76: On Plan Z, Creative Finish Lines and the Graceful No—with Alexandra Franzen

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Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Pivot Podcast. I am delighted and in fact jumping out of my chair, couch, desk, wherever, with glee to have Alexandra Franzen here with us today on the podcast. Alexandra Franzen has been a professional writer for about 10 years. She writes articles about creativity, productivity, communication, goal setting, entrepreneurship and how to deal with difficult situations in your life and career. Her latest book is you Are Going to Survive, A collection of true stories about tough scary stuff and how to get through it and it has been called you new best friend on a Bad day. I have had the great pleasure of attending two of Alex's workshops live with her in New York City and can verify that she is a true wizard with words. All of us in the room would just leave those sessions mesmerized and hypnotized by Alex's ability to riff on the spot and help us craft the perfect prose and a few more fun facts before we get into the interview. Alex loves music and dark roast coffee. She has blue hair and a fish named rupaul. And she lives in Portland, Oregon, with her partner Brandon, with whom she helped open a brunch restaurant called Honeymilk. Alex, welcome to the show.

Oh, my gosh. Thanks for having me. What a fun introduction.

You are one of the people online that I could just read and read and read and never get tired of your newsletters. I've been following your work for many, many years, and you're probably the number one person that I look to like, wow, this woman is really doing it. And in such an authentic, fun, smart, sharp way. So thank you for being my friendor from afar all of these years.

Did you just call me a friend, Tor?

Sure did. Sure did.

I love that. That a great word. And thank you. The feeling is mutual. I think you're just amazing.

I want to start with this brunch restaurant, Honeymilk. I think it's an awesome pivot story that even as a writer for 10 years, you met your chef boyfriend. And I'm curious to know how you decided to open this restaurant and how you approached that process, knowing that you weren't necessarily coming from a restaurant background and. Yeah, would just love to start there because it's such an interesting side project for you.

Yeah. So if we go way, way back in time, like when I was a kid, a teenager, I've always had a passion for food. Definitely. I was watching the Food Network when I was 13 years old. My brother and I would watch Iron Chef and just geek out over that. So I've always been interested in food. I actually worked for a catering company when I was a teenager, things like that, I never really envisioned myself becoming a chef or anything like that, but it's always been a passion of mine, for sure. And then when I met Brandon, my sweetheart, who is an extremely talented chef, there was a day when we went on a date and we went to a park. We'd been together at this point maybe a year or so, and I remember he packed, like, a picnic lunch with cheese and grapes and bread, and it was very romantic, and we sprawled out on this blanket, in the park, in the sunshine. And he had this little notebook. And he showed me in the notebook all of his dreams, basically his dreams and plans to open his own restaurant one day. And I just kind of got so caught up in, like, the romance of the moment. And I remember looking at his notebook and I just said to him, babe, let's do this. You know, we can do this. Let's get something started. It can start really small. I'll help you. We'll do it to you together. You know, I love entrepreneurship. Let's make this happen. And that was that. I kind of just leapt into it with him, very starry eyed and naive and kind of thinking, like, how hard could it be to open a restaurant? And spoiler alert, it's really hard. But it really just began with kind of a gut feeling and a desire to help my sweetheart to build his dream career, as I've been able to build mine as a writer.

One of the things I found most interesting looking at the website, is that you're only open Saturdays and Sundays. It is specifically a brunch restaurant. And I smiled when I saw that because it's so you. It's so you to somehow customize it to be more manageable than working some crazy restaurant hours that a lot of chefs have to work with tireless, super long days. And I'm curious what your thought process was of just being open for those two brunch days and focusing so specifically on. On Brent.

Yeah. So it's a funny story. The whole thing unfolded, as many projects do, in a sort of semi planned way and then a semi surprising, spontaneous way. So Brandon, my boyfriend, his original plan was actually not a brunch restaurant. His original plan was he wanted to do a hot donut and ice cream shop. He's always been obsessed with desserts and pastries. So that was his original concept for Honeymilk. But what ended up happening was he was kind of going around town looking for a space where he could do this or looking for maybe a temporary space he could rent just to get things going. And in his sort of wanderings around town, he happened to connect with this guy who runs a pizza restaurant. And the guy who runs the pizza restaurant, it's kind of an unusual space. It has, like a giant kitchen that he would rent out to other chefs who wanted to do food production and, you know, make caramels or cupcakes or catering or whatever. And this guy says to Brandon, like, almost as a joke, you know, hey, you know, I'd love to Sell your ice cream at my restaurant. But also, I'm not open on the weekends in the morning, you know, you should rent the whole space for me and, like, do brunch or something. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Exactly. And Brandon was sort of like, huh, Brunch had never really occurred to him to do. But brunch is obviously super popular, especially in Portland. People are, like, bonkers over brunch here. They'll line up and wait for hours to get brunch. It's like a ritual. And, you know, Brandon loves brunch, and he's. You know, he has a lot of skills as a chef, especially in pastry and, you know, making amazing, flaky croissant dough and things like that. And his wheels just started turning, and he pivoted, essentially, and he went, all right, you know, I think ice cream is out. I think we're doing brunch now. And that's really how that all began. And then in terms of doing it just two days a week rather than seven days a week or five days a week, that was originally just born out of budget and necessity. We could only afford to rent that space two days a week. And obviously, the weekend is more popular for brunch, so it kind of made sense. And then as things grew over the course of two years or so, we realized. We kind of crunched the numbers numerous times, and Brandon realized, I'm actually making plenty of money just being open these two days a week. You know, we're open two days a week doing brunch, and we're crushing it. I don't need to be open seven days a week. And, in fact, that doesn't sound fun to me, so why not just keep it limited to two? And he decided to do that, and it's been a great choice for him.

