Jason Goldberg argues that business success comes from adopting a playful mindset and discovering what you activate in others, not from chasing originality. Ask trusted people what they get from you and review childhood praise to find your authentic voice. You don't need to be an all-knowing expert, just consistently activate a feeling in your audience.
Chapters
If anybody tells you this is the way to build your business, run as fast as you can. Because there is no way to run your business, right? There is your way, but there is no the way. Everybody wanted me to kind of do what they had done. Everybody wanted me to do what everybody else had done. And to me, that's doing business as usual. And I want you guys instead to do business unusual. The core of everything that I'm going to share with you today is really one question. And it's this. How can I play with this? Any challenge, any opportunity, any stressor, how can I play with this? Because we don't actually have to work on stuff, right? We can play with things. So you don't work through challenges, you play through challenges. So how can I play with this? Becomes kind of the mantra for what we're doing here. So the first fundamental misunderstanding I want to talk about is around finding your voice and owning your power. And I hear this so much from people, they want to do this. Now. The funny thing is it doesn't actually show up this way. And again, like I said, language is super important. Nobody wakes up at 3am and says, oh my God, if I could just find my voice and own my power, my life would be so much better. So what really happens is they're taking life too seriously. And the way it really typically formulates in your head is, oh, crap, this is super serious. I need to be 100% original and a frigging all knowing expert. And that really holds us back when we start taking that stuff so seriously that we have to be 100% all knowing expert. When I first started my business, I didn't just think I obsessed over finding the thing that I would be known for. The one thing I could say is mine, the proprietary process or the message or the whatever it was that was going to be my thing. And once I found that thing, the money was just going to pour in and I was going to be T. Harveker overnight or, or Oprah or somebody equally disgustingly rich. And so when I started, my goal was this, what to be known for. Because everywhere I would look, somebody has done that already. Everywhere I go, people have already done that message. So here's what I shifted to. So instead of being known for and obsessing over my content, right, obsessing over being known for one particular thing, I shifted into what could I be known for? Activating within others. There are ways you can do this. There are questions you can ask people and ask people straight up people that you Love people that trust you, people that really know you. Ask them, what do you get from being around me? How does your life feel after an interaction with me? You can ask them this. What do I activate in you? What do I give you permission to do in life? And it doesn't matter if you're a coach or not, if you're a service provider, if you're any kind of entrepreneur and you agree, as we talked about earlier, that you are at the forefront of what you're selling, then it's so important to know this. Because once you know what, what you activate within people, that becomes the butter in the pan of every dish that you cook. And it's so beautiful to do that. Because when you really key into that, when you really figure out what it is for you, maybe you help people see possibilities, maybe you give them hope, maybe you are playful and you activate joy, maybe you activate, you know, deep thought, maybe you polarize. There's something that you do that is active. Every single one of you activates something within people. And when you know that, especially from a personal branding perspective, it's beautiful because you can change what you are known for limitlessly times and as long as people are keyed into what they know they can expect from you, what you are going to activate within them, energetically, they'll follow you if this changes. And I know this to be true. For me, this is not anecdotal, this is not intellectual because my message has changed a lot over the last five years. And the same people will continue to follow me because they know no matter what I share, no matter what I'm known for, they always know they'll leave with a certain feeling from interacting with me, whether online, in person, anything else. So I want you to do this work for yourself. Ask people what you activate within them. Another thing you can do, another way you can can find this for yourself. Look back at your childhood and look for two different things. Number one, what you were praised for. And the other side of that is look back in your life as a kid and see what did you get in trouble for? Because that's also very telling about what you can activate in people in a positive way. So when you're worried about being a 100% original, all knowing expert, realizing that you don't have to be an expert at anything but you, Sam.
