you talk to us about that change for you and perhaps if you have any suggestions for listeners and how we engage with this issue and engage with disability yeah now first for anyone that knows me now that may listen to this podcast i have to make an adjustment i am certainly not sitting at the same weight that i was before so there there are few more pounds the on app then that they had day before and i need to work on that but the thing i tell people when someone brought this up to me the other day from their perspective which i appreciate it now their perspective i don't feel is the norm right is not what i have seen most of my post injury life but she said to me if you walk into a restaurant and you see people sitting down do you think any different of them with them sitting down then if they've been standing up i said no i i don't she's like so then why should it matter that you're a wheelchair user i said what i don't think it should but i will tell you it is very very different first of all this is a pet peeve that people know me people now i mean i'm not super young i'm not in my seventies i'm not super young right and i'm on a college campus and i see you know we're on much of students to h people and i get called buddy now more than i ever had before and i don't just mean i've been on campuses my entire life right i went from stanford to michigan to yale another day i'm back to michigan and so people infant me a bit more in the chair it's pal people call me buddy and i say first of all not your buddy right you would usually default to mister sir doctor whatever especially based on where you see me and i see how they talk to the people right next to me right now there's the intersectionality of being a disabled black man which we can get into as well but i was a black man this entire time so i was dealing with all of the implications of being a black man and higher ed being a black man in medicine being a black man faculty member right i even been dealing with all of those things once the disability enter the picture it has been very very different and it's been a somewhat exciting social experiment at times because people do not assume that i am who i am when we're in a room pool of people right and they will speak to everybody else in the room that they assume is probably the boss before they come to me right and know that the intersectionality component of that plays in but it is primarily different due to the disability now what i think is important to recognize in this conversation is something that i try to say at time is that not all disabilities are apparent or not all disabilities are visible so while my lived experience is one of being a wheelchair user and that is something that is hard to not see when you're looking in a room full of people there are many people that will be in that room that have disabilities that i try not to call them invisible but once again that's just my own language because i think that's saying something's invisible is saying that i don't see you and it's just like to me when people say you know i don't see color i want people to see color because i want people to see that that is a black woman that did that good thing right i want you to understand that there are certain individuals that look a certain way that have been repeatedly and systematically marginalized and distributed against so if you don't see color you will not see the consistency of behavior that then revolves around people of certain race and so for disability i want you to see disability i want you to understand that it's there even if the person does not have a disability that is apparent to you right now that's a whole another conversation about disability culture because a lot of people don't want to identify with being disabled because of the negative connotation that comes with it and i think that that is too bad because just like i see nothing wrong with being a black man yeah i see nothing wrong with being a disabled man even though there are people that will assign negative to both of those things yeah wow that was very powerful thank you for sharing that and oh okay wow i feel like i have so many things that i wanna say and i can take this so many places but i do wanna circle back to something you said earlier just about the fact that you are a father that you unfortunately lost your father that you you have a sister that has deal with mental health issues and that's all informed who you are today as a human being can you talk to us a little bit perhaps you can talk about one of those stories or talk to us about a period of personal growth related to the other parts of your identity i will tie a couple of them together because i would say and and it's related to the last thing i mentioned actually i despite talking about the lack of access in this world i have seen much more change with respect to physical disability much more understanding with respect to physical disability than i have seen for intellectual developmental disabilities for mental health challenges and so the part of my life that i sort of talk about is my family and our experience with disability broadly right we were a family that was sort of this picture almost of perfection to other people two physician parents first child goes to law school pass the bar right away second child goes to medical school max orthopedic surgery residency you have three doctors one lawyer now in this family all successful and to the outside world everyone's like a wow look at that family everything is great right now inside we didn't realize and maybe people didn't realize and we started to find out that my sister who is two and a half years over the me a wonderful person amazing woman intelligent gorgeous just just amazing she started to show some signs of anxiety and it eventually was that my sister had bipolar now this is something that is not a secret and i'm not disclosing anything that she wouldn't want me to disclose but i started seeing that while i was in medical school and i was learning to become a physician in learning about mental illness right while i was seeing it manifesting in my own family and i know how we felt in terms of the things that we almost didn't want to talk about didn't want to share i then heard how the medical community talks about patients i saw how we use words that are not flattering to patients we talk about our patients as if there are some other group of people and not like we are part of the same humanity ourselves we talk about it as if we are immune to disability ourselves we talk about it as if it is their fault in some way though we are physicians diagnosing and illness we meet may it seem like that illness is that person's fault and we treat mental illness very different than we treat physical illness and so i'm watching this happen in my family as i'm then joining the ranks of this medical profession where we're supposed to first do no harm and i'm seeing a lot of harm being done to people in my own family right i then get to a point where we suddenly lost my father to suicide we did not know that my father had any sort of mental health sort of challenges himself we didn't realize because to me depression is an illness that a side effect or end result of unmanaged or untreated depression is suicide right so dying by suicide is sometimes the way i like to use it right because when people say committing suicide is it's if the person took an action themselves that was their fault mh right you know say that someone committed a heart attack yeah right like they had a heart attack right now there may be lots of reasons that led to that heart attack some of them may have been somewhat into their control many of them may not have been but suicide is something they don't talk about in that way right we look at it as if that person has one hundred percent agency in autonomy over that decision but i feel as though that is the result of an illness that then is not treated or managed in a way that allows them to see that that decision is not the only decision that could be made so enter back into our world father eldest brother of six my mother also was the eldest of six so he had six other siblings in that family was really kind of the center of our culture and our family who now dies in this way and we're looking at what that means and so now i'm the oldest grandson i'm the oldest sibling oldest male sibling and now i am responsible so to speak for caring for the family caring for my mother through this time and so that time of personal and professional growth for me was how do i support a family that that has lost their father is actively in the process of supporting sister and daughter who is having her own challenges taking care of my son as a father and having to explain to him what these things are but then living as a disabled black man in this world and trying to then show people that all of us have this shared human experience in some way that we are identifying disability and os sizing people alien people stigma things and not recognizing that access the one thing that all of us need and if provided with the appropriate access people can then do what they need to do to demonstrate success so i think that that it wasn't a one point in time but it was looking at all of those experiences and how those have shaped me as a physician how they've shaped me as a father how they've shaped me as a brother how they've shaped me as a boss how they've shaped me as a friend to then see how i want to then live the rest of my life and how i want to encourage my son to live the rest of his life seeing disability recognizing that it is there knowing that it's diverse in its manifestations and knowing that individuals with disabilities are no lesson important to no less capable or competent or qualified than anyone else and that there's no line that we draw between those that are disabled in those that are not we all are on some sort of spectrum or continuum and it just depends on what sort of additional factors are at play in your life at that time as to what level of access or resource or support you may need to be able to then be successful thank you for listening to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows and the lessons learned remember to share the podcast with friends and family and my hope is that these stories help you navigate your no straight path journey if this content is adding value to your life and i hope it is please take a few minutes out of your day to read the show and write a review you can click the link in the show notes to write a review it helps other listeners find the show and i just really appreciate it have a lovely week embrace the journey and remember you're not alone

hey everyone this is ashley men papa your host and resident storyteller and welcome to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows and the lessons learned no straight path is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals we are digging into the human stories behind success and my hope as always is that you leave the conversation inspired motivated and excited about your journey hey friends hey i hope you are well we have another insightful episode for this week i had a great conversation with phil ag and he is the host of the uk's number one marketing podcast nudge and we're actually in hubspot podcast network together grateful to be in his company and on the show he interviews experts in psychology and behavioral science to try to better understand how humans make decisions yes you know i love people and understanding people so i was so excited about this conversation and he has spent over a decade in senior marketing roles at buffer hot jar and brand watch where he has helped launch products and social media website analytics and ai and i just learned so much from this conversation with bill we cover the things i love of course so childhood setbacks pivot but we do it from phil perspective which is rooted in behavioral psychology and it felt like a vulnerable conversation mixed with a college course in behavioral psychology yes i know it sounds like an odd mix but i promise it worked it really worked and i think you're gonna love this conversation so let's get to it alright phil i am so excited to have you on the podcast i just can't wait to dig into your story you have just such an interesting journey and i feel like i love listening to your podcast but i have so many different questions about you so i'm excited to learn more thank you thank you thank you for coming on the podcast thank you so much for having me and yeah i'm really excited to chat today i love your show know it asks entrepreneurs different questions and what they would typically be asked in the normal interview and i definitely think some of the things you'll ask me today things that i probably haven't been asked for before so i'm very excited good good so phil let's start from the beginning tell us about your childhood tell us about how you grew up my parents were very clear orientated when i was younger and i think that's probably shaped a lot of my life today but we had a lovely childhood was i've got two sisters and there was a lot of enjoyment and laughter like fun in the house and we were younger yeah we definitely taught the value of work when we were young both my parents worked ninety five jobs my mom especially is a real well model for me in terms of her career and that career focus i think definitely has influenced all of our our siblings growing up i wasn't very academic when i was younger at all one thing that i noticed is that i really hated reading when i was younger which is kind of funny now because like something i really enjoy and it's the backbone of my podcast really is reading awful lot of books about behavioral science and talking to offers about them but it wasn't something i into a tool when i was younger my main sort of passion when i was younger was was drama and theater i really loved performing and being on stage that was i think the thing i was most excited about i always dreamt to being an actor that's sort of cliche thing but i really enjoyed that part of my life and yeah i spent a lot of time thinking about doing that and i think that's definitely partly shaped who i am today and then another big aspect to my childhood in terms of thinking about my education was i was diagnosed with d demeanor when i was quite young and that's i think that was a really interesting thing when i reflect back on my life in terms of how it shaped my education i think that diagnosis has definitely helped me in many ways but also hindered me in in others in terms of given me a label and making me think maybe that i wasn't able to read as many books as i would like or wasn't as academic as i'd hoped to be so that definitely affected me and i i remember maybe not giving my all to my academic performance when i was younger too but yeah a really lovely childhood and i think in a way it's shaped to i am today but in interesting ways i wasn't much sure a reader when i younger i am now i wanted to be a pan actor when i was younger and i'm a podcast and now which is quite different i think in a lot of ways there's paths there which have helped me people come am today yeah yeah thank you for sharing that and you know you said there was a switch so you are a big reader now and i am surprised to hear that you weren't a big reader growing up you know when did that change happen yeah so i really think this was something to do with the there's a lot in psychology about the labels you give people and how that changes their behavior this is known as the confirmation bias when we have an opinion or a view we will seek data information views that match that opinion so for example if you are a big fan of certain sports team you'll seek outlook lots of articles that match your views so saying that sports team is wonderful or that your rival team is awful you'll love that views whereas views which say that your sports team actually is a bit below par you won't bother a reading and i think as a child being diagnosed with d it sort of had the same effect of me where i was being told that i would struggle with reading that i would struggle with writing and struggle with spelling and i sort of looked for things in my life that proved that point so i didn't read many books and i think that was maybe part me proving of that i was the sexy away well i didn't make it much of an effort with learning how to spell properly when i was younger i think that was maybe part of it as well there's there's some really interesting studies about the sort of nouns that used to define children especially so this is great study with christopher barr who asked children in this nursery to help clean up and the way he asked them changed how likely they were to clean up so when he asked them can you help clean up very few did but when he asked them can you be a helper many more did same we're voting when people are asked can you be a voter more and more likely to vote them when you say can you vote so sort of a self identity thing how you view yourself you view yourself as a helper or a vote you're more likely to do those actions if you see view yourself as academic if you're more likely to read and yeah so a lot of my childhood i just didn't view myself as that person and i think maybe that's partly due to d dislike label or something else but i didn't view myself as person it probably wasn't until i was in my first job and performing fairly well i remember probably you know early early twenties realizing oh now almost seeking more views to match my belief i'm doing well of my job surely i must be able to read lots of bricks and really get into that side of it and then that's when i started to read and and actually discover a world lot of behavioral science through those books and stuff like that but it was probably only once i had seen in my life behaviors which could change my view of myself this is theory behavioral science that attitudes don't lead to behaviors it's that behaviors lead to attitudes if you do something a lot you will gain an attitude which matches that behavior i think that was as visible in the lot of my sort of upbringing and and early career well i love that and listeners this is just a taste of what phil does on his podcast so it's just so fascinating how you've used behavioral science too just describe your childhood and you're upbringing your relationship with reading so i love that how it's just really become a part of you and you also mentioned that you loved acting and i think that's incredible and i do think it's a little bit reflective of being a podcast there's an art to this there's a bit of performance to this even the way that you put your podcast together i would say there's a lot of story and their science and it's smart and you can see that in the entertainment industry it's a form of entertainment so do you feel like you're living out a little bit of your actor drinks and your podcasting potentially i think anybody who has studied you know fair studies or drama or acting when they were younger perhaps maybe up until eighteen or maybe even and beyond that process is it's so different from any other part of academia the muscle you're trying to grow is not knowledge is not physicality it's you're trying to get really good at authentically appearing to be different people which is really odd thing to do for part of a profession but in doing that i think you gain an awful lot because as an individual you gain the ability let's this you know well known idea that we all contain multiple different versions of ourselves so the way i'm acting with you actually is different from how i would act with my partner it's different from how i'd with my best friend it's different from how i'd with my work colleague it's different from how i'd act with my parents so we're constantly changing our manner and our tone of speaking the way we even express ourselves depending on who we're with there's a lot of evidence in the world of sales that your ability to mirror the person you're talking to to sort of mirror their a body language their actual language as well will dramatically increase the chances that you'll be able to sell to them will get a higher tip if your weight of waitress all these things and so acting is really giving you a incredible course in how to authentically be a different person authentically be a different version of yourself for a salesperson person that could be to really well mirror the person you're talking to and and sell better to them for a podcast that could be but like you're doing right now actually to act in a way which makes me feel really come or and more likely to share genuine stories about myself or you know for other creators that can be many different things but i think it's even though it's a very novel and different form of academia acting or education i should say it incredibly useful because it gives you a lot of skills that you would just not get from any other form of education which i think have been incredibly useful today as a podcast broadcaster yeah yeah and i am just curious because we've been talking a lot about authenticity on the podcast lately and you were talking about different versions of yourself do you think you can be authentically yourself with different versions of yourself does that make sense because sometimes there's this challenge in society when you are bending and twisting to seltzer to someone or you are changing yourself in various different environments that you may lose your authentic self or lose who you are and i think that's something that the millennial generation we've been talking about is there any science about this yeah there's definitely well first of all i guess that the perception we have that we should be a very particular person and that is all authentic self and we should always stick with the attitude and behavior that that one person has is probably quite new and probably isn't something that is commonplace in the past because of social media we now have you know these profiles which are supposed to show our authentic itself they never do as we all know a show very roast version of ourselves but they are supposed to show you know what we don't have an instagram fulfill when he's in a good mood an instagram fulfill and he at a bad mood an instagram fulfill and he's being professional an instagram phil when he's being do we just have an instagram fulfill of course there are different profiles and you know maybe you can show your authentic self in different ways but anyway my point is i think if social network is pushing this idea that there is one authentic self at all of us have and to show all authentic self we should act in the same way all of the time no matter who was speaking to but i think that is quite novel and new i think if you look back in the past you would see it's really common for people to act in a slightly different way when they're at work when they're at home it's really common for people to act in a slightly different way when they were friends when they were colleagues and that was quite a normal thing now whether or not at good or bad is probably a debate which is longer than this podcast but it's i would say pretty normal for people to be able to change their behavior based on who they're with and if we look at what the psychology says it's a really good thing to help us collaborate and get along so i shared earlier these research into mirroring for salespeople this is really really full proof research which showcases that if you mirror actions of other people you will increase your you'll increase your ability to collaborate all of these wonderful things not just the case with salespeople the case with teamwork and all these other areas but if on the other hand you were purposely acting in a different way to the people because that you viewed that as your always authentic itself if you didn't make the effort to change your behaviors to match them you would probably end up not collaborating with them in the same way it's a bit like if you imagine going board for example or you go and meet people who are from a completely different culture you should be encouraged to change your behavior and your actions and maybe even hold back some of your views to better fit him with that group better fit him with that culture because it will allow you to collaborate better and i think that's maybe what i would say as being authentic is not about being very firm on one point of view or or only showcasing one side of your personality or not molding to the people you're meeting i think it's more basic than that because all of those things are really important if you want to increase collaboration yeah no i think those are great points and i've been thinking about that too and i think as humans we're dynamic and so i always say i'm a people person i love people and you do activate differently based on different environments and that's okay i think we can have different authentic versions of ourselves right we can have authentic versions of ourself at work so there's certain cultural norms that you're gonna still add adhere to but perhaps you want to push certain initiatives and you want to maybe stand your ground on specific things that you wanna see in the culture maybe that's your authentic self it's trying to stay true to the things you wanna see in the workplace there's still these cultural norms and way that you ways that you want to relate to people that's important to understand and so i don't know i'm gonna do some more research on that but i really love your take there's something else as well actually which is just when you were talking i was thinking about what what does authentic health even mean i mean you could take the way you dress as an example like the way i would address differently depending on who i'm with and your authenticity can directly correlate with your experience or your expertise or your stature within an organization so there's this really incredible study into this principle known as the red sneakers effect which is this idea or it was the study which was conducted with researchers who are these big academic conferences and the re and the for this study people would note exactly what people were wearing when they would come into this academic conference so were they conforming to the dress codes are wearing a suit tie smart clothes smart shoes or were they non conforming were they're coming in in a t shirt and red sneakers and jeans for example and most people would conform that some people would come in and they wouldn't conform they would wear the red sneakers and then what the people behind this study did is they went and spoke to the people who wore suits and the people who and basically every participant in this conference and they would ask them because they were researchers how many citations do you have so a citation is when you are referenced by another researcher for the work that you've done the more citations