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But I think the issue becomes when we feel like we have to do it exactly like someone else, and when we force those square pegs into a round hole and it doesn't fit and we feel uncomfortable the whole time, it's not going to feel good. Welcome to the Strategy Hour podcast brought to you by Boss Project. I'm your host Abigail Pumphrey and I'm dedicated to supporting online businesses. I don't believe in one right way to build a business. I'm here to help you build business your way, one that supports not only the life you have, but the life you want. I'm on a personal mission to help you become financially free. I'm taking all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a seven figure online business. I'm here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way. Whether you're creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business. Settle in. It's time to talk strategy. When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more at WhatsApp.com Teen adjective used to describe an individual whose spirit is unyielding, unconstrained, one who navigates life on their own terms, effortlessly. They do not always show up on time, but when they arrive, you notice an individual confident in their contradictions. They know the rules, but behave as if they do not exist. New Teen the new fragrance by Miu Miu defined by you. Have you ever hit a milestone you worked your entire life for, only to feel absolutely nothing? We so often decide how we're going to feel before we even get there, and we think if we arrive that somehow we will feel a certain way and it will change our lives. And we spend so much of our time and attention focused on our future selves that we forget how to live in the present. But it's not your fault. We were handed this invisible checklist when we were all kids. No one ever said it exactly explicitly out loud, but it was definitely expected. And I feel like every culture and every part of the the country or the world has like their own slight tweaks to it, but it's inevitably similar. Where we're supposed to get a good education, we're supposed to get a good job and buy that house and get married and have those kids and live that dream life. And you can insert all these other little expectations along the way. Like in certain cultures, you're expected to have a more professional career. And others, like you're lucky to make it to a university. And I'm not here to tell you what is good or bad or what is success or what isn't success, but I am telling you that we all thought we would feel a certain way if we did what we were told. If we did what society told us would make us successful. We wanted sounded great. And honestly, I think maybe in a different time, in a different era, probably without the Internet, some of those things could be true. Like if you were to check all those boxes, maybe life would be really good. But good isn't defined by how much money you make or where you live in the world or what kind of house you have or what kind of car you drive, or if you're married or if you're single or if you have a partner for life or. Or if you have children or not. Like that doesn't matter. It doesn't change who we are today. It doesn't change how we feel. It doesn't change our emotions in the moment. It just makes us compare ourselves to this inconceivably impossible representation of what a good life, what success, looks like. I think a big root of this problem goes back to childhood, where we were rewarded based on outcome. No one cared how hard you studied or how many reps you put in to memorize for that test. They only cared what you got right. They only cared about the result. And some kids had to work hard, incredibly hard to get there. They had to make flashcards and study with their parents and work on it and work on it, and they still wouldn't get it. And there'd be other kids that would open a book, look at it one time, show up to the test, and ace it every time, and a whole plethora of kids in between. But does that mean the person who didn't try and who did well on the test is more successful than the person that put in the work that worked really hard to understand and wanted to do a good job? Are they more successful than that person? I don't know. I mean, society would tell you it's really only one way. I think if you were to step back and look at it, you and I would both agree that of course the person who is putting in the effort deserves more. But we've created a culture in which we're rewarding outcome, we're not rewarding effort. And if you continue to reward outcome, then you are constantly trying to get new ones. You have to beat yourself at your own game. You have to continue to outdo yourself over and over and over again. And obviously, in a very toxic version of this, you have to outdo everyone else around you. But even if you're not playing that game, even if you're not doing the comparison game and you're only focused on you, you still have to be better than yourself all the time. And when you've worked really hard and you have done the reps and you have gotten better and you have accomplished incredible things, constantly outdoing yourself will eventually become absolutely impossible. I remember my mom as a kid, she would tell me, you can do anything you put your mind to. You were capable of anything. And I believed her. And in many ways, I still do. My mom was this representation of what was possible for my life before I