#48: Dave Hollis of The Hollis Co: Living Up To Your Potential

Come on this journey with me each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow.

I'm ready for my close up.

Hi and welcome back. I am so excited you are here with me. It has been a crazy week, to say the least. I'll tell you, things are changing so rapidly and the things that we used to just take for granted are suddenly gone. It, it's been been such a week of highs and lows for me. I'll tell you. I am pretty much always the most positive person that I know and I really truly am. It annoys some people I think, but I always do believe that there's some action step we can take, something we can do to change our circumstances. And I always just feel pretty positive that things are going to work out. That is until one day this week I forgot what day it was. But it was this week. I just had a nervous breakdown. I was crying watching a show with my son. I was crying, crying, riding my peloton. I was crying, crying, crying. And I'm not a crier. It was so weird and I think it just really hit me the magnitude of everything that's happening, how many people are sick, this uncertainty with the economy, with everything. And it just really overwhelmed me. Now what I will say is I posted about it and so many of you reached out to me and sent me the most beautiful messages, gave me so much encouragement and that felt really amazing. But I'll tell you what it reminded me and, and that's that we need to, every single day we need to reach out to someone and just check in on them because you never know what's happening. One of my best girlfriends is so sick and thankfully we have been in touch because I mean, these are people who are close to you, they might live across the country. You're not thinking to reach out to them all the time, just thinking and assuming they're fine. Well, maybe they're not. And I just, it was really eye opening to me that if I hadn't let people know I was having such a bad day, I would have never got that outpouring of support. So it's really important to let people know what we need and for us to check in on other people. I'm making it a habit. Every night at the end of my day, I'm just sitting on the couch and messaging a bunch of different people just to say, hey, wanted to check in. How are you doing? How are you feeling? Are you okay? Because it's just nice to know that people care about you given the situation that we're in. And things are just moving so quickly. So I was at Whole Foods, happens to be one block from my house, so it's the easiest place to go to. It's the only place that I've been going since the shutdown happened. And. And about a week ago, I had gone and it was pretty much normal. I wore gloves going in, but other than that was pretty normal. And I went back yesterday, and I'll tell you, it is not normal. They have totally closed everything down. There's one way to get in, one way to get out. They've formed all of this process and procedure that you have to stand six feet away from people. You cannot just walk into Whole Foods anymore. You can only get called in when one person leaves. And it makes a lot of sense that they're doing it to manage too many people being in there at one time. I get it. But it really felt so sad when I got there and saw that now this has happened. You know, it's just like things keep changing so quickly. It's very bizarre. It's tough to process. But then it also takes you to a not great place for me, which is, oh my gosh, if this is happening now, what does next week look like? So I really have to get my mind right and remember to get back to hopeful. If this could happen this quickly in a negative way, what could happen tomorrow in a positive way? So that's where I want you. Cause if either is possible. Right. So let's not give effort, energy towards the negativity.

Let's.

Let's put it towards a positivity. And to that point, I wanna walk you through something really crazy good that's been happening through all this madness. One year ago, I googled the biggest author in the US in the self help personal development space. And it was there was two nonfiction books that showed up. One was the Obama book, and the other was Rachel Hollis's book, girl, wash your face. So I dug into girl, wash your face. Cause I felt that was a little bit closer to my situation, seeing as how I'm not connected to the presidency at all. So I googled who her agent was and I found her agent. So this is a year ago. I cannot even believe that. So crazy. So a year ago I sent in a blind email to Rachel Hollis's agent and just pitched myself. You know, I had no idea what I'm doing. I'm just figuring I'll pitch myself. So I pitched Myself to this woman, as to why I'm gonna make her a lot of money, as to why I'm gonna be a great author, blah, blah, blah. And she responded a day later and just said, hey, you are not the right fit for me. However, my partner tends to work with women and focus on business, and you might be a good fit for her with your business lean and business perspective. Why don't I connect you to her? So she gives me her partner's email. I reach out to her partner and basically send the same pitch, saying, your partner thought I'd be a good fit, et cetera. She came back to me and said, great, send me your book proposal. Well, I didn't even have a book proposal, much less know how to make a book proposal. So I said. I told her that.

I said, I don't.

And I've gone back and looked at these emails, and it's hysterical. And so, again, this is one year ago. I did not know what a book proposal was. So I just told her, listen, I don't have a book proposal. Don't know about book proposals, but I'm telling you, I've already written the book, and can I send you the book? So I send her whatever, 30 chapters of my book, which is crazy because I just sat there and knocked it out. And a week or two later, she responds to me. Heather, while this is interesting and I do like a lot of it, I need a book proposal to market it. I wish you much luck in finding a publisher and finding an agent. Like, she kind of blew me off. So I thought, well, that's not okay. So I went back to her. Okay, well, her name's Jill. I said, jill, how do I write a book proposal? Which is very funny now, a year later, and now that I know her. And so she came back to me and said, you probably need to hire someone, seeing as how you've never written one, you don't know what it is, so you might want to start there. Crickets. So I write her back, well, who should I hire? Do you. You know, I just had no idea. So she says, yes, if you want the name of someone that I work with, here is Peter's contact info. I regard him very highly. You might want to check him out.

Good luck.

Blows me off. So I reach out to Peter. Peter and I headed off, and Peter's expensive, and I had to make a really substantial investment in myself and in my vision for my future. And again, this is a year ago, and so Peter and I started working on the book proposal. Oh my gosh. A book proposal, I have to tell you, is a lot of work. And I see why people don't go the traditional publishing route because one, you, you probably have to hire someone to help you because book proposal is very elaborate and it's nothing like writing a book. Nothing. And so it's about sales and marketing, it's about competitive analysis, about audience analysis, about marketplace analysis. It's a deep, deep dive. And yes, you need to have sample chapters and you need to have all of your chapters included in portions from the book, but that's really not. That's not even close to it. So again, I'd never done it. I really needed to lean on Peter for his expertise and help. We worked great together, personality wise. We hit it off. It was just a good fit. And for months we worked on this book proposal because when you hire an editor like this, they're usually working on multiple jobs at one time. So he's editing different proposals for a lot of people. And so we're back and forth. I really didn't have a hard and fast timeline then because as always, I was just trying to, you know, do as many speaking engagements as I can. Really focus on that continuing to move my podcast forward. Wait, I probably hadn't even launched my podcast yet when I first started this. No, because my podcast launched in May. So when this all began, I hadn't launched my podcast. That happened during the process. So all these like push and pull things would happen where sometimes I'd lean in more, I'd have more time, and I'd work more on the proposal. And then other times I'd lean out and focus more on launching my podcast, focus more on my speaking engagements, focus more on different initiatives. And then my TED Talk was approaching, and when it came time for my ted talk about 30 to 60 days out, I really shut everything down. And I basically just said to Peter, listen, I need to pull back on this proposal. I just need to redirect and really focus on my TEDx talk. It's critically important to me that I nail this thing. And so I kind of let most of my projects go at that point, except for speaking engagements, obviously, because that was my number one revenue driver, was obviously before COVID 19. Okay, so I go back and forth with all this. I give my TedX talk and I come back up for air. I'm smiling because I'm just remembering this now. I come up for air and it's December, right? And I'm like, oh my gosh, how do I not have this thing done. It's almost been a year I've been working on this. And so I went all in on the book proposal and Peter luckily was available. And we went back and forth every single day to get this thing done. We've been working on it way too long and not had a finished product. So we get it all done. I want to say I thought it was done in December. And I submitted, I paid Peter and I submitted to Jill the book proposal and she's so sweet and she came back to me and said, while this is really fantastic and shaping up so much better than I had ever anticipated, remember I had reached out to her almost a year prior without a book proposal and not knowing what one was. She said, I think you can do better. And she gave me a couple key directives that she thought I could improve upon, which was really nice, you know, because she started with being very flattering and then came in with, here's how we can improve. And she's the expert, 25 years in the business. So I went back to Peter and said, Peter, here's the feedback. Can I start working on this and send it back to you? Yes. So I just went all in on this in December and just worked, worked, worked non stop until January. Had the second version done, went back to jail, second version, she comes back. While this is even better and I really love A, B, C and D, here's where I think we can improve. We went back and forth, get ready for it, back and forth, 15 times. The 15th time was the charm. And if you don't think that I was frustrated by the end of this and starting to question, one, am I supposed to even be writing a book? Two, am I ever going to get a book deal? Three, is this the right agent for me? I was questioning everything because it wasn't coming together, it wasn't working out. And I had a year in on this and 15 versions of the proposal. 15 times I was told no. Finally the 15th one was the lucky one. So she comes back to me, she said, great job. So much more improved. So happy with this. I think that this is a phenomenal proposal. I'd like to go to market. Let's sign an agreement together.