you have the more higher up in your field you are the more expertise you have and they found something really fascinating that people who had more citations were far more likely to dress differently they were more likely to break conventions and where those red sneakers for example and so there's an argument there which suggests that they are being more authentic they're being more treat themselves they would just wear genes and red sneakers at home so that's what they're wearing in the conference but it's actually showcasing that authenticity only comes out of them being confident and not and knowing that they are the experts within their field knowing that they are better than the majority of their peers that allows them to be authentic mark zuckerberg can get away with wearing added adidas our sliders in the office and to investor meetings because he's the ceo founder and one of the richest men in the world the junior intern of facebook or meta isn't gonna be able to do the same thing and get away with it because that person does not have that level of expertise so authenticity is difficult because it can actually depend on how your viewed by others and you might struggle to be your authentic self if you don't have the same stature as as say the ceo for example who is possibly it but able to be more authentic self than you yeah yeah no it's so true they say once you get to a certain level then you can do what you want or just so they always say even with older folks they say everything that's on their mind because they're in their eighties and they have all the wisdom and knowledge and so they could be their true authentic itself it'll be interesting to see how the culture changes here in the research and so when may have to come you have you come back on for a part two at some point to chat more but i do wanna get to nudge wanna get to your podcast the number one marketing podcast in the uk it's such a good podcast it's so smart it's has great storytelling and i'm curious you know how did you get here what inspired you to start the podcast tell us a little bit about that journey yeah so the typical story i get gave which maybe some of the listeners who have heard me before talk about this is that i went to university i studied marketing a university which is actually quite rare in the uk most people wouldn't study marketing but i was convinced it was a good idea i'm not convinced now that it was it's very expensive cost me fifty thousand pounds and awful for lot of money and i think it was a bit of a waste of time because i went into my first job and was doing a marketing job and i basically found that i was pretty much useless at the majority of tasks i was given i was asked to write a blog that people would click on and i couldn't do it i was asked to write an email that people would open and i wasn't any better than anybody else i'd studied all these tenants of marketing strategy and i realized i knew nothing about human behavior i wasn't able to change the decisions that people made i wasn't able to convince people to buy the thing i was selling over anything else and so i really struggled in my first few years in marketing and then probably around the point we spoke about earlier when i started reading books i discovered behavioral of science and this is just a field of research into the behavior people make and why people make the decisions they do it's basically the field of psychology and it was fascinated to me because it basically revealed that the tasks i was being asked to do they're not tasked that you execute on just based on gut instinct you can leverage a lot of these laws and these biases from the world of behavioral science to actually write a better email copy or create a blog that gets people to click and so i started to read all these wonderful books out behavioral science and i just started to apply it to my work so i would be writing an email and i would apply one of these principles i'd be writing a blog where i'd apply another a principle and that's sort of just where it ended with me i didn't really think about it at all until then at any point in terms of creating a podcast or anything like that but then i took and this actually might be relevant to you it might be something you've experienced as well i took a sa from my job in twenty nineteen we took i think six or eight months to go away and we traveled around new zealand we lived in new zealand for a while and then traveled around south america as well and i right basically i think this is a definitely a takeaway that i've had in my life having time away from a full time job having time to focus on nothing but just i don't know living for those six months really gave me a bit of space to think about what i wanna be doing with my life and what i wanna create and all of these things and it was during that sa article when i realized oh i would i'd actually really love to do a podcast on this subject i'd really love to interview people about it and so i decided to email a few of the offers that i really liked to few the researchers whose research i admired and fortunately they agreed to interview to come on my show and let me interview them and it went from there and that's how i started the podcast but the takeaway i have looking back on it is i think there was lots of inspiration to start a podcast inspiration that all of us see all the time we always see people on linkedin talk about how wonderful their stuff is or we always see people writing books having people to take risks but the inspiration was always there i think what's more interesting for me is that the sa sebastian really gave me the time and the space to think about it and to actually make the commitment to start it and my takeaway i'm not the first to say this but my takeaway from that is that it's really important in your life to give yourself space and give yourself time to do something which isn't just your nine to five job because in doing that you'll probably end up discovering things you want to work on projects you want to start and that was definitely the case for me yeah so i definitely love that i definitely agree that just taking time to reflect taking time for yourself it always leads to creativity and i think that's really important and it's something that we lose especially as we get older as we're adults and we're working in our jobs we don't focus on creativity because it can be challenging it's competing with a lot of other things in our life so the fact that you're able to take that time and then create something so wonderful that helps so many people i think is great and i think it's just another testament to why we need more sa so leaders if you're listening to the podcast right now you might wanna add a sa mathematical program to your company and i'm curious about how you built out your brand tell me about some of the challenges that you faced yeah i think what's been particularly difficult for me as a creator he's been working a full time job whilst creating is managing side projects with full time work so in the four years i've run nudge just since twenty nineteen i've had three different jobs and i've actually found myself picking jobs that will better accommodate my side project basically so moves i've made have i've always accommodated that being one being the most recent move was to a company called buffer who really really invest in inside projects and make sure that you're set up in a way where you can work on them in fact they you'll even have a a four day work week where they encourages work on your own thing on the fourth day so that's been really helpful but i have noticed that to grow my brand i've even changed my career and that you know one of the most recent things i've done which i think hopefully will help me overcome this challenge of of not being able to invest as much time as i want or not being able to invest as much energy is i've decided to leave my full time job for the first time and go full time on the podcast so last week i told my company i was leaving and i'm going full time and that was a challenging decision to make not an easy decision to make but one of the things i was actually inspired by was there's a really good by dan pink wrote the book power regrets brilliant orphan and this book powerful of regrets is fascinating because he asks i think it's something incredible like fifty thousand people to share their regrets and say fifty thousand people emailed dan with all these different types of regrets they had regrets about not reaching out to that girl that they met on the train who they fell in love with or regrets about not starting that business with that partner that they think would have taken off or regrets about maybe not ordering that thing at that restaurant that they went to and they're were in canada and they really wished i could go back and try it now all these regrets and he analyzed them in all these different ways so discovered what are the most typical regrets people have or what are the categories are most typical one of the findings one of the main takeaways he had was the structure of the regret so how likely were people to regret actions that they had taken versus actions that they hadn't taken so were people more likely to regret taking an action so starting that business or asking that girl on the date or eating that food or not doing the thing and he found conclusive across every gender all demographics all age ranges that the regrets that people had were for not taking action rather than taking action so people were far more likely to regret not starting that business not asking that person out whatever it might be and i think that has stuck with me with a lot of my life decisions where i found myself wondering should i make this call should i start this business should i go full time on my podcast and i refer i think back to that study and i think back to the regrets people have and i've sort of told myself that well i will regret it more if i don't try it so even if it might fail even if it might not work i'll regret not doing something rather than sticking with the status quo which is the easiest thing to do so yeah those are some of the challenges i've faced and i think what's really helped me i overcome them is this idea that you all regret in action more than action yeah so i love that you brought that up i actually haven't read that book yet by dan pink but i've seen it and heard about it and listened to him on podcast podcasts and i think it is really fascinating the power of regret and so it's still on my list and you know i'm curious about some of the psychology principles that you think could be helpful for people as they navigate their career you've mentioned so many thus far as you've been talking and just the way that you shared your story but if you have any principles for listeners that you think could be helpful i'd love to hear them yeah well we spoke about authentic self earlier and there's one but i do think about which links for that which is a principle known as the platform effect and a really interesting principle it was his study conducted back in the sixties with a researcher called earlier arr and for this study he filmed an actor answering a series of quiz questions very proficient so getting ninety percent of the questions right this actor really looked like a genius and then at the end of the quiz questions the actor took a sip of his coffee and actually managed to spill the coffee all down his white shirt so made a bit of a fool of himself and the researcher at elliot ar he showed this recording of the actor answering in questions right two participants the participants were told this is just a quiz contestant they weren't told it was an actor but he added a bit of a twist so half the participant in elliott study saw the full uncut version of this recording so they saw the actor answer all the questions correctly and then spill coffee down himself and the other half saw an edited version so they saw the actor answer the questions but not spill the coffee down itself so slight tweaked one just sees a bit of a flaw bit of a weakness comes in sitting the quiz answer and ellie arr then interviewed each of the participants and asked them about how intelligent they thought the quiz contestant was but also how likable they thought he was and what he found which was really interesting is that the l ability changed dramatically based on whether or not this person spilled coffee down themselves so when the person spilled coffee down themselves he was ranked as extremely likable very likable when they didn't and he was actually at ranked as quite un so that small thing of just spilling covid until changes the and this revealed of the sort of world of psychology which suggests that imperfect things have good elements are actually more likable than fully perfect things so a similar version of this study was conducted much more recently by jo sylvester in cardiff university in wales and in her study she got a bunch of her research assistance to apply for a number of different jobs so to send out cds for all sorts of different jobs and then go in for interviews she made sure that each time the research assistant apply they usually showed the same set of skills the same experience so as much consistency as possible but then she encouraged the research assistants in half of the interviews to only show their strength to only show that the reasons why they should be hired and then in the other half of the interviews they did to also show their weaknesses so just tell people about their strengths but also say by the way i'm not very good in this area now rationally we would expect the research assistants who only show their strengths to be more likely to get a job after all people are hiring people for their strengths not for their weaknesses but right in reality what happens is the people who showcased their weaknesses the people who fl their floors were far more likely to get the job they're are far more likely get for the second round they're far more likely to to have their cv accepted whatever it might been and so the finding here of this practical effect discovered way back with that coffee spelling experiment to people applying for jobs today is that by embracing your weaknesses by showcasing your weaknesses by not trying to hide them will make you more likable we'll make you more likely to get a job we'll we'll do all these wonderful things for you which i think it's really important to recognize you know when you're trying to be authentic self because there's this idea that we want to hide the negative things about our lives on linkedin we only wanna showcase our success stories but actually this research would suggest that the opposite is true by showcasing some of the weaknesses you have by showcasing some of your flaws you're probably more likely to increase your like ability and to get the things that you want to achieve so thank you so much for sharing that because it's actually so validating and i feel so affirmed in the work that i'm doing because i think it's so important to share our humanity and it was interesting i had a guest on not too long ago in a prior she's a workplace expert and keynote notes speaker and she talks all about embracing our awkward ness and our careers and how that is extremely helpful and how it helps us be more relatable and not that we should showcase it you know to the world but just to embrace it and that it's okay and i think that the fact that the research is really supporting our humanity supporting who we are as dynamic human beings and that it's helpful for us feels really really good so thank you for sharing that and you've just shared so many gems i think that you know your journey has been so interesting i'm so excited for you now that you're going into this full time entrepreneurship you have built out this really big brand with amazing content and i'm curious if you've thought about this you know about your life purpose or your career purpose can you talk to us a little bit about purpose yeah it's a difficult thing to answer for a british passion i think which don't really talk about purpose we just so to just get on with it but that's a great question is something i think think i think about a lot especially career purpose and probably the thing that i think about most i'm gonna reference dan pink again clearly he's had a big impact on my life he wrote a book called drive which is one of the first books i read you know when i first mentioned that i started reading and he spoke in that book about how people are motivated and how they encouraged to work and do the things they do he said some controversial things in that because well you know specifically about maybe not incentivizing salespeople and stuff like that which was interesting but his main takeaway on motivation was that to motivate people you have to give them autonomy so you have to give them freedom to work on the things they wanna work the ability to potentially even work when they want to work the freedom to share our own point if view all that things you have to give them more for autonomy you have to give them the ability to get mastery he calls it mastery and what does he mean by mastery well what he means this ability to master a certain subject so mastery being i wanna get fantastic at podcasting so i wanna learn all there is about interviewing i wanna wanna learn all there is about behavioral science and i think it's really that feeling of every day you work on it you can see yourself getting better in a way that an artist who paints for every single day of her life will see herself getting much better as she she ages and progresses and say mastery i think it's really important as well you've got autonomy you've got mastery and then the final thing he talks about is purpose and he defines it quite loosely so purpose could be you're working on something which has purpose in the world perhaps working or for an ng or a charity which is really making an impact or you're working or something which is purpose for you maybe you're working with a local community that's close to your heart or you're working on a project which is keep bringing people things that you value and purpose i think is really important as well you want to be able to wake up each morning and think the thing i'm am doing today has purpose if i wasn't doing this thing there would be people who would suffer or people who wouldn't be happy for example probably more so if you're a podcast or people aren't gonna suffer if you stop recording but people might not be happy and so those are the three things i think about a lot in my career i want to have autonomy want to be able to master a subject and i want the thing i'm doing to have purpose and that's defined a lot of my life choices so i think one of the reasons podcasting is so attractive to me is because running your own business gives you a lot of autonomy gives the ability to pick your own hours to decide who you want to interview what episodes you want to create how you want to create those episodes huge amount of autonomy that's that real feeling of mastery every single month i work on this podcast the better i will get the higher quality my shows will be the more listeners hopefully they'll attract but more so just i can listen back and really hear progression which i value and then purpose as well and i think purpose for me is probably a more difficult one because you know what purpose is there and running a marketing podcast you could say and you could argue but maybe you just view it as there is purpose in creating something in the world that other people value and that's probably more purposeful it's got more purpose to it and simply being at least in my opinion one part of a giant organization where your work is not as visible for example so yeah in my career i think a lot about autonomy mastery and purpose and then in life i've got no idea actually dead oh deep british i got i got no good wisdom for you there you know what you did great i heard exactly forgot about just the british culture and it's so interesting because my grandmother she was from guyana but her father was british and it took her like fifteen years to say i love you to me i would say i love you and she'd say did kiddo and as she got older she just became so much more american and so and not that the brits aren't sweet she loved me so much but so much more affectionate and i was like finally we got you we got you and so the fact that you have even been contemplated and thought about your career purpose i think is beautiful thank you for sharing that you've shared so many gyms if you have any final thoughts to share with the listeners i'd love to hear them yeah i think the one thing that i haven't talked about much for any other podcast or anything else is this d slack label and i think when i reflect back on my life it really did have an impact on me it really did change my perception of myself and what i could achieve and what i should be doing and what i should be reading or not read and where i should be focusing my time and it really did impact me if i reflect back on it that label i think changed a bit of my trajectory and so one thing i would say to people that who have d sex or perhaps have children with d is to i think acknowledge that you know that this is a real thing and that you know there's is something people should be aware of and it's really important to accommodate that and to set up environments in which you'll be able to better function those things are all really important but one thing that i would also say at least i know has helped me i don't know if this will help anyone else but don't let that label define you don't change your behavior because you have been defined as being sex or whatever it might be because i definitely did i definitely didn't bother trying to read because i just thought i couldn't i definitely didn't bother trying to creatively write which is something i really enjoy now because i didn't think i could i spent much more of my time doing subjects and works on things which were different from basically what i was told i couldn't do and so that's just something that stuck with me a lot recently and i sort of wished that i had known more about when i was younger and it's probably advice isn't too helpful for some people and probably advice that most people just get intuitively but for me that's advice that i have wanted to hear so don't let those labels to define you it's probably my final thought i love it no i think it's extremely helpful and it's a good reminder for so many people thank you so much phil thanks ashley thanks so much for having me thank you for listening to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows and the lessons learned remember to share the podcast with friends and family and my hope is that these stories help you navigate your no straight path journey if this content is adding value to your life and i hope it is please take a few minutes out of your day to read the show and write a review you can click the link in the show notes to write a review it helps other listeners find the show and i just really appreciate it have a lovely week embrace the journey and remember you're not alone

