Episode 273: The Have It All Method™ Live from NeueHouse

Welcome to a special edition of the Powerful Ladies Podcast. This episode was recorded live in Venice, California, on April 25th, 2024, at NeueHouse. It’s an amazing discussion about my Have It All Method™ featuring myself and three of my favorite entrepreneurs: Maurice Philogen, who flew in all the way from Lebanon; KJ Atlas, whose solo Powerful Ladies episode you may have heard (if not, go back and listen!); and Chris Grubisa, one of my favorite humans and the founder of the production company Chrilleks and his new venture, Let’s Cook, all about video editing and community.

• Show Notes

  NeueHouse Vince Beach

  KJ Atlas Powerful Ladies Podcast Episode

  Chris Grubisa Powerful Couple Podcast Episode

  Maurice Philogene Podcast

• Transcript

  Follow along using the Transcript

  Chapters:

  (00:00:01) – Welcome to the Have It All Method Live at NeueHouse

  (00:02:15) – Why Redefining Success Changes Everything

  (00:07:40) – Entrepreneurship, Identity, and Letting Go of the Script

  (00:13:05) – How to Build a Life That Actually Feels Good

  (00:20:30) – The Role of Patience, Surrender, and Doing the Work

  (00:27:55) – Getting Unstuck with Money, Meaning, and Self-Trust

  (00:35:10) – You Can't Have It All Without Self-Responsibility

  (00:41:30) – The Power of Community, Curiosity, and Showing Up Fully

    📍 📍 📍 📍 📍 Welcome to a special edition of the Powerful Ladies Podcast. I'm your host, Kara Duffy. This episode was recorded live in Venice, California on April 25th, 2024 at NeueHouse. It's an amazing discussion about my have it all method featuring myself and three of my favorite entrepreneur. Maurice Philogene, who flew in all the way from Lebanon, KJ Atlas, whose solo Powerful Latest episode you may have already heard.

  If not, go back and listen. And Chris Grubisa, one of my favorite humans and the founder of the production company Krillix and his new venture, Let's Cook, all about video editing and community. He and his wife have also been featured in a Power Couple episode previously as well. So listen to that if you haven't as well.

  All the ways to follow and support this panel are in our show notes at thepowerfulladies. com. But until then, please enjoy this episode.

  Hey guys, thank you so much for being here. I'm Kara Duffy. I am a business coach, consultant, educator. I also run The Powerful Ladies. It's a media company. We have a great podcast. There's some podcast guests in the audience tonight. And this conversation about how to have it all is so important. so important to me.

  It's one of the core things I work with my clients on. It's a core fundamental belief that I have about just living life in general. And I have picked three incredible other fellow entrepreneurs who are also living this methodology. So I'm excited to get into this tonight. Talk about how it works, how it's true, how it's a lie.

  How can you actually have the life that you want? But I'm going to allow my amazing guests to introduce themselves. We'll start with Maurice.

  She caught me off guard. What's up people? My name is Maurice. I go by Mo, that's easier. I split my time between Washington DC and Lebanon. I'm usually in the Mediterranean somewhere. I met the amazing Kara at a conference that I flew to a couple of weeks ago. Professionally, which I think is important, I am a real estate investor.

  I run a media company called Trilife on Media, where I run a podcast, do coaching, and am doing some TV projects now. And relative to the method that we're talking about, For 25 years, I was an executive at a corporate firm. I was a street cop for 15 years at the same time. I was also a federal agent at the same time.

  Yes, it's all possible.

  I was a real estate investor, while I was being an actor on TV, while I was It's traveling the world 100 countries, 300 times. If you want something, you can focus on it, right? We can create and protect time. And I think that's why Kara asked me to come to talk about that journey and tell you guys what I know.

  I'm going to pull my seat up real quick so I can see your face. We were going back and forth about up chair, back chair. And the amazing KJ Atlas.

  Hi everyone. I'm KJ. I'm a professional astrologer. I'm a spiritual business coach and a relocation specialist. I use astrology as my main tool to do all those things.

  I'm a guide, a coach, and I create tools to make connecting with yourself, the seasons and nature a lot easier. This is a very unconventional niche and it is possible to do things that are extremely unconventional and go against the grain. to follow your true self and to give that to the world and give other people permission for that.

  And I'm also a seasoned digital nomad, but I'm based here in LA after living all across the time zones in the United States. I'm originally from North Carolina. I've lived in Texas, Portland, Oregon, and many different countries, many different states and cities in Mexico. And now LA is home for the last two years and continuing to Make many new connections here that LA is such a beautiful place to connect and meet people like there is So much potential here.

  Thank you all for being here.

  Thanks for having me, Kara.

  Of course.

  And then last but not least, Chris Grubisa.

  I'm Chris. We do video editing. We do it for brands, creators, agencies, media companies that say creators and podcasters. We do it out of long beach, California. Trying to think what else you can.

  Prompt me towards, yeah, I'm a father, I'm a husband entrepreneur who happens to video edit.

  One of the first things I want to talk about is the fact that most people are not operating in a way where they're thinking that we can have it all. We are either stuck in whatever cycle we were raised with or told from school or the career we're in.

  How did you first see that you could have a different life and the one that you wanted? And when did you decide to break free from whatever prior existence you had before going after what you wanted? Anyone can jump in.

  I got exposed to it when I was 15. So I went on a trip to France. So I grew up in Boston. I was born in New York, raised in Boston, live in D. C. So I'm all East Coast every day. This is very odd for me to be on this side. But I went on a trip to France when I was 15 years old.

  30 days an exchange student's family that stayed with me the previous year. I went with him. Rode around the country for 30 days in an old stick shift Range Rover. It exposed me to culture in a way that I didn't understand growing up in Boston. So that was the first thing. Then the second, so it was, there was a series of events.

  The second event was I read a financial book when I was 21 coming out of college. I just didn't want to fall into the credit card trap. I found the phrase passive income and something clicked with me, which said if I can generate money without physically having to be somewhere, I would have time. If I had time, I could go to other places and have those kinds of experiences around the world. It set me off on this journey of buying real estate to earn financial freedom. So it's not that I started something and then left it. I actually did everything at the same time. When I earned financial freedom working at that firm, I started declining promotions because I was very aware that if I took them, like for example, when they asked me to be partner, nah, that's another 40 hours a week that I don't want.

  So what I did was I kept strategically taking those paychecks. Kept strategically buying real estate very quietly. And then would pursue passions outside of work, like being a street cop acting on TV and things of that nature. And that's how I figured it out. It was just this very visceral thing that life is about experiences and relationships.

  And then money was a tool to get it. So I found a way to get the money to get the experiences.

  Okay, thank you.

  Well, I was going to start this off by saying astrology isn't something you really choose. It's kind of like a calling. And then I was like, that makes me sound like a televangelist. But it is, it is like that.

  I didn't plan this. I grew up in a town of about generously 600 people. I'm not kidding. And I didn't have a lot of mirrors. I didn't see business women. I didn't see spiritual people. My first connection was like, Oh, I saw this young, cool person eating hummus. And I think that's what cool artsy people eat.

  And I think I need more of that. And it kind of led me on this breadcrumb path. I loved arts, I loved theater, and then I got really, really sick when I was 17. Like, I almost died. I got a diagnosis of lupus, and when you get that at 17, it really rocks your world. And I was like, I'm not going to spend my whole entire life in hospital rooms trying to deal with this.

  I'm going to figure out ways to heal myself, mind, body, spirit. So I went to the thrift shop, in the small town to try to find books of all kinds. So I got palmistry and herbalism and Jungian archetypes and all these random things, how to heal yourself naturally. That's a scary rabbit hole, just letting you know, especially now.

  And I realized that there's something magical about the mind body spirit connection, and we don't talk about it enough, especially in the U. S. And when I started to understand myself and heal on this deep spiritual metaphysical level, a lot of my symptoms started reversing. This isn't to say that astrology will heal your illness.

  Trust me, it's not like that. It's a lot of things, but it's a big component and it's a mirror to help you understand yourself. It's been quite a journey. You know, people are always like, Oh, I'm this overnight success story. And that's a big fat lie because it's been a grind for seven years. Every little step has built towards the next thing.

  And then the next thing and the next thing. And I just kept following those breadcrumbs and it's worked out pretty good so far.

  Damn, yeah. I think the, the break, there was a breakthrough moment of what it was. So me being in, you know, high school, I never made the sport teams and that's how I was brought up.

  And I think arts with media and skateboarding. Really showed me, it paid me the path. And I think that's why I met incredible people like yourselves today through Kara Christopher Ray. I, I grew up watching Chris's videos here as a, as a high school student. So I guess in a way, like actually a huge way to.

  Bring clarity to it. It's, you know, people like Ray or people in front of me who paved the path to show me that. And then also, you know, skateboarding was that, you know, fists up. Not like it is now with all the Olympics and stuff, but the arts and the power through media more specifically. And I think that's why I devoted my entire life to media because of, you know, you, at the end of the day, you turn your brain off, you either scroll on your phone or you go watch a movie on Netflix or whatnot, there's an influence behind that.

