Ashley Stahl - Part 2 | Get Unstuck, Discover Your Direction, and Design Your Dream Career

Srini Rao: One thing that you say in the book is that in a world that values plans, the number of years listed on your resume, company loyalty, all of it, quitting is for badass human beings who are to face the truth of where they are and reserve the courage to do something about it. Now, I think that's interesting because that also flies in the face of so much of our cultural programming.

I grew up in an Indian culture where accolades, accomplishment, and linear career paths are extremely valued. I don't think that's common to just Indians. I think it's just amplified in our culture. What I wonder is how people find that courage to actually do something about it, especially when they've put so much time into something and are falling victim to sunk cost bias.

Ashley Stahl: Yeah, definitely. Sunken cost bias is such a real phenomenon. And I can't tell you the amount of people who have come to me saying that they're going to spend more years being miserable just because the amount of years they invested in their misery I think ultimately one of the biggest things to remember, especially if you have a college education or that's part of what's making you feel a sense of sunken cost is that your degree or your education, or even your experiences, they're here to serve you.

You're not here to serve them. It's like the amount of people I've seen being a slave to their degree when they're not happy with it. Is mind boggling. And I also must say that we are living in a world right now where, according to the research, we're going to live longer, contrary to how it might be feeling with 2020 in our rearview mirror right now.

But there are so many advancements coming, and as a result I see it as very normal for a lot of people to probably. keep going in their career. We're already seeing the retirement age is being stretched. And as a result, I think it's really important to ask yourself is it really quote unquote too late if you're 45, 55, 65 to make a change because some of the most fascinating people I know have had multiple careers.

And I had one client who she had five career paths and each one was a decade. So she climbed to the top of one. She entered another one at the middle slash top climbed beyond the top of that one and continue to do so it's more important to just really hold your career lightly and give yourself permission to see it as a vehicle for your own self expression as a vehicle for you to be who you are in the world.

Srini Rao: Yeah. So what do you think it is that differentiates the person who navigates that transition, whether it's forced on them or whether they choose it consciously and navigates it well versus the person who doesn't like, what have you noticed when you've talked to people?

Ashley Stahl: Yeah. It's I talk about in one of my TED talks, how perfectionism is just this mask that I think people wear when they're afraid of failure.

And I get it. It's easier to tinker and tinker than it is to just accept something and be vulnerable and put yourself out there. But what I would say to anybody who is in that state is clarity comes from engagement it's not going to come just from thought you are and engagement can look like many things.

It can look like. Listening to this podcast episode, it can look like having a conversation with someone who's doing work. You find really inspiring. It can even look like taking a job because you thought your way as far as you can. And now you need to go actually try it on what I will say. I think back.

I had a client who. He got a job offer in Berlin and he was living in San Francisco. And I remember saying to him he was so scared to leave his apartment, leave his family, go to Berlin. And it's I asked him, I said, are you marrying Berlin? It's just another city that you can go to and leave.

And what's the worst that can happen. He's the worst that can happen is I don't like my job. I'm like, okay, then what will you do? It's I don't know, I'll probably have to get another job. I'm like, great. Sounds like a slight inconvenience that's it. That's it that you're telling me that you need to go do.

And I think people just hold their career moves so heavily that they don't see the importance of that personal experimentation. And so I remember that client, he ended up moving to Berlin. I think it cost him a couple thousand dollars to end his lease prematurely and he ended up absolutely loving it.

And realizing that there really was barely any downside to him taking that risk and trying it on.

Srini Rao: Yeah. It's funny because we had Annie Duke here. She just had a new book come out called How to Decide. And she said, there's almost no decision in your life that's irreversible that has significantly high costs.

Ashley Stahl: Exactly. And it's funny, people constantly get stuck on making the best decision. There is no best decision. There's just different paths and in a lot of ways, one path will be better than another and so on. And it's just so important to be able to make that piece with life and really trust life in that way.

Srini Rao: So I want to get into something that you call core skills, but I want to do this in a way that's backwards by referencing a part that you mentioned later in the book. You say we've heard it all before, do what you love and the money will follow or my least favorite from the self help movement, follow your passion.

