financial-samurai-po_sam-dogen-financial-samurai-liz-tran_full-length-jun-8-2023-001_composer-eubtp038l_clip

00:00:00.000 | - Hello everybody, it's Sam from the Financial Samurai

00:00:03.460 | Podcast, and in this episode I have Liz Tran with me,

00:00:07.600 | who is the creator of Reset, an executive coaching company

00:00:10.760 | to CEOs and founders, and she is the author of

00:00:14.480 | The Karma of Success, Spiritual Strategies

00:00:17.660 | to Free Your Inner Genius.

00:00:19.880 | Welcome Liz, and say hello.

00:00:21.760 | - Thanks for having me, Sam.

00:00:23.780 | - No problem, I loved your book, I read it from cover

00:00:27.040 | to cover over the course of about four or five days,

00:00:29.960 | and it was very therapeutic, and I also noted

00:00:33.840 | that it seemed like you were also looking for a lot

00:00:37.120 | of therapy as well in your life and in your journey,

00:00:40.080 | so please tell us and the listeners how this book

00:00:43.600 | came about, why did you write it,

00:00:45.240 | and how everything got started.

00:00:47.600 | - Yeah, so I have always been a really career-oriented

00:00:51.900 | person, so growing up I grew up in a very kind of

00:00:56.920 | economically unstable situation, so we grew up in

00:01:00.040 | Section 8 housing, which is the low-income housing,

00:01:03.440 | we were on food stamps at times, I was raised by a single mom

00:01:06.480 | and so I just thought to myself, I'm gonna make it,

00:01:09.640 | I'm gonna make lots and lots of money,

00:01:11.120 | this is gonna be my goal, and I thought that since I was,

00:01:14.500 | I don't know, like eight years old, I was like,

00:01:16.040 | I'm gonna make a lot of money, and so I went on this very

00:01:19.540 | prescriptive path into tech, and then eventually

00:01:23.160 | venture capital, and when I got to age 34,

00:01:28.160 | I realized that a lot of the content that I had consumed

00:01:32.000 | as a voracious reader of career books, voracious reader

00:01:35.440 | of trying to figure out how to build a network,

00:01:37.680 | get ahead, et cetera, and all of it kind of worked

00:01:40.440 | on the surface, I mean, it definitely worked,

00:01:42.340 | I was an executive at a venture capital firm

00:01:44.800 | by the time I was 32, but it wasn't fulfilling

00:01:49.440 | in a real way, and I started to feel that impact

00:01:51.640 | on my life and my choices and who I felt like

00:01:54.360 | I was becoming, and at that time, I was starting

00:01:57.160 | to think about having a family, and I was about

00:01:59.600 | to get married, and I realized that I had to make a choice

00:02:03.520 | about what was most important, and it previously

00:02:05.880 | had always been money, and I decided, you know,

00:02:09.240 | maybe I can do both, maybe I can have both,

00:02:11.680 | maybe I can make enough money, but also still have my soul,

00:02:15.400 | and I started my own business, and I went on this journey

00:02:17.600 | that had a lot of ups and downs, started a business

00:02:20.860 | that was largely in person, and then it was open

00:02:24.400 | for about nine months when the pandemic happened,

00:02:26.640 | had to shut it down, and put about $250,000

00:02:29.320 | into that business, it was all my own savings,

00:02:31.940 | plus a $100,000 loan, and I was sort of thinking,

00:02:35.160 | wow, for someone who worked really hard to make

00:02:37.760 | a lot of money, here I am at 34, I don't have any left,

00:02:42.760 | I don't have a business, how do I recover?

00:02:45.680 | And I went into this process of figuring out

00:02:48.560 | a new path to success, and building another business

00:02:51.160 | that was right for this world that we live in,

00:02:53.620 | this is when I built my executive coaching company,

00:02:57.080 | and it worked, and what I wanted to do with the book

00:03:00.720 | is to present a different path for people,

00:03:03.300 | which I think you really understand,

00:03:05.840 | because you sort of decided not to do the, you know,

00:03:09.240 | Goldman, Credit Suisse thing, and then forge your own path,

00:03:13.480 | and I wanted to give people the permission,

00:03:16.320 | and also some guidance, with me operating as their coach,

00:03:21.000 | the way I coach CEOs and founders, but via this book,

00:03:23.800 | to help them chart out their own unique path,

00:03:27.320 | using their intuition, versus, you know,

00:03:30.200 | just following the things that we are all told

00:03:33.280 | that we should do, you know, check this box,

00:03:35.360 | get this type of job, make this amount of money

00:03:37.320 | by the time you're 30 years old, et cetera,

00:03:39.520 | and it was really funny, because as soon as I loosened

00:03:43.920 | the grip on some of these ideas that I had held previously,

00:03:47.480 | success really flowed for me, so within a year

00:03:51.120 | of making this pivot, then I paid back this loan

00:03:55.680 | that I owed for $100,000, and paid back all the debt

00:03:58.480 | that was on my credit cards, I started making

00:04:00.200 | really good money as an executive coach,

00:04:02.620 | I bought a house on 22 acres in Connecticut,

00:04:05.520 | like shortly thereafter, and then I also got this book deal,

00:04:08.960 | and I felt like, okay, you know, obviously,

00:04:11.560 | it wasn't all about the money, but I was able

00:04:14.480 | to figure it out, you know, that balance

00:04:16.200 | between deep personal meaning, and also being able

00:04:19.760 | to kind of take care of your own day-to-day needs.

00:04:23.000 | - You know, being able to invest $200,000

00:04:25.760 | in your own business, and let go or walk away

00:04:29.680 | from, I'm assuming, a six-figure job

00:04:31.860 | at the venture capital company,

00:04:33.400 | takes a lot of guts and courage.

00:04:35.080 | You said you were 32 years old at the time?

00:04:37.760 | - I was 32 years old, and I was making

00:04:39.920 | about $500,000 a year.

00:04:42.200 | - Oh, wow.

00:04:43.040 | - And also, because I was part of the leadership team,

00:04:47.600 | I had more in carried interest in the firm,

00:04:50.160 | so I had a piece of the pie, and the idea was,

00:04:53.320 | you know, if I stayed for seven or 10 years,

00:04:56.320 | the funds would return, and I would be, you know,

00:04:58.840 | millionaire, like many times over,

00:05:00.600 | and so that was the promise, and that's what everyone

00:05:03.360 | who's still there has happened to them.

00:05:05.440 | You know, it's like pretty, it's a very successful fund.

00:05:08.240 | You know, they were one of the early investors

00:05:10.360 | in Instagram, and have backed a lot of big companies

00:05:14.160 | like Spotify, and Oscar, and Jet, et cetera,

00:05:16.920 | so it was a great firm, and walking away was hard,

00:05:19.640 | because I had always operated, too, from a place

00:05:24.320 | where I was really fighting to be seen, I think,

00:05:29.200 | because, like, I never really felt like I was good enough

00:05:32.600 | in a lot of ways, like, I went to public school,

00:05:35.000 | I went to a public university, and then,

00:05:37.000 | when I came out of college, I sort of had to prove

00:05:39.760 | that I was good enough, and so getting this job partially

00:05:42.120 | was kind of proof to myself, like, hey, I could do it,

00:05:45.560 | and then I realized that it was really empty,

00:05:47.160 | because the only person that could actually give me

00:05:49.640 | that validation was myself.

00:05:52.200 | You know, like, I had this validation,

00:05:53.640 | but I still felt like crap every day.

00:05:56.240 | - Well, maybe it's partially that you were able to leave,

00:05:59.000 | because you were able to get that job,

00:06:01.120 | able to make that half a million dollar mark,

00:06:03.480 | so you told yourself, well, you could do it,

00:06:06.000 | and then, now what, because you've experienced it

00:06:08.600 | for one or two, several years, and you're like, okay,

00:06:10.960 | you've seen it, you won't at least regret

00:06:12.840 | not having tried, right?

00:06:14.120 | - Yeah, exactly, and also, I looked around at a lot

00:06:18.600 | of the people who I knew in the industry,

00:06:20.760 | and a lot of them were very unhappy,

00:06:23.880 | and then seeing that, you know, you kind of take

00:06:27.000 | the veneer off of the story, you know,

00:06:29.920 | there's so much sort of, you know, lore around venture

00:06:34.400 | capital as an industry, and seems like such a fun job,

00:06:37.960 | which I think it is in a lot of ways, you know,

00:06:39.760 | people who have a penchant for it really enjoy it,

00:06:42.760 | but you kind of take the veneer off, and you realize,

00:06:45.320 | hey, you know, things are not as sweet as they look,

00:06:48.520 | you know, and so being able to see that up close

00:06:50.840 | and personal also enabled me to say, hey, you know,

00:06:53.920 | I'm working with all these people who went to Harvard,

00:06:56.600 | Stanford, business school, and you know,

00:06:59.400 | I felt just as capable as them, and then I also felt like

00:07:03.840 | this path makes a lot of people happy,

00:07:05.680 | but it isn't actually a guarantee,

00:07:07.440 | and there are a lot of deeply unhappy people

00:07:09.760 | who get caught in this kind of warm blanket

00:07:13.240 | of not being able to stay, and I think I sort of was feeling

00:07:17.080 | that in myself, I was like, if I stay for another year,

00:07:19.240 | I'm gonna stay for another 20 years,

00:07:21.880 | and there's so much more I wanna do with my life.

00:07:24.800 | I'd never actually chosen any work that was about

00:07:27.400 | self-expression or about even my own happiness,

00:07:29.960 | it was very practical and very much like, okay,

00:07:33.000 | I'm gonna get into tech because that's where the jobs are,

00:07:35.560 | it's 2008, I was like, okay, great,

00:07:37.920 | I happen to be good at recruiting in HR,

00:07:41.480 | never loved that, and sort of made my way up,

00:07:43.880 | and then I got into venture capital,

00:07:45.640 | and I was like, okay, I'm just gonna do the best job I can,

00:07:48.200 | and so then at 34, I was able to ask myself,

00:07:51.040 | okay, what do I really wanna do,

00:07:52.320 | and I think when you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs,

00:07:54.600 | you do have to have your baseline needs met

00:07:57.520 | before you can start to think about creativity

00:07:59.360 | and self-actualization, and so I think that's true,

00:08:02.160 | like getting that job enabled me to say,

00:08:04.080 | you know what, I actually don't want this.