  I think that. That Hollywood shine, if you will. Now it's all social media as well. Incorporate into that. There's an empowerment there. And I think that's what started to give me the the permission more importantly, to, to take on whatever you want to stand for and believe in. Like you can do anything you kind of want today.

  It's, it's a weird, it's a really unique thing lately with social. Cause you can be you anywhere. In the world. Yeah. Yeah.

  I feel really lucky that I've had a past in skateboarding, action sports, street wear, a lot of places where they encourage you to break the rules.

  And I remember when I was working at Puma, we weren't allowed to have WGSN, if anyone knows that trend site.

  We weren't allowed to have it because they didn't want us making things that someone else might have curated in any capacity. And it was really frustrating sometimes because there's some collections you're like, I just need the new pink, like give me the new pink. But it was being in a place where they, we were told to break the rules, figure it out.

  We're not, we can't follow the same path and taking that and be able to apply it to life. Because you looked at this collection of people, I happen to live in Germany at the time, there's people from all over the world who were as crazy as I was to leave home. We didn't really know why. We just thought it'd be fun.

  Let's go try it out. And now we're in charge of making this stuff that's influencing other people. You guys also have all left home. How has leaving home been a catalyst for. Going after the life you really want and could you have had the life you wanted if you stayed?

  Absolutely, not.

  Yeah, no. Yeah

  That's the short answer, but I something I deal with every single day Because my family is still in rural North Carolina.

  My mom my grandparents my little brother and I'm still very close with them as much as I can be living on opposite coasts and It's not easy, but you make it work You make an effort to call and FaceTime and engage and build a relationship as much as possible with the things that are still important with home.

  And I think leaving has actually given me a lot of respect and reverence for the place itself and my family. It's easier to romanticize it when you're further away. But in short, no, I think you do have to, sometimes the answer, and this is what I talk about with locational astrology, sometimes the answer is to leave.

  You know, there's a lot of rhetoric around don't run from your problems, but sometimes the environment is the problem, or it's limiting, and you have to spread your wings and try something new.

  I'll talk about it from, no, I, I 100 percent agree, and I'll talk about it from the education perspective and the familial perspective, meaning your family.

  So I grew up, I'm a Haitian immigrant kid everything in my family is just, Education, save, pensions, you'll be fine, that kind of thing. The other thing so, when I told my parents what I was doing, they were like, no, you're not doing any of that. And I'm glad that I didn't follow what they said. I'm also glad that I didn't follow, because your family has a blueprint.

  They have a social blueprint, a financial blueprint. My mama and daddy are savers, and I'm an investor. My job is to take a dollar and go make, send it out, and I expect it to come back with two or three in a few years. But the other thing I want to tell you and this is more general and I think this is important 20 to 30 years of formal education wherever you're from told you what to be Like you are programmed with it It told you what success looks like how you're supposed to compete with you think about it when we were in high school It was all competition Who is going to make the AP classes, who's going to be the MVP, who's going to be the valedictorian, who's going to be the prom king, prom queen.

  It translates into college and it translates into the work world. We're all going to chase this thing called executive VP and sit in cubes until we get it. Nah. But the only, the only way that kind of you, you, you get an opportunity to unlearn that. It's by going out into different environments to see what people are doing.

  And there are so many of us in this room seeking something different. If we don't break free from molds of some sort, you're not going to be exposed to the thing that's going to jog you to do something different for your life. So I think we have to get out of our own comfort zone.

  And Chris, you in particular, you've immigrated here to make your business go to the next level.

  So can you tell that story a little bit?

  Yeah, there's many points. There's like the currency. It's like, I think today's, I don't know. I didn't check the. Stock or whatever, the 30 percent difference in Canadian dollar. And that affects when you're transferring a thousand bucks, 10, 000, a hundred thousand goes up, especially when you're trying to build a family now in my current chapter of my life, but also a business to like invest a lot of capital into what you're building.

  It is, it was a huge risk. I remember I lost. Maybe I'll just recap this real quick. My wife and I were doing the traditional route. It was what Maurice was saying. It's like, you know, everything was school. You check the boxes of competing. We were going, we had a four level side split home. We just got married and then we had everything built up.

  And something inside wasn't happy. We sold everything and put it into our SUV and drove across the East coast to LA for that dream. And just, it took a toll on everything. It took like a finance mental space, physical. I lost a bunch of weight in that as well. It was all pressure. I don't know where I'm going with this, but It's basically at the end of the day, it's like believing in yourself and knowing that you can do it and it's the most cliche thing to say, but it's like, you know, we had the your question was like the resistance of family and whatnot too.

  It was all tested, I think. And I knew that I could, there was a capability of doing it. And like, as a Canadian and on an outside perspective, like LA is the top cheese. I try to scare myself with even a situation right now. Like speaking at Venice beach, like it's a big thing for me. I'm that's, you can see why I'm nervous and everything, but it's like, when I go home to home, see my, my home is family.

  Now it's not in Canada. It's not a location. It's just literally where my feet are with my family. And I just, there's an appreciation and it, and it works out in the end, I guess. And it's all a trust inside. Yeah. There's so much to impact. So if I went off the rails on that one, yeah.

  No, not at all. Cause I think you and your wife, Alex, who had a company together now have separate companies are still big collaborators with each other.

  There's a test on marriage there that no, that no school book told us there's no textbook entering kids who are. Or yeah, growing in this country. There's a culture aspect to it. Canada is very different than LA coming from no community as well.

  Yeah.

  Yeah.

  Cause you've had to build a new business, new employees, new friends.

  A mindset to it's a different mindset up in Canada. Yeah.

  Well, I just think that there's so many people who in the U. S. we used to immigrate across the U. S. even within it a lot more, and it stopped. And in fact, we're moving as Americans less than we ever have before. And I think it's really interesting because so many of the people I know who are.

  living a life that they are excited about, have, whether they've gone home and come back, there's been some shift. Doesn't mean that you have to run away and never be at home to have that. But there's a component of leaving, as you were saying, like seeing something else or traveling a lot, or like it's an expansion component that I think allows you to actually choose what you want versus what you've seen all the time.

  There's a lot of conversations right now about. why representation matters so much. If you see it, you can be it is the phrase, right? So I think that there's, when we look at what have it all is, I coach a lot of people on what you think you want to have is still this big. So what does it take to kind of blow your mind and be like, Oh, I didn't even know that was an option.

  Do you guys have something in particular that you remember that you didn't realize you could have until you saw it or received it?

  When I received it? If I, when I, So now I coach people in lifestyle design after looking back on 20, 25 years of my own journey and I didn't realize something that was happening when I was doing it. For everything I've done, I've always employed what I call systematic patience. Always. I was like, this is my idea, I'm gonna find some kind of system to get it, and I'm gonna stick with that system as long as it takes.

  I was very good about not jumping and chasing the shiny ball of certain things. So, for example, on the real estate side, I just picked single family homes. Not because it was the best thing, but just because I read a book in a library when I was 21 years old. And I just stuck with it. And I found myself owning 30 plus and paid them off and it just worked.

  But it wasn't until I actually received it at the end. Where I was 38 years old, I was generating 160, 000 a year, 13, 000 a month, but I was still working at my company. And I was like, ooooh, did something. So then I started employing that for everything. I just started employing systematic patience. I said in 2002 I want to be a federal agent, and I finally became a federal agent in 2015.

  I said in 2004 I wanted to be a street cop, I finally got it in 2009. I said I want to try out for the NFL, I did. Even though I didn't make it, it doesn't matter. I did it. And now I said I want to live between the East Coast and the Mediterranean. And I did it. I said it in 2015 and it finally happened in 2021.

  And now I go back and forth. It's all systematic patience, but I didn't realize it. It was only when I did a reflection on my own life. Oh, this is a thing. So if you just stick with it, have faith in it, don't chase the next thing that comes up that, Oh my God, let me now go try this. It will show up. You just keep going.

  Yeah. I'm still trying.

  Yeah.

  You go, I'm totally blanked.

  I think if you told 16 or 17 year old me that you could. have your own business, be 100 percent yourself, have a nose ring, and help people, and make money, I would have said, you are absolutely insane. Get out. There's no way. get to show up to work every day and be 100 percent myself in every way. I'm always going to wear bright colors.

  I'm never going to hide the fact that I'm queer. And I'm a gay witch from the south.

  Like, little me would be absolutely mind blown to even have that vocabulary. Like, what? And it's exactly what you said about patience. And also the breadcrumbing of just like letting little things kind of unfold to you. And then following your impulses and trusting that it's going to happen. Last weekend.

  did many sessions for Goop, and that has been on my vision board for seven years. I'm not saying that to brag, I'm saying don't give up on that vision board from seven years ago because it can still come true and it takes a lot of patience and it gets really frustrating waiting for those things and you're like, why am I not there yet?