was even born, before I was even a thought in her mind. She already worked for a hand surgeon, and she was dissecting cadavers to help them understand the muscle strength of certain digits on somebody's fingers so that if someone were to lose a finger, their thumb in particular, that they could pick a certain finger and rework it so someone could have a working hand. She was 18 before I was born. She had her first patent before I was born. She created and sold her first company. And by the time I was two and a half, she was on permanent disability. And I have no way of knowing if the clean room that she worked in, where she was working on microchips, because this woman was a genius, is a genius, was a genius. Arguable, right? If that was the reason for a brain tumor, I will never know. But when you come out of the womb and you see this woman in her early 30s and she tells you about her past, which is not all that long ago. And I was just in awe of her. I was in awe of everything that she did and everything she had accomplished. And I remember this feeling of, like, if my resume could be half as cool by the time I'm in my 30s, like, then I've made it, that was success to me. And I'd argue that my resume is pretty freaking cool. It is incredible the things I've been able to accomplish over the last 15 years of working in marketing. In the last 10 years running this company, I've been featured in Forbes and Inc. This podcast has been toted as one of the best podcasts for entrepreneurs. I've been interviewed by cnbc. I've filmed for a television show that never aired, but nonetheless, I what else have I done? Recorded nearly a thousand episodes of this podcast. I've been interviewed by some of the most brilliant minds in business and also had the opportunity to have them on my own show. I've hosted events that have brought in tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and had hundreds of people teaching. I've worked with over 40,000 small businesses. My website has been read in 189 different countries. And that's just the stuff on the top of my head. I could go on. I know there's so many more things I've accomplished. Like today just sitting is an accomplishment. Okay, just sitting. I'm on day 10 of IVF stimulation medication, so I am on very high doses of LH and fsh and my estrogen is through the roof and I'm sweating and uncomfortable and my body is bruised and I feel like I'm carrying around two water balloons that could pop at any second. And sitting today is an accomplishment. And I would love to tell you that for the last multiple hours that I laid crying in bed, that I felt that way, that I felt like sitting was an accomplishment, that I felt like the things I had done were worthy or enough or, you know, setting me up for the success that I wanted in the future. I wish I could tell you that was true. But I laid in bed beating myself up, that I couldn't do what I could normally do on an average workday, that I didn't have as much energy, that I didn't have as much stamina, that I didn't feel good. And I know I'm not alone in that. I know so many of you have gone through or currently going through a season where life is handing you a bag of dog shit. And this could be good stuff. Like Dayton of IVF is not a bad thing. I am so excited about the potential of starting my own family and also incredibly overwhelmed about what that looks like. So many of us hold these things in tension where the good thing is here and the bad thing is here, and they're intertwined and laced together and tied up in knots. But you don't have to have it all figured out. And maybe you can do anything, maybe that wasn't a lie. But either way, regardless of what they meant by all those pep talks when we were kids, the things that were meant to often empower us somewhere along the way became a set of rules that we felt like we had to follow. And if we weren't following them, we were failing. Or if we weren't following them, we weren't successful. Or if we weren't following them, we weren't smart. Or if we weren't following them, we were going to be ostracized from our community. Everyone wants to be loved and in community and supported. And they also want to feel good about the work they're doing and the things they're putting out into the world. And I want all of that to be possible without us constantly berating ourselves. We deserve love. We deserve to live a good life. We deserve to see ourselves as worthy. We deserve to live in the present. I know it's possible. I know it's something we can do together. I know it's something that we can work towards. But I don't think it's going to happen if we don't let some of these rules or misconceptions go. The things that we framed about success, if we don't undo these patterns, I think we're going to stay stuck. I think we're going to stay exactly where we are right now. And we will not have a path forward. We will not be able to pass go and feel good about it. This year I've been on my own sort of Eat, Pray, Love journey. Not necessarily spending a year abroad gallivanting across Italy and India and Bali by any means. But I have been trying to rediscover what I really want. Because when you've checked all those boxes and you've done all the things and you've gotten all the accolades and you've reached this level of success and you're unhappy, or it's not even that you're unhappy, but you just seem unsatisfied. I want to be content more of the time. I want to feel good in my body more of the time. I want to be