Firing The Man
THANK YOU TO OUR 25,000+ LISTENERS! We are so thankful to be one of the TOP E-Commerce Podcasts delivering high-quality authentic content to you! Serial Entrepreneur’s David Schomer and Ken Wilson share tips, advice, and insider knowledge about all things Amazon FBA, Walmart WFS, and E-Commerce. Discover how you can create multiple income streams by selling physical products online so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love - whether that is spending more time with family or traveling the world. Ken and David have successfully created several six and seven figure online business ventures. During the journey, they have had major wins, losses, and lessons learned. This podcast will teach you about selling physical products online through platforms such as Fulfillment by Amazon, building a team, outsourcing, listing optimization, pay per click (PPC) advertising, driving traffic to your listings, and productivity tips / life hacks that will provide a path to be successful in building your online business. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from Ken and David you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Firing The Man
Smashing Self-Limiting Beliefs with Amber Fuhriman
What if the biggest obstacles to your success aren't external challenges but the stories you tell yourself? In this revealing conversation with attorney, success architect, and podcast host Amber Fuhriman, we unpack the limiting beliefs that keep entrepreneurs trapped in cycles of frustration and self-doubt.
Amber shatters the common myth that successful entrepreneurs have some secret knowledge or inherent advantage. "Nobody knows what they're doing," she explains. "We act with uncertainty, evaluate our decisions, figure out what worked, and figure out what didn't." This refreshing honesty cuts through the carefully curated social media personas of success, particularly what Amber calls the "Lambo, plane, and Rolex watch" images that trigger more skepticism than inspiration among seasoned entrepreneurs.
The conversation takes a surprising turn when discussing high-stress environments. Rather than pushing harder, Amber advocates for intentionally slowing down—scheduling "breathe time" throughout the day and working in focused 45-60 minute blocks. This counterintuitive approach has transformed her productivity and mental clarity, especially after discovering the power of breathwork when traditional meditation failed her.
We explore the fascinating connection between childhood experiences and entrepreneurial drive, with Amber explaining how our earliest programming shapes our definition of success. "Money equaled success, success equaled happiness," she shares about her own journey, "and that meant all the pain I felt in my life was going to disappear." The revelation came when success didn't deliver the promised emotional fulfillment, leading to anxiety attacks and a profound reexamination of her goals.
Perhaps most valuable is Amber's advice for entrepreneurs feeling stuck: "The antidote to feeling stuck is taking a step, whether you think it's in the correct direction or not." She challenges listeners to examine whether they have data supporting their perceived plateau or if they're simply justifying inaction, noting that "the distance between deciding and action will decide who makes the most money."
Whether you're just starting your entrepreneurial journey or looking to break through to your next level of success, this conversation provides the mindset tools to recognize and overcome the internal barriers holding you back. Connect with Amber at successdevelopmentsolutions.com or amber@amberfurman.com to continue your journey toward authentic success.
How to connect with Amber?
Email: Amber@amberfuhriman.com
Website: https://fuhrimanlaw.com/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/break-your-bullsh-t-box/id1475272089
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@amberfuhriman668
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2320358498239185
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amberraefuhriman/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fuhrimanlaw/
Twitter: https://x.com/FuhrimanLaw
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts, serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Firing the man podcast, the show where we explore the journeys of entrepreneurs who have taken control of their destinies by building their own businesses. Today, we're excited to welcome Amber Furman, an accomplished attorney, success architect and host of Break your Bullshit podcast. Amber is the founder of Furman Law, a Las Vegas-based firm specializing in immigration and criminal defense. Her unique expertise in both areas has made her a sought-after advocate for clients navigating complex legal issues.
