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- [00:00]
Steph Moy
Foreign.
- [00:04]
Courtney Johnson
Welcome to Slay the Gatekeeper.
- [00:06]
Unknown
I'm your host, Courtney Johnson, and I.
- [00:08]
Courtney Johnson
Am here to un gatekeep the gatekeep. Thank you so much for being here.
- [00:12]
Unknown
Enjoy.
- [00:16]
Courtney Johnson
Well, thank you for being here, Steph. I am so excited to chat with you. You're one of those people who I feel like I already know you because I love all your social content.
- [00:26]
Steph Moy
Well, likewise. You know what's crazy? I was just thinking about this. I know we originally connected on TikTok, but first of all, I appreciate you reaching out when I literally had like 1 5k followers or something. And now even like a month and a half later, I've grown a lot since then, but I hadn't even started posting on Instagram yet. I think you were like literally one of my first 10 followers on Instagram. So genuinely appreciate your support from the very, very, very beginning. I can say that about few people.
- [00:52]
Courtney Johnson
Well, I think what your content does really well is I love this idea of like information equity, where you're sharing the things that might be uncomfortable to share, but it's those things that maybe people that are really wealthy or successful do, and you want to educate people and I'm sure that could be uncomfortable at times. I'm sure you might have gotten some hate or some trolls.
- [01:12]
Steph Moy
Totally. As we all do.
- [01:15]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah. Well, beautiful. Steph, do you want to introduce yourself? Who are you? What are you working on? What do you talk about and share about?
- [01:24]
Steph Moy
Sounds good. Yeah. Well, my name is Steph full time. I'm a founder of a company called pin. It stands for power in numbers. We essentially do all the boring back or back office admin, legal admin, tax work to enable groups of people to form their own funds, like institutional funds, but full of retail investors to invest in startups that they care about. We started off really on my own journey at school hoping to do this for my classmates, where 60% of our class were unaccredited, meaning they were typically ineligible for traditional vehicles. So we invented our own. And now PIN has kind of taken over the boring admin work to create that for a bunch of other folks across different schools, YC and other VC funds, professional groups of all sorts, so on and so forth. And so it's a little bit of what I do full time. And then on the side, as of two months ago, I guess I've kind of dipped my toe in the content creator waters, if you will. Really kind of sharing more about what I've learned about equity, vc, business, school, so on and so forth. And it's been A really fun thing actually, to do both in parallel, building a company and also sharing it publicly as well.
- [02:24]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, building in public is really important and I'm sure that's going to be really supportive to pin of you having a strong personal brand.
- [02:32]
Steph Moy
Definitely. I'm excited about it. And thank you again so much for having me.
- [02:35]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah. Let's get into some of your cheat codes, which, again, these are pretty spicy cheat codes, which I absolutely love. The first cheat code is that if you want to be wealthy, don't optimize for a high salary. Why shouldn't you optimize for high salary and what should you do instead?
- [02:53]
Steph Moy
Yeah, that was my first ever video and I was so delighted that it took off and it was controversial. I think that's why it took off. And it really came from my learning of just seeing a lot of my peers and also mentors in finance actually kind of take very divergent paths. Some who kind of stuck it out in finance and who are climbing the corporate ladder and making really great salaries versus others who were more risk averse or, sorry, more risk seeking earlier on in their career to seek out opportunities, whether it's to start their own company, to make investments, to do things with a higher beta and variance so that they could have a very large outcome and exit. And I think the second thing as well is from my time in venture capital seeing kind of the variance of outcomes of people who start companies or invest or whatever else. It's so fascinating to me to see that even the most successful people, select celebrities, people who've made a lot of money through athletics or some other sort of talent, they're all getting into venture capital or starting their own businesses. I think we literally just saw this week, even Mr. Beast is literally making more money from feastables and from his e commerce businesses than he is his videos. And he's obviously wildly successful independently. And so I think something that I just care a lot about is making sure people realize that of course, trading your time for a high salary is really great. But if you want to break out from just trading your time for more money, really the way to do it is to create assets that scale. And a big way to do that is through equity, whether building your own company or investing in it and accruing it in other ways.