And these expressions are often a fast track to nowhere. And I think that makes a really perfect segue to talk about the importance of skills because even Cal Newport in his book so good, they can't ignore you said following your passion is. Not only misguided, it's dangerous advice that often leads to bad consequences.

Yes,

Ashley Stahl: it's so true. Here's the deal. There's a really big difference between being a consumer and a producer. And this is something that I write about a lot in the book you term because I think it's really important for people to get this down. Being a consumer of something I love politics.

I consume a lot of politics. I love fashion. I take a lot of content on that's fashion based on my Instagram. These are things that I love. I love cupcakes. Let me tell you, I would be a horrible cupcake baker and I definitely am not meant to be a politician because I'm way too honest. And it just tells me that just because I'm interested in something doesn't mean I have the skill set to back success in it.

And according to research, we are happier when we're doing well at something that just feels like common sense. And for some reason, there's too many people I think out there trying to turn their hobby or their art into their work. When really it's just meant to stay something that you have as a hobby, something you love consuming, something you love playing with and not something you want to turn into work.

Yeah it's funny because even dissecting that whole passion idea it's basically when I looked at it and as I was writing this out, it's okay typically the equation is follow your passion, the money will fall, you'll be satisfied no, follow your curiosity, figure out what you find engaging.

Srini Rao: If it's find it engaging for long enough, then you'll actually be. Yeah. Start to develop skills and then and the byproduct of all those things seems to be passion. So let's talk about these 10 core skill sets, which you talked, which you mentioned, which are innovation, building words, motion service, coordinating analysis, numbers, technology and beauty.

So what I wonder is one give us an overview of what they are, but how do people figure out where their core skill sets lie?

Ashley Stahl: I love this topic so much because I find that there's such a simplicity in me figuring out these 10 core skill sets that I talk about in chapter two of U Turn and that we can go through now is the result of about a decade of research on my own email list and people have taken my programs.

And what's so amazing about them is how simple they are. So as I go through each of these, I would just advise anybody listening to see them not just as something tactical, but also to see them as an energy that you can reside in. So the innovation skill set. is really the intrapreneur, the person who runs their own book of business under the umbrella of a company, the highly creative self starter, the person who rises in the ranks to be second in command in a company who's helping solve those big business problems, or they're the entrepreneur.

But whatever it is you're around someone whose core skill set is innovation. When you feel them in that problem solving visionary energy. And then number two is the builder. So like you had mentioned, this is actually quite tactical or it can be more of a metaphor. So the builders are the mechanics, the construction workers.

It can also be the web developers who are building a website. It's really just about an energy. That the person spends their day in as well. And then the third one is words. This one's mine. I'm guessing this one's is yours to speaker. I'm a writer. I'm a content creator. This can also be the skillset for talent agents, real estate agents.

The thing is just because you see a job doesn't mean it's assigned to one core skillset. It's going to be carrying out differently based on the person who's core skillset. It is so you might have a therapist who words is their core skill set and what their clients are going to get out of them is incredibly worded sentences that are so healing and helpful for them to make sense of their lives.

You might also have a therapist whose skill set is another 1 you mentioned analysis and maybe where they're bringing the value. as a therapist is they're just very analytical, able to catch patterns in the way people are living their lives and help them really see that. So it's not to say that every skill set means that these are the jobs in the skill set.

It's really, this is the energy and does this match how you lead in your life? So the words core skill set can cover a variety of areas. But one question that I love to ask people, especially in this one, but all of them is, are you an introvert? Or are you an extrovert? And I know there's a lot of research on being an ambivert, but what's so interesting for me is I do believe people lead with one or the other.

Either you get your energy mostly from being alone or mostly from being with people. And it's going to look very different if you're the words, core skillset or any of these for me, I'm more of an introvert professionally. So what that's going to look like is less time of me on stages and more time.

of me at a coffee shop alone behind my computer, writing my thoughts out and that's where I'm going to get my energy. Whereas for you, maybe it's different. And then skill set number four is motion. So this is actually a surprising one. People don't always expect that motion is a core skill set, but the ability to be on your feet all day and be in motion is an ability.