It's so incredible. It's like 80 20ing the restaurant business. Like, here's a restaurant where an industry where you might assume going in, oh, I have to do it this certain way. And it's amazing that through circumstances and then experience, he realized, oh, I'm earning just almost as much as I would be if I were working 10 times more all day every day and into the night.

Exactly. Yeah. He loves to just, you know, get in, make that money, sell that, fill people's tummies with biscuits and get out. And then the rest of the week, he doesn't have to be, you know, at the restaurant, which is a wonderful thing. And, you know, yes, maybe someday things will be different. There are many different ways he could sort of grow and take the business from here, but for now, that's a pretty sweet little model he's got going. I'm really proud of him for making that move. And it was fun to be along for the ride, especially the first year as we were growing.

Oh, yeah, it was fun to be along for the ride, even from the sidelines. I've always admired you as someone who was really discerning about what to pursue and how to set things up. And actually, I have a private community called Momentum, and someone just put a call out and said, who do you all admire who is not super active on social media? And your name came up more than once. And so on this theme of, you know, something like, hey, did you know you could open a restaurant and only have it open for brunch two days a week? Who knew? You're also someone where a couple years ago, you decided to close your Twitter account. And I would love to hear more about how you choose what to pursue and what not to, and even specifically around social media, how that has been since you made that decision. Yeah.

Oh, this is a. This is kind of a pivotal moment in my life was a couple of years ago. I was very active on Twitter at the time, and I was. I would say I was pretty good at Twitter. You know, I enjoyed it. I was good at it. I liked crafting little witty tweets and things like that. And I built, you know, not a. Not a massive, but a pretty significant following on Twitter as well. I think I had, I don't know, maybe 12, 13,000 followers at that time. But what started happening for me was as the years rolled along, I just started to become very aware of how much of my time and creative and mental energy was getting tied up in Twitter. And I actually did a little experiment where I kind of recorded, okay, how long does it take me to write, edit, and post one tweet? And then how much time am I spending sort of tracking that tweet, seeing who has commented and who's responded and who's retweeted and how many times, and yada, yada, yada. And I came up with this estimate that I was pouring somewhere around, like, 10 to 12 minutes of my life into every tweet. And then I sat down and I looked at how many times I had tweeted in the past year, and it was like thousands, thousands of tweets. And then I multiplied those thousands of tweets by that 10 or 12 minutes per tweet, and then I multiply that by like, the next 40 years of my life, let's assume I'm gonna keep tweeting for the next 40 years at the current rate. And what I found was kind of horrifying for me. Basically, what I realized is if I. If I keep using Twitter in this way, by the end of my life, I don't remember the exact number, but it was something like, I will spend three years of my life on Twitter. And when I saw that number, like three years, I really felt very sad. And it's not that Twitter is bad. It's not that social media is bad. It's not. It's amazing. I mean, it's an incredible tool. But for me personally, that didn't sit right. And there was something about that that made me very sad and that made me want to make a big change. And I realized, you know, I mean, I don't know how long I'm going to be alive on this world. I feel that all of our lives are so precious. And for me, spending three years on Twitter was not acceptable as a way to spend that portion of my life. So I decided that I was going to kind of like, retire from Twitter for just a summ 3 months, just to see how it felt and just to see if it negatively impacted my business, for example. And the summer went by, and what I found was that I felt great.

I felt like I had more space in my brain that wasn't sort of being caught up in the social media world. And nothing bad happened with regards to my business. In fact, everything stayed the same. Improved. Now, this is to say, you know, every business is different, of course, and everyone needs to have their own unique marketing approach and their own way of connecting with clients, yada, yada, yada. But for me personally, I didn't see any negative impact. And so then that gave me the confidence to basically deactivate, one by one, all of my accounts. So no more Pinterest and no more, you know, whatever. I don't even remember what I was using at the time. A whole bunch of different things. And I deactivated everything one by one until, at this point, I have my website, I have my blog, I have my newsletter, and then that's it.