- [04:17]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, you share this example of Beyonce performed at Uber, and instead of billing them for the 6 million, which is her fee of performing, she, you know, asked for a stock and that ended up turning into 300 million, which is wild.
- [04:32]
Steph Moy
I mean, seriously. And There's a. It's so interesting to me too, the shift that I'm seeing across all different scales, both from obviously someone like Beyonce who already has a lot of money and is able to take risks like that all the way to even independent startup advisors that we see regularly who instead of taking an hourly salary or, you know, some kind of contracting deal with cash, they're doing it for equity instead. So that's been really fun to see.
- [04:54]
Courtney Johnson
I'm seeing that in the creator space as well with brand deals of. Some creators are opting into equity brand deals where they're almost acting as like a marketing consultant rather than cash. And that is one of my goals for 2025. I think that's so smart.
- [05:09]
Steph Moy
Incredible. I'm excited to hear about it.
- [05:12]
Courtney Johnson
Yes. I'll keep you updated on that. Okay, we have cheat code number two. And this is this idea of Kazan. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but an aggregation of marginal gains and improving yourself by 1% every day. What does this mean? How do you implement it?
- [05:26]
Steph Moy
Yeah, it is Kaizen. And the only reason I know that is because I got flamed in the comments for saying it exactly how you did, which is exactly what I thought. So now I know before people come at me again for it. But yeah, it's been one of the most powerful kind of learnings in my life, which is sometimes it's really hard to stay motivated until you see progress. That's why working out and becoming fit is so hard. Right? You might go to the gym for even two weeks straight and you might not see progress. And you can take that same analogy and apply it to anything professional as well. Like very few times dedicating yourself to even two weeks, which is very impressive in and of itself, is going to yield enough of a change to kind of keep you going. And so something that I've thought about is how even just taking a little bit of change every single day and realizing that it's not about the change that you see in one week, two weeks, but really just the compounded version of what you see over time has been a really powerful source, I'd say, related to that concept as well. Something that I've tried to internalize is that it's less about the outcome of whatever my goal is and the final destination, but really kind of enjoying the journey. And I think this framework is nice, where it breaks down a huge goal. Like in my case, building a really great company that I'm aspiring to and working hard to every day instead of focusing on just that and the achievement of that, Focusing on kind of like all the steps that I know are compounding over time to get there.
- [06:42]
Courtney Johnson
That's kind of the antithesis of this problem of perfectionism, where people think, once I have all of the steps in place, once I get that degree, once I have that piece of knowledge, then I will finally do it. But the problem is they. They never do it.
- [06:56]
Steph Moy
Totally. Exactly. And I relate to that so much because it feels like there's always a reason to push something off, whereas there's a lot of power and just feeling like, wow, you can do something about your goals today. Literally.
- [07:09]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah. I love this example from Atomic Habits where they say, if your goal is to go to the gym every day, what you. You don't need to focus on actually working out. You just need to focus on putting on your gym clothes and driving to the gym every day. Like, that is the first step. That is the 1%. Then maybe it's walking to the door of the gym, Then maybe it's working out for five minutes.
- [07:32]
Unknown
Right.
- [07:32]
Courtney Johnson
And then going home. And eventually you're going to build a habit so strong that you'll be at the gym every single day for an hour. But if you start with, I'm going every single day for an hour, that might be too overwhelming, you might fail, and then you're going to get in a loop where you're not trusting yourself and your goals. And it's a negative spiral.
- [07:49]
Steph Moy
100% that resonates so strongly.
- [07:52]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah. Okay. Cheat code number three. Take risks. 10 to 20% out of your comfort zone. I'm curious why you're recommending 10 to 20% instead of 500%.
