Ashley Stahl - Part 1 | Get Unstuck, Discover Your Direction, and Design Your Dream Career

Srini Rao: Ashley, welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Thank

Ashley Stahl: you so much for having me. I know this is an exclusive show and I'm so honored to be a part of it.

Srini Rao: I am absolutely thrilled to have you here. I found out about your work by way of our mutual friend and former unmistakable creative guest Ben Hardy.

And I think the moment you I saw the words counterterrorism in your bio is yes, I definitely want to talk to her to see if she can dispel my myths about counterterrorism. And the fact that Jack Bauer is not real or that's not what it's actually but before we get into all of that, having read the book, I want to ask you what I think is a very fitting question.

And that is what birth order were you, and what impact did that end up having on the choices that you've made with your life

Ashley Stahl: and your career? Okay. A number of siblings. My dad was married before my mom. So I guess for him, I'm number three, but with my mom, I'm number one. So I'm the older sibling in his current marriage.

Srini Rao: And what impact does that end up having on your own life and the choices that you've made

Ashley Stahl: throughout your career? You know what? I've never been asked this before, but now that I take a look at it, a lot of impact because I had a little brother who, he was a bit of a slower learner. Now he's one of the sharpest tools in the shed.

But back in elementary school, I remember him really struggling to learn and having to join resource classes. And I think at a young age, being the older sister. It made me into a protector. I was always very sensitive about him, very worried about whether he was going to be okay. And obviously as an adult, he's doing incredible things in the world.

But as a kid, I think that being born first and having a brother who needed a little bit of help turned me into a protector. And it makes a lot of sense for why I would have had an interest in something like counterterrorism later in my life, because it's the epitome of trying to be a protector. It's trying to help people, not just on a people level, but on a national level.

And I think for me, I was drawn to that career path because I'd always had a comfort zone and being someone who could help others and protect others.

Srini Rao: Yeah. I know from having read the book, there's also another sister who had a pretty tragic ending to her life. What about that sister?

What impact did that end up having? Because I know you write about her, reference her multiple times throughout the book.

Ashley Stahl: Yeah, I I love that you picked up on that because I wondered at the end of writing my book. I'm like, did I honor my sister? Did I mention that she existed in my life?

I talk about my life. And obviously I didn't really write the book as a memoir. I wrote it as a prescriptive step by step career guide. And so there were some times where I struggled to find where I could share parts of me while also maintaining integrity with wanting to educate my family. Yeah. reader on how to figure out their career path.

And so when it came to my sister I grew up with a sister who was super fun. She was a typical big sister, always had me over to her apartment for slumber parties. And she was from my dad's first marriage. So my half sister. And I never really referenced her like that because she always felt like a full sister to me.

And she used to pick me up from preschool and we just had this really special bond growing up. And I always knew something was off about her, but I think like the saying, love is blind. Like I never really wanted to know what was wrong with her because it felt sad, whatever it was. And it wasn't until later in life, I realized that she had a drug addiction and my parents would make comments about it.

And we tried to help her. And eventually in college, I remember going back to this idea of protecting where my parents had been totally burnt out on trying to save her and help her and by the time she hit rock bottom and needed to go to rehab, it was on me as a college student to have this like neutral mindset and my dad had signed over the rights for me to represent him and negotiate for her slot in this rehab that she would be living in.

And I remember feeling the weight of the world on me in college, like not just wanting to. Be a provider, like someone who financially could swing things. Rehab is expensive for anyone who has had somebody with a drug problem. Especially if you live in LA. You've got like Promises in Malibu, which is like somewhere between a vacation in Tulum and it is expensive and it really rocked me to see the cost, not just of life, but the expense of fixing problems, like really fixing problems in your loved one's lives. And so for me, I believe rehab was like 1, 200 a day for her. It was pretty significant. And she needed months of rehab. So I remember representing that and taking that with me.

And so I mentioned her a few times in the book, but I probably didn't do her justice. And I think that grief has a huge impact on how you show up as an adult in your life. And trauma has a huge impact on your career. And even just in this conversation with you, I'm pretty sure I probably haven't fully.

Catalyzed or processed all of the ways that trauma has influenced my career.

Srini Rao: Yeah. What in your mind is it as somebody who has made multiple changes in your career that keeps somebody from being able to bounce back? Because I know the way this ends is pretty tragic from having read the book despite the rehab.

