Critical Success Tips from Impactful Women

we've had the great portion of featuring some truly extraordinary women on impact theory and in this very special episode we'll share some of the most powerful lessons they've learned on their journey to success these inspiring women have exceeded what the world has told them they can be and achieve and whether we're talking about an athlete like Kerri walsh-jennings a business magnate like Sarah Rob o'hagan or an inspirational powerhouse like Mel Robbins each of these women have stories worth telling and lessons worth listening to really really closely and if you want to succeed whether in business or in life pay attention I know I did [Music] oh my gosh thank you I know you called me the master of motivation and I think motivation is complete garbage so maybe we should start there that is a perfect place to start so I totally agree with you but why do you say that I do 100% now I said that in the spirit of I know what you're trying to do so it is met with absolute reverence uh-huh but why do you say that it's garbage well and we'll talk a lot about this but I think it's garbage because at some point we all bought into this lie that you've got a feel ready in order to change yeah we bought into this this complete falsehood that at some point you're gonna have the courage at some point you're gonna have the confidence and it's total [ __ ] frankly I don't know real add to swear at absolute okay it's it's complete garbage and so there are so many people in the world and and and you know you may be watching this right now and you have these incredible ideas and what you think is missing is motivation and that's not true because the way that our minds are wired and the fact about human beings is that we are not designed to do things that are uncomfortable or scary or difficult our brains are designed to protect us from those things because our brains are trying to keep us alive and in order to change in order to build a business in order to be the best parent the best spouse to do all those things that you know you want to do with your life with your work with your dreams you're gonna have to do things that are difficult uncertain or scary which sets up this problem for all of us you're never gonna feel like it motivations garbage you you only feel motivated to do the things that are easy right what do you think that is oh I know exactly why that is because I I've studied this so much because for me one of the hardest things to figure out was why is it so hard to do the little things that would improve my life and what I've come to realize and what we'll talk a lot about today is that the way that our minds are designed is our minds are designed to stop you at all costs from doing anything that might hurt you and the way that that that that this all happens is it all starts with something super subtle that none of us ever catch and that is with this habit that all of us have that nobody's talking about we all have a habit of hesitating mm-hmm you can truly trace every single problem or complaint in your life to silence and hesitation those are decisions and what I do and what's changed my life is waking up and realizing that motivations garbage I'm never gonna feel like doing the things that are tough for difficult or uncertain or scary or new so I need to stop waiting until I feel like it and number two I am one decision away from a totally different marriage a totally different life a totally different job a totally different income a totally different relationship with my kids your life comes down to your decisions and if you change your decisions you will change everything but I know the next question is gonna be so how do I find the right path what what is that process yeah you know for me I went through this phase where I just stopped saying no to things so when I first started youtube I thought okay I'm I'm opening the gates up to this new platform and this new type of creation I've never done before but I've also started going to shows more often I started to meet different types of people I think a big part of finding out what's right for you is stop confining yourself to a path that you've been convinced is the path this what I'm doing right now is nowhere on the path for a young Indian girl that's a part of my family like this is nowhere on the path it was very much so go to school and get married and have kids and that's the success if you if you're able to have those kids and give my mom some grandkids you're successful and I think it's about really stepping outside of that and exploring whether that's in school and taking classes that you might not take at first glance whether it's going and experiencing different types of arts meeting different types of people making new friends I think there's so much out there that you don't even know exists and I'm a testament to that I make videos on the Internet ask my mom if she thought I could have been a job when she was growing up you know so I think it's all about just really getting out there and seeing what's available and so then what are the signs that somebody should look for to know that okay this is something that resonates I think okay I love sleep I just do have said I love sleep but there's some mornings when I wake up and I'm like I don't even care how tired I am I'm so excited about this day so I think being excited to wake up also you'll just see it in your energy I think as well a little pep in your step I have when I'm walking to set is really telling also the people you surround yourself with I think when you start to get surrounded by people and my team is a great example of this that really bring out the best in you and you feel yourself growing and learning and maybe a little more patient or a little more creative or you think about things a little differently any type of evolution like that I think is definitely signs we're doing the right thing you know this this entire career path has been everything but comfortable no part of its comfortable so even on the days when I come home and I think that was horrible that audition was horrible I can literally feel part of