Lessons

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Entrepreneur's Journey

Well we're ready to get going so I'm just going to get right in and handed over to you but don't do it pam let's do it all right well one of the things that I always like to start with especially when I was hearing you vanessa say you have all these ideas and you have some fears and anxieties and is business owners oris perspective business owners were often in our own head and we're worried one of the really wonderful things that we know from this moment on is that you are not alone right the bonds that you can make with each other with all of us during this class the bonds that we can make with each other online I highly recommend are things that we continue to work throughout the rest of your life and we're going to actually be talking specifically about how to do that but one of the biggest things I think that trips us up is thinking that we're alone in the journey I know for me I have been doing I've been self employed for almost seventeen years so nineteen ninety six was when I w...

hen I hit the road independently I was here in san francisco my last real job was at barclays global investors and I actually loved my corporate job some people think because I wrote escape from cubicle nation that I'm anti corporate when in fact I'm not I I am work mode independent if you have a particular work mode that works for you that takes care of yourself and your family or your pets or your location independent lifestyle, that is awesome, there is no magic work mode that's going to be perfect if you choose entrepreneurship, it does give you a lot more flexibility for doing what it is that you want to dio. So I started the first ten years or so of my business as a consultant to corporations and that's, where I saw a lot of people who were extremely frustrated and they had been in a corporate career. A lot of people just fell into a career, right? They go to their college counselor to try to pick their their major. I see some shaking heads, maybe some shaking heads out there. I see, you know that people are definitely then get into a certain career path where maybe you are in a certain job and a manager tells you should go in one direction, and so you kind of follow that path and through the course of doing that, then that's often where you find yourself, like many people, that I get emails from in the middle of the night who say, like, how did I get here, right? Who are these people kind of like a david byrne song, right? What am I doing here? And that's really, where you can have the opportunity of redefining your life and doing something different. So after meeting so many people who were in that situation and finding that many people wanted to leave, but they felt like it was like jumping off a cliff, uh, that's what I thought, wait a minute, maybe they're actually is away where I can help people to navigate not just a step by step business, journey of starting a business, but also the personal journey, the internal journey of fear and doubt and all of that. And so that's, really where I started, I moved from the bay area to phoenix, the phoenix area. I fell in love with my handsome husband, who is from arizona, and we knew that we wanted to have kids. I didn't want to be traveling all the time, and so I wanted to set up some kind of a business that would that would serve me that way. And I literally remember the moment when, because I didn't want to go back to my former clients who had paid me handsomely to keep there, uh, they're employees happy in their jobs, I didn't want to go back to them and pillage their employees, and I remember thinking, like, how could I possibly reach these people? I know that they're there, but you know, I thought, should I, like, sneak into the cafeteria of some, like, large companies, that actually literally was a thought that I had in my head and this, you know, this was about eight years ago. I had never read a block before, and I didn't know anything about internet marketing. And so I it was really kind of a big mystery. So I took a course from a woman named suzanne falter, who taught me all about building an online brand. And, um, one of the first assignments that we had was starting a blawg. So that's, actually, how I started escaping cubicle nation was as a class assignment, so once again, to reinforce in my own particular experience, sometimes being involved in educational experiences is a way that you can really begin to build something I had no, we have ever imagining exactly how this journey would turn out for me. So from that vlog, I ended up working with individual clients I've worked with, actually thousands of people throughout the last eight years, people who are in corporate jobs who want to leave and start a business, people who are in academic situations. Um, and, um, it's, really, one of the things I think that has kept me honest in the work, uh, when I am doing work with people where they're basically putting their entire livelihood at risk as well as the livelihood of their families I don't take that very lightly I'm not one of those hey like jump in the net will appear you know I mean that's awesome by france sonia simone who's that copy blogger says sometimes you jump in the floor will appear right um we we have to be prepared for everything so I'm a big fan of planning and a big fan of really looking at um at all the options okay? So one of the things that I say very frequently is that hating your job intensely is not a business plan it's really not and uh sometimes that's what drives us is just the desire to do something different and we confuse that with thinking that that is actually preparing us to be successful in a business and it's really not you can not like where you are it's kind of similar to dating any of you date now or have ever dated right? It's not good to just say I don't want to be with this person, so then I'm going