present more of the time. And I've made a lot of strides to do that. I've spent more time outside, more time walking. I'm so proud of you. Know how your phone keeps track of your steps? My step daily step amount is up over a thousand steps from last year. That feels huge to me. I'm obviously moving my body more and that feels so good. I spent more time in prayer and reflection, in community. I've spent more time learning from other people and not being the one trying to lead. And all of those things have helped me stay more present, have helped me become more content. This morning I went for what normally would have been my long walk. But I did half my walk because I felt like I was waddling around with those water balloons and I was like, I gotta, I gotta go inside and sit down and I made myself some breakfast and I was sitting on my deck and it was a beautiful day in October and the sun is out and there's a light breeze and you can hear the birds chirping and my dogs are at my feet and I have a beautiful view in my backyard and I have nowhere to be. I had nothing on my calendar, I had no appointments, I had no obligations. Everything that I quote had to do was technically optional. Everything on my to do list is not an obligation. It's something I'm choosing to do. Want to learn exactly step by step how to get paid to generate leads in your business? I'm ready to give you the exact steps that help me generate tens of thousands of qualified leads and millions in low ticket digital product sales. I won't just show you what I did, but teach you how you can do it too. I'm talking not just how to create low ticket digital products, but also showing you how to use them strategically to generate leads for your other existing or future offers. I'm sharing it all@bossproject.com jumpstart including exactly how I made $8033 and generated 277 leads my very first month selling products. Find out more@bossproject.com jumpstart this episode is brought to you by Marshalls where you never have to compromise between quality and price. The buyers of Marshalls hustle hard working to bring you great deals on brand name and designer pieces because Marshalls believes everyone deserves access to the good stuff. Visit a Marshalls store near you or shop online@marshalls.com curious how I've added nearly 10,000 subscribers to my email list in just six months. Well, 9,528 to be exact. I want to share all of my strategies, all of my marketing, all of the behind the scenes with you. Head to bossproject.com leads right now to get this case study completely for free. That's bossproject.com L E A D S On the other side there's going to be a circle super quick 2 minute survey and I want to hear more from you about your current struggles with email marketing and what has you super excited to build an email list. Filling this out helps me deliver more quality content like this case study right here. So grab your copy. Now fill out that quick survey@bossproject.com leads. So you're about to make a trade based on a friend's text, but which you do you listen to, is it we could buy a house in Tulum, get optioning those options. We could lose everything. Or let's do a little research, get your head in the trade and make the investment decision that's right for you. Learn more@finra.org TradeSmart and that felt so good. It felt so good to sit there in that moment. But I think the reason I was able to get here after months and months of effort comes down to undoing these things. And do I think there's more than three? Probably. I'm still trying to like really pin down what they are because you deserve to know that. I want you to know that. I want to be able to gift that knowledge to you. I didn't spend the last year of my life trying to figure it out, to not be able to pass it along. But the first misconception may feel obvious when you look at it on the surface, but it takes a very, very long time to undo this way of thinking. This way of thinking is ingrained in you. It is like a neural pathway in your brain. We're talking you have to rewire things for this to become untrue. And the misconception number one is success is about doing more, that we need to grow constantly, that we have to scale, expand, that we have to better ourselves, that we have to do more, that we only measure progress. We look for validation, we look for applause. We look for people to say, you're doing a good job. But more is often a disguise for I don't know who I really am. I don't know who I am without this job, without being a mother, without I don't know who I am without being the one that people rely on who I am. If I'm not accomplishing something, if I'm not the expert without a to do list, I've lost my purpose. I don't know how I exist without that title. If I'm not building something, I feel like I'm just disappearing. I don't know how to measure myself without looking at the output. I don't know who I am without someone else needing me, who I am when no one's asking for help. We spend so long going for these titles like mom that you forget who you actually are. You just adopt the title like it's your only thing. But you're not just a caretaker or the glue or the one holding it all together. You're not their partner. You're not any of those things. Who are you without the business, without being a CEO? If you've built your whole identity around being a founder, what now? Who are you without being the one who's always leading, without being the brand, how do you separate yourself from it? Who