We did that.

She went to market. Now, mind you, this was two weeks before the coronavirus hit the U.S. so I'm not anticipating anything. Jill's not anticipating anything. Just tough timing, right? So she goes to Marketplace with it. Usually I had been told it takes six to eight weeks to get offers back. You know, like it's A sort of a longer process. Well, things accelerated and changed because our world has changed. And I really started getting discouraged because we got back to no's the week the coronavirus really hit, and I started getting really sad thinking, oh, my gosh, I've been working on this for one year. I've spent a ton of money on it, a ton of time on it. I wrote 15 versions of a book proposal, and I finally got this done, and here I am sitting with two rejections from publishers. And I felt really bummed out and just questioning myself until I remembered it's not how many no's you get, it's about getting one yes. You can get 700 no's. It doesn't matter. You're just looking for that one yes. So I shifted my focus back to all I need is one. And then, wouldn't you know, I started getting offers, and we got multiple offers, and it was really great. However, again, during this time with the coronavirus, it's not ideal from an economic standpoint, but it wasn't ideal timing because a lot of companies are not wanting to invest money and offer out money right now. I've seen that with endorsement deals that I had. Cancellations came in fast and furious when the coronavirus hit. So again, I knew it wasn't the best time, but we'd already gone to market. We're living in it, we're making it happen. And wouldn't you know, my dream publisher came to us just two days ago with a fantastic offer. I am so excited and proud. And the reason why I want to share that story with you in detail is because sometimes we're sitting in something and saying, oh, I'd like to write a book. Like, right now, we're stuck at home. Now is the time to do it. Right. Thank goodness I started on this whole project a year ago. If I didn't, I'd just be starting now, right? So, yeah, I might not have gone full force all the time, but I committed to it and I took action a year ago. So whatever it is your dream is, whatever it is that you want to do, take action today. You don't have to have all the answers. I certainly was clueless, but I found the answers along the way, and I didn't give up. I didn't focus on the no's. I. I focused on getting one yes, which you can, too. So hoping so much that you focus on the one yes, take action today while you're home. If you ever thought about starting a podcast, writing a book, starting a personal Brand. Today is the day I'm challenged you to go after it. Hang tight. We'll be right back.

Meet a different guest each week. Hi, and welcome back. I'm so excited to introduce you to my guest today. He's a New York Times bestselling author of get out of youf Own Way, husband to Rachel, father of four kids, COO of the Hollis Company, and former head of distribution and sales at Disney. Welcome, Dave Hollis.

Well, thank you for having me. I'm so happy to be here today.

Well, I'm so excited for you. Randomly, I saw you were on Good.

Morning America remotely this morning.

Honestly, of all the things I had dreamt of, man, when I have this book come out, the thing I want to do, sit next to Michael Strahan on that darn couch. And then the world flipped upside down. And so we made lemonade. And so here we were out of our home here in Texas, beaming in via Skype to the studio where we got to have what was a very, very nice conversation, albeit a different one. How to thrive in a world that feels very different than the one we were sitting inside of two, three weeks ago.

Yeah, it's so interesting, and you mentioned this when we first got on Today, that you're having this unbelievable success. I mean, literally, it's the goal every author has to be on that you're on the top five New York Times bestseller list. And to have that all happening while the world seems to be crumbling around us is really, it's a strange juxtapose for you to be handling.

Yeah, it's interesting because, man, if there was a thing on January 1st of 2020 that I felt like I was training for, it was the release of the book, a 22 city tour to promote the book, the kind of press tour and everything else that would go around the launch of the book. And those plans were upended. Like every other person who's listening's life has been upended. And you get to choose whether you want to be a victim of it, feel like it's happening to you, or feel like it's happening for you. And so truly I have had to, and it's an active, active thing, work to find the ways that this happening, the way that it has, has been for me, has maybe been the perfect time for this book to be released because of part of what the messaging inside of it is and how to think differently about fear, the stories we tell ourselves. Think differently about coping mechanisms, think differently about working with the person that you happen to be in relationship with. Because all of these things are in real time thrust on us in a way that we would not have invited, but that we are going to work through and I think come out the other side stronger for.

Yeah, absolutely.

We're hopeful for that.

And it is interesting because I just read your book this weekend. I loved it.

First of all, want to mention that.

It'S really, it's an easy read in that you share in each chapter these personal stories that really pull you in. You know, that first story with the handle of vodka is just. I couldn't put the book down after that. So I suggest everyone just like, read the first chapter and you're gonna be all in. But then these great tangible takeaways in each chapter that really empower any reader to feel that, wait a minute, okay. These are all things I can apply to my life. I mean, just from giving up bad habits, like you said, addressing fear, giving up on this idea that we are just our job and our title. I related so much to the entire book and I do feel like it's very timely right now, as we're all saying, stuck at home and struggling. How to get positive, how to empower ourselves. This is a great three, four hour.

Task for anyone to take on and.

Really come out better on the other side.