So these are the fitness trainers, the masseuses, even the tour guides, people who devote their life to just being out and in motion all day. And skill set number five is service. So this is the humanitarian, the nurse, the supporter, and a great question that comes up for me with this particular skill set and as well as all of them is your skill set coming that the one that you think you have from a wounded place?

or an inspired place. And I say this because there's a lot of people who learned how to be you talked about your culture. There's a lot of different cultural backdrops that have inspired people to be people pleasers, abandon themselves, lose their sense of self. And they did that as a coping mechanism to stay in their culture or to stay in the role that they were taught to be in culture aside.

And so it's important, I think, for people to ask themselves, did I just learn how to be a people pleaser? And I'm telling myself that this is my skill set, really important question to ask yourself for all of these. And it is possible that you had some sort of trauma in your life that also influenced your skill set.

And it's both. Number six is coordination. So this is the event coordinator, the operations person, the project manager. I love the coordinators because I have none of that skill set inside of me and they make the world go round. And then number seven I had mentioned was analysis. So the researcher, the academics, the economists, or the highly analytical therapists, you name it.

And then number eight is the number crunchers, the accountants, the investment bankers, the bookkeepers. Number nine is technology. So the IT whizzes, the artificial intelligence creators. And number 10 is beauty. And I love these people. The, these are the ones that they're, if this is your core skillset, you're making art of the world around you, whether you're an interior designer, a makeup artist, you can usually tell when you're around someone whose core skillset is beauty.

They just have a way of not just putting things together, but they tend to have ability to put themselves together. So those are the 10. And I know that some people will resonate with one or two or three of them, but it's really about figuring out what is the number one that you lead with that you really feel like you have a gift.

Srini Rao: So you, you alluded to culture making, having an impact. I'm really curious. As somebody who comes from the culture I did where your sanity is definitely going to be questioned if you've done what I've done, at least until you're successful at it. To some degree, cause I remember I had a relative tell one of my cousins that she thought what I was doing, this was when I just started my blog and no book deal on a thing that what I was doing was a waste of my education.

I said, great, we'll take her off the list for the wedding that I haven't yet to plan. But the thing is I wonder in your own work, like what have you seen as cultural differences and challenges in navigating this transition? I think everybody comes from a different upbringing and it's so important to be able to do that work and reflect on who are you versus who have you been taught to be.

Ashley Stahl: One exercise that I really love recommending people do is just writing on a piece of paper. I am the one who and starting to get some clarity on what are the identities that you hold for yourself. So if I filled it in, I would write I'm the one who's always on time. I'm the one who overprepares.

I'm the one who's super funny. I have a sense of humor. I'm the one who has all of these things. And there's nothing more powerful, I think, inside of us than our desire to self identify. It just keeps us feeling safe. It keeps us feeling like we know what we're working with. We know who we are, and we don't have to search to go be anybody else.

And so I would just advise anybody listening to this to at least start asking yourself those questions of who do you identify as and do you want to be. All of those things. Do those things resonate for you?

Srini Rao: So one thing you say was that by making career decisions out of fear and by morphing myself in with the people around me, I wouldn't thrive in the long run, only survive in the short run.

It took me all of my twenties to come home to myself. The young creative girl inside of me who was always meant to be a writer in retrospect, I often laugh when I think about how much I've gone off course, only to come back to what I've always known yet rejected about myself. And it's a matter of noticing what I like to call turn signals, signs that it's time to reevaluate your life.

I wonder about this because I remember I had this guy named Eric Wall here, and he always referenced this quote by Sergeant Kierkegaard that said crisis is all changes preceded by crisis, whether that's an identity crisis, a personal crisis of any kind. And what I always wondered was why is it that you need the crisis to bring the change about and how do you do it without a crisis?

Ashley Stahl: Yeah, great question. The reality is that we put a lot of energy into building our lives. And at the same time, when we create a static life that's built on somebody that we were at one point, it doesn't always match who we're becoming. The only thing that is true is to me that we're always changing and a lot of the times people will wake up in a life that maybe they're old, that old version of themselves fit.