Do you have Facebook?

I don't have Facebook, no. And I am very happy with that.

I hear you. It's so interesting to hear you say that it didn't negatively impact your business, because I think so many of us feel the shoulds at every level, not just people trying to run an online business, but there is so much Pressure now for people to have a perfectly crafted LinkedIn profile and keep up with all their friends on Facebook and post witty bon mots on Twitter. And I love that you first experimented, then stepped back from it. And I'm curious to know how it has been in the years since growing your business primarily through your newsletter.

Yeah, you know, when I. When I look at, you know, how. How do clients find me? Who's hiring me and why? Who's signing up for my workshops and retreats? You know, how. Who are these people and how are they finding me? What I discover over and over, at least for my business, is that it's primarily word of mouth. Right? So one client hires me, they have a positive experience, and they tell their colleagues or their friends in a very intimate word of mouth kind of way, and then that leads to more client inquiries. For me, that's huge. Word of mouth for me has always been the number one way that new clients find me. Yes, my newsletter has been really important as well. I consider my newsletter part of my body of work as a writer, so I really pour my heart and soul into it. I try to make every single newsletter inspiring and interesting and helpful. My newsletter audience has grown. You know, it grows a little bit every year. I've never been one of those people who's like, I need to get five new sites a month or what? I just let it do its thing, really. And I trust that if people really love it, they'll tell their friends about it. And often they do. So that helps for sure. The other thing that has happened is that even though I'm not active on social media, I know because people tell me that sometimes my work gets discussed and shared on social media, even though I'm not there, which is kind of interesting and cool. And so I know that people who run blogs and podcasts and who are on Facebook and doing webinars and other spaces like that, they will sometimes talk about my work. They'll link to something I've written, or they'll link to my newsletter signup page, or they'll share a free workbook that I've created, or they'll mention something so there can be a conversation about you and your art and your business, even if you're not the one initiating that conversation. That's what I've found to be true. So there's a whole variety of different ways that people find me. And again, I really believe that everybody personality, every human being is different. Every business is different. I run a business where it's essentially a boutique business. Where I work with a very small number of clients at a time and my retreats and events are very small, usually eight to 10 people maximum. So I don't necessarily need thousands of customers every month flooding to my website. I just need a few people. I need my little circle to hire me and enjoy me and recommend me and that's it. So for me, you know, social media I ultimately just found to be, you know, nice and fun, but optional, not mandatory.

It's so true that word of mouth, what's really cool is how you kind of reverse engineered how people were hiring you, how whom, where they were finding you. So you could see that it's mostly word of mouth. And in that case you do a great job with your current clients. You would be anyway. And then they spread the word. I'm curious to know how you are currently working with clients because I know that's shifted over the years too, and how you see that evolving as you look ahead to the coming year.

Oh, this is such a great question. I'm actually meeting with a business coach next week to talk about my plan for next year. So yeah, the way that I've worked with clients over the years has pivoted and evolved so many times.

I was actually thinking back recently because I was writing a little piece about this to like 8 years ago when I quit my job in public radio and decided to be a self employed freelance writer. Back then I was mainly kind of positioning myself as like a resume writer and cover letter writer and kind of job hunting material focused writer. That is totally not what I do today. But back then that's, I think I thought, you know, okay, I'm pretty good at this and I know a lot of people need this, so I'll just put it out there and see what happens. And there have been so many evolutions since then. For the past year or two or three, mainly with clients. What I've done or what I focused on is working with clients who are somewhere in the health, fitness, food and sort of personal growth arenas. Most of my clients fall into those industries or categories and, and most of them hire me to write either website materials to help them develop a new project like a podcast or a class that they're building. And also a lot of books, book proposals, book manuscripts. So usually people hire me when they're working on a big project and they want an editor or they want a writer. Sometimes I operate like a ghostwriter where I'm just writing everything, and other times I'm more of an editor consultant. But people hire me when they've got a big project and a message they want to share and they need some help to get it done. And that's what I've done for the last several years. And it's been, it's been pretty great. There will be some changes ahead, though.

Drumroll, please.

Drum roll. Yeah. And you know, it's. To be totally honest, I don't have like a five year plan. I don't know exactly what my client work will look like, you know, in the, in the future. Future. But I think for the immediate future, one thing that I've realized about myself is that really, I mean, yes, I love writing and yes, playing with words is fun, but what I love more than anything is when I see a client cross the finish line with a project. Meaning, like, the book is done and they're holding it in their hands and they have that moment of, oh my God, I'm an author, I did this. Or the podcast season is done and the 18 episodes are posted and they're like, oh my God, I did it for real. I love that moment of finishing. It gives me so much joy. It makes me feel so proud of me, of them. And I want more, even more of that. So for next year, I'm actually designing a new service that will involve working with me in a slightly different way. And it's all about getting people over that finish line because that's what's up. That's what I love. And I know how hard it can be to do that, especially for my clients who are exceptionally busy. So I want to help. So that's kind of a subtle, but I think important pivot in how I'm offering my services next year.