are you if you're not busy? I don't know who I am without the applause or the recognition. What if I'm not impressive anymore? Am I still enough? Who am I without something to prove? Why do I always have to be the strong one? If I'm not achieving something, does that mean I'm failing? I built my worth around being capable, and without that, I feel lost. I've been in survival mode for so long, I don't know what peace feels like anymore. I don't know who I am outside of crisis mode. What happens when the noise stops and the silence becomes deafening? If you've built your life around the next goal and you don't know how to live without one, I'm terrified for what's next. Unless you let that go. Misconception number two. Success looks the same for everybody. We think there's a one size fits all approach, and we know that's not true. And yet we're always looking for one. Every time you go buy from an online business or an influencer, you're actually striving for uniformity. You want to be more like them. There's no right place or right time or right structure for every single person. My right time and your right time could be dramatically different things, but that doesn't make it any lesser, more successful. You could, of course, take someone else's steps and go far. I'm not saying that learning from other people is a bad approach. I've spent the last 10 years teaching online. If I thought teaching was a bad idea, I wouldn't be doing it. But I think the issue becomes when we feel like we have to do it exactly like someone else, and when we force those square pegs into a round hole and it doesn't fit and we feel uncomfortable the whole time, it's not going to feel good. And it's not to say that you should always be comfortable. Success isn't necessarily about always having the best day ever or always feeling like you have enough this or enough that. It's not about that. But we can't continue to think that if we all have the same set of things that we will all feel good. Now, this one, this one sucks. This one actually really, really sucks. And I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but success is not going to make you feel safe. Even if you get there, even if you have the things that do make you feel successful. That illusion of stability, having more money, more status, more control, it's not going to be what quiets your nervous system. If you've been stuck in survival mode for so long, if you've been living in anxiety and burnout and disconnection, suddenly having money land on your lap or a post go viral, or you win that client or you win that job, it's not going to make those things go away. It's not. You have to heal on your own. Money obviously gives you space and choices, and I am not denying that. But it's not going to make you feel safe all on its own. You're the one who has to work through your insecurities and the things that have left you broken along the way, the traumas that you've carried with you, the abuse from your past, if that's part of your story. Controlling every situation is not going to make you feel better. If anything, constantly trying to control the amount of money you make, the status you have, and putting safety nets around all that, all the time is only going to make you more anxious, more burnout, more disconnected. We want those things because we think they're gonna, like, fill a wound. And they're not. At some point, I had to sit back and ask myself, if I'm doing everything right, why does it feel so wrong? Why is the blueprint not working? Why is doing everything society said I should do not enough? If you've outgrown the metrics that you built your identity around, achieving more is not going to create a new experience if you're numb. Doing everything right is not going to make the numbness go away. All of this has been a huge inspiration for the book that I'm working on right now, because we've all been sold a lie. And I could continue to sit here and show you how to make more money and grow your email list and build the business of your dreams, but if that's not going to get you where you want to go, then why am I going to keep doing that? That's perhaps a story for another day, but I've been wondering if the very thing that has made you successful to this point is now what's actively destroying you? Things have to shift. We have to tell ourselves new stories. We have to get super curious. And this isn't about pulling ourselves away or doing a bunch of reflection on our own. If anything I've put myself out there more, just in new ways. I don't always think putting yourself out there more is writing a vulnerable post on Instagram. It could be, but usually not. A lot of that ends up being very superficial. I wonder if success isn't something you have to chase at all, but something you need to define for yourself. What if it had less to do with what you're building and more to do with how it feels? I have a client who was talking about her business and what has happened over the last number of months and the things that she's worked on and things that she hasn't. And she shared that she didn't feel like she was doing enough, like that she wasn't continuing to focus on this thing over here that she had previously thought so important. And I had to tell her that the reason you're not spending time over there is it was a means to an end. You did that so it could afford the life that you wanted. And now you're there, you have the house and the land and the animals and the kids and everyone's