me evolving as like okay what you did it and now you know for the next one what to do you'll know what to expect for the next one and those scary things are all signs that you the right thing cuz you're growing all right so if you were gonna leave for your kids a few rules suggestions about how to build a Champions mindset and then that was it they could never talk to you again what would you leave them yeah do that to me how to make it hard oh my goodness um how to build a Champions mindset let's see I'm just gonna have to start running things off let's do it so I mean I don't know how many things I have but I'm just gonna have to go for it so first thing is you have to you have to say okay what is it that's gonna make me happy what is it that I want then you have to map out a plan right in order to get there and you might have to enlist some help from other people you might not have all these answers for yourself and be too overwhelming to think you have to do it alone but that's the first thing you got to do and then you got a so you got to get that right team of people in place that are gonna help you along the way know more than you know be honest with you you know so you don't start thinking your own [ __ ] doesn't stink you know and then you have to be willing to do the hard work that it takes and you have to go into it knowing that there's gonna be roadblocks there's gonna be challenges that's just something you should expect so when you see it it's not gonna throw you off right and then you have to just kind of have faith and then when you have your moments of weakness you have to you know for me from what I believe in a higher being I believe in God I'm a spiritual person so it's like I'll have those talks and say you know please give me the strength to get through this give me the strength to be focused and then I really trust that that's gonna come I'll just ask for it and then next thing I know things kind of just work out you know so that I feel like that is something that I can always lean on so no matter what's going on you know I'm gonna get through this so you know I think that that's pretty much it I mean there's a lot more that we can say obviously but that's really what it comes down to is knowing that you know you have what it takes to make it you know it might not happen in the time that you want it to happen but it will happen and these are all things I think that people who are successful have said before right so I'm not really saying anything different but if I'm talking to a child I would kind of keep it simple and and put it like that and I would say write it down you know write it down and sometimes you're gonna forget cuz you're gonna get emotional and if you're like me you're gonna maybe have a bad memory and you might need to refer to your notes you know and that's something that you have to do you have to say it you have to think it you have to write it and you have to really believe it in your heart no matter what it is if you were in Steven Hawkings situation what would you if your attention to I would yeah so I've actually if I couldn't race and if I couldn't express myself physically because I've talked about is that I've when I haven't been able to use my legs I've had to use my voice hmm and so what's really been empowering for me this past year is to be an advocate for the sport be an advocate for obstacle racing it's such a new sport and we have such an opportunity as athletes to help shape it and where it goes and will it make it to the Olympics or what will it do so for me it would be shaping that and also really I'm really passionate about women and sport and about women and you know women equality and sport things like that and so using that voice how do you think we get to that how do we man I mean that's been a question for how many years at this point but it's really we've come a long way but it's really just more and more it's women standing up but it's also men standing up you know it's everyone regardless of of making sure that you know prize purses for women are the same across genders you see some sports where men get a hundred thousand dollars and women get fifty thousand dollars for winning the same freakin race I don't get it and so that is something that there needs to be there needs to be a constant dialogue about it and unfortunately you know we're still not there about getting there so I know decorum is gonna force you to give me a really humble answer to this question and I'll maybe push you a bit but what do you think your impact has been by you beat the vast majority of the men that you race against I mean vast majority so do you think that's helping do we need more people that are playing at that level that can really show up in in dazzle quite frankly but I wouldn't want diem back to be is to start to normalize that conversation because people will say oh my god you they oh my god she got second overall or she she won that 50k oh right like it's some crazy strange thing mm-hmm and that's great it brings attention to it but was if we keep thinking about that as an outlier it's not gonna shift we need to be like look dude that woman one that's awesome that's cool that's a woman one right and if we can normalize that then that's when I think we've really made progress [Music] what do you think is has been the secret to your success and one thing I'd love you to touch on is you said I never saw myself as a great female executive I was just the best executive yeah so one why how'd you not fall into that and then to like what makes a great executive I come from New Zealand and we many people may not know were the first country in the world to give women the vote really thirty years before the United States that amazing and I have wondered is that why as a woman I grew up with a set of different cultural guardrails because I remember coming to America and discovering what title nine was and I was like why would you need something like that like it just never occurred to me growing up that as a female I couldn't do anything that I wanted to do and and it's it's funny I think now for women I'd give sheryl sandberg clearly so much