Speaking of the finish line, your new book talks about what happens when we cross that finish line and expose ourselves to judgment from others and critics. It's called you're going to survive. True stories from people who have endured soul crushing moments in their careers. Failure, rejection, disappointment, public humiliation, and how they got through it. And you will too.

Yes. Like the longest subtitle of all time.

I love it because you just didn't leave anything out. Take us back to one of your worst moments where maybe you got a one star review and you generously share those in the new book, which is hard. Someone said on my first book, if you've never thought about anything ever, this is the book for you.

Gosh.

So harsh. So harsh. Yeah, you know, I remember when my very, very first book came out, which was 50 ways to say you're awesome. It was a really sweet little book. It was essentially a gift book. You know, it wasn't a. It wasn't a 300 page book. It was small, it was sweet, and it was illustrated and colorful. And the whole premise of the book was to inspire people to say thank you a little more often. So it was filled with ideas on how to say thank you and how to say I love you and how to say I think you're awesome and I'm so happy you're my friend. And I thought it was a really lovely project. I was quite proud of it when it came out. And then I got a couple of pretty rough reviews on Amazon about that book. And most of the reviews centered around like, this book is too childish. This book is silly. This book says awesome too many times was one of them. Like, the book is called 50 Ways Awesome. So I don't know what you're talking about, but just people who just didn't like it for whatever reason, it just wasn't for them or they thought it was dumb or frivolous or, or whatnot. And you know those reviews suck, right? Like, it's not fun to pour your heart and soul and months of your life into creating a project and then have someone go, you know, blech. And like spit out your food and say it's gross. Like, no one. That's not fun. No one likes that.

What helped me to not feel totally discouraged was that yes, there were some negative reactions, but yes, there were also really positive reactions. And I remember in particular I got a box in the mail one day and inside the box, I'm gonna like, cry. I still remember this so vividly. This woman had purchased this book and she had used it as part of a summer camp program that she was running. And it was a summer camp program for teenage girls, teaching them self confidence and building their self esteem and also teaching them self defense, helping them become really strong and powerful. And the girls loved the book and they tore out the pages and they folded the pages of the book into little origami hearts and stars. And then they mailed a box of those hearts to me.

And oh my God, like I opened the box, I started crying. I couldn't. I'm like crying right now. And it was, it's moments like that, you know, where you realize, okay, you know, not everyone likes this book. And some people think it's frivolous and childish and you know, Sally from Idaho thinks that I said awesome too many times or whatever. But there are also people for whom this is resonating and There are people who enjoy this and like this, and this book in some way is making their lives better. And, you know, my. I think it was my mom who said this to me recently. She said something like, we get to choose where we focus our attention. Right? And I've learned repeatedly over the last several years that I just want to focus my attention on what is working and on the people I am helping and on the people who get what I'm doing and who enjoy it and just funnel my attention there and keep creating stuff for them and really just put the blinders on and for the most part, filter out the negative stuff, especially negative comments that just, you know, I can't really do anything about. You know what I mean? The ones that are not helpful or constructive in any way, it's better just to tune them out, I feel.

I remember writing a blog post after my first book came out called, but surprise, negative reviews won't kill you. You know, because it felt like, oh my God, I'll die if people don't like this. And then when they happened, I remember thinking, ouch, just like you said. But I was never sorry that I wrote the book. I was just like you. There were so many more people who did find it helpful. Even though of course we can look back on our earliest projects and I can feel a little embarrassed or you know, what I knew at the time, but I never felt like I would have done anything differently. And I knew that I had worked my ass off for three years and that this reviewer has every right to his or her opinion. Absolutely. But it just didn't change that I would have done this and released this, even though it was imperfect, even though I might be slightly embarrassed by it a few years later.

Totally. There's actually a story in my new book, you're going to Survive. I interviewed a lot of different people for the book. I wanted to talk to people from all different types of industries. Some entrepreneurs, some not performing arts, nonprofit world. You know, I really tried to go, to go broad and get a lot of different stories about discouragement and criticism and so forth. And there was one woman I interviewed, her name's Maria. She is a branding strategist. She runs her own agency. But she's also a brain injury survivor. She had an aneurysm when she was very young. Totally freak situation. It just happened out of nowhere. And she almost died. In fact, it's like a miracle that she's not dead or in a coma. After that injury, she woke up in the hospital. She was temporarily blind. She had to relearn how to use her body and her brain. I mean, it was a horrible experience. And she eventually wrote a book about that experience called Rebooting My Brain, where she tells the story of kind of re entering the world and how she learned to use her brain again. And she wanted the book to be a message of inspiration for anyone who's dealing with something tough, whether it's a brain injury or something else. Long story short.