00:08:06.880 | - In your book, you talk about going on

00:08:10.520 | this spiritual journey to Asia, I think it was India,

00:08:14.400 | when exactly did you go on that journey,

00:08:16.720 | and how long were you over there for,

00:08:19.160 | and what were some of the key things

00:08:20.320 | that you learned on the way?

00:08:22.240 | - Yeah, it was a year that I was traveling,

00:08:25.900 | and I was working concurrently at the same time,

00:08:28.880 | so I was doing some consulting work for tech companies,

00:08:32.000 | helping them hire people in different countries,

00:08:35.400 | and so I was, like I had saved some money,

00:08:39.120 | and so I was partially living off of that,

00:08:41.320 | but I also was kind of working at the same time on and off,

00:08:45.080 | and one period of time where I wasn't working

00:08:47.400 | is I went to India, and I did a yoga teacher training

00:08:49.600 | at an ashram for a month,

00:08:51.480 | and I really didn't have phone or email,

00:08:54.680 | and I was totally disconnected,

00:08:56.680 | and it was just really a life-changing experience for me,

00:08:59.520 | and that's when I started getting into Buddhism,

00:09:01.120 | and then throughout the rest of the trip,

00:09:02.960 | I would visit monasteries,

00:09:04.840 | I was constantly reading books about Buddhism.

00:09:07.220 | This was actually exactly 10 years ago,

00:09:09.920 | so I was 28 at the time,

00:09:12.160 | and that kicked off kind of a years-long

00:09:15.320 | exploration of spirituality.

00:09:16.720 | I actually grew up Catholic,

00:09:18.840 | and didn't really care for it,

00:09:21.760 | 'cause it's extremely boring when you're a kid.

00:09:24.080 | You go to mass, it's like an hour and a half long,

00:09:26.480 | and I just loved the ideas around Buddhism,

00:09:29.960 | and it really resonated with me.

00:09:31.200 | I was also reading a lot at the time about minimalism,

00:09:33.600 | and just seeing that I could change my life

00:09:35.920 | in a different way,

00:09:36.760 | and so after a couple years of doing that,

00:09:38.560 | I was actually doing consulting work,

00:09:41.400 | and then whenever I'd save enough money, I'd go travel,

00:09:43.760 | and I kind of was into it,

00:09:45.240 | and I was like, oh, maybe I'll move to Bali,

00:09:46.760 | or maybe I'll move to Vietnam,

00:09:48.200 | where my family's originally from,

00:09:49.960 | and it was around that time when I was 30

00:09:51.680 | that I got this offer from this venture capital firm,

00:09:54.280 | and so it was sort of a fork in the road

00:09:56.000 | of do I pursue my interest in spirituality?

00:09:59.240 | (laughs)

00:10:00.280 | I was thinking of working as a yoga teacher in Bali,

00:10:02.920 | where my friend had a studio,

00:10:04.760 | or do I take this job in venture capital?

00:10:07.120 | - In New York City? - I don't know.

00:10:08.680 | Yeah, in New York City.

00:10:09.520 | - That's totally a big fork.

00:10:12.800 | - Totally different, and then I thought,

00:10:14.680 | okay, you know what, I'm gonna try this thing,

00:10:17.380 | because I can always quit if I don't like it,

00:10:20.440 | and I'm really glad that I did,

00:10:21.960 | because even though it wasn't the end for me,

00:10:25.120 | it wasn't the final destination,

00:10:26.740 | it was a really important stop on the train

00:10:29.080 | to where I'm going.

00:10:30.000 | - Yeah, I think I definitely wanted to,

00:10:33.880 | during the global financial crisis,

00:10:35.200 | think about going to Bali,

00:10:37.000 | eat, pray, love moment, or Thailand.

00:10:39.720 | I've always dreamed of that,

00:10:40.920 | because I grew up overseas in Asia for 13 years,

00:10:44.360 | and it was really fun, but I was only there as a student,

00:10:46.920 | and I thought to myself, how fun would it be

00:10:48.720 | to actually be there as an adult

00:10:49.960 | with actually income to spend?

00:10:52.740 | So I'm glad you did that,

00:10:54.480 | because I'm assuming that it changed your life,

00:10:57.660 | in a sense, and your whole path and trajectory.

00:11:00.820 | - Yeah, and I wanna do it again.

00:11:02.820 | When I have a couple of kids,

00:11:04.940 | I wanna do it when they're in middle school,

00:11:07.220 | because I was just thinking, no one likes middle school,

00:11:10.180 | I don't think, I think everyone has a bad experience,

00:11:12.660 | and maybe it would be nice to swoop them away

00:11:16.020 | and have them travel for a year or two,

00:11:17.980 | and try out a bunch of different countries,

00:11:19.740 | put them in different schools,

00:11:20.700 | so that's kind of my big, long-term on the horizon.

00:11:24.340 | I don't have any kids yet,

00:11:25.180 | but that's kind of the plan for the far term.

00:11:27.400 | - Right.

00:11:28.540 | Yeah, I was in middle school when I was traveling a lot.

00:11:31.560 | I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,

00:11:32.960 | and it was a phenomenal experience.

00:11:34.840 | Four years in Malaysia, four years in Taiwan before that,

00:11:38.680 | several years in Japan, Philippines for one year, Zambia.

00:11:42.240 | I definitely recommend it if you can do it,

00:11:44.260 | because it just opens your world,

00:11:46.420 | and you meet other people,

00:11:47.680 | you learn other cultures and languages.

00:11:50.320 | I hope more Americans can travel and see the world.

00:11:52.720 | I think there would be more world peace

00:11:54.160 | if there was more travel.

00:11:55.360 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:11:56.880 | I mean, do you think that influenced

00:11:59.040 | kind of your unique and unorthodox path

00:12:04.040 | of being able to say, like,

00:12:05.800 | "Hey, you know, I can choose to do a different thing,"

00:12:07.840 | because you had seen a lot of different ways

00:12:10.200 | of living growing up?

00:12:11.900 | - Definitely.

00:12:12.740 | When I was in Malaysia,

00:12:13.560 | I was surrounded by a lot of entrepreneurs,

00:12:16.120 | people who, it wasn't just they worked at the government,

00:12:19.120 | or they had a day job, they were entrepreneurs.

00:12:21.160 | One was the creator of the Yo's Drink,

00:12:24.800 | like these drinks in carton boxes in Asia.

00:12:28.000 | One did well as a chicken farmer.

00:12:31.040 | And they drove nice cars, had nice homes in the hills,

00:12:33.920 | and I was like, "Wow, you can do anything you want."

00:12:36.040 | And this was in Malaysia,

00:12:37.220 | where there was a bigger dichotomy

00:12:39.600 | between the rich and the poor,

00:12:41.480 | and I knew I didn't wanna be poor,

00:12:43.020 | because I saw how some friends lived,

00:12:45.040 | four people in a studio, for example.

00:12:47.640 | So it did give me a different perspective

00:12:49.700 | and different ways of living,

00:12:51.100 | and when I was able to start Financial Samurai in 2009,

00:12:55.120 | I was like, "Wow, I actually have the flexibility

00:12:57.280 | "to do this anywhere."

00:12:58.960 | And so it's interesting.

00:13:00.720 | I did go travel like crazy for a couple years,

00:13:05.200 | and then we had our son in 2017,

00:13:07.400 | so we then, we settled down.

00:13:08.760 | So I'm also waiting for until our daughter,

00:13:11.480 | who's three and a half years old now,

00:13:12.880 | to maybe turn five or six,

00:13:16.120 | so she remembers her travels,

00:13:18.340 | and then we'll start going on that great journey again.

00:13:21.520 | - Yeah, that makes sense.

00:13:23.800 | Yeah, that's cool.

00:13:24.680 | - It's very different, though.

00:13:25.840 | When I came to America for high school,

00:13:28.120 | it was a big shock, because most people just spoke English,

00:13:32.120 | and most people had never traveled abroad,

00:13:34.920 | whereas I was literally traveling

00:13:36.440 | every two to four years for 13 years,

00:13:38.760 | and it was an adjustment for me,

00:13:40.720 | and it felt really boring, frankly, in Northern Virginia,

00:13:46.440 | because my parents were working in the Foreign Service.

00:13:49.220 | - So I'm from Northern Virginia,

00:13:51.220 | so I feel like I had the opposite experience of you,

00:13:53.420 | where I grew up in this very homogenous place,

00:13:57.340 | where not only is everyone sort of the same,

00:14:00.140 | everyone's kind of culturally the same,

00:14:01.460 | like everyone dresses the same,

00:14:03.400 | everyone's parents work for the government

00:14:05.500 | in some capacity, right?

00:14:06.900 | Like everyone-- - And a contractor.

00:14:08.140 | - A contractor, everyone lives in a house

00:14:10.220 | that was kind of built in the past five, 10 years.

00:14:12.380 | Like it's very, very normalized.

00:14:14.380 | Everyone drives a Toyota Camry.

00:14:15.420 | It's like very normal.

00:14:16.640 | - That's what we drove. - Everyone's just the same.

00:14:18.340 | (both laughing)

00:14:20.860 | And when I started traveling,

00:14:22.900 | it was like the world opened up,

00:14:24.260 | and I thought, oh my God,

00:14:25.660 | people can live all sorts of different ways.

00:14:27.780 | Like I can be a different person.

00:14:29.300 | No one knows who I am here.

00:14:31.060 | And so it feels like you and I kind of had flip-flop lives.

00:14:35.220 | - Yeah, I don't know.

00:14:36.320 | I mean, it sounds like we both kind of lead

00:14:38.900 | to a similar destination,

00:14:41.260 | and I don't know whether it's better

00:14:43.120 | to see the world while you're young

00:14:45.480 | or see the world after you've graduated high school

00:14:48.200 | or college.

00:14:49.040 | Either way, I hope just more people see the world.

00:14:51.840 | - Yeah, I agree.

00:14:53.200 | I think because it kind of gives you permission

00:14:56.360 | to know that your world can be really different

00:15:01.360 | than how you grew up,

00:15:02.280 | and I sort of think of adulthood in that way

00:15:04.760 | where it's a constant expansion

00:15:06.840 | of what your areas of knowledge are.