credit and love for what she's done to start this conversation on you know what we need to do to get more women into leadership roles and I feel like sometimes we can get all of the data in our way and use that almost as a reason to not take the step because like there's so much incredibly real data that says that you you know are not going to get funded in the same way as a guy well you you won't you know so you've just got to almost say those are today's circumstances but they're not a reason not to change and move it forward and you know I think for me I just have worked in predominantly male industries the whole way through and it just I've never even really noticed that I was the only woman at the table very often I just was like well [ __ ] I'm here and so I'm gonna do the best I can and it's up to me to outperform my peer group whoever they are and the place that I want to start is actually the dedication to your book which I shouldn't have been surprised by it but for some reason I was and I'll paraphrase it was to all the girls out there who have big dreams think bigger work harder and I thought whoa why why think bigger why work harder you know I think for me there were so many times in my life that I was told no I was told I wasn't good enough I wasn't strong enough I wasn't fast enough I was too skinny so many things where people just didn't believe in me and I think you know I owe a lot to my parents which I'm sure we'll get into but I just feel like they truly taught me to believe in my dreams and I had this huge dream of you know winning that all-around gold medal at the Olympics and not many people believed in me but when I was able to kind of set that dream in that goal and I knew it was like this huge goal that you know for so many years for an American gymnast it was unattainable and unachievable so Mary Lou Retton won in 1984 and then one of my closest friends and teammates Carly Patterson won in 2004 so had been 20 years before an American gymnast won and so being able to train in the same gym as Carly the gym that my parents started was was really something that inspired me every single day because she kind of made me believe that this is possible you know it is possible for an American gymnast to do that and so I think just being able to see that every single day inspired me that being said I just feel like so many times there's people around you whether they're in your life or now social media you know people are always going to tell you no and people are always going to like roll your eyes when you tell them your dream or your goal and I think what I realized throughout my career and continue to realize is that those dreams and those goals are within reach and they're you know just at the tip of our fingertips and if we really want to do it it's it's far beyond obvious then just like work hard and believe in yourself you know you have to do a few more things in between all of that but I just think with young girls today that it's important for them to have a voice and to believe in that voice so talking about your frame of mind which I found really really interesting and and you've talked about it saying I have something else it isn't just the work ethic in fact I'm gonna paraphrase this gonna be really close everyone that plays tennis has work ethic so that isn't what separated me from everybody else what separated me from everybody else was that other thing what is that other thing I always think there are there are things that just can't be measured like you know I don't know if they're in thin air or they're another planet or what but like they're and a lot of sports are measured by numbers so you have statistics and you have all the point percentages and like I'll talk to my coach and he'll show me actual patterns of a player or where they serve so I'm aware of it in a match and all that is important but when you're deep enough in a match or you're deep in a third set like so much is you rely so more I do on my mind and what I believe is right in that moment on my instinct and whether it's the repetition that I formed with all the years that I've played or it's the discipline that I've that I've formed or it's just the experience that will kick in no numbers are important and you must rely on them but there are things that like you don't mean Andre Agassi had the school you don't have to be better than everyone else in the draw when you go out on the court like you have to be better than someone that's across the net and whether that is at a very high level whether that's at a low level whatever it is it doesn't matter you can't can be great every single day like there's only a handful of times where I've gone on the court and felt like I did everything well no it's impossible well I go to this place in my life where people say like you know what are one of the biggest lessons you've learned and to me it's like not to compare myself to others because that's just the recipe for failure right I'm never gonna be you and never gonna be as articulate or passion there to convey myself like you do I'm never gonna have misty Mae's hand or her ball control and I for so long I compared myself against the greats and be like [ __ ] I'm falling short like I need to become them to become great which is just [ __ ] you know and once I stopped you know honestly comparing myself and owning myself and being inspired by them and stealing all the best parts of them and making my own like that is so much more powerful you know and so I want to do that for the rest of my life and I I'm not a literal person you know like I think there's all shades of grey and life is a [ __ ] rainbow and it's not black and white and thank God because I am like an in-the-moment person that I could contradict myself from one to the next but I'm not bullshitting I get to my truth and this is my experience and I believe that we're always in flux and we're always expanding you know so please take me with a grain of salt but know that I mean my [ __ ] you know it's like this weird like there's so many - I caught a museum II and I feel like sometimes I'm nonsensical but I know what the [ __ ] I want