Speaker 2:Beyond her legal career, amber is passionate about her personal development and empowering others to overcome self-limiting beliefs. As the creator and host of the Break your Bullshit podcast, she engages in candid conversations aimed at helping individuals break free from self-imposed barriers and achieve their true potential. In this episode, we'll delve into Amber's entrepreneurial journey, her insights on balancing a demanding legal career with personal growth initiatives, and her strategies for breaking through mental barriers that often hold us back from success. Whether you're an entrepreneur, business owner or someone seeking inspiration to take the next step in your personal or professional life, amber's story and insights are sure to resonate. Amber, we're really excited to have you on the show. Welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. To start things off, you talk a lot about the stories that we tell ourselves. What are some of the most common limiting beliefs you see entrepreneurs make, and how can they begin to break through those?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think that the stories we tell ourselves are so individual and unique that everybody's is going to be a little bit different. However, just like every action or Hallmark movie you've ever seen, they have themes that underline them right. You feel like if you've seen one, you've seen them all, even if the characters are different.
Speaker 3:The biggest thing I see with entrepreneurs, especially new ones, is they make the mistake of believing that the people that are the most successful that they're looking up to and they're modeling their journey after that, they just knew what to do, that they had it figured out all along, and that the reason that they were successful is because they had some leg up and there's something different about them, and so that's one of the biggest things that I like to dispel right off the bat is that I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. Nobody knows right. We just act with this uncertainty and then we evaluate our decisions and we figure out what worked and we figure out what didn't work. So this preconception, or this notion that the reason people are successful is because they had some additional like foresight and knew what to do, is the biggest lie in the story I see entrepreneurs tell themselves.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and that's something that I think with social media, it's worse, because you're in your free time flipping through Instagram or Facebook or whatever your platform is, and I can tell you, in particular in e-commerce, there's a group of influencers we like to call them Lambros, and they're guys that stay next to their Lamborghinis. They talk about building passive income. Guys are standing next to their Lamborghinis, they talk about building passive income, and I do think that that sets a really, really bad expectation, or unrealistic expectation, for people that are just getting started. And so what? Any thoughts on that, like navigating this world or overcoming this in the social media time?
Speaker 3:So many thoughts, so many thoughts. So I mean, first of all, I laugh because it's so relevant the Lambo, the plane, the Rolex watch, like it's to the point now where, if I see somebody with those things, I go straight to skepticism instead of admiration. And there was a period of my life where I was like man, I want that. I want to be able to stand next to the car, I want to be able to wear the you know $10,000 watch. I want to be able to do all of those things. And now, because I know how easy it is to go rent a Lambo or like charter a private plane for an hour or take a picture when you're trying on the $10,000 watch and share that out in social media, my immediate sales mind goes to this is a marketing ploy. This is a marketing campaign, and I think it's gotten even worse with AI because you can now go into an AI platform and I'm a huge believer of AI, so I want to put that out there first. I use it in my business all the time, however, just like anything else. I mean, I'm a certified trainer of NLP. I get told all the time NLP is manipulation. No, it's influence, but it's intention. That makes the difference between influence and manipulation. It's the same thing with AI. You can go on to AI right now and you can say take this picture of me and have me stand next to a red Lambo and it'll pop it out as if it's real. So you don't even have to go rent the Lambo anymore.
Speaker 3:So the biggest thing I have is hang out with people in person. Hang out with people in real life and even if that real life is virtual real life, get on the Zoom call, reach out to them, have the conversations, figure out who they are in real life, because I have hung around with people who have ridiculous amounts of money and I've never been in a Lambo. I've hung out with people who have ridiculous amounts of money and I've never been on a private plane. The people who I mean what's the old dating advice Like? If somebody tells you that they're a good guy, they don't have to tell you. Or if somebody is a good guy, they don't have to tell you they're a good guy, right? The people that have these things are not out there posting pictures of themselves with these things. They're out there mentoring other people. If it's organic, it's real, but if somebody's just standing next to this fancy thing talking about how cool it is to stand next to the fancy thing, my brain immediately goes to you're full of shit, same yeah.
Speaker 2:And that filter has developed over time and it hasn't always been that way. At one point I wanted a Lamborghini, but now I want time with my wife and children and that's rich to me, and so, uh, no, I think that's really good perspective. And so one of the things I want to talk about is is uh, you've been a business owner, you've been an attorney uh, both very high stress environments and so how do you, how have you navigated those high stress environments while maintaining a long-term vision and mental clarity?