Like me, like every author ever, she got some beautiful reactions to the book. She got grateful emails from people saying, oh, my God, thank you for sharing your story. It was so touching. This really helped me, et cetera, et cetera. And she got some nasty reviews too. She got reviews saying that her writing wasn't that good, that she should have hired a better editor.

One woman said that the story was boring. They said it basically said like, yeah, the beginning about the brain aneurysm was great, but then the rest of the story was boring and kind of insinuated. Like, it would have been more exciting if she had almost died again or like something like that. Just like really preposterous stuff. But what she told me when I interviewed her is, you know, she chose, I'm not going to let the harsh criticism steal my joy and steal my pride that I feel about this project because she was so proud that she wrote this book and finished it. And she's not gonna let a couple of critics, regardless of where their criticism is coming from. She's not gonna let them steal the joy that she feels. And I think that's such an important reminder for all of us. You know, we have to just fight to protect our joy and not let it be taken away.

What surprised you most by the time you were done editing this book?

Oh, man. What surprised me most?

You know, I was. I don't know if I'd say I was surprised. Actually, I was somewhat surprised. I was surprised by how literally every single person I spoke to, when I asked them, can you tell me about a really discouraging, stressful moment in your career? I was surprised how literally everyone was like, yes, I have like 40 different stories for you. Everyone has a story. Everyone has a survival story. And I think we all kind of know this, but we forget sometimes that everyone is human and everyone is struggling and everyone gets scared and that it doesn't stop once you, quote, unquote, made it, if that makes sense. You can be a Grammy award winning musician or a Broadway performer or a fundraiser who's raised $150 million and you can still have stressful, discouraging days when you wonder, what am I doing? Or will anyone show up for my next show? It never stops. At every level of our careers, we have to deal with hard stuff. And I find that sort of comforting in a weird way that we're all in this together and it never ends.

And that even when we do fail. You write, you say sometimes the worst moment of your entire career can be the catalyst for a new chapter, a new project, a brilliant new innovation or system, maybe the best work you've ever done. And isn't that interesting too, that even when things do go completely haywire, it ends up sparking something new?

Yeah, I think one of my favorite examples of that from the book was I actually interviewed my brother. My brother is a jazz musician. He is one of my heroes, really. I mean, he's my relative, of course, but I look up to him so much as an artist and he tells the story. It's actually one of the very first stories in the book, might be the very, very first story where he talks about how when he was just out of college, he auditioned to go on tour with this really big artist and he had this opportunity to audition and it was so exciting. And he went and he thought he did a great job. And in the end, he didn't get chosen. He didn't get the job. In fact, his best friend got chosen to go on this world tour with this amazing performer. And my brother Ben, I mean, to say that he was crushed is an understatement. He was so discouraged. This was the very beginning of his career. So he had so much insecurity around. Can I really make it as a musician? Am I just kidding myself? Can I really do this? And then watching his best friend get chosen instead of him felt like this blow to his self esteem. And he felt like, oh my God, you know, my best friend has got what it takes. But maybe I don't, you know, maybe I'm just kidding myself. Maybe I wasted four years of my life and, you know, studying music in college and I'm trying to be a jazz saxophonist. You know, what the hell am I doing? I mean, just all of this insecurity. But what ended up happening, which I thought was so interesting, is that because my brother didn't get to go on this amazing world tour and because he didn't get chosen for this gig, and because he was, quote unquote, stuck at home, instead of touring around the world, he ended up starting his own band. And that band is called Me Body. And they have since gone on to tour the world and get nominated for Grammys and they've had an incredible run. And I wonder, would my brother have started that band if he'd gotten that job that he wanted so badly back in those early days of his career? And I think the answer is no, or it wouldn't have started at the same time or not in the same way. So it is interesting how sometimes not getting the job that you wanted or not getting the client that you wanted or having something kind of fizzle apart can be a catalyst for maybe something that's so much better than what you originally thought you wanted. It's certainly a catalyst for a new opportunity if we choose to view it that way.

Yes. And there's almost no way that it won't be a catalyst because it just shocks us out of whatever we think we wanted. And for me, if I just have faith that, okay, this wasn't meant to be and the quicker I get to that place of trust that, well, then I guess I wasn't meant to be traveling on that day or to go on that tour to get that speaking gig. Who knows why? But I will be shown it will reveal itself to me why that didn't come through or why I needed more time.