and I know who I am and I know that what I want is gonna help me become more of a of what I am [Music] last night question four where I was going how do you identify or cultivate or whatever that word is the truest version of yourself but just to piggyback on what Jesus said my work seems to be about the very entire relationship but it's really about healing the child within the parent and in that respect it's for every human being I would agree that every human being is a child so it's in the under the umbrella and the guise of the parent wanting to pick up the book because it's about the child but when they pick it up and they realize this is about how they have to yet confront who it is they truly are so to your question how do you develop the truest self well most of us have been divorced from it this is the tragic truth for the reasons I said we've been given a prescription we've been raised through a conditioned lens not a lens that truly honors who it is we are so in order to now recover that we have to peel back the layers we have to undo all that has been done to us so we have to read question all that we should have never been given answers to and we should have been allowed to discover on our own such as who is God what is God what is religion what is beauty what is achievement what is success what is truth write those questions those big life questions should have been led to us not given to us we should have been led to discover them this should not have been given to us packaged because maybe they don't work for us and it is through the discovery of those answers that we discover who it is we are and we discover our relationship with the universe so we are robbing our children of this valuable process by handing them this list all we need to do really is just to guide them and the most essential thing we need to do is discover those answers for ourselves and value the sovereign right to muddle and fumble and stumble and mess up because when we value it and see how much it's given us we let our children suffer we let our children fumble because we know where it's going to take them because we saw where it took us this is the greatest lesson for parents to realize the power of pain and our desire to fix it for our children and to control it because we're trying to mitigate and control it for ourselves but we've never been able to but this is the universe's biggest lesson you have to surrender life is pain life is unpredictable it's it's a curveball it's a crapshoot it's some adventure and if you don't live it waking up every day saying maybe this is the day I will fully give it all up and change and start anew we're so afraid to mold the skin we're so afraid so we'd much rather live in the conformity of stagnancy you know as long as we remain the same you know it's much easier but life is not that you know so all spiritual lessons of the Mystics are ever-present in this potential of this moment you know and our children show us that we're just afraid pain is the greatest teacher doesn't mean youself flagellate and self-inflict it just means you you don't hold yourself back in the fear of it you just live fully you talked about having scar tissue from growing up and you you maybe downplayed it a little bit here in your book and then some of your talks you've talked a lot about like not having the TV parents with accents always being because your parents were moving you moved like an insane number of times yeah 12 times so moving around so much to stay in essentially wealthy neighborhoods so that you could go to the best public schools and that you know kids can be really really cruel so going through that then coming out of it I think that breaks most people why didn't it break you what were you saying to yourself mentally because I'm sure at the time you weren't thinking oh this is really gonna make me a great entrepreneur you're just trying to get through it but what were you telling yourself to get through it I think for me my refuge was in helping other people I started doing community service in high school and for me it was this refuge maybe seeing people who had it even worse than me put my own suffering in context maybe it made me feel like I could somehow transform hurt and pain that I was feeling into something positive in the world you know looking back on it I feel like maybe that was the original impetus for me to do this work you have magic words for somebody who's going through something similar but their response is to close down it's not to open up they're not being propelled forward they're being held back because I've met people that they fall into both camps like really similar circumstances but just diametrically opposed responses like do you have the the magic sentence that you know would help somebody jump from closing down to opening up the only real power we have in the world is choosing our response we can't choose what happens to us we can get stuck into situations where we are abused where we are not treated fairly where any number of bad things can happen and so the only choice we can make is how to respond and I find that that knowledge gives me so much freedom because if something bad is happening to me that I can say is beyond my control I can say well at least you know I have the power in my response to show the world what kind of person I am and I can't tell you the number of really interesting examples of post-traumatic growth that we're now cataloguing people who've lost everything people who've had their kids murdered in front of them people who've had just everyman manner of hardship who are able to choose their response and rather than shutting down and you know getting more and more depressed which is something that you have to get through but the the choice to take that painful experience and mold it into something positive for the world is I think the deepest kind of healing we can have as humans and for me I think part of what got me through those tough times eventually as I matured was the knowledge that I had transform that into something good for the world [Music] but I'm not you know the classic Silicon Valley CEO you know I