- [08:04]
Steph Moy
Yeah. This is a concept from a popular class at GSB called Touchy Feely. And it actually. Their framework actually talks about taking 10 to 20% risks, mostly emotionally. So imagine you have this really daunting, heavy conversation coming up, or you're really scared of confrontation, and you historically kind of shy away from having direct conversations. They kind of coach people to take smaller risks 10 to 20% outside of your comfort zone. So rather than jumping into probably the most direct, scary conversation, maybe just start with something that maybe you'd feel a little bit uncomfortable saying to someone that you feel a little bit more comfortable around where the stakes are lower. Um, something that I've loved is that I've extended that to other things in my life where I've seen or I think I used to do things like exposure therapy in extreme cases. Like, I'm terrified of heights and I force myself to go bungee jumping, things like that. I think on a day to day basis where the stakes are a little bit higher professionally or in social situations, it's a little harder to do. Although some people, especially on TikTok as we've seen, are doing that very boldly. Um, but what I think it. What I love about it is that it helps me more manageably continuously expand outside my comfort zone, since every time I take a risk 10 to 20% outside of it, my existing comfort zone just expands a little bit more and it feels a little bit safer, if you will.
- [09:16]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, that's so beautiful. And I will recommend the listeners if you want to dive into this topic more.
- [09:21]
Unknown
The Big Leap is a really good.
- [09:23]
Courtney Johnson
Book that dives into how to expand the edges of your comfort zone. But no, I think this is really important. Like going back to the gym. Example from Atomic Habits. If you're constantly going 2x3x10x outside of your of your comfort zone, you might overwhelm your nervous system or your psyche so much that you shut down in order to feel comfort. So pushing the boundaries without completely overwhelming yourself is such a sustainable way to continue growth. That's not going to burn you out. I love that. I almost call this like microdosing discomfort. Where are the little. Oh, I love things that you can become uncomfortable today. Like that might just be talking to somebody new at an event or you know, having that hard conversation.
- [10:07]
Steph Moy
Totally love that.
- [10:09]
Courtney Johnson
Okay, cheat code number four. The 90 day rule. Forcing yourself to do something for 90 days before you quit. Tell me about this one.
- [10:18]
Steph Moy
Yeah, I mean, this I think relates to the Kaizen concept that we talked about a couple of ones ago, which is if you just commit to doing something every day for 90 days. And your example too, I think is great. Like just I want to work out for every day for 90 days. And I'm not committing to a full hour or anything, but at least I'm committing to wearing gym clothes and showing up at the gym. I feel like it detaches the outcome and the potential success or not of that outcome from the actual journey. And building the habit in my. In my experience ends up being like more than half the battle. Right? It's not about even the 90 days or whatever it is. It's about building a habit to make it feel like second nature and therefore hopefully creating something that'll sustain past the 90 days. But at least I promised myself I'll do it at least for 90 days. And at that point, that's when I'll reevaluate. Is this serving my life well? Am I liking this? Is it serving my goal, etc. But at least it forces me to know that, okay, I'm not even going to think about it. I'm doing it for 90 days. In regards to whether it's successful or not. Doesn't matter, because I'll evaluate it then instead of now.
- [11:18]
Courtney Johnson
Super helpful. And that also gets you past that, the emotional barriers. Maybe you're coming up on 20 or 30 days and you're feeling the dip. You're feeling that emotional decline. Knowing that you just have to get to 90 days, even if it's imperfect, is really great. Another book recommendation. The Dip, really fantastic. Talks about this as well. What I do is I do a hundred reps. It doesn't have to be days in a row. But before I quit something, I'm like, I got to do a hundred reps of it. For example, Instagram threads. I'm like, I'm going to test it out and I just need to get a hundred reps in. And then. And then I can decide if I want to use the platform or not. Or even my podcast. When I first started, I'm like, I don't know if I want a podcast, but I'm going to put out 100 episodes. And only after the hundred episodes, I can decide. Because if you're stopping at 10 or the 20th rep or the 30th rep, there's just not enough data to tell you if there's progress or not.
- [12:11]
Steph Moy
Totally. And actually, it's funny. Mr. Beast has a quote that I love where he talks about how when people ask him for advice on how to create videos, he doesn't give advice until someone's created 100 videos, and then they come back to him and he'll give more nuanced advice. But really, it's about the reps. Like your mentioning it is.
- [12:26]
Courtney Johnson
I mean, the questions that people ask me about content creation are all procrastination questions. So, like, what time of day should I post? What topics perform best? What format? And I'm like, none of that matters if you're not posting. And the answer to the question is different for everyone. So show me your top performing post and I'll give you your strategy. But if you don't have enough data to tell you your outliers, it's not going to work.