to be do with anybody pretty much anybody with a pulse that walks in the door because I just don't want to be here not very successful in the same thing is true when you're starting a business, so what we're going to be doing today is first in this first session is really just mapping out the whole journey of what are the steps in the journey kind of like candy land you guys remember that game from when you're when you're a little so we know like where we going where the steps where we are some each of you might already be at different stages of the journey you for example I have been in business for a really long time but you might find that even though you've been in business for a really long time there's always a chance to go back maybe you skipped some steps you didn't even know were there right? Maybe you have gotten to a place where you really are ready for change and growth like you were saying in your introduction so that's really what we're going to do is to map that out and I'm really, really lucky tohave um a very talented person to help me with doing that today uh who is emily shepherd who I'd love a rousing round of applause for family you here thank you for thank you super exciting and you can find emily on lengthen so it's emily shepherd shepherd like sheena g p a r t okay and graphic facilitator that's okay and emily has one of these talents which I covet so much I actually it's not healthy how much I wish I could do what she does but people who are graphic facilitators khun b in a situation like we are here today and hear us having a conversation and sharing ideas and captures the conversation and images and in particular the reason why I wanted to have emily here is so that we can all have a visual anchor to go back to during the course of the three days and maybe afterward, when you get home, you know, to remind yourselves where you are in the journey and for all of us, including folks who are out there on the internet as we're going through the days and we're remembering where we've been from a learning perspective from a learning methodology perspective I'm a big learning in development walk that's a lot of what I did the first years in my business whenever we have multiple reminders, especially visual reminders of where we're going, it helps us tto learn and it helps us to remember and often a big thing that's important in this journey is knowing where you are in the journey. So thank you so much for being here waiting to see developing a final picture it's very exciting so where we're going to start is actually in setting a bigger context for where psychologically we are when it comes to starting a business and there is a a particular model that I use all the time it's for my dear friend martha back I know that mike knows martha back. Having trained with her as a coach, some of you might be familiar with her work. She writes a monthly column for our magazine for oprah's magazine, she's frequently on oprah. And she is a harvard trained sociologist, one of this great combinations of super super smart book learning smart, along with hilarity, she's really funny and she's also very in touch with just how are we wired? Naturally what's what's our instinct and intuition. So in one of her books, which is called finding your own north star, she created this change model, which I find over the years to be tremendously helpful in understanding where we are in the journey of entrepreneurship. And so there are four different stages you can see for this catalytic events sometimes there's something that happens that kind of jolts us into a state of change. So sometimes it's losing your job. Anybody ever been laid off before? Yeah, anybody, anybody on the internet? I'm sure you know, in this day and age, it's more and more frequent that people will do that, and I'd love to hear if there are people that are on the internet, if you can, you know, share that experience, when did it happen, how did it happen? Often when that happens that just jolt us into this very strange state of being that it's the first square which is called death and rebirth and basically we lose our identity that how we've known ourselves we often feel very discombobulated and a little bit spaced out you khun you can often hear people that are in death and rebirth say things like you know I just don't feel like myself things are really strange right? I just feel a little bit awkward and that's actually exactly how you should be feeling in that stage because you are going through a transition if you've been a mom right life before children and after children isn't it totally different so that's another kind of catalytic event it doesn't just have to be something negative it can be getting married or quitting your job intentionally and traveling around it puts you in the state of really feeling a little bit awkward and it gives you the opportunity to change your identity the second square yes so I just wanted time in from the internet there are certainly people who have been let go later yes and interesting cat marie says I got laid off from my first job I had for two and a half years I loved it so I really cried and susan baer says I got laid off but it was the best thing that ever happened to me although it was very painful at the time yeah there are a couple others here you know it seems like the trend is that it's been a blessing in disguise for a lot of these people you know, terrorists is although it was traumatic it's the best thing that happened it's force people to explore entrepreneurial ventures that's the recurring hand here and that is it's a common things sometimes you know I don't know if I'm filtering everything I know being the escape from cubicle nation lady I realize that many people will come to me when they're wanting to go the entrepreneurial path right after they've been laid off but I do find very very often that when people choose to see it as something that is a new