- Hello everybody, it's Sam from the Financial Samurai Podcast, and in this episode I have Liz Tran with me, who is the creator of Reset, an executive coaching company to CEOs and founders, and she is the author of The Karma of Success, Spiritual Strategies to Free Your Inner Genius.

Welcome Liz, and say hello. - Thanks for having me, Sam. - No problem, I loved your book, I read it from cover to cover over the course of about four or five days, and it was very therapeutic, and I also noted that it seemed like you were also looking for a lot of therapy as well in your life and in your journey, so please tell us and the listeners how this book came about, why did you write it, and how everything got started.

- Yeah, so I have always been a really career-oriented person, so growing up I grew up in a very kind of economically unstable situation, so we grew up in Section 8 housing, which is the low-income housing, we were on food stamps at times, I was raised by a single mom and so I just thought to myself, I'm gonna make it, I'm gonna make lots and lots of money, this is gonna be my goal, and I thought that since I was, I don't know, like eight years old, I was like, I'm gonna make a lot of money, and so I went on this very prescriptive path into tech, and then eventually venture capital, and when I got to age 34, I realized that a lot of the content that I had consumed as a voracious reader of career books, voracious reader of trying to figure out how to build a network, get ahead, et cetera, and all of it kind of worked on the surface, I mean, it definitely worked, I was an executive at a venture capital firm by the time I was 32, but it wasn't fulfilling in a real way, and I started to feel that impact on my life and my choices and who I felt like I was becoming, and at that time, I was starting to think about having a family, and I was about to get married, and I realized that I had to make a choice about what was most important, and it previously had always been money, and I decided, you know, maybe I can do both, maybe I can have both, maybe I can make enough money, but also still have my soul, and I started my own business, and I went on this journey that had a lot of ups and downs, started a business that was largely in person, and then it was open for about nine months when the pandemic happened, had to shut it down, and put about $250,000 into that business, it was all my own savings, plus a $100,000 loan, and I was sort of thinking, wow, for someone who worked really hard to make a lot of money, here I am at 34, I don't have any left, I don't have a business, how do I recover?

And I went into this process of figuring out a new path to success, and building another business that was right for this world that we live in, this is when I built my executive coaching company, and it worked, and what I wanted to do with the book is to present a different path for people, which I think you really understand, because you sort of decided not to do the, you know, Goldman, Credit Suisse thing, and then forge your own path, and I wanted to give people the permission, and also some guidance, with me operating as their coach, the way I coach CEOs and founders, but via this book, to help them chart out their own unique path, using their intuition, versus, you know, just following the things that we are all told that we should do, you know, check this box, get this type of job, make this amount of money by the time you're 30 years old, et cetera, and it was really funny, because as soon as I loosened the grip on some of these ideas that I had held previously, success really flowed for me, so within a year of making this pivot, then I paid back this loan that I owed for $100,000, and paid back all the debt that was on my credit cards, I started making really good money as an executive coach, I bought a house on 22 acres in Connecticut, like shortly thereafter, and then I also got this book deal, and I felt like, okay, you know, obviously, it wasn't all about the money, but I was able to figure it out, you know, that balance between deep personal meaning, and also being able to kind of take care of your own day-to-day needs.

- You know, being able to invest $200,000 in your own business, and let go or walk away from, I'm assuming, a six-figure job at the venture capital company, takes a lot of guts and courage. You said you were 32 years old at the time? - I was 32 years old, and I was making about $500,000 a year.

- Oh, wow. - And also, because I was part of the leadership team, I had more in carried interest in the firm, so I had a piece of the pie, and the idea was, you know, if I stayed for seven or 10 years, the funds would return, and I would be, you know, millionaire, like many times over, and so that was the promise, and that's what everyone who's still there has happened to them.

You know, it's like pretty, it's a very successful fund. You know, they were one of the early investors in Instagram, and have backed a lot of big companies like Spotify, and Oscar, and Jet, et cetera, so it was a great firm, and walking away was hard, because I had always operated, too, from a place where I was really fighting to be seen, I think, because, like, I never really felt like I was good enough in a lot of ways, like, I went to public school, I went to a public university, and then, when I came out of college, I sort of had to prove that I was good enough, and so getting this job partially was kind of proof to myself, like, hey, I could do it, and then I realized that it was really empty, because the only person that could actually give me that validation was myself.

You know, like, I had this validation, but I still felt like crap every day. - Well, maybe it's partially that you were able to leave, because you were able to get that job, able to make that half a million dollar mark, so you told yourself, well, you could do it, and then, now what, because you've experienced it for one or two, several years, and you're like, okay, you've seen it, you won't at least regret not having tried, right?

- Yeah, exactly, and also, I looked around at a lot of the people who I knew in the industry, and a lot of them were very unhappy, and then seeing that, you know, you kind of take the veneer off of the story, you know, there's so much sort of, you know, lore around venture capital as an industry, and seems like such a fun job, which I think it is in a lot of ways, you know, people who have a penchant for it really enjoy it, but you kind of take the veneer off, and you realize, hey, you know, things are not as sweet as they look, you know, and so being able to see that up close and personal also enabled me to say, hey, you know, I'm working with all these people who went to Harvard, Stanford, business school, and you know, I felt just as capable as them, and then I also felt like this path makes a lot of people happy, but it isn't actually a guarantee, and there are a lot of deeply unhappy people who get caught in this kind of warm blanket of not being able to stay, and I think I sort of was feeling that in myself, I was like, if I stay for another year, I'm gonna stay for another 20 years, and there's so much more I wanna do with my life.