hey everyone this is ashley men papa your host and resident storyteller and welcome to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows and the lessons learned no straight path is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals we are digging into the human stories behind success and my hope as always is that you leave the conversation inspired motivated and excited about your journey hey friends hey i hope you're well we have another amazing guest entrepreneur and content creator jordan gut jordan is actually my friend and she's just a beautiful soul she's an inspiration and she uses her influence with a visible brand in large following on social media to inspire others so y'all know that is definitely the type of content that i love and before we get to our conversation i'll tell you a bit more about her jordan gut the ceo of media is a visionary entrepreneur with a decade long immersion in the entertainment industry leveraging experience with giants like meta teachable and jordan founded bear jean media to empower heart centered entrepreneurs through authentic social media strategies achieving rapid six figure growth within a year of media named after jordan's grandmother stands for compassion kindness and innovation this media powerhouse aims to amplify voices foster connections and make a positive impact in the digital landscape guided by mission to empower individuals to thrive authentically in the ever evolving world of social media yes it is ever evolving but jordan has all the tips and tricks for how you can succeed in that arena and in this conversation we chat about it all the career journey grief marriage and going after your dreams and i just can't wait for you y'all to hear this conversation so let's get to it alright jordan thank you so much for coming on the podcast i just love you i love your stories so i'm excited to just learn more yeah thank you so much for having me i love you and i'm really excited to dive in thank you and i feel like i feel grateful that you've been so vulnerable you know on social media i just wanted to say that because i don't even think i would even know different versions of your story if you didn't share it on social media even though we know each other in real life and so yeah i just wanted say thank you for that and i want to learn more about how you grew up can you tell us just about your family you're upbringing a little bit about little jordan yeah totally so i was born and raised in honolulu hawaii i'm an island girl and i spent the first nine years of my life just being raised by my mom and my grandma and just really being surrounded by strong women who you know went above and beyond to make sure i felt loved at all time i think what i can definitely say is i grew up with a lot of love i grew up around a lot of strength and i think that just growing up in hawaii and in even places like new york where i lived for a few years and now living in la it was a bubble it it felt like a magical place to be quite honest and i just remember growing up i did a lot of pretending and acting and playing house and you know a lot of just imaginative things as a child that i think really has carried on into today i enjoyed being by the beach i enjoyed playing with my cousins i enjoyed going to swap meats with my mom my mom always said i was a very easy kid i was very chill and to myself and just a sweet girl so i mean growing up was i feel like beautiful i was very blessed to grow up in the way that i did for sure i love that it sounds like such a lovely childhood and you know you mentioned both your mother and your grandmother and how they raised you and we have some overlap in our stories and just you know the loss of them and how they've informed who we are as humans and so i wanna know more about them about perhaps any lessons learned how they've informed who you are tell us about mom and grandma yeah so it's wild because my company that i started in twenty twenty is named beer gene media and my grandma's name was beer jean and i remember you know my mom working multiple jobs and my grandma loving the one to kind of raise me when she was at work grandma was very stern she was very like i don't play but when it came to me i was like the perfect person like i know i was her favorite like a thousand percent i would get away with any and everything and again i think my grandma really showered me in love and i feel like my mom and my grandma really nurtured any dream that i had ever had you know if i said i wanted to act my mom was like okay let's do it like what do you wanna do you wanna take acting classes you wanna go get head shots like nothing was crazy or off limits when it came to them i don't think there was a dream that would be too big or too wild or too ludicrous or chris where they'd say oh jordan how are you gonna do that right it was always like okay well well let's figure it out go ahead you wanna do that cool go you have a passport go do it right and i think that's one of the lessons i learned from them of just that fearless of if you can think it if you can see it if you've been shown the vision then go for it and know that you have support in your corner and i think that's what i've tried to embody throughout my life of just supporting people and supporting their dreams are holding that vision until they're ready to birth it i find a lot of strength and i find a lot of just peace being that for people when they're not quite ready to get that dream out there i think another thing i learned from the both of them is just how rooted i am in my faith i remember going to church with my grandma every sunday and it was a baptist church so you know we're there for about sixty five hours yeah and i'm sleeping exactly sleeping in the pew you know waiting for church to be over but that was instilled in me when i was a baby a little girl and i carry that into the thread of what i do as well i did a call yesterday with some of my past clients to see how they wanted to improve or what they would want to improve in my program next year i have a group coaching program so they shared a few things and then i also asked what made you join right like what made you swipe their credit card it's a four figure investment there's so many people online doing what i'm doing what made you swipe it and i think i haven't ever written down they said your love for god and i could see the faith and everything that you do it's just you it's how you show up and so i'm so grateful that i'm able to carry that you know with me and the way that i show up for sure oh yeah oh i love that the fearless the faith and you certainly exemplified that in your career and so let's actually pivot to your career i know you've had some twists turns can you talked to us about your decision to go into i believe it was first content creation and entertainment and yeah let's talk about that yeah so i went to the university of oklahoma so boomer sooner if anyone out there listening if you know you know and i graduated in two thousand and ten and the summer before i graduated i had heard about internships and i knew that i wanted to do an internship at least before i got out of college it wasn't something that was really talked about maybe because we were in oklahoma i don't know but i had seen a commercial come up on the tv and it was a commercial from the mori show and they were like we're looking for interns and i was like oh my god this is my dream i've been watching more since i was like thirteen like sneaking to watch the show you are the father there i was like this is my chance like i was so excited and of course i emailed and i feel like everyone who wanted to be an intern got to be an intern because it was unpaid it was in connecticut and i had to figure out how to make it work and so again an unpaid internship drove from oklahoma i rented a room in connecticut for a summer and i was an intern and i answered phone calls of all the people calling in for the mori show about the baby mama drama or i think my husband's doing this so my teenagers out of control and i was like this is so awesome like i love it and i just i was already going to college for mass communications and broadcast journalism so it i was already up my alley and i was already part of my major and so i had a great summer in intern it was wild it was a lot of work and again it was unpaid and i drove twenty two hours back to oklahoma by myself to finish my senior college and so right before i graduated i reached out to one of the vps and asked if there were any roles available and they said well matter of fact a production assistant role became available can you interview and i said yeah sure sure can i sure i can't and they were like can you come friday sure sure sure i booked a flight with no money as a college student and i slept in a hostel in new york city for one night so that i could be ready for the interview the next day took the train back up to connecticut and i had my interview when i got hired on the spot and when i graduated college i packed my car up again and i drove all the way back up to connecticut and i settled there for three years while i worked from mori and it was everything you think it was and yeah the first question i always get about the show is is it real and it is so i think that's what made it so crazy for me was just seeing that these stories were people's real life and it started to get a little hard for me just because i'm such an em impact and you know conflict tv is a bit i don't think that's a word but it is that and i enjoyed the people i worked with i enjoyed more but i had to step away after three years because it just didn't feel good to me anymore and i was very validated in that decision and leaving as well and from there i was in front of the camera behind the camera i created c created a web series that front of mine and i created it was a commute web series we put it on youtube for a year put the little money that we had into that and in year two it got picked up by the t digital and they fully funded our second year so i've always been into the content scene and really been into creating content it's been in my blood yeah you know yeah no that's amazing in that web series so i did watch it and i thought it was hilarious oh thanks yes so oh thanks yeah i like to do my research i was like wait i understand have web series which is really incredible and so being in front of the camera now you're in front of the camera in a a different way so can you tell us about that pivot being in front from the web series and now to your own company and sharing content and helping others with their content yeah it was not easy i thought it was gonna be automatic to be quite honest you know being in front of the camera i've done commercials i've auditioned for big shows like power master of non sisters at one time so i was petrified so i started my business in the height of the pandemic july twenty twenty and so being so confident showing up on camera for audition all of that commercials i did stuff for dark and lovely like i had been immersed in that and just being front and center and i remember starting my business i have a coaching and consulting company and we helped small business owners tell their story on social media to grow their communities and drive revenue into their business and i remember being so scared to post that i started a business because i didn't think anyone would take me seriously i thought people were gonna laugh at me i thought people were gonna say okay you're an actor like what do you know about starting i was petrified and for that reason i started talking about my business first on facebook because it felt like more of a safe space it was people i knew my family my mom commented on every single thing so i was like okay i can start here this feels good and i remember hiring my first business coach on a personal credit card i twenty five hundred dollars and i was like what are we doing i'm collecting unemployment but okay let's take a chance on it mh and she was like you have to start going live and i was like excuse me what what is going live and i remember ashley i used to sweat i used to be so nervous i remember going live in facebook groups and it wasn't it until i think it was two weeks after actually doing it i got my first sale and i was like oh okay alright okay this is cute and i started to document my process and i started to show up more consistently and i started to build that muscle even when it felt uncomfortable and doing so in addition to telling my story like you said in the very beginning out being vulnerable and transparent about my process we hit our first six figures within nine months of launching my business so once i stepped out of that fear again stepped out of that uncomfortable or stepped into it right things really started to change for my business i love that story so much and i think you know and i've even seen it on your social media you've shown the growth which i think is really great it's very helpful the transparency and i think you've showed one of your first lives and i remember thinking wait is that even jordan like jordan is usually very confident you know coming on bubbly excited but yeah you were nervous and it's the same thing for me with my podcasting journey it's like anytime you're a beginner you just have you don't know what you're doing and you'll figure it out but it just takes time it takes consistency it takes repetition and you'll see the growth and so i love how you've been showing that in real time and it was just such a good reminder because i couldn't believe that because i think when people meet you you know they thought thought you came out the gate doing this kind of work you know girl you have to put in the reps and i always told my students it feels a little crunchy at first right like none of the stuff i mean unless this is like your god given gift but the majority of the content that you put out in the first few months for year is crunchy it's just crunchy and it's great it's messy you get to look back on it and you get better but you have to sit in that space to become that next version of you and there's always a message in the mess and if you can stay in that there's so much reward on the other side yeah and speaking of mess message in the mess you know has there been a messy period or a challenging setback in your career and how did you overcome that yeah absolutely eight months into launching my business in four weeks before i got married i lost my mom unexpectedly and it was earth shattering it was everything was going so great right like i just got engaged we're getting ready to get married in a few weeks my business had had this hockey stick type of growth i felt really in sync and in rhythm with my clients at the time and we had just moved into our new apartment in brooklyn because we were about to get married so it just felt like alright like i started this works this is cute and i remember getting that call and just dropping everything i was living in new york at the time with my fiance now husband and my sister had called me and i had calls scheduled the whole day i told my va to cancel everything and our car wouldn't start and my mom was in massachusetts at the time and our car wouldn't start so we ran to their rental car place to try to get a car to drive up to massachusetts because she was being rushed to the hospital at this time and we went to the rental car place they were all out of rental cars and so we ended up taking an uber four and a half hours from new york to massachusetts and our member texting my sister like is mom good like what's going on and she didn't text me back and when she didn't text me back that's when i knew and so my step dad called me and i knew and the uber driver was just it was just so divine where he was just praying for us and like i can't even explain how it sounds weird but how soft that moment was for me because i do feel like it could have been a bit more chaotic but i was surrounded by my fiance i was surrounded by this random stranger and he got us there safely and it was a really hard time and i had to stop like i had to stop working i had to paused my group coaching program i had to stop with my one on one clients and i disappeared i disappeared from social media and again i was in such a good group we were growing like crazy we were closing clients like crazy but i had to take a step back to process and i won't say heal because i do feel like healing i don't think it ever ends right i think it's a journey so i think i had to start my healing process i think having community during that time and my faith and my husband my fiance sustained me because i always used to say to my mom time if something were to happen to you i'm just gonna kill everyone like i'm not gonna be able to live i don't know what i'm gonna do and to be sane in my right mind and to have the will to keep going was nothing but god to be quite honest so i think that probably no is and has been my biggest setback and to continue to keep going after such a huge loss yeah yeah as you know i'm so sorry for your loss and i just appreciate you sharing that story and i know you also have a podcast and you shared a little bit more about that and yeah the things you described about just even being able to see you know is so challenging and so tough but to be able to see the divine and beautiful moments within it just being in that uber with the man who was praying for you you know things of that nature that kind of stuff happens in the valleys of life you know it's just as you said like it's something that's inexplicable but you've certainly described in a way that i think is gonna help it helps me and i think listeners for my podcast because we're starting to have more open conversations about grief which i think is so helpful and i am curious do you have any advice for anyone that might be experiencing grief yeah great question i mean definitely like i said community has been a saving grace for me i also think talking about it and talking about it to an extent where you feel at least comfortable or maybe a bit of discomfort has been helpful for me because i can't tell you how many times first of all it's extremely hard to post about my mom and my grandma and just like tell the story or talk about it but every single time i do it there's somebody that's like oh my gosh like i just lost my mom where oh my gosh like i needed to hear that and so it's moments like that that also heal me along this journey so i think that once you start to get to a place where you can just share bits and pieces i could never share this story two and a half years ago three years ago with my mom i could never get it out i would be spitting and sn everywhere like it would be very very hard so obviously take the time you need but express and talk or write those feelings out as often as you can because i think there's something about just not holding it in that's helpful and i also wholeheartedly believe that your grief is not for you it's to bring others through their breakthrough right like when they can see okay she went through that okay she's or he or they or then they're on that other side it's like you are that light for that person and i think that if we don't do that there's gonna be a lot of people trapped in that valley because they haven't seen a glimmer of light and so you can be that glimmer of light when you just share those little including those little plate pieces that is my mom's favorite song or my mom loved eating that right if that's as little as you can get out someone else can hold on and grasp onto that so yeah yeah oh yeah no i think that's so insightful and so helpful and i definitely agree you said something important too that i hadn't thought about your grief is for other people as well you know i hadn't thought about it in that way but it is and how helpful it's really an expression of your humanity and helping everyone you know feel less alone and so it doesn't have to be on major social media platform and the way that we both share it literally can be in that tiny conversation right with a friend it's just that vulnerability and so i appreciate people like you who do share it with the world but you know and also just the fact that you said it's so hard to share i found that really interesting and i you know i'm not sure i've had certainly like a bit of a different experience i feel like i needed to share it and it was like this release for me which was interesting and then i went through a period where i've just i've stopped sharing in that way but it's more so i just incorporate my mom in the way i speak about things the way you just mentioned just now just saying that was my mom's favorite song or that's kind of where i'm at right now but you know different life seasons will certainly i might have another essay coming out you know in a year about something about my mom you never know so but yeah so and when i asked that a question about setback i actually was going in a different direction i wanted to know more about the career setback that you had i think regarding the web series or just the culmination of starting the company so we talked about the content but i think there might have been a story in between correct me if i'm wrong there yeah yeah so i mean for me the biggest setback and i think for a lot of people was covid that was kind of the catapult or the springboard as to why we started where i started my company you know production shut i was collecting unemployment i was starting to get emails about doing home audition so i was doing self tapes in my room during covid and hopes that you know something would go into production or would be doing recordings at are home for commercials or and i just felt like i was being called for more but i also didn't know how to do it right i never started a company i what is a llc what is a s escort corp what is it was a journey it was a it was a failure way in the dark type of situation and you know we started the web series initially because we were tired of being casted in hyper sexual roles or stereotypical roles you know the angry black woman or the feisty latin latino or the home record or the other woman and so i think that was one of the first times i was able to take control of the narrative right take control of the content i was creating take control of what was being put out there and like i said when we initially did season one we put our money into it we brought our friends in from the industry we paid them pennies and we fed them we made sure we got them good like you know sandwiches from the deli or pizza right like it was just a dream right and keeping and nurturing a relationship to then reaching out to that person and asking if there was room where he was working at bet if there was room on the slate for programming and then saying yes and then us being able to bring all of those people into season two that put in that sweat equity in season one and being able to pay them and being able to pay ourselves that was like my first taste of like okay you can create content you can make money doing this you can create things that actually you want to talk about in stories that you want to tell and i did i was like okay this could be some easter rice stuff like yes out yeah he's really like let's you know take this to the next level but yeah covid hit and i started building something else and i don't know if i will ever go back to creating web series or storytelling in that way but i do know that a lot of the way that i tell stories in the way that i show up authentically is rooted in the struggle and the challenges that we had creating a series from scratch i love that and you know now you are continuing to build this extremely successful business do you have any lessons learned from just your entrepreneurial journey and being a business owner it's so interesting when you talk about just the beginning because i just don't see you that way like i you know i'm like she is a business boss like what what is she talking about she didn't know what she was doing but so it's just yeah it's yeah i mean so lessons i've learned i'm in this season of doing something that makes me scared i wanna say every day but majority of the time when i do that something crazy happens something big happens a big contract comes through or a client that you know has been watching me for a year decides to take the leap or the piece of content performed so well even though it's nothing i've ever done before so doing something scared i'm definitely in that season i think a big lesson that i've learned one of my favorite books is essential by a greg mc and it really talks about the importance of just simplicity and so i think one of my biggest lessons three years into building my business is keeping things simple the way that i teach is simple you know i don't need to have a bunch of offers my processes and my systems are simple my team is simple and i really try to keep what's essential within my business i can tell you two years into my business i was buying investing every software every program everything and it was fine it was great i'm all for investing invested in coaching still to this day but i think there's a line to making sure that your voice and your inner voice is not drawn out right so that we're not listening to everett because you can build a business and you can make a million or two million or ten million or fifty million dollars a hundred and fifty different ways all the ways work right every single way works all the pinterest works the instagram works the podcast works the tiktok works all of that works right but what works for you and pouring gas on that i think that's the biggest lesson you don't have to do all the things lock into what feels good for you and then focus on that thing right focus on that because we get bored in our business and we're like okay let's buy another system or let's invest in another program and it's like but is what you're doing working is it making you six years is it making you seven figures can you refine it even better can you give your client a better experience right like let's start there before adding click funnels and adding this and adding that so i think that's the season that i'm constantly in of how can we make this simpler how can we make this easier how can we system this since we've we do it over and over and over again i think that's the biggest lesson and last but not least document your process like everything that you do doesn't matter if it's i don't writing snail mail like document every single thing that you do because when it's time to build and build your team you're gonna want some sort of playbook that they can refer to because you don't wanna build a business alone you're gonna need to build a team to scale even if it's a small team yeah yeah excellent advice and you know speaking of scaling and building the team i know that that's a lot of work when you're running a business so talk to us a little bit about work life balance work life integration whatever you know phrase you use to describe a way that you're able to honor your work and honor your life outside of work yeah i mean i feel like there's definitely this buzz phrase of there's no such thing as balance which i agree i do think you have to unlock what balance means for you for us currently we have a four day work week so on fridays it's my desire day so i do things that i desire to do whether it is something like this this is something that i desire to do or if it's going to get a massage and that's something that i desire to do i used to call it for a while it was my ceo day then when i lost my mom it was my healing day but then i started working with a new coach slash therapist and we were talking and she said i call mine desire day because sometimes on my desire day i do feel like working i do feel like you know getting some things done and i would find myself shaming myself because today supposed to be my healing day where it's supposed to be my day off day and then i get hard on myself because i wanna bang out some work or i wanna send these emails right and so she said ren naming that your desired day kinda lets it be free to do whatever you want and i loved that so fridays is kind of spent with cleaning up anything in the work week that i didn't get done that i desire to do or like i said just going to the beach sure spending time with my husband or whatever that looks like i think that's been helpful the other thing that i really started implementing recently is systems in my life and so my husband and i have a sunday weekly meeting it is so structured it is great we have an agenda we talk about you know what we loved that each other did this week how can we support each other this week what do we have on the calendar this week meals this week so that's been really helpful we do that every sunday and then we're building out like a home playbook which has like our favorite takeout or things that we've been dying to watch on netflix and we're just making a list love guys this that yeah so that you know we're thinking about family planning next year and we'll wanna hire help and how beautiful would it be to take this book and say hey to our nanny or hey to whoever's helping us in the home and please help us we want thai food tonight it's already this is what cabin orders every time this is what jordan orders every time and it's just system ties so i think that's been really helpful i'm in this community called the society by this woman i don't know natalie last name but she's the ceo of boss babe and i heard her talk on her podcast about just system her family life and that blew my mind and then she had it template in the membership for it and i was like okay now we're cooking and it's been beautiful right i send my husband to the grocery store because the whole list is in there you know whatever we need pictures of it there's recipes that we're not putting together in there so i think that's helped a lot with quote unquote balance of like our household being ran with systems and it not feeling restricted it's felt really beautiful these past eight weeks i would say those are such gyms i'm definitely stealing the desire day for friday yeah yeah i think that makes a lot of sense and you're right because sometimes you can get hard on yourself if you're not doing the thing that you said you would do even if you're just trying to rest you're like wait i'm motivated today to work and to do x y z so it's really how you feel it seems like you are being very intentional about your life you are paying attention to what makes you feel good what makes your household run very well you and your husband i love that planning i don't think i could