I just remember thinking, wow that's gotta be really rough.

Ashley Stahl: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, I think that. Having had a sister who passed away I had grieved her for a lot of years of my life and was building my business as a career expert and hustling in my career. And whenever I would see her, it had evolved to a place where she eventually became homeless and we did everything we could to help her.

And you know how it is. It's you can't help someone that doesn't want to be helped. And so with. My sister, I think it's just a reminder for anybody listening that if you have unresolved issues in your life and you're not looking at them and if you're holding grief, a lot of the times grief can just be like pushing a beach ball under the ocean and it's you don't, if you're not facing it, you're spending more energy resisting it.

And so for me, with my sister, what's been so key and what's been also so key to be helping other people in their career is really reminding people that your stuckness is only exist because you're stuck in your thinking. And I always advise people when they start working with me in any way to grab a piece of paper and write down all of the things that are grabbing pieces of their mind share.

So for anybody listening, I would recommend saying like writing at the top of a piece of paper, like what is pulling on me? What is pulling on my energy? What are some thoughts that I'm having about my life? Where am I still in grief? Where am I still upset? Where am I still sad? All of the things you write down are opportunities and they do trickle into your career because they're tying up your energy.

Srini Rao: So having to confront the mortality of a sister at the age you did what decisions did you make about how you would live your own life going forward?

Ashley Stahl: Yeah I feel I had some really odd kind of paranormal experiences as my sister was dying and I never really talked about them before on, on any recorded platform.

So I don't know if this is a fit. For your audience listening, I've been

Srini Rao: known to do that to

Ashley Stahl: people. I actually, I love that. What an incredible thing that you can do here. With my sister, as she was passing away, I started having flashes of visuals of moments in her life that I wasn't a part of because she was 30 years older than me.

So she died at 51 and it was. Really, I 20, 23 years older than me, actually. And my older brother who grew up with her, I had moments and memories that she had shared with him. And it was really interesting. I texted him when she was on her deathbed and she was in a coma for a lot of days before she finally passed away.

And I said to him did you guys have orange carpet when you were growing up? Did you have a weird red convertible? Did you guys run out of oil on the way to a concert in the car and have to get help? All of these weird thoughts would come through. And I think that's the thing about information and even creativity in your career.

You just don't really know where information is coming from. There's so much we don't know. There's so much mysticism in the world, but it was really. flooring and jarring for my older brother who started to text me and ask me questions when he was in the hospital with her because he just couldn't believe the memories and flashes that were coming through for me.

And then I got a message in my mind. I had a box in high school and it was this weird leopard print box with all of my high school photos and I hadn't opened it in probably years as one does when they leave something in their garage. And I got a voice in my head and it said, check the leopard box from high school.

There's something in there and I need you to give it to your brother. And I opened it and it was my sister's journal from 1985. So I had grabbed that and I didn't even open it. I just gave it to him and we were both just floored. So I don't think about that experience often, but what.

I do know just talking to you about it now is that I've always had a sensitivity and I think it's that sensitivity that allows me not only to be a good career expert and to really pick up on nuances with people, but it also guided me into a career in counterterrorism like there was a sensitivity to me where I was able to connect with people and.

For a long time, I think I had some misunderstandings about my career. I didn't really know how to make sense of all of these parts of my personality, the protector, the sensitive one. And so for me going into counterterrorism, I thought, wow, I'm going to be part of a good cause. And I'm going to use my people skills that I really naturally have to make a difference and make an impact and get information that saves people's lives.

And it wasn't until I finally got there, of course, that I realized like I'm not cut out for counterterrorism because. The same sensitivity that drew me to it is the sensitivity that made it so I could not stay. Yeah

Srini Rao: I do want to talk specifically about career, but I want to talk about this protector thing because I, one thing I wonder is how you draw that line between this drive to be a protector, but also feeling responsible for the outcomes.

People's lives because I know that you even allude to it in the book about saying you're not responsible for the outcomes that your clients have. This is the person who offers an online course or teaches something. There's no way you can be responsible for the outcomes that people have because that's on them.

And I think that often we tend to place that burden on ourselves. So where do you how do you draw that line? As somebody who's hardwired this way, I

Ashley Stahl: learned that from my mom. Honestly, I, there was a day right after I graduated college, a friend of mine, and I'd been pretty close with her, but we'd lost touch towards the end of college.