Speaker 3:Well, once I realized alcohol wasn't the answer, I went to really slowing down and I know that sounds counterproductive, right when I work with business owners and entrepreneurs that are in a high stress environments which, let's be real, every business owner and every entrepreneur is in a high stress environment. There's no way around it. We think that speed is the answer. We think that doing everything as quickly as we can and on our own is the answer. And so when I talk to them about, like, what kind of self-care did you have today? How did you spend your downtime today, their answer is I don't have time for downtime and we have to.
Speaker 3:So I know what it feels like to be this type A hard charging, get the hell out of my way, attorney, and that lifestyle only serves me for so long. The first time somebody mentioned meditation to me was like I don't have time to slow down and breathe Like I. This is stupid. It serves no purpose for me Just taking 30 seconds, 60 seconds, to start, and, like I schedule in my calendar now breathe time Like I'll, I'll put, um, I'll put.
Speaker 3:So let me go back when I look at my schedule in the morning, especially because I in the law firm, I had an assistant that made sure I was in all of my appointments all of the time.
Speaker 3:When I went into coaching I didn't have that anymore, so I had to figure out how I was going to manage my own schedule. So I created this system for myself where, when I wake up in the morning, I set alarms for myself throughout the day before important appointments. And then I realized that I was setting alarms for important appointments for other people, but I wasn't setting alarms for important appointments for myself. So then I started setting breathe alarms throughout the day, like have you gone for a mental health walk? Have you gone outside today? Have you taken time just to shut everything off and go let the sun hit your face? Those things are more recharging than we know, and if you feel like you're ending your day incredibly stressed, incredibly overwhelmed, you're going to bed with already tomorrow's problems racing through your day. The counterintuitive answer to that is to take some time and slow down.
Speaker 2:I like it. I like it. What have you found to be the sweet spot for downtime? If you look at a eight or nine hour day out of like, if you're planning out an optimal day, how many breaks are you taking? How long are those what's that look like?
Speaker 3:I really like to work in 45 to 60 minute increments. I like to make sure that I'm standing up every 45 to 60 minutes, that I'm so for every 45 to 60 minutes that I work. I like to take between, depending on my day and how busy I am or productive I want to be. I like to take between like a 90 second breather where I just like intentionally calm my breathing down for a little bit, up to a 10 to 15 minute walk. So ideally for me the ratio would be 45 minutes work to a 15 minute walk. Sometimes, as business owners and entrepreneurs, that's not. That's not feasible. So at a minimum I'll do like a 60 to 90 second breathing session and breathwork session. And let me be clear that this breathwork conversation was an accidental find for me because I was so stuck in. I can't meditate, I don't slow down. Meditation's hard for me.
Speaker 3:And I went to this retreat that was a sales retreat and a customer journey retreat from somebody that I looked at as my kind of people super type, a super, get shit done and at the end of every day he did a breathwork session and he said this isn't mandatory, but you guys don't have to be here. I encourage you, if you've never done breathwork before, to stay and try something new. And so I did, and it was like meditation didn't work for me, but breathwork. I'll lay down and do a breathwork session. It's so enjoyable for me. So that would be. My piece of advice is, if you're saying, if you're, if you're the former version of me, and you're listening to this saying I don't meditate, I don't breathe, I don't do that shit, it doesn't serve me. Try something new and find somebody that you trust in an environment that's different for you, and just give it a shot, because breathwork is something that opened the door for me.