  And it's so easy on social media, like you said, the glamour, you can see what someone else is doing and start comparing and you go down this mental trap. Don't do that. I need to take my own advice, but take your time .

  So I want to get into what it means to have it all. say this to people and they go, whatever, that's just a phrase.

  It's a bunch of BS for marketing. It's not real. I think it's real. I can give you my definition, and I want to hear what you guys think this is. I believe that you can have it all if you choose your all. Often when I am sitting down with a client, I'm like, what do you want in your business? And what do you want in your life?

  They rattle off a list of things, find things, like I'm not judging what they're listing. And we start building their business and we get a few months into it. And then things start popping up that they didn't tell me the first time. Things that they actually wanted. Things that weren't their competitors, weren't from their mom, wasn't from their dad, wasn't what their neighbor has, wasn't what the celebrity they were following or the other entrepreneur they were following had.

  And to me, it's a stripping back process of. What do you uniquely want, even if it sounds completely insane? And then what are you willing to not have because you don't care about it? So like a big thing that I want to talk about today is what do you say no to as well? So I think you can have it all if you authentically choose your all And what's in and what's out that makes your life work.

  So it's not having everything everyone wants just what you want How would you guys define what it means to have it all?

  With growing a family right now, I just welcomed a daughter nine months ago and a four year old at home. It's, it just brought my life into clarity of when you give yourself to another being in life. It's like, it's for me, it just goes to health and I guess just togetherness. And then it comes into like, am I happy with what I'm doing and pursuing and building?

  And then everything else comes down like, I don't know. I got nothing to my, my essence here, just the ring on my finger and whatnot. But it's all materialist. Like it falls off real quick, essentially what I was trying to get with that. Yeah, health and, and time with them and quality time with the people around you too, that can go to friends and family as well.

  And before you guys answer, so what I'm really hearing in that is that. You're prioritizing your love languages also.

  Yeah. There's a ton. Yeah. You see, you're getting it out of me. I can't. My coach's

  ears never turn off. But I am. No, you.

  One example for Kara. I remember when we were coaching at the men's group too, and it was like, what do you want?

  And I was like, I just want a Peloton right now. And I just didn't have the bike and everything. And I remember that one day I was like, just, it wasn't even impulse, but you, you pushed me to the point of getting it. And that thing has literally changed my life. Like I can show you my stats. I'm on it religiously now because, and what that does, it's great to be a committed advocate for this company and everything, but it's changed me for who I am.

  As a leader in my business, as a, as a father foremost, husband and elite, how I lead myself because there's no, there's a commitment behind it. There's a consistency. These are the bigger things that I'm, I'm figuring out now. Typical creative where I'm just like surface level thinking, but yeah, it's stuff like that, that, that care.

  I don't, it's an anchor into what your work does too. It's changed like in that retro, in that perspective for me.

  Well, and he's referencing a men's group I did called your extraordinary life. And one of our taglines we have is a ridiculous and extraordinary life because. Extraordinary can feel heavy sometimes.

  Ridiculous makes it fun. And with the Peloton example, we were talking about like, what would be crazy things you guys could do this year? And you had Peloton. I'm like, Chris, you can do better than a Peloton. And I was also like, That's a lot of

  money.

  I'm like, if you want to, but also I was like, you can get a Peloton right now.

  I got the plus.

  Right. But it was like, This isn't a

  plug?

  So often we have these things that we're like, Oh, it'd be great if I had that. And the truth is, if you want it, you can have it like right now.

  Yeah.

  Like we put these things on a list and we're like, Ooh, I have to earn that one. I'm like, do you?

  Like, You could, like, there's so many routes.

  I think everything's available today. Sorry to cut you off. It's like, could have financed the bike. It could have, like, there's so many more options. Like, I don't know when we moved to LA, it was like, I knew nobody here. Okay. One flight, make cards, leave behind stickers, like brand yourself, go to a premier, okay.

  Next flight, next flight, next flight. Okay. Now drive over here and move here. And it's like There's always a way through. I think I can leave. Yeah with that and just there's there's always a way. Yeah,

  KJ How about you? What does it mean for you to have it all?

  really try to live by my personal values and That looks very different from anything that I knew the first 22 years of my life Most of that was, I think it's about the deconditioning.

  You know, deconditioning all the things that you think you should have, and what people tell you you should have. And then when you look inside, what do I actually want? For me, I don't want kids. And I always heard people saying, You're going to change your mind, honey. Just wait, you're going to change your mind.

  You're not going to feel complete. Maybe that's true. That is true for some women, and I love that. I love that for you. And for me, that's not it. And to get comfortable with knowing that's not it, that's not going to be a part of my habit at all, but I value freedom. I want to be able to have multiple homes in many places and just say, you want to go have dinner in Paris?

  Let's go. And jump on the plane. To have that freedom, to have the flexibility. because of my previous illness, sleep is such a value. And that was one of the reasons I started my own business is because I'm was tired of people telling me what time I needed to wake up and be somewhere. Because there's some days where you're like, I really need that nine hours.

  And that to me is a part of having it all. What is your non negotiables?

  Having it all. I used to say having it all was what I want, when I want, how I want, and that's not what it is anymore. Having it all means I'm in control. We all have a, look, money is a long pole in the tent for a lot of people. Okay. And I, I got something right in my late twenties by accident, which was I'm going to go to work.

  I'm going to take this degree that I got. I'm going to get a salary with that degree. Then I'm going to use that salary to create an income. So when I went to work, while everybody else's definition of success was climbing the ladder and things of that nation, things of that nature. My definition was I got to take these paychecks and create an income of some sort.

  Because if I can create the income and cover my basic needs, food, shelter, water, things for my kids, I'm in control. And I've been in control since I was 36, 37 years old. Nobody could ever tell me what to do. So once you cover your basic needs.

  It's not that you chase more money, it's that you start chasing experiences, and you start chasing creative projects, and then those experiences start to compound on each other. You start to meet more people, you start to go more places, you start to create more. That allowed me to create a private equity firm, that allowed me to travel to a hundred countries.

  And it's not because I had millions, it's because I had a few thousand coming in a month covering my basic needs and then a little bit more. So for me, the have it all method was like, nah, I'm never going to allow an employer to tell me what to do at all. And so the day I cover, the day I realized that my basic needs were covered, I still went to work for eight more years because I actually liked what I did.

  But to have it all, I just put myself in control. And that's the way it works for me.

  When I was working in corporate life, I had my kind of four corners. I call it the four things I had to have to say yes to someone else because being my MBA is an entrepreneurship. I never thought I'd work for somebody else.

  But then I got jobs that were fun. So my four things were must include travel. I want to be surrounded by people that inspire me, that are cool and up to something, I want to be making cool things, and I have to be learning something. And those are four values that are still in my life, they've never gone away, it's just shifted where those things happen.

  And I, and there's so, it was never about, the title or the salary because that we could negotiate. But if it didn't have those four things, it wasn't even a conversation starter because what else are we doing? So whether it was working for someone else or working for myself, like I wanted to make sure I was getting more out of the equation because I'm going to give a lot.

  Like who here knows that they give more than they get most of the time? Yeah. So like that, how do we make that equation more balanced at a minimum versus always feeling like we're on the losing end of what's happening? You guys have mentioned what you've chosen. Are there anything unique that you have said no to or given up to have at all?

  Tons of stuff I got. So the, into the kid thing I think my time right now in my life, it like time as a whole, it's like my limited time to what I can create and what that is a reflection of patience and also having the courage to be like, you know, Okay, well, I'm going to, I have to step away from work.

  There's like a non negotiable 3 p. m. Childcare is gone. Okay. And then having the courage to be like, I, this, emailing someone back saying, this is going to take two more days than I expected or something. It's little courage moments like that that's helped me. And then saying no is the biggest one. It's just excuses.

  I'm going back to like the working out. It's self care time. It's me time in a way. And it's, it's a necessity. It's a, what's the word essential? Like, yeah. And so saying no to the excuses and I'm not, not even verbally or not even externally. Everything inside, I think, is not just being true to yourself and empathize with that as well.

  If I'm not pushing hard on a workout one day, per se, it's, it's like, well, let's go meditate and just take, you know, clarity, not physically exhausted. Yeah,

  to push you a little bit more. What are some things that the average guy your age is doing that you are not?

  Are you going out at night? Are you drinking alcohol? No, zero

  alcohol. Just because I don't, I, I, I heard recently that it's like when you have hangovers, it's just borrowed time from the day before. And I just don't want to loan that time and whatnot too. Yeah. So it's, it's also gone to the most extreme to where I cut so much off where I'm like, it's too much and I got to be kind of loose because I battled with this thing.

  It's, it's curiosity over control. And I'm trying to find that balance of, of, yeah, kind of the dibble dabble.

  How about you, KJ? What have you said no thank you to for your dream life?