I'd never actually chosen any work that was about self-expression or about even my own happiness, it was very practical and very much like, okay, I'm gonna get into tech because that's where the jobs are, it's 2008, I was like, okay, great, I happen to be good at recruiting in HR, never loved that, and sort of made my way up, and then I got into venture capital, and I was like, okay, I'm just gonna do the best job I can, and so then at 34, I was able to ask myself, okay, what do I really wanna do, and I think when you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you do have to have your baseline needs met before you can start to think about creativity and self-actualization, and so I think that's true, like getting that job enabled me to say, you know what, I actually don't want this.

- In your book, you talk about going on this spiritual journey to Asia, I think it was India, when exactly did you go on that journey, and how long were you over there for, and what were some of the key things that you learned on the way? - Yeah, it was a year that I was traveling, and I was working concurrently at the same time, so I was doing some consulting work for tech companies, helping them hire people in different countries, and so I was, like I had saved some money, and so I was partially living off of that, but I also was kind of working at the same time on and off, and one period of time where I wasn't working is I went to India, and I did a yoga teacher training at an ashram for a month, and I really didn't have phone or email, and I was totally disconnected, and it was just really a life-changing experience for me, and that's when I started getting into Buddhism, and then throughout the rest of the trip, I would visit monasteries, I was constantly reading books about Buddhism.

This was actually exactly 10 years ago, so I was 28 at the time, and that kicked off kind of a years-long exploration of spirituality. I actually grew up Catholic, and didn't really care for it, 'cause it's extremely boring when you're a kid. You go to mass, it's like an hour and a half long, and I just loved the ideas around Buddhism, and it really resonated with me.

I was also reading a lot at the time about minimalism, and just seeing that I could change my life in a different way, and so after a couple years of doing that, I was actually doing consulting work, and then whenever I'd save enough money, I'd go travel, and I kind of was into it, and I was like, oh, maybe I'll move to Bali, or maybe I'll move to Vietnam, where my family's originally from, and it was around that time when I was 30 that I got this offer from this venture capital firm, and so it was sort of a fork in the road of do I pursue my interest in spirituality?

(laughs) I was thinking of working as a yoga teacher in Bali, where my friend had a studio, or do I take this job in venture capital? - In New York City? - I don't know. Yeah, in New York City. - That's totally a big fork. - Totally different, and then I thought, okay, you know what, I'm gonna try this thing, because I can always quit if I don't like it, and I'm really glad that I did, because even though it wasn't the end for me, it wasn't the final destination, it was a really important stop on the train to where I'm going.

- Yeah, I think I definitely wanted to, during the global financial crisis, think about going to Bali, eat, pray, love moment, or Thailand. I've always dreamed of that, because I grew up overseas in Asia for 13 years, and it was really fun, but I was only there as a student, and I thought to myself, how fun would it be to actually be there as an adult with actually income to spend?

So I'm glad you did that, because I'm assuming that it changed your life, in a sense, and your whole path and trajectory. - Yeah, and I wanna do it again. When I have a couple of kids, I wanna do it when they're in middle school, because I was just thinking, no one likes middle school, I don't think, I think everyone has a bad experience, and maybe it would be nice to swoop them away and have them travel for a year or two, and try out a bunch of different countries, put them in different schools, so that's kind of my big, long-term on the horizon.

I don't have any kids yet, but that's kind of the plan for the far term. - Right. Yeah, I was in middle school when I was traveling a lot. I was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and it was a phenomenal experience. Four years in Malaysia, four years in Taiwan before that, several years in Japan, Philippines for one year, Zambia.

I definitely recommend it if you can do it, because it just opens your world, and you meet other people, you learn other cultures and languages. I hope more Americans can travel and see the world. I think there would be more world peace if there was more travel. - Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, do you think that influenced kind of your unique and unorthodox path of being able to say, like, "Hey, you know, I can choose to do a different thing," because you had seen a lot of different ways of living growing up? - Definitely. When I was in Malaysia, I was surrounded by a lot of entrepreneurs, people who, it wasn't just they worked at the government, or they had a day job, they were entrepreneurs.

One was the creator of the Yo's Drink, like these drinks in carton boxes in Asia. One did well as a chicken farmer. And they drove nice cars, had nice homes in the hills, and I was like, "Wow, you can do anything you want." And this was in Malaysia, where there was a bigger dichotomy between the rich and the poor, and I knew I didn't wanna be poor, because I saw how some friends lived, four people in a studio, for example.

So it did give me a different perspective and different ways of living, and when I was able to start Financial Samurai in 2009, I was like, "Wow, I actually have the flexibility "to do this anywhere." And so it's interesting. I did go travel like crazy for a couple years, and then we had our son in 2017, so we then, we settled down.

So I'm also waiting for until our daughter, who's three and a half years old now, to maybe turn five or six, so she remembers her travels, and then we'll start going on that great journey again. - Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's cool. - It's very different, though. When I came to America for high school, it was a big shock, because most people just spoke English, and most people had never traveled abroad, whereas I was literally traveling every two to four years for 13 years, and it was an adjustment for me, and it felt really boring, frankly, in Northern Virginia, because my parents were working in the Foreign Service.

- So I'm from Northern Virginia, so I feel like I had the opposite experience of you, where I grew up in this very homogenous place, where not only is everyone sort of the same, everyone's kind of culturally the same, like everyone dresses the same, everyone's parents work for the government in some capacity, right?

Like everyone-- - And a contractor. - A contractor, everyone lives in a house that was kind of built in the past five, 10 years. Like it's very, very normalized. Everyone drives a Toyota Camry. It's like very normal. - That's what we drove. - Everyone's just the same. (both laughing) And when I started traveling, it was like the world opened up, and I thought, oh my God, people can live all sorts of different ways.

Like I can be a different person. No one knows who I am here. And so it feels like you and I kind of had flip-flop lives. - Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it sounds like we both kind of lead to a similar destination, and I don't know whether it's better to see the world while you're young or see the world after you've graduated high school or college.