Yeah. There's a friend of my new friend of mine, Chris Carlson, who was one of the co writers of that amazing book series called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. She co wrote it with her late husband and I was hanging out with her a couple months ago and she was telling me about a pretty awful thing that she'd gone through. I won't share the details because I think she's. She's revealing it in her next book. But she said something interesting which was, you know, sometimes stressful, hard stuff happens. And, you know, we sometimes like to say, like, oh, everything happens for a reason. Her attitude is, no, not everything happens for a reason. Sometimes things are just awful, and sometimes things are just terrible or violent or terrifying. It doesn't happen for a reason, but we can choose to create a reason. We can choose to create some kind of opportunity or make meaning out of that difficult situation. It's a choice. And I really like that attitude because it's empowering. Rather than leaving us feeling victimized by things that might happen in our lives or careers.

My friend Tara said something similar to me, that we don't choose our suffering, but we can transform it.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

One of the things that I wanted to do, a virtual standing ovation note I read recently was you wrote to your newsletter about plan Z, and you said you find it empowering to write down every awful, terrible detail. So I want. I of course will post to this link to this in the show notes, but I also want to read a condensed excerpt for everyone listening so you can all get a flavor for Alex's brilliant writing and this just brain of yours, I love it. Okay, so I'm gonna read it and then I want to hear your take on what's so helpful about this level of detail. So Alex writes, and again, this is an excerpt. The longer post is glorious. She says, okay, there's zero money in my bank account. My business is tanking, my reputation is in ruins. I move into a raggedy studio apartment which I rent for $200 a month. Instead of working as a self employed writer, author, retreat leader, writing consultant, I have to get a grim job as a graveyard shift bartender in the dive bar to end all dive bars. Sometimes I pop outside for a cigarette. I've never been a smoker before, but this is my plan Z. So I'm burning through at least a pack a day. At the end of my shift, I trundle home to my empty mattress. I sleep on the floor next to the rat that I've adopted as my pet. My partner Brandon has left me, naturally. So I write poems and song lyrics about my gut wrenching heartache as a silver lining. Now that my career is in shambles and I have no clients and so on, I have plenty of free time to write my next novel, which I work on diligently at the local public library because I no longer own a laptop, tablet or phone. And it's coming along nicely once I write it all down. My plan Z doesn't actually sound that bad. I mean, this just is the most priceless piece of writing and I think it's even in your new book. But talk to me about this Plan Z and what it was like for you to not just write down that exercise, but share it with your audience.

Yeah, so this, this exercise of, you know, asking what's your plan Z? Is something I've actually done for many years. You know, we all, we all have our plan A, right? That's the plan where you achieve all your goals and everything works out and everything's perfect and it's rainbows and parades and then most of us have like a plan B, which is, okay, well, you know, maybe that doesn't happen. But I can always, I can always get another job. I always have this I can fall back on. But many of us don't stop to consider Plan Z, which is like, okay, but seriously, what if everything falls apart? Like, what if it's an absolute calamity? What if I'm left with nothing? What would that look like? And it can be scary to even think about that. We try not to think about it. Right. But I think it's actually very helpful and even healing in a way to really sit down and go, okay, what would my worst case scenario be? Like, really, what would my rock bottom moment be? And to write it out in a lot of detail, just like the passage that you just read. Because what I find personally is that when we sit down and kind of face those fears and write it all out, all the details, what I find is that it, like you mentioned, you know, it's. It sometimes is maybe not that bad. Like, yes, it's bad, but it's not like you're dead and it's survivable. And in a weird kind of twisted way, maybe it could even be sort of beautiful. You know, maybe it could be a breakthrough for you, or it could give you all the free time you've been longing for. I mean, there always is sort of a weird silver lining to even the worst situations. And so I find it comforting to write down my Plan Z. And it helps me to feel just a little more brave as I'm marching forward with my various, you know, projects and books and whatnot. Because I always know, all right, well, even if I have to, you know, even if my partner leaves me and I lose my apartment and I lose my computer and I have to work in a dive bar and, you know, whatever, like, I will survive, you know, I. That is survivable. And I can rise up from that again. And no matter what, it will be okay.

Similar to your exercise, I and I share in pivot. I do a worst case scenario, cash out. Like, I make a list in order. So as things are falling to hell, you know, as Plan Z starts occurring, what would I do? In what order? And it might be 20 items long, but it's like, first I would give up my apartment. Apartment. And live in airbnbs. Okay. Then I would sell this. Then I would cash out these stocks then. And you see actually how long that list is until you even get to Plan C, which I love your approach of the most detailed Plan Z and recognizing that barring our death, life goes on and we would figure it out.

I love your cash out idea because, yeah. Then you see, like, okay, like, yes, it's possible that I'll hit rock bottom, but Like, a lot of things would have to happen or that point, and probably I would be able to turn things around well before then. Probably, right?