  A couple things come to mind. I think. In the beginning, there's this misconception that you have to say yes to everything, and to a degree, some of that is true.

  And then also, it's like, is this just something that's wasting my energy, or is it actually moving the needle forward? Is it helping anyone? Is it helping me? And then make that decision. Another thing that comes to mind that I mentioned earlier is, you know, the family piece. It's like, I only get to see my family a couple times a year.

  And with aging grandparents, you're like, is this going to be the last time? Like, I hope not because I live far away. And in order to chase my dreams, I would need to be in LA or New York. And that's still a long flight from where I'm from. So that's another big piece. And then I think about, you know, Other women in my peer group, and I guess I could be going out to festivals and getting wasted on a variety of drugs and stuff, but that doesn't, it never really has appealed in the way, and I guess it's also because I've always been more conscious about my body and my health.

  So I guess that's something that I, you could say I cut out. But it wasn't really this, like, big loss,

  you know? Well, I think often what we say no thank you to to have our best life, we don't realize. Like, it's not a loss. Otherwise, we wouldn't let it go. But I think when we look at people who are chasing the life they want versus the average person, there's a huge list of what they do on a regular basis and what they do on a regular basis.

  What about you? What have you said no thank you to? Ooh,

  a lot. A lot of stuff. Let's say in the middle of my journey, so let's go from like 28 to, so I'm 48 now, but let's go 28 to, to 41. I was, what I, I penned something called Entrepreneurial Depression. I think I was depressed for a very long time. Not necessarily clinically, but because I gave up social recognition.

  I gave up promotions at work. I didn't go after them anymore. Like I think you, KJ, you were talking about it. But instead of, I think you might have been talking about it. Instead of going for partner at my firm, I created a role. I suggested a role and I created a role that would allow me to travel around the world because I wanted the experience of that versus going after the partner role.

  So I turned down partner four times and then my colleagues were like, what's wrong with him? Why is he here for 22 years, but you're still not a partner? You're still a senior manager. Or when the fellas was going out on the weekends, usually my weekend time was when I was painting or toilets or termites and stuff like that.

  And I had to give up that stuff if I was deploying for the military. Cause I really wanted to be there. Just like Chris is talking about. I had to give up not being with my kids because I'm just very much a servant person. So I wanted to serve and I wanted to be a police officer. So I wanted to serve.

  You just give up a lot of things. And while you're doing it, you're like, am I doing the right thing? Because the herd is going right. But your instinct keeps your instinct, your faith and everything about you keeps telling you to go left. So you go left. And it wasn't until I was age 41, 42 was like, Oh, shit.

  It was a good thing that I went left, but I didn't know for about a decade that I was doing the right thing and it hurt. And it's, I struggled with it. And now all the partners at my firm who still work there and see me kind of floating around the world, like, how'd you do that? And it feels good. But while you're going through it, you have got to have, I mean, I'm being jokey about it, but man, those nights when I was like corporate during the day, street cop at night, real estate on the weekends, like, does this make sense?

  But yeah, it makes sense because you have 28, 000 days in a lifetime. That's it. That's all we got. In the average lifetime, 28, 000 days. I know that right now I have 11, 300 and change left. I don't got time to waste. I'm not worried about other people's definitions of success. You shouldn't be either. They don't care, right?

  So, yeah, you're going to have to give up a lot, but you're going to get so much out of it when you get to the place that you were intended to be.

  There's a woman that we've had on the Powerful Ladies podcast, Jen Harper. She's the founder of Cheekbone Beauty, the first indigenous beauty brands in North America.

  They're at Sephora Canada. They're now expanding into Sephora in the U. S. She gave up alcohol, ultimately forever, wasn't planning it at the time and gave up television for a year to start her company because she just got to a point where she goes, when am I going to choose myself? And for her, that meant no TV, no alcohol for at least a year.

  What can I make? One year goes by so fast. I know moving around. I'm like, it's one year. I can live anywhere. What do we got? Like a shed? I need a backpack, a shed, a phone. We're good.

  That hits home so clear.

  And so it, you, you start realizing what you do or don't need. I do think traveling and like when I travel, I am carry on only.

  So backpack, rolling carry on. That's it. I've been gone for six months. six weeks that way. But then you start real, well, first you might hate a few items in your wardrobe and be like, we're burning that when we get home. But normally you're like, this is all I need. Like what, what else are we really hanging out with?

  Then you get home and you're like, we can burn the house down. This is such a waste of my time. So you start choosing things. I think also there's. the exploration of asking what you really want. It keeps changing. Like my have it all keeps evolving and changing. And as you check things off the box, a spot normally opens up.

  You're like, well, that's done. What do I want to put there instead? How are you guys seeing your have it all evolve? And also like, are you giving yourselves time to explore what you might be missing? What you want more of? Like, where are you allowing that conversation with yourself?

  Mine's ongoing. There's no hard stop to it.

  It's driving here. It's sometimes overanalyzing things, decisions. It's a consistency. It's a continual like beautiful, beautiful wrestle. I don't know how to put that. Yeah. How about you guys?

  Something I'm trying really hard to work on is celebrating where you're at instead of trying to manifest the next thing, because I did that for a while, and it's exhilarating, but it is like a drug, and it's not good for your brain to constantly be going on to the next thing, and Logistically, I am trying to find my next place.

  But it is part of that manifestation process of like, what do I really want in a place? Like, what makes me feel good? What is my sanctuary? What place is going to help me recharge? What's going to help me build community in a neighborhood? Just for an example. And to really think about those things instead of like, Oh God, I just really want this, like, really glitzy, glamorous loft, beach view.

  It's like, yeah, sure. But what is like the next step towards that and enjoying and being grateful for where you're at in the past before you jump right into the next thing?

  I think it's a great point of we work so hard wishing for it and working towards it, and then we get it. And we, it just goes whoop.

  Like, someone asked me, even how long people have been on my team, I'm like, wait, how long has it been? Three years? How long have we been in business? Six? When did that happen? Okay, cool. Did we, do we have an anniversary? Did we celebrate one? Like, I don't even know anymore, so we need to like put some of those things back in.

  You know, Maurice, you've chosen a life that has you international on a regular basis. Yeah. Pros and cons.

  There's no cons. You know what? They're just like data roaming.

  I, KJ, I really appreciate what you said about being present. I'll address that and the thing that you said before. I am very, very intentional about how I live now. I don't want to build nothing no more. You know why? Because I have a couple of mentors and business partners who I have learned by observation what not to do.

  And what I'm not going to do is wake up at 62 and be like, man, I forgot to live. Like, we do this thing where we build these resources for the sake of building it. But the whole point of building the business, from my perspective, the whole point of building the business outside of helping people is for you to live however you're supposed to live.

  So I'm taking the fruits of my labor now, and I am living. Like, a lot. A lot, a lot. I, Kara pinged me, and I was like, Kara, I'll be in Lebanon, but I'll fly 7, 300 miles just for this. Just to roll back. And when I was on, no, no kidding, when I was on the plane, I was having a conversation with someone, she was like, What are you doing?

  And I explained this, and I said, She's like, man, that's a lot. What are you going to do there? I was like, I don't know. I'm just living in the moment now because I think we, it's cliche, but the whole, you know, this is the present. It is genuinely a present. I think we forget how to, we, we forget how to do that, but the international stuff, no, I don't find any cons in it because here's the beauty of being international or the beauty of doing anything that is new to you.

  It puts you in the beginner's mindset all the time. So every time I go to Lebanon or Cyprus or Turkey or wherever I'm going, your brain goes back to being a kid because you have to relearn. How do I hustle on the bus? How do I build this relationship? When I get in an Uber, first thing I tell the Uber driver, assuming we vibe is why don't you roll with me for the whole week?

  So I hire them because I know that if I make friends with that person, they're going to show me a little crust of the city that you will never find. I want to learn all the time. So because if you go to a different place, the socioeconomic differences forces you. So as much as I love New York, Boston, and D.

  C. where I roam, I'm not learning anymore. So I like being in different parts of the world so I can learn. So for me, there is no con. I might be tired a little bit here and there, but that's what points and travel hacking is for.

  I think after deciding what you want and giving yourself time to think about that and talk to people about it, I think having a coach or an advisor to figure that out is also important.

  transformative. I know that some people up here are big journalers also to get that time with yourself. How does community and relationships factor into your all?

  Like all in, like it's basically in one long line, like one sentence for me is the just someone to lean on. I think that's the biggest one you never know. Like everyone needs help. And there's so much more to that. What was the, cause I'm just like my, I just went deep into the thought.

  How is community part of your all?

  The purpose is what I was getting at too. Yeah. It's a purpose. It's like, I, so I video edit, but there's an uplifting of people, whether you own the brand or you want to make the campaign success. It's, it's an, it's an empowerment. And I think. The community, if I'm making my family, my wife, my son, my daughter, whoever else, dog, anybody happy, or grandparents, it's, it's, that, yeah, people are, are kind of, are, are everything for, for someone like me in, in the operations side, yeah.