Either way, I hope just more people see the world. - Yeah, I agree. I think because it kind of gives you permission to know that your world can be really different than how you grew up, and I sort of think of adulthood in that way where it's a constant expansion of what your areas of knowledge are.

You know, you have a very small world when you're small. It's just your house and your neighborhood and your school, and then it broadens and broadens and broadens. And that's actually kind of the point of individualization and becoming an adult in the world is to learn different ways of being.

So I actually think it's nice for kids to do that when they're younger 'cause you just get that expansion and that muscle sort of earlier. And my next book is all about mastering the ability to change, which I call AQ, like your adaptive quotient, which is I think actually more important than IQ these days given how quickly the world is changing.

I think if you can get kids to use that muscle earlier, you know, then they sort of never forget it because it is harder. Like I see my friends who, you know, didn't get their passports until they were in their 20s and are taking trips for the first time.

And it is a little overwhelming for them. And not to say that we can't all get that muscle back, but it's nice to have it and just keep using it. - So let's talk about your current book, The Karma of Success. What does success mean to you as a woman in a hustle and bustle New York City?

- Yeah, well, okay. So this is the way I think about, I mean, it's funny 'cause like I obviously have a very deep spiritual side and this book is a spiritual book, but I'm also probably one of the most pragmatic people that I know and maybe, you know, I write about spirituality and I learned about it because you seek the knowledge that you don't currently have or like that which is missing in your life.

And so for me, success used to mean, this is before I had this big transformation, this big journey, it used to mean being better or the best compared to the average around you. And so in school, that means, you know, getting the best grade. You know, I always push myself really hard in school, shining in some way, winning contests, being distinguished.

And that was actually the way that I thought success was, even when I started working in my 20s, I would think I need to be the best person on my team. I need the CEO to know that I'm here at seven o'clock in the morning and like leaving at 10 o'clock at night.

You know, I need to be the hardest working person. I need to have prepped more for this presentation than anyone else, right? I need to put more elbow grease in. And so I sort of looked at it like that, like, how am I doing against my peers? I always measured, you know, is my apartment nicer than my friend's apartments?

You know, do I have a nicer car, this and that. And where success has really transformed for me is to stop looking around at the people around me and to stop measuring success as a gauge of how I compare to others. And more of, am I fully living up to my greatest potential?

And also, am I getting paid the equivalent amount for it? Right? Like at the end of the day, I think money is a really powerful thing. And there are lots of people who live in the spiritual world who are like, well, if you do what you love, it shouldn't matter if you get paid for it or not 'cause it's your soul's calling, it's your work.

And I actually think the opposite where, you know, money is energy exchange. And so if you're putting a lot of good energy into the work that you're doing, you should get a lot of it coming back to you. And so when I think about success, it's like, of course, doing the thing that, you know, it feels meaningful, feels challenging for you, but then also, you know, being kind of a shark and pushing in negotiations to get paid what you deserve.

- Yeah, it sounds like success evolves over time. So you were talking about, you know, your earlier definition of success. But I guess now, after the book, after your own entrepreneurial journey, how would you define success a little bit more precisely? And what is it about these executives who make a lot of money, these CEOs who have a lot of success and power, prestige, whatever, what are their problems?

What are some of the most common problems they come to you about in terms of, you know, fixing their lives or whatnot? - Yeah, definitely. So I personally feel like success in detail for me is about helping as many people as I can. Just because I'm, my personal motivator is altruism.

I believe there are eight core motivators out there, and everyone has a couple that really pop for them. So for instance, you know, a person could be really motivated by impact, which is the idea of like getting real stuff done that is meaningful. Someone might be motivated by recognition, like having people say you're doing a great job.

You might be, you know, motivated by affiliation, which is the feeling of being part of a community, you know, putting that community together. So anyway, I think there are eight key motivators. And so for my clients, it really depends on what they're motivated by. It's funny, some of them do not care at all about recognition, and it's very uncomfortable when I even call out something great that they've did, you know, and others really, that is meaningful for them.

It's like how they register what they did well. And with my clients, I've had really long-term relationships with them. I have seen most of them every week or every other week for like two or three years. And so we work together. Yeah, it's like very, very long-term. And so I actually don't really have a lot of movement on my client roster because people just stay for a really long time.

Usually it starts off with once a week, and then, you know, sometime within the first six months, they move to once every two weeks. And what I'm doing to help them feel successful is really first, I'm helping them just get to a good baseline of feeling productive and effective in their life.

They usually have way too many meetings. They're overwhelmed. They don't have enough time for deep work, too many direct reports, stressed out, you know, feel like they're not operating at their best. And so during that initial period, I just try to take care of a lot of low-hanging fruit and force them to really change their schedule and change their commitments and priorities.

And that takes some time, you know, you're kind of helping them reframe what they think their day needs to look like. And then from there, it's a lot of acute issues that pop up. So it might be, you know, how do I have this difficult conversation and let go of this executive who I just brought on board three months ago?

- Very tough to have those conversations. - Yeah, and like even today, in today's world, how do I do this production and force while still maintaining company culture? How do I spend my time between like fundraising and this new product release? And so it's a lot of like very specific issues where they'll come to me with something in mind.

And then usually during that hour-long conversation, there are a couple other things that pop up too that they may not have even known that was a problem because, you know, their lives are very go, go, go, like checking things off a checklist very quickly. And when you're operating at that speed, you don't have a lot of time to slow down and think, okay, strategically, am I even doing the right things?

I know I'm doing a lot of things, but are they the right things? And so I sort of push them to make that time in that space. It's sort of the difference of, you know, having a conversation with, you know, your buddy, grabbing a beer, you haven't seen each other in like a few months, so you just catch up versus when you get to spend a whole weekend together, you can talk about the real stuff.