Yeah, you know, the book's written through the lens of the stories that I believe that had me in my own way. Whether you call them limiting beliefs or lies or stories, we all are victim to the way that we have thought about the way that life has happened to us and the way that we are afforded access, the way that we can pursue certain dreams or goals, the way that we should or shouldn't break from the norm or be comfortable with failure. And the hope was if I could tell some really honest stories about my discovery of the untruth in these stories that was holding me back, that if you in any way could see yourself in my stories, that maybe one, it would make you feel less alone. Because struggle and storytelling that doesn't serve us is definitely a thing that is across the board, a universalism. We all struggle and we all believe in things that keep us held back. But also in trying to finish each of these chapters with some tangible tips, maybe if you see yourself in some of the storytelling, you'll also then have a little bit of a guidebook on how to, hey, follow these breadcrumbs and you might be able to get out of your own way, get unstuck, be at least in a position where if you were to find yourself walking down that path, avoid the trappings of stepping in it the way that I might have.

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Well, I think that a lot of people out there that are currently in.

Corporate America or have a background in.

Corporate America, they're really going to relate to your thought process. I know that I did. And I have a lot of friends who are at those pivotal moments in their careers, you know, getting into their 30s, 40s, where they're saying, do I want to keep working for the man is There not something more out there. And I, frankly, as I mentioned to.

You, I was fired.

That was my catalyst out to see that you were leaving freaking Disney. I mean, that is. It's unbelievable. You were going out on your own. So if you can tell us a little bit about that story and that thought process, because I still. I still can't believe that you actually made that jump even before Rachel's massive book hit. It's so confusing me.

I still can't wrap my head around that.

Yeah, well, I had the blessing, I can see it now as providence, serendipity, luck, whatever you want to call it, of a few major forces coming together at the same time. So I, yep, worked in entertainment for a little more than 20 years. The last 17 was at the Walt Disney Company, where for the last seven years, I was the head of sales for the movie studio. And the first two or three, maybe even four years, three or four years of me being in that role, it was exhilarating. I did not have the answers. I was many, many times surrounded by a team that was unbelievably more qualified than I was to do many of the things that I'd been tasked with. And in that, I found myself asking questions, failing on small things, but learning every single time. I would step into something that I did not yet fully and totally understand. And that was amazing. But not long after I took the job, the company in having just acquired Pixar, added Marvel Studios to the slate. Two years later, added Lucasfilm to the slate. And as the learning curve diminished and the strength of that intellectual property was just so strong, selling movies to movie theaters was my primary job. And Avengers and Star wars and all of the classics from Pixar and Disney, I'll tell you what, they need those big movies. And I have the greatest team in the business. And so, you know, the team is setting records. We're doing work unparalleled in the film business. And I am getting recognized with accolades and title and pay that was disconnected from my effort. And so as I was approaching factor two, this milestone 40th birthday, I'm going from my 30s to my 40s, and I in the sea of not being challenged necessarily to do well at a job that most people are, you know, dreaming of. I'm sitting with a sea of questions now around what my purpose on this planet is. Big old existential things that usually would hang around for moments at normal birthdays are now weeks long. A thing that's happening as I'm turning 40 and I am stuck with why am I on this planet? Why am I in these positions where I am not being asked to fully utilize my potential? And what legacy will I have if I continue to do work that recognizes me with straight A grades without having to study well for tests? And we're in the backyard of my house one night and My kid, my 7 year old, I have four kids. My middle son asks, what are you most afraid of? And out of my mouth falls, that I am most afraid of not living up to my potential. Right? Like he's fishing for something super simple. Spiders, tarantulas, you know, and out jumps this big thing. I am most fearful of not living up to my potential. And there I was in real time with this recognition that I was living into my greatest fear. Sitting in a job, doing this work, not. Not actually having to use every one of the gifts that was afforded to me. And that dissonance that existed between who I could be, where I had to fully utilize what I can do on this planet. And just mailing it in was creating pain, regrets, like a whole host of stuff that had me slowly descending into a lesser version of myself, while at the same time, third factor. My wife is just growing every single day into a better version of herself. She has embraced personal development. She is working on becoming a better version of herself, better tomorrow, every single day. And now the contrast between the two of us is a thing that acts as a massive catalyst for me to examine why I am settling for living into my greatest fear on this planet of underutilizing my potential. And so, on the one hand, I'd love to say, man, I had so much vision for what this partnership with my wife and leaving Disney to pursue our dreams together at the Hollis Company could mean. I did have some of that, but I more was motivated out of the leverage that came in understanding what not making a major move might mean to the way I feel about myself when I'm by myself, to our marriage, to the way my children think about me and the way that I showed up well for them 20 years from now. And that was more than anything, the reason to say, you know what? I have to do something, if you will. I have to leave what I know for what I need. And I will now pursue discomfort. I will pursue being challenged. I will pursue not staying inside of my comfort zone for the opportunity to grow, because that's the only place where it actually lives.

Did you feel petrified when you actually.

Handed in the resignation?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I was sleepless, leading into going in and having that conversation in part because I was so worried of what they would think of me for making a choice that made sense to me, but not them. Right? They were living and still live inside of a construct that they afford value and weight to. That I forgot the entirety of my career in entertainment had afforded way too. And I was declaring that my decision for what was best for my family and myself was to leave the construct that they'd given value to. And I was worried how they would respond. They might think I'm crazy. They might. I don't know what they're going to think. And so, man, I walked in, I was nervous about it, less so about what might happen to me on the other side of making the decision because I knew I had to make a choice. But the gift that came in this and for anyone who's listening, if you are resisting making change because of a worry of what they might think or how they might react, they were not thinking about me. And their reaction, though short term, was more generous than I would have suspected or expected. They made their reaction from a business perspective, not an emotional one. Right? Like their questions were more about maintaining the business. Their questions were less about me personally, though they did have a lot of empathy for wanting me to land on my feet. Their questions were really about continuity of the business and nothing more. So don't let the worry of what somebody else might think or the people that you work with might. If you feel a calling or a push to leave something that makes sense to you but may not to them, you got to follow the calling.

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There's a lot that you just gave us right there. So to me, when you were, you know, so concerned what they were going to think and then seeing that they handle it well some way that also is, it's like a punch to your gut that you weren't as or this is how I would take it, that you weren't as valued as you thought you were. And I wonder what that did to your confidence in that time.

Oh my goodness. I mean like ego is such an important thing in all of our lives and ego is such a liar when it comes to our self importance through the lens of what other people are thinking or how much weight they put on us being a part of them. The first weekend after I left happened to be Father's Day. And I only remember it because every Father's Day for the seven previous Father's Days, a Pixar movie came out. And part of the job that I had on Sunday mornings was doing work on our movies to talk about the performance with the press. And so here I was for the first time in now eight years, not having anything to do as the incredible sequel was coming out, setting records, doing great business. And I had the luxury of sitting on the floor of my den with my kids after having had waffles, drinking a cup of coffee. And it was devastating for me that the business could go on as easily as it could. Of course it could. That there weren't people calling, saying, hey, how did you handle? Or how would you say? Or how would you do? And if nothing else, I mean, I will say this, I had concocted for some length of time after I left that there was a conspiracy afoot, that people had been actually told that they were not to reach out and have conversation with me because my ego needed to believe that it was more than relevance, that it was more than like out of sight, out of mind that was keeping people from reaching out with texts or phone calls. And the reality is people are not thinking about you. And that's not an indictment on them. It's a reflection of their humanity. Like you, like all of us, like me, we are each primarily interested in ourselves and what's of our most important interest. And that doesn't make them or us bad. It makes us human. And so, man, what a gift that was to get to the other side as much as. Yep, it was a little soul crushing at first because Now I make moves in our business and in what I pursue professionally and personally without having to think for one second about what people might think, because I know for sure now they're not thinking.