get my husband to do that much planning with me but i will try we'll we'll try for bi weekly meetings or mother or something yeah fine yeah we took us a while to get here though like we tried i thought i was gonna build something out in notion we'd push it back like and then finally we're like alright let's do it if we're on vacation i have the ipad in the car and we're like just talking through it and that has it's just made a difference of like how does it work for you and it's in google docs it's not a notion it's not in click or asana or hubspot it's just like let's just do in a google drive and just make it super simple and you take notes one meeting and i take notes one meeting and it's amazing it really really is yeah yeah sounds like such a great partnership and you know i am curious just to pivot a little bit back to purpose and you've talked a little bit about just the work you've done and experiences you've had and i'm curious about how you would define your life's purpose or your careers purpose have you thought about that i feel like my purpose is to help people see the best parts of themselves that they can't see yet i think too often and i love it it's so great i love it when i meet my clients and they come to me and they don't speak as highly about the thing that they're building whether it be the business or their mission when i can look at them and see that it's so big and it's so vast and it's so great i love pulling that out of them to help them realize like i'm the ish like i'm pretty dope i'm pretty popping i think that is one of my favorite things to do is i think about one of my clients before she joined my program we were going back and forth in the dms and she was like i'm starting my little side hustle like i'm in my nine to five like i'm starting a side hustle and i corrected her right in the dms and i said it's your business you're starting her business and she was in my program she wrote her resignation letter to her corporate job and saved it on her desktop and put a date on it and she started working towards that resignation because she started to believe that what she was building was no longer a side hustle it was a business that would allow her to walk away from her corporate job so it's moments like that where especially my heart is for heart centered women who are entrepreneurs that run a service based business i love working with people that have a heart to serve others and so with those types of women we are so focused on everyone else right we're focused on getting everyone else the result and just forgetting like how freaking dope we are and how beautiful it is to talk about how dope we are and not from an ego standpoint or not from a boast full standpoint but i stand ten toes down on who i am and the results that i bring right i'm changing people's lives and when i can pull that out of someone and then then make money from that and change their lives from that i think that is walking in purpose in addition to the fact that so many people see god's light either on me or through me or from me i think that's the highest compliment that i can get from what i'm doing in my business or in my life even if i'm at the coffee shop and someone's like oh there's god on you girl like i feel like those moments like that i'm just like okay in purpose in purpose like keep walking like that yeah and i can say when i first met you i felt the same way i was like she has a light about her and it was just so nice to connect with you and to have you even just like really recognize that about yourself like other people tell you but you to really believe it and to step into it i think is extremely powerful and empowering and you know this has been such a great conversation i usually end with final thoughts so if you have any final thoughts that you like to share with the listeners i'd love to hear it i don't know why this is coming to me but i'm just really proud of you like when i met you at mutual friend's birthday that was like our first encounter and your heart for your mission and what you're on fire for has been so amazing to see you definitely are a woman who does what she says she's going to do because i remember when i met you i'm taking us back and i'm doing this and i'm doing this podcast and i'm gonna build it i'm gonna figure it out and like just to see that and see you knowing some of your story i don't know all of your story but the pieces that i do know have taken a lot of people out of the game have made a lot of people quit have made a lot of people stop so to see you still going and going with so much grace and softness and integrity and just pure has just been it's been a dream to witness and i'm so excited to see what god's gonna do for you as you continue to be obedient to what you said you were gonna do thank you so much jordan okay so you wanted me to cry okay thank you no no no cry oh that that no no no i appreciate you sis thank you that means so much yeah of course thank you for listening to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows on the lessons learned remember to share the podcast with friends and family and my hope is that these stories hope you navigate your no straight path journey if this content is adding value to your life and i hope it is please take a few minutes out of your day to read the show and write a review you can click the link in the show notes to write a review it helps other listeners find the show and i just really appreciate it have a lovely week embrace the journey and remember you're not alone

hey everyone this is ashley men papa your host and resident storyteller and welcome to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows and the lessons learned no straight path is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals we are digging into the human stories behind success and my hope as always is that you leave the conversation inspired motivated and excited about your journey hey friends hey we are back with the new season for twenty twenty four and i'm so excited about this season we have some wonderful guests and i have lots of reflections to share it is actually election season as many of you know and the california primary is tuesday march fifth yes it is tuesday march fifth and we have a special guest who is running for office on the show today although media coverage often focuses on the political polarization at the national level state and local politics have a direct impact on the lives of americans it is important so i am grateful that we have the opportunity to hear from a millennial running for state assembly walter garcia walter is an old coworker of mine and he truly has a heart or service i don't usually have politicians on the podcast because it can be challenging to have the vulnerable and honest conversations that i like to have on the show but fortunately walter candidly shares his story and offers insights on what it's really like to run for office he shares lessons learned that are applicable to any career and before we get to this insightful conversation i do wanna tell you a bit more about walter born and raised in northeast san fernando valley walter is the proud son of two mexican immigrants although his family faced an economic hardship and adversity walter remembers his parents telling him one thing over and over again don't give up and help others those values have guided him through unparalleled opportunities to serve our country at the local state and national levels he's worked for a number of prominent politicians including california attorney general rob ban united states secretary of health and human resources xavier ba and vice president kamala harris and after attending public school in the san fernando valley he went to brown for college and northwestern for law school and i truly believe in walter mission so we are gonna dig into his story on the show but if you want to learn more about his campaign i'm actually gonna leave everything in the show notes please donate if you can every dollar count it's very important is very challenging to raise for a political campaign especially as a younger candidate who does not come from money and privilege as many of us know and so it is something that we actually talk about on the show as well and i can't wait for y'all to hear this conversation so let's get to it alright walter thank you so much for coming on no straight path i'm just so excited to dig into your story we've had a few conversations about it thus far and just you know i have lots of questions so thank you for coming on the show well thank you for having us it's truly an honor and pleasure to be here you've done a lot of great work on this show and so i'm looking forward to this conversation absolutely so you know the drill i want to start from the beginning so let's talk about your childhood your family your upbringing can you just paint the picture for us sure the son of mexican immigrants my father has been and still is a construction worker my mom is an in home care provider part of sk twenty fifteen she's been doing that job i believe for around eight years or so but as i was going up we had just one source of income my father again he worked construction and so as my mom likes to to remind me and my sister as we were going up we moved around the first probably three to five years of our lives quite a bit from apartment to apartment until we finally settled down in my current home hometown appointment that's where i am doing this interview from and where i live and you know even then when we settled all down here the very room that i'm doing this interview from was the room that was home to not only me but my sister as well as two cousins so there were two families under one roof for us to be able to make ends meet for us to be able to pay the mortgage so you know goes to show that even though we finally were able to settle down our roots even then it was still a little bit challenging right given the fact that our family has always been on the lower income side of things and i had to live with and my uncle and his family so obviously there were some benefits to that growing up with with cousins and having people to play with but there's obvious drawbacks in terms of never having your own space and a living tight quarters but that's what i remember most i think from when i was growing up just the the struggle for them you know for my folks to make ends meet and as as most immigrant parents tend to do they didn't really share a lot of that struggle they just kind of let us be kids to the to the greatest extent possible and they you know my dad just try to work as much as he could to to provide for us and i think there were small ways subtle ways where you know i realized growing up dead i would not have some basic one one might say that other friends would have i remember playing soccer growing up that was like my big thing and i would ask my dad hey dad can i get these new soccer fleets when some other friend would get something you would say no the ones that you have are still perfectly good but you know after while start hearing now and and you realize not only is it for good reason but also because of the financial situation being a bit tight so you know that was what i remember going up but just always having folks who were pushing me to do well i could academically as well my mom in particular so he laid down the law when it came to to school yeah yeah and can you tell us a little bit more just about who you were as a child so you mentioned your mom what would your mom say about you was your what would your dad say about you your family how would they describe little walter and does little walter show up in the work that you're doing today these are very very good questions even and more interesting than than i anticipated there would be i just asked my mother earlier today how she would describe me because i i myself curious right obviously i have a certain perception of myself but she's my mother she knows me well she would describing me and again these are this is my mom so it's no surprise that they're generally somewhat positive she described me as as intelligent as somebody who was determined she describes me as being somewhat similar to my niece now she's five years old and she's also equally as as as determined and the last word she used to describe me was just kind of academically mind it right i i always wanted to do well in school but i really didn't have a choice my mom didn't didn't allow for anything else i'm being honest with you but she just wanted me to do well my father you it's interesting my dad is a very different personality he's a lot more to himself i think a lot more a lot less expressive but i think he'd probably described me to similar extent that my mom did he was just the one he would when when things got to him and meant that we were in a little bit of trouble so we tried to avoid dad and and the potential discipline that came with that as for myself i just kind of on a final note i i even remember i was thinking about this recently because i i don't think about those things often until we we we recently chatted i think growing up i was competitive i think for sure i mentioned i played soccer i didn't like losing fortunately i was part of a team that that didn't lose a lot and i was captain and the team for several years i should love the idea of working with others ticket to to the to the you know short goal of of winning the the championship of winning a medal i also think i was to borrow one of my mom's words determined i kind of have always been of the mindset that if i want something i need to i need to work hard for it right it's not gonna magically appear in my life and then the final word i would use for myself is is empathetic going up in the community where i grew up here in coin it's it's very latino a very very immigrant and heavy and so folks here have always struggled not to my family and so being that type of environment made be very but are sensitive i think is the way read to describe it to the realities of life the struggles of life and made me relate to folks here in my community but also folks just generally right that sort of willingness to put yourself in other shoes i could've have always saw myself as a pathetic even as a child right i would i would give my mom on the hug if i saw a little bit sad right or little things like that yeah thank you for sharing all that i love that i love the image of you seeing your mom and and seeing that she sad and giving her that hug and you know doing similar work now you know using your empathy to effect change and so i'm really curious about your career journey about specifically your decision to run for office coming from i can kinda see the dots coming from their specific background and and wanting to create change and having opportunities to go to various elite institutions and so yeah tell us about that career journey and ultimately your political journey i've been pretty lucky you in the sense that i've always realized public services what i wanted to do my mom jokes around it when i was an elementary school i was very clear about to people even as a kid where like i wanna be involved in politics you know it's kind of a crazy idea for somebody entering as a kindergarten student to at elementary school but for me i suppose it was always rounded in the fact that folks who worked in politics at least as i would see on uni vision here with my parents when we would watch a new cast they were trying to make change and so that for me was was so awesome even though i was young i'm like wow like how do how are they doing that and how can i one day get there so i think it's stemmed from that and it also stemmed from my for my upbringing knee right despite us not having a lot my folks always encouraged me to think about others encourage me to find ways to get back so kinda marrying those two things kinda made sense for me to be focused on public service and and luckily when i was in high school i started my very first internship for then state center alex pad who's now the us senator of california and the cool thing about him and the reason why that experience was so central to my life is that he also strong equipment he grew up a couple blocks away from me right and he too went through in a elite institution on the east coast he went mit and he really kind of laid down on you know that that foundation showing me that it is possible so growing up with that it was really empowering in having role models such as alex pad and so ever since said i've been working in public service i've had the great pleasure of serving in government at the local state and national level and it is really it's really an honor right i i the way i think about it is my folks grew up in mexico with a small little impoverished town and with dirt roads and you know i remember when house was a white house syndrome for president obama i got to take my folks on a west wing tour and they got peek inside the oval office and you know just kinda thinking about that enormous transition for them right being able to come from mexico with little to nothing and then being able to see within you know i eyesight the the most the office of the most powerful person in the world so all that has kind of led me to continue push to get involved in government and that's why i decided to announce that i was running for office just late last year i announced because my congress ran here decided to step down at the end of his term from congress and so he urged our assembly woman blue r to run for his seat and so she announced that and and that is going to leave open the assembly seat i thought about it quite a bit i'm like man you know do i really wanna do this do not ultimately concluding that there's never gonna be a perfect time for anything and so you know i feel good about the experiences that bring to the table and i decided to take that chance i love that and you know so you did contemplate the decision a bit can you expo upon that tell us a little bit about what was going through your mind what were some of the challenges that you could foresee or possibly foresee when it comes to running for office i as i've mentioned have worked for several elective and so i've been able to see things from that perspective right i've upward for attorney to know javier turning to rob ban i was a lot clerk to center kamala harris during law school but it's very different when goo yourself or in in the arena as teddy roosevelt what would put it because the buck truly desktop with you and there are very basic things that i found that i needed to to find out the hard way such as which la county office to go to i had gone to my local branch i needed to go to the main branch which was quite a way away for me realizing that you had to pay a filing fee i who to myself asked if i could get that waived because it was around a thousand two hundred and it seemed outrageous to me i was told no but it was worth asking oh wow and you know the the woman who kindly told me no she said i've not had anybody asked me but it's just kind of the way grew up right like that's a lot of money let me figure out if i can avoid that charts somehow so again you know learning curve from that perspective and i absolutely contemplated it but i didn't have enough time i guess one would say because i had three weeks three and a half weeks roughly to make a decision before the filing deadline happened and after the following deadline you can't submit any paperwork read by that deadline you have to submit everything that they asked for in order to appear on the ballot so the decision making process was very quick but i don't like making decisions important once in isolation i have the great fortune of having a lot of good people in my life and so i don't mind calling them bugging them and you know having them alpine as to what i should be thinking about and you know are there certain blind spots that i'm not privy to are there certain things that i'm not paying attention to and at the conclusion of that process is i'd like to joke around you ask a million people for an opinion he'll get a million different opinions so for but for me was a question of just getting all that information and thinking about it sort of his pros and cons right what are the pros what are the cons kind of drilling it down to that and i think one of the things that i realized would be challenging and that has been challenging is the fundraising aspect of things it's just brutal to have to especially coming from my type of background to ask people for money the maximum allowable amount for my racist five thousand five hundred not many people in my life can can donate that much money and so there are certain realities that you run into i think you know when you are a first gen student first gen american right although the first first time candidate and those are just some of the realities that i think some folks that had warned me about but they become a lot more obvious once you actually start going through the process i think that's been challenging but on the on the other side i still have been able to receive a lot of support and sometimes from unexpected places which is a blessing and perhaps just as importantly i've learned how much i love getting to me people and that's so central to this job i mentioned that i literally just got back that's why maybe i look a little bit ten but i was knocking on doors and just encouraging people to to consider voting for me and i actually like that it's probably the most fun aspect of this of this run getting to me people getting to lender stories and again there probably comes from my empathy and and you know so it's it's been really interesting process but i i certainly wouldn't change it for the world i love that i love that and i wanted to interview you specifically just because i often hear the entrepreneurial journey and i certainly think it's an inspiring one and i think the political journey is also very similar and inspiring one as well you're raising funds you know when i'm talking to some of my other guests they're raising vc funds are they're doing no crowd funding and the challenges that come with that and often is really challenging for first gen folks for bi folks in all of these different industries but i'm just really proud of you for going through this journey and also sharing with us and i'm curious about how is this process changing you and this might be something that you might not be able to answer until retrospect and like you know later on but i am curious as you're stepping into this more so leadership role because you said previously that you worked for so many incredible politicians we've done amazing work but it's different when you're running the show do you see something inside of you changing that's that's something i've i've given thought to because even though i've only been in this race for around a month and a half i certainly have felt change and what i think is arguably an important way which is that no longer do i get affected so much but either the the highs or the lows if you kind of learn that you have to just push through because there are so many little or potentially big moments where you're either feeling super high right or you can feel super high or you can feel super low and going through all of those moments every single day since i announced my campaign forces you to either lose your mind every single day because of all those highs and lows or to just kind of take a deep breath and realize alright this two shall pass alright and whether it's a good or bad moment and i have to say that i credit my ability to adapt to the situation and i think i'm adapting to it pretty well to my decision during my first year of loss quota to to see a therapist that i think was so so important for me just because growing up as a set of immigrants it's not something that you're really told to do or suggested a day you kind of handle it on your own and you figure it out one more or the other and during that first year law school you're surrounded by brilliant people right pretty much no matter where you go and i think for me no matter what my previous work history was i felt am i worthy of being here i have this question will i sound dumb if i ask it all of these inner monologue that i used to take place i was able to talk through with the therapist at northwestern and you know you realize that maybe it it's a little bit weird when you started off but just about everybody who is a relatively healthy and has a good mental state has or continues to see one right i mean i i was just watching a documentary about n nfl quarterback and how it is that you know one of them in particular was seeing a a therapist after games when he just had done rough right by just talking through the emotions right because you're the person who a lot of times as a quarterback gets gets the blame so i i was so grateful that i did it and i joke around with a lot of my my bi male friends like hey y'all should see a therapist yeah do don't joke tell them to do it not no but real it it really is true right i mean yeah therapy is not for everyone i think i realized there are some people who have different ways of processing they don't like talking so much yeah but i encourage them right like hey we all have emotions everybody no matter rich or poor has gone through some things in life and so if you feel like you you're struggling you should really consider trying to talk to somebody at bare minimum right whether it's a friend or or you know and my he's a professional but i do think that my ability to just kind of go with the flow as best i can now is is i trace back to that fundamental decision and being able to better regulate my emotions because you hear too much and this was another reason why i got in elected officials who treat their strat like crap who think that their god's gift to mankind and that's just not right i mean that's not the way i was raised that's not the way i think anybody should perceive their position of power and so if you're listening to this and you know you're feeling emotions and do they might seem overwhelming considering a therapist it it it works wonders yes i concur i concur and i love that you went in and did that on your own and especially yeah your first year of law school which is definitely a very challenging time for most people and it can be very jarring just that transition and i'm curious because i've always i wonder about this you're coming from humble beginnings that you mentioned earlier in a working class family and navigating these elite institutions and now stepping into a position where you're running for office you are somewhat navigating very different worlds is that hard if so you know how how do you do it well i'm sure that you also have a brilliant answer to this but i think the bottom line is that there's no perfect answer a lot of times i remember thinking about my experience in law just wishing that there was this