And because I see my clients so often, we just almost automatically drop into that space of I'm like, what's really going on? What's really happening? And I'm not an investor and I'm not a peer, you know, I'm not a co-founder, I'm not an employee, I'm actually an objective person who doesn't have my own personal bias that I'm bringing in.

And so it's a very freeing space for them to be really honest about their problems because it's purely confidential. And like, I have no skin in the game, right? Like I'm not on their board, I'm not gonna judge them for it. So it's really a beautiful relationship. I mean, it's so great to see some of my clients go from their seed stage round of having like two employees to now having over 100 employees and having raised 50 million in funding.

It's just, it's so nice. - No, that's fascinating. It sounds like therapy for highly busy and motivated people, which is great. I've never had therapy, but I find that writing and actually speaking to people is very therapeutic. And sometimes we lean on our partners so often that we can sometimes make them fall down and we need someone else to give us some objective advice.

- Yeah, definitely. I always say to my clients too, that they should also have a therapist, like not just me, 'cause we're also doing things like, we're like reviewing board decks and we're talking about fundraise strategy and things like that. And so it's probably like 25% therapeutic and 75% like we're working through the issues.

But a lot of times it's like therapy issues that pop up when you're trying to resolve business issues. You know what I mean? Like if you're having a conflict with someone at your company, then it's probably also stemming from some things that you have going on from your childhood.

- Yeah. (laughing) - You know, we're all that way. - Right. So listeners who don't believe that negotiating a severance package is possible, you heard it from Liz here first. A lot of these managers, CEOs, executives, have a difficult time letting go of people. So if you can strategically bring up your issues and make it a win-win scenario where you're willing to stay on at your company to help transition, find your replacement and so forth, you are better able to negotiate a severance package than you think to do something else.

And that's something that I did in 2012. You gotta think about win-win scenarios from the manager's point of view, because it is tough being a manager. - That is really true. I think if you can make your manager's life easier, then they're so much more willing to break the rules for you, which is nice.

How did you negotiate yours? What was the severance package that you got? What did you do? - So for me, it was in 2012, and I was telling my managers, 'cause this was not long after the global financial crisis, and I witnessed many people get let go. It was like seven rounds of layoffs, thousands of people got let go.

But I understood what the severance package entailed. It was three weeks of pay per year worked. You got all your deferred comp and cash and stock. And so at the end of 2011, I thought to myself, I don't really wanna do this anymore. I was in Santorini, Greece. I was drinking a Mithos beer, overlooking the crater on a 78 degree day.

And I was like, wow, this is a really nice life, and I have financial samurai that I can do some cool stuff on if I was able to focus on it. And so I just brought it up with my manager after a terrible bonus for 2011. And I said, hey, I know times are difficult.

I'm thinking about doing something new. I'm not gonna go to a competitor. I just wanna do something new and take a break. Do you mind laying me off instead of laying someone else off? Because I know it's hard for you to lay someone else off. And in exchange, I would love to get a severance, and I'd love to get all my deferred compensation, and I'll train my subordinate, or my employee who I hired years ago, and introduce him to all my clients, and things will be seamless, and things will be good.

And he thought about it for maybe three or four weeks, talked to the HR people, other heads, and he said, sounds good, sounds like a plan. And so that's what happened. The severance package was the number one catalyst to giving me the courage to leave my job behind at 34.

And I really hope that more people who are in corporate America, any company, any industry really, has that type of thought process to think about trying to get a nice exit package so you have a financial cushion to do what you want. Because most companies, they don't provide pensions anymore.

There's no, at age 50, you get pension for life. It's like less than 14% of companies, I think, have pensions. - Yeah, you know what I like about that story is that you were proactive about it too, where you're seeing all these other people, like seven rounds of layoffs, and said, you know, I think a lot of people have paralysis and they just wait, and they're like, okay, well, I'm gonna wait for this decision to happen to me.

- No, don't let it happen to me, no. - Yeah, you're like, I'm just gonna do this, you know? Like, I'm gonna actually be proactive and then it can happen on my terms. - Oh yeah, because on your terms is a very different mentality, because if you get surprised and you get that notification or your services are no longer needed, one, you're gonna feel terrible.

You're gonna feel like a number, you're gonna feel like, well, what happened to my years of service, don't I mean anything? My life was dedicated to the betterment of this company for so long, especially if you've been there, like I was, for 11 years. And so if you can be proactive in thinking about a win-win scenario for your employer who wants a motivated employee, who wants to generate more revenue or have more efficiency, then you can really benefit your manager.

Don't just quit and say, see you later, two weeks notice, because that puts your colleagues and your manager in a lurch, in a bind, 'cause it takes months and months to find someone. And then it takes months and months to train someone. So really think about being actually less selfish.

I think quitting is actually a little bit selfish, right? You're thinking about yourself, I don't wanna face the wrath of the manager, I'm just gonna quit over email or text. Actually face that wrath, see how you can help, and I think good things can happen. - Yeah, you know, when I quit my job in venture capital to start my business, I actually gave them like eight months notice.

I mean, I quit and they were like, hey, we want you to stay for a year. And I was like, okay, I think I can do it, I think I can do it. And so I started working on my company simultaneously, and I only made it to eight months, but it was still like really, you know, I showed them, I was like, you know, I'm willing to do this for you, even though it's pretty hard on me.

And you know, it was a great transition. - Yeah, I think, and you didn't burn any bridges. I'm sure they were appreciative. Obviously they paid you your salary, you were able to fund more of your retirement benefits, have more health benefits. And that's the thing, the world is small, even though it seems crazy and big, the industries that we walk around in is pretty small.

Like someone will know you somewhere, and you wanna develop a pretty good relationship, because you never know when you're gonna need help in the future. - Yeah, you know, when I quit my job to go traveling, this was like 10 years ago when I was 28, and I really didn't like my boss.