You know how it is like your early years of college, you're like best friends with people. And then you hardly know each other by senior year sometimes. So this girl that I had really liked, really connected with. I found out that her dad had passed away unexpectedly and I really felt it for her. Like I remember having a really hard day at work just feeling that for her, even though we hadn't been in touch.

And I called my mom and I, and she's asked me how my day was going. And I said having a really hard day and it was my first job ever as an underpaid admin assistant. So I always took long lunch breaks for my own sanity. And my mom said to me I'm so sorry that you're feeling. Your friend's loss, but she said one day you're going to feel this loss one day.

You're going to lose me or your dad and that day is not today. So you don't need to feel this kind of loss today in your body. You don't need to feel this today. And. At first, I was like, wow, that isn't that kind of compassionless not to feel for someone else and she really helped me understand the difference between like life eating me alive in some way, like letting myself feel everything versus having basic empathy and really, caring for other people and wanting the best for them and sending them good energy, but not taking on the weight of their world on your own. And I realize now it doesn't really serve anyone for me to take the weight on of their challenges. And sometimes it's an insult because I'm not trusting or believing that they have what it takes to handle their own lives.

You know what I mean? And I think sometimes when we try to feel for other people or sometimes empaths it's we think we're so empathetic and compassionate, but sometimes we're just controlling because we want to feel better. It makes us uncomfortable that other people have things. And so we try to.

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com slash creative and get 40 off your first subscription. Again, that's mindlift, M Y N D L I F T. com slash creative for 40 off your first subscription. Yeah let's do this. Let's shift gears and talk briefly about the counterterrorism career, because I think, like I said, I'm hoping that you can clarify some of my misperceptions about the reality versus my fantasy version, which is based entirely on watching eight seasons of 24.

First off you mentioned this protector nature is what led you there. Can you walk me through the trajectory in a bit more detail? Like, how in the world do you end up in this job at such a young age? Yeah. What's the difference between the fantasy that I have of it and the

Ashley Stahl: reality?

Gosh, it's two really amazing and also loaded questions. I could go on for so long about the fantasy versus the reality. I think we're in a fantasy in a lot of areas of our life, not just in counterterrorism, but I do get that. National security is an area that really appeals to the imagination. Okay, how did I get into it?

I always loved cultures. I always loved traveling. I always loved people. And I was really good at learning languages when I was a little kid. I came from a lot of privilege at the time. My dad ended up losing all of his money and his entire company. But as a little kid we had a lot of wealth and my mom had somebody taking care of me and she spoke Spanish and my mom had asked her if she could teach me.

And so around age six, I'd spoken fluent Spanish. And she always commented on how I picked up the language very easily. The irony is that I've already forgotten it now. As an adult, I don't know how to speak very much Spanish. But as a little kid, I spoke it very fluently. And from there in middle school, I started taking French classes and French came so easily to me.

I remember the professor almost couldn't make sense of it. He used to, there was one day he gave us the assignment. He said, come into class next the next day it was French one. And Describe a photograph of yourself, and it was like French one, so people were really fumbling and bumbling their way through the photograph, but in my case, I literally just started talking as if I'd known the language my whole life, and he pulled me aside and said, have you done French before?

Like, where did you learn this? And I really couldn't make sense of it. It was just a natural thing for me. And yeah. It made sense for me, I think growing up to just study something around culture, around languages, around people. And just like anyone going to college, it's I didn't really know what to major in.

Like I'd heard all those platitudes of do what you love and the money will

Srini Rao: follow.

Ashley Stahl: Yeah. To me as a career expert now, and even with my book out, it's like nightmare advice, but I didn't know better. And so I just picked things that I was lightly interested in, which government and history I thought, okay, this is storytelling and cultures.

And then I studied French because I was indecisive and I already had taken years of that language and. I went to study abroad in France and there was this woman in an alleyway and I'll never forget, it was like raining outside and nobody was out and I was just walking around on a Sunday afternoon and I heard this like slapping sound and he hit his wife and he was screaming at her and I didn't know what language they were speaking and she looked at me and I remember that inner protector that we talked about really came up for me and wanting to do something about it, wanting to help her and.

Instead of helping her, I did what I think a lot of people do. I made a career decision about her. I decided that there was something in the wiring of my brain that was like, I want to protect her. I'm studying politics. 9 11 had just happened years prior. It feels like I just need to do something in government to protect people.