  I've never really had community until I moved to L. A. And what I mean by that is community who really loved me for me. I lost a lot of friends along the journey. And now this whole little row of hens in the back. Thanks for coming. My lovely life partner and my four besties. Just show you the example of when you plant somewhere, because I was a digital nomad, and it was kind of hard to build that sustainable community outside of being online.

  So I think having online community is really, really wonderful, but then also building, Where you're living helps you feel so safe, especially in a time where everything is online. Everything feels really disconnected and different. And I still feel like a little baby fawn sometimes trying to do that, but we're working on it and it feels so good.

  And I love you. Thank you for being here.

  Man, community is everything. I told you at the beginning, I think life is experiences and relationships. You, there's no way, like, you're not going to on your deathbed and say, Oh, I, that, that thing that I built, you're going to be thinking about the people. You're going to be thinking about people.

  What, and when I told you about that entrepreneurial depression stuff, this, that was the problem. I didn't have you guys who were thinking about life in this way. I mean, I already aged myself, but Yahoo had just started. There was no Google, there was no Facebook, there was no Instagram, there was no LinkedIn.

  It was very hard to connect. What I had was aisle six of the Fairfax County, Virginia library. And I was there reading all the time. And as much as I, I'm very proud of 23, that will get me emotional. I'm very proud of 23 year old me. I don't know what he was thinking, but he was thinking about 48 year old me.

  But the challenge I had is I didn't have tribe back then. have my DC tribe. I have my Lebanon tribe. I've integrated them. I got my business tribe. I don't want to do this shit by myself.

  I

  don't. I, Kara's tribe now. She said, can you come? Yep. I'm coming. You just, it's better when you are giving of yourself to people.

  I have this in my tri life on world, I have this principle, what's in it for them. So usually when I interact with someone, I'm like, What's in it for that person? I'm never worried about what I'm going to get from it. I never said to Kara, Kara, what am I going to get from coming out to talk to people?

  I don't come to the West Coast. What am I going to get coming out here? No, it's like, how can I help you? And I know I'm going to benefit because now I get to talk to some of y'all and maybe build a meaningful relationship with someone. So tribe matters along the way. Money's just a tool for all this stuff.

  That's, That stuff is not a destination at all. Relationships is for sure.

  You know, I'm always saying that entrepreneurs and small business owners need both a coach and a community. And probably multiple coaches all at the same time for whatever you're trying to tackle. I think that even if you're not an entrepreneur, but you are committed to carving your own path.

  You have to have a community because you need the other crazy people to hang out with that get it. Like, I, I, if anything, I think I have a gift of like collecting the people who are doing something totally weird and random and want to do it together. There's people in this audience who keep like we keep building the group like who else wants to be crazy and have it all who else wants to be crazy and have an international life.

  Who else wants to say like sure Paris dinner Friday. Let's go.

  Yeah,

  I remember being at on a snowboarding trip in the Alps when I was living in Europe and we're at the top of the mountain having an apres ski. And my friend goes, it was during the 99 percent protest in New York, and he goes, you know that we're part of the 001%.

  And I went, What do you mean? He's like, not the money part. He's a but no one at this table would think twice about making anything we want happen right now. And we can find the people to make it happen. And I went, Ah, that's it.

  Listen, I'm Tyson. If you Take, take this and I bet, I hope this changes your life in some kind of way.

  Find someone who is trying to make their extraordinary ordinary. Yeah. If you find, so my extraordinary is, if I'm in the Mideast, usually spend two weeks over there and I got an 11 year old, so I'm always in DC. I will commute on a Sunday night to take my son to school on Monday. That's my extraordinary, but it's become so ordinary now because I do it all the time.

  Building a private equity firm was my extraordinary, but me and a couple of business partners, we just made it ordinary. It's normal to us. If you, now I'm not saying you guys are in real estate or do what I do or astrology, it doesn't matter. If you find people who are trying to make their extraordinary ordinary, it will become ordinary at some point.

  And those people will rub off on you. And then the status quo of the rest of society, not that it's wrong, becomes weird to you. It's like, nah, that's not my thing. I want to be around people who are trying to do something significant, and that becomes your normal. So find people who are trying to make extraordinary ordinary.

  Another controversial topic is about following your passion. Good idea, bunch of BS, thoughts. I'm all for

  it.

  Laughter.

  But for real, I think if you're going to start a business, you have to be radically obsessed with it, at least for me. I couldn't wake up every day and say, I'm going to go, what would I think is really boring?

  I'm going to try, I know, I have too many interests, right? But the idea of like, I'm going to get up every day and I'm going to try to sell, Bibles. I don't think I could do that. I'm going to try to sell encyclopedias. I couldn't do that, but I can get up every day and do what I love, and that is the fuel that says keep on going.

  So, find your passion and then figure out how to make a lot of money from it instead of just struggle because that starving artist stuff is not cute anymore. We can, we can make a lot of money being artists. So

  go do it. And that's what I help people do. Small plug, Chris.

  Oh, geez. It's funny. I'll be transparent with this too.

  I made, so media, I've only, like, it's a calling to my life, I think is the best way to put that. I just picked up a camera, my dad's camera. You watch videos, you make it over the years and you find schooling that you don't like taking a high school, college, now your career. And I, I merged a lot. Like my wife and I worked together.

  It was all unified finances, business plan, vision, all that. So it's definitely testing at times, but it definitely got to. late nights were just worth it and all that. You need that like obsessive. You need that. It causes the drive and no, no, a non negotiable to say it nicely. The no BS. It gets you out of bed type feel like it's, it's, it's black and white.

  Boom. You're in to get you through the day essentially. And then now I'm at a point where I made, you know, I've passion for cooking and I made, I brought food play into my editing. Space. Cause it's all cutting and chopping and let's cook up something together. That's the whole play on it. So now I'm also playing with that.

  I'm like, I love the cooking side, but do I want to bring that in now? I'm kind of like, yeah. And it's worked for me in the past and it will work because there's the boundaries. I think we were touching on before. Right. It's just being responsible with it because you need that love, but you don't want to be too drunk on that, I think.

  Well, I think you're also bringing up the idea that once you learn how to monetize something you love doing, you're like, ooh, I love reading. How do I monetize that? And like, it just keeps going. So sometimes you're like, ah, I don't know if that love needs to be a business, but if it could, what would it look like?

  Friends are coming at me, they're like, you need to do a cooking show, cause this and that, and if you're going to film it, you have to edit it. And I'm just like, I don't, but my cutoff time, my cooking time with my family is like, meditative. I lose my loser self. I don't think of Eminem mom's spaghetti.

  There you go. It's all time. But it's, it's, it's that precious, you can see my mind goes everywhere creative again, but it's the it's that precious time where I'm like questioning it. Like, do I dibble dabble with it? And it's a responsibility and a, yeah,

  I understand that struggle.

  But I want to give y'all the permission to use the normal to your advantage, too. This is what I mean. To me, a career, or whatever you do for work, is one of two things. It's either your purpose, passion, or it's purposeful. So that corporate firm I told you, that was not my passion, but I stayed 25 years. It was purposeful.

  I needed them two checks. Yes. I needed the skill sets that I was getting from there. I also designed my life such that I was gaining experiences like working in Sweden and Finland and Norway and wherever I was at, but I was taking the purposeful paychecks out of that, filling up my 401k, getting all them stocks.

  And then I was pushing it to my passion stuff, which was owning clubs and doing real estate and restaurants and traveling the world and stuff like that. know that people say, sometimes you got to burn the boats to go get, I'm, I am obsessed about many things, but I was practical in my obsession, right?

  I had this resource that was called a corporate career. It's like, Oh, I'm getting paid a fair amount of money. Let me use this money to translate it into stuff. That's going to take care of me and my family for the rest of my life. Plus build the stuff. So when I got off career highway at age 46, I just went off the off ramp and I just kept going.

  I had built everything. So yeah, I think you can, you can have your passion and push it too, but there's also a practical nature to life as well. And that's okay as well. So you can leverage your nine to five, just make sure you leverage it more than it leverages you.

  I think that's such a good point because there's so many people who will come up to me after a conversation like this and go, I'm not passionate about anything.

  And I'm like, okay, well, I bet if you start thinking about what you love and what makes a great day and what you can't live without, like we've turned off so much of our curiosity, attachment to passion to figure out what we even like anymore because we're just going, trying to make it through the day.

  Like when people now say like, Oh, can't wait till Friday. I'm like, Sounds like you have a really bad week, if that's what you're thinking about. And there's that idea of like waking up on Monday and being excited. And there are some days I'm excited. Some days I'm like, whew, I got a day, but I was talking to Chris earlier.

  We made this like, it's all my fault now if I'm feeling too full, but I don't think. don't think passion needs to be why you chose something, but I do think. your intuition and the voice in your head keeps going, go left, a little bit more left. And, and that's what we have to listen to because sometimes it doesn't start off as a passion right away.