I felt like she was just almost borderline abusive. She was so mean, and really just kind of, just really unpredictable. And I thought about, you know, quitting and going to HR and saying like, hey, this is a bad working situation. But I actually was like, you know what? It's a small world.

I just wanna kind of get out of this on my terms and just like have a good experience. And so I just said, you know, I'm gonna go travel, something I've always wanted to do, and you know, wish you the best. Like, how can I keep helping you and supporting you?

Maybe I can like, you know, work part time for you, or just do what I can, help find my replacement. So I found my replacement, and then about four or five months into my traveling, my old company, it wasn't my boss, but it was someone else at the company, reached out to me and said, hey, do you wanna do some freelance work for us, consulting?

And that was the beginning of this freelance career that I had that I could do while I was traveling. And then that career actually was what parlayed me into venture capital, because it was one of my freelance clients, my consulting clients who said, hey, I think you'd really get along well with my investors.

Do you wanna meet them? And so, you know, not burning that bridge, even though I kind of wanted to, in a way I really wanted to be angry. It actually really worked out. - No, that's good. I mean, folks, you'll never know when you'll need some help or when you'll need just kind of support.

I mean, really it's your network that can prod you along the way. It's almost like a insurance blanket, an insurance policy. If you have a strong network, it's very hard to fail. - Yeah, absolutely. And you just learn so much from it. You know, there's always someone who you can learn from.

There's always someone who can expand, you know, your understanding of what's happening in the world. I mean, I think jobs out there are changing so rapidly and they will continue to because of AI and all the changes that that's causing. And so I think, you know, like leaning on network is so much more important than, you know, acquiring the information because, you know, you're gonna be able to get the information faster from people than you will in trends that you're reading, even if you follow all the best sites.

- Right. I wanted to read a passage from your book because I thought it was really true and I want listeners to really think about this. And it starts on page 200. And the passage is, "Why do we make ourselves feel like winners or losers based on the artificial deadlines we pluck from the sky?

Why do we believe that life events are better because they happened before age 30 or occurred in tandem with our peers? Who's to say that the plans we create for ourselves are even the ones that will lead to success? There was once a farmer whose fence became damaged, allowing his horse to run away.

'What bad luck,' his neighbors said. Now he'd have no horse to plow his fields. His response was, 'We'll see.' A week later, his horse returned home with two other wild horses, who the farmer then successfully tamed. 'What good luck,' his neighbors explained. And again, the farmer simply said, 'We'll see.' Later that month, the farmer's son was riding one of the wild horses when it became frightened and tossed him off.

The son broke his leg. 'What bad luck,' the neighbors said, knowing the farmer would miss his son's help in the fields. And all again, he said, was, 'We'll see.' The next day, military officers visited the village to conscript all the young men into the army. With a broken leg, the son was passed by.

'What good luck,' the neighbors exclaimed, knowing the son would be safe from the dangers of battle. And as always, the farmer smiled and said, 'We'll see.' - Why did you choose to include this passage? And what is the lesson learned from this story? - I love this story. This is one of my favorite stories.

And, you know, I read it somewhere in some Buddhist Zen book years ago. And after I read the story, I started doing this myself, where if something disappointing happened, instead of getting really wrapped up in the vortex of feeling anxious, why did this happen? This is horrible. This is so disappointing.

I would just say, 'We'll see,' right? Because over the long arc of time is when you really see how things will play out. You know, obviously there's an immediate effect, an immediate benefit, or immediate harm that's being done, but you don't know how it's actually gonna happen five, 10 years down the road, and what that's gonna mean for you.

You know, some of my biggest disappointments have turned into the greatest, greatest advantages of my life. Like, you know, I remember being around this time when I was about to go traveling, and my mentor said, "Hey, you gotta go work at a big tech company "because you've worked at all these small startups, "and you have to really even out your resume.

"So go to Google, go to Twitter, go to Facebook," something like that, before Facebook became meta. And I tried, you know? I like tapped my whole network. I did so many interviews, but I just wasn't the right candidate, which is so funny because I went on to like go work at a very prestigious venture capital firm, but I wasn't what they were looking for, and I couldn't get a job.

And I was so sad about it. And because I was so disappointed, that's when I actually was like, "Fuck, I don't know if I can say that, but F this, "I'm gonna go traveling." And that opened up everything for me. And so I'm like, "Okay, that's amazing." And then even with, you know, my business having to shut it down during the pandemic, first I thought, "Wow, I just literally invested "a quarter of a million dollars into this business "that poof, it's gone." But now in hindsight, the pandemic allowed me to shut down my business very quietly alongside everyone else who was struggling, and it allowed me to admit that I actually wasn't really having fun running this business.

It was really stressful, and I didn't like being in person every day. I didn't like the work that I was doing, even though I thought it had been my dream. And it was the silver lining where I got to build this career now as a writer, a coach, and a speaker.

And I just wasn't doing that before. I didn't have the time to do it. I never would have had the time to write a book. It's very time-consuming. And then when I was underemployed, I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna write this book, finally, "this book I've had in my mind." And I think that's true.

You know, sometimes we also even think that good things are happening, and it's what we want. But later on, we find out that maybe we didn't even actually want it. And so I think giving life more of a neutral perspective really helps me be happier. And I want to include the story to let people know that if life hasn't gone your way in terms of the timeline you thought or where you thought you'd be, not only is it not over, it doesn't really mean anything.

Like, nearly, not even nearly, but every single one of my clients who was a very successful entrepreneur has had such crushing defeat and disappointment that people told them, "You should just give up." Like, external people, not even their own dialogue, but other people were like, "Why are you even doing this?" And so I think I wanted to include that so that the readers would know if something happens to you that is disappointing, it's not a knock on who you are, it's literally just kind of the ebbs and flows of the world that we live in, the universe.