It's so true. It also, and I'm interested to know if you felt the same way.

It surprised me some of the relationships and friendships I had in corporate America that I truly thought were solid friendships. Fast forward, you know, that year for me, when I got fired, for you, when you left, not hearing from those people, and now I'm a couple years out. I reflect back on, I guess those really weren't friendships the way that maybe I felt them or saw them. And that gives me a lot of perspective that I want to share with anyone listening right now. Sometimes we put friendships on a pedestal. They might mean more to our side than they do to others. And sometimes in corporate America, people are just playing a game to get ahead or for whatever it might be.

Yeah. What I think I realized more than anything, and again, this isn't an indictment on any of the people, because I think back on myself with people who left the company while I was there. Thousands of people came and went Disney during my 17 years. And while I was fond of them and had good relationship with them and even considered them work friends, once they were gone, the currency that we primarily had talked about during the entirety of our friendship was now gone. There was not something for us to actually catch up on with regard to the business. That left most of the reason why we were hanging out or having conversation out of the picture. And so, man, the relationships definitely are ones that I can intermittently touch up, have a quick conversation, quick text, but they are few and far between. And as time goes by, more time goes by right in between the times that you're actually talking to someone. So, you know, you take the conversation with the people that you can pick up as if, you know, nothing has happened since it was left off, and you appreciate those the most. But again, the gift, and I'm sure it was somewhat of a gift here for you, the gift in seeing two years removed from this corporate environment, how much weight or not to have afforded anything that happened inside of that corporate environment has left me appreciating the friendships that aren't actually based inside of the corporate world at all.

Yeah, they're much more meaningful now.

So not only did you make this massive change of leaving your clothes, career and deciding to go to work with your spouse, which that's a whole other chapter and issue. Right. You also made a series of Other massive life changes in a very finite window of time, which kind of blew me away. I'm so interested as to why. Giving up bad habits, deciding to write a book right away. Why? I mean, why take all of these, become the CEO of the Hollis company right out of the gates, why take on so many rapid changes immediately?

This is a good question. And in hindsight, you know, like I can see, man, there were probably too many things bitten off at one time that were probably more a reflection of the worry of how I'd previously assigned so much weight to my title, so much weight to the status that came with that job, that if I wasn't keeping every single ball in the air, if I wasn't doing all of the things, did I inherently have as much value as I had before I left, which I now know for sure, 100% every single day? Yes, of course, my business card, my job title, the access that it affords, it does not define the kind of value that I have. I am enough and whole as a human, no matter where I work, no matter what I do. But as much as I was leaving to pursue all the things, I definitely took on all the things. And in taking them all on, I'm going to take your question in parts because there's a little bit of an interesting story in each. The CEO job as a. For example, right? My wife had built this company for a decade and a half's worth of time that we are now working inside of it has been through a whole host of different identity shifts. But she, blood, sweat, entrepreneurial tears, has been working inside of the space for 15 years. And when I was leaving because of the drive of ego, it was very important to me that my title was CEO of her company. And for her, a proud female founder who'd spent as much time as she had. That was a very, very difficult request for her to hear. But as we're trying to pair superpowers, she's the visionary creative, I'm the operator integrator. You put those two together, pour gas on the fire, everything is fantastic. She knew, hey, if I want to take this to the next level, I need the operator integrator. And yes, I will see this title to you because it's important to you. And growing this business is important to me. But a year in removed from the thing that was driving the ego around, wanting to be called a certain thing, we flipped roles. We flipped our roles back to me being the chief operating officer, a thing I was doing on an every single day basis. Her back to being the chief executive officer. Because in the clarity of time, the thing that came a year removed from worrying about what people were thinking, I could see what was important. Man. We're leading a community of primarily women. There's some men, but primarily women who are consuming the tools that we are creating. We have a team that is more women than men. We're raising a daughter. The idea that we would have a woman as the leader of this organization makes sense, but it also is the right thing for. For the kind of time and work that she put to building this company to what it was. The idea of writing a book is a wholly different thing in that I never, ever thought that I was gonna write a book. And in fact, when I originally was the recipient of the rough draft version of Girl wash your face, though it wasn't Rachel's first book. It was her first big book. I had a panic attack. I mean, I truly was mortified that she decided to be so honest and so transparent and so forthcoming. And all the things in her life where she stepped in it, where we'd stepped in it, and the vanity around sharing the beginnings of a relationship where I was a jerk, or the challenges and struggles we had in the world of intimacy or any of it just felt like, oh, my goodness, this is more a liability than it is an opportunity. I don't think you should publish this book. I tried to talk her out of publishing the book, and it was only in. After seeing the power of other people seeing themselves in her stories and some tools that she was representing helped keep her out of her own way, that I asked a question. Hey, I've been in my way. Like, I've been in this ditch that I created myself, this weird bridge between 30 and 40. Sure was hard, but in the leap from where I was to where I am, is there something that I might also be able to, in my stories, let people see themselves in? And the interesting thing about my wife and myself is she wrote this book through the lens of someone who is wired unbelievably differently than I am. I have been skeptical of the tools that she has been a believer in from the word go, including a book like the book that I wrote. I'm mindset wise, someone who's been more fixed to her growth mindset motivation wise, more extrinsically motivated to her being internally motivated. And so as I was playing with this idea of writing a book and telling these stories, the community that we have was representing that, hey, there's some resonance in how you're wired. I'm not motivated like your wife. I don't have a growth mindset like her. I'm married to someone who's skeptical. I think there's an opportunity for this to be a tool. Would you consider doing it? And when I started, then I had to ask that question. If I'm going to do, I want to approach it with the same kind of vulnerability and transparency that freaked me out at that first reading of her book. And the answer was, yes, of course you have to, because if you're going to do it, you got to go. And I think part of the reason why the book is working is that the honesty and vulnerability and owning the struggle that I've been through and have pushed out of is one, a reflection of all of us struggling. But two, hopefully a sign of hope for someone who feels stuck that they too can get out of their own way. So deciding to do it all at the same time. I know, Heather, you asked a question like a half hour ago, but I'm going to finish it because you said one more thing, right? The decision to do it all at the same time was a provocateur of bad coping mechanisms. And so what I will say is one of the chapters of the book is this lie that a drink will make this better and a drink will not make it better. Because in the midst of grappling with the identity shift from corporate to startup, with figuring out how to work together well, as a person who wants to still make out with their business partner, at the end of the day trying for the first time to write a book, all of the things stacking on top of each other were triggers that took what for me was a very casual relationship with alcohol throughout my life. At the end of a long day, have a drink. Well, at the end of a long day, with all of those things happening, it became uncasual. And so I had to talk very, very honestly about how these triggers will exist when you decide to pursue growth. And you are going to have to make a choice as to whether or not you want to fully experience the fruit of the growth or mute all of the benefits. And what I can say in having more to drink than I should have a year ago when I decided to stop drinking, I was, yep, taking some of the anxiety away and taking some of the fear and the imposter syndrome and the overwhelm away. But alcohol or any coping mechanism, they are not local anesthetics. You can't take the anxiety away without also taking away the joy. You can't take away the fear and also not have it dilute all of the benefits from growth. I left something that I was so comfortable with for wanting so badly to experience growth. And here I was drinking in a way that was completely inhibiting my ability to receive the benefits of that growth. So that was a long way to answer a three part question.