magical wand that i could have and just wave all my problems away but a lot of times it come from trial air right and and i think that the most important thing is just to act if you're feeling like you need help right asking for help if you if you're feeling like you don't understand a particular concept in law for instance you know ask a fellow class may ask ask somebody else but i i think acting for me was the most important thing and not just suffering in silence i also had the really good benefit of having a lot of role models at northwestern and either upper class or or or folks who work for the university professors who allowed me the space to feel my emotions to be able to kind of allow me to realize that there's no shame and and feeling like you don't know what's happening because if you start talking to somebody in classmates states tuned feel the same way they might they just might not voice it so i think it's it's for me it was a question of of acting as it related to navigating law school and undergrad brown and i think for politics it's a little bit different just because by nature of it being politics you realize that you have to be a little bit more careful about who it is that you share information with right because maybe it could be used against you right or who it is that you decide to dive to right you're you're experiencing this problem i mean you'd like some feedback right that's the reality of it i'll just be sharing it with the entire world and i think that's something that that people very quickly learn right in politics and perhaps the the biggest thing is though on the flip side when you do find people who you can talk to and ask those very potentially basic questions it can mean a very very big a very big weight off your shoulders right like for me when i first started running i had questions about like what do i do now that my knew is gonna be on the ballot right i got all the signatures yeah i started asking around and the thing that i started kinda hearing common is well you wanna consider getting a treasure how do want a treasure for him where do i find one you know like truly it's like a political treasure do i google it like what i do yeah and i just started asking around where like you know so who do you recommend and you know a couple of people mentioned the name and i just decided to go with that name out a necessity as well i just needed to move on i couldn't think about it to my so i would say it's it's pretty similar right in some that you act but you have to be a lot more cautious i think about how you go about doing it and at the end of the day politics is politics there's a lot of unexpected things that happen maybe somebody who you thought would support you is not gonna support you maybe somebody who didn't think what's gonna support you is gonna support you mh that doesn't a little bit feel like house of cards but a lot more ut i think yeah okay okay yeah no you raised a really good point to just this heightened level of exceptional that i'm sure bi candidates have to experience because there's this light that's really shed on you there's a there's a what's the word there's a spotlight on you and you can't we can't afford to make certain mistakes that perhaps other people can make unfortunately and so you do have to meet more careful and so that insight is so helpful for me because that means will never running for politics i'm like vulnerable queen i share all my flaws on the podcast and everything i'm struggling with in all personal growth because that is my personality i am proud of you walter no no i it honestly like it's it's that's an honest thought that i have right like that's just something that that came to mind i think we're we're fairly similar and you know based on the conversations that we've had in terms of just wanting to excel and pushing ourselves to excel mh and the other thing i realized about politics so that you you have to have a short term memory with yourself as well like is there a couple of times like as i've been going through this process right on a day to day basis where i i think to myself gosh darn it i didn't do this i didn't do that and you can think about everything you did you and that's sometimes the way i function because i constantly hold myself to a high standard but sometimes you have to think about what what did i do right so the flip side of that and you realize like oh man i was able to knock on all these doors i made all these phone calls and you know like i did some really good stuff and so it's just this constant push and pull effect that i'm having to deal with but you know i i think everybody has to go through that and some people are more open about it than others yeah i agree and it's focusing on the progress which i love and speaking of progress i would love to learn more about your career purpose some of the work that you are pushing for through political office you know what do you really care about what do you wanna change i know we have so many problems and unfortunate issues that we need to tackle but what are you focusing on and what do you really care about sure so when i made the decision to jump into this race it very quickly became apparent to me that it wasn't gonna be easy that it was gonna be an uphill battle there are a total of six candidates running for this office for state assembly district forty three here in san fernando valley but i must admit i ultimately decided to still go for it because i felt strongly about my working class routes as well as my experience at the local state and national level which i've talked about but i also felt equally strongly about what it is that i'm trying to do for the community i'm focusing on several issues but among those issues are housing and homelessness which i have professional experience with protecting our environment which i also have experience with both personally and professionally and then public safety right and like i said all these issues i i either to have lived experience or professional experience with and i'll take for example housing and homelessness in my most recent position as a spokesperson for attorney general rob on i gotta work with the attorney general's office has what's called the housing justice team and it's a group of lawyers that work to do two things for the most part first make sure that we're holding accountable local governments that refuse to approve their fair share of housing it happens all too often unfortunately especially the more wealthy communities where they refuse to allow more affordable housing in their backyard right it's it's often seen as yeah the people are gonna commit crimes these people are no good when in reality last time i checked everybody commits crimes right white folks rich folks did too right so that is that is the bottom line right and i think it's really disheartening when i've heard some of those public comments and oh these folks are gonna bring crime no you california is just so freaking expensive at this point i mean i'm thirty two years old graduated from law school you know i have all these accomplishments and i can't afford to buy a a home on my own right here in in in california same here let's that can be a whole another podcast you're right listen yeah it it's it's clearly impossible right and so for me housing and homelessness is so critical we just need to build more housing i remember when i was trying to find a a place on my own here in the san fernando valley they're just warrant a lot of options and and if you just look across the board when you build more housing you're able to lower the cost that folks pay for for the rent so that's one of the issues protecting our environment i focus on environmental issues for attorney general po as well as be sarah for example recently before i left the office on leave we announced a loss against by with the biggest oil and gas companies in the world holding them accountable for misleading the public about the effects of climate change and fossil fuels right they for years have publicly said that there is no big connection between fossil fuels and and climate change went behind the scenes there's documentation that they have known there's a clear connection between the two and so it was awesome to be a part of that and on a personnel now when i was in law school i worked at our environmental advocacy center at northwestern which is like our legal clinic and i helped that an environmental justice organization on the sas southeast side of chicago providing them legal advice they were dealing with the a company that was refusing to do more to protect local citizens from a dangerous substance known as pet coke and so i just love making sure that people can continue or if not continue can start to breathe cleaner air drink cleaner water and then here locally where i live there's an airport that is open pretty much twenty four seven there are small engine airplanes that use lighted fuel and one of the big issues is that there have been several accidents over the last decade because of just a variety of factors but they have led to airplane crashes happening close to people's homes like literally right across from people's homes and again it's let it fuel right so proud to join the community here last year and pushing for stronger measures for folks to be able to live in their homes in greater peace right whether by having those airplanes no longer use let fuel and transition to un unload fuel by asking that folks here in the community especially right around the the the airport have noise canceling windows because those airplanes are freaking loud and then finally public safety right public safety i i grew up here couple of houses down from a local gang and i remember just being told by my parents trying not to walk later at night and don't look that way and mind your business essentially and it wasn't fun but it's a reality that not just myself but other folks screw up with right and so for me it's so incredibly important that people can feel safe in their neighborhoods and yeah that means tackling the root causes of poverty making sure that you provide opportunities for our youth making sure that they know that their community has their back right and so i'm so focused on that and also pushing for stronger gun safety regulations here in california we have some of the strongest laws but the number one killer of children is our guns yeah right and it's just a terrible terrible tragedy and i think we need to do more about it i agree i agree with all of that and thank you so much for sharing all of that and that you are you know doing this work because i'm i'm really proud of you i know don't have any personal experience but we talked about how challenging navigating politics can be but we still need people like you who are fighting for important policies and so i'm curious if you have any advice for anyone who has big dreams you said that you were lucky in that you knew what you wanted to do pretty early on in life which is wonderful and you've been able to achieve that but it doesn't seem like it was a linear path even because there's is no straight path okay that linear here yeah based on my understanding and i'm curious if you just have advice for someone who perhaps was in your shoes when they are for younger or just someone who might have big dreams wow yeah i mean i even though i've had that goal of continuing to be involved in public service you're absolutely right my path has been far from linear it is not straight at all because i remember when i was in high school i had this sort of mapped out chart of what exactly i was gonna do in from point a to point b and point c kind of type a in a way if you will and i remember at some point like i had applied for something some sort of scholarship that i didn't get and i was devastated i felt like the world was gonna end and then you realize well buddy this is just the beginning right life is gonna continue to have many of those setbacks right because sometimes we think well if we're just so determined that if we do our best that we're gonna get it but that doesn't always mean that you're gonna get what you're looking for so i think i was forced to slowly but surely be more adaptable right to to make sure that i wasn't so rigid about everything because if i was rigid about everything right about only doing point a and only doing point b there's absolutely no way that i would be where i'm at today i'll give you a quick example i had gotten an accept to the white house internship program and as crazy as it thompson now i was about to turn it down because i didn't have housing in washington dc and it was way too expensive for me to be able to afford it right and i i was at the point of turning it down when all of a sudden you know you're kinda telling enough people miracles can happen like i got to one of the heads of a open profit here who who's now your friend and he said hey man you know i heard that you got accepted and you're about to turn it down that's the most ridiculous thing i've ever overheard and so you connected me to some family friends of his and and they let me stay in their basement ultimately for the entirety that summer for freight in dc and they're now like my second batch of parents right and lee yeah and again had i been super rigid and just been like alright this isn't gonna work out blah blah blah like you know just move on no i you have to be flexible unfortunately and it hurts me to say that i'll be honest with you because i like things going according the plan but you just have to be flexible and above all realize that you can't do everything on your own i just finished knocking on doors i was mentioning before we got started and my mom was with me and it just it was a very comforting thing because it it was a reminder of exactly that right that sure you can try to do things on your own but it'll take you a lot longer to get to where you wanna go because people have gone through the experiences that you've gone through they have knowledge that they can offer and people like to talk you know they like to talk especially folks who have similar who have career pets that maybe you're interested in taking asking them out for coffee you know for a phone call whatever it is that you that you think might be helpful a lot of times people are very willing to do it and as i joking owning like to say if you don't hear from them one time make sure to check again because follow we're busy yeah follow yeah because people are busy and they have lives and things happen right but following up as well is so crucial because sometimes people truly are are caught up and something and they can't get back to you other times bugging them into coffee can can also work i i caution you to do that but you know a couple times doesn't hurt so i i think in general being flexible and being willing to learn from others and asking you know those important questions i think is is are the biggest thing that that come to mind for me i love that excellent advice yeah so you've already provided such great advice but i am curious if you have any final thoughts that you like to share with the listeners yeah no it's just just one thought that comes to mind really and that's if you're able to to make sure about i have met several people in my life who can't vote for different reasons right and they wish they could and so i always try to make sure that i tell my friends even when i'm not running for office i mean now that i'm running for ross you can rest assured i'm really bugging them even when i wasn't i i i have plenty of friends who know that when it's election time they're gonna get a text from me just because i'm truly a believer in the importance of of using your voice right in this case by casting a ballot and for us here in california the primary election is on march fifth and it's not just my race here in san fernando valley it's gonna be on the ballot right for state assembly it's also gonna be a us senate race between adam schiff katie porter properly and others right so i always think that there's something important to to vote for because if we don't vote for something then somebody else is gonna be happy to do that for us and so that that i think is the the final thought that comes to mind just making sure that we realize that we have the enormous privilege of being in this country right especially you unknown where my parents came from realizing that it is in a imperfect country that there are still so many things that we need to do to create a more perfect thing in and it's on us to do that right it's not us through politics it's also through other work as well but we can all do our part it's it's important that we do just that thank you for listening to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows on the lessons learned remember to share the podcast with friends and family and my hope is that these stories hope you navigate your no straight path journey if this content is adding value to your life and i hope it is please take a few minutes out of your day to read the show and write a review you can click the link in the show notes to write a review it helps other listeners find the show and i just really appreciate it have a lovely week embrace the journey and remember you're not alone

hey everyone this is ashley men papa your host and resident storyteller and welcome to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows and the lessons learned no straight path is brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the audio destination for business professionals we are digging into the human stories behind success and my hope as always is that you leave the conversation inspired motivated and excited about your journey hey friends hey i just wanted to say a quick hello to everyone and wish you a happy new year if you've been following the show on social media then you know that we are easing into the new year we are going to start this year's season on wednesday february twenty first yes i'm super excited and my sa article has officially ended so i am back to balancing corporate life with podcasting life it's a really exciting time i made a career transition into d work so diversity equity inclusion and belonging work and it just feels aligned with my purpose of helping others feel seen and valued you'd heard and respected and it's just been wonderful so far but it has certainly been a no straight path journey to get here and i just can't wait to share my journey on a solo episode at some point this year so stay tuned for that because i am living this multi hyphen life i am still figuring out how i can continue to bring you inspiring content without burning out i'll have to get creative and just take some lessons learned from past so if you remember justin key and his story he's a psychiatrist in author and when he was working on his book deal with harper collins he decided to use short stories he had written in the past and with his full time psychiatry practice and family life i just didn't understand how he could do it all he has a wife and three kids he just didn't have time to write a new novel so he got creative and he recycled old content and published you know an incredible book so i know that there are ways to do this i just don't know how yet but i do know that you should expect breaks in the podcast in fact we're going to normalize breaks in content creation creator burnout is real and i'm just committed to producing content from an inspired energized and reflective place that's just where the best content comes from and that's how i wanna create so to stay up to date with a podcast i'd follow no straight path on instagram and on linkedin and you can sign up for my newsletter on subs yes i finally i finally have the newsletter everyone i've been going through different iterations of it but if you wanna hear more about my thoughts and mu about pursuing a life well lived then i would definitely sign up for the subs stack newsletter because i'm gonna do more of my kind of blog content if you've read my blog a little bit more i'm gonna be a lot shorter but more just mu about life in general and speaking of a life well lived my content is often reflective of whatever season i'm navigating in life it's a reflection of my curiosity of the pain points i'm navigating and just the things i love and you all know that i love vulnerable storytelling and inspiring story so there will be a lot of that but i also wanna mix it up a bit this season mindset work in cultivating inner peace it changed my life and i'd like to chat with experts who specialize in healthy mindset well being experts financial experts relationship experts people who can provide practical advice on how to live a fulfilling life so if you know anyone please reach out i'd love to hear from you and to give a bit more context about the season of life i'm navigating right now i wanted to leave you all with a message and i wrote on instagram at the end of last year and it really sums up my journey in twenty twenty three okay here it goes this year i bet on myself in one i'll admit that i didn't always feel like i was winning at a few points in my journey i questioned whether taking the risk was worth it as soon as i started to loosen my grip on my vision and focus on my interior life things started to fall in place i had to take a hard look at myself who do i become when things aren't going my way how do i move through life with uncertainty who do i want to become the answer was clear i wanted to cultivate presence and our peace and an un unfavorable joy so i did the work i strengthened my faith leaned into gratitude and built self trust muscle god answered my specific prayers and my subconscious desires although i am so grateful for the outcome i am truly grateful for the journey i'm becoming the woman of my dreams my mama would be so proud so as i enter this new year i am going to continue to focus on becoming thank you michelle obama y'all know i love her you know and it's a process it's a journey and i hope you join me in this journey at becoming because it's worth it

it was really really challenging to have both of those things be happening to be at once feel like i'd finally made it but i was also being held back in a really sort of painful way right and so i had to really come to terms with can i even do this anymore is they is this even healthy for my body like what is my body telling me by giving these signs right hey friends i can't believe twenty twenty three is coming to an end this year has just been an incredible year for no straight path i want to sincerely thank all of you for your support it means so much and just thank you for sharing the podcast with your network thank you for the mentions and the repo thank you for them messages thank you for all the positive reviews and thank you to everyone who donated to the kickstarter earlier this year this support helped me put out weekly content aim to inspire according to spotify wrapped eighty nine percent of you all to discovered the podcast this year you actually love the good enough job at episode with simon stalls off i love that too and if you haven't read the book you definitely need to i'll put it in the show notes and the podcast was streamed in forty different countries the podcast has shared so many times and we saw lots of growth in the numbers and while i'm so grateful for this growth i think you all know that my hope is at the show helped you grow personally i certainly have i have more thoughts and reflections on personal growth and much more that i plan to share next year but i wanted to actually close out this year with an interview with someone who has had such a positive impact on my podcast podcasting journey and that's carly baker she is a manager of the hubspot creators and carly is actually on the cusp of the younger millennial and older gen z age cut so we're just gonna call her our first guest from gen yes i thought we'd mix it up in here from the younger generation they are the future wow i know i sound like a millennial auntie because i am friends i'm always like carly is this cool what do you think but seriously carly has a great story with wonderful insights it's been so great to get to know her as i've been going through my podcasting journey and we talk all about carly transition from a creative industry to the corporate world and how she let go of one dream and embrace a multi passionate identity i appreciate carly honesty and deep reflection and before we get to our conversation let me tell you a bit more about her so carly baker is an audio file and creative based in boston and carly passion for the podcast industry can be traced back to her roots as a professional musician where she spent significant time working in and exploring the facets of the audio industry as an artist in freelancer her approach to working with creators is informed by her own experiences in the creator sphere currently a creator partnerships manager at she specializes in inspiring engaging and supporting creators across platt forms to achieve their goals and drive business impact when her headphones aren't in you can find carly deep the racks at your local vintage establishment and local bookstore yes carly loves to reach she actually read over a hundred books last year which is insane yeah don't know how she did it but very impressive and inspiring and speaking of inspiring i can't wait for you y'all to hear this conversation so let's get to it alright carly thank you so much for joining me on the pod i am so excited to chat with you i just love you as a person and your story so thank you for joining me oh thank you so much ashley it's such your privilege to be here i'm really excited to share my story and get to chat with you today absolutely so you know the drill i wanna start from the beginning i wanna start with your childhood can you tell me about how you grew up tell me about those childhood aspirations and dreams that you had for yourself yeah absolutely so i am the youngest of two and i grew up in the pacific northwest so definitely very arts focused community i think is how a lot of people would describe the pacific northwest and i was always i'd like to think of myself as always kind of being the very energetic kind of weird kid that a lot of people probably know we're gonna think about or have some sort of image of in their mind i was always very creative and one of my earliest memories from school is being the person when we're supposed to be you know sort of silently working on things in class who's like always humming in a tune or singing and the other kids always telling me to be quiet so i feel like that encapsulates a lot of the kind of energy and and spirit that i have today i've always been someone that's been deeply creative and really in touch with that part of myself and so it's kind of just been a continuing thread through throughout my life since from a very young age i love that and so tell us about the pursuit of your dreams