- Yeah. When I was reading the story, I remember back to when I was 12 years old and I first started roller skating. And there's this one kid, he was so good. He was doing these twirls and spins, and I wanted to be like him. So I started trying to do the same thing, and I ended up falling on my butt and spraining my elbow.

You know, I braced myself, and the elbow went the other way it's supposed to. And I was thinking to myself, "Oh, that was so painful." It was so painful. But then I thought to myself, "Well, at least I didn't break my arm." (laughing) It was just like a different perspective, because the longer you live, the more good and bad things tend to happen.

So I think owning that neutral outlook is very important. In terms of your clients, do you see certain attributes of your clients that are different from the average person for them to become CEOs, to become successful startup founders and all that? - Yeah, you know, for the most part, people are very different.

I work with this personality assessment called the Hogan, and it's this very detailed 26 dimension, 100 sub dimensions of a person, all scored from zero to 100. And people do tend to be all across the spectrum. People are motivated by different things. They're strong at different things. My clients, some of them are highly technical, right?

They came up through engineering or biology of some sort, right, 'cause they're working in the biosciences. And other people are not. They're more on the creative side of things. Maybe they came up through marketing or they came up through sales. And so the background, like school, where you came from, your family, those are all different.

I think those things that you see on a resume or on paper, they're all across the board. But there are a couple of personality traits that I think are similar. One is I think you have to be a little bit of a masochist to become a founder, start your own company.

I don't know if this resonates with you or not, but you kind of have to be like harder on yourself than anyone else is hard on you because once you start your own thing, you don't have a boss anymore. No one's telling you how you need to do it.

And so there's this trait where my clients are all pushing themselves harder than any other person could ever push them. And that comes up from different ways. Maybe it's the way they were raised or just their natural anxiety or even like their natural standards for themselves, but they're all extremely hard on themselves.

And I sometimes have to even pull it back and say, this is actually starting to be a detriment. Like I'm all for you pushing yourself, but it's tipping over the edge. So that's the first one. I don't know, what do you think about that? Do you see that in yourself?

- Yeah, well, I know that because of my time in banking, I worked 60 hours plus a week for 13 years. And I did write a really, I guess, controversial, there's a humongous number of comments on this post. It's called, are there really people who work 40 hours a week or less and complain why they can't get ahead?

So a lot of people were upset at that title, but it was one of those things where I was working 60, 70 hours a week. And then I had overheard many conversations about people complaining, how come they couldn't get promoted, but they were working like single digit hours a day.

And I was thinking to myself, well, how do you plan to get ahead if all these successful people that you see in the media and all, they're working way more and they're working weekends. I mean, it's one thing to be at the same level of intelligence. It's another thing to be at a higher level of intelligence and work many more hours.

Because if you work 60 hours a week all year, that's 50% longer than the average 40 hours a week. Of course, even if you had the same amount of intelligence and all that, you would probably get more done, maybe 50% more a year. And then you compound that over 10 years.

That's a lot of gains. So in terms of masochism, no, not really. Like I worked in an industry that was really hard and stressful, but in 2012, I wanted a break. And so I left because I wanted that break. And I did say to myself in 2009, when I started Financial Samurai, I'm gonna publish three posts a week for 10 years in a row.

And I wanted to do that because it was a challenge. And I knew that something good would eventually happen if I stuck with it long enough. Because I didn't have any particularly superior intellect or insights, personality. I was very average in every way possible, but I knew I could control my work ethic, which I think what most of us can control, our work ethic.

And now it's just, things are kind of the way things are. It's like a muscle. I just publish three times a week. 'Cause if you can speak forever, you can write forever. And now I'm doing more podcasts because I think it's really fun and exciting. And I promised myself that I'm gonna try to last 10 years, coming out with at least one episode a year.

Why not? It'll be fun. Who knows what will happen? But you have to be disciplined in regulating your time, especially if you have dependents. I have two kids, I gotta take them to school. And then I say, well, okay, 9.30 a.m. till 10.30 a.m. will be podcast time. And then 11 a.m.

to 12 will be writing time. And then three hours will be exercise and relaxing time. So I went the different route. I decided to do a lifestyle business instead of a venture-backed, investor, big pressure, huge potential business. Because the ultimate thing I wanted to optimize for was a better lifestyle.

- Yeah, I think that's really true. That's why I also run a lifestyle business versus starting a venture-backed business. But I do think that there's a similarity where you are setting your own goals, though. And they're really ambitious goals. And I think that's really important because unless we, working for yourself, whether you're a VC-backed company or you're a solopreneur, no one's gonna set deadlines for you.

(laughs) - No. - And there's always this type of work that is really important, but it's not urgent. It doesn't have to happen right away. And it can just get kicked down the road forever. - Yeah, it's procrastinating forever. - Kind of like writing a book. Like, oh, I'll write it one day, I'll write it one day.

And you're like, I just gotta get it done. I gotta get it off my plate. And so I think that's really important, is just even just making up urgency and deadlines for yourself. And I think the second thing with my clients is that something that they really have in common is that they have a hard time working for other people, I guess, is maybe what it is.

Because it is tough doing a startup, really, really tough, especially before you hit your series A and you don't have product market fit yet. And so you kind of have to really dislike working for someone else enough to trade that off for the pain and the uncertainty. And also it's just hard.

You literally have to do 10 people's jobs. And so I think that's part of it too, where they're like, you know what, this is kind of horrible, but it's better than going back and remembering what it felt like to be a staff product manager at this place, you know, whatever it is.

- Yeah, that's really true. And I think that desire to be free, to be your own boss, increases over time. Because when you graduate from high school, college, and you get your first job, you don't know anything. So of course you're gonna be more amenable to listening to other adults who are senior to you, so you can learn.