And now they're looking at their life thinking this doesn't work for me anymore. This isn't honoring. Who I am now, and it's not to say that we need to be flippant and make quick decisions that unravel our lives, but it is to say that when you change as a person, what your needs are going to be, what you want out of your career, what you want out of your partnership, all of those things are going to come into play.

And sometimes it requires you to really face a lot of inconvenience in unraveling your life. So you can bring it back together in a way that feels true for you. That being said, you can probably be incremental about it and prevent some of the damage where not making change in every area of your life at once.

You can probably focus on one area at a time, but I do think that change can be really chaotic.

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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 dot com slash creative for 40 off your first subscription. Yeah. It's funny because I think that the one thing that I've always started a question, if you've been reading my ridiculous Facebook status updates is like this whole idea of platitudes.

I think there's this common phrase that Reid Hoffman always likes to say is building a startup is like jumping out of a plane without a parachute and building it on the way down. And I'm like that's great. If Reid Hoffman is the investor in your startup, if not, you're probably going to just plummet to your death.

Ashley Stahl: Yeah, I get that. And I also think that I don't know with every new belief we have about how we see the world and what we see to be true or every new experience we have that influences our belief, it does feel like a death. It's like an old version of us is dying because we no longer see the world that way anymore.

Yeah. Probably one of my favorite lines from the entire book was this distinction between what you call the goal line versus the soul line. You say that so many of us are operating with the University of. Santa Monica calls the goal line in life. We aspire for more results in our outer lives.

Srini Rao: More money, more fame, more beauty, bigger titles, more weight, loss, more and more. And I think that's just the nature of our culture because what do we do? We reward and we celebrate people who accomplish remarkable things. These are the people that we put on the covers of magazines.

So these become our role models for success. In a world where outliers are our role models for success, how in the world do you shift yourself back to the soul line from the goal line? First of all, it can be really tough for anybody to know who they are anymore when they feel super disconnected from their selves.

Ashley Stahl: So a lot of people will come to me and say, I need clarity. And to me, I'm like, no, you don't. You just need to connect yourself because. a lot of information will sneak through your mind. That's very true for you when you're connected to yourself. So anyone who's feeling like they're in that numbing zone, where I think a lot of people feel that after the year that we've had in 2020, it's important to say to yourself, okay, what can I do to just come home to myself?

That's the concept of my book, making a U turn. That's the concept of my pocket. Everything I've created comes back to this idea. And so for me, it's saying, you know what, I'm going to. Grab a piece of paper and write down all of the things, places, people that make you feel you again, that make you feel alive again.

In my case, going to the beach, putting my feet in the ocean, it makes me feel more alive. There's a couple friendships that I have when I talk to them. I feel more myself. And when I feel myself, I start to get more creative again. It's like this inner switch. For my energy and my aliveness goes back on and from that place, I'm able to get so much insight on what my next best move really is.

And so I would advise anyone if you're in your career right now, especially trying to make a change and you're not really sure what's next first focus on turning yourself back on as a human being and getting back into your aliveness. Let's talk specifically about values because I think that if you had talked to me about core values when I was in my early twenties, I would have basically said, this all sounds like a lot of new age bullshit, which is a term I like to use a lot in case you haven't noticed.

Srini Rao: But the thing is that's because I don't think I had enough life experience to really understand and figure out, oh, What are the things that I really value? So I wonder why is it that you, we don't really look at this early in our lives? Cause I feel like early in our lives, it's not about values.

It's all about accomplishment. It's what you. So one, why is that? And what have you seen as the difference between the understanding of values between your younger and your older clients that you've worked with? One of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to their core values is they pick words that are aspirational to represent who they are.

Ashley Stahl: And what I mean by that is your core values should really be Like the top three, four, five non negotiable principles by which you live your life. They're not words that you want to be more of that you aspire to, although that information is really useful. Your core values are words that represent who you want or who you truly are as a person.

And one bar that I set for people when they're coming up with their core values is to say to themselves, without that word, I'm not me anymore. That's what you need to be able to say. So humor is one of my core values. You take away humor, if I remove humor from my way of being, people are going to say something.