- [12:49]
Steph Moy
Yes, Procrastination questions. That's such a. That is so. That resonates so much. In my experience. It truly is just the biggest and best Procrastination tool. And dangerous, too, because it makes it feel like you're actually doing something when you're not. Is my experience.
- [13:04]
Courtney Johnson
You're, like, intellectualizing. Intellectualizing it. Okay, Cheat code number five. We have interview biases. So actually, my most controversial posts ever are posts that I put out about interviews and biases in interviews. So I really love to see this because people might feel triggered by these biases, being like, well, I don't wanna work at a place where people are biased or I don't wanna work. It's like, this is human nature, and you can learn it, use it, exploit it, or let it control you. So the first bias is recency bias and primacy bias. Am I saying that right? Or primary bias?
- [13:43]
Steph Moy
Yeah, definitely.
- [13:45]
Courtney Johnson
What are these in relation to an interview?
- [13:48]
Steph Moy
Yeah. First of all, I couldn't resonate with that more. I have a. Like, there's a video of mine, one of my top, most performing videos, in part because it's so controversial, where we talk about kind of how people amass power and people feel so uncomfortable by the idea that people are doing, you know, transactional, sociopathic things to amass power in a corporate environment. And I can understand why it makes people uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable as someone who doesn't really like politics. But at the end of the day, if that's how things work, understanding the system and how you can at least use them in your favor is so valuable. So I appreciate that you bring. I appreciate you bringing that up because I think it's such a powerful point in my experience with the interviews. And I've seen this actually on both sides of the table, both as an interviewee and as an interviewer. Especially for the bigger companies where they're interviewing literally hundreds of people for a small subset of roles, you become one of a hundred candidates. Right. It's really hard to stand out. And so the reason for this bias that I brought up is making sure that you best position yourself to stand out amongst a pool of 100 candidates. And in our experience, the people who are at the very, very beginning of the day or at the very end of the day end up being the ones who rise to the most, you know, top, or end up being most top of mind when people are debriefing at the end of the day and deciding who to hire.
- [15:00]
Unknown
Interesting.
- [15:01]
Courtney Johnson
So you want to try to schedule in the morning or in the afternoon.
- [15:05]
Steph Moy
Totally. The middle is where everyone gets fuzzy, tired from lunch, lethargic, you know. Yes. Beginning around.
- [15:12]
Courtney Johnson
That's good. And then we have the the halo effect. This is your appearance, right?
- [15:19]
Steph Moy
Yes, it's all, I mean, pretty privilege is maybe the, the phrase that people hear about most, but really it's just that people who put, or who look more well put together end up being seen as smarter, funnier, more competent. You know, another video of mine that went super viral that people had controversy around is like how attractive is too attractive and whether that ends up hurting you. But for the sake of this conversation in general, putting your best foot forward in looking presentable. And that's I admit, hard for me as someone who works for myself and tends to dress very casually and likes to lay low, but doing, you know, going the extra mile to do your hair or do your makeup or whatever it is in my experience really does make a first impression, really make a difference. And that's why I think at least acknowledging that that's the bias that people have is really important.
- [16:03]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, and I want to reiterate again, like you might be thinking, well, I don't want to work at a company where they are being judgmental about my appearance. It is not happening consciously. Hiring managers tend to be like pretty inclusive. They're, they're the ones that are most trained on inclusivity. However, these are parts of human behavior. Like this is in our biology. We cannot change people's subconscious biases. Like our brains are pattern recognition with machines. And it could like you could even have bias in an interview, something so subconscious, like maybe the interviewer's ex girlfriend name was Steph and so they actually like subconsciously really don't like anyone named Steph.
- [16:44]
Steph Moy
Totally.
- [16:45]
Courtney Johnson
There are so much biases you can run run up again. There's also positive biases too, like wearing glasses. People tend to associate someone wearing glasses being smarter. You know, having certain backgrounds might have different biases of positive or negative. So our last bias is fundamental attribution error, not depending on people giving you the benefit of the doubt. What does this one mean?
- [17:12]
Unknown
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- [17:55]
Courtney Johnson
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- [17:57]
Unknown
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- [19:32]
Courtney Johnson
I created Sunrise Content Club because I.