and your childhood dreams that you've had growing up yeah absolutely so i developed a childhood dream pretty early on growing up i didn't come from a family that's musically inclined in terms of practicing themselves but was always listening to a lot of music and engaging with a lot of art from a very young age and my mom specifically is a really big fan of opera and so because i was so interested in music as a kid i spend a lot of time going to concerts with her and i sang in elementary school choir and learned how to play the recorder and you know did all the music classes i just very quickly became really passionate about it and i started you know as soon as i started to sort of learn in instruments and engage with music i knew that it was gonna be something that i was gonna wanna do for the rest of my life and i have a little bit more of a specific story that i can share in terms of how i came to the ob which ended up being a really big part of my life for many years so i went to a symphony concert with my mom and we went to the seattle symphony of course and we are sitting in the audience and a piece called s odd was one of the pieces that was on the program and it has a very large ob part and the piece of music is is known really widely as a an excellent showcase for woodland instruments but specifically for the ob and it's funny now because i've actually played that piece so many times i've probably more times that i can count but i just felt really enchanted and drawn to this instrument and i turned to my mom and said i wanna play that and so then of course she had to like figure out what it was and that really started sort of me choosing something that i was very interested in and that sort of led to me starting and kind of going on the journey but when i started middle school i had wanted to start playing the elbow right away and it's actually one of the most difficult instruments and so and i asked my music teacher she said no that i had to wait until i was older and then i needed to learn a different instrument first and she actually ended up going on maternity leave and so when she was on maternity leave i told the sub and the sub was very excited and started me with lessons in her office and while all the other kids were playing in the ensemble during class i was just in the teacher's office like trying to teach myself and figure out how to learn this instrument and of course when my real teacher came back she was pretty upset but at that point i had started and i wasn't gonna stop and that really was sort of the the start of of the journey and i really got attached pretty quickly and decided that i wanted to move to new york and i wanted to go to music school and that i wanted to be a performer for the rest of my life and that just sorta of started the the journey and everything that i did after that was always done in pursuit of that well that's so amazing and just the ob thank you for also just the music lesson because i never even heard of that instrument but that's very interesting and just how you were just determined at a young age to achieve this dream and go after it and even with your teacher going on maternity leave and just trying to make sure that you got to do the thing you wanted to do and you did it and so from my understanding you've been pursuing this dream for quite some time in your life and then there's a pivotal moment where you actually have to let go of that dream can you tell us a little bit about that did you make it all the way to a professional music setting to college tell us a little bit more about that mean that music journey and then that unforeseen pivot yeah absolutely so once i started you know i was in the in the teacher's office and very quickly i had decided that i had wanted to i needed a teacher i taught myself everything good i could do i learned as much as i could from my music and so i started to take private lessons and what i think was very unique about my journey taking lessons was actually the teacher that i started with in in sixth grade she was my private teacher all the way until i was eighteen and i went to college and then i would continue to take lessons with her while i was in college when i would come home and so we had a really strong bond and she isn't too much older than me maybe twelve thirteen years older than me and i think just sort of saw her as kind of an older sister in in a way and she had achieve my dream she had gone to new york she had studied at j she was a full time musician and was teaching lessons and came from the same place that i came from and it felt like it made it so much more she just provided such a good example for me and and made it just so that i could see myself really doing those things more so than just sort of picturing them like it seemed very achievable in a way that it hadn't been before and so i'd started to work with her and right away she said okay if you wanna do this let's do it and here is everything we need to do and then i just kinda went on that journey and you know that led to me in high school performing with a bunch of youth symphony so i was probably playing twenty to thirty hours a week doing lessons and i really had extreme tunnel vision from a very young age and was not really interested in participating in anything that wasn't going to push me forward on that path but at the same time this was when i sort of started to feel the wins change and feel like i'm not quite sure if i can do this forever not because i didn't want to but because of sort of signals that my that my body were was giving me so when i think about sort of when the when things got a little bit more challenging for for me and when i started to as i said bill the winds change which is funny i guess when talking about a wind instrument yeah but i i started to deal with a lot of pain in my hands and in the musician community in general and there's a lot of judgment and a lot of shame around having performance based injuries it's seen a lot as a weakness which is really unfortunate and upsetting and i think maybe mirrors some of what injured athletes and and folks and other industries might feel as well but i started to have pretty severe pain in my hands and mostly just do from overuse of course you use you know when you play a wind instrument you use your hands and your fingers a lot and you're constantly having to balance an instrument and you're having to sit in a very stiff position for a very long time and basically i had a bunch of treatment i had ac i had a hand specialist that i went to see i had steroid treatments i had done kind of everything that i had could you know to try to make it l for me and eventually i would wake up in the morning and my hands would be in fist i wouldn't be able to open my hands because my tendons i had so much debt damage on my tendons and so that really was a big reality check for me and at that point i couldn't hide it i'd been hiding it at school i did end up going to new york i did end up fulfilling that part of my dream and worked really hard while i was there and it was difficult because i was really living out everything that i had worked towards and was living sort of in my idea of success and having these amazing opportunities and doing more than i ever could have thought but i was also hiding behind this i was also hiding this injury and was it was really really challenging to have both of those things be happening to be at once because i feel like i'd finally made it but i was also being held back in a really sort of painful way right and so i had to really come to terms with can i even do this anymore is is this even healthy for my body like what is my body telling me by giving these signs right like is this even going to be something that will be obtain for me to continue on for the next couple of years nonetheless like for the rest of my career right and so i kind of came to a crossroads where i had to come to the realization that maybe this isn't the path for me and and that really started me down sort of a whole new journey of having to really sit down and be honest with myself about what was possible in my life and how i wanted to navigate through that well thank you for sharing that just because i feel like your story is certainly one that a lot of people need to hear and i feel like we don't talk about it enough just even just the idea of working so hard towards one specific dream but then your body literally tells you you cannot do it anymore and you're right now does happen to athletes but it does happen in the music industry it happens in the tech industry a lot of people are now dealing unfortunately with carp tunnel but and getting early arthritis like there's definitely more talk around these issues and how we can mitigate those challenges but sometimes it's like you actually just have to let go of the dream and i'm curious about this pivot for you when you talk about what's possible for my life you know what were you thinking in that next moment what were you thinking about your dreams and and how did you even process this pivot yeah i mean to be honest i still don't know if i've processed it it's been about four years i would say since i yeah finished finished school and sort of went down a new path and my kind of immediate choice was i felt like i'd been so focused on one thing and i truly was so focused on one thing for so long that i realized that so much of self identity and my self worth was tied to me being successful at this for a lot of different reasons i'm a very stubborn person and i think that that's definitely part of it and i also spent a long time i grew up in an environment where a lot of people told me that my dreams were not possible and you know you you won't make it you're you're gonna fail you should do something else and i was so that just made me wanna do it even more and so i think getting to a point where i felt like maybe those people were right was really challenging just for me personally because i'd spent so much time wanting to prove to myself and i think also partially wanting to prove to others that i could do it and when i had to walk away not because i was choosing that for myself necessarily but because i physically couldn't do it anymore that was extremely defeating and it's still something that i think back a lot on i i still don't think that i'm fully have let it go in the way that maybe would best serve me and but i've also realized that it's just a part of the journey and when you see yourself through specific lens from such a young age for such a long time you get very accustomed to that lens and so when you're trying on other lenses it feels very uncomfortable right and so that's been a big part of the challenge that i've had but it's also been really beautiful because i've been able to see myself through so many other lenses and to tap into so many other parts of myself that i really ignored or didn't really even give myself a chance to explore so it's also been very beautiful and in that way the first kind of pivot that i took was my original plan had to had been to do a masters in music and i knew that i couldn't perform now and so i decided to do a master's in music business which i felt like kind of tied in a lot of my experiences of being a freelancer and every musician is basically their own marketer having to go out in network and promote and get gigs and all of those things and you know there's i had also just personally had a lot of bad experiences working with people in the music business and so i decided that i wanted to make a change in the music industry and studying music business and so i enrolled at a master's degree and learned a lot about marketing and during that time i'd had been a part of the service economy for a long time and wanted more of a career focused role i guess you could say and so i started to i i did a marketing my first marketing role at the university and while also learning marketing in classes and kinda just went head first but still you know wasn't really sure what i wanted to do it just felt like a good option and a way for me to use kind of my creative brain and and learn new things and that's when i realized i'd been a marketer all along the entire time when i've been a musician i just didn't have a name or you know have any idea of sort of strategy and and those types of things and so yeah that really was kind of the start of me moving away from being just a musician and starting to explore sort of other your paths for myself yeah i think that's great and i think that there are a lot of people who might move from acc to corporate career in various aspects and in various industries and for various reasons right yours was an unfortunate injury other people it might be financial and i'm curious about the advice that you might have or someone that's going from this creative space to this corporate space yeah absolutely and i will say all of this with i definitely do not have it figured out i'm still very much like on this journey myself and these are some things that i am either personally working on right now or have been working on in the past or plan to work on in the future so i always wanna make sure that i do share that yeah it's a process we're all learning yeah yes we are every single day at least for me always always learning and discovering but i think one of the largest challenges that i faced and going from the creative to corporate space is that i spent so many years building for myself and designing and doing all practicing and putting in their reps and doing all of these things and really building a personal brand and and building for myself and now working in a corporate environment you're really more in a role of building for other people so you're building for the company or building for your team you're not as focused on only building for yourself and doing things that always have you in mind and i think that's been really challenging for me is figuring out okay if i wanna build for myself what does that look like in this new way right like how am i still building for myself outside of work like what challenging my own view of what even building for myself is and so a good example of this for me is i this year got into playing competitive pin ball which is like very very random and it's very fun and i really struggled when i first started of feeling like i had to be really good and i needed to be the best person and i needed to practice the most and do all of these things and what i realized is like i was just trying to treat this new interest like the interest that i had forever and that it actually wasn't serving me to peel that way and so i think having awareness of how you wanna build and what's important to you and like how are you serving yourself if you spend a lot of time maybe in a role or or at a company where you're you're building on behalf of others and sort of what that what that looks like so that's definitely a big distinction i think between what it feels like to go from a a creative self building role to a corporate job and yeah that's definitely been a challenge and then when i think about sort of advice that i would have for someone that has to make a career pivot because of you know sort of unforeseen circumstances i think knowing and being comfortable with the fact that like walking away is a step forward i think when i made the decision to walk away i spent a lot of time thinking about the past and about things that i could have should of would have done as many of us do and also being really scared by the fact that i didn't have a future that was perfectly planned out and i was so busy being pulled forward and backward that i couldn't see that where i was was enough and that just making that step was a really good step and meant that i was actually gonna be healthier and was just another a part of a new journey and because i was so afraid of a new journey that was really difficult just to be present and to be okay with that and i think when i think about so many of my friends that are in the creative sphere and specifically maybe in in music or in a creative a part of the arts where there's a very defined path with very defined milestones it can be difficult to find yourself at a place where you don't have a defined path and you don't have those milestones you feel very lost and it's very hard to feel grounded and where you are and so that's one of the biggest challenges that i've had and things i've had to learn over time it's like it's it's okay to not know what you're gonna do in the future it's honestly probably preferable because i feel like every day i'm learning so much about myself and what my interests are and just not having the freedom and not feeling confined by certain things that i have to do has really allowed me just to be more my self and in every way and i think that's been really beautiful i love that so much and you know it's so interesting because when you were describing your journey even though it's a creative journey it really is very analogous to a lot of the corporate journeys it sounded like going to law school for me and then mh going and becoming an attorney and all of these different milestones and things that are set that you have to follow and then after that you kinda there's this uncertainty and you don't know what's next mh but it's just a little bit surprising because i thought that the creative industry had more of that flexibility but it seems like we're all kind of dealing with these different markers of success in every different industry and we're all at some point tying our self worth to it you just said you've been able to become more of yourself and i think that's very profound can you tell us more about that like who are you and how are you stepping further into who you are yeah absolutely i mean i think the biggest one of the biggest things for me is changing the way that i think about and view myself as i think i had touched on a little bit earlier i really only viewed myself through the single lens of being a musician and i really blocked out pretty much any other thing that i was interested in that wasn't moving that dream forward and and was affecting sort of the way that i sought myself and when i think about myself now i've seen myself through many different lenses and i would identify more as being a sort of a multi passionate creative i've rediscovered my love for reading i have this like pin ball situation going on i play as a part of a league and that's great i started sewing like i am no longer con finding myself to just seeing myself through one lens i realized that i am interested in many things and that that's one of the most beautiful things about myself is that i can give myself the freedom to explore and to never feel like i can only be one thing so that's been a really big change and i think it's also been very scary it's something that i is beautiful and i also really struggle with and i think you know sometimes when i sit down and i have these moments where i cannot believe that i work a desk job i can't believe that i work corporate i never saw this as something that would ever be in the cards for me or whatever work and i think it's been really grounding and has provided a sense of stability in a way that i never really had when i was a musician and also never thought that i wanted or would be a good fit for me and so i think the entire journey has just been me challenging my own fear in my own sort of blockers that i put in my way and as i said in i'm very stubborn and it's very easy for me to be led by fear even though i think a lot of folks would maybe seen me as a very confident person i actually struggle with that a lot and have a lot of self doubt and constantly have a strong internal dialogue with myself about these things and yeah i think it's it's just been such a journey to see myself change and it's been hard but it's also been it's something i didn't expect i expected myself to feel really resent about this journey and yes i do feel resent about it sometimes for sure i definitely have really challenging days but i've also surprised myself in so many ways and i think finding more ways to surprise ourself especially as we grow into careers and as we get older it's a really important part of self discovery and the ways that we change yeah no i think that is really excellent every so many things that you just said i'm curious about a few things so one you talked about these different lenses and seeing yourself in different ways this you know multi passionate creative which i think is an excellent description of you and people if you follow carly i'll put it in the show notes but on social media you'll see that she is also very fashionable i love your clothing every time i see you but so certainly just you know a reflection of all these different interests that you have and you were so singular focused before do you feel like you're happier now that's a great question yes it's funny i hesitate to say yes but i really do truly believe that i am happier and i think it's for a lot of reasons actually but i think deep down it's a couple of different things i look in the mirror and i feel like i understand who i see looking back at me and i think for a long time i didn't feel that way would i say that that was just because i was on a different path and a musician no i think that that's part of it but i also think that you know there just were so many i i wasn't living a stable life i wasn't taking care of myself in the way that i do now there's a lot of factors of course but when i look at myself and who i am in my friendships in my marriage and the way that i am at work like i totally feel like i'm out of place now where i can be myself and people like love it and embrace that and i don't have to feel embarrassed or in secure or not feel like i can be myself in those situations and so because of that alone and being able to be fully present with myself i would say like the happiest that i've ever been even though my life looks different than i thought and there's still challenges of course but i would say for sure yeah yeah and when you say there's still challenges of course what do you mean by that is it the resentment it is it the regret is there a way that some of the work that lit you up in your music career does any of that translate to any of the work that you do now yeah absolutely and i think i'm always trying to move myself closer to feeling that way through my work i i'm a big cry i'm a pis so i i'm a big cry i cry all the time it's a really good really release for me and i still have moments where and i was just crying to my husband about this the other day about the fact that like i just sometimes cannot believe that this is my life it's so surprising to me and i think it's a good surprise it's challenged my abilities my willingness to learn my stubborn all of these different things and i think what one of the most challenging parts of moving from creative to corporate is is figuring out for me how to continue to tap into that creative side of my brain i do think that it is one of the strongest parts of my spirit and is one of the biggest sort of assets that i have as a person and so i'm always trying to figure out in my day job how can i activate this more how can i bring more of this to the work and so that's kind of just an ongoing process and i i don't think that that'll probably be ever go away i think it's just a part of me that's yearning to to use those those skills and of course i am still a very creative person and and do a lot of things outside of work that fulfill that but i'm always kind of on a journey of how to bring more of that energy to my corporate job and i think that ties into a little bit of advice that i would like to give people which is find a way to stay connected to your dream i think for me it was very painful to figure out how to incorporate those parts of myself and of a dream that was my dream for so long and and have a s relationship with that and also bring some of that into my corporate job and so that's kind of been my focus for right now now that it's a little bit less painful and i've let go a lot of sort of the resentment and difficulties of okay how do i re energize these feelings and this excitement and figure out how to bring this side of myself to my corporate job yeah okay another one another gym i love that find a way to stay connected to your dream no matter what that is extremely important i think that is certainly advised that i need to follow i try to follow in my life i think it's like you've always gotta stay connected to the things that light you up and you may not be able to always get it in your corporate job and that is okay you know we would want to build skills we want stability you know we gotta make a living and but there are ways to just bring yourself bring that creativity and as you said previously also just seeing yourself in all these different lenses so you're able to pour into different parts of yourself even if it's not from a job or career perspective mh in the pin ball competition thing i love that too because i think also as we get older we lose our relationship with fun in a way yes you know like just actually being intentional about having fun in you know when just comes to like playing games or or making it more competitive i think that's so fun i used to love pin my husband and i we like to go to our arcade sometimes and i'm always i always just like leave it so happy and fulfilled so that's just another reminder too and i just think this conversation has been so great carly it's been so helpful i feel like we need to talk more you know no straight path has so many different iterations and so that's why i really wanna do to come on the show because i like wait there's a creative to corporate we talk a lot about oh i was in this corporate corporate started yeah you know this creative industry this creative business but no it it happened so many and it's just so twist and turns but it can happen in so many different ways and so your specific story i think it's gonna be really helpful for a lot of people if you have any final thoughts please share oh any final thoughts i feel like i always have lots of thoughts of course but one of the biggest things and pieces of advice in sort of directional thoughts that someone that i actually work with had shared with me when i was going through a little bit of a role change a couple of months ago was really think about how are you filling your cup and i think that this is a great question not only to ask yourself in terms of your career and your job but also outside of work i think especially now in the age of the internet it's very hard to feel like you have control over how you spend your time how much time you spend doing things whether or not you're prioritizing doing things for yourself doing things for other people like you have to work really hard to be aware of how are you filling your cup how are you doing things that are getting you closer to where you wanna be how are you spending your energy how are you spending your time who is in your circle all of these sort of things that kind of it mixed together into some kind of life cocktail i'm really gl into this cup this cup idea but i do think it is interesting and it's really important to be in touch with yourself and how everything that you're doing is is supporting you whether directly or or indirectly and so i would just suggest people think about how they're filling their cup and how at the end of the day how you feel about those types of things and how you're supporting yourself i think we as humans spend a lot of time thinking about other people and supporting other people whether that's at work or in relationships or when you're driving and letting someone cut in front of you of these different ways that we serve other people and i think it's also really important to think about how you're serving yourself because at the end of the day you can't serve other people if you're not taking care of yourself it's super important so be in touch with who you are and and what you need and try to give yourself as as much of that as you can well thank you so much this conversation definitely filled like up deep human connection so thank you carly for coming on the show i appreciate you mia thank you so much for having me ashley thank you for listening to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows on the lessons learned remember to share the podcast with friends and family and my hope is that these stories help you navigate your no straight path journey if this content is adding value to your life and i hope it is please take a few minutes out of your day to read the show and write a review you can click the link in the show notes to write a review it helps other listeners find the show and i just really appreciate it have a lovely week embrace the journey and remember you're not alone