That was good.

So do you think something just came to mind around the drinking that I really relate to? When we're back in corporate America, and I mean multiple times a week, there's cocktail parties and entertainment, client entertainment and team entertainment. I feel almost as if that routine and expectation in corporate America makes it almost easier to fall down that slippery slope versus where you are now versus where I am now. When you remove yourself out of that routine, it begins to look a little differently, don't you think?

It's such a good point. Because there were so many times where drinking was just part of a Tuesday and a Wednesday and a Thursday in social settings with COVID clients, with, you know, your colleagues, whatever it might be, that it wasn't, oh, I'm going to drink to mute, I'm going to drink because of overwhelm. It was that you were drinking because it was just a reflex of what tends to happen on evenings when you're with your customers, on evenings when you're with your coworkers. And if you get into that habit where it's just so routine to grab something to drink and then something that ends up being challenging shows up, I'll tell you right now, my concern in the midst of this coronavirus is that people who have had a steady regular relationship with drinking, whether it's social, with friends or with coworkers or customers, and now find themselves for the first time inside of small spaces, asked to stay home with other people, potentially also their kids, and just having a casual drink is a thing that they are used to. Now that you add this additional stress, there's some unknowns and some anxiety that comes in. Everything that we're experiencing. I worry that that becomes a coping mechanism for a lot of people in a way that they're just not expecting it to sneak up on them because of the way that they just had this normal casual relationship. It was just a part of my life that was totally fine and totally normal until it wasn't. And thankfully, I mean, I am in a relationship with a partner that has agreed to have an accountability thing as a part of our relationship. She is a mirror on an every single day basis. But it came down to her having to say this that I had to save myself. And if you're listening to this, and this is tipping into a place where, you know, your relationship with alcohol, your relationship with pills, your relationship with food, your relationship with whatever it is that helps you not have to think about this time that we're in, the unknowns of work, the unknowns of how we're. What you have to save yourself. Because you may not be someone who is lucky enough to sit next to Rachel Hollis, who can tell it to your soul, but I'll tell it to you right now. You're gonna have to save yourself.

So these are great points that you bring up around the current environment that we're in, because everyone is under more stress and pressure and uncertainty than ever. So anxiety is running rampant.

And, of course, people turn to our vices. For me, I know you exchanged the drink for running, which is such a great upgrade, but given certain situations like we're in right now, in some communities, you can't go outside and run right now. So people are really having to dig deep. I was concerned with myself, with not wanting to go down a negative road here, knowing that, you know, we're in this lockdown mentality, which I'm an extrovert, and I like being around people, so I know my own weaknesses. I said, it's better just not to.

Have any in the house.

You know, just get rid of it. You know, personal controls. That's a step I can take to help myself. But now this is the craziest thing. I'm the most disciplined eater my whole life. Who is in the fridge eating my son's mashed potatoes and French fries? That's not even who I am. And that's who I'm showing up as today. My son said to me today, mom, why are you eating all these carbs? I don't know. It's changing one vice for another and saying, you know, I said to myself today, okay, I'm one week in. That was my reset week, trying to get accustomed to this new world that I'm living in. I'm going to cut myself some slack. I didn't do a great job with my eating. I feel like crap. I gained weight. Whatever. Okay, reboot today. And how can I make this week a better week now that I know what I'm walking into?

If you had a morning routine before all of this happened, you need to stay doubly connected to it now. If you have a set of habits with, you know, when triggers happen, there's a good routine that happens to that trigger. You need to stay Doubly connected to those routines and those habits now, you know, to the point of having substituted drinking for running. I do want to be clear that just the decision to have a healthier coping mechanism does not make the triggers go away. Right? I still was pursuing all of these things. All of the balls are still on the air, all of the triggers of fear or anxiety or imposter syndrome, they're still popping up. As I'm a first time author, first time entrepreneur, first time working with my partner, right. I had to just stay so connected to this habit that was going to allow me to process my anxiety, my fear, my everything in a more positive way. I've run a little more than a thousand miles since I stopped drinking a year ago. That's a lot of time running on the road. Now guess what? In the midst of lockdown, I'm having to also find other ways. I happen to live in the country, in Texas, so there's a little more latitude that I have to getting out, moving my body. But it for you may be that you need to find a song that the second you start to feel triggered can snap you into a different mind state. It may be that you need to put some alarms on your phone that will remind you two and three times a day who you say you are. I had this opportunity back at the front of the year to sit and just really think about what I was hoping to get from this year. And in the time three days, no technology, a lot of journaling, I was really interested in understanding where pain had existed in my life over the last three years. So I, for about three hours just went and thought about every time I experienced personal pain. And pain for me was guilt or shame or feeling like I was just not who I would hope to be. And I wanted to try and identify what existed every time I felt pain so that if I could see any kind of consistency, I might be able to eliminate that thing. And for me, every single time the pain existed in the previous three years, there was a single ingredient that was always there. And that was the person I was saying I wanted to be. The person I told people I was and who I knew myself to be in the privacy of my own head as I'm falling asleep at night were disconnected. There was dissonance, there was incongruence between who I know I can be and who I actually was showing up as. And for me, I had to sit down and really understand that there's some math in an equation that I have to reconcile to eliminate that dissonance. So I just play a game of if, then. If I say I want to be an exceptional husband, then I need to actively pursue my wife on an everyday basis. If I want to be a connected parent, then I need to have conversations with my children without technology. If I want to lead my team in this way, then, right? If, then it's simple math. But during this crisis, right, during this crisis, during a new job, during a transition, during whatever it might be, if you can apply the same kind of if, then and really be clear about who you have to show up as to close the gap between what you say you want and who you ultimately show up as. That distance is shame and guilt. That distance is the pain of not fully utilizing your potential. And the more that you can close that gap, the better you'll sleep at night. The most important thing in this season, or frankly any season, is how you feel about yourself when you are by yourself. And those times when I felt pain, that pain existed when I was by myself, when I knew as I'm looking at myself in the mirror, I just wasn't living up to who I knew I could be. Wow.

You know, it's so deep the way that you're thinking now and having read your book and, you know, having consumed your content, I know it wasn't always that way.

Right.