- [19:35]
Unknown
Really desired accountability in my content creation. How it works is we meet on Zoom every single weekday from 8 to 9am we get on the Zoom, we play some fun music, we have a little mindful moment and then I give you a content prompt and we spend about 45 minutes working on this prompt together. In this time you can ask questions, get feedback on your content and at the end we all share our wins and we also share our content that we have created during that time so we all get an initial boost because we are liking and commenting on each other's posts. There's also a really fun and supportive group chat where you can ask questions, share your content, get accountability. The Sunrise Content Club is an incredible way to stay consistent in your content creation and have community support. It is especially helpful with folks with ADHD who find value in body doubling. For a very limited time you can join the Sunrise Content club for just $99 a month. This is a very special limited time founders rate and I am so excited to see you guys there. Join the Sunrise Content Club today.
- [20:42]
Steph Moy
Yeah, this one was a really interesting one for me because I think that I've experienced this both, like, on the receiving end and also, you know, as I kind of talk to other folks. And it's the idea that you interact with someone and you attribute your interactions with them to their character rather than circumstances around it. Right. So imagine you're driving on the road and someone cuts you off. Very rarely in that moment are you thinking, oh, that person's, you know, driving their pregnant wife to the hospital, and that that's why they cut me off. You know, you're more likely to think, oh, that guy's horrible. He's a terrible driver. He's a horrib person. He wanted to cut me off. He's angry. And there's obviously, like, micro interactions of that every single day. And I think understanding that people are going to interact with you and have an impression of you and they're not going to naturally give you the benefit of the doubt is so powerful because it gives you the ability to control the narrative, or at least it has encouraged me to control the narrative in a way where I wouldn't have before. One example of that is if I'm having a bad day because I am so tired from the night before, or I had a work blow up that's really causing me to act differently. I will actually just tell people I don't use it as an excuse to justify bad behavior, but I just say, hey, you know, just want to give you a heads up. I'm showing up today maybe like 60% of my best self because I had a really long night last night because of XYZ reason. And at least acknowledging it and putting that on the table gives the opportunity for the other person to use that to judge you rather than, you know, completely not knowing any context and judging you, thinking that's, you know, how you are as a person all the time.
- [22:08]
Courtney Johnson
Wow. Yeah, that's super helpful to bring into really any interaction because there's also the. I'm not. I don't remember the name for it, but there's a bias that our first impression is the lasting impression. So if you meet someone for the first time and you're kind of being an asshole, it doesn't matter how nice you are later, they're gonna still clock you as an asshole. So maybe sharing, yeah, why you're not showing up 100% that day.
- [22:33]
Unknown
I think that's.
- [22:33]
Courtney Johnson
That's awesome. And really, any interaction.
- [22:36]
Steph Moy
It reminds me of this video that we had to see probably in school at some point, where professors were giving lectures and there was actually no audio for any of the lectures. And it was so fascinating that students were asked to judge from that 10 second video of an audio less lecture of a professor and judge the competence of that professor. And they found that after those same students took the class with those same professors, their exact same impression from that 10 second audio less clip was basically very highly correlated with their assessment, even after a whole semester of actually having them. So the power of a first impression, even without the full picture of knowledge around someone is really powerful. To your point.
- [23:12]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, very important. Cheat code number six. This one is surprising, and that is take selfies with famous people that you meet or just people that you admire. Take a photo with them. Why are you going to take a photo with them?
- [23:28]
Steph Moy
It's simple, but so brilliant. And that's actually literally the CEO, former CEO Google, excuse me, the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, taught one of our classes and he was the one who told us this, which is take selfies with people, especially people that you want to stay in touch with or who are admirable to you because it'll actually encourage them to respond later. And so I remember actually I took a selfie with him with my classmate at the time during our final presentation, taking his advice literally. So we have a selfie with him too, that if we ever need to contact him in 20 years, we hope will open the door for him to respond to us. But I thought that was so smart because obviously people meet hundreds of thousands of people over the course of their entire career and you're just not going to remember all these micro interactions. But showing kind of that personal touch and sparking a positive memory is so key. And how many people actually remember to do that? I feel like a cold email and one of, you know, a thousand that might be in this person's inbox would really stand out with something like this. So I try to remember whenever I can. Now.