And at a point when you learn enough and you have enough financial cushion or backing, I think that's when a lot of people generally say, well, let me maybe try to take a leap of faith. And then some people will never take that leap of faith, which is fine, 'cause having a day job and having your community and stability of income and benefits is really nice.

It's just not something that, I just didn't wanna live with regret on knowing I didn't try something new. Because I've always wanted to be entrepreneurial since I was a kid. - Yeah, you know, I honestly have a lot of jealousy sometimes about people who don't have this real desire to work for yourself, because I've always had that too.

And it kinda makes life harder in some ways. I mean, now my life is really nice and easy, but it was kinda bumpy getting here for a little while, as it is for everyone. And sometimes I look at people I know who are like, okay, they've been at said really successful company, working in a job there for like 10 years, and now they're an executive, and it's great.

And I don't know, it's kinda nice having health benefits. It's like nice having, like I won't have maternity leave, like I have to just save up money for myself. Like those things are all so nice. And so I just think it's like a personality thing. I often wish that maybe I was a little bit more by the book, because maybe life would be easier, but I'm very also happy to create a life that feels like it works for me.

- Right. And before I ask you about maternity leave, are there any other attributes of CEOs? You mentioned two, and I think that's, those are the two, those are the two, but anything else you noticed? - I think the final thing is you have to have a really good handle on your own ego, because you're gonna be wrong a lot of the time, and that's okay.

You've gotta just be like, okay, I missed on that. Here's why. That's okay. Like I just gotta move forward. And I think the interesting balance is that you have to be really willing to see yourself very clearly in terms of your shortcomings and your faults, because then you know how to build around those things.

You have to be honest. And at the same time, you also still need to have a pretty sturdy base of confidence. And so it's almost like this feeling of, you know what, I'm wrong a lot of the time, but at the end of the day, like I'm still a good human being even though I'm good at my job, I'm good at working.

And so it's that balance of knowing that you're gonna fail and then you just need to fix it and move on, but also not letting it color what you can see for yourself, because when you're in the cycle of having to raise funding every 18 months, you have to go out there every 18 months with lots of progress and convince investors that you are the best in the world.

And so you have to have that swagger. You have to have that confidence. - Self-belief. - Self-belief. And at the same time too, you have to be the most paranoid person at your company that things are gonna go wrong. You have to hold both unlimited belief in yourself and your business, and then also paranoia that you're constantly messing up.

And that's kind of a hard line to walk, but I think my clients do that really well. - When you speak to these CEOs and startup folks, do you get a sense in general that they are more self-confident than the average person? So when you talk to me, can you feel confidence?

What are the signals that people display in terms of confidence that you observe? - Yeah, so it's interesting because I think a lot of times we think confidence in culture is like someone who brags a lot or is very outgoing. And I actually don't think that's true. I think confidence is actually more inclusive than that.

A lot of my clients are very, very quiet and they're very shy as well. So because I do work with a lot of people who came up through the technical side of things, so software engineers, et cetera. And so confidence is actually something more subtle. I'm actually an introvert myself.

I don't really, I spend a lot of time alone. (laughs) I'm a coach, but I like just reading and sitting in my room and being quiet, and I don't really like going to parties. And so the way I think about confidence is that you can't always pick it up on people right away.

Like if you meet someone for the first time, you won't really know if they're confident, but it's sort of how they respond to the situations that come across their plate. And like at the end of the day, do they think that they are innately capable? And like when, I think confidence is really when something very surprising and something really disappointing pops into your life, do you let it swirl you up and make you think that you're a horrible person and that you messed up?

Or does it kind of tether you and ground you and your confidence just says, you know what? It's okay, I'm gonna be fine. And so it really just starts to come up for me when I see my clients responding to different situations. I don't always pick up on it like a first conversation.

I can hear it a little bit in how hard they are on themselves or the way that they'll narrate something bad that happened to them, but it takes a little while to kind of figure it out. And I actually work with a lot of my clients on confidence building exercises, especially right before they go fundraise and during the fundraise process, which is often many months long, we will be really deliberate about contributing to their confidence bank account and trying to get that level up.

Because it is also variable. It can go up and down over time, but at the end of the day, we can all adjust it for ourselves. We can work on it. - Confidence bank account, I like that. That's something I need. I need to raise big time before I enter a tennis match.

(laughing) The pre-match jitters are tough, but you have to have in tennis, it's like 60, 70% mental. Do you believe you're gonna win? If you do, you're gonna have a greater chance of winning. If you don't, then you already defeated yourself. - That's exactly the way it is in life.

And I love reading about high performance athletes like Serena Williams, greatest tennis player ever. And Michael Phelps where they build confidence by visualizing themselves winning the game. Like Michael Phelps will literally visualize every single stroke in the pool. And so by the time he gets to the race, he already has won it in his head a hundred times.

And he's like, "Oh, I can do this." So I think the confidence is the same thing. You picture yourself doing it, you picture yourself winning. And so then when you get there, it doesn't feel so far away. - Yeah. It's still pre-match jitters, nerves, it's there. But yeah, that confidence is so important.

I wanted to conclude by talking to you about, being a woman in New York City and in your book, I felt like you were going through a balance, a struggle between career and family a lot. And I empathize because I regret having kids so late because I was so focused on my career.

And it's also expensive here in San Francisco. And before San Francisco, I was in New York City. So can you tell me about that balance and how do you try to balance it? And how would you encourage other women who are in big expensive cities, who want a career, but who also want a family to balance that situation as well?

Can you really have it all? And how do you get there if you can? - Yeah, I love that question. I'm still figuring this out for myself. It's hard, because I came up through really male dominated industries. I kind of adopted this way of being that was very much, my career first and everything else comes second.