00:15:10.080 | You know, you have a very small world when you're small.

00:15:12.000 | It's just your house and your neighborhood and your school,

00:15:15.240 | and then it broadens and broadens and broadens.

00:15:17.000 | And that's actually kind of the point of individualization

00:15:20.680 | and becoming an adult in the world

00:15:22.120 | is to learn different ways of being.

00:15:24.000 | So I actually think it's nice for kids to do that

00:15:25.960 | when they're younger 'cause you just get that expansion

00:15:28.480 | and that muscle sort of earlier.

00:15:30.080 | And my next book is all about mastering

00:15:34.120 | the ability to change, which I call AQ,

00:15:37.400 | like your adaptive quotient,

00:15:38.520 | which is I think actually more important than IQ these days

00:15:42.760 | given how quickly the world is changing.

00:15:44.880 | I think if you can get kids to use that muscle earlier,

00:15:49.120 | you know, then they sort of never forget it

00:15:51.960 | because it is harder.

00:15:53.080 | Like I see my friends who, you know,

00:15:55.280 | didn't get their passports until they were in their 20s

00:15:57.360 | and are taking trips for the first time.

00:15:59.320 | And it is a little overwhelming for them.

00:16:01.160 | And not to say that we can't all get that muscle back,

00:16:03.320 | but it's nice to have it and just keep using it.

00:16:07.560 | - So let's talk about your current book,

00:16:08.720 | The Karma of Success.

00:16:10.840 | What does success mean to you

00:16:14.240 | as a woman in a hustle and bustle New York City?

00:16:18.360 | - Yeah, well, okay.

00:16:20.120 | So this is the way I think about,

00:16:23.880 | I mean, it's funny 'cause like I obviously have

00:16:25.560 | a very deep spiritual side

00:16:27.560 | and this book is a spiritual book,

00:16:29.160 | but I'm also probably one of the most pragmatic people

00:16:33.480 | that I know and maybe, you know,

00:16:34.760 | I write about spirituality and I learned about it

00:16:36.320 | because you seek the knowledge

00:16:38.920 | that you don't currently have

00:16:40.480 | or like that which is missing in your life.

00:16:42.640 | And so for me, success used to mean,

00:16:46.240 | this is before I had this big transformation,

00:16:48.480 | this big journey,

00:16:49.760 | it used to mean being better or the best

00:16:53.320 | compared to the average around you.

00:16:56.600 | And so in school, that means, you know,

00:16:58.360 | getting the best grade.

00:16:59.440 | You know, I always push myself really hard in school,

00:17:01.160 | shining in some way, winning contests, being distinguished.

00:17:05.080 | And that was actually the way that I thought success was,

00:17:08.440 | even when I started working in my 20s,

00:17:11.320 | I would think I need to be the best person on my team.

00:17:14.480 | I need the CEO to know that I'm here

00:17:17.320 | at seven o'clock in the morning

00:17:18.560 | and like leaving at 10 o'clock at night.

00:17:21.720 | You know, I need to be the hardest working person.

00:17:23.720 | I need to have prepped more for this presentation

00:17:27.640 | than anyone else, right?

00:17:28.640 | I need to put more elbow grease in.

00:17:29.880 | And so I sort of looked at it like that,

00:17:31.080 | like, how am I doing against my peers?

00:17:33.120 | I always measured, you know,

00:17:35.080 | is my apartment nicer than my friend's apartments?

00:17:37.200 | You know, do I have a nicer car, this and that.

00:17:39.800 | And where success has really transformed for me

00:17:44.000 | is to stop looking around at the people around me

00:17:48.960 | and to stop measuring success as a gauge

00:17:50.920 | of how I compare to others.

00:17:53.360 | And more of, am I fully living up to my greatest potential?

00:17:58.240 | And also, am I getting paid the equivalent amount for it?

00:18:02.240 | Right?

00:18:03.080 | Like at the end of the day,

00:18:04.360 | I think money is a really powerful thing.

00:18:06.520 | And there are lots of people

00:18:07.400 | who live in the spiritual world who are like,

00:18:09.560 | well, if you do what you love,

00:18:10.720 | it shouldn't matter if you get paid for it or not

00:18:12.760 | 'cause it's your soul's calling, it's your work.

00:18:15.680 | And I actually think the opposite where,

00:18:17.920 | you know, money is energy exchange.

00:18:20.000 | And so if you're putting a lot of good energy

00:18:21.800 | into the work that you're doing,

00:18:23.440 | you should get a lot of it coming back to you.

00:18:25.960 | And so when I think about success,

00:18:27.560 | it's like, of course, doing the thing that,

00:18:29.640 | you know, it feels meaningful, feels challenging for you,

00:18:33.200 | but then also, you know, being kind of a shark

00:18:36.040 | and pushing in negotiations to get paid what you deserve.

00:18:39.600 | - Yeah, it sounds like success evolves over time.

00:18:44.680 | So you were talking about, you know,

00:18:47.120 | your earlier definition of success.

00:18:50.080 | But I guess now, after the book,

00:18:52.560 | after your own entrepreneurial journey,

00:18:56.040 | how would you define success a little bit more precisely?

00:19:01.040 | And what is it about these executives

00:19:04.680 | who make a lot of money,

00:19:05.560 | these CEOs who have a lot of success

00:19:08.240 | and power, prestige, whatever, what are their problems?

00:19:12.600 | What are some of the most common problems

00:19:14.520 | they come to you about in terms of, you know,

00:19:16.840 | fixing their lives or whatnot?

00:19:18.720 | - Yeah, definitely.

00:19:20.400 | So I personally feel like success in detail for me

00:19:24.280 | is about helping as many people as I can.

00:19:27.200 | Just because I'm, my personal motivator is altruism.

00:19:30.680 | I believe there are eight core motivators out there,

00:19:34.680 | and everyone has a couple that really pop for them.

00:19:38.280 | So for instance, you know,

00:19:39.920 | a person could be really motivated by impact,

00:19:42.120 | which is the idea of like getting real stuff done

00:19:44.800 | that is meaningful.

00:19:46.160 | Someone might be motivated by recognition,

00:19:48.200 | like having people say you're doing a great job.

00:19:51.800 | You might be, you know, motivated by affiliation,

00:19:54.280 | which is the feeling of being part of a community,

00:19:57.200 | you know, putting that community together.

00:19:58.360 | So anyway, I think there are eight key motivators.

00:20:00.320 | And so for my clients,

00:20:01.800 | it really depends on what they're motivated by.

00:20:04.720 | It's funny, some of them do not care at all

00:20:06.720 | about recognition, and it's very uncomfortable

00:20:08.800 | when I even call out something great that they've did,

00:20:11.520 | you know, and others really, that is meaningful for them.

00:20:14.400 | It's like how they register what they did well.

00:20:16.800 | And with my clients,

00:20:17.920 | I've had really long-term relationships with them.

00:20:21.480 | I have seen most of them every week or every other week

00:20:26.240 | for like two or three years.

00:20:27.840 | And so we work together.

00:20:30.520 | Yeah, it's like very, very long-term.

00:20:32.520 | And so I actually don't really have a lot of movement

00:20:34.120 | on my client roster

00:20:35.040 | because people just stay for a really long time.

00:20:38.400 | Usually it starts off with once a week,

00:20:40.480 | and then, you know, sometime within the first six months,

00:20:43.640 | they move to once every two weeks.

00:20:46.160 | And what I'm doing to help them feel successful

00:20:48.440 | is really first,

00:20:50.320 | I'm helping them just get to a good baseline

00:20:53.280 | of feeling productive and effective in their life.

00:20:57.320 | They usually have way too many meetings.

00:20:59.840 | They're overwhelmed.

00:21:00.960 | They don't have enough time for deep work,

00:21:03.080 | too many direct reports, stressed out,

00:21:05.800 | you know, feel like they're not operating at their best.

00:21:07.840 | And so during that initial period,

00:21:10.480 | I just try to take care of a lot of low-hanging fruit

00:21:13.160 | and force them to really change their schedule

00:21:15.320 | and change their commitments and priorities.

00:21:18.280 | And that takes some time, you know,

00:21:19.960 | you're kind of helping them reframe

00:21:22.400 | what they think their day needs to look like.

00:21:24.680 | And then from there,

00:21:25.520 | it's a lot of acute issues that pop up.

00:21:27.600 | So it might be, you know,

00:21:29.440 | how do I have this difficult conversation

00:21:31.920 | and let go of this executive

00:21:33.240 | who I just brought on board three months ago?

00:21:35.480 | - Very tough to have those conversations.

00:21:37.520 | - Yeah, and like even today, in today's world,

00:21:40.120 | how do I do this production and force

00:21:42.760 | while still maintaining company culture?

00:21:45.600 | How do I spend my time

00:21:48.520 | between like fundraising and this new product release?

00:21:53.200 | And so it's a lot of like very specific issues

00:21:57.200 | where they'll come to me with something in mind.

00:21:59.680 | And then usually during that hour-long conversation,

00:22:02.880 | there are a couple other things that pop up too

00:22:04.960 | that they may not have even known that was a problem

00:22:09.080 | because, you know, their lives are very go, go, go,

00:22:11.840 | like checking things off a checklist very quickly.

00:22:16.440 | And when you're operating at that speed,

00:22:18.400 | you don't have a lot of time to slow down and think,

00:22:21.320 | okay, strategically, am I even doing the right things?

00:22:23.760 | I know I'm doing a lot of things,

00:22:25.560 | but are they the right things?

00:22:26.440 | And so I sort of push them to make that time in that space.

00:22:30.040 | It's sort of the difference of, you know,

00:22:31.960 | having a conversation with, you know, your buddy,

00:22:35.840 | grabbing a beer, you haven't seen each other

00:22:37.680 | in like a few months, so you just catch up

00:22:39.720 | versus when you get to spend a whole weekend together,

00:22:42.400 | you can talk about the real stuff.

00:22:44.080 | And because I see my clients so often,

00:22:47.200 | we just almost automatically drop into that space

00:22:50.240 | of I'm like, what's really going on?

00:22:51.880 | What's really happening?

00:22:53.280 | And I'm not an investor and I'm not a peer,

00:22:55.480 | you know, I'm not a co-founder, I'm not an employee,

00:22:57.880 | I'm actually an objective person

00:22:59.880 | who doesn't have my own personal bias that I'm bringing in.