And so that's where that moment was for me. And from there on out, I did everything to be the best I could in the I ended up going to the best school I could. I went to the Department of War Studies at King's College, London. I started taking Arabic classes. I started learning Dari, which is language spoken in Afghanistan, amongst other places.

And eventually when I graduated in the middle of the recession, I couldn't get a job to save my life. And ended up as an admin assistant kind of with that horrible career advice, again, of taking what I could get or just trying to get my foot in the door. It's it wasn't even the right door, but I just was desperate to be employed.

And I remember this moment about three months into my job, which was pretty mind numbing, that I thought to myself you know what, I. The misery of putting myself out there will never be as miserable as the trajectory of the career path I'm on right now. And I emailed my university and said, do you have a list of alumni who have moved to Washington, D.

C.? And they emailed me 2, 000 names, emails, and phone numbers. Wow. And I literally, the thing about D. C. is it's pretty one dimensional. If you're there, you work in the government. There's not a lot of guessing games, so rare that I meet somebody in D. C. that's working in like cosmetic marketing

It's what? What are you doing here? So I ended up working my way through that list and I would say a hundred out of the 2000 people. And I called and emailed every single one really helped me. Obviously I got hung up on, tripped over my words, really embarrassed myself, but there was a bunch of them that actually helped me.

And it was magical to see what started happening in my career when I learned how to talk to people and that experience is what lent itself to me coming up with so much content later in my life as a career expert around how to craft an elevator pitch, how to talk to people in a way that's authentic, intentional and also moves the needle forward.

And so from there, I ended up getting a few job offers and one was as a defense contractor for the Pentagon. Running a program that was helping NATO withdraw from Afghanistan, and I was in charge of the curriculum. So that's what got me into national security at a really tense time. As far as the myths go unless you're an intelligence officer where you're in the field like the excitement is quite minimal.

And even then. There are years where you are on really boring assignments, and I know this because I'm friends with a lot of people in the CIA, and I've also coached plenty of them in my practice, and I will say that if I talk to any spy who's been in the field for a decade, They probably had one or two very edgy, adrenaline rushing, exciting years, but a majority of the years they're collecting information.

They're going on smaller tasks. It's not always what you're seeing on television for sure.

Srini Rao: So Jack Bauer's life is far more interesting than most normal people's

Ashley Stahl: lives. It's a miracle he hasn't had a heart attack

Srini Rao: If you've ever noticed the three things that Jack Bauer never does, he never sleeps, he never shits, he never eats us for and he never has sex.

And the one time he tried to have sex, somebody shot the person he was having sex with

Ashley Stahl: . Exactly. And you know what I do get, there's a lot of people in D. C. who are alcoholics. And I understand that it is intense, the amount that some people have put themselves through. But for me, working for the Pentagon, it was a lot of analysis.

It was a lot of intelligence reports. And if I'm being completely candid, a lot of the information coming in. It's very sad. And the only way to survive how sad it is to just desensitize yourself because every single day it's a new bombing in a new farmer's market and more casualties. For me, I just had to put up, put on a very academic lens and look at the information coming in and work with analysts and with my team to devise conclusions based on the data, which 30s analysis is not a core skill set I have.

Even in my book, that's something that I wrote about quite extensively. And I can tell you read that because for me, that was like the biggest area of misunderstanding in not only my career, but everyone I've ever talked to as a client career.

Srini Rao: So I would ask you one other thing about this and we'll start getting into the concepts in the book.

We're in a really bizarre time in terms of government probably for the last. Four years. Who knows if we'll have some semblance of normalcy now that the recent election is over, but I think as a content creator I think a lot about media and the important the role that it plays in shaping public perception of the actions of politicians.

And I've had white house staffers here. I've had military personnel here. Now I'm talking to you. One, there are two things I wonder about this misperceptions. Do you think the public has about them? The actions of the government and then what do you think is the responsibility of people in media when it comes to talking about all of this?

Ashley Stahl: Yeah. Wow. What an incredible question. First of all, the biggest thing that I always wish people would understand just for me having worked in Obama's administration. At the Department of Defense is that before somebody gets elected, there is so much information they don't know that will be served to them on the day they're sworn in.

And I think this matters more than anybody ever talks about because you've got politicians making promises on stages, but how can you make commitments without context? Do you know what I mean? And yeah, mind blowing to me how people don't understand that people are running for office, making promises based on what they know and what they can do right now.