opportunity then it can be a really positive transition and often pushes you into a situation where you want to explore things that maybe you've always wanted to explore but it gives you permission right you can also choose not to and to just hunker down and resist immediately try to grab the next thing that you can and very often then it just puts people right back where they started it's one of those things where if you don't really take the time to process the experience to grieve the change even if it's a positive change and really give you get to know yourself so that you can you can shape a new identity the second square of changes called dreaming and scheming and that is where you have the opportunity to imagine new possibilities. So I'm curious also for some of the folks who have chimed in if that happened to you when you got laid off, or maybe even for ideas that you have right now, what are all the random list of ideas you have for starting a business before some of you have done what you're doing? Did you think about other other kinds of businesses to start? What were some of the ideas that you had before you settled on the business that you have right now for my in studio audience, that anybody have really different ideas? Or did you know exactly what you wanted to do? You j yeah, I think for me, it's, like, I've got more specific over time, and, um, I actually started out in the holistic healing world and was a holistic health counselor that I was doing do a little work, and then I got sort of fighters, the coach and I started coaching as working with a woman, and I honed in on women entrepreneurs and then now focusing on mom entrepreneurs. So it's just been a process that just kind of clarify who I wanted to work with and how I wanted to work with them. Right and do you find that the work interestingly right doing holistic healing, being a doula and then do you find that that experience in particular is really helpful now when you were yeah definitely I mean, I feel like at the time like as I was shifting and moving, I feel like there's something wrong like I feel like I was being flaky or, you know, like, oh, I should hurt actually just decide and retrospect I looked back and I see how I learned like really valuable things from each of those experiences and I bring them to the work that I do now and so I really appreciate that journey, and I realized that even though I didn't know it at the time like it was serving like that, you know, larger purpose I love that I love that and that's it's a really good example of exactly what I'm talking about for square two for dreaming and scheming it's what we actually should be doing is exploring different interests and you don't know if something's gonna work or not until you do it right. We have this idea that something is going to be really great, but when you're actually inhabiting that business and you see what it's like to run it, then that's when you really begin to get an idea and an understanding and so in that stage of dreaming and scheming you know, and it could end up after you develop this particular part of your body of work with with mothers that are also entrepreneurs that maybe you're going to be excited for a new adventure, right? It can always keep keep coming around, but we have I think we have a societal bias sometimes about, like, just choose something and move and do it, you know, mike, have you gotten a little heat from some of your friends or former colleagues that maybe thought you were a little wack a doodle for hitting the road? You sold everything you own, you're traveling? Yeah, you're you're leaving this, I mean, really good, you know, corporate job where you're on this, like, you know, fast track path, right? There are probably people who were like, oh, my god, mike, you know, he had so much potential, like, oh, in their mind they thought, he's throwing it all away here he was, you know, we had him destined for having a corner, offices a vp, and there is nothing wrong with that path. If that had been your path, that would have been a tremendous path. And I imagine you might coach some men, given that that's your demographic. Where that's actually what they want to do and they've always wanted to do it and that will be the great place for them to go but for you you knew that it wasn't there was something in you that was saying that this is really not the best choice and so yeah you I sold everything completely changed what you didn't mention in your introduction that I know because I know you is you and your brother spent a whole summer um summer of service a summer to serve a summer to serve where they spent they traveled all across the us and did volunteer work working with all kinds of different nonprofit organizations and doing service working with kids and animals and all kinds of different things that you did and that was an example of really living in the dreaming and scheming mode which you know it sounds like for right now now you're kind of you know, still exploring many options but you're beginning to settle on something that sounds like it's really interesting where you wantto put down some roots and really develop it andi I'm still making it making it up as I go you know everyone obama was making up being president for the first time you all of us your innocence making up you know, being an author and being a speech you know it's like we're all you know learning and just being out there playing our our edge exactly and it's all yes being a free agent really is that is that you can know you know steve jobs has the famous quote about you can't connect the dots into the future you can only connect them backwards, you know? And so you kind of have to like I feel like sometimes I'm a little bit all over the place even though I've been a designer for twenty some years but I find that I don't want to be in that box anymore and and I struggle with it a little bit because designers content