Speaker 2:That's really good feedback. That's really good feedback, and I would say that I have heard similar things about breathwork. However, I am probably where you were prior to trying it, where it was like I don't have time in my schedule or how do I do this, and I had heard a saying one time if you feel like you don't have 15 minutes to meditate, then you need to meditate for an hour, and when I first heard that, it seemed kind of counterintuitive, but I do think that there's definitely some truth there, and so one of the things that you've mentioned early on in your answer was alcohol, alcohol not being the answer, and one observation I have is and I interact with a lot of entrepreneurs- and business owners is that and this is anecdotal, but I bet it's backed up by data substance abuse tends to be higher with business owners and entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:Why do you think that is, and do you have any tips on managing that in a healthy way?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I think there's a few different reasons for it. It's cultural. I think that when you start your business, what's the first thing they tell you to do? Get out there and network. Well, where are most networking events held? They're held at mixers. They're held in bars.
Speaker 3:Right, I am really optimistic at this sober lifestyle that so many people are starting Like. If you really look around, you can see people who are choosing to be sober. That's not me. I do drink. I want to make that clear. With that being said, though, my answer for how to handle it responsibly is going to be the same thing that I would tell you with anything else and it's intention.
Speaker 3:So many times, people don't even realize that they're grabbing a drink just for the purposes of feeling like they have something in their hand, and this was for me. I quit drinking for about seven months. It was supposed to be only for like two or three weeks. I just I felt like I'm a huge sports fan, and I felt like every time I would go to a sporting event, the first question I was asking myself is what am I going to get to drink? And, as I realized, that was the first thing going through my head. I didn't like it. I, in college, after my dad died, I went through a really unhealthy relationship with alcohol. I was I don't know if I'd call myself an alcoholic, but I would definitely have called myself somebody with an alcohol abuse problem. But I would definitely have called myself somebody with an alcohol abuse problem. And so for me, I'm super sensitive when I feel like my first question, my first thought, is what am I going to put in my hand? So I wanted to show myself I could quit drinking, and it was supposed to be for two or three weeks. And then I liked the way I felt and I was like I'm just going to go till my birthday and ended up going about seven months. And what that taught me was that if you're not intentional about what you're doing, what's the phrase? I heard a quote the other day that said if you don't set your goals, if you don't set your intentions, somebody else will wrap you into theirs. Right? And so I think it's just this whether it's your schedule, whether it's stress management, whether it's what you're going to choose to eat or drink or put in your body, every behavior has an intention, and we get to identify what that's going to be. And I want to expand on that just a little bit, because it's not just alcohol and it's not just negative things, right?
Speaker 3:One of my favorite podcast interviews I ever did was with a really good friend of mine who, if you stripped away our identities and you just looked at some of the major points on our timelines, we were identical people. We both had a history of suicide in our family. We both lost our dad at a young age. We both had siblings that looked up to us. We were both the first business owners in our family. Like so much was identical.
Speaker 3:Yet I went to law school and he became a drug addict, an alcoholic, and went to jail. Now he runs really cool events. He's an extremely successful business owner and entrepreneur. But people look at me and they say you went to law school, you're so accomplished, and they look at him and they say you went to jail, you're a fuck up, when in reality we were numbing the same pain. My drug of choice was academics. So I see people all the time say I don't drink, but I'm going to go on a 19 mile run this morning. Don't fall into the mistake of thinking that because your drug of choice is healthy and societally acceptable that you're not numbing something that you need to be dealing with in order to be successful as a business owner or entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:I think that's a really good point and oftentimes, yeah, alcohol or drugs are the go-to, but yeah, there's certainly addictions that are healthy. Academia is one, and you had talked, you had mentioned this new kind of sober lifestyle. I listened to a podcast with Andrew Huberman on alcohol. I don't know, it is probably one of the most downloaded podcasts of 2024. And all he did was just spoke about like, when you drink alcohol, what are the effects? What effects does it have on your body? All data-driven he's a scientist, outstanding podcast and that one alone changed my relationship with alcohol. And I think your point on intention is really good. There's a lot of times you kind of go on autopilot and you don't stop and ask what is my intention for this, and so I think that's that's really good advice.