Anyone who knows me is going to be like, are you okay? Because it's just not who I'm not me anymore without that word. And so I would recommend anybody right now really take a look at 2 dynamics in their career. The 1st thing is the what and that has to do with what job are you doing? What title are you in?

What service are you offering? If you're an entrepreneur. What product are you offering? What's your business that has to do with your core skill set, what you've created, what you're offering, how you're spending your day, what tasks you're doing. The other piece of the puzzle is the how and given that we know that more than 50 percent of people leave their job, not because of the actual job, but because the person that they work for, they don't like their boss.

What that tells us is how your job looks. matters just as much as what your job is and what you're doing and what your responsibilities are. So what I would say to anybody when it comes to core values is those are the key non negotiable ingredients to who you are. And usually when you feel really unhappy in your job, there's one of two things at play.

Number one, you're working outside of your core skill set. You're overriding who you are to perform in a skill set that doesn't sync up with you. Or number two, you're violating a core value. Let's say a core value for you is balance and you work 90 hours a week. That job is violating your values.

Let's say your core value is integrity and you're selling something you don't believe in. Your job is violating a piece of who you are and that's tiring. I would say the top two reasons people don't like what they do is because they're working in the wrong core skill set or their job is trespassing on a core value.

Srini Rao: Wow. All right. So let's go through these ideas of career best. This struck me in particular because I graduated from Pepperdine in April, 2009, which was a horrible time to get out of any kind of school MBA program because nobody was hiring MBAs for. A hundred grand a year when they could hire somebody to do the same job for 10 bucks an hour.

And I saw a lot of friends actually do exactly what you say not to do here in these myths the take what you can get approach. I literally, I remember somebody telling me that. I remember she put a Facebook post up. This is one of my classmates that she had applied to every job on the internet.

I was like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Yeah,

Ashley Stahl: no, you haven't. And that's the thing is like people who come to me, they say I'm stuck. And I'm just like, no, you're not. You just haven't created enough options for yourself. Stuckness is an issue of options and thinking.

Srini Rao: Yeah. Yeah. You talk about take what you can get.

So that's where the first thing I think that I learned this lesson of take what you can get early sometime in my late twenties. One of the, it was those rare moments when people were actually willing to hire me for a job and it was crazy because up until that point I had always taken the first offer I could get.

And I remember it was the first time in my life I had two offers and one was in for the startup in Mountain View and I didn't want to make the commute. And I sat I said, I need a week to think about this because I'm really hesitant about the commute. And I also have another offer where there is no commute.

And the recruiter from the startup in Mountain View would call me back every day. And I think from the time we started talking to the time that they made their final offer, she raised the salary from 50 to 80 grand to see if I would take it.

Ashley Stahl: Wow. See, and that's the thing is that when you're clear on what you want or you really step into your worthiness, people will meet you there.

We are constantly being met with the energy we are putting out. And that's not even some spiritual thing. If you come with confidence, people are going to treat you with the respect that confidence brings. The fact that you have the confidence to say, I've got multiple options and I need some time to think about this, that's really appealing for a recruiter.

And it's always going to be, it's just like dating, right? Dating somebody who's got options. It's it creates a little more attachment from the other person. It's all part of the dance that we are in. And job hunting is no exception.

Srini Rao: Yeah. It's funny because I think you, you see this even in creative work, right?

Is that I always say, don't ever choose from your first available option. Like I made my publisher do 20 versions of my book cover and I'm sure the designers there hated me for it, but I didn't care because I was like, the first option is definitely not going to be the best one. And I remember even in, there's a book called inside Steve's brain, which was written by a journalist about Apple.

And he said, anytime Steve jobs got a prototype, he would make sure people gave him two versions of everything. Wow.

Ashley Stahl: Yep. I can totally see that. And I'm just like you, my book cover had so many iterations. And I do think there's something to be said about momentum and being in something that's good enough.

I think in the personal development world, there's a lot of preaching around excellence, but I feel like in a lot of ways that can turn us into a robot. And for me, Thank I value progress and momentum a little bit more than being perfect in a plus. That being said, I always want to be in integrity with whatever I'm putting out.

And so I would ask anybody who's in the kind of the options what is your tipping point? And are you happy with the amount of time you spend in your options or in creating options so that at least you're keeping your momentum in your life as well and in your career?