You've gone through massive personal transformation, as you've mentioned in the past two years. One of the things that you brought up when you were just explaining all this was you brought up imposter syndrome, which for me, in a very limited way, I only knew women had imposter syndrome.

So I've had my eyes opened by.

Seeing your level of success and then understanding you too, struggled with that. It was shocking to me.

Well, I mean, I've seen it on both the corporate side and this now entrepreneurial side. When I was on the corporate side, I was the beneficiary of having a few promotions faster than others, that in new seats that other people may have been more qualified for in the privacy of my head, some seventh grade voice of not enough, the insecurity of somebody else judging me for being fully and totally prepared for the thing I was stepping into, I would find myself in this imposter syndrome acting out in a way that was overcompensating for not yet being totally imperfectly qualified for the thing that I had been afforded. And having been promoted fast. And man, I was offered such a gift early on. I tell the story in the book of one of my bosses pulling me aside when while I Was sitting in a meeting where I was so worried that everybody was thinking about me not being qualified for this work. Every time there was a silence in the meeting, I would try and interject something smart to make them believe me wholly and totally worthy of having been promoted into this job. And he says, hey, will you follow me to my office? I'd like to have a quick conversation with you. I think I'm being awarded a statue of some kind for having above and beyond the call of a meeting, contributed in such an amazing way. And he lets the door close, turns around and says, shut the F up. Up. Just like soul piercingly crushes my little baby, baby soul and says, hey, I wouldn't have put you in this job if I didn't think that you were a person who could actually do this job. Well, you are, though. You think, helping your case, undermining your credibility every single time you open your mouth and try to justify for people who, by the way, are not questioning whether or not you ought to be in the job, if you should be in the job. So close your mouth, do your work, let your work speak for itself. Get this thing under control. And it was the first time in my career that I really understood, oh, this is the downside of imposter syndrome. This is the way imposter syndrome can catalyze and undermine our personal brand or the reputation we'd hoped to try and build in this new business. Forget it. I mean, like, I was shocked that this would rear its head after having 20 plus years of experience leaving as the president of distribution to come and, like, helm this thing with my wife that's small as we're starting to build it. And yet I came out of an environment on the corporate side where problems were usually addressed so fast by people with such deep subject matter expertise that when problems started happening at such a frequency in our small business, I started to question whether or not I was the kind of person who had the set of skills to properly lead this group of people. And I can see now just time, obviously, is such a gift. I can see no, there were some differences. There was a little more trail management on the Disney side than there is trailblazing. And some of the work that we're doing here. So, of course, as we're trying new things, we're bound to make mistakes. I also have just fundamentally had to rewire the way that I have a relationship with failure. Because, man, I avoided failure at any cost, Tried to find and surround myself with experts as much as I could on the Disney side. And failure is the only way that the company we are building will get to where we are hoping it to be five, ten years from now because of the data stream that comes out of those failures. Man, it's such a rich way to learn what you need to do, what systems to implement, what people you need to hire, what products you need to offer. Every single time we make a mistake, we are given the gift of learning something. And that is something I understand now, two years into this, that I did not fully appreciate those first six months.

But you weren't going to figure it.

Out if you didn't immerse yourself in it and take the chance.

This is also true. This is also true. I mean, here's the thing. Either you will grow and fail, or you will be comfortable. Either you will decide that failure is a thing that you can become comfortable with, you'll become comfortable in that discomfort, or you will stay stuck. You will not grow, whether it's in your career, you will not grow your business, or you will take chances and you will do things that will inevitably push yourself or your business out of its comfort zone. I've had to have a strange conversation with the team here at the Hollis company that is hard for them to hear, but important for them to hear. And that is the audacity of the dreams of where we're taking this business are such that if as we're sitting around a leadership table, you leaders are interested in being at the leadership table in the future, you will have to push into failing. And the way that I've had to say it to them is you will not be at the leadership table five years from now with the set of skills that you currently possess, and that includes me. And that's not an indictment on them not being good people. They're great people. It doesn't even mean that they aren't competent. They're super confident. But they do not yet have the set of skills because of how much bigger we're trying to build, the kind of impact that we can have at the company. And so they also, like you listening, will have a choice, right? Their choices continue to push themselves outside of things that they are comfortable with so that they can learn and apply those learnings to themselves, add them to their tool belt, or become comfortable with where they are right now and have a boss or two layers of bosses come in over the top of them. As we continue to grow with people who have a greater set of skills.

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Coupled with that statement, which is so on point, it is critical to truly have a culture within the company that supports the statement. Right. Because I think for so many of us, we've been at companies, we've been in situations where we need to innovate and we need to take chances. But we all know that behind the scenes, don't be the guy that went out on a limb and actually tried it because if you did fail, you were fired. I look at Sarah Blakely and her expertise around this. She actually has weekly meetings to celebrate that week's failures. And when you really not only embrace it, but cheer it on and celebrate it, you know, that's really taking the culture to that lean in, move fast, break things mentality so that you can grow exponentially in a year to five years. Like you're talking about.

Yeah, we have these small awards that we pass out every single week at our all hands meetings that are a reflection of the six core values of the company. And one of them is better tomorrow. Just a reinforcement that we value people who are in a perpetual pursuit of growth. And there is only a single way to pursue growth and that is to get outside of your comfort zone, to do something that scares you to fail and then really measure how fast we can get up and apply the learnings, not whether or not the failure existed or not. We celebrate. I love what she's doing. I love anyone honestly who has created a company on the back of failure. And every company that you admire, listener, every company that you admire is built on top of and not buried beneath the failures that they were willing to take risks through and learn from. And so, man, the more often that you can read stories about failure and normalize it existing and celebrate the fact that there is fruit that comes from it, the faster you will change the way that it is a negative and see it only as the vehicle for growth.

Well, let's celebrate some of your failures.

Your more recent ones.

What are some of the failures that you have personally witness and been living as CEO when you were in that position of Hollis Co. What are some of those things you look back on, you can point to that wasn't the right move.