to be real purists and you know and they wanted to really you know, fantastic work that wins awards and I find that there are other aspects to how I can help people that are are equally is interesting to me and even just being able to turn some of your interests into into side businesses like if I started a thing called team pasta too creative you know, culinary experience and I haven't been really promoting it much have only given away that the class to a number of people, but I've taught up to twenty people at a time learning howto make pasta by hand and everyone just really loves it but I can't quite get my energy you know, it's it's more just something I kind of did just for myself to brand it and and start it and um and whether it needs to be turned into a full fledged businesses remains to be seen. But, you know, I don't think that I would have done that kind of thing if I were working in a full time job someplace fantastic, right? And now he knows what a lot of people know about so hee portland to do it right you can, you know, come anyway, just go to team pasta, make make a trip to portland and great what what were some of the ideas that people had? Did anybody have absolutely so money coming through, pam needy says, starting my own graphic design company and becoming a public speaker in the area along with applying jobs, the rainy day store says, besides my ebay business now, I really want to start a travel site for families so that but there are a lot of people who are saying they have these different things that they want to dio what else do we have? Yeah, you know, we're seeing people say it's harder to answer the question. So what are you doing these days? A lot of these people are working in different fields all at the same time bam she's working out of blogging platform that allows users to post anonymous posts that's pretty interesting, but yet again it is people were laid off uh he will was laid off from a permanent job ten years ago but from that time's been working as an engineer contractor so there's been a lot of these interesting and it does become I think storytelling is one of the key skills that we need often just to tell our relatives what we do during the holidays you wouldn't believe the amount of blawg traffic and questions and e mails I get and it causes real anxiety especially for people of my parent's generation or grand parents for some folks when this whole new world of work is confusing and it can seem like we're just a bunch of flakes but to create a people who were just making stuff up who can't focus there's a particular and maybe sometimes we are and that's okay too right I mean it's our life it's our life and we can choose to make it up as we go along we all make it up it's everything is a construct of the mind everything there's no stability in anyone track there is no one good career tohave it's just whatever you decide really works for you so I think in the stage of dreaming and scheming this is a place where people get tripped up and they judge themselves sometimes they get judged by other people and it's why it's really important to say wait a minute you know I am actually just taking my time and exploring options there's a particular kind of person that, um I know actually for your dear cousin abe kudo who is a very dear friend of mine um which is called multi potential light and abe has done some great work with emily on a podcast for people there are some people who are actually wired to always have multiple interests so they would be saying totally loved the pasta idea with the graphic design with the branding with taking treks to nepal like a multi potential light by their nature love to be focused on many different areas and I really respect and admire that some of my other pierre's career coaches like barbara sure talks about uh what is the term that she uses? I know we have slash careerists scanners I think is the term that barbara sure uses scanners. Marcie alba her used to write for the new york times calls him slash careerist so I am a pasta maker flash graphic designer yeah, you may just end up being a multi potential light, but I say as long as you develop a coherent business structure in both by coherent I mean for you that gives you the amount of money that you need for your life that gives you the kind of lifestyle that you want who the heck cares, how cool is that right? You're building this amazing body of work which is actually why I wrote my next book because I'm finding so many more people are wanting to create multiple things throughout the course of their life. So for this for dreaming and scheming it's a natural process that you go through where you are gonna be thinking about a lot of possibilities and I think for you, rodney that's probably where you're going to be living between square one and square too, right? You've just gone through significant professional change personal change, and so you want to give yourself permission to just kind of relax and take care of yourself get to know yourself again, but then really begin to dream and scheme before you have to jump into something immediately. So that's that square two square three the hero saga is often where you then begin to settle on a particular idea you've done dreaming you know you is kind of the end of your journey, j as you were saying, you've experimented with different things, you end up realizing that you really want to put some roots down and worked with a particular group and that's where you really begin to develop it like the hero saga from the greek uh, mythology that I used to love to read as a child it's filled with adventure and dragons and unexpected things that often happen the hero saga is one that's really filled with a lot of adventure and unanticipated things and challenges when you move through that into the square for the promised land is where you really get the pieces in place, you have the business that you want, things