Srini Rao: So I want to finish with two final areas.

I think that you talk about elevator pitches, but I think more importantly right now, in the context of covid, where a lot of people have lost their jobs, people are really struggling, what is your guidance to people in this situation? Because I think there are people who have been in the same jobs for years or being forced to change.

And a lot of these situations are completely out of their control. They can't do a whole hell of a lot,

Ashley Stahl: meaning if they lost their job and they're starting over in some way or another. Yeah and even certain cases, like if you're a waiter at a restaurant, like you're done for a while, at least or if you're in an industry like that, where there's no nobody coming in, like if you're in the hospitality industry, this has got to be horrible.

Yeah. I just have to reiterate your core skill set is really what you want to lead with and your industry is a backdrop. So while a lot of industries are taking a hit. And if you're working in hospitality, you're probably taking a hit. It's important to realize that there's got to be a way for you to communicate not about hospitality, but about the core skill set that you were using in the role in hospitality so that you can make sense of it for your next step.

A lot of people who make career changes, they look at their resume and they say, how am I going to make sense of being a. Hospitality restaurant person when I want to go work at a tech company in sales, it's like hospitality is all about people. It's all about sales. Really spend that time on your resume because your resume is a marketing document.

It's not a place that you go word vomit. Everything you've ever done. It's a marketing. I would say look at what you've been doing in the past and how it relates to where you want to go in the future and spend 80 percent of the bullets on your resume and your past job reflecting concepts and skill sets that would be relevant for where you're headed.

And from there, really think about how to talk about yourself because one of the most botched and also asked interview and networking questions. Is tell me about yourself and it's just crazy. Like we don't think about how to talk about ourselves because it's sneakily seems obvious. And that's such a vague question too.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a cop out, but it's still, you can always count on it happening. This

Srini Rao: is why I would never ask that at an interview, but I think as you get towards the end of the book there's something you said that really struck me. You said we never really start over who we are right now is made by the ingredients of our past experiences and emotions.

We're always carrying the threat of our past with us into the future of our careers, relationships and lives, whether we want to see it that way or not, and we can choose to hold the new with lightness. I love that. That was one of my favorite phrases from the book. But one thing that I wonder about is a lot of people will take those threads of the past and carry them as baggage into their future.

I should know. I know firsthand because I've done it, particularly in the context of relationships. So how do you actually find the value of the threads from the past, particularly the ones that

Ashley Stahl: were awful? Yeah, totally. First of all, there's a very fine line between addressing an insecurity and shining a mega spotlight on a weakness.

So I think it's really important that when you walk into high stakes situations like a job interview or a really important networking conversation, you realize if there's a doubt looming in the mind of the interviewer, if you have a doubt about yourself and you think it's really evident and something that you need to share or address, Be quick, be direct and be clear about it and then move on because it's also just about the amount of real estate.

You give that issue in a conversation that makes it something that people focus on more. I had somebody who they had a gap on their resume and they just told the recruiter and we talked about this. They just said I had a health issue and I left the workforce for a year and I'm so grateful that I'm all better now and I can totally focus on it.

And it was like the recruiter had no questions after that. And then you had somebody else who they made the gap on their resume mean that they were lost and confused and scared. And even if you were lost and confused and scared, why don't you just talk about what you learned and that you're really grateful that you're back and you're focused

Srini Rao: now.

Okay, so as the guy who has basically become professionally unemployable and been fired from damn near every job, how do you address something like that? It's funny because I think if I went and applied for jobs now, I would probably have a lot more value and skill to add after 10 years of doing this.

The first 30, 10 years of my career is nothing but a resume of failures.

Ashley Stahl: Yeah it depends how you look at it. I know that it can be really cheesy to be like, nothing is a failure, but. In a lot of ways, if you are learning and honing your skill set there's something to be talked about there.

So I would say when it comes to pivoting or making a change or looking at time in your life that there is failure, it just goes back to that same concept of how much attention you're giving it. I would also think to yourself what are the top three skills that the recruiter or the hiring manager?