  Like I never would have guessed that I was a business coach even 10 years ago. So sometimes they, what we're meant to do and when our purposes shows up, because we say yes to something that sounded crazy and you keep following the, what seems like a crazy idea and not in an unhealthy way. But in untraditional way, and that's when these doors keep opening up wider and wider and you're like, wow, okay, I can do so many different things with what I have now as people are exploring how to think about their have it all and how to make it happen.

  And they're ready to say, you know, guys, I want to uproot my whole life, sell everything. What do I do next? How do I start? What advice would you give to someone who really wants to radically transform their life to live in alignment with themselves?

  Mine came immediately, so I'll share it first. The quality of your questions.

  That's that.

  Can you explain that more, because I think this is really important.

  Yeah, it's like, I had a close person in my life and she was like, what do you want? I was like, oh, I want an office. So in the city. And then it's like, no, what do you really want? And it was like, well, Hollywood would be fun. I'm not a citizen, da da da, da da.

  And so it was like possibly like, this was like, I was like 19 at this time, so I had no idea. But it was like, well, what does Hollywood look like? Well, how can we make this work? What steps do I, who do I need to become? Who do I need to talk to? Who do like it? It just. You hear all these things on Instagram all the time too.

  It's like even to actually today, I should take this for my own, is like, go home and just start writing like questions on like where you want to be. I think because it was like, I don't know what immigration looks like. Oh, that's a lawyer. Oh, you can come on on visas. Oh wait, I'm building my vision here. I can be on this artist's visa, I can be on this business visa, I can be on this citizenship over here.

  There's, you know, and you start, it's, yeah, there's it's the quality of the, the question. Yeah. Yeah.

  I love that. I'm all about curiosity and asking more questions. And it kind of segues into what I was about to say, which is self inquiry and constantly asking, who am I in reflection to everything around you? Because I don't think that you can create your life and really manifest anything without being in your radical authenticity, knowing who you are.

  Which is a journey. It takes a lot of time to decondition what everyone tells you you should be and how to do it. And then to say, this is actually true. And then you're like baby Fawn, like how do I actually do that every day? And then it gets easier. And then you start to love that version. Like, a lot.

  And then, you trust it. So it's a process. Discovery. self love, self trust. We're all still working on those things. No one's a master. And then it starts to kind of unfold and get easier because you're like, okay, these are the things that are meant for me. And they're coming to me because I'm in myself and my purpose.

  And I think the more that you try to make yourself palatable for other people and like squirm to fit in these boxes that are really not meant for you. It just rejects you because it's trying to push you in the other direction towards the things that are going to come a lot easier, man.

  Remember the word blockers. Everything we want just has a blocker to it. The way I think about it and the way I work with people when I coach them is everybody has a vision. I make people do it in a manner that they write down their perfect day in vivid detail. The emotion, where are you, how does it feel.

  And then we take that day and we break them down into goals. I'm going to to time freedom, financial freedom, geographic freedom, freedom to execute your purpose like Kara was talking about, and freedom to build meaningful relationships. If you're at work from 9 to 9, you don't have time to build relationships and that other thing that you want.

  Those goals just have blockers. So if you want to be around the world all the time, And, like, my problem was I had 900 pieces of mail coming to the house. Like, how am I going to be around the world if all my business mail is coming to the house? Well, it's just a blocker. You write the blocker on a piece of paper.

  You put that piece of paper in the middle of your dining room table. Thank you, Jim Rohn, for this. You take that piece of paper, you put it in the middle of your dining room table, and you walk around it. And you start to realize that that thing that was so big in your head, all it is is a silly little thing you just got to solve.

  And for me, solving the mail thing was just virtualizing all my mail. don't want employees. I don't because I need to be around the world the way that I want to live. So whatever it is you want to do to have this life, there's just blockers to it. And typically blockers can be met by one of two things.

  One, some action that you have to get done. You got to have an honest conversation with yourself and just get the thing done. Two, a relationship. If I wanted to develop real estate in the Mediterranean, I don't know how to develop real estate for one. I'm an investor, not a developer. So, I just found a relationship.

  I found somebody who was doing it and my action was to build a relationship with that person and give to them. So, if you want to create this life, whatever it is, be honest with yourself. Define the blocker and then the work is just to get rid of the blocker and it goes away.

  Building on that, my core beliefs in the coaching world as well are that every problem can be fixed by either a structure or a mindset.

  And so, so often people will say, Oh, I want to live in Italy. And they jump right to, how do I get a visa? And I'm like, whoa, Like the visa thing we can figure out, like people have done that, but why do you want to go to Italy and what are you going to do when you're there? And what is your day going to be like and how often are you going to go back to whatever home is and start unpacking what you actually want when you're there, like imagining the bold future you're creating because we jump to how so often and don't hang out in the why, why are you doing it?

  Who are you going to do it with? What are you really going to get out of it? Like the what is the transformation component? So my biggest question I'm always asking people is what if? What if you could have blank? And just keep writing that down. What if I could live in Italy? What if I could have a team that traveled the world?

  What if I got to see my parents once a month, no matter where we lived? What if I got to have a retreat once a year with all my friends? Like, you just keep saying the what ifs. You don't need to know how. And I think that's what stops so many people from having their dream life, is that they think they need to know the answers.

  But to your point, the answer, someone else has. So whether it's a coach or someone in this room, or even just asking the people in your life, what you, here's what I really want. I don't know how to get it. It starts shifting everything because if you're stuck on how it'll be real hard to remember why you're doing it.

  And

  I, and I just want to add to that because she said, what if, and I love that most people will say, Oh man, if only like shift your, if only to what if, because all it does is force you to get away from the restriction or the societal definition of status quo or whatever. And you're like, what if it forces you to start thinking constructively on, okay, well, what if I did this?

  Or what if I get on a plane and fly 7, 300 miles and get here? What is it going to be? And it just shifts you into the let's get this done kind of mindset, which is a good thing.

  Well, I would love to open it up to some questions. What do you guys want to know about how to have it all? Where are you stuck?

  Yeah, go ahead. We have a mic. Would you mind grabbing that? Thanks.

  Is this proof? Yes.

  I think a common question people ask is, what do you wish you would have told yourself 10 years ago? But I'm going to switch that to maybe three to five years ago, because 10 years ago, we're completely different people. So.

  Truth.

  What would you tell, what is it? So,

  you know, one thing that we haven't touched on too much is how courageous we have to be sometimes in chasing our own best life and having it all because we do get confronted by like, why aren't we satisfied with this?

  It's kind of good enough. I think three to five years ago, I would have told myself to be bolder about what I knew I shouldn't be tolerating anymore. Like, so often we're not having what we want because we're tolerating something. One of the things I did in the past three years was end an eight year relationship because it wasn't good enough.

  And it was a really hard choice to make. It was There was no, it was like solid B but I'm not living a B plus life. And I actually was leading the extraordinary men's group that Chris is a part of, and I'm like, Shit. This, like, I was challenging them. What in your life's not extraordinary? Let's fix it. And I'm here leading it going, It's my relationship, damn it.

  And so I had to step back and be brave, and it took, probably another six months after I realized it to be like, no, I got to do this. But I would have told myself to anything that it wasn't working. That wasn't, I shouldn't be tolerating for my extraordinary life. Just deal with it now. Don't let it drag on, be courageous and just go clear the space.

  Cause sometimes we have to like, just shut things down without knowing what's next. And just being like, that doesn't work. Let's just shut that door. So another one can start making room.

  Oh, does anyone else want to answer the, what would you tell yourself?

  I, I, I became, I, I became a man of faith last year. I would have asked myself to become a man of faith five years ago. You can bull in a China shop, all the actions you want, but sometimes the world, the world is just not ready. And you, you, you have to wait for certain other pieces to fall into place.

  And that comes with patience that comes with time that comes with trust and belief. Sometimes we think we can solve everything and you simply can't. You can't. You just have to wait for certain things to fall in, fall into place. You'll meet certain people at certain times where you're like, Oh my God, I can't believe I met that person exactly at the moment where it makes sense for me to meet that person.

  Yet you wanted them to be in your life, you know, three years earlier. Right. So I just say, give myself more ability to have faith in what I'm doing. Yeah, that's what I would tell myself.

  Just keep crawling. think about, was it, maybe five years ago. Yeah, I was in the crossover of working my full time agency business writing Wikipedia articles for very dry companies.

  And it was really draining. And so I would study my craft and then I would freelance content in the astrology spiritual world for people who are my elders, my ancestors. There were a lot of 12 hour days, and there were a lot of tears, and can I actually do this? Like, can you actually follow your dream and do what you love?

  And sometimes there's going to be a lot of late nights, but it's never going to be harder than the first three to five years. And that's a generous timeline. Like, it's never going to be harder than the first couple years, and if you can just stick it out and keep going and prioritize what's going on in your life for those three to five years, it gets a lot easier.