air flowing, you're enjoying what you're doing. And so martha gave mantra cz for each of these different squares, which I find extremely helpful, and so the first one is, I don't know what the hell is going on that's okay, when you have just experienced a catalytic event, you were laid off, there was a death, you just you pulled the tom cruise and jerry maguire, and you grab the goldfish and gave a speech in front of all your fellow employees and walked out the door. Then often you have this feeling of everything is up in the air, so the very, very best thing you can keep repeating to yourself is, I don't know what the hell's going on and that's okay, as I'm going through this, I'd love to hear from our internet audience where it is that they think they are based on what I described, what square of change do you do? You find that you're in so that's for square one and that's the best thing that you can tell yourself I was just the world domination summit in portland, oregon, and one of the speakers was a wonderful I told the wonderful journey of quitting her job. She was an npr reporter name is test, and she had just, you know, up and quit, and it was a really prestigious job and was feeling a little bit unsettled and her choice that she made. And so I shared this monster with her. I don't know what the hell's going on that's okay? And I saw her just absolutely settle into her chair and get a big smile on her face, and it was like some weight was lifted off her shoulders, right? There's, nothing wrong with being a little confused every once in a while, um, square to the mantra is there are no rules and that's okay, so when you are imagining different things and this is the same for let's, say you have a new product line that you want to develop, right? Just whatever make up crazy stuff. This is how innovation and entrepreneurship happens is where you can just ask really open ended questions like, you know what? If I like, instead of teaching just in a lie, you know, teaching in a live setting, why don't we, like stream it for free over the internet for everybody to access her, I'm sure that when creative life started really insane, like why would you invest all this money and give it away for free? You know, you like communists, it's anti american, you know? But, uh, yeah, it's a great crazy idea and it's obviously working, but it wouldn't have come about when the founders of creative live we're trying to figure out what they wanted to do if they were constrained. Tio, how have things been done? You really wanted to say there are no rules let's figure it out and make it up there often at this stage in square to when your brain storming a lot of ideas, sometimes that's where our social self comes up, that how we've been trained to be successful in, you know, within society where it's like, well, I couldn't do that because I don't have an mba or I don't have that experience and and those just forget those voices at this point, you had it when you get to a certain point of a specific business and you look very concrete, lee what's actually needed then that's, where you can figure out like what experience you need or what you don't square to are no rules and that's ok for square three, the mantra is this is much worse than I expected and that's okay, I think this is powerful because after going through personal meltdown and then coming up with a whole bunch of ideas and then finally settling on one in moving it forward when you have your first product launch and everything totally fails or you know nothing turns out the way that you thought you can think I'm a total failure I never should have done this what was I thinking I'm not really cut out to be an entrepreneur when in fact this is what's supposed to be happening it's always much worse it's always the the storm before you you have that calm so that's for square three have any of you ever have that when you first started your business was there some kind of calamity were you shaking your head a little bit I think to myself now I find success things go bad and then we just get back on the horse and try something dio and that didn't work so let's try something else yeah work towards whatever works you know what doesn't want mouse flying experience in this report yes did you have any moment like any particular thing that happened that just what was it was a painful experience or hard experience really guarding a fashion company were having a really hard time finding people to sew and so I thought well I mean we took us months months and months and months when was quick cause it's like well we thought oh this would be easy to find you know days of internet research and you find like one person and then you call them they think we don't do that okay you know just keep trying and keep trying and keep trying but do you think oh that's gonna be easy no it's much worse much harder than you think it's going to be much worse much harder and yet in that pursuit of truck in your case trying to find folks who can sew your fashion line that's where you learned all kinds of things that you never would have learned write about that business it forces you to be creative it forces you to reach out and do research identify people who have done it before which is exactly what you need when you're doing that in the martial art world equated to the early on push ups and sit ups and repetitions when you're totally out of shape and you don't know what you're doing that actually is that training that's going to allow you to be strong and successful once you make it through that time it's kind of funny in relation of that that I always like talking to people in totally different businesses on my own I was prefer it but there's a gal who has a very successful goat cheese company in portland and and apparently she she was lining up her resource is from like peru for some rich was down there doing something I don't know and and she contacted, like, twenty