You mentioned earlier your passion for getting people over the finish line. I'm curious if you can share with us one or two nuggets that you've learned, even exercises like this one. But what helps you when you are coaching clients, get them past that finish line, despite all of these fears that we've talked about on this episode today?

Oh, that's a great question. Well, one thing that I always encourage my clients to do, especially if they're about to begin a big project, like writing a book or writing a memoir or producing a podcast season, something big, is I always encourage them to write down three reasons why they really want to finish this. And that may sound like, so simple, but it's something that we often forget to do. And I encourage them to write down three reasons that are really honest, you know, and if one of the reasons is, like, I want to make another $10,000 before the end of the year, like, that's a valid reason, Write it down. If that's true for you, and that's a real motivating force behind this project, write it down. And if one of the reasons is, you know, I want to have memoir that is like a capsule of my life that my kids can read when they're older and when I'm dead, if that's a motivating reason, write that down. Whatever the reasons are, it doesn't matter, as long as they're honest and they're true for you. And then I encourage them to write it down, which is really helpful. But what's even more helpful is, like, midway through the project, when they start losing momentum and losing steam and feeling overwhelmed, and like we all do a couple weeks or months into a project to revisit those reasons and read that list back to themselves. Ideally to keep that list, like, pinned above their workspace or taped to their mirror or somewhere where they're going to see it every single day, to keep those fires burning so that they can get themselves over the finish line. I find that to be really helpful. And as sort of a writer, editor, coach, helper on this journey, sometimes I will email those reasons back to them and be like, remember, this is why you started, and this is why you're gonna finish. And what's so funny is often a client will email me back and go, oh, my God, I totally forgot. I even wrote those things down. Like, there's something about getting into the thick of A project where we just kind of forget why we started, and it can be so helpful to remember. So that's a big thing. And the other thing that I'll say with regards to getting over the finish line with a major project is I think we really. Most people think like, oh, I didn't finish writing my book because I'm not a talented enough writer or I don't have enough discipline or whatever. But what I find, I think more often than not, what stops people from finishing a project isn't really anything to do with talent or passion or even discipline. It's more kind of the logistics of life. People will try to write a book, but they'll neglect to actually schedule time on their calendar to write the book. You know, just really basic scheduling and logistical stuff that we sometimes forget to do. So I really encourage people to put those basic pieces into place before they even start the project. You know, look at your calendar for the next several months and block out whatever it's going to be. You know, every Friday from nine to five is like art time, book time. That is just for this project. Block out time in advance and treat that time just like you would any other important appointment. It's amazing to me how many people feel like they're going to magically squeeze their project into the corners and crevices of their week rather than actually making space and time for it. So, yeah, think about logistics, think about scheduling, think about blocking out time in advance. And honestly, that almost more than anything else, I think, is what will help you to get across the finish line.

I'm so glad you brought that up, because I know that making time for your art and for art in general is really important to you. And you wrote to me, you said, I feel squished and sad without it. Which is the best description because often these big projects involve saying no to a lot of things and good things. Before we were hitting record. You made a great point that our social networks now are almost unnaturally expanded. And I'm curious, you're someone, I think, one of your biggest strengths, in addition to you're so prolific, I don't even know how you do it. So maybe you'll share in this nugget. But is the art of the graceful. No. I would love to hear, as we start to wrap up, how you say no and how you've just your journey of arriving at saying no to probably quite a lot of things, and often awesome ones at that.

Ooh, yeah. Saying no. I think something funny I've realized about myself this last year is that I'm really good at saying no. I've become really good at saying no. What my new challenge is, I think, is that although I'm very good at saying no to sort of proposals and invitations and requests, I also have a tendency to almost, like, say yes to my own ideas a little too often. Like, I'll get some great idea for a new project or webinar or class or course or workshop or something that I want to create, and I'll sort of say yes to my own idea maybe a little too quickly, and then realize, oh, I've overloaded my schedule. Not because I've been saying yes to other people, because I've been saying yes to my own notions, but just too much. So that's kind of funny. It's almost like I need to learn to say no to myself.

That's my next chapter of saying no.

Well, I love that on a whim, you're like, hey, honey, let's open a brunch restaurant. We got this. You know, it's cool because it's gotten you this far, but I can imagine that it definitely just. It's like one of those superpowers that is good to throttle back on at some point.