  I

  had another question, right? You want to pass that down? Thank you.

  Yeah, thank you for what you said about anniversary. Because when you said that, I was like, I've been in my business for nine years. I never celebrated one anniversary. I'm just like, ah, it's nine years, you know, so I'm going to celebrate next time when it's ten for sure.

  But I loved what was brought up in the very beginning about like the shiny, I don't, I think it was Maurice that brought it up about the shiny object, you know, how do you differentiate though? Like sometimes like my best ideas are like just a download and I'm like, Oh shit. Right. But I'm also a creative and I'm also very, you know, all over the place.

  So how do you know which one's the one and how do you know which one's like, you know, I'm going to give that one like 24 hours. Yeah.

  For me, I told you my process and I, my process was not formalized in my twenties. I didn't realize it, but I was following it just instinctively. I just had a vision and I would write the thing down that I wanted and my actions needed to match that vision.

  So if some, let's say. The reason I did real estate was not for real estate. The reason I did it is because I wanted the passive income to live well. So if some other thing showed up, I'm like, does it provide passive income? No. So I don't want to do gold. Gold is not giving me passive income, that kind of thing.

  It has to match my vision. My vision right now is I want to live between. East Coast of the U. S. And the Mediterranean. So somebody asked me to go spend a significant amount of time in Italy to go work on a project. Yeah, I don't want to do that. It's not an alignment with what I've said that I wanted to do now.

  Your vision can change. That's fine. But if every single time someone came with some idea, you shifted, You're never going to get anywhere. And that was the one thing I happened to be good at was I was just stubborn. I was stubborn in everything I did. So when the Bitcoins came and this came and I was like, I don't know that I'm not doing that.

  So I think you just have to be truthful to your vision, stick with it and exercise what I said, which is systematic patience.

  Everything you said speaks so deeply to me because I've also done the same thing. I'm just like, Oh man, that's a really good idea. I'm going to do that next. I'm going to do that next. I get lit up by so many things and some things are going to be really cool, fun projects and hobbies. And I think as Americans, especially, we love to try to monetize everything.

  And so sometimes we need to just. If I want to start making watercolor prints, I don't need to sell them. I can just make them for myself. I don't have to weave them into the business in some way. But it's hard. It is hard because there's so many good ideas. Which ones do you chase? And I have recently come up with a rule where it's like, if I'm still thinking about it a month later and it still feels good, like something I can put energy into, then we're moving it forward.

  If it was just a small, Spark of inspiration? Eh, I don't really actually want to put the effort into that, or it doesn't make sense, then it can be a personal life thing, or just completely die off, but I totally know what you mean. That's really hard, because when you're multifaceted, there's so many things to love and do, so don't try to put everything in a monetization box.

  My thing is the heart and the head. So just for my selfish personal reason, it's like my friends for years were like, you can edit, you can video at it. And I had this company that produced a video and photo and all that stuff had to be edited. It was a little sliver of that company, the agency over here.

  And I just took that sliver. And with remote work and pandemic and life at home and clarity and everything, it started to like widen up and to the point where I supply, you know, video edits with the team, but that actually empowers people. It's something I can take all that experience from my decade plus.

  Back in the day and apply it to my new day. So that's, it fits with the head's thinking, but there's a passion deep within my heart and then it's making a movement with it, putting it on your arm, living it stickers, the messaging. And that's where my magic is like boosting with like, I'm like ready to go.

  And now I can see that I'm, I'm tracking instead of. Kind of titterly what's the, what's the word? Like learning my baby steps to walking to now sprinting. And then understanding what everyone's saying here too. It's the marathon at the end of the day, but it's that magic of. I've seen that little, you know, I guess the question for the, when you wanted to test it, it's like, does this serve me right now?

  Does this serve me for the big vision?

  I work with a lot of creative entrepreneurs and I think there's different buckets of shiny objects. There's the shiny object that is a completely different business. There's a shiny object that's a different business pillar. And then there's all the ideas that are within the boxes you've already made.

  I use monday. com for all of my business kind of organization and with my team. And there's a board on there that's just future ideas. And in that future ideas board, it's grouped by like course ideas, topics, retreat ideas, which are all kinds of things in my business already. So they get put in there.

  And then if I keep noodling on them and they make sense, then we'll, we'll execute on it. Then I have my secret list, which I don't overwhelm my team with, because they would probably go crazy if they saw what I was thinking about on a regular basis, and it's the other things. It's like, wouldn't it be cool if I had this other podcast where we talked about this and that?

  And wouldn't it be awesome if there was a business doing this? And with those ideas, especially if I get a great name, I'll go by the domain name, get the Instagram handle and put it in a box and just let it sit and marinate. The number one most recommended book from guests on the powerful ladies podcast has been big magic.

  by Elizabeth Gilbert. I highly recommend it to anyone who, who is a creative and is chasing ideas because there's a beautiful story about genius and how it goes away and it comes to us. And sometimes we have a great idea that we might be meant to start, but not finish or vice versa. And sometimes we have a great idea, but it's not the right time.

  And so I had this list of ideas, and it surprises me what shows back up and what will keep pestering us, but I think classifying and making lists of what these ideas are, getting it out of our heads so we can focus on what we're doing now, but not losing the idea, I think is the most important part. Yeah, great question.

  Who else has a question? Yes. You know, I feel like when we're in

  spaces like this with all these people who are like obviously don't have our own thing and we're creatives and we're hustling, I think like I would love to hear all of you guys on the panel talk about how you allow yourself to rest. Like I'm in this point of rest right now where I've been in careers.

  I feel so immensely guilty not working those 14, 18 hour days on set and like for changing my goal. It's like immense guilt. And I would love to hear how you guys kind of like embrace for yourself and like allow that time to breathe.

  Great question. Quick first question. Who here works 12 or 14 hours a day?

  Nope.

  Nope. I'm done with that. Yeah. I stopped. It

  was so good. Kids definitely put a full stop to that. Love the Pirelli hat. So dope. Where did you get that at one? It goes to what I initially got with that is the courage. It's like the courage of saying no. The courage of, I'm not even, actually I'm going to take rolling my eyes back.

  The courage of keeping my phone on silent for notifications. You know, and then having that responsibility or the, what's that word? I'm losing it right now. I have the responsibility to not pick up the phone immediately. Like it's those little courage moments. It's like, that's basically like. Sometimes I was saying with working out, it's like I meditate and it helps, that helps me actually more than physically working on my body too.

  And it's, it's having that courage of just believing it was Maurice was, you were saying that it's like, how do you know what's right? And I think the vulnerability and the transparency as of late, the conversation as like a culture, I think it's upbringing more of self care. And yeah, so it's little courage.

  What is your self care actually look like? Like, how are you taking care of yourself and how are you taking breaks?

  Literally. So the cooking thing got a fire pit. It forces me to look at throw another log on and let it burn and appreciate, I don't know, building something, but enjoying it. And Chris, you have a cold plunge and sauna at home.

  The sauna is like, you can't take technology in there. So it's like, you got to talk to each other.

  It's

  stuff like that. It's, I don't know. I don't have a, Full answer. It's like, I think my courage is my, my end.

  Knowing Chris and his family dynamic, they are very good at cutting things off and like, this is when things end, they do a lot of tag teaming, like trading off, but when you spend time with them in the evening, you guys aren't taking late calls, you're not doing things.

  It really is like. That's done. Now we're family time and that's it.

  And a little thing that came up with that is I put bookends to my day on the calendar. So when I physically see it myself and then all my scheduling is like automatic here, schedule a time with me, those links, no one can schedule, you know, Monday morning.

  Cause I get my stuff together and then Friday every day at like 3 PM, I think it cuts off. So it's, yeah, I tested that on for like six months and then it start, you get into the rhythm and then your ordinary is your, it just becomes the norm.

  I. Hustle culture is ridiculous commitment to self is not.

  Okay. So I, I definitely move a lot, but it's, it's more for life now than it is for me building anything. But during the years that I was telling you, when I went through all that entrepreneurial depression, man, I was hustling and I had to sleep in the cracks. in a, in a lot of ways. And when I think back on it now, it exhausts me.

  I don't know how I did what I was doing. I had to learn. I wrote a newsletter on it in the last three, four years. I had to learn how to be idle. It's so crazy. We are like, even in the entrepreneurial space, in the nine to five space, it's obvious, right? We, Oh, we got to impress the boss. And I don't know. So we stay till nine.

  We go to the happy hours. That's nor that happens, but it happens in the entrepreneurial space too. We do it to ourselves. When, actually, the man upstairs or whatever you do or don't believe in actually wants you to live. Like, you're actually here to live and not drive yourself into this frenzy. The crazy thing is work never stops, but life will.

  Like, when you start realizing how precious this time is on this planet, if you're being committed to yourself because you want to fly to come spend time with Kara, that's not work. That's living. Knowing the distinction between the two will help you. Give yourself permission to be idle. I really respect what Chris is saying about saying no.