five different gute handler people to find goats because she needed the actual resource is she couldn't and I thought, wow, I mean, if she was willing to call that many people and I think she was, like, kind of ready to give up and and but she managed to find somebody, but she was doing all of that arranging, like, from halfway around the world, and so I really admired that, you know, kind of, I mean, maybe she thought the same thing, how hard could it be to find somebody with ghosts? You know, another country like you have to get over the hump, like let's call asia and that's called china and interact with them and email and see how it goes sometimes it goes well, and sometimes it doesn't, and, yes, keep trying, exactly, exactly, but that that's that when I get all old school grizzly, you know, business coach that's, exactly what it is that you need to develop. And I think if you aren't able to develop that kind of grit in that kind of focus in the early stages in square three, then that's often where you're unable to go through and really build a successful business it's really important e j yeah, I think, um, what I found is it was really helpful to, like, hear other entrepreneur stories because on the outside looking in like, you know, you look at people and you think like, oh, they, you know, they figured it out, why can't I? And then you don't really hear the backstory of, like, well, I sent out a hundred book proposals are made like, you know, twenty five phone calls before I actually get this, and so I think because we're surrounded there's so many examples of, like, inspiring entrepreneurs who are successful in making it that when you're in this stage, at least from me, I tell, like I kept comparing myself to them and feel like I was so far behind that I was out of my league and that maybe I shouldn't have done this, you know? And so I think that's a big one like trips, other people too, that is so true and it's all such an illusion. Most of the time, we especially in the way I think, we often use social media now, which is a really different experience than when I know I first started business where I don't think the internet was it was around it wass but you very rarely had like a hotmail email address, you know, coding my own website, but now we do present this carefully manicured vision of ourselves to the world and often you have somebody who's gone on this huge long journey of all kinds of fits and starts in order to get to a place where then, for the first public product launch, for example, everything looks great when in reality, I mean, occasionally it happens where there's somebody who just gets lucky or that's just the way that it was meant to be in their life, where everything just falls into place, but very often it's because of the way that people are curating their own story. And even if somebody has a much easier time, nobody, nobody, nobody on the earth is going to do your work like you're going to do your work. Nobody is going to serve your your clients the way that you serve your clients because you were made specifically to work with the people that you're going to work for. So maybe it takes you a little bit longer. Maybe results look different, but the more that you really lean into your own experience and don't compare, I think that's really where you get your power and it's a very, very common thing in what a horrible feeling isn't it to always feel like you're behind? You're just starting and you can feel like you're behind I talked to twenty two year olds who are like, oh my god, you know, I'm so behind and I'm like, dude, I'm forty six, I could care less it's, not a race, their peers of mine that air making more money or whatever doing fancy or things that's okay, because I'm totally cool where am I'm happy to be right here right now, specifically with you and with those folks that are out there, I think that's what gives us the real quality of life? So that's definitely a huge important thing. The last mantra is everything is changing and that's ok, when you get to the promised land, when you figure out exactly how everything works, your business begins to grow and you don't have to worry about money anymore. You start to get some traction, get some kind of a personal brand or, you know, business brand then often everything is changing and that's okay, sometimes the market shifts. My husband has a business, a construction business in phoenix and in two thousand seven consequently, right at the time when my daughter was born, when I got the book deal to write escape from cubicle nation, the entire phoenix market crashed, it was one of the two worst hit an entire country and he is an extremely hard working person had a great business, a great reputation and we went from growing and changing like we had just bought huge pieces of equipment for his large scale construction business like those big caterpillar machines to all of a sudden the entire market was gone and it seemed like in a period of two weeks so I was writing a book about why you should quit your stable job to start a business at the mean time of living through personal huge financial challenge running as fast as I could in order to make it happen remember when I talked to my dad about it during that time? You know I said, how can I do this? This is so hard it feels like I'm in the middle of a jungle warfare and I have to sit down under a palm tree and write a poem, right? It was just like what do you mean? And my dad who's been a huge advocate for me my whole life is very inspirational to me, he said you're going to write a better book because you are not going to tell people to just say screw the man and quit your job to start a business that is not responsible you're going to be very specific about what's actually involved in the process and I think he's totally right it made me be very honest some people say you know almost too cautious right of what many times in