think that for me I used to believe that that meant that I could never really achieve what they achieve that there were certain parts of the world certain levels of success or in levels of business that we're just going to be too big for me it's like how can I dare say I'm going to run an energy company like that I'm going to build wealth for a community like who the hell am i how did you get over that because I think most people have that but they stop there the first thing that I did was not think too far ahead so the idea was instead of imagining from day one oh I want to build an energy company it was more imagining or really envisioning well why am I getting up in the morning why might you know what's the point of my day especially also I think I would add to recently wanting very much to make sure that little girls who look like me believe that they can do anything and believe that they can do more than just media and entertainment in particular and believe in the value of their perspective and so that's what gets me up in the morning and then everything else the details it's like it kind of I can push through that day and what I found is that instead of trying to live a successful life if you aim to have a successful day you know just you know 12 if you have 13 of the 24 hours of your days you've won those hours you've won the day and if you win most of the days in a week you won the week you know we just need a simple majority here right and if you if you win you know most of the weeks in a month there you go most of the months in a year most of the years in a life and and all of a sudden look at that without even trying you've been able to kind of get somewhere and so the the biggest roadblocks for me were kind of in those big momentous moments then so like getting ready to raise the round for example was one of those big moments where I realized that without knowing it I had been building a life up to this big leap but but it wasn't about starting there thinking about the leaves thinking about the big mom two things that would have to happen it's like you just go hour by hour day by day week by week month by month year by year and then all of a sudden in five years into working on something I have the opportunity to raise the largest round any black ones ever raised in history and I'm afraid I'm afraid just by everything I've gone through to get there I'm afraid and it's because I still am just like yo I know me and Mark Zuckerberg went to the same college but that's about it I was on the step team I know he wasn't you know what I mean like yeah I mean I mean from what I understand he wasn't I don't you know but like we we have different we have a different life and I know that ultimately these investors are looking to invest in people that they understand right I think actually a lot of people I don't think I'm special in that I think people like to understand things and in the worst of times in my business if they don't understand me they're not gonna understand my decisions they're not going to have faith in how I'm going to get us through this and it was actually this person who's currently one of my advisors works for one of the top pcs out here in the West Coast and he said without missing a beat Jessica Mark Zuckerberg could have never invented the socket uh you know it is your life it is your unique perspective it is who you are that has brought you here so anyone who invests in you is going to want you to be who you are they're going to have to trust that being who you are even if it's different from who they are but that's going to be the thing that's going to take this to the next level no matter what and I think for me that was that was the critical piece of advice right like we all need someone to say the thing that's been so obvious that we've just been to head down to to realize but in the end you know it's about recognizing the value in our own struggle being appreciative and aware of our privilege so that we kind of empathy for others and their experience it can we can bridge the gap for them and then being able to take all of that and own it say this is who can we curse can I curse go for it I'll try not to though I'm not gonna try you know I mean like this is who the [ __ ] I am there you go this is who I am hello who - who you are into who you are that's great but this is the [ __ ] I am right take it or leave it like I know that no matter what happens if I stay Who I am like I will I will feel good about it at the end of the day you know that's all the only thing that's going to be constant in this ever-changing world especially in the startup space is Who I am and so in really meditating on that and thinking okay you know what I don't know what's gonna happen with this round I don't know what's gonna happen with this company but I do know who I am let's double down I hope you guys enjoyed that episode as much as I did I was blown away by all the amazing inspiration and quite frankly usable tactics that these powerhouse women shared with us and one more time I just want to thank every one of the extraordinary women that have come on this show and shared what they've learned not only to inspire us but I think inspire an entire generation coming up behind them so to each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart thank you for coming on I am eternally grateful and I think I speak for all of us when I say that we all are so thank you and if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care alright guys thank you so much for joining me for that I hope that you got as much out of those incredibly gifted women as I did so much amazing stuff is coming out of female leaders right now and that's why recently we launched a new show called the women of impact it's close to find my amazingly talented wife Lisa Billy she talks all about how she went from being a housewife to being a full-blown entrepreneur as part of the founding team to built a billion-dollar company quest and now here at impact Theory if you want to hear her and other extraordinary women talking about their experiences go right now to youtube and to Instagram it's women of impact