  I say I don't want to do another real estate deal. I've said no to so many in the past year because that's not living for me anymore. So once you get yourself to a particular place where you're, you're basic, remember, this is why I said getting your basic needs covered is so important because you have choices.

  You have choices, right? Don't default to the entrepreneurial status quo either. of, no, I got to do this hustle culture thing because that's what Instagram is telling me. Garbage. You're gonna wake up and you will have missed it all. So give yourself permission to be idle and still or be where you want to be for what it's worth.

  I'm a city dude. And all of a sudden, probably in the last two years, I've become so, I'm in so in love with mama nature. I'm always outside in mama nature somewhere with my shoes off, ground on my feet, feeling energy from the ground. I can't live without the Mediterranean Sea no more. This world has so much to offer.

  Our nervous systems are so busy with phones and dings and planes and this and that. Nah, man, slow down before we miss it. Give yourself permission to be idle.

  I saw a quote recently, and I don't know where it came from, but it really hit me because it said that I've never met a relaxed woman.

  Truthfully, like I think about my mother, grandmother, and all the women around me growing up, that there's always someone to help, someone to take care of, something to do. There's, and if you go deeper, there's always more weight to lose. There's always more productivity to have, someone to serve. And you don't have to do any of that, but it's so hard.

  To decondition from it and not do that and I struggle with it. I do struggle with pulling away And I have to kind of force myself Like what am I going to do to relax today? Like I will love my massages You know to literally be forced on this table. You cannot touch your phone. You are going to relax for 90 minutes And like you said, I love cooking.

  That's my meditation. And it's a form of self care. Like, I need, after a long day of calls, I need an hour in the kitchen by myself to just chop a vegetable. And think a lot about how We're like, oh, I want to be better than, I want to be, do my ancestors proud. And for me, my ancestors died on poor farms in Appalachia.

  And I was like, I need to be rich in order to make them proud. I need to work really, really hard. And then one day I had this breakthrough and I was like, I need to leisure and rest because that's what they didn't get to do. They were working so hard that I need to learn how to actually really rest and relax.

  And I live up here in this space. And so it's so hard. And you know, there's different modalities and things you can do to help you drop in. Toolkits for self care are so vast. So explore and have fun with it and figure out ways to drop into your body. And Periodically, even if you live up here and most of us do, because we're on our phones, we're taking calls, answering emails, whatever.

  And if you have to literally remove yourself. You know, go get a massage, go sit in the park for an hour without your phone, or go by the beach since we're by the beach. I'll also take periodic little weekend trips to my favorite place, Palm Springs, and say this is not going to be a work weekend. I'm going to indulge, I'm going to rest, and sleep till 10 or 11, because my body needs that.

  Contrast to the hustle, and so you can kind of define it because I don't have those kind of boundaries where you turn it off at 5 p. m., and it can be really hard for some people, and I respect that, but if you can't turn it off, find ways to sort of push yourself into dropping into your physical body instead of living up here.

  It's not easy. The littlest thing that came up was a time limit on your apps. That's what helped me. It's like when the, it goes a different shade on your home screen. You're like, I got it. So it's a little reminder. Yeah.

  Well, and I think so much about the relaxing and self care concept is really auditing your day of what's allowed in and what's not.

  There's so many micro moments that we give away without thinking and there's not the intentionality behind it. I think also we have to remember that we need to give room for ourselves to have seasons. Like when we're, sometimes you're sprinting through something and it's going to be a lot and it's going to be a lot of hours and then it's like, okay, now I need to step back.

  So. There's like a mix. But I also think when you are blending your, all your worlds together, like I hate the phrase work life balance. It's like saying spring seasonal balance. You're like, wait, what? Like it's just part of life. So especially when you're curating all the parts of your life into one big swirl, it's not always clear.

  Like, am I working? Am I not? I'm working right now, but I'm working with three people. I enjoy spending time with. So is it work? You called it not work. So it's, it's. How do we mash things up together? I'm always looking at how can I go on a hike and bring friends and have a great conversation. And maybe we'll talk about business too.

  If I'm going to Palm Springs, I'm trying to make it about business so I can expense it. So how can we go to Palm Springs, have a business meeting, get it, you know, tax deductible, and then have fun at the same time. Like I'm always looking at how we blend it together. But last weekend or the weekend before I had nothing on the calendar.

  And at first I was like, Oh, what am I going to do? And I'm like, nothing. And I got so bored on Saturday and it was at a tipping point. We had to lose your mind. No, no, I'm going to leave the house, even if I'm by myself. I was like, no, we're staying here. And then it cracked open all these moments of clarity about stuff that I was working on.

  And I ended up working because I was like, Oh, no, like it all just came out. And. It was okay. Like it's so if you love what you're doing and you're responsible about taking care of the other parts of your life We don't need to be mean to ourselves about working on a Friday night or a Saturday as long as we're finding it I think somewhere else and so It's it what it's what works for you and that comes back to the have it all for you exclusively and selfishly because it's it's what season are you in and Right now I don't even own a tub, so there's no self care baths happening in my life, yeah.

  I do want to add one more thing real quick. I'm definitely in a different season, so I've shifted my environment. I don't really roll with the business partners and stuff that I used to roll with before, because I'm not building anymore. Where I typically am, dinners are three, three and a half hours long.

  I love it. I, I, I, I want to, that's why I love the Mediterranean so much, and you can find that in the US. You can You we're making a conscious choice. Look, if you roll into New York, dc, Venice Beach, in these types of places, you gonna run around these types of people, us . So your, your brain is gonna be like, yo, we gotta go like that.

  Overachiever over there. I gotta overachieve more than that. Overachiever. Yeah. But I'm around the people who, they're overachiever, they're overachievement is how we. Who's Moroccan? You're Moroccan. My, my, my someone who's very special to me is half Moroccan, half Lebanese. So our overachieving when I'm in Lebanon, for example, is cooking.

  For hours. And I'm like, yeah man, this is my life. So I just want to encourage you sometimes it's not you, sometimes it's just your environment. You can choose to be in a different environment and not have to strive for the million dollars and be like, you know what, I'm going to take this job. This job is going to pay me enough to live pretty well.

  I'll save some money on the side, but I choose to live my life this way. It is a conscious choice what we are all doing. Right? So just be aware of that. Be aware of your environment. Be aware of the choices you're making. And lastly, a lot of us are doing it because we're looking at other people's definition of success.

  My definition of success, every time some hedge fund or something comes in, oh, you'll make this money. And I'm like, I don't want to. I'm good. Like every, I don't want to build no more. I want to sit around a table for three hours, drink a lot of wine. And, you know, doughs on the couch after dinner. That kind of thing.

  That's life now. I like that kind of life.

  Well. I just want to make sure we get their pictures up. Do you? I don't know. Is it? Are you back there, Lucas?

  Can we click to the next slide? Perfect. Oh, can you go back one? Okay. So I want to make sure that you guys, if you love their advice and what they're up to and just want to support them and, or be friends, I recommend follow them, hang out with them. We are going to go upstairs and we're going to have about an hour to hang out and mingle and talk to you guys and network.

  Everybody here loves making new friends. So we want to meet you and talk. So please join us upstairs. And then next slide, if you could, we've got some exciting things coming up. So I also have some flyers here. Ask Kara. I'm going to be back here doing office hours on May 8th. So free business coaching or life coaching career, whatever you want to talk about, you can book a session.

  So grab one of these. I also have this great catalog about how to make your business thrive. It's people I recommend, lawyers, accountants, CPAs, graphic designers, photographers, so grab one of those too. But really, thank you guys so much for taking your time to spend this with us. I hope you got great things out of it.

  And then please stay in your seats because we are going to come up and take a photo with all of you guys too. But thank you so much. And I hope to see you on May 8th as well.

  All the links that connect with Maurice, KJ and Chris are in our show notes at the powerful ladies. com. If you loved this episode, please subscribe wherever you're listening and leave us a rating and review. Join us on Instagram at powerful ladies. And if you are looking to connect directly with me, visit Kara Duffy.com or Kara underscore Duffy on Instagram. I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Until then, I hope we're taking on being powerful in your life. Go be awesome and up to something you love.

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Chris Grubisa founder of Chrilleks and Let's Cook Editing
IG Link: @chrisgrubisa
Website Link: letscookedits.com

KJ Atlas - Personal Astrologist & Creator of the Grove Almanac
IG Link: @kjatlas 
Website Link: kjatlas.com

Maurice Philogene - Entrepreneur, Investor, Philanthropist, Lifestyle Design & Financial Freedom Coach
IG Link: @mauricephilogene
Website Link: trylifeon.com

Created and hosted by Kara Duffy
Audio Engineering & Editing by Jordan Duffy
Production by Amanda Kass
Graphic design by Anna Olinova
Music by Joakim Karud