what you don't say creates distance right so if you are in a some sort of partnership whether that is and i've i've literally used this in my relationship with my girlfriend in my business relationship with my brother and now i'm extremely conscious about it is what you don't say creates distance and what does that mean there's a lot of times where we go that certain actions from or loved ones or people close to us might create some sort of reaction in us and then we don't say anything and we you know kinda like stuck deep inside of us and that just builds up right my build up some sort of resentment in my build up any other filling it could be mainly i would say it builds up some negative feelings hey friends we have another great episode for the holiday season and i just had a really thoughtful conversation with luis and bon ka also known as the biz they are the creators of content pro it which is part of the hubspot podcast network and this conversation it was just so much fun luis and fo or brothers and technically both of their names are luis but the younger brother actually goes by fo z which probably makes things a bit easier for them especially because they are brothers and business partners yes i think the unique thing about this conversation is that they are actually family and when you meet them you automatically feel like family they are just so warm and welcoming and they remind me of my uncles cracking jokes and just having fun and as we gather with our families this holiday season blood chosen or both i think this conversation sheds lights on some important themes the value of laughter and storytelling the value of having honest and difficult conversations to help bring you closer to the people you love to the people you care about and the value of connection and community so before we get to this conversation let me tell you a bit more about luis and fa they are the dynamic brothers behind biz and they have spent over seven years mastering the art of content creation that drives opportunities and profit as online personalities owners of studio podcast suites and host of the top point five percent global podcast content profit which is in the hubspot podcast network they're on a mission to help companies business owners and content creators transform their content into value patch assets that amplify their message build trust and create consistent opportunities drawing from their experiences with industry giants like hubspot orange theory red bull chat homes international and more they've developed game changing frameworks such as the nbc minimum viable content yes clever not mvp these venezuelan brothers once on a path to professional soccer pivoted to entrepreneurship driven by a passion to support their family back home and make a global impact but what they cherish most are the invaluable relationships or through their podcasting journey and it is an exciting journey and i can't wait for you all to hear about it so let's get to it alright i am so excited to have the dis luis ph or actually luis and luis you can explain that the brothers on the show today thank you guys so much for just coming on no straight path i love your story i love your energy we spent some time together at podcast movement recently and we just had so much fun so i'm just so happy to have you here yeah actually is that is an honor and privilege should be here with you i'm i'm excited to hopefully share our story and before inspire some people we'll see yeah when i when i saw your email on my inbox you guys wanna come to my i like hey can't cancel cancel everything on the thursday you can tell you can ask my brother how am i coordinating times and giving him time for meetings and he will tell you i'm not the best but as soon as i saw your email i was like we gotta make this happen oh i certify that that's actually true like he's actually really bad at meeting times so so yeah thank you for having this absolutely thank you guys so much so yeah well thank you for responding to the email you got it on scheduled or here and yeah so i am excited to talk to you about your childhood can you guys yeah let's start from the beginning especially as brothers tell me about how you guys grew up about your personalities yeah let's talk about that yeah for once up upon of time in nineteen ninety to three now okay do not my brother was a fairly happy kid until i was born that's also true i certified you know no but i'm gonna lead with this one personally i feel like i haven't change that much on a personality wise you know i think i've i still live as a child in in many ways you know in in good ways you know i had that happiness that kinda like life wonder that curiosity i'm very curiosity driven but obviously in sense of responsibilities and awareness all these other skills hopefully i've grown up but you know growing up we're from venezuela south america for those that don't know exactly where is this is brand next columbia right on top of brazil and we live there pretty much for whole life i i moved out of there at age eighteen and for those that are not very familiar with venezuela is a country in a little bit of turmoil right is that i feel like it's kinda settling up a little bit but not really and you know we grew up in a country that was starting to turn into somewhat of a communist reg jim and you know there was a lot of insecurity out on the streets right my brother has a crazy story about that if you want to dive a little bit about that later but we were fortunate enough that we had we were a medium class family right our parents love parents they're still married which we obviously were extremely grateful for right i feel like in a world where now that is not as common and we did have a lot of opportunities and we have parents that sacrificed a lot to give us the opportunities right for example my brother at the age of fifteen he moved to europe for a little bit to chase his dream playing soccer we always wanted to be soccer players right and or that literally moved everything in his world to make that happen and me personally at the age of eighteen i managed through soccer get us scholarship here in the us right and that's how we managed to kinda like escape that regime by home and find new opportunities so i wouldn't you know as much as sometimes i would like to have that awesome entrepreneurial story of like a rag to riches and all that stuff by any means we were rich but also by any means we had huge huge like struggles and and this crazy story right but definitely a lot of the values that were instilled in us by our parents right or dad or mom have played a huge role when it comes to yeah the things that we're building right now on or on or a entrepreneurship courier yeah i think the concept of family right was a big one growing up like our family was always like having lunch together as much as possible being together as much as possible or that was very big on that spending a lot of time together he would drive us to the soccer games every single weekend right like and that family value was something that it it is something that i today remember right i have two kids now i'm married to so that's something definitely like spending time together so one of the things and i'm through that time together we got to live a ton of stuff and our dad was always like you know be be humble and like be honest honesty the biggest thing ever and so with that obviously you know it's as us kids or or as a teenagers years you you have your rebel moments you know i at seventeen for example took one of the cars in the house and and crashed in the middle of the highway without permission no driver's license right that that's one of those crazy events yep that that that happened but besides that right we had a pretty normal childhood and we're very fortunate even though we're living in in a country like venezuela to to be in a really good school that taught english and we open opportunities and yeah for us and like once he said right like at fifteen i was in i went to europe to play he also came for like a summer to play in europe as well then we both came here because of those opportunities based on honestly relationships that our parents develop there so like from that very young age we were exposed to our dad is super personal well like he will make friends in any line he will be like in the line for the bank and then best friends with a guy in front of it give that's can talk to a wall if you want talk to the wall you know our mom same thing like every time we had like a family the gathering like they were the there still are like the the soul of the party right they dance together that my mom sings and i think being exposed to that allowed us to tackle world when we left home on yes under a a different perspective yes but i will add as we go on this journey we've had pinpoint some challenges some triggers if you call that have developed from that childhood right because like again our parents loving parents and we know that they have the best intentions when racing us but at the same time they know what all all they know is what they know right and they don't know what they don't know and at the end of the day for example we've pinpoint they just simplify it as the money mindset that or that had right has had an effect on us growing up and on entrepreneurship career right so those type of things right that might not be as visible as other aspects of the story those have had a huge huge influence on us and on our awareness on how we're trying to grow in this journey yeah but both parents right like our dad chemical engineer mom is a you know university professor so no no entrepreneurship at all in our household we always felt like a nature or at least i did you know from a very young age like make at least like some money right like we didn't have an allowance deputy like it's a or that was like we'll figure out you know watch cars or do dubai and we ended up going to this market and grabbing you know buying is like counterfeit soccer jersey for like five bucks right and then taking them to our school on selling them for like twenty five or thirty bucks and or grabbing downloading music from like live wire or because i'm putting them into the cds and then selling those cds in scope so they're there's always an element i will say this obviously that is super illegal we don't come down on any of that but back home that was super normal for us growing up because there's traffic everywhere where you go and you would go on the highway and there was this crazy traffic and there would be these guys we called them bull in spanish i don't i don't really know the name in english but these people with this kinda like car huge car hanging up their neck with pirate movies and cds these and games and selling it and you see cups stopping and buying this pirate used this counterfeit for your movies right so you grow up thinking is normal in our neighborhood right on top of like a bakery there was this guy that had a shop like he literally mortar shop a i brick and mortar shop and all he sold and rented was counterfeit burned movies right he would download him from the internet put him on a cd and then you would go and rent like a literally like a counterfeit blog blockbuster us and again if we don't condone any of this that's very illegal but that was the reality we grew up and so for us when we were kinda like trying to make money because our friends had an allowance we did it and you know we wanted to go to the movie theater with our friends etcetera we needed to figure out ways to make money and doing this type of things was kinda like the solutions that we were seeing around us right and at the end of the day bringing it back to entrepreneurship that's one of the lessons as well which is there's problems everywhere that need to be solving obviously there's legit and on ways to solve those problems but in our eyes was paul or friends music because wow this let's burn some some cds and provide the the music and music for yeah yeah wow okay i love so much about your entire childhood it's just sounds like such yes such a great childhood with just so much support and family and fun and it's so funny that you said that to just about the pirate videos and how there were just hold shops like that remember when i was studying abroad in peru and my host dad he said okay we're gonna go shopping we're gonna go to the black market and i said the black market like is this okay is this the who's was like no everyone goes everyone goes it's fine and so we went was this huge you know flea market with all these different things but certainly were like knock off brands and things of that nature but it was just like the family pastime on sundays which was bunny so yeah yeah we it's a typical thing we yeah we actually have a that there was kinda like a black market like that that's what we used to buy the soccer jersey yeah and it's called cemetery market yeah and you know if if you're not scared by that name as a ten year old you know something is odd so my that is alright right we're gonna go to cemetery market we're gonna buy some shirts we're gonna buy you some clothes awesome let's it go and around that time there was this rumor about this weird drug it's not a rumor it was a very legit thing yeah well i guess it was a legit thing about this drug that they were using to like i don't know knock how people on then kidnapping and whatever they used to call butt dang dang and it was pretty much like again i don't have no idea but they would say that if they touch you it could transfer through like skin and you would pretty much like pass out and they could take you at least that's what i remember off to my knowledge so our dad like sits us down like in the living room right and keep in mind like i don't know if once it was ten i was like thirteen at the time yeah and he's like hey guys you know we're gonna go to the market and we're gonna walk be walking from the subway station to there there's gonna be busy a lot of people and the way that these markets are set up is that you have like this sideways containers right and each container is like a shop so it's like just stay close to me and our dad is a very fast worker he's a fast worker like he would throw rocks at me while we were playing sock practicing in soccer because i did in jog fast enough he's like ron and he would just like throw we love him oh i love my dad but and he goes stay close to me because butt dag out there and did touch you right you're faint and then you'll be taking yeah pretty much does debrief right so you know personally i i'm like okay perfect i'm just gonna say close to my dad and i don't i think like you in the drive there or i must slow walk i'm a very curious person so i like to look around so we get to the to the market and or that just starts going and he's not like this type of person that stops to look at the options if he's going for one thing he's just gonna go straight to that spot and then pick it up and then leave so he was going and i'm behind them you know behind the two of them and i'm kinda like trying to catch up and all of a sudden these people that the people at their mark and try to sell they're very handy like they will grab and they're like hey come here come check this out right but it's normal like home right but or that didn't tell us that he forgot that part that important part of the story so we're walking in there and this random guy he's like hey look we have all this stuff and he grabs my arm and i'm not kidding i think because of the fear that i was feeling my bluff just i just everything just came down i i didn't pass out what i got this see i was so afraid on scream i started screaming dad dad i'm guy grabbed me he was like oh my gosh panicked because like i'm so sorry i'm so sorry and then i guy came in like gave him water sugar water yeah i i had to sit down for a little bit and take her breath i was panicking but at the end of the day we got all the goods nothing happened it was it was all okay but just a representation right like a visual image of how this market has to go which are a little crazy i wonder how there are nowadays we haven't been in a while yeah yeah wow i love that i love the storytelling and speaking of storytelling i know you do a lot of that and your work with conte profit and yeah i wanna know about that story and about that journey can you tell us about your entrepreneurial journey yeah absolutely like the stories like we've had i think that bug we didn't really know what it was since we didn't have any entrepreneurs that we knew in our family or or some friends maybe yeah but it it's not it was not the typical thing and then you know we end up here in the states playing soccer we both played here that's the reason and then after that we really are like well what now like what are we gonna do and as an international student you only have a few options to to be able to stay in the states right either you get married you get an h one b visa right and that means you have to go work for a company they have to sponsor you personally for me like i had a a four month period where a company could recruit me and then actually pay for the process and the at the time i graduated i think two hundred and fifty thousand people were applying for twin visas and only sixty five thousand spots were available so like to me that was not even an option because these are also people have been working with the company for full year right so the time i graduated just made it that way so i was like okay you know what was the other way entrepreneurship right we're like i guess we'll start a company and there was always like that feeling of i wanna build something i don't wanna be working for somebody else i wanna explore the possibilities of what we're gonna be doing yeah i around that time you know we started selling vinyl stickers or roommate at the time came in to her house and it's like guys we're gonna start a company we're gonna sell stickers and then it's like sweet how do we do that and then he's like i just ordered a vinyl cutter right so it's like this machine that cuts vinyl sheets so you can then turn into stickers so we started designing stickers we didn't know how to design we just copied and paste some stuff in illustrator and and learn how to do vector files and all this and then we will go to shops and try to sell these like twenty dollar vinyl stickers and were like we're gonna have to sell a ton of stickers to actually you know pay something and that evolved until we went to this amazing conference in orlando where fell in love with a screen printer on a roommate dropped five thousand dollars to buy this machine and we put it in the garage over house we actually were leaving in a seven bedroom house at the time my now wife was leaving it with us at the time all roommates two dogs a cat like it was crazy crazy time and we started screen printing t shirts it's in the back of a garage right at the time i was working as a fitness studio manager so i ran a couple fitness locations and then fa and at steven we're doing this screen printing during the day and also throughout the night i will come in home at seven pm pm and we was it was horrible let me tell you it was a horrible it was processed yes especially in humid florida with that garage that is all steam and warm yeah and do not recommend we're buying like an oven so we can actually dry the the the ink on the shirts that made it a lot hotter we didn't have a place to like actually dry the shirts so we ended up putting these all these ropes across like the first floor of the house i'm like hanging the shirts we have three hundred shirt ordered two hundred your orders right and and we had to turn these around in within a week so we learned a ton but then after that we're like you know what i think we need to move to the digital space and we decided to start a brand and by starting a brand we start learning about social media on this stuff and that evolved into us offering social media services for local businesses yeah i'm gonna make a quick brand this is here because i think this story is kinda funny but i think it's the entry way for a lot of people as well to this entrepreneurship world especially in the digital space which is courses right we didn't know anything we'd i mean we went for a four years school i don't even know what you graduated before but i did sport management right and i in my mind i knew nothing about digital marketing i don't and i remember one day i was on youtube and i got a very famous ad in front of me that i'm sure whoever's listening to this they're gonna remember and it was an ad from ty lopez the one on here in my garage he's like i'm here in my garage with my books and my lamb and that ad hook me like no other given i've had read some books about entrepreneurship some funnels before but this ad pop up and the ad was amazing but again i didn't really have the belief that we could do anything on the marketing space or online because i didn't believe we had the skill set but when this ad pop up for me pop was an opportunity to learn the skill set to then go ahead and build a business so the course was like a thousand bucks and i remember i watched the ad i went and watch the whole webinar and i went running to my boss i was like dude this is it this is the opportunity he was selling how to build a social media marketing agency and i went to my brother running and i told him we are gonna build a social media marketing agency we're gonna be millionaires these things is is we're gonna print money dude this is so good and well i think my passion in a way he run to me because i was the one with the critic exactly and i think my passion in a way sold him and he was like alright let's invest in this right and i was her entry point to that world we bought the course we did not finish the course we probably consume about thirty percent of it but thanks to that those teachings right those entry points you know regardless of the views that you have about ty lopez right if you're listening to i know he's a little bit controversial but that actually kick started or online journey and guess what we fell we believe that we had some skills that could help people and we went out down and we started selling some businesses right and we started alright let's talk to dentists start to restaurants how can we help him and back it started the journey of many many lessons yeah it was funny because you know our first client was make can restaurant right and we were you know we're supposed to go in there and take some pictures and do that and when we're trying we're selling that the owner we actually they have a company register at the time and you know once shows up and we have like this sprint contract i showed up in a suit he showed up in a suit and you know he you haven't wore shoot seeing how many probably yeah yeah anyway so he signs a contract you know we take the payment thing think he was five hundred dollars at the time and we're like we have five hundred bucks what do we i'm like well we have to go register the company so we immediately went online and register the company here in florida and when we go back the owners like hey guys i was doing some research and i noticed that you guys started the company today that i signed we're like well you know we're kinda like proving a concept and you know that you know we kinda talked our way around the and that was like the story of our first five hundred dollars yeah now looking back at it i think he definitely saw through or novice like i guess if you're gonna put it that way you know he he saw through maybe or will to build something and he was compassionate enough to let us work on his on his restaurant yeah at the end of the day it was a very tough client not gonna alright but we learn a lot right we learned a lot about wow we are definitely under charging first of all for while we're doing and second we want to work with a certain type of people but again it was a fun start to the journey yeah now to know to not extend the story too much you know fast forward a few years and we were doing mostly video content for local businesses and that's when twenty twenty came came along you know the world shutdown and eighty percent of our business pretty much closed and we're like wow what are we gonna do now yeah in a week i mean we yeah phone calls yeah we had just rented a new office space right it was a new expense not only that but that's when we had invested to previously made one of the biggest investments we've done in business right we we were seeking for some sort of mentorship actually ashley here's the timeline yeah i give you the context of that investment here's the timeline april twenty nineteen my son is born i'm working in the fitness studio september twenty nineteen i quit the fitness studio because we wanted to do full time business i go take a personal loan because my wife is like hey but she was in in grad school at the time so if if you finance like the next year like you can do whatever you know you want so i went in and i i