00:23:03.000 | And so it's a very freeing space for them

00:23:04.800 | to be really honest about their problems

00:23:07.960 | because it's purely confidential.

00:23:09.840 | And like, I have no skin in the game, right?

00:23:11.720 | Like I'm not on their board,

00:23:12.640 | I'm not gonna judge them for it.

00:23:14.520 | So it's really a beautiful relationship.

00:23:16.400 | I mean, it's so great to see some of my clients

00:23:18.960 | go from their seed stage round of having like two employees

00:23:23.800 | to now having over 100 employees

00:23:25.880 | and having raised 50 million in funding.

00:23:28.480 | It's just, it's so nice.

00:23:30.100 | - No, that's fascinating.

00:23:32.520 | It sounds like therapy for highly busy and motivated people,

00:23:37.440 | which is great.

00:23:39.080 | I've never had therapy, but I find that writing

00:23:42.240 | and actually speaking to people is very therapeutic.

00:23:45.680 | And sometimes we lean on our partners so often

00:23:49.120 | that we can sometimes make them fall down

00:23:51.280 | and we need someone else to give us some objective advice.

00:23:54.840 | - Yeah, definitely.

00:23:55.720 | I always say to my clients too,

00:23:57.600 | that they should also have a therapist, like not just me,

00:24:01.040 | 'cause we're also doing things like,

00:24:03.200 | we're like reviewing board decks

00:24:04.640 | and we're talking about fundraise strategy

00:24:06.720 | and things like that.

00:24:08.320 | And so it's probably like 25% therapeutic

00:24:11.800 | and 75% like we're working through the issues.

00:24:14.960 | But a lot of times it's like therapy issues that pop up

00:24:18.160 | when you're trying to resolve business issues.

00:24:20.640 | You know what I mean?

00:24:21.480 | Like if you're having a conflict with someone

00:24:23.400 | at your company, then it's probably also stemming

00:24:28.400 | from some things that you have going on from your childhood.

00:24:32.600 | - Yeah.

00:24:33.440 | (laughing)

00:24:34.260 | - You know, we're all that way.

00:24:35.100 | - Right.

00:24:35.940 | So listeners who don't believe

00:24:37.560 | that negotiating a severance package is possible,

00:24:40.740 | you heard it from Liz here first.

00:24:42.440 | A lot of these managers, CEOs, executives,

00:24:45.800 | have a difficult time letting go of people.

00:24:48.320 | So if you can strategically bring up your issues

00:24:52.020 | and make it a win-win scenario where you're willing

00:24:54.640 | to stay on at your company to help transition,

00:24:57.360 | find your replacement and so forth,

00:24:59.600 | you are better able to negotiate a severance package

00:25:03.560 | than you think to do something else.

00:25:05.200 | And that's something that I did in 2012.

00:25:07.360 | You gotta think about win-win scenarios

00:25:09.400 | from the manager's point of view,

00:25:11.080 | because it is tough being a manager.

00:25:13.220 | - That is really true.

00:25:15.120 | I think if you can make your manager's life easier,

00:25:17.720 | then they're so much more willing

00:25:19.480 | to break the rules for you, which is nice.

00:25:22.080 | How did you negotiate yours?

00:25:23.680 | What was the severance package that you got?

00:25:25.520 | What did you do?

00:25:27.100 | - So for me, it was in 2012,

00:25:30.480 | and I was telling my managers,

00:25:32.360 | 'cause this was not long after the global financial crisis,

00:25:35.640 | and I witnessed many people get let go.

00:25:37.720 | It was like seven rounds of layoffs,

00:25:39.280 | thousands of people got let go.

00:25:40.920 | But I understood what the severance package entailed.

00:25:43.600 | It was three weeks of pay per year worked.

00:25:46.280 | You got all your deferred comp and cash and stock.

00:25:49.280 | And so at the end of 2011, I thought to myself,

00:25:52.200 | I don't really wanna do this anymore.

00:25:53.520 | I was in Santorini, Greece.

00:25:55.000 | I was drinking a Mithos beer,

00:25:57.520 | overlooking the crater on a 78 degree day.

00:26:00.640 | And I was like, wow, this is a really nice life,

00:26:02.840 | and I have financial samurai that I can do some cool stuff

00:26:05.400 | on if I was able to focus on it.

00:26:08.200 | And so I just brought it up with my manager

00:26:10.520 | after a terrible bonus for 2011.

00:26:12.400 | And I said, hey, I know times are difficult.

00:26:16.120 | I'm thinking about doing something new.

00:26:17.800 | I'm not gonna go to a competitor.

00:26:19.080 | I just wanna do something new and take a break.

00:26:22.240 | Do you mind laying me off instead of laying someone else off?

00:26:25.720 | Because I know it's hard for you to lay someone else off.

00:26:29.120 | And in exchange, I would love to get a severance,

00:26:32.800 | and I'd love to get all my deferred compensation,

00:26:35.680 | and I'll train my subordinate,

00:26:37.960 | or my employee who I hired years ago,

00:26:41.080 | and introduce him to all my clients,

00:26:43.040 | and things will be seamless, and things will be good.

00:26:45.440 | And he thought about it for maybe three or four weeks,

00:26:48.640 | talked to the HR people, other heads,

00:26:50.360 | and he said, sounds good, sounds like a plan.

00:26:53.480 | And so that's what happened.

00:26:54.960 | The severance package was the number one catalyst

00:26:58.280 | to giving me the courage to leave my job behind at 34.

00:27:02.120 | And I really hope that more people

00:27:03.920 | who are in corporate America,

00:27:07.360 | any company, any industry really,

00:27:09.280 | has that type of thought process

00:27:11.320 | to think about trying to get a nice exit package

00:27:14.160 | so you have a financial cushion to do what you want.

00:27:16.800 | Because most companies, they don't provide pensions anymore.

00:27:20.960 | There's no, at age 50, you get pension for life.

00:27:24.560 | It's like less than 14% of companies, I think, have pensions.

00:27:28.320 | - Yeah, you know what I like about that story

00:27:30.680 | is that you were proactive about it too,

00:27:33.320 | where you're seeing all these other people,

00:27:35.960 | like seven rounds of layoffs,

00:27:37.160 | and said, you know, I think a lot of people have paralysis

00:27:40.080 | and they just wait, and they're like,

00:27:41.320 | okay, well, I'm gonna wait for this decision

00:27:43.840 | to happen to me. - No, don't let it

00:27:44.680 | happen to me, no.

00:27:45.520 | - Yeah, you're like, I'm just gonna do this, you know?

00:27:47.880 | Like, I'm gonna actually be proactive

00:27:50.240 | and then it can happen on my terms.

00:27:52.240 | - Oh yeah, because on your terms

00:27:54.720 | is a very different mentality,

00:27:56.520 | because if you get surprised and you get that notification

00:28:01.400 | or your services are no longer needed,

00:28:03.120 | one, you're gonna feel terrible.

00:28:04.280 | You're gonna feel like a number,

00:28:05.640 | you're gonna feel like, well, what happened to my years

00:28:07.200 | of service, don't I mean anything?

00:28:09.220 | My life was dedicated to the betterment

00:28:12.340 | of this company for so long,

00:28:13.560 | especially if you've been there, like I was, for 11 years.

00:28:16.880 | And so if you can be proactive in thinking about

00:28:19.600 | a win-win scenario for your employer

00:28:21.600 | who wants a motivated employee,

00:28:23.120 | who wants to generate more revenue or have more efficiency,

00:28:27.200 | then you can really benefit your manager.

00:28:29.720 | Don't just quit and say, see you later, two weeks notice,

00:28:32.480 | because that puts your colleagues

00:28:35.040 | and your manager in a lurch, in a bind,

00:28:37.280 | 'cause it takes months and months to find someone.

00:28:40.000 | And then it takes months and months to train someone.

00:28:42.700 | So really think about being actually less selfish.

00:28:46.600 | I think quitting is actually a little bit selfish, right?

00:28:49.400 | You're thinking about yourself,

00:28:50.300 | I don't wanna face the wrath of the manager,

00:28:52.600 | I'm just gonna quit over email or text.

00:28:54.600 | Actually face that wrath, see how you can help,

00:28:57.480 | and I think good things can happen.

00:28:59.760 | - Yeah, you know, when I quit my job in venture capital

00:29:02.080 | to start my business, I actually gave them

00:29:05.760 | like eight months notice.

00:29:07.080 | I mean, I quit and they were like,

00:29:08.360 | hey, we want you to stay for a year.

00:29:10.160 | And I was like, okay, I think I can do it,

00:29:12.760 | I think I can do it.

00:29:13.600 | And so I started working on my company simultaneously,

00:29:15.720 | and I only made it to eight months,

00:29:17.480 | but it was still like really, you know, I showed them,

00:29:20.340 | I was like, you know, I'm willing to do this for you,

00:29:22.880 | even though it's pretty hard on me.

00:29:25.840 | And you know, it was a great transition.

00:29:28.680 | - Yeah, I think, and you didn't burn any bridges.

00:29:30.800 | I'm sure they were appreciative.

00:29:33.520 | Obviously they paid you your salary,

00:29:35.000 | you were able to fund more of your retirement benefits,

00:29:38.220 | have more health benefits.

00:29:40.280 | And that's the thing, the world is small,

00:29:42.040 | even though it seems crazy and big,

00:29:44.160 | the industries that we walk around in is pretty small.

00:29:48.360 | Like someone will know you somewhere,

00:29:50.680 | and you wanna develop a pretty good relationship,

00:29:53.600 | because you never know when you're gonna need help

00:29:55.040 | in the future.

00:29:56.360 | - Yeah, you know, when I quit my job to go traveling,

00:30:00.000 | this was like 10 years ago when I was 28,

00:30:02.760 | and I really didn't like my boss.

00:30:05.480 | I felt like she was just almost borderline abusive.

00:30:08.720 | She was so mean, and really just kind of,

00:30:12.280 | just really unpredictable.

00:30:13.880 | And I thought about, you know, quitting and going to HR

00:30:18.360 | and saying like, hey, this is a bad working situation.

00:30:21.580 | But I actually was like, you know what?