Speaker 3:Well, if you, if you stop drinking for a while and then you go out and you have a night out with friends, you feel the effects differently. And that was one of the first things that I noticed when I quit drinking for that seven months and then I decided to have my first drink after that and it was a choice was I had two beers and I woke up the next morning feeling so groggy and I was like I haven't felt this way in a really long time. I don't like waking up feeling like this. And then the other thing in the reframe that really helped me is I never realized this until I heard it on a podcast that alcohol is the only drug that we have to justify not using. Right Like if you go out and somebody offered like I'm in Vegas, so this is probably a more common occurrence for me. But if you go out and somebody's like, hey, you want to go to the bathroom and do some coke, you're like no, that sounds like a horrible idea. And they're like OK, maybe you make good life choices.
Speaker 2:But if you say, do you want to go to the bar and get a drink and you're like no, I don't drink. They're like what the hell is wrong with you? There's a big movement going on and I'm not sure what's driving that. I'm sure it's a whole bunch of things, but I do think it's a net positive, for society as much as our accessibility for the landscape is changing.
Speaker 3:I think with social media has kind of two sides to it. It has the side we talked about before, which is where all the people that I will publicly call douchebags live, the people that want you to believe that they're more successful than they are. And then we have this other side of social media that, over the last four or five years, has started to take over, which is let me tell you about my struggles so that you can learn from them, and if you can make it on that side of social media, you will find the people who are talking to you about sober lifestyles, that are talking to you about depression and anxiety and about coping techniques and about breathwork, and I don't know that those people are more that. That lifestyle is bigger than it used to be. I think it's more accessible, which is allowing other people to feel like it's okay to talk about, and so it's growing, but it's growing because people are finally saying I'm tired of living in this world where not talking about this isn't acceptable.
Speaker 2:Tired of living in this world where not talking about this isn't acceptable. Yeah, yeah, no, I absolutely agree with that. So, as I was prepping for this interview, I was listening to a couple of your podcasts, and one of the things I heard you talk about was redefining success. And so how do you guide entrepreneurs to align their business goals with what actually fulfills them?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So this goes back to your first question that you asked of the lies that we tell ourselves. So I'm going to get super scientific for you for about two and a half seconds and then we'll go back. So, sociologically, there's a sociologist by the name of Morris Massey that came up with these sociological guideposts of where we develop individually and also as a society, and he theorized that the ages of zero to seven is when we're imprinted, where all of our values are learned, where all of our beliefs are learned.
Speaker 3:If I have somebody that comes to me that says I want to communicate better, my first question to them is let's go back to the age of zero and seven. What was communication like in your household? Did your parents show you what it was like to have open communication? And then, from the ages of about eight to 14, we take everything that we learned in that imprint period and we start to model the people around us. Model the people around us. For those of you listening, I know that you can relate to walking into a room, seeing a little human and being able to identify who their parents are just by the way that they stand, dress and show up. They're modeling the people that are close to us, and there's also a thing called reverse modeling. So we either model people and we say I want to be like you, or, if we have a negative experience, we reverse model people and we say I don't wanna be like you, there's no way in hell I would ever show up like you. And then we try to become the opposite of that and then we enter our socialization period from about the ages of 14 to 21. This is known as middle school, high school and the beginning of college. We're figuring out where we fall on the social ladder. So I feel like this is important to answer your question, because people's definition of success is often driven by their beliefs of what success is going to bring them for those values and that model of the world that's created between the ages of zero and seven and then modeled between eight and 14.
Speaker 3:For me, using my experiences, I grew up in a super, super, super small town and I looked around and I reverse modeled that small town. I wasn't. I never wanted kids. I grew up in a very religious community where I was told that my job as a woman is to have children and if God wants me to have some sort of a career. He will create the path for that after I procreate enough. I was the oldest child and so I feel like I had this path of I don't know what I want, but I know what it's not. And it's not living in a farming community, raising kids and staying here.
Speaker 3:So for me, I saw money as success. And being born in the 80s and raised in the 90s doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, cpas those were the people that made money. I hated science. So for me, the long path after all the trauma was go to law school. For me, if I went to law school, for me, if I went to law school, I could make $100,000. Money equaled success, success equaled happiness, and that meant that all the pain that I felt in my life was going to disappear. I started having panic attacks and anxiety attacks when money didn't equal happiness.