- [24:26]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, I think that also goes back to cheat code number three of taking these risks that are just a little bit outside of your comfort zone. Maybe it's a little out of your comfort zone to go talk to that person, approach them, ask for a photo. That's a great way to microdose discomfort. Also, I highly recommend if you guys want to see a really good example of this Avni Barman, great example. She's. She's great at this.
- [24:52]
Steph Moy
She's so. Yes. That girl is incredible. I feel like my comfort zone is like 1/16 of her just normal being. And I aspire to be more bold like her. She's awesome.
- [25:04]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah. I met her last week at south by, and she was just so great, like chatting with everyone, meeting everyone. I'm like, wow, I really, I really admire you. So anyways, go search Avni Barman on Social and find the examples of selfies with famous people. Okay, last cheat code, that is. There's some rich habits that will improve your life that you have three of these and the first one is to hire a coach.
- [25:30]
Steph Moy
Yeah. Oh my gosh. This is one of the biggest things that shocked me. I grew up like in an immigrant family where you're taught to self learn. Especially with the rise of YouTube and so many just online resources, sometimes it feels silly to pay extra for information that could hypothetically be free and likely is free on YouTube and other resources, but something that I found fascinating, especially amongst my classmates or even my old bosses and mentors, et cetera. They view time as money. And so to them, even though information is literally free at their fingertips, they view the time savings that they would have of paying someone to teach them everything that they need to know instead of them kind of swimming through the Internet trying to find it themselves to be hugely, hugely valuable. I've seen this especially with founders as well, who are kind of swimming through different ideas. Instead of kind of wasting two to three months on new ideas, they're able to talk to folks, coaches, experts, et cetera, to shorten their learning curve from say three to four months down to one to two. And that helps them over the course of their career. We talked about the 1% compounding over time. I feel like that just expedites that 1% so much faster.
- [26:34]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, I know. I've recommended a lot of books, but for the listeners, a book that's really helpful in implementing this is called who not how, who not how. And basically it states the same thing of you have a problem come up, let's say, or something you want to test out? Let's say you want to start a podcast. Instead of figuring out how to do it, figure out who. Figure out who is the person that already has that specific unique knowledge that can give you the right path. You save so much time, you might talk to somebody for an hour and save weeks, months, even years of trial and error. I think that's incredible.
- [27:11]
Steph Moy
Totally, totally.
- [27:13]
Courtney Johnson
All right. Our next rich habit is stop thinking about small money decisions or small money problems or issue. Instead, think about the bigger money decisions and issues. So maybe you're not arguing over that extra $5 accidental charge. You're arguing over something that's much bigger. So tell, tell me about this because I feel like a lot of people do get stuck in that, oh, I got overcharged or this, I bought this thing and I need to return it. But it was $7.
- [27:41]
Steph Moy
Yeah, I fall into that trap all the time on principle alone. I feel irked when I feel like I'm owed something and I don't have it, even if it's, you know, less than $10. It's not about the money, it's about the principal. But I've realized that I waste so much time. And it's not only just the time, it's the emotional energy that goes into the frustration of having to coordinate the admin stuff of it to follow up that I felt like was really draining and just a negative part of my life in general. And something that I've seen from again, very successful classmates, mentors of mine, or people further along in their career is that they let that stuff go. Not because they don't believe it's right on principle or anything, but because they just know that their time is limited. And instead of focusing on these small wins or kind of righting wrongs, they spend those times focusing on big money things. Whether again, it depends on everyone's scale, whether it's like tax optimization for their portfolio or how to earn more money for example, or they're purchasing a house, how do they actually save money on that transaction and learning kind of the ins and outs there rather than again saving on these micro things, whether it's the $5 coffees or the returns that you forget, etc.
- [28:43]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, and your time has a, has a cost. Like I think it's really important to understand what your approximate hourly rate is and if it's worth that emotional mental and time energy to fix whatever problem that is. A lot of times for me it's not if I buy something for $10 and I need to return it, or maybe I make a few hundred dollar mistake and like end up getting the wrong person. Whatever, you gotta let that shit go and try to worry about the bigger figure decisions and problems.