00:30:23.880 | It's a small world.

00:30:24.880 | I just wanna kind of get out of this on my terms

00:30:28.340 | and just like have a good experience.

00:30:29.800 | And so I just said, you know, I'm gonna go travel,

00:30:32.640 | something I've always wanted to do,

00:30:34.000 | and you know, wish you the best.

00:30:35.320 | Like, how can I keep helping you and supporting you?

00:30:38.440 | Maybe I can like, you know, work part time for you,

00:30:40.800 | or just do what I can, help find my replacement.

00:30:43.560 | So I found my replacement,

00:30:44.600 | and then about four or five months into my traveling,

00:30:49.600 | my old company, it wasn't my boss,

00:30:52.120 | but it was someone else at the company,

00:30:53.080 | reached out to me and said, hey,

00:30:54.120 | do you wanna do some freelance work for us, consulting?

00:30:57.400 | And that was the beginning of this freelance career

00:31:00.080 | that I had that I could do while I was traveling.

00:31:02.360 | And then that career actually was what parlayed me

00:31:05.800 | into venture capital,

00:31:06.800 | because it was one of my freelance clients,

00:31:09.160 | my consulting clients who said, hey,

00:31:10.880 | I think you'd really get along well with my investors.

00:31:13.800 | Do you wanna meet them?

00:31:15.040 | And so, you know, not burning that bridge,

00:31:17.520 | even though I kind of wanted to,

00:31:19.480 | in a way I really wanted to be angry.

00:31:23.160 | It actually really worked out.

00:31:25.000 | - No, that's good.

00:31:25.820 | I mean, folks, you'll never know when you'll need some help

00:31:29.720 | or when you'll need just kind of support.

00:31:32.240 | I mean, really it's your network

00:31:33.520 | that can prod you along the way.

00:31:35.200 | It's almost like a insurance blanket, an insurance policy.

00:31:40.040 | If you have a strong network, it's very hard to fail.

00:31:43.640 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:31:45.000 | And you just learn so much from it.

00:31:47.400 | You know, there's always someone who you can learn from.

00:31:49.520 | There's always someone who can expand, you know,

00:31:51.760 | your understanding of what's happening in the world.

00:31:54.000 | I mean, I think jobs out there are changing so rapidly

00:31:58.060 | and they will continue to because of AI

00:32:00.780 | and all the changes that that's causing.

00:32:03.300 | And so I think, you know,

00:32:04.540 | like leaning on network is so much more important

00:32:06.740 | than, you know, acquiring the information

00:32:08.840 | because, you know, you're gonna be able

00:32:10.700 | to get the information faster from people

00:32:12.460 | than you will in trends that you're reading,

00:32:14.820 | even if you follow all the best sites.

00:32:17.140 | - Right.

00:32:18.100 | I wanted to read a passage from your book

00:32:20.460 | because I thought it was really true

00:32:23.120 | and I want listeners to really think about this.

00:32:26.340 | And it starts on page 200.

00:32:28.020 | And the passage is,

00:32:29.260 | "Why do we make ourselves feel like winners or losers

00:32:32.100 | based on the artificial deadlines we pluck from the sky?

00:32:35.580 | Why do we believe that life events are better

00:32:37.660 | because they happened before age 30

00:32:40.020 | or occurred in tandem with our peers?

00:32:42.500 | Who's to say that the plans we create for ourselves

00:32:45.300 | are even the ones that will lead to success?

00:32:48.260 | There was once a farmer whose fence became damaged,

00:32:50.940 | allowing his horse to run away.

00:32:53.060 | 'What bad luck,' his neighbors said.

00:32:55.960 | Now he'd have no horse to plow his fields.

00:32:59.040 | His response was, 'We'll see.'

00:33:01.800 | A week later, his horse returned home

00:33:03.720 | with two other wild horses,

00:33:05.440 | who the farmer then successfully tamed.

00:33:08.080 | 'What good luck,' his neighbors explained.

00:33:10.700 | And again, the farmer simply said, 'We'll see.'

00:33:14.400 | Later that month, the farmer's son

00:33:16.080 | was riding one of the wild horses

00:33:18.140 | when it became frightened and tossed him off.

00:33:20.780 | The son broke his leg.

00:33:22.520 | 'What bad luck,' the neighbors said,

00:33:25.040 | knowing the farmer would miss his son's help in the fields.

00:33:28.480 | And all again, he said, was, 'We'll see.'

00:33:31.720 | The next day, military officers visited the village

00:33:34.860 | to conscript all the young men into the army.

00:33:37.860 | With a broken leg, the son was passed by.

00:33:41.000 | 'What good luck,' the neighbors exclaimed,

00:33:44.000 | knowing the son would be safe from the dangers of battle.

00:33:46.780 | And as always, the farmer smiled and said, 'We'll see.'

00:33:51.640 | - Why did you choose to include this passage?

00:33:54.040 | And what is the lesson learned from this story?

00:33:56.400 | - I love this story.

00:33:58.600 | This is one of my favorite stories.

00:34:00.040 | And, you know, I read it somewhere

00:34:02.600 | in some Buddhist Zen book years ago.

00:34:05.820 | And after I read the story, I started doing this myself,

00:34:10.640 | where if something disappointing happened,

00:34:13.520 | instead of getting really wrapped up

00:34:15.940 | in the vortex of feeling anxious,

00:34:18.840 | why did this happen?

00:34:19.680 | This is horrible.

00:34:20.500 | This is so disappointing.

00:34:22.080 | I would just say, 'We'll see,' right?

00:34:23.920 | Because over the long arc of time

00:34:26.800 | is when you really see how things will play out.

00:34:30.200 | You know, obviously there's an immediate effect,

00:34:32.840 | an immediate benefit, or immediate harm that's being done,

00:34:36.280 | but you don't know how it's actually gonna happen

00:34:38.200 | five, 10 years down the road,

00:34:39.400 | and what that's gonna mean for you.

00:34:41.040 | You know, some of my biggest disappointments

00:34:43.720 | have turned into the greatest, greatest

00:34:46.680 | advantages of my life.

00:34:49.120 | Like, you know, I remember being

00:34:51.080 | around this time when I was about to go traveling,

00:34:54.900 | and my mentor said,

00:34:56.620 | "Hey, you gotta go work at a big tech company

00:34:58.920 | "because you've worked at all these small startups,

00:35:00.800 | "and you have to really even out your resume.

00:35:04.060 | "So go to Google, go to Twitter, go to Facebook,"

00:35:06.180 | something like that, before Facebook became meta.

00:35:08.780 | And I tried, you know?

00:35:10.780 | I like tapped my whole network.

00:35:12.820 | I did so many interviews,

00:35:13.940 | but I just wasn't the right candidate,

00:35:15.740 | which is so funny because I went on to like go work

00:35:17.500 | at a very prestigious venture capital firm,

00:35:19.060 | but I wasn't what they were looking for,

00:35:21.020 | and I couldn't get a job.

00:35:22.620 | And I was so sad about it.

00:35:25.180 | And because I was so disappointed,

00:35:26.600 | that's when I actually was like,

00:35:27.540 | "Fuck, I don't know if I can say that, but F this,

00:35:29.840 | "I'm gonna go traveling."

00:35:31.060 | And that opened up everything for me.

00:35:33.100 | And so I'm like, "Okay, that's amazing."

00:35:35.060 | And then even with, you know,

00:35:36.780 | my business having to shut it down during the pandemic,

00:35:39.580 | first I thought, "Wow, I just literally invested

00:35:43.120 | "a quarter of a million dollars into this business

00:35:44.780 | "that poof, it's gone."

00:35:47.140 | But now in hindsight, the pandemic allowed me

00:35:50.180 | to shut down my business very quietly

00:35:52.260 | alongside everyone else who was struggling,

00:35:54.500 | and it allowed me to admit

00:35:55.340 | that I actually wasn't really having fun

00:35:57.540 | running this business.

00:35:58.380 | It was really stressful,

00:36:00.860 | and I didn't like being in person every day.

00:36:02.740 | I didn't like the work that I was doing,

00:36:04.100 | even though I thought it had been my dream.

00:36:06.900 | And it was the silver lining

00:36:08.140 | where I got to build this career now

00:36:11.100 | as a writer, a coach, and a speaker.

00:36:13.620 | And I just wasn't doing that before.

00:36:15.220 | I didn't have the time to do it.

00:36:16.220 | I never would have had the time to write a book.

00:36:17.660 | It's very time-consuming.

00:36:18.940 | And then when I was underemployed, I was like,

00:36:20.500 | "Okay, I'm gonna write this book, finally,

00:36:22.080 | "this book I've had in my mind."

00:36:23.860 | And I think that's true.

00:36:24.980 | You know, sometimes we also even think

00:36:26.340 | that good things are happening,

00:36:27.980 | and it's what we want.

00:36:29.700 | But later on, we find out that

00:36:31.580 | maybe we didn't even actually want it.

00:36:33.540 | And so I think giving life more of a neutral perspective

00:36:37.460 | really helps me be happier.

00:36:39.060 | And I want to include the story

00:36:40.940 | to let people know that if life hasn't gone your way

00:36:44.940 | in terms of the timeline you thought

00:36:46.860 | or where you thought you'd be,

00:36:48.520 | not only is it not over, it doesn't really mean anything.

00:36:51.540 | Like, nearly, not even nearly,

00:36:53.380 | but every single one of my clients

00:36:54.700 | who was a very successful entrepreneur

00:36:56.700 | has had such crushing defeat and disappointment

00:37:00.620 | that people told them, "You should just give up."

00:37:02.980 | Like, external people, not even their own dialogue,

00:37:05.100 | but other people were like, "Why are you even doing this?"

00:37:07.100 | And so I think I wanted to include that

00:37:08.800 | so that the readers would know

00:37:10.260 | if something happens to you that is disappointing,

00:37:14.780 | it's not a knock on who you are,

00:37:16.900 | it's literally just kind of the ebbs and flows

00:37:18.660 | of the world that we live in, the universe.

00:37:20.460 | - Yeah.

00:37:21.780 | When I was reading the story,

00:37:22.820 | I remember back to when I was 12 years old

00:37:25.220 | and I first started roller skating.

00:37:27.220 | And there's this one kid, he was so good.