Speaker 3:So, to answer your question, when it comes to redefining success, the first thing we have to understand is this thing you say you want, whether it's the career, whether it's the money, whether it's the relationship, whether it's the family, whatever you're defining success as deep down inside in your programming, what is it that you think that's going to do for you?
Speaker 3:What do you think it's going to create, because I promise it won't. If you don't feel happy, fulfilled, loved and valuable without those things, you are never going to feel that with it. So I feel like what most people do is they say I'm going to put my head down, work really hard because if I reach this level of the external success, then I will feel valuable, loved and worthy of living my life the way that I want to. What we get to do is understand where that comes from, so we can create a business and a life that aligns with what you want to have, instead of you chasing things that you think are going to fix the problems that you don't want to solve. That money and society has told you success is going to make better.
Speaker 2:I really like that answer, and I think money is an obvious one, that it seems like you almost have to go through it to realize that. Are there any other areas of life where you think people often think it's something that's going to fulfill them but ultimately does not?
Speaker 3:Yeah, all of them. The reality is all of them. I see it a lot in relationships. If I could just find the perfect partner, everything else would fall into place. I saw a quote once. I've been single for a long time because my last, my last relationship I realized that I needed to do some work. I realized that I had I had some, some shit I needed to solve internally and then I wasn't ready to date. So I have just put myself back out into the dating pool and I haven't. I haven't dated in like eight years. I haven't dated in like eight years and I needed that because I was looking for somebody who was going to complete me. And I saw a meme the other day that said I don't need you to be my happiness, I need you to find yours so you don't ruin mine. And I feel like that is the best way to sum up a relationship and spirituality, religion. I see it with that health. If I could just have the perfect body, then everything else would fall into place. If I could just lose the weight, everything else would fall into place. I'm going to share.
Speaker 3:I saw another podcast recently where a husband and wife were talking and he asked the wife. He said has there ever been parts of our relationship where you lost attraction for me? And she said yeah, there has. And he asked the wife. He said has there ever been parts of our relationship where you lost attraction for me? And she said, yeah, there has. And he goes it was in my fat area era, wasn't it? And she goes yes, but not for the reason that you think and she went through all of these reasons that he changed the way that he dressed and he changed the way that he showed up and he changed. And she went through all these things and she says I never wanted you to change the way you looked. I wanted you to change the way that you felt about how you looked.
Speaker 3:And I think that that is what's so powerful. No matter whether you're in a career relationship, whether we're talking about money, whether we're talking about spirituality, whether we're talking about keeping your house clean, it doesn't matter. There is a reason you're not doing it now, and that reason has to do with something internal. And bringing the organizer in to clean your house isn't going to make you feel better about yourself. Getting the perfect partner isn't going to make you feel better about yourself. We have to do the internal work, to figure out why we think that these external things are going to solve a problem for us, before we will ever feel successful.
Speaker 2:Well, money's the obvious one. But then you went and listed off six or seven of other ones that I think are definitely relevant. And so one thing I want to go a little deeper on, and you had brought it why this is, and I'd be interested if you have any ideas. But they oftentimes did not have a rosy childhood. They've had something bad happen to them, they've had some period of intense struggle, and you just see that that is an observation that I have. You just see that that is an observation that I have.
Speaker 2:And it seems like in the deep work community there's kind of two schools of thought. There's one that's you know, address that trauma head on, and then the other opinion is childhood trauma should have a statute of limitations, and at some point you need to and I want to mention this is not my opinion, uh, but you need to pick your, pick yourself up by your bootstraps and take accountability for your own life. And, and so I'm curious, like it is a two-part question why do you think those are some common traits of entrepreneurs and the second piece of it is common traits of entrepreneurs, and the second piece of it is where does dealing with childhood shit deal, like play into self-development?
Speaker 3:So I'm going to answer them backwