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Sumi Krishnan
The energy of la. I could feel the things that people actually make fun of LA for. Like usually everyone's like, oh yeah, like everyone in LA is like chasing a dream and like, you know, hustling and blah, blah, blah. But I actually found out that I. Hello, hello everybody and welcome to the Dream Life Club podcast, episode six. I am so excited you're here. Today we're going to talk about how does or how can your environment affect your chances for success or affect your business growth. So I want to tell you a little bit. This will be more of like I'll tell you a little bit of my personal story where I share how moving from Washington D.C. to Boston to Nashville and then to Venice beach kind of shaped what I was able to accomplish in each of those environments. And then I'll start to hopefully get you thinking about how you can create the environment around you, wherever you are to help you achieve your goals and build your business. Okay, so if you don't know me, my name is Sumi Krishnan. I built a business in DC, grew that business to multiple eight figures in revenue with over 200 full time employees. Before we sold the company exited and I moved to now LA to pursue a new career as a pop music recording artist, which is filled with its own unique challenges which I'll be also sharing here on the pod as we go along and using my current journey as a learning tool to share more lessons and to lead the way building a completely different enterprise and hopefully share what's possible in a whole new field. So let's get right into it. If you are a woman entrepreneur trying to build a business, right, we're going to smash the ceilings, we're going to break the statistic that says that only 2% of us cross the million dollar mark and we're going to make crossing a million dollars in revenue table stakes. And we're going to do that together. And one of the keys to thinking about building your business is taking really seriously your environment. Okay. Now of course I talked about in episode six the type of people we're surrounding ourselves with, right? And the network that we're creating and building for ourselves as we grow businesses. But today I also just want to dive a little bit deeper into literally our physical environment. Our physical environment and how that could affect us. How that affects us. So I spent a lot of my life in right outside Washington D.C. shout out to the DMV and what happened was that you absorb the energy, you literally absorb the energy, the way of thinking, the vibes and like just The. There's an energy in the air of wherever you live. And the energy in the air in Northern Virginia in the DMV was really one of two things. It was government contracting or it was politics. Like, those were the two main fields that people were in. Of course, there were other things, but those were the two main fields. And the energy that I felt. Now, I'll also put this disclaimer and say that some people are more sensitive to energetic signals and energetic things than other people. And what I know is that I'm. I personally am extremely sensitive to environmental energy. And, like, the energy in the place that I'm in, like, affects everything. Like, I could. I can feel the cells in my body changing when I moved from D.C. to Boston, Boston to Nashville, Nashville to LA, like, in all sorts of different ways. Like, I feel it and it affects my mood. It affects what I want to do. It affects everything. Right? And so if you're that type of person, then this is going to be really important for you to start thinking about. If. If you're not that type of person, maybe this doesn't matter at all. And you can turn this episode off. All right. So personally, when I was in D.C. i mean, everything was impacted by the energy of politics and government contracting that was surrounding me. Like, who I was dating at the time, you know, was affected by that energy. What my goals were, what I thought was possible for myself, and just how I felt in my body, how I took care of myself physically, how I spoke, how I dressed. Like, everything was kind of affected by the environment. Right? And it's no surprise, like, we always. We're social beings. We. We adopt the things that we. We like, naturally fit in. Actually, I remember, like, there are people who, like, change their accent to fit in with the people around them. Like, subconsciously or unconsciously change the way they're talking to speak more like the people that they're surrounded by. These are, in subtle ways, we always ad. Adjust ourselves to the environment and what we're surrounded by. So when I was in dc, it was like, I was, like, passionate about building my government contracting business. I was wearing pantsuits every day. I was wearing big, chunky, conservative jewelry because that's what everybody was doing. I wasn't really prioritizing my health and fitness because no one around me really was. I was kind of. When I think back now, I was. I was. I was surrounded by energy. That felt kind of gray. It felt kind. Kind of gray. And I don't know how a different way to say that could be. And I'm not saying that Washington D.C. is a bad place to live. What I'm saying is it wasn't right for me at the time. Like it might be right for me now because now I'll go back and I'm a different person. So it'll be different for me. Right. It's always the match of who you are with your environment that affects how it affects you. But at the time, it wasn't right for me. It wasn't a ma. It made me feel gray. It made me feel like I only had one path. It felt like everybody was on the hamster wheel. Going, going, going, but going nowhere. That's how, that's how I felt. Right. So it also becomes a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy because you then put that out and then you see more of that and then you put that out more and then you see even more of that. So like anything, like it's never the fault or it's never that that environment was to blame. It was that the combination of me at the time and that environment made me feel like the only thing that I could do was build my government contracting business, be relatively like unhealthy, unhappy. Didn't really feel lit up by anything in my life. Had to work really hard to find the motivation every single day, you know, was really good at what I was doing, was really committed to doing what I was doing. But it felt like I wasn't alive. I didn't feel alive. Everything felt like it was a drain on my energy and nothing really, I didn't find the things that really gave me energy. All right, so close to the time to when we finally sold that company, I, before we did, I put, you know, I had put a management team in place that was running things on the ground day to day. And I found a way to take a year away from the company and go to grad school. So I went to pursue a master's in public policy at Harvard, the Harvard Kennedy School. I was so excited to go. I was passionate about politics. I was thinking about maybe doing a career change into politics. And I get in to Harvard, which was like, wow. Like I, you know, I had gone to a state school for undergrad and first, first round grad school and just was like so excited to be around what I thought was going to be like a really intellectually stimulating environment. Be around like the smartest people is what I. And just give myself an opportunity to delve deep into subjects that I was really interested in, but really didn't have a Lot of experience in. So I leave and I go to Boston. And what I noticed was that a lot of my assumptions were correct. Like the, the first thing I said when I called my grandmother and she was like, how is it going at Harvard? And I was like, it's so intellectually stimulating, Amama. Like, it's the best. I'm having such a great day every day and, like, learning something and around such interesting conversations. And she's stop me. And she was like, sumi, it doesn't matter. She kind of laughed. She kind of laughed at me. And she was like. She was like, intellectually stimulating. She was like, what matters more than that is what are you contributing? She was like, forget about being stimulated. What are you contributing? And I was like, oh, wow. Yeah. I was like, really, really, really good point. Right? That has actually stuck with me. Like, that has stuck with me forever since she said that to me. Because it's kind of a really good life lesson, right? It's not about what you're getting out of a situation. It's not about how stimulated you are in any way or intellectually. It's about what are you offering to the environment, what are you contributing, right? And so that was an aha moment for me that I've taken with me ever since. But Harvard and Cambridge was an academic environment. There were people exploring the nuances of deep questions. People very much informed because it was public policy, right? People very much informed about what's going on in the world and the trade off between. You know, there's always a trade off when it comes to policy, which is something that a lot of people don't understand. Like, you know, what's the role of government? Like, what are the trade offs? Like, what. We can't just agree to disagree. Like, somebody has to make a decision and put a policy into place. So, like, where. How do we make those decisions? Right? And it's. It's a really fascinating topic. So I loved that time so much. But again, it was very cold in Cambridge. Very, very cold. I had a really hard time taking care of myself there because I wasn't very active, right? Because it's so freaking cold. I felt again, like the environment was very much like, sit and, you know, read books and discuss deep things. And yet it wasn't very. There was, there was a little less, like, fun than I wanted. There was a little less pizzazz than I feel, like my natural personality, like, desired. There was a little less talk about things other than academic things, right? It was very much confined to that one thing. And I had this dream of being a singer songwriter. I was like, gosh. But I had, you know, graduated the program, and then I was living in Boston still, and I was like, where do I go now? Do I go back to the DMV? Like, do I go back home to Northern Virginia, D.C. or do I stay here in Boston, or do I just make a completely wild choice and, like, I don't know, move to Nashville and, like, Nashville, if you don't know, is known. It's like the heart of songwriting in this country. It's like, where some of the best musicians in the country and world live. And. And you go, there's live music every single night in Nashville. And you're just sitting, like, three feet away from some of the most famous songwriters who've written, you know, like, Adele's top hits, Rihanna's top hits, like, and they're just, like, at the local bar, like, playing their new song for you. And so it's a really, really special environment. And I had known about it, but I had been there, but I'd, you know, obviously never lived there. And so I had kind of what felt at the time like a fantasy of, like, what if I just could move to Nashville and become a singer songwriter? And, like. And it didn't really feel real. Okay. It didn't really feel real because, of course, I had this company in D.C. so my mind was like, well, I probably need to, you know, go back there. And, like, it was a. I. But I felt a. I felt like a real. I was at a fork in the road because I didn't want to go back to the environment that made me feel kind of unalive, or that means dead, I guess, to Gen Z. Not literally dead, but I just didn't feel energized. Right. And I didn't want to do that, but I felt like I had to. I felt like, what am I going to do? I can't just, like. I can't just like. Like, go to, like. It just felt like at least if I was in Boston, I was not too far. You know, it's like an hour flight. And it's. You know, I'm still working in policy and politics, which was related to a little bit of what we were doing with the company. And it felt like more of a connection than what felt like just like, abandoning ship and, like, moving to Nashville. But I had a very interesting decision to make. And what ended up happening was I decided to be really serious about selling the company so that I could feel free from that responsibility. And I realized, like, how I'm feeling, I have to take into account, even if nobody else understood it, even if nobody else understood why I would ever want to give up or sell this company that was doing so well and had so much potential. And we would have continued to grow. You know, we were about 20 million in revenue when I sold. We would have continued to grow to fifty, seventy five, a hundred million from there. I'm sure of it. Right? Because that's the trajectory we were on. And so no one could really understand me. Like, why would I want to give that up to go become a singer songwriter? Like, it seems stupid. And I am so proud of myself for trusting my gut and for making that really hard decision that I wasn't willing to sacrifice my own feeling of life. Like, if you don't feel alive in any pursuit or if something feels great to you, there's something wrong. And you've got to trust that even if it doesn't make any sense to anybody else. Okay? So I. Then it took me a year, and we went through the whole M and A process that stands for mergers and acquisitions, if you don't know. And we sold the company. And now I'll say that I don't think that I maximized what I could have gotten for that company. And if I had been more patient, if I had been willing to put in a few more years, like, I'm sure it could have been a real different situation. But I prioritized. Like the time that we are spending every single day and every single week and every single month and every single year, I wanted to feel alive. I wasn't willing to sacrifice that. And I think in retrospect, someone could have said, like, well, you could figure it out, how to feel alive there. Like, nothing about your circumstance or nothing about that environment is saying that you have to feel gray and dead inside. But I wasn't able to do it right. And so we also have to take stock of the reality. Like, we can keep telling ourselves we should be able to do this or we should be able to do that, but if you're not able to do it, sometimes you need a change. And a change in environment can be so powerful. So I moved, sold the company, moved to Nashville, and it was like I had a new life. I was suddenly a different person. Being able to be surrounded by musicians on a daily basis, having musicians come over and, like, I had this, like, lower level, like, garage from this townhouse that I was living in, and they, you know, I kind of set it up with like, you know, the. The sound equipment, and I would have musicians come over and we would play and we would write songs, we would jam. And I was going to open mic nights every day of week, or at least a couple times a week. And playing out, going to shows, getting writers rounds, like, then I released my first ep, did my EP release show. I felt that energy of that city. Like, it was a special, special time in my life because it was like my coming out party. It was like, I, hi, I'm an artist. It was like, hi, hi, I'm Sumi, and I'm an artist. And before then, I had never told anyone that I had this desire in me. I had never shared it publicly. And so being able to do that and then be surrounded with the best talent in the world was so special. And that's when I knew and that I remember in Nashville, it became really real to me how the energy of our environment can affect us. Because when I was living in Washington, D.C. even way back when I was growing my company, like, I had started learning the guitar, started songwriting, started trying to go. I think I went to, like, a handful of open mics. The problem was I wasn't plugged in. Like, the music scene in D.C. existed, and I could have plugged myself into it, but I didn't because the other energy took me away from that. Right. I needed to move to Nashville to feel like I could finally put myself out there as an artist. So I say all that to say that sometimes those environment changes allows you those environment changes allows you those environment changes allow you to do something different. And if we were all superheroes, we might be able to do anything we've ever wanted to do in any environment that is presented to us. But I don't think that that's a real human thing. Like, I think it's totally fine if you say to yourself, I need a change. Like, I need a change in environment. And I know there's a lot of people out there who can't just get up and leave, right? Like, I was single. I didn't have a partner with a job. I had flexibility. I didn't have kids. And so I had more flexibility to get up and move and make a change. And I was able to sell my company, right? But if you can't do that, I'm gonna stay tuned, keep listening, because before we wrap today, I'm gonna talk about how you can be thinking about giving yourself an environmental change up, even when you just can't get up and move to Boston and move to Nashville. Then what happened was the pandemic hit when I was in Nashville and I remember like feeling really closed in, right? Cause I just moved there. I had maybe one. I had one really good friend and a couple other people that I knew. And yeah, a few other people that I knew. A lot of musicians and stuff that I was meeting and all of that, but really like one really good friend. And so she and I were our little Covid pod. And I remember like feeling the energy of Nashville suddenly because I was dating also in Nashville. I was dating and the dating scene there, I just wasn't fine. Like I was having trouble. I even hired a matchmaker and I just like kept on running into like, this is not my type of guy. It's not my type of guy. They actually. And I don't want to go into details of like who I'm looking for, what I'm looking for on this public platform right now. But like they couldn't actually find introduction, even like introductions to meet the type of men that I was interested in meeting. And so I kept even having to sacrifice on like just like the minimum of like what I was looking for. And. And then the pandemic was going on and then I realized how much of a red state Tennessee still is, obviously. But like, even though Nashville is pretty progressive, like we're in Tennessee and it was really hard to live in that environment during the pandemic and Nashville started to feel really small and I came out to Venice beach, rented an Airbnb with that friend I mentioned and I had the time of my life. Like I literally was like the energy of la. I could feel the things that people actually make fun of LA for. Like usually everyone's like, oh yeah, like everyone in LA is like chasing a dream and like, you know, hustling and blah, blah, blah and every. And that's what people make fun of people in LA about. But I actually found out that I love that. I love people like that. And being in that fast paced environment where people are chasing a dream, but get this, a dream that they're passionate about felt very different than the environment I was in Washington D.C. where everybody was hustling. Oh yeah, people were moving fast, right. But they were oftentimes chasing dreams that they weren't passionate about. They were going for the next, you know, corporate promotion, but they were actually like really unhappy at work. Right. Or they were building a business but not interested, not passionate about it. And so when I came to la, I found that people are chasing dreams that they're passionate About. And I freaking loved that. And I was like, this is the energy I need to be in. Then I would, like, go, you know, go down to the beach and, like, lift weights outside with the sun shining. And I'm like, something about that, like, like, effect affected my nervous system. And I was immediately happier, right? I was immediately happier being around the ocean, being around the water, being able to, like, be outside most of the year and not be trapped indoors. I realized those things really affect me. They really affect my nervous system, they really affect my mood, they affect how I feel in my body. And so I decided to move from Nashville to LA because I was like, now I'm just like, I'm gonna go where I feel good. Like, I'm gonna go where I feel good. I am so lit up, so motivated by the energy of the people here, right? I am so lit up by the fact that I can go outside, go to the beach, jump in the ocean, beach warmed by the sun, like, every single day. And so I made that decision. And what I can say is, like, my life has just continually gotten better and better and better and better over the last six, seven years that I've been, you know, finding these new places and new environments. And so everyone, I think, has places where we feel most alive in, right? And now one of the draw. And every, by the way, choice in life, every choice in life comes with a sacrifice, right? Like, we. We can't make a decision without cutting off, like, the other possibility, without cutting off anything good that we were getting from the other thing that we're not choosing, right? Like, we have to be willing to sometimes make those really tough choices and sacrifices. And one of the hardest things for me that moving away from the east coast has brought is being so far away from my family, who I love dearly, like, especially as a single woman. Like, my family is everything, right? My parents are there, I have sisters there, I have my amazing nieces and nephews there. And I love them so much, and I miss them so much. My grandmother, who I don't get to see or talk to much a lot anymore. And, you know, it's so hard some days to be so far away from them, right? And so. But yet that's the choice I've made. And so I have to deal with that choice to the best of my ability. And part of that now includes really making an effort to go back and visit every two or three months so that I still feel connected to them. Right? Best I can. So I want to share this with you guys and share this personal story and my personal experience because I want you to start thinking like, are you in an environment that's draining you or are you in an environment that's energy giving? And oftentimes it's just as easy as asking yourself that. And if you can't and you don't have the freedom to just get up and decide to move, I totally get it. Of course, right. Often it's about money, right? Because maybe where we want to move is more expensive. So then we have to decide, okay, are there ways that we want to be willing to figure out how to make more money in order to afford a certain place or afford a move? So that's one question. Oftentimes it's about, you know, just you can't with your, your partner or your kids or like whatever it is going on. And if that's the case, if you're, if you can't, if you feel like you want a change of environment but you can't make that change, then I want you to think about the micro environments in your life. Because even no matter where you live, you can control your micro environments. You can control if you're not. If you're working from home and like really uninspired, sitting at your kitchen, dine or dining table every day, trying to write some emails and get some work done on maybe a small laptop screen. Like, maybe it's just about changing your work environment up. Maybe it's about three days a week going to your favorite coffee shop, getting a delicious oat latte and like banging out some work for three hours. Or maybe it's about finding a co working space that feels really good to your body or like a nice hotel lobby that you enjoy working in. Or maybe it's about setting up a space in a corner of your house with a nice big monitor and like a nice keyboard that feels supportive and great chairs that feel like sometimes we can just make little changes and they really skyrocket our feeling for, and our for every day, right? Maybe it's just about getting like your favorite coffee maker, right? And your favorite coffee and making a ritual around starting your work day with something gorgeous, right? So there are ways that we can change up our work environment even if we don't change up our physical location like the city we're living in, right? There's also ways that your home environment can be changed up even if you don't move across country, right? Like, do you feel like the bedding on your bed? Like what, what little corners do you have a favorite chair with A lamp. That's your little reading corner. Do you have your kitchen that feels really amazing and energy giving. Like, do the spaces in your home feel energy giving? That's the question I want you to ask yourself or your playtime environments. Like, do you have a favorite place to go play? Right? What does that mean? Recently, I got a bike and I started. Instead of driving everywhere around town, I started biking everywhere around town. And I will tell you, I have this, like, infusion of joy whenever I ride my little blue bike with a basket around town. It just makes me happy to feel the wind in my hair and look up at the sun. Like, it just, it literally gives me joy. Do you have, like, little things that you can do to change up your play environment? Right? Because it's like work, home, play. Do you have those little things that you can think of how to change up your play environment? Or is it like, do you need to join a new gym, right? Or do you need to find. Take. Start taking tennis lessons, right? Do you need to do something that. That's an environment change, right? You're selling on the tennis courts once a week or twice a week, right? That's an environment change. So think about, are there ways that you could change up your play environment to make you more inspired? Because ultimately, as we' growing businesses and entrepreneurs, like, there's a lot of things we have to do that we don't really want to do. There's enough that we have to do that we don't want to do, but that we have to do and we can't get out of, right? So we want to make everything else around us as inspiring and as uplifting and as motivating as we can so that we have the energy to do the things that we would prefer not to do, but we have to do because we're committed to growing our businesses. So I hope this episode was helpful for you. In short, I just want you to think about the places that you've lived, the energy that those places have given you, and start thinking about, does the place you're currently living give you the energy that you want? And if not, could you be open to moving? Could you be open to moving? Right? Could you be open to moving? And if not, then think about your micro environments, the environment that you work in, the environment that you live in or sleep in, and the environment that you play in and create those environments so that they're energy giving and not energy sucking or energy draining. Because we need all the energy that we can get. We need to feel as alive as possible to fulfill our business dreams and to actually build businesses that make the impact that we want to make in the world and that actually allow us to live our dreams as well. So, so much love to you and I'll speak to you on the next episode.