And I do have a lot of regret around that. Not even just on like the kids front, but I missed a lot of bridal showers, bachelorette parties, even weddings of my close friends when I was in my late 20s and 30s. That's when everyone's getting married, but that's also when I was really putting the gas pedal on my career.

And I felt like I was through, until I quit my job at Venture Capital, I was always at the office. I was always traveling for work. And I wouldn't give a second thought to not seeing my family, my family of origin, my brother, my aunts, not seeing best friends, because I had to drop everything 'cause we were trying to close a deal.

And I do have some regret around that because I definitely, I burned some relationships that were hard to repair and some that actually haven't been repaired. And then now, my husband and I, we're both in our late 30s, I'm 38, he's 39. We're just like on the cusp of having our kids, which is really exciting.

We're gonna have a kid in January. - Congratulations. - Thank you, I'm really excited. - I'm really excited too. - I'm so excited. And do I regret waiting 'til I was 38? I mean, part of it wasn't my choice. We did two years of IVF and we tried for three years.

And I think it was just kind of meant to be that way. No one could tell us why we weren't getting pregnant. It was weird. Everyone's like, "You should be fine. "You have plenty of eggs, blah, blah, blah." And it still hasn't been explained. And I think part of it, this is gonna be a little woo-woo maybe for people, but I don't know if I was actually subconsciously ready because I was so career-focused.

And it was only in starting to see role models of other women who would say things like, "You know what, kids, that was my breakthrough." A lot of people think that kids hold you back, but the creativity that they bring into your life, the way that you can reprioritize everything that's important, the clarity that you have about who you are, all that stuff makes you better at your career.

And I remember the night before I had my IVF procedure to hopefully get pregnant, I had my friend over for dinner who's also a career-minded woman, she's writing a book. And I said, "Do you ever worry about kids "impacting your career?" And she said, "No, what is a more creative act "than creating life and then raising a child, "getting to figure out what this person's life looks like?" She was like, "How could that not make you more, better, "more competent, more capable?" And I just started crying.

And I was like, "Oh my God, you're right. "I've been looking at it the wrong way of like, "do I have this or do I have this?" Hey, guess what? Actually, maybe you can have both. And I think I'm lucky, I have a supportive partner. We're gonna have some help.

You know, not everyone can say that. I think I'm very privileged in that way to be able to have a nanny in the future. And I have enough stability in my career where I can set my own hours and things like that. But I do feel like that wasn't available to me when I was 35, when I first started trying to have a kid.

And 38 is late, right? Like you're starting to think, okay, wow, when my kid is getting married herself, I'm gonna be in my 70s. You know, and you're like, whoa, that feels like a lot. Or like, this kid's gonna graduate from college. I'm gonna be like almost 60. And you're like, wow.

But I think it was, you know, just like the passage that you read, that was my path. And I think I had to reconcile that idea of success and be able to see that, you know, I could do both if I was really creative about it before this kid was like, yeah, okay, I'm gonna come join you.

- Yeah, it's really tough. And I really empathize with women who want that career and who want that family. Because I've met many, many women in my time on Wall Street who have told me in their 40s, you know, I wish I spend more time seeking someone or balancing my life a little more.

And it's hard to have it all. I was able to have a kid at, I guess, 37 and 39. And that, no, no, no, that was wrong. 39 and 42. That was with my wife, 37, 39. And it was just kind of like, oh, we snuck by, it's stuck right in there under 40 for at least our first one.

And it's gonna be a great adventure for you. You are gonna be tested beyond belief. But there's a great saying, have children and the money will come. And it's not just so much about the money, it's about being able to have the, unlocking these superpowers where you have more energy, more focus, because you want to do everything for your children.

So I'm really excited for your journey. - Oh, I love that. My husband's family has a saying, and it's like what you said, and it's the child brings its own bread. Which is like, you know, that kid will give you everything that you need to figure out how to like support it and make a living for it.

Yeah, I'm really excited. And I'm also very, you know, inspired to know that, you know, you had your kids when you had, you know, your career more sorted out and like a little bit later, like I love seeing role models for that. And clearly like your kids are happy and great.

(laughs) You know? - Well, I don't know most of the time, but you know, there is a benefit, right? So the negative of having children late is that you will not be in their lives as long as you could have been. Right, and that's a big lament. However, the great thing about having kids late is you're generally more mature.

You've done more of the things that you've wanted to do, and you're generally more financially stable. So after this podcast, I'm gonna take her to the zoo for a couple hours, and we're gonna hang out and go on the choo-choo train, you know, and just be one together. And so there are pros and cons of everything.

And for late parents, for older parents, you can actually do the math in terms of how much more time you could actually spend with them as a late parent to actually surpass if you had had them five years, eight years younger. You can work it out, and you can kind of catch up.

So not all is lost. - That is actually really true. That is so true. I never thought about that way of like actually looking at the time that you can physically spend with them. So true. - So. Well, thank you so much, Liz, for being on this podcast. It's been a great hour speaking to you.

Can you let the listeners know where we can find the Karma of Success and where we can find you if we want some coaching? - Yeah, so you can find the Karma of Success at any bookstore, so you can pre-order. It's coming out July 25th. Actually, I don't know when this podcast comes out, so let me take that back.

- I'll probably release it around July 25th. - Okay, great. So you can find it at any bookstore. It's everywhere. And I recorded the audio book myself, so if you wanna hear more of this voice, you can get the audio book as well. And then for me, you can find Reset on Instagram at ResetNYC.

We have a very vibrant community there. And then I have a podcast called Reset with Liz Tran. And if you go to my website, which is liz-tran.com, there's a bunch of resources there for people who are looking to basically live up to their greatest potential for their careers. - Awesome.

Well, thanks again, and thanks for coming on. - Thank you, Sam. - It was such a pleasure. - All right, take care.