Yes, yes. You know, and that's a perfect example. Like, I have no regrets that I helped Brandon to open his restaurant. And I'm so proud of what we created, and I'm so proud of him, and it's a wonderful thing. But, you know, for about a year of my life, I had no time off. And I mean, none. Like, I was working Monday through Friday, I was working on projects with my clients. I had a super full schedule. I was traveling, I was teaching, working on a book. And then every Saturday and Sunday from like 5am to 5pm brunch mode. You know, setting up the restaurant, setting up the kitchen, serving the customers, being the hostess, doing the, you know, the money counting and everything. At the end of the day, washing the dishes by hand, mopping the floor of the bathroom. I mean, it was non freaking stop. And I kept up that pace, I honestly don't know how, for about a year. And then it got to a point where I was like crying at the end of every day because it was just too much. So, yes, I'm proud of it. And also, yeah, I'm becoming very conscious that sometimes I need to say no to my own exciting ideas or risk burning out because there's only so much we can do and still have time to, like, eat toast and read books and work out and sleep. So it's an ongoing process for me, but in terms of saying no to other people.

For me it's all about trusting what I call my hut, which is my heart and my gut, right? And we all have a hut. And we all get those feelings. When you get an email and someone invites you out for coffee or to dinner or to an event or to collaborate or whatever it may be, we all have that one second gut reaction that is always there, you know, if we choose to listen to it. So I listen really carefully. And I also, I try to be very protective of my time when it comes to other people's requests. And what I love doing is saying no, but always, when possible, providing like an alternative form of support. So, for example, I might get an email from someone who reads my newsletter and they might say, hey, Alex, I've followed your work for many years. I really like what you're doing. I'm an aspiring writer. I want to write my first book. I'm in Portland. I live here. I would love to have coffee with you and pick your brain about writing and books and publishing. I know you're really busy, but I would just love to take you out for coffee. So I might get an email like that, right? And that's a perfectly lovely invitation. You know, it's not that there's anything wrong with asking.

But I just, I don't do it. You know, I very rarely will just meet up with someone, I don't know, just to chat. It's just not how I. How I like to spend my time. And it's frankly, I don't have the time to do that. So rather than ignoring that email and deleting it, and rather than writing back and just saying, nope, sorry, can't, what I would usually do is say, thank you so much for writing. I'm so glad you enjoy my work. It's wonderful that you want to write your own book. I'm so excited for you. What a great thing to do. I'm not able to meet up for coffee, but. And then here's where I would provide some kind of alternative form of support. So I might say, but here's a link to my all time favorite book about writing books. Or here's a link to a bunch of articles I've written about how to stay motivated with a writing project. Or here's a link to a podcast that I've done where I talk about how I got my first book off the ground. So I would provide some alternatives. I might even refer them to writing coaches or mentors that I know or whatever. So it's always no, but how about this? Or no, but here's something else you might like or no, but here's what I can offer you. And to me, that makes the process of saying no feel like really beautiful and generous and lovely rather than like I'm slamming a door in someone's face. So that's my approach with saying no. It's no, but how about this? And it works well for me. And it can also allow me to say no to even a very, very close friend while still maintaining that relationship and not making them feel like I won't help. I will help. Just maybe not in the exact way that they originally wanted.

I love help. It's the most genius. Alexism One of them.

The latest that I saw was nervous, excited, Nervited.

Nervezaided.

Yeah.

Nerve sighted. Yeah. Yeah. It's perfect. It's perfect. Alex, this has been so much fun. If you could encourage people to do one thing when they stop listening to this episode, what would it be?

Oh, man, what a great question. I would say think about a project that you really want to complete in the next week or month or year or whatever the time frame may be. Maybe launching a new website or making over your website, maybe writing a book, maybe some other kind of creative or entrepreneurial or personal project. And I would encourage you to do what we discussed earlier. Write down three reasons why this project really matters to you, why you want to finish it, and then look at your schedule and block out time like a boss. Get it done for real and you will feel so proud of yourself. Do that.

I love it, Alex. Thank you so much. And go out and buy Alex's new book. You're going to survive, Alex. Where can people find you if they want to keep in touch?

On Facebook?

Just.

Well, obviously at a pick your brain session. Important. Portland.

Yes, let's have a coffee. Portland. After we finish chatting on Facebook. No, let's not do that.

You can find me at my website, which is alexandrafranzen.com not a very creative website name, but there it is. And on my website I have a newsletter, I have free resources, I have hundreds of articles. All my books are there, upcoming classes, retreats, all that jazz. So you can check it out and you can send me an email. My email address is on my site and I read and respond personally to almost every single email that I get. So it's totally cool to reach out in that way. I'm totally down with that.

And I can just add that Alex's website is a veritable gold mine. You will not be disappointed. Her newsletter is a must read, like even pull it out of any filters. And her in person workshops are truly incredible. Absolutely worth it. So if you get the chance to meet Alex in person through one of those, I say go for it. Alex, you're amazing. Thank you for everything and thanks for being here with us.

You're amazing. Thanks for having me. This was such a such a joy. And thanks for the awesome questions. It was so much fun.

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It.

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Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.