- [29:15]
Steph Moy
Totally. Yep. And it's so easy to get caught up in that over and over again. And it's just like a habit to break. Versus yeah, in my experience it's been very hard to kind of like go back and forth between them. And so the more that I've kind of deprioritize that as like a habit that I get into of one that I spend emotional energy on, the more time I have freed up for kind of other bigger decisions to make.
- [29:36]
Courtney Johnson
Totally Totally.
- [29:37]
Unknown
Okay.
- [29:38]
Courtney Johnson
And then the last rich habit, our last cheat code, is that you are the sum of the five people you spend the most, most time with. Before you chat about this, I just want to share this workshop that I did with the author of Miracle Morning at South by Southwest last week. This was a really problematic workshop. It was. The author took it pretty far. But I'm just going to share what he shared because it is. It does have truth. So he made us write down the five people we spend the most time with. We had to write down their approximate fitness, like their weight or how fit and healthy they are. We had to write down the approximate amount of money that they make and rank them on each core values. Then we saw. We averaged them and saw the fitness level we statistically will be at, the money we will statistically be at, and the expression of our values we will statistically be at. And it's true. Like, it is hard to hear. It was very confronting, but. But it's true. This is a trite piece of advice that has a lot of truth. So what do you. What do you think about that exercise? I'm afraid to post a video about it because I'm afraid I'm gonna get canceled.
- [30:51]
Steph Moy
Well, okay. Actually, one thing that. One of the videos that you've made that I loved the most was you make one about, like, how to bait trolls. And it's. I mean, in my experience, again, short experience of a couple months doing this, all of my top performing videos are the ones that were seen as the most controversial, even if I didn't mean it to be. And so for me, first of all, I think people get upset about anything. But two, I feel like, if anything, lean into that. I think that's really. That's a really interesting exercise, to be honest. I have found that to be so, so, so true in my experience. Like, I've actually even thought about that in regards to my optimism or cynicism as one kind of small example for that. My mood is so drastically different depending on the environment that I'm in. And obviously, the people that you spend time with are the most, you know, or a big part of your environment. And so I started to realize that, especially with work environments. For example, when I was in, you know, an intense finance work environment where everyone's super intense and competitive and you're there literally 90% of your waking hours, that had a huge difference and impact on my optimism, my happiness, my motivation, etcetera, versus when, you know, now I'm working on my own company, have a Lot more freedom to choose who I spend time with, people who are a lot more independent and free thinking and ambitious in a different way, et cetera. And I've noticed a change in myself just in that, you know, very kind of short time. And I think the same thing for friends and family, et cetera. It's just. It's hard to be around people and not pick up their habits in the same way that if you spend enough time with someone, you start to literally pick up their mannerisms and the words they say, et cetera. People's habits and how they think about things literally just rub off on you. It's one of the most powerful functions for change, both for better and worse. So, anyway, that doesn't surprise me that that exercise was done. It makes a lot of sen to me.
- [32:33]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, it's. It's definitely powerful. I. I think it's important to go where your goals are normalized, like, not necessarily a place where everyone is trying to accomplish your goal. Let's say your goal is to, you know, raise your first million dollars for your startup. Instead of only surrounding yourself with people who are also trying to raise, surround yourself with people who have raised, who have raised 1 million or 10 million or 50 million, where it's normalized and seen as not a big deal. If your brain sees something as not a big deal, it is inevitable that it will happen for you.
- [33:07]
Steph Moy
Totally. That rings so true for me too, like, even just. Or even just seeing something as possible for you. And that's why role models and all these things in the public eye and media is so important. But I've seen this even for myself where, like, for entrepreneurship. I remember growing up, or even when I was in finance, it's just like I had never met an entrepreneur who had done those things. And so I'd always bucketed those people in my mind as, like, these special people who had these skills and. Or happened to be born in San Francisco and had these connections until I was fortunate enough to work in an industry where I was exposed to, you know, thousands of entrepreneurs. Got to see, like, actually, that's not true. There are people who look like me who came off from or came from very different backgrounds without even the connections that I have, who've done it successfully. Just making it feel real, I think is supremely powerful. So I love that example that you gave up because I think it's just. It rings so true to me.