00:37:29.340 | He was doing these twirls and spins,

00:37:31.320 | and I wanted to be like him.

00:37:32.980 | So I started trying to do the same thing,

00:37:34.700 | and I ended up falling on my butt and spraining my elbow.

00:37:38.940 | You know, I braced myself,

00:37:40.660 | and the elbow went the other way it's supposed to.

00:37:43.780 | And I was thinking to myself, "Oh, that was so painful."

00:37:46.380 | It was so painful.

00:37:48.220 | But then I thought to myself,

00:37:49.180 | "Well, at least I didn't break my arm."

00:37:51.380 | (laughing)

00:37:52.220 | It was just like a different perspective,

00:37:56.300 | because the longer you live,

00:37:58.060 | the more good and bad things tend to happen.

00:38:00.820 | So I think owning that neutral outlook is very important.

00:38:05.580 | In terms of your clients,

00:38:08.860 | do you see certain attributes of your clients

00:38:13.380 | that are different from the average person

00:38:16.140 | for them to become CEOs,

00:38:17.620 | to become successful startup founders and all that?

00:38:20.660 | - Yeah, you know, for the most part,

00:38:25.100 | people are very different.

00:38:26.540 | I work with this personality assessment called the Hogan,

00:38:28.820 | and it's this very detailed 26 dimension,

00:38:33.540 | 100 sub dimensions of a person,

00:38:36.100 | all scored from zero to 100.

00:38:38.900 | And people do tend to be all across the spectrum.

00:38:42.260 | People are motivated by different things.

00:38:44.260 | They're strong at different things.

00:38:45.900 | My clients, some of them are highly technical, right?

00:38:48.020 | They came up through engineering or biology of some sort,

00:38:53.020 | right, 'cause they're working in the biosciences.

00:38:54.980 | And other people are not.

00:38:55.980 | They're more on the creative side of things.

00:38:57.180 | Maybe they came up through marketing

00:38:58.340 | or they came up through sales.

00:39:00.340 | And so the background,

00:39:02.820 | like school, where you came from, your family,

00:39:05.500 | those are all different.

00:39:06.340 | I think those things that you see on a resume or on paper,

00:39:09.140 | they're all across the board.

00:39:11.100 | But there are a couple of personality traits

00:39:13.620 | that I think are similar.

00:39:15.500 | One is I think you have to be a little bit of a masochist

00:39:20.500 | to become a founder, start your own company.

00:39:22.420 | I don't know if this resonates with you or not,

00:39:25.180 | but you kind of have to be like harder on yourself

00:39:27.900 | than anyone else is hard on you

00:39:29.540 | because once you start your own thing,

00:39:31.500 | you don't have a boss anymore.

00:39:33.060 | No one's telling you how you need to do it.

00:39:34.780 | And so there's this trait where my clients

00:39:37.140 | are all pushing themselves harder

00:39:39.140 | than any other person could ever push them.

00:39:41.660 | And that comes up from different ways.

00:39:43.100 | Maybe it's the way they were raised

00:39:44.580 | or just their natural anxiety

00:39:49.580 | or even like their natural standards for themselves,

00:39:52.780 | but they're all extremely hard on themselves.

00:39:55.340 | And I sometimes have to even pull it back and say,

00:39:58.900 | this is actually starting to be a detriment.

00:40:00.380 | Like I'm all for you pushing yourself,

00:40:02.060 | but it's tipping over the edge.

00:40:04.340 | So that's the first one.

00:40:05.460 | I don't know, what do you think about that?

00:40:06.780 | Do you see that in yourself?

00:40:08.420 | - Yeah, well, I know that because of my time in banking,

00:40:11.700 | I worked 60 hours plus a week for 13 years.

00:40:14.540 | And I did write a really, I guess, controversial,

00:40:17.660 | there's a humongous number of comments on this post.

00:40:20.100 | It's called, are there really people

00:40:21.860 | who work 40 hours a week or less

00:40:24.260 | and complain why they can't get ahead?

00:40:26.740 | So a lot of people were upset at that title,

00:40:30.860 | but it was one of those things

00:40:32.460 | where I was working 60, 70 hours a week.

00:40:35.220 | And then I had overheard many conversations

00:40:38.380 | about people complaining,

00:40:39.380 | how come they couldn't get promoted,

00:40:40.740 | but they were working like single digit hours a day.

00:40:45.180 | And I was thinking to myself,

00:40:46.820 | well, how do you plan to get ahead

00:40:49.540 | if all these successful people that you see in the media

00:40:53.020 | and all, they're working way more

00:40:54.900 | and they're working weekends.

00:40:56.100 | I mean, it's one thing to be

00:41:00.140 | at the same level of intelligence.

00:41:02.340 | It's another thing to be at a higher level of intelligence

00:41:04.820 | and work many more hours.

00:41:06.420 | Because if you work 60 hours a week all year,

00:41:09.260 | that's 50% longer than the average 40 hours a week.

00:41:12.300 | Of course, even if you had the same amount

00:41:13.660 | of intelligence and all that,

00:41:14.820 | you would probably get more done,

00:41:16.520 | maybe 50% more a year.

00:41:17.840 | And then you compound that over 10 years.

00:41:19.620 | That's a lot of gains.

00:41:21.780 | So in terms of masochism, no, not really.

00:41:25.220 | Like I worked in an industry

00:41:27.180 | that was really hard and stressful,

00:41:29.700 | but in 2012, I wanted a break.

00:41:32.340 | And so I left because I wanted that break.

00:41:34.780 | And I did say to myself in 2009,

00:41:38.220 | when I started Financial Samurai,

00:41:39.460 | I'm gonna publish three posts a week for 10 years in a row.

00:41:43.420 | And I wanted to do that because it was a challenge.

00:41:47.020 | And I knew that something good would eventually happen

00:41:50.140 | if I stuck with it long enough.

00:41:51.780 | Because I didn't have any particularly superior intellect

00:41:56.640 | or insights, personality.

00:41:58.020 | I was very average in every way possible,

00:42:00.220 | but I knew I could control my work ethic,

00:42:02.580 | which I think what most of us can control, our work ethic.

00:42:05.780 | And now it's just, things are kind of the way things are.

00:42:10.620 | It's like a muscle.

00:42:11.660 | I just publish three times a week.

00:42:13.420 | 'Cause if you can speak forever, you can write forever.

00:42:15.780 | And now I'm doing more podcasts

00:42:17.380 | because I think it's really fun and exciting.

00:42:18.920 | And I promised myself that I'm gonna try to last 10 years,

00:42:22.240 | coming out with at least one episode a year.

00:42:25.100 | Why not?

00:42:26.020 | It'll be fun.

00:42:26.860 | Who knows what will happen?

00:42:28.500 | But you have to be disciplined in regulating your time,

00:42:31.980 | especially if you have dependents.

00:42:34.020 | I have two kids, I gotta take them to school.

00:42:36.260 | And then I say, well, okay, 9.30 a.m.

00:42:38.020 | till 10.30 a.m. will be podcast time.

00:42:39.940 | And then 11 a.m. to 12 will be writing time.

00:42:42.660 | And then three hours will be exercise and relaxing time.

00:42:45.780 | So I went the different route.

00:42:48.480 | I decided to do a lifestyle business

00:42:50.660 | instead of a venture-backed, investor,

00:42:54.860 | big pressure, huge potential business.

00:42:57.420 | Because the ultimate thing I wanted to optimize for

00:43:01.540 | was a better lifestyle.

00:43:02.700 | - Yeah, I think that's really true.

00:43:06.140 | That's why I also run a lifestyle business

00:43:08.820 | versus starting a venture-backed business.

00:43:12.340 | But I do think that there's a similarity

00:43:13.980 | where you are setting your own goals, though.

00:43:17.140 | And they're really ambitious goals.

00:43:18.980 | And I think that's really important

00:43:20.220 | because unless we, working for yourself,

00:43:23.380 | whether you're a VC-backed company or you're a solopreneur,

00:43:26.760 | no one's gonna set deadlines for you.

00:43:30.260 | (laughs)

00:43:31.100 | - No. - And there's always

00:43:31.920 | this type of work that is really important,

00:43:34.300 | but it's not urgent.

00:43:35.140 | It doesn't have to happen right away.

00:43:36.380 | And it can just get kicked down the road forever.

00:43:38.540 | - Yeah, it's procrastinating forever.

00:43:39.380 | - Kind of like writing a book.

00:43:41.100 | Like, oh, I'll write it one day, I'll write it one day.

00:43:42.700 | And you're like, I just gotta get it done.

00:43:43.780 | I gotta get it off my plate.

00:43:45.100 | And so I think that's really important,

00:43:47.180 | is just even just making up urgency

00:43:49.860 | and deadlines for yourself.

00:43:51.580 | And I think the second thing with my clients

00:43:54.140 | is that something that they really have in common

00:43:57.220 | is that they have a hard time working for other people,

00:44:02.220 | I guess, is maybe what it is.

00:44:05.940 | Because it is tough doing a startup, really, really tough,

00:44:09.060 | especially before you hit your series A

00:44:11.460 | and you don't have product market fit yet.

00:44:13.140 | And so you kind of have to really dislike

00:44:16.860 | working for someone else enough

00:44:19.020 | to trade that off for the pain and the uncertainty.

00:44:23.660 | And also it's just hard.

00:44:24.860 | You literally have to do 10 people's jobs.

00:44:27.060 | And so I think that's part of it too,

00:44:28.700 | where they're like, you know what,

00:44:29.900 | this is kind of horrible,

00:44:32.300 | but it's better than going back

00:44:35.580 | and remembering what it felt like

00:44:37.340 | to be a staff product manager at this place,

00:44:41.340 | you know, whatever it is.

00:44:42.180 | - Yeah, that's really true.

00:44:43.020 | And I think that desire to be free,

00:44:47.580 | to be your own boss, increases over time.

00:44:50.020 | Because when you graduate from high school, college,

00:44:51.820 | and you get your first job, you don't know anything.

00:44:53.780 | So of course you're gonna be more amenable

00:44:55.700 | to listening to other adults who are senior to you,

00:44:58.300 | so you can learn.

00:44:59.620 | And at a point when you learn enough

00:45:02.580 | and you have enough financial cushion or backing,

00:45:06.820 | I think that's when a lot of people generally say,

00:45:09.300 | well, let me maybe try to take a leap of faith.