And then information is changing. Information is fluent. The government is fluid. Context is fluid. Everything is changing all the time. So yeah, I think that the public kind of lacks compassion for that reality and they're very quick to lose trust in somebody versus realizing like they are handed a very odd deck of cards that is constantly moving.

So that's number one. And I think that's really relevant for the time we're in right now with a change in presidential office. I think the second thing around. public officials and responsibility. It's so interesting. I had such a hangover from politics for so many years. You're probably the first person who's asked me about politics, which is so interesting.

Cause I've worked in national security. You would think maybe somebody would ask me, but what is the responsibility? It's hard for, I almost feel like it's silly for me to even have an opinion on that because having been surrounded by politicians, it's the amount of information that they are sifting through with their team, the amount of constituents they are serving it's insane and my first internship was working for Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, like back in college.

So I was his like guinea pig, like I would open up his mail and that was the time of anthrax and people, crazy people would send a baby powder in the mail. Instead of anthrax, just to scare whoever was opening the mail, which was me. And I just learned firsthand through working for him that the amount of phone calls, the amount of questions coming in it makes it really hard for anybody to even be human.

I do think that when we're living in a pandemic, there's a scientific responsibility that is clearly lacking among our politicians. Too much of like real housewives of Beverly Hills and not actual politics on TV, like it's mind blowing, but. I do have a lot of compassion for anybody in politics, and I think it's a crazy career path choice now that I've been around it.

Srini Rao: Yeah the reason I ask is I think it's really relevant to the times that we're living in. And I think that it's it's funny because I think that we often tend to just be very extremist in our views, regardless of what side we're on. We're like, Oh, those people are all full of crap.

Like they're wrong and we're right or vice versa. And I think that to your point of context I think that's often overlooked. I feel like that's overlooked in career advice too, because there's a lot of bad career advice that leaves context out of the conversation. I think that makes a perfect segue to getting hot into the concepts in the book.

And I want to start with passion because I think that you and I have a lot of very similar views on this. I am very much of the Cal Newport be so good. They can't ignore you. School of thought when it comes to this, because I feel like so many people follow their passion right into poverty.

I know this because I watched it happen when we started in 2009 lifestyle design, Tim Ferriss's for our work week, digital nomads were all the rage. And most of those people are non existent today or basically just found themselves miserable and broke. But I think you said at the beginning of the book that a lot of us think that passion should dictate the work we choose to do.

And I learned the hard way. There's a huge difference between being a consumer and a producer just because I love buying clothes as consumer. It doesn't mean I should become a fashion designer, the producer of the clothes, a happy consumer does not always translate into a happy producer. Outside of the sort of endless graduation speeches and self help books that perpetuate this idea.

Why do you think that this is such a prevalent narrative when it comes to careers? There's this really interesting tool on Google called the Ngram, and basically what it does is you can put a phrase in there and it will show you over time how often that phrase is used in Google, which is really just a reflection of how much it's prevalent in our culture.

Ashley Stahl: Like Google is our culture in a lot of ways. It's such a mirror for it. And if you look up the phrase, follow your passion, you'll see on the Google Ngram from 1980 through the millennium, it just skyrockets. So it's almost like somebody said it, it felt good and it took. And I think that is what sometimes happens when it comes to career advice or any sort of advice on the internet, especially.

And I think that because it got so infused in our culture, it gave us all a hall pass from actually critically thinking about our careers because they felt so nebulous. So instead of thinking about who are we as people? What are our skills? What are our gifts? We were just taught to look at what we're interested in.

And that's why the result was a lot of people who are lost in the workforce because they followed a hobby that they don't actually have a skill set to back necessarily.

Srini Rao: It's funny because people would ask me when I was in business school, what are you planning to do when you get out? And I said, I know that as long as it has nothing to do with the internet, that will be my career.

I guess the universe has a sense of humor like people like, were you passionate about podcasts? And I was like, I don't even listen to podcasts to this day. Really? I don't listen to them. But I said part of it was that we had this formula. So backward, I was curious about it. I found it engaging and I spent years developing the skills to get it to be.

A point where I could make a career out of it. And I think that's one thing I think is often overlooked, especially in our sort of online, you can do anything you want, be anything world, which sells a lot of false hopes and creates a lot of unrealistic expectations.