There's two that have happened recently and they are 100% things that I can see as having happened for us. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. It's smarted to have to go through it. But one of Them was we created a line of journals where daily gratitude is a big, big deal in our family, but also inside of our community. And so we have a line of journals and the Start Today journal was something that man, we created a lot of demand for, got people really, really excited about, and then used a new 3 PL partner to help make available to our community and found out very, very quickly that many, many orders, 6,000 orders, did not actually make them make their way to the people who had paid us their money and were expecting them to arrive. And so the learning truly like the greatest gift that came out of it was you need a customer service team. One learning right at the time we had a single human that was working in customer service. Now we have seven full time people that that's just the thing that they do, making sure this community is taken well care of. But also we learned how important it is to, to go through asking for an RFP process and actually vetting the different vendors that can make bids to handle things like shipping your product. Because we went off of a recommendation of a person who meant well but had not necessarily done a ton of research and found ourselves with somebody that just wasn't great, unfortunately. So good learning, it opened us up to finding a vendor that could deliver the product in a better way, in a different way, at a lower price with less. Like so many good things came out of that and we've developed, I would argue, a best in class customer service team that has truly, with every single interaction, created lifetime love of the community and of the company because of the way that we are investing and taking good care of the people that want to hang out with us. So that was 1, 2. We have had a lot of success in live events in the last couple of years and personal development conferences is a thing that we do. There's a women's conference, a business conference, there's a run that's taking place. But the women's conference, on the heels of having had a lot of success in terms of how fast venues were selling out, big venues, 7,500 people venues, we put a bunch of venues on sale at one time and included in that, putting London on sale because the community had raised their hand, said, you know, we would love for you guys to, to come and bring these things to the uk and we said, absolutely, let's do that. Well, let's, let's do it. So we got a 5,500 person venue and we planned all the details to make just an like I would argue again, best in class kind of experience inside of Europe, inside of uk and we made a big announcement, did all the things we do to normally sell these tickets really, really fast. And two months in, we'd sold 380 tickets out of 5,500. And so the gift here again was understanding that there is more work that is required to expand our business beyond North America than we were necessarily thinking was required. Doing a little bit more of the intel on how ready the audience is before we take a step and invest the kind of money that is required to throw these events. These events cost more than a million dollars to throw. And so it's not small money for a small business for us to expand into a new territory. So as a first, we had to cancel the conference and man, it stinks to have to let down those 380 people that had bought the tickets. We took great care of them, gave them free tickets to another event. And truly, I do believe we'll be in London. It's just that it's not time yet for us to be in London. So there was something in that learning though, that was important for any of the individual parts of our business to make sure that we do a little bit more of intel research, spending some time to understand the demand in the market before expanding into it. Or said another way, don't take success that sits in one part of the world or one part of the business and apply it immediately to another without first toe dipping to make sure that there's actually something there, especially in these times. Certainly, Darren, with everything that's happening with this virus, I feel even luckier and more fortunate to have been given the gift of some of that learning now so that we can be really careful about how we plan our live event business going forward.

Speaking of that, speaking of the live.

Event business and knowing what a massive.

Revenue stream that is for you speaking business is huge for me as well. How are you pivoting your operation right now to insulate yourself from this current climate where you can't go out and sell these tickets on site?

Well, here's the thing for everyone listening. If you have a business that is going to in some way be impacted by the change in how live events, people gathering, this virus affords people the opportunity to come together. And if you are listening, you do have one of those businesses. This is going to also create opportunity for people to explore what virtual services look like. We have digital education, online coaching that is available to people and so we're certainly going to continue doing that. But is there the potential to also Add some additional value around digital education that specifically speaks to some of the things that people are going to struggle for, through and with inside of this crisis. Conferences. As much as we love having things that happen in person, might this end up creating for us the opportunity to spend some time inside of a digital virtual conference environment? I don't know yet. But I think every one of us as business operators is going to be investigating how when life shows you lemons, lemonade is the thing that you have to try and produce. And maybe because of the forced nature of this slowdown, the forced nature of not being able to get together like this, it creates a whole new and different kind of business that would not have necessarily even occurred to any of us if not for the fact that we are being forced into it.

So true. It just reminds me of 0809 and.

The recession and that window of time of having to assess where are the opportunities where when it seems like everything.

Is crashing, there is always an opportunity.

It's just up to us to find it.

I think there is, unfortunately, in the shorter term, going to be some bigger hurdles that all of us are going to have to get to and a longer recovery after a longer stretch through crisis. But in that, man, this is where muscle gets broken down to get built back up. Like I truly end up believing that we will on the other side of having to to collectively as humanity, make our way through this, come out of it stronger, think differently about how we take or don't things for granted. But as business operators, the ingenuity and creativity that's required to survive times like these will have rippling generational effect for a company. As you're thinking about what it might be 20, 30, 40 years from now, some of the greatest ideas end up coming inside of the times like these where the sword is really being sharp.

So true. All right, I know I need to.

Let you go soon, but there's one thing I really wanted to get to because it's a great tactical piece of advice in one of your chapters, which is the 8 mile negotiation tactic that you employed. I freaking love that.

Thank you. Well, I came into it because, man, I found myself often walking into a room with people already coming at me for why I was not necessarily the person who ought to be leading the negotiation. I became the head of sales at the Disney at the Walt Disney Company at 36 years old. And so in a world where there were people who had much more tenure, who understood the business far better than I did, to be able to lead with something in My conversation style, my negotiation style that would acknowledge the weakness that they perceived as a strength because of my ability to reframe it before they could come at me with it. It changed the way I thought about almost every single part of negotiation. So if I could preemptively identify what of what they might use against me, the way that Eminem did against Anthony Mackie and 8 Mile, it turned out to be such an inoculator for any of the barbs that might be thrown my way and allowed us to get to the bottom line without having things necessarily turn emotional or defensive, as most of the negotiations had tended to until I started really using the tactics. So if you as a person who's listening, are walking into a negotiation, and if you're human, it doesn't need to be a business negotiation. It could very well be a personal negotiation. You just want to watch something different on television. You may in fact want to just start by acknowledging a little bit of the position that you expect someone to come back at you with as a way to inoculate you from that barb. Having any power, man. It has been such an effective tool in any of the conversations I've had with vendors, with customers. And I really encourage you to think differently about the power in owning your perceived weaknesses. I've been able to turn almost every perceived weakness in my life into absolute strength, absolute power, in a way that makes me think completely different about it. So there's confidence in that. But that has also in that reframing made them, whoever I'm talking to, think completely different about it as well.

So good.

And the book is so great. Again, you need to get. Get out of your own way. It's top five New York Times bestseller right now. It's definitely something you want to immerse yourself in in the next day or two while you're home. It is really going to be a catalyst for you to get to that next level. And Dave, one last thing I have for you. Could you please tell us what the.

Tattoo is on your arm?

Because I love it.

Yes, I have a tattoo on my arm. It says a ship in harbor is safe, but that's not what ships were built for. I got it as a reminder in the midst of emerging out of this funk that I created, that I can only continue to feel a sense of fulfillment if I am growing. And the only place that growth happens is outside of my comfort zone. I am built for this choppy water. I am in pursuit of the benefit that comes from sitting inside of it, even on the Days. And especially on the days that it is uncomfortable, because in that discomfort, I will grow. The strongest tie that exists is the one that exists between growth and fulfillment. You got to leave the harbor. If you are going to be fulfilled. Believe that. Get out of your own way. It starts by leaving the harbor.

So good, Dave. Where can everyone find you?

I am on Instagram. Rdave Hollis. On Facebook, I'm Dave Hollis. But any of the stuff that we create, we are in the business of creating tools to help you take control of your life. So thehollisco.com is where every single thing we create exists. And, Heather, I am so grateful to be able to be here with you today. Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much for your time. I know how busy you are.

It means the world to me. And please check out. Get out of your own way.