actually got four personal loans to a afford i think it was like a fifty thousand dollar year that that we budgeted at the time do not recommend i do not recommend and and then we go to this amazing conference with somebody that we've been following for quite a while we actually implemented things that i did that he was like teaching online and we got amazing results for the clients that we had at the time so we're like this seems like a logical event so the day that i quit us a friday we're on a plane to go to boise idaho and we're in this like room next was like six hundred all their entrepreneurs and they make an offer for this mastermind and then we invest half of my loan into this mastermind like never in our life we've invested that i'm amount of money we didn't tell my wife we say we're like we're gonna make this back again that belief that we we could actually do it and then you know we're starting implementing and then march twenty twenty comes along and then all you know every single person that we're helping in town i think we only have one online client at the time completely closed doors and they were like hey guys like we cannot pay you like i don't know in loan so we were really between the the the wall on the sword you know and we had to figure out so that was a day that our online time was like what are you guys don't you guys start a podcast and he was being on podcast he was doing three shows a week and we're like i guess we'll do that we have time now you know we have about thirty to sixty days worth of runway we will figure something out that's when we launch actual content profit the podcast out that that you have now i think we're about to hit five hundred episodes very soon and you yep and then the first one the episode it was just me on honestly documenting what we're experiencing at the time or learning at the time you know from books that we're reading or the maybe be crying a little bit be crying a little bit and we run out of things to say very quickly right so we're like wow either we have to go interview some people and learn from them right document what they were doing and go that so that's a route we took for with the show mh and immediately after us as soon as we started bringing people into it the our guests actually started asking well what are do you guys doing like what do you guys do as a business and think it was like the third person that that we actually showed like a demo of our product and at the time we decided to go straight with multipurpose video from long form to short form they guys like i need a team like you guys and he hired us and we're like wow what an opportunity so we completely changed the way that we were doing outreach each out the time and yeah we pretty much changed the business model from the the product that we were offering to the way we were acquiring the customers yeah so and yeah that's kinda like what kicked it off at the end we went from the twelve of us and then we manage to build a small team that would help us with the fulfillment and allowed us to do more of the podcasting and then we've been consistent for the last about four years three years three years yeah fast four a few years obviously lots of lessons in between and crazy things happening but you know right now by the time his interview going out you know we have a a physical location where we weren't rent out podcasting in studio to to local creators and and we had the online agency as well so it's been it's been a fun last like seven years for sure oh my gosh okay so much you yes i was literally you just took it out of my mouth i was just about to say lots to back but i love that story so much it's like a lot of testing and iterating and like belief in yourself and lessons learned and definitely just has all of the parts of a really good entrepreneurial story and i'm just so curious about maybe some of the things that you think what are some of the things that you would have done differently if you could go back is there anything that you would have done differently or any lessons learned that you wanna share i mean i definitely there's a lot of lessons to be shared i'm thinking specifically what would i done differently because i don't think i've ever actually sit down and think about that it's a great question i've thought about it he's like i was going into business alone no i do not repeat your what do not pay the initial thousand bucks for the social media market and that honestly i've i thought about these question a lot actually you know i work with a coach and we explored so many dark moments in my life and i mean this is one of the questions i come up right and honestly like my honest opinion like i don't think i will change anything because it's allowing me i actually had this call today fran you don't know this but i was like how i was reflecting on this i was like man like this year has been cray like we acquired the studio and there's just been a lot of stuff but we've also felt like complete honesty threading a lot of water right it's been it's been interesting like this year and i'm like man like i feel like less motivated for some reason it's been like the direction is not it hasn't been clear it is clear now by the way cool tom yeah i can't wait for that conversation but i'm going back and i'm like man like if you ask my fifteen and sixteen year old right at the time obviously soccer is the thing but like i was also thinking like what if soccer is not the thing is like i wanted to be a business vision owner type of deal like if they didn't wanna work for somebody else i wanted to leave in a place where there's opportunity right what a better place than the united states of america right for that i wanna live in a in a really nice place on which we do i live in a really nice house really nice neighborhood with her i have my two kids i have my dog i have my dream car i have like amazing beautiful wife right all these things and i'm like man like i actually like today was that realization and i actually made it like if i go back to my eighteen year old the starting college i'm like that's the things that i was saying that i want it to do on half so i'm like wow i think it's time for a new goal post like a new target like what's out there right and it's like and then you can reverse engineer and go about it but like that's why i feel like i don't need to change because those are things and mistakes and things that happened that led me to this point which was my dream eight years ago right and you're like what that's crazy so i don't think that's why my opinion is was like i don't think i will change anything because with challenges and all we're leaving the dream i'll figure up i know right yes yes we are happy i love it i love it you know it's this morning i met with a friend that i met at a coffee shop a while like i love coffee shops by the way and i always i don't know why but i get to meet some incredible people at coffee shops yeah i call it coffee set serendipity i was meeting with him today and we were talking about kinda like some some family triggers on whatnot you know he was sharing a little bit about his family history with me and i don't remember exactly how we transitioning into the topic but i remember kinda talking about hey where we are right now is it's kinda like a collection of the the decisions and choices that we've taken before so if we change something if it there's something i would change we probably wouldn't be where we are right now you know are there more efficient ways to do things yeah i'm sure one hundred percent right but those are the lessons that we're learning that now hopefully we're gonna implement in the future and now looking back into other conversations i've had i remember saying is tough right and being in low moments and i'm like this is very difficult there's some challenges but i don't think i would really change much or anything at all right so your hair my hair maybe a little bit maybe maybe i would maybe i woulda kept my my man bun you know know maybe i woulda kept that one but yeah you know it's at the end of the day we're a collection of those choices that we've made and those mistakes that we've made as well so i feel like going back and changing something would be kinda like maybe erasing part of who we are right now and what we have accomplished haven't given the thought that my brother had so i'm i'm that's actually a cool rabbit hole that i'm gonna have to dive into right in comparison to like my own goals and where i wanna be but sometimes what i will say is difficult to see the bigger picture and what you have accomplished especially like my brother i said that we have that feeling that we have been kinda like stock kinda like swimming in the same place for for a little bit but when you look back into it and you compare it to maybe even a year ago the progress is is clear right but sometimes we're just so stuck in the problem that is difficult to space out and and take a look at that so long answer short it would be i don't think i would change anything if i'm being honest it but there's definitely a lot of lessons so i'm curious what type of lessons would you like to hear about yeah yeah so if there's just a self development kind of lesson for entrepreneurs anything where you feel like you've really grown where you were tested and that could be just perhaps a helpful mindset shift for perhaps someone who wants to be like you and be in your position i the first one that comes to mind and there's a little bit of recently bias on this one just because it has come up lately in our lives is actually something i learned from a book i'm trying to remember the name of the book but pretty much it says what you don't say creates distance right so if you are in a some sort of partnership whether that is and i've i've literally used this in my relationship with my girlfriend in my business relationship with my brother and now i'm extremely conscious about it is what you don't say creates distance and what those mean there's a lot of times where we go that certain actions from or loved ones or people close to us might create some sort of reaction in us and then we don't say anything and we you know kinda like tuck it deep inside of us and that just built up right my build up some sort of resentment in my build up any other feeling it could be mainly i would say it builds up some negative feelings and you know there was some time recently that i filmed me and my brother weren't communicating as much and i think that was mainly because we were so stuck in the problems he's was like working in the business that we have this weekly meeting and we kept postponing it and all these things and all these other things were happening challenges inside of the business that we kinda like shoving around and maybe we were taking certain actions without consulting and that started to create this feeling on me that i felt that i was there was a huge gap between my brother and myself at that time right so i remembered that advice that i've been applying in my relationship room with my girlfriend since we started that's actually how we started the relationship at or hey look what dustin guys say is it creates a distance and i don't wanna have that distance in this relationship right and it has served a lot so i brought that to the table to my brother one day i just randomly pop up in here actually on the studio he was sitting there with he's sitting right now and i pop on the door and i had like hey look i give him me a little bit of context on what i was gonna say but i told him what else is say creates distance and i feel like there's quite some distance between us right now so less talk right and it wasn't an easy conversation i could feel to see my brother watery eyes it's too proud to to cry you know maybe you could see a few tears on running down my cheeks but you know it's yeah that would be and i don't wanna say a device because i don't know in what position people are in this situation but has definitely been something that has been extremely helpful for me specifically it also like just lifts weight from you like you feel like you have all these things that you wanna discuss that you wanna talk about all these worries and as soon as you share them you know because you may have some expectations of some sort and guess what happiness equals reality minus expectations and by communicating these things you're get to remove those expectations and actually have facts and it gives you clarity so again it's a tool for those that i wanna use it right to close the distance between special relationships in your life whether that is entrepreneurship or your romantic life whatever it is yeah so that's what that's why he's also a partner that's why he's here that's why we invested in a thousand bucks eight years ago no i love that and you know that that was a really hard time and that was a really hard conversation that we had and i'm very grateful for moments like that so i encourage everybody to like at least explore what that looks like for me personally i think like this last year we've been through a lot of changes like this big decisions to go get a coach i've never really i think that has been the biggest investment apart from like the mastermind personally that i've done and is made me like see my situation under different eye balance ideas like i get asked the right questions to be able to like get out of that situation and like maybe think from like a ten thousand feet above instead of inside and place soccer our entire life we always had coaches right whether it's a team coach or whether it's like a one on one coach right and whenever you we decide to as entrepreneurs to tackle these crazy challenges of building businesses or building an audience so building our community of building something of value for somebody out there we don't even consider going and and seeking help we're like we can figure this out by ourselves and youtube but there i think it comes to a time where there's enough information and we we kinda know what to do is inside of us and we need that help for somebody to kinda pull that out from us so in the stage nature of my life to the last year that has been one of the best moments and you know the conversation i i just talked about about like the new goal post i was a conversation you on had today right and literally this is the first time where we're seeing each other today that's was why fa see just is is just finding that one out but it's been it's been a game changer for for me at least and and i think is maybe a better person better leader in still lots of work to do but maybe consider finding that that person that could that fits your personality type right and then they can help you move the needle forward well okay more gyms i love this so much and just you guys are great wow thank you so much also for just being very honest in in sharing that kind of more challenging part of your relationship and how you're able to overcome that i think that's extremely helpful and it's actually related to something that i talked about recently on a solo episode about applying the lessons that we learn from a personal perspective to a business perspective to a career a lot of this is applicable to all of the relationships in our life all of the things in our life and i feel like i've learned certain lessons in my life from a personal perspective very similar to having those difficult conversations like i came into my relationship with my husband having had past relationships and saying hey we have to be kind but also honest because that it'll build up and then i don't want you to just leave me and he was like okay crazy girl but no he didn't say that but he's like you were intense of have a lot of had a lot of things coming in but it was extremely helpful but i didn't think about it from a business perspective or from even from just a creator perspective and you're dealing with outside contractors you're dealing with public you're dealing with brands it's important for me to have those difficult conversations no matter what you know even if you're not close because you wanna protect your values and protect your vision and i think i had challenges with that and so i think it's just the art of that difficult conversation and having it i think is invaluable in so many aspects of our lives absolutely i mean based on what you said there's a phrase that i referred the last week or so like it's stuck with me it's like i'd rather be honest and nice and going back to like how we were raised and like we wanted to be everybody's friend and you know and that maybe we were nice a lot of times right and even with our even with with our team we're in the middle of like these decisions that we have to make with our internal team and also my family i have a four year old right like he he does something wrong and then you know he puts potty face and then you all you wanna do is like snuggle go him and you're like no gotta be gotta be honest and and with him and like actually explain what was wrong and and i think that's super important because by being nice maybe you're doing the at the service to that other people especially if it's your own business and it's something that you know you've invested not only money but time and sweat and tears and blood and maybe some other personal relationships right and you're like okay am i actually being honest with what's being said first for me and then what's being said from whoever i'm having that tough conversation with and if for me that changed everything because i owe personally tended to be towards a nice side right like i be like oh you know this was not done correctly or x y z like i it's okay like we can we can figure out for the next time i'm like it was not done correctly it's black and white in this specific situation this is why and so on so i i've been grabbing onto that phrase a ton the last couple weeks and it goes exactly you know hand in hand with what you said yeah go going back to what we're sharing before about choices right that where we are right now and who we are is a collection of the choices that we've made not having the conversation is still a choice right a lot of people might see oh my only choice is to potentially have the conversation i'm gonna it's awkward i'm not gonna do anything guess not doing anything it's a choice as well and this past three days i've seed three day event of our good client i'm really good friend and in one of those days i actually shared this from one of my favorite newsletters if you don't don't mind me reading it here for i i like giving credit to people so he's his from taylor welch he says there are really only two things in a person's life things created by them and things allowed by them you may know have chosen the problems and scenarios that are causing stress your life but every day you go without owning and removing them that is on you if you can take ownership of where you are right now today you can also take ownership of the solution and more often than not the solution to those difficult moments is difficult conversations right so again that'll be owning that scenario making a choice having the conversation and then hopefully get into a resolution i'm being open that knowing that the resolution might not be the one that you want right i will be obviously we're brothers we love each other but i'm open to potentially the resolution that we were looking looking for certain problems it might be right that is like okay we're gonna go separate ways you're gonna do your own i'm gonna do my own thing obviously we'll be harbor i'll be heartbroken it'll be extremely sad and that is not the situation just in case but dang it but you know you you you gotta go into those conversations again without expectations right because happiness equals reality minus expectations yeah yeah no so many gems i love that too and i think what i saw recently is that there's a difference between kind and nice and we can be kind and have those honest conversations and but be authentic to what we really want and that's and nice is a different way of doing that and speaking of kindness and being nice and and relationships what advice do you have for people building relationships i think you both are excellent at that i remember being at podcast movement and everyone knew the biz everyone knew luis bon your energy is amazing you know do you have advice for others who are trying to build relationships i think this is applicable to anybody in their career and in their life yeah i guess i'll i mean full playbook what's the playbook yeah i think there's a few things but i think for us at a personal level is own who you are right in a sense like once on a suit selling social media marketing agency package definitely not who way definitely i know who he is right like remember having a conversation early in our podcast i think it was like episode like thirty something with a guy his name is bart miller still good friends to this day and we talked about personalities and like who you are as a person or like if you are training to be an athlete like you morph into that person never morph into some you know an expectation from somebody else to you and for us we're at the time we're launching the podcast as it was something brand new for us and we were told by our coach at the time that only one attractive character needed to be hosting to show and we're like what it's gonna be the two of us and it's gonna be the way that we want it it's gonna be you know live there's the only one attractive lesbian definitely definitely a this guy and we're like we're gonna do interest live and if we make a mistake it's okay and you know it's it's we're not gonna post edit the podcast because that adds friction to us like and it's accepting at that at that level that is and then that translates into events right because we know that we're not from here so maybe our english is not the best you know we don't have to be apologizing for it right we like we like soccer we were so or jersey right we forget to get our haircut so we wear hats backwards so you know it's not too crazy right so all all these things that make your own personality and that day i remember we're like let's lean into that and then that allows us to actually repel the people that we don't wanna be around and attract the people that actually sync with our energy and like what who we are and like appreciate those things and he's been incredible so i think that's one and number two start podcast is that you can you can start relationships ask scale very easily right you're creating this amazing thing about you can have this conversation and even if you have one listener prep so it's totally okay because really the relationship that matters at that point is the person that you're have in the conversation with across the camera so those two things have been like the biggest needle mover at least for me yeah when it comes to bill relationships yeah piggyback in of what you said and i mean it is clear share for a reason right but is just be yourself right just saying it in in simplify terms it's be yourself b you and again zero expectations on we're gonna connect with everybody i need to connect with everybody guess what no you're not gonna be everybody's friends right but guess what luckily we found a group of people that are like minded right they have similar interest similar passions and turns out that we connected with you guys and it has been absolutely amazing but also something that we had share with us from one of our previous guests i can contact this profit his name is gary henderson he's really cool guy very very smart he has been running communities for years i say he's one of the og community builders out there in the internet and he told us well you gotta realize sometimes like they're role of people in your life sometimes it's temporary right and i struggle with that because i like making friends i'm like i'm gonna make friends for to collect friends i want to collect friends right he has polaroid in his room i'm like oh he's but at the same time brad because and i was telling him mostly in the context over a group i'm like well do you know when somebody leaves like that hurts you know like it's tough because what is the same with the relationships right you gotta go with the relationship with an open heart hey i'm gonna poor value into you i'm gonna welcome you into our life but guess what if they want to go and move on into other aspects of their lives that is totally okay that doesn't mean the friendship is over maybe they just went on and the search of something else and again there's relationships at different levels two relationships as well people that you're gonna be talking to every single day or on a very consistent basis and then some other friends that you might reach out once a quarter and there's still very very good friends right so again removing expectations at the end of the day removing those expectations and be open to people coming in and live in your life but you gotta be true to yourself because if if not people looks through all that right people can feel the energy when you're talking on camera and when they meet you in person if there's a dissonance in there i think that's a challenge right when you consume somebody content or and you are across camera with somebody and you're having a conversation and then you go in real life and there's this dissonance of like but they were totally different when i interacted with them over there right that causes a lot of friction and then people don't see you as authentic and they're probably gonna push you on aside yeah no i think authenticity is so key another theme that i love to talk about on the podcast and you guys brought it right back to all the things i love relationships authenticity i am so grateful for our friendship and relationship through podcasting through the hubspot podcast network you guys are like my podcasting brothers so thank you we're not like we are yes yes yes yes you are so thank you both so much for coming on no straight path this was so much fun thank you having us yeah that was awesome by the way we have a competition going pick bro so if you actually watching these on youtube we're listening you can pick louise or fun and then you know we we added to the top yeah guys v on the on the comments below i love it i love it i'll do it too alright thanks guys go ahead thank you for listening to another episode of no straight path the highs the lows and the lessons learned remember to share the podcast with friends and family and my hope is that these stories help you navigate your no straight path journey if this content is adding value to your life and i hope it is please take a few minutes out of your day to read the show and write a review you can click the link in the show no to write a review it helps other listeners find the show and i just really appreciate it have a lovely week embrace the journey and remember you're not alone