Ashley Stahl: Yeah, I think we're in an era right now where a lot of people are just so thirsty for realness and like people talk about it in like fancy marketing deck presentations of being authentic and transparent and stuff like that. So it's all buzz terms, but it's such a real phenomenon. It's like we're all so hungry for realness.

There's too many perfectly curated instagram grids and people who have been participating and even I've definitely been one of them having created an online business in the illusion that you can create through PR and paying people to write about you and make you sound cool. And so for me, I am just like one of those seekers who is deeply hungry to not just put realness out there, but keep it within myself.

And if for anything, my own sanity.

Srini Rao: Yeah I put this Facebook status update up the other day, which is the introduction of the book that I'm going to self publish, and it was the hidden dangers of personal development. And I said one of the big dangers here is you're being sold a lot of false hopes.

And I think what's interesting to me when I look at this as a senior, sometimes I feel like even through the work that people like you and I do. We plant seeds of dissatisfaction where there weren't any before. Like we've sold people this idea that there's something wrong with having a job and collecting a paycheck and that's not a good life.

And I was like, who's to say that's not a good life. There are plenty of people who are really happy with that. And yet I think that's the danger. You get this sort of nonconforming narrative that really populates the zeitgeist.

Ashley Stahl: Yeah, 100%. And I think that we're all going through such a turbulent time.

And there's so much uncertainty that our mindsets are very malleable right now and very tender. And times like this is when we crave grounding more than ever. So we grab for ground, whatever that looks like a relationship that might not be right for us, a career change that might feel like we're scratching an inch of a career that's not working so we can go into something else.

But it's almost making sure that we're really thinking clearly Transcribed During these times that we are so vulnerable,

Srini Rao: Let's get into sort of what you got these core components core nature core values and core skills. Let's start with core nature. You say that, you come home to yourself, returning to your core nature, knowing that you're true, knowing your true nature means knowing how you feel when you're in your most natural and honest state.

It means knowing how people experience you when you're in a room with them. Now, what I wonder is how people make sure they don't confuse that with, hey, this is making me feel good, so I should make a career out of it. Because that would be very easy to do. I feel like I see that a lot, particularly in these sort of spiritual meccas and new age bullshit.

Yeah,

Ashley Stahl: I love that you sound like you do have some spirituality to you, but it also sounds like you're what I like. I'm a spiritual skeptic. Yeah, no, you're selectively spiritual, which is I am as well. So I appreciate your kind of like scrutiny and questions. So core nature, I think that every concept in my book is a place that someone can get misguided if they're not paying attention and really reading the concept.

So core nature is about who you are when you are in your most natural state. That's how I talk about it in chapter one of the book. And the reason I introduced this concept as the first concept is because I do see your energy as the foundation of where you're operating from in your career. It's not your skill set.

It's not going to tell you how you're going to spend your day necessarily, but it is going to tell you what it feels like when you're you. And so I think what's important when it comes to understanding what your energy is when you're in your most natural state is asking people who you feel the most yourself with to describe how the room changes when you walk in.

So I would probably ask my mom. My dad, maybe a sibling my partner, and then maybe a couple people who are distant, but still people I can be myself with. Like back when I was in the workforce, I had a work wife ask her as a colleague, like, how does the room change when I walk in? What is the energy you're picking up on?

And then maybe somebody a little more distant that I still feel like gets a sense of me. So collecting that market research. And I like to email people that question or text them so I can read their answer. I think there's something helpful in being able to take a look at it and really process it. So anybody listening to this podcast, I would say come up with a list of maybe five or six people that you feel like really get your vibes and text them saying, how does the room change when I walk in this crazy career coach on the unmistakable creative podcast is asking me to ask people in my life.

So I'm curious if you could just give me feedback on a few words that you would describe my presence with in the room. And you can take a look at patterns and the adjectives you get. And also, of course, the most important thing is just checking with yourself, which words deeply feel resonant to you.

A lot of friends will say to me that I have a lot of humor, which I don't know, it's probably not even coming across on this particular podcast because I'm in so much thought with you. But most of the time, that's where you're going to find me is like hamming it up. So those words matter for your career, and it's a really good starting point.

And once you collect those words and come up with three or four adjectives that you think Really represent your core nature, the energy that you bring to a room, how the room changes when you walk in, I would say, ask yourself, who do you know in the world that you feel like has a similar energy to you?

What are they doing out there in the world? How can you start to get curious about how they're using their being their natural state to create results and even money in their bank account?