It is not just for men, because this woman right here loved it. Hang tight. We'll be right back. I asked you to try to find your passion. I hope you enjoyed meeting Dave as much as I enjoyed interviewing him. He's fantastic. And how freaking ironic is it that I just got my book deal done? I was telling you the story about how I googled Rachel Hollis, and today I just interviewed her husband, who happens to be number number three right now on the New York Times best seller list. Oh, and guess what? He published with my publisher. And he's with my agent, too. Holy world's a colliding. I'm just putting this all together right now, and it's completely freaking me out, and I'm so excited and blown away. Okay. You just never know what can happen. And that is not just with bad things. It really, truly is with great things. And I'll tell you, even getting to Dave Holiday, that is one benefit that has happened from the coronavirus is it's a lot easier to get to people because everyone seems to have a lot more time. I just got a great pitch this morning from a supermodel that I would have never thought to reach out to, but reached out to me to want to come on the show. You know, some of these people that we just typically think are so busy and have no time to, you know, respond to our ask are really available right now. So make sure that you put your ask tasks out there and take action now. And I'll tell you, I'm always taking action. I'm working out here in the house, and I'm trying not to lose muscle, because if you're like me and over 40 years old, you know that muscle is the first thing to go until now. I've got a clinically proven way to prevent muscle loss for you. It's called Rejuvenate. Rejuvenate is clinically proven to help increase muscle recovery, aids in rebuilding loss muscle, and assists in the prevention of muscle atrophy in patients after an injury or surgery, or just people like me that are getting older. It's essential amino acids that are the building blocks of protein, and they are vital to restoring and repairing lean muscle. The body does not produce essential amino acids. It's necessary to get them through diet. Amino acids have a faster absorption rate compared to typical dietary protein. And Rejuvenate is a unique blend of all nine essential amino acids. You need to give this little dust a shot. Invest in you. It's less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Besides, Starbucks is closed anyhow, so you gotta check it out. Www.rejuvenatemuscle.com use the promo code confidence at checkout and get 15% off your entire order. Start building muscle while you are sitting on the couch at home right now. Www.rejuvenatemuscle.com promo code confidence at checkout and get 15 off your entire order and start rebuilding your muscle. You will so thank me for this. It's the small things that we can do. All right, so I'm obviously super excited with everything that's going on. I'm so excited I got the chance to interview Day Paws. I'm definitely turning this negative week around, and I hope that this inspires you as well to make some positive changes, take some action, and find out ways that you can make this whole bizarre situation better for yourself. I'm trying every day, and granted, there are some days that are harder than others, But I really believe that we will get through this. I truly believe that things will end up for the better in the end, for sure. Okay, so a couple questions that were sent to me this week. This is a really tough one. Hey, Heather. As a member of the service industry, I have have found myself currently unemployed. Like so many people right now, millions of people, I'm trying to remain positive and use this time to my advantage and perhaps really take the time to figure out what my passion is. As much as I love the industry I'm in, I'm not exactly sure that I want to be in it forever. I started journaling and I try to meditate. Do you have any ideas to help me? Yeah, for sure. So for me, the question that really changed my life was when a mentor of my said, hey, Pick your head up from where you are today. I was always looking at the day ahead of me, the year ahead of me. He's like, forget that, stop thinking about your job. Start thinking about you. What is it that you love to do? What is it that you love to do when you were younger? What is it that you've been drawn to but never paid attention to? What would you do if you didn't care about money and money wasn't a factor? What really has meaning and connection to you? And back then, this is going back probably five years ago. I decided to start doing charity work because I like to give back, I like to help people and I really like to help kids and people who are underprivileged because I've been there and I really relate and empathize with that. That took me into a whole new world, which was the charity world. I joined the board of City Year Miami Charity. I met so many amazing people like minded. They started giving me speaking opportunities to MC see events, to host luncheons. And I started using my superpower that I wasn't even recognizing to benefit others. And I loved how it felt. And that started me down a very slow process of realizing for me, working in corporate America, working in a toxic environment was not healthy, was not good for me, and that I deserved more and I could give more to the world and help more people by showing up as the real me and walking away from that negative situation. So, you know, take those steps, take some time with yourself and you don't have to have that answer immediately. I remember I had talked to another friend about it and said, I just don't know, how am I going to figure out what I'm really meant to do? And he said, well, go take a stand up comedy class. And I said, well, why am I going to do that? He said, because you don't want to, do you? I said, no, of course I don't want. It sounds terrible. And he said, then that's exactly why you need to do it. Go put yourself in a really weird situation that you wouldn't typically do and see how you respond. And that whole experience opened my eyes to the this message that I could get up on a stage and talk forever and not feel nervous and not fall over my words, but it came natural to me. And when you start seeing yourself in your element that you don't even understand is your element and people start pointing it out, those can be the pivotal moment where you say, hey, maybe this is something I'm actually supposed to do. So that really started opening my eyes. It started me down a different path, which, again, I didn't figure out overnight. But over the next few years, I really did. And that's how I ended up here. That's how I wrote my first book. That's why I wrote my second book. That's how I ended up launching my speaking career, my podcast. All this stuff has evolved over time. Did not happen overnight. But it started with that intention that I was going to find it and to start looking. So start looking. Okay, so I got a note today on my website, heathermonahan.com if you haven't gone to it yet, check it out. I've got a free accountability partner. For 30 days, I will keep you positive and focused on your goals. You'll get an email from me every morning helping you to achieve your goals and stay positive in this difficult time. I got a note. There's like a little, it's called a drift bot that enters acts with people who are on my site. And someone wrote in, hey, Heather, I want to get out of the hell hole I'm in. I'm working to distance myself from enough people to stand on my own two feet. Okay, the first thing that I said back, first of all, I said, sign up for my accountability partner program. You will start getting positive messaging daily, which you need. You need positive people in your life as much as you need to rid yourself of negative people. I said, start listening to my podcast. You can totally, totally immerse yourself in positive content, positive movies, positive readings just as readily as you can immerse yourself in the negativity of the media.

Right?

That's a choice. So then I said, you also need to start changing your word choices. You said that you need to get yourself out of a hell hole you're in. That does not sound very good. Why not say, hey, I'm climbing out of this hole, right? Let's start changing the words and be mindful of the power of words. Let's not say we live in a hellhole, because there's nothing good about that. Let's say I'm climbing out of a difficult situation. Turn it into positive, even in the smallest way that you can, because those word choices will have an effect on your thoughts, which will have an effect on your actions. All of this stuff has a domino effect, and I want you to choose words that are working for you, not against you. It's a great, great place to start. If you haven't checked out my website yet, you got to check it out. Heather Monahan, dot com would love to see you there and support you. Also have my free ebook on how to create confidence in any situation and who doesn't need more confidence now? So thank you so much for being here with me this week. It means the world to me. I would love to answer your questions DM me on any social media platform at Heather Monahan or you can go to my website and leave me questions right there on my drift. But I'm here with you. No one succeeds in this world alone and that includes me. So thanks for being here to support me. I'm showing up for you every single day and I can't wait to see you next week. Until then, keep creating confidence. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen.

No one succeeds alone. You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.

Come on this journey with me.