00:45:11.260 | And then some people will never take that leap of faith,

00:45:13.500 | which is fine, 'cause having a day job

00:45:16.060 | and having your community and stability

00:45:18.260 | of income and benefits is really nice.

00:45:21.220 | It's just not something that,

00:45:23.300 | I just didn't wanna live with regret

00:45:25.180 | on knowing I didn't try something new.

00:45:27.420 | Because I've always wanted to be entrepreneurial

00:45:28.880 | since I was a kid.

00:45:29.780 | - Yeah, you know, I honestly have a lot of jealousy

00:45:33.700 | sometimes about people who don't have this real desire

00:45:38.700 | to work for yourself, because I've always had that too.

00:45:42.580 | And it kinda makes life harder in some ways.

00:45:44.660 | I mean, now my life is really nice and easy,

00:45:46.240 | but it was kinda bumpy getting here for a little while,

00:45:49.340 | as it is for everyone.

00:45:50.860 | And sometimes I look at people I know who are like,

00:45:53.220 | okay, they've been at said really successful company,

00:45:56.700 | working in a job there for like 10 years,

00:45:59.660 | and now they're an executive, and it's great.

00:46:01.260 | And I don't know, it's kinda nice having health benefits.

00:46:04.700 | It's like nice having, like I won't have maternity leave,

00:46:07.220 | like I have to just save up money for myself.

00:46:08.940 | Like those things are all so nice.

00:46:10.780 | And so I just think it's like a personality thing.

00:46:13.440 | I often wish that maybe I was a little bit more by the book,

00:46:17.020 | because maybe life would be easier,

00:46:18.540 | but I'm very also happy to create a life

00:46:21.460 | that feels like it works for me.

00:46:23.540 | - Right.

00:46:24.680 | And before I ask you about maternity leave,

00:46:27.420 | are there any other attributes of CEOs?

00:46:29.820 | You mentioned two, and I think that's,

00:46:32.340 | those are the two, those are the two,

00:46:33.340 | but anything else you noticed?

00:46:35.380 | - I think the final thing is you have to have

00:46:40.380 | a really good handle on your own ego,

00:46:42.820 | because you're gonna be wrong a lot of the time,

00:46:47.180 | and that's okay.

00:46:48.000 | You've gotta just be like, okay, I missed on that.

00:46:51.780 | Here's why.

00:46:53.180 | That's okay.

00:46:54.020 | Like I just gotta move forward.

00:46:55.180 | And I think the interesting balance is that

00:46:57.580 | you have to be really willing to see yourself very clearly

00:47:01.420 | in terms of your shortcomings and your faults,

00:47:04.260 | because then you know how to build around those things.

00:47:06.140 | You have to be honest.

00:47:07.440 | And at the same time, you also still need to

00:47:10.540 | have a pretty sturdy base of confidence.

00:47:12.660 | And so it's almost like this feeling of,

00:47:14.820 | you know what, I'm wrong a lot of the time,

00:47:16.940 | but at the end of the day, like I'm still a good human being

00:47:20.140 | even though I'm good at my job, I'm good at working.

00:47:22.500 | And so it's that balance of knowing that

00:47:25.900 | you're gonna fail and then you just need to fix it

00:47:28.300 | and move on, but also not letting it color

00:47:31.980 | what you can see for yourself,

00:47:33.300 | because when you're in the cycle of having to raise funding

00:47:35.820 | every 18 months, you have to go out there every 18 months

00:47:38.980 | with lots of progress and convince investors

00:47:41.660 | that you are the best in the world.

00:47:43.180 | And so you have to have that swagger.

00:47:44.860 | You have to have that confidence.

00:47:45.700 | - Self-belief.

00:47:46.780 | - Self-belief.

00:47:47.600 | And at the same time too,

00:47:48.660 | you have to be the most paranoid person at your company

00:47:51.180 | that things are gonna go wrong.

00:47:52.980 | You have to hold both unlimited belief in yourself

00:47:57.980 | and your business, and then also paranoia

00:48:01.060 | that you're constantly messing up.

00:48:02.420 | And that's kind of a hard line to walk,

00:48:06.840 | but I think my clients do that really well.

00:48:08.980 | - When you speak to these CEOs and startup folks,

00:48:13.820 | do you get a sense in general that they are

00:48:15.660 | more self-confident than the average person?

00:48:17.580 | So when you talk to me, can you feel confidence?

00:48:22.100 | What are the signals that people display

00:48:24.800 | in terms of confidence that you observe?

00:48:28.040 | - Yeah, so it's interesting because I think a lot of times

00:48:31.660 | we think confidence in culture is like someone

00:48:36.540 | who brags a lot or is very outgoing.

00:48:39.880 | And I actually don't think that's true.

00:48:41.380 | I think confidence is actually more inclusive than that.

00:48:45.180 | A lot of my clients are very, very quiet

00:48:48.460 | and they're very shy as well.

00:48:50.660 | So because I do work with a lot of people

00:48:52.180 | who came up through the technical side of things,

00:48:55.340 | so software engineers, et cetera.

00:48:57.340 | And so confidence is actually something more subtle.

00:49:02.060 | I'm actually an introvert myself.

00:49:03.940 | I don't really, I spend a lot of time alone.

00:49:06.460 | (laughs)

00:49:07.300 | I'm a coach, but I like just reading and sitting in my room

00:49:10.180 | and being quiet, and I don't really like going to parties.

00:49:13.540 | And so the way I think about confidence

00:49:15.300 | is that you can't always pick it up on people right away.

00:49:19.300 | Like if you meet someone for the first time,

00:49:20.780 | you won't really know if they're confident,

00:49:22.780 | but it's sort of how they respond to the situations

00:49:26.380 | that come across their plate.

00:49:28.220 | And like at the end of the day,

00:49:29.620 | do they think that they are innately capable?

00:49:33.320 | And like when, I think confidence is really when

00:49:36.140 | something very surprising and something really disappointing

00:49:39.060 | pops into your life, do you let it swirl you up

00:49:42.380 | and make you think that you're a horrible person

00:49:44.700 | and that you messed up?

00:49:45.900 | Or does it kind of tether you and ground you

00:49:48.440 | and your confidence just says, you know what?

00:49:50.580 | It's okay, I'm gonna be fine.

00:49:51.880 | And so it really just starts to come up for me

00:49:53.780 | when I see my clients responding to different situations.

00:49:57.380 | I don't always pick up on it like a first conversation.

00:50:00.380 | I can hear it a little bit in how hard they are

00:50:01.980 | on themselves or the way that they'll narrate

00:50:05.020 | something bad that happened to them,

00:50:06.820 | but it takes a little while to kind of figure it out.

00:50:08.620 | And I actually work with a lot of my clients

00:50:10.660 | on confidence building exercises,

00:50:12.620 | especially right before they go fundraise

00:50:14.980 | and during the fundraise process,

00:50:16.260 | which is often many months long,

00:50:18.900 | we will be really deliberate about contributing

00:50:22.580 | to their confidence bank account

00:50:23.940 | and trying to get that level up.

00:50:25.980 | Because it is also variable.

00:50:28.060 | It can go up and down over time,

00:50:30.000 | but at the end of the day,

00:50:31.900 | we can all adjust it for ourselves.

00:50:34.740 | We can work on it.

00:50:35.580 | - Confidence bank account, I like that.

00:50:37.460 | That's something I need.

00:50:38.740 | I need to raise big time before I enter a tennis match.

00:50:42.100 | (laughing)

00:50:43.340 | The pre-match jitters are tough,

00:50:44.660 | but you have to have in tennis,

00:50:46.460 | it's like 60, 70% mental.

00:50:49.380 | Do you believe you're gonna win?

00:50:50.900 | If you do, you're gonna have a greater chance of winning.

00:50:52.780 | If you don't, then you already defeated yourself.

00:50:55.660 | - That's exactly the way it is in life.

00:50:57.280 | And I love reading about high performance athletes

00:51:00.340 | like Serena Williams, greatest tennis player ever.

00:51:03.220 | And Michael Phelps where they build confidence

00:51:06.900 | by visualizing themselves winning the game.

00:51:10.820 | Like Michael Phelps will literally visualize

00:51:12.460 | every single stroke in the pool.

00:51:15.140 | And so by the time he gets to the race,

00:51:18.660 | he already has won it in his head a hundred times.

00:51:21.340 | And he's like, "Oh, I can do this."

00:51:22.940 | So I think the confidence is the same thing.

00:51:24.660 | You picture yourself doing it,

00:51:26.140 | you picture yourself winning.

00:51:27.940 | And so then when you get there,

00:51:29.380 | it doesn't feel so far away.

00:51:30.940 | - Yeah.

00:51:32.100 | It's still pre-match jitters, nerves, it's there.

00:51:35.140 | But yeah, that confidence is so important.

00:51:37.520 | I wanted to conclude by talking to you about,

00:51:41.940 | being a woman in New York City and in your book,

00:51:45.600 | I felt like you were going through a balance,

00:51:50.020 | a struggle between career and family a lot.

00:51:53.500 | And I empathize because I regret having kids so late

00:51:59.380 | because I was so focused on my career.

00:52:01.220 | And it's also expensive here in San Francisco.

00:52:03.400 | And before San Francisco, I was in New York City.

00:52:06.260 | So can you tell me about that balance

00:52:08.780 | and how do you try to balance it?

00:52:11.460 | And how would you encourage other women

00:52:13.440 | who are in big expensive cities,

00:52:15.860 | who want a career, but who also want a family

00:52:18.780 | to balance that situation as well?

00:52:20.460 | Can you really have it all?

00:52:22.100 | And how do you get there if you can?

00:52:27.060 | - Yeah, I love that question.

00:52:29.180 | I'm still figuring this out for myself.

00:52:33.180 | It's hard, because I came up

00:52:36.820 | through really male dominated industries.

00:52:39.500 | I kind of adopted this way of being that was very much,

00:52:45.980 | my career first and everything else comes second.

00:52:49.980 | And I do have a lot of regret around that.

00:52:53.260 | Not even just on like the kids front,

00:52:55.500 | but I missed a lot of bridal showers, bachelorette parties,

00:53:00.540 | even weddings of my close friends

00:53:02.260 | when I was in my late 20s and 30s.