Or whatever, whoever you're talking to needs to know you have and what are some stories you have from your past, whatever you were doing that shows that you really have those skills. And if you don't have a certain skill that is so clearly important, how can you relate to them that you are a committed and fast learner?

Srini Rao: Wow. I love this because you've packed this with so much very practical insight. So I want to finish with two final questions. Earlier in our conversation. You alluded to the fact that you grew up privileged and with a lot of wealth, but you also saw your dad lose his wealth. And I know that even in running your own business, there've been ups and downs.

I wonder what that experience has had on your own perspective on money and wealth.

Ashley Stahl: Yeah I learned about the concept of a self fulfilling prophecy through my own money mindset. So my dad for anybody who I'm guessing hasn't read the book yet. He lost all of his money when I was young. We came from, like you said, a lot of privilege and it really rocked him.

But for me as a kid, when we moved into a new house, I was actually excited that it was a smaller house and that their room was closer to mine. So that's where my little kid head was. But my dad was So anxious and stressed doing the best he could to be the best dad possible and provide for all of us.

That as a result, he, there's just a lot of fear in the house. And I remember this one day it was my 10th birthday and he gave me luggage for my birthday because that's what you could afford. And that was the first time I realized what money was. And I remember saying, like, why did you give me this luggage and throwing a total tantrum at age 10?

And he said to me honey, this is what I can afford. I don't have money anymore. And that was the first time that I learned what money was. And there are a couple of messages I experienced that day. The first thing was when you don't have money, you can't have fun. That was the story I told myself just by watching how he was behaving and how he was operating when he was talking about money.

And the second message was that I need to fix it all because it was so stressful to me to see my dad in distress. And so as I grew up and I started my first business, I started to see a lot of success and this mindset I really carried with me and I was so afraid of losing money just like my dad did.

that I behaved differently. That's what happens when you're in fear and you're in a self fulfilling prophecy. I started behaving out of that fear. I hired lawyers as soon as my business started doing super well to take a look at everything I was putting out there and let me know that it was okay. I almost felt like I wasn't allowed to do that well because I was so surrounded by financial loss as a kid.

And so I remember telling my lawyers I need you to go through everything and make sure that I'm allowed to be making this kind of money. And I remember in that moment, they said to me, okay this is going to take us a month, even longer. And I turned off my entire business after a year of struggling or two years of struggling in my business.

I was making millions of dollars and I turned everything off. I turned off my marketing so that they could take their time and go through everything. And I value integrity. I come from counterterrorism, like I value justice. And so for me, I was just thinking to myself I need to do the right thing.

I need to make sure I'm playing fair games. When you have a large online platform, there's a lot of new rules that apply to doing business on the internet. And I didn't know what those were because I just started playing big. And the lawyers came back about a month and a half later and they said, all right, you're good to go.

There's no issues with your content. I turned my ads back on and the algorithm wasn't the same. And that was after I hired seven employees took on six figures a month of overhead. And next thing I knew my course that I had on job hunting wasn't as profitable and I was facing huge financial loss and I was in denial.

I didn't want it to be true. So I spent about 8 months trying to fix it, paying for all of the overhead of my team and then eventually I had to face the music and I had to let everyone go and I ended up in a half million dollars of debt. Out of the fear of losing it all, I hired these people to make sure I don't lose it all, and then I lost it all.

So it's just, it's interesting to see what our biggest fears can do to us and how much they can change the way we behave, and as a result we create our worst nightmares.

Srini Rao: Wow. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. So I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our, the unmistakable creative.

What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable? I hate that I'm so trite saying this, but honestly it's realness. It's authenticity. It's unmistakable and people can feel it and people are so hungry for it. And I think it's really lacking in the time that we're in right now.

Amazing. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story and your wisdom and insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you your work of the new book and everything that you're

Ashley Stahl: up to? Thank you so much for asking. I have a podcast, it's called U Turn podcast, Y O U, just like the book U Turn.

And right now we are giving away a huge bundle of more than 25 hours worth of free trainings on starting a side hustle money mindset when you upload a screenshot of your receipt of your book order. So just go to youtermbook. com for that. It's Y O U T U R N book. com.

Srini Rao: Awesome. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.