- [33:56]
Courtney Johnson
Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. I've also found this is like one of my other pretty problematic cheat codes. But if you're single, I find that you can learn a lot of that in dating. Like, surround yourself. You can date founders. You can date people that you know are doing. Doing big things and kind of see that they're just like normal people with problems that just have audacity.
- [34:16]
Steph Moy
Oh, I love that. That is a great cheat code. That's like, hey, you gotta use your. Your whatever you have to your advantage. And I love that framing.
- [34:26]
Courtney Johnson
Oh, my gosh. Dating for networking is great. Okay, speaking of audacity, my last question, really, to everyone that comes on the show is how they. How they got their audacity. Just their confidence that they can do anything. And I know you're sharing that. You come from an immigrant. An immigrant family. I find a lot of times, like, friends that come from immigrant families have a hard time doing that. They have a hard time stepping into this audacity and high risk tolerance. When you've been conditioned in a space with kind of a low risk tolerance, very, like, safe path laid before you. So how did you. How did you gain the audacity?
- [34:58]
Steph Moy
Yes. Oh, I love that question. And that. That rings so true in my experience. It's funny, I talk about this a lot, but I did grow up in an immigrant family, and I think my parents do have, you know, a more conservative outlook in general. And I remember I just started my company, I think, four or five years ago now, or my first company four or five years ago. And up until that point, like, literally up until the time I decided to do it, I would get into fights with my mom all the time about this dream of what I had of to start my own company versus, you know, I'd come from, like, a finance background, working at these very stable firms with great careers and career trajectories. And that was a point of contention literally up until the moment I actually decided to do it. And I think it was, like, a couple things that finally, like, flipped the switch for me. One is realizing that we only have one life to live. And I'd seen that through a lot of. I mean, just. I think actually one of the more powerful examples is, like, when I worked in venture capital, being able to see kind of, like the full spectrum of outcomes of people again, meeting hundreds, if not thousands of entrepreneurs, some very successful, some unsuccessful people from very different backgrounds. Just the deep admiration I had for them, regardless of where they came from, how they turned out, etcetera, Was just so inspiring to me that it really kind of struck a chord with me is like, this is something that I want to do. And then I think the second is realizing that even if I'm very fortunate now to have very supportive friends and family who kind of really support the goals that I've had, and it's taken a while. So I will say also patience will get you there. But also finding the people. Exactly. Kind of what we just talked about in this last cheat code of finding people who are supporting you and giving you kind of the examples and the. Or, sorry, how do I rephrase this? Finding the people that are actually going to support you in your biggest dreams, I think has been the biggest cheat code. And the reason that I have the audacity that I do, I'm so inspired by my friends, for example, who, you know, some of them are founders, some of them are in medicine, some of them are writing books and authors and comedians, et cetera. They're all just shooting really, really big and surrounding yourselves with those people who are dreaming so much bigger than you otherwise would on your own, I think just gives me so much light and excitement and a feeling like, I can do it. We can all do it. You know, we're all in this together. So that's really what inspires me.
- [37:08]
Courtney Johnson
Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, Anyone, literally anybody, can do it. Anybody can accomplish your goals like you are deserving of it. You can do it. It's really just gaslighting yourself to believe that it's possible. That's it. That's it.
- [37:22]
Steph Moy
Yes, totally. And it's a numbers game. That's the other thing, too. Number of shots on goal is everything. So just keep it.
- [37:29]
Courtney Johnson
Keep your reps in total. Well, thank you for coming on, Steph. Where can people find you, follow you, maybe? How can they learn more about pin?
- [37:41]
Steph Moy
Yeah. Thank you for having me. Find me on all platforms. I need to consolidate eventually the handles, but you can find me at Steph, the founder on Instagram or startup Steph on TikTok. And then I'm also fairly active on Twitter. And that's just my name, Steph Moy M U I. And PIN is linked on all of those very heavily. So you're welcome to be led to to the website from any of those sources.
- [38:04]
Courtney Johnson
Awesome. Thank you so much.
- [38:06]
Unknown
Okay, y'all, if you like this episode.
- [38:08]
Courtney Johnson
You would love, love my Patreon. Okay? You get exclusive access to me, exclusive content, tons of other resources, and a lot of juicy shit. Okay? So I hope to see you on my Patreon.