00:53:04.980 | That's when everyone's getting married,

00:53:06.100 | but that's also when I was really putting

00:53:08.120 | the gas pedal on my career.

00:53:10.060 | And I felt like I was through,

00:53:13.100 | until I quit my job at Venture Capital,

00:53:14.700 | I was always at the office.

00:53:15.980 | I was always traveling for work.

00:53:17.900 | And I wouldn't give a second thought

00:53:19.820 | to not seeing my family, my family of origin,

00:53:22.820 | my brother, my aunts, not seeing best friends,

00:53:26.700 | because I had to drop everything

00:53:28.020 | 'cause we were trying to close a deal.

00:53:29.740 | And I do have some regret around that

00:53:31.580 | because I definitely, I burned some relationships

00:53:35.260 | that were hard to repair

00:53:36.800 | and some that actually haven't been repaired.

00:53:39.120 | And then now, my husband and I,

00:53:44.820 | we're both in our late 30s, I'm 38, he's 39.

00:53:49.020 | We're just like on the cusp of having our kids,

00:53:51.820 | which is really exciting.

00:53:52.980 | We're gonna have a kid in January.

00:53:54.900 | - Congratulations.

00:53:56.020 | - Thank you, I'm really excited.

00:53:57.940 | - I'm really excited too.

00:53:59.140 | - I'm so excited.

00:54:00.460 | And do I regret waiting 'til I was 38?

00:54:03.500 | I mean, part of it wasn't my choice.

00:54:05.100 | We did two years of IVF and we tried for three years.

00:54:09.100 | And I think it was just kind of meant to be that way.

00:54:13.580 | No one could tell us why we weren't getting pregnant.

00:54:15.620 | It was weird.

00:54:16.440 | Everyone's like, "You should be fine.

00:54:17.360 | "You have plenty of eggs, blah, blah, blah."

00:54:18.940 | And it still hasn't been explained.

00:54:21.020 | And I think part of it,

00:54:22.420 | this is gonna be a little woo-woo maybe for people,

00:54:24.340 | but I don't know if I was actually subconsciously ready

00:54:28.800 | because I was so career-focused.

00:54:31.140 | And it was only in starting to see role models

00:54:33.620 | of other women who would say things like,

00:54:36.180 | "You know what, kids, that was my breakthrough."

00:54:39.780 | A lot of people think that kids hold you back,

00:54:42.820 | but the creativity that they bring into your life,

00:54:45.780 | the way that you can reprioritize

00:54:47.380 | everything that's important,

00:54:48.460 | the clarity that you have about who you are,

00:54:50.980 | all that stuff makes you better at your career.

00:54:54.020 | And I remember the night before I had my IVF procedure

00:54:58.140 | to hopefully get pregnant,

00:54:59.600 | I had my friend over for dinner

00:55:01.100 | who's also a career-minded woman, she's writing a book.

00:55:04.300 | And I said, "Do you ever worry about kids

00:55:06.360 | "impacting your career?"

00:55:08.560 | And she said, "No, what is a more creative act

00:55:12.060 | "than creating life and then raising a child,

00:55:15.560 | "getting to figure out what this person's life looks like?"

00:55:18.760 | She was like, "How could that not make you more, better,

00:55:22.800 | "more competent, more capable?"

00:55:24.880 | And I just started crying.

00:55:27.600 | And I was like, "Oh my God, you're right.

00:55:28.720 | "I've been looking at it the wrong way of like,

00:55:30.800 | "do I have this or do I have this?"

00:55:32.880 | Hey, guess what?

00:55:33.720 | Actually, maybe you can have both.

00:55:34.940 | And I think I'm lucky, I have a supportive partner.

00:55:38.720 | We're gonna have some help.

00:55:40.800 | You know, not everyone can say that.

00:55:42.080 | I think I'm very privileged in that way

00:55:44.040 | to be able to have a nanny in the future.

00:55:46.520 | And I have enough stability in my career

00:55:50.920 | where I can set my own hours and things like that.

00:55:54.280 | But I do feel like that wasn't available to me

00:55:58.120 | when I was 35, when I first started trying to have a kid.

00:56:01.080 | And 38 is late, right?

00:56:02.240 | Like you're starting to think, okay, wow,

00:56:04.840 | when my kid is getting married herself,

00:56:08.040 | I'm gonna be in my 70s.

00:56:09.560 | You know, and you're like, whoa, that feels like a lot.

00:56:11.520 | Or like, this kid's gonna graduate from college.

00:56:13.220 | I'm gonna be like almost 60.

00:56:14.600 | And you're like, wow.

00:56:16.320 | But I think it was, you know,

00:56:17.640 | just like the passage that you read, that was my path.

00:56:20.760 | And I think I had to reconcile that idea of success

00:56:24.000 | and be able to see that, you know,

00:56:25.560 | I could do both if I was really creative about it

00:56:28.200 | before this kid was like, yeah, okay,

00:56:30.240 | I'm gonna come join you.

00:56:31.440 | - Yeah, it's really tough.

00:56:35.200 | And I really empathize with women who want that career

00:56:38.440 | and who want that family.

00:56:40.560 | Because I've met many, many women in my time on Wall Street

00:56:43.920 | who have told me in their 40s, you know,

00:56:47.200 | I wish I spend more time seeking someone

00:56:50.140 | or balancing my life a little more.

00:56:53.560 | And it's hard to have it all.

00:56:55.000 | I was able to have a kid at, I guess, 37 and 39.

00:57:00.740 | And that, no, no, no, that was wrong.

00:57:02.960 | 39 and 42.

00:57:04.960 | That was with my wife, 37, 39.

00:57:07.320 | And it was just kind of like, oh, we snuck by,

00:57:09.520 | it's stuck right in there under 40

00:57:11.160 | for at least our first one.

00:57:12.900 | And it's gonna be a great adventure for you.

00:57:15.760 | You are gonna be tested beyond belief.

00:57:18.720 | But there's a great saying,

00:57:19.760 | have children and the money will come.

00:57:21.560 | And it's not just so much about the money,

00:57:23.240 | it's about being able to have the,

00:57:25.920 | unlocking these superpowers where you have more energy,

00:57:28.720 | more focus, because you want to do everything

00:57:31.360 | for your children.

00:57:32.980 | So I'm really excited for your journey.

00:57:34.960 | - Oh, I love that.

00:57:36.560 | My husband's family has a saying,

00:57:39.120 | and it's like what you said,

00:57:40.500 | and it's the child brings its own bread.

00:57:42.960 | Which is like, you know, that kid will give you everything

00:57:46.160 | that you need to figure out how to like support it

00:57:48.180 | and make a living for it.

00:57:50.000 | Yeah, I'm really excited.

00:57:51.480 | And I'm also very, you know, inspired to know that,

00:57:54.120 | you know, you had your kids when you had,

00:57:58.120 | you know, your career more sorted out

00:57:59.840 | and like a little bit later,

00:58:01.280 | like I love seeing role models for that.

00:58:03.240 | And clearly like your kids are happy and great.

00:58:06.160 | (laughs)

00:58:07.000 | You know?

00:58:07.840 | - Well, I don't know most of the time,

00:58:09.240 | but you know, there is a benefit, right?

00:58:10.520 | So the negative of having children late

00:58:14.120 | is that you will not be in their lives

00:58:16.280 | as long as you could have been.

00:58:17.920 | Right, and that's a big lament.

00:58:20.340 | However, the great thing about having kids late

00:58:23.400 | is you're generally more mature.

00:58:26.760 | You've done more of the things that you've wanted to do,

00:58:29.640 | and you're generally more financially stable.

00:58:32.520 | So after this podcast,

00:58:34.680 | I'm gonna take her to the zoo for a couple hours,

00:58:36.560 | and we're gonna hang out and go on the choo-choo train,

00:58:38.440 | you know, and just be one together.

00:58:41.760 | And so there are pros and cons of everything.

00:58:45.440 | And for late parents, for older parents,

00:58:49.680 | you can actually do the math

00:58:51.160 | in terms of how much more time

00:58:52.600 | you could actually spend with them as a late parent

00:58:55.560 | to actually surpass if you had had them five years,

00:58:58.280 | eight years younger.

00:58:59.280 | You can work it out, and you can kind of catch up.

00:59:01.480 | So not all is lost.

00:59:03.440 | - That is actually really true.

00:59:05.600 | That is so true.

00:59:06.600 | I never thought about that way

00:59:07.740 | of like actually looking at the time

00:59:09.240 | that you can physically spend with them.

00:59:11.400 | So true.

00:59:12.720 | - So.

00:59:13.960 | Well, thank you so much, Liz, for being on this podcast.

00:59:17.920 | It's been a great hour speaking to you.

00:59:19.440 | Can you let the listeners know

00:59:21.200 | where we can find the Karma of Success

00:59:23.640 | and where we can find you if we want some coaching?

00:59:26.640 | - Yeah, so you can find the Karma of Success

00:59:29.560 | at any bookstore, so you can pre-order.

00:59:32.620 | It's coming out July 25th.

00:59:35.040 | Actually, I don't know when this podcast comes out,

00:59:36.520 | so let me take that back.

00:59:37.360 | - I'll probably release it around July 25th.

00:59:40.320 | - Okay, great.

00:59:41.160 | So you can find it at any bookstore.

00:59:43.240 | It's everywhere.

00:59:44.720 | And I recorded the audio book myself,

00:59:47.320 | so if you wanna hear more of this voice,

00:59:48.880 | you can get the audio book as well.

00:59:50.800 | And then for me, you can find Reset on Instagram

00:59:54.280 | at ResetNYC.

00:59:55.600 | We have a very vibrant community there.

00:59:57.400 | And then I have a podcast called Reset with Liz Tran.

01:00:01.240 | And if you go to my website, which is liz-tran.com,

01:00:05.100 | there's a bunch of resources there

01:00:06.560 | for people who are looking to basically live up

01:00:09.420 | to their greatest potential for their careers.

01:00:12.240 | - Awesome.

01:00:13.320 | Well, thanks again, and thanks for coming on.

01:00:16.640 | - Thank you, Sam.

01:00:17.680 | - It was such a pleasure.

01:00:19.180 | - All right, take care.

01:00:20.340 | [ Background noise ]

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