running around and it's beautiful chaos, right? But that was the beautiful chaos she'd been planning for the whole time. And she felt like if she worked more, that someday she'd get there. And, you know, she's a lucky one. She. She was someone that was able to willpower her way through the hard seasons to get to a point where she. She could have the life that she wanted. But I don't think you always have to have more willpower. I think you can love your life right now, even if it's not exactly what you expected. It makes me think about my first office. I think some of you have seen it written in an email or in my story on the website or something, but I've talked about my first office being a lawn chair and a five gallon bucket of paint. And I'm not kidding. Like I have the picture to prove it. We had just bought our first house and it was a 1960s fixer upper. And my now spouse and I, prior to getting married, had decided I was going to save and pay for the wedding and he was going to save and pay for the down payment for our house. Didn't need to work out that way, neither here nor there, but basically we had spent pretty much every dollar to our name in the previous six months. And here we are sitting in this house and we have nothing. We have a lawn chair. I bought him for his 21st birthday. Why? I bought my boyfriend a lawn Chair and a bunch of camping equipment. I don't know. I sometimes question my past as well. But at least we had the lawn chair because we had no other place to sit. We were sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of this carpet, this gold carpet. It was so gross. It was this gold carpet, shag carpet. And he had ripped up, thank God there was hardwood underneath it all. But we didn't own a piece of furniture. Everything was hand me downs or things we had quite literally pulled out of the trash. Especially dumpster day. On the day that most people move out of college. That is. That is the time to go thrifting. People will leave the craziest things behind. But we had nothing. And it would be so easy to look back on that time and say, that sounds miserable. You're literally sitting in an empty house with no money and you have this whole life ahead of you and how are you going to get anywhere? You have nothing. And I look back on that season and I see a woman who was determined and excited and invigorated and inspired and wanting to reach people and build community, and someone who spent her nights and weekends, you know, sanding drywall and ripping down wallpaper and spackling. And I will never get the smell of drywall dust out of my head. Like if someone even just says remodeling, I get flashbacks. And sure, there were plenty of bad things, there were plenty of hard moments, there were plenty of things that I would not want to relive. But I did a much better job then of living in the moment, of being there and being excited about where I was. Because every new thing was brand new. And when things don't stay new, when life changes and you can't just constantly be outdoing yourself anymore, it can feel really strange. But now that contentment comes from other things. It's not necessarily the like, go getter attitude of my early 20s, though. I love her. She was great. Highly confident, Kind of miss her sometimes. But I am much more content with other things now. I'm much more content reading a book and drinking a cup of hot tea and working on my needlepoint project and hearing the sounds in my neighborhood because we live kind of in the woods, just hearing animals and crickets and frogs and all the things, those are the things that light me up. And so I'm not asking you to figure it all out. I'm not saying you need to know what success means to you or how it's going to look or how you're going to get there in fact, I want you to do less of the how you're going to get there. Spend a lot less time there. I want you to be thinking about what should you be building that you actually want to maintain. What do you want your day to day life to look like? How can you do more of that right now? If you stop trying to prove your worth by achieving more, what would you do instead? Spend some time journaling? Spend some time listening in silence. I'm not necessarily saying to other people, I'm saying just like let things come to you voice, note your thoughts or write them down in your notes app, or jot them down in a notebook. You just have to stay curious. I think most people get success wrong not because they're lazy or ungrateful. They get it wrong because they're going after a definition that was given to them by someone else. I am so excited to be writing the book that is going to help you rewrite that future. Hey, a few quick favors before you leave. I'd love if you'd share today's episode, send it to a friend who needs to hear it and post on social. You can show us where you're listening from, your favorite takeaway, or why someone else should listen. Be sure to tag me at Abigail says and Boss Project so we can share it. Okay. Second favor to get podcast updates and all the behind the scenes news from Boss Project. I'd love if you join my VIP list. Just head to bossproject.com signup to make sure I have all your contact details. Really love this show. It would mean so much to me if you'd leave a rating and review it not only helps more listeners find the show, but allows us to bring on quality sponsors so we can keep bringing you this valuable content for free. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.