the book I'm like it's cool if you want to do it but it's okay if you don't really think before you act and so sometimes those kinds of changes or things that happened or another thing that happens I think kind of like your situation mike is you're living the dream you're living the corporate dream you're doing well you're progressing and you're growing and then you personally say this is not the life that I want to live and so you choose to blow it up yourself and a lot of times that's that's what it is that we that we d'oh so the mantra everything is changing and that's okay just when you think that you've arrived somewhere the nature of life itself is dynamic it's always changing its always growing so where are our folks in the squares of change we have people all across the board out of square two's hello ease jackie and williams are in square too but following what you just said awesome landa says that she's in the middle of her hero saga with a bit of dreaming and scheming finally taking the step to take action on my plans for myself but as you just said, it is cyclical and you often go from square three back to square one like a spiral yeah, exactly absolutely and camera, he says you know, I feel behind finally set up my blood in february and beat myself up all the time for not writing post for not getting bookings I know that feeling very well as I haven't updated my block and I don't know how many months don't go there, but people are definitely resonating with everything that we're saying can't marry again, it's it's I'm in square to I know I have a lot to offer and businesses I want to approach, but I never never feel ready to never feel ready teo so getting over that I'm sure there's a lot of fear involved, so yeah and that's so interesting because just when you think about it for a moment when you are feeling like you're always behind and by the way, there are blawg police who send you a ticket if you don't host a least twice a week now there's not a mean new business idea there's a yeah, and after that it's like it's it's your blogged I realized I sent out my newsletter yesterday and I looked when I was in my back end of my my mailing list program I hadn't sent one since march and I thought I had been like I had missed one month, but I'd skipped like three months and didn't even realize it, you know, there's certain practices that are good and we learned from people saying at this stage of business this is what you should be doing all the giving some of that advice throughout the next three days however, we are all the heroes in our own journey, right? This is our journey and if you define it by somebody else or measuring is e j was saying against what you're pierre your colleague is doing you're setting yourself up for total and complete misery and just think about it for a second when you are establishing your business and you want to make a good connection with people, then how does it feel if you're already showing up to the first conversation feeling like hi, my name is pam and I'm like totally behind and I don't really know what I'm doing I'm like totally unprepared and rodney is like, wow, I like totally don't wanna work with you, pam, you know no matter what you d'oh as opposed to like this is where I am and I'm happy to be here. You know what there's a lot that I don't know still to this day when I start escape from cubicle nation, I had quit my job and started a business, but I had never got an mba I hadn't studied extensively entrepreneurship I knew that it was possible but I was totally and completely committed toe learning what I needed to learn so my first clients that were brave enough to work with me whenever we got to a situation where they said you know what's the answer to this I would say you know what? I have no idea but I will find out and that became my own personal mantra I don't know but I'll find out in the in the course of finding out is where I met some of my dearest friends and mentors guy kawasaki seth golden rich sloane from startup nation martha back so in the pursuit of information and knowledge is where you can really learn what it is that you need to learn so being where you are and honoring where you are is really, really important um the other thing I think in terms of talking about going bouncing back and forth in the squares of change sometimes I think when you're aware of what's going on in the process we do have a natural tendency to really understand you know where we are it's like we don't really have too much control over it if we don't spend enough time for example in square one really getting to know ourselves and doing our own personal work then when we get in square three and we're moving a business forward sometimes that bites us we don't feel right we're not connected so you do want to go back and visit but we're constantly spiraling through thes these kinds of squares of change and also, pam, they're people who have those multiple business ideas that they're working on and that those air in different phases. So we have the rainy day store who believes that she's in square three with ebay store, but then still in state square, too, with the idea for that travel website that we were talking about earlier. So exactly recognizing where you are in each equally important that's really important. So you don't measure your results in the second travel business against what you've done that's, far more developed in the other one. Exactly. Yeah. So? So this is just a good contacts. How cool is this? Oh, my god. Do you see why I'm jealous about emily? Skill set it's. So fantastic. Yeah, because so as you've been listening right, you can. You can see the kind of visual image that had been resonating with her, right. This catalytic event. A big, you know, flame possibilities, light bulbs. I love the dragon that is so cool. And then finally, the promised land, right? We're a soon as you get there, you got to come back down.