We're Only Human

One day, Angelica Patlán asked herself: is this who I am or who I thought I was supposed to be?

She realized who she thought she was supposed to be is completely different from who she really is. That realization changed everything for her.

In this episode, Angelica Patlán and I discuss:

How the lack of closure while working as a 911 dispatcher affected her

The ways in which she re-found herself by getting lost and intentionally feeling uncomfortable

When she realized she wasn't happy following the prescribed path

Dealing with self doubt and fear

Why perfection is often stemming from self doubt

Jessica Williams is the founder of Tech Biz Gurl. She also has a day job and is a caregiver. Like many of us, she's juggling a lot of plates in the air. She has recently realized the importance of pausing and recharging in her life.

In this episode, Jessica Williams and I discuss:

Why she isn’t trying to escape her day job

How being laid off from her job helped her

How her day job helps build her side hustle

Why comparison engine is the worst and how it's affecting you too!

The impact she wants to make on the world

What she learned about herself from The Fear Experiment

Her experience being a caregiver

Her techniques for focusing

Marsha Shandur has a beast who whispers in her ear every day. She used to try to quiet the voice but the voice kept coming back. She also realized she wasn't the only one with this beast whispering. Many of us have this little voice in our head, trying to convince us that we aren't good enough.

Marsha is on a mission to show us how to tame this voice and successfully co-exist with it. We're then able to be who we are without fear of the voice tearing us down.

In this episode, Marsha Shandur and I discuss:

Why she believes there’s a beast whispering in our ears

Her preference for a flip phone rather than a smartphone

Her passion for making the world more accessible

Why she write herself notes on her Christmas tree every year

Her favorite Christmas memory that she's never told anyone about before

The strength of being alone

From moving in with a roommate for the first time in years to spending a weekend alone in a treehouse with a hot tub, Bridget Poetker experienced a lot of change in 2020.

As hard as 2020 was, she has never been more proud of herself for how much she grew as a person that year.

In this episode, Bridget Poetker and I discuss:

Why she’s not inspired by people who have been in the same career for 30 years

How Bridget decides who she wants to be a part of her life

How she learned that being alone is good and ok

Why she stayed in a treehouse with a hot tub by herself for a weekend after getting laid off

The various ways she grew as a person in 2020

The importance of actions over words

When she was nine years old, Angie Cole wrote a letter to her pen pal expressing her fear that she would never leave her small hometown and never get to travel.

Today, Angie travels the world living a nomadic life. She helps people who have been following the rules and realized that's not working for them. People who have always been told to live life a certain way to be successful.

Angie discovered at an early age that the rules were never meant for her. That realization led her on a path to live a life beyond her wildest imagination. A life her nine year-old self could never have fathomed when she wrote that letter to her pen pal.

In this episode, Angie Cole and I discuss:

When she realized the rules aren’t meant for us

How she deals with the chaos in her life

Why we are all so desperately trying to achieve the hot tub

How she created conditions to hear herself and what she wanted her life to be

The ways in which fear and desire are two sides of the same coin

How she conquered the fear of never leaving her small town as a child

What home looks like for her as she lives a nomadic lifestyle

2020 crushed Emma Wolno's plans of being a digital nomad who traveled the world while growing her business. Instead, she was grounded in her hometown and forced to stay put.

That initial setback evolved into a year of life lessons that she never saw coming. She realized there is so much to learn from slowing down and immersing oneself in each day.

In this episode, Emma Wolno and I discuss:

The various lessons she learned from 2020

The twists and turns her life took after graduating university

Why she “did the whole move for love” thing

Her guiding word for 2021 and why she picked it

Why she considers past relationships to still be successful relationships

Her techniques for practicing self care

Why she prefers the process toward achieving goals over the goals themselves

What success in life means to her

In June 2020, Shannon Downey gave up her job, sold all of her possessions, bought an RV, and began traveling the United States as a nomadic craftivist.

Shannon is here to remind us how simple it can be to change the world. It doesn't have to be epic. Changing the world can be as simple as a single moment or action.

In this episode, Shannon Downey and I discuss:

The money and power course she took with a dominatrix, and the clarity she derived from that class

Why she has a personal board of directors in her life

How she's been forced to pace her learning in this chapter of her life

The million lives she’s lived and how they’ve all shaped who she is today

Why she moves on to the next thing once she feels like she's learned all she can from the current chapter of her life

How she saved the unfinished quilt from a 99 year-old quilter with the help of over 1,000 people around the world

Bruce Ackerman devoted six years of nights and weekends to building his software company Printavo before he began full time work on it. He's on a mission to push his industry forward and grow custom apparel shops along the way.

He sometimes still can't believe he's living his passion every single day now, remembering how he ran his own custom apparel shop in college.

Bruce isn't afraid to make significant sacrifices along his journey. He always thinks back to his guiding question: what is the impact you want to make?

In this episode, Bruce Ackerman and I discuss:

The anxiety that 2020 brought

Why Bruce is okay chasing more, better, faster

How working on Printavo nights and weekends for 6 years has shaped who he is as a person

Where he got the entrepreneurial bug from

How being an entrepreneur affects his relationship with his wife

Why he didn’t tell his parents about his business for the longest time

When Laura Peña came home from her nine-to-five job one evening, she opened the door, saw her husband watching TV, and thought to herself: Is this it? Is this life? There must be more.

She felt like she was on a train going a million miles an hour. And then suddenly, she stopped and thought to herself: Is this where I’m supposed to be?

Today Laura is the founder of She Is The Universe, a global platform that inspires and empowers teenage girls around the world.

In this episode, Laura Peña and I discuss:

Why it’s ok to feel like there’s more to experience in your life than you have so far

The benefits of leaning into discomfort

Ways to step outside your comfort zone

What it’s like to live a nomadic life

Why our gifts don’t always need to make money

The inspiration behind She’s The Universe

How her parents attempt at starting ideas has inspired her

The importance of sharing our own stories and acknowledging that other people do care about our stories

After Kevin Raheja dropped out of the college his mother taught at, he went to Alaska in search of work on a commercial fishing boat.

He was tired of the cubicle walls surrounding him at the job he worked to pay for college. He wanted to be free, challenging himself, doing the opposite of what he was doing.

Kevin yearned to connect more with nature and experience more of what it means to be human. His journey working on the commercial fishing boat and his subsequent career managing partnerships at software companies have shown him what he's truly capable of.

In this episode, Kevin Raheja and I discuss:

Why a psychology class in college forced him to realize he didn't like the future he was heading into

The reasons he escaped to Alaska to work on a commercial fishing boat

Why the physical demands of crab fishing wasn't actually the challenging part

The big lesson he learned from his crab fishing days

How his dad’s sudden death affects him each day

The effects living in a small village in India for 6 months during his childhood has on him

What micro goals and macro goals are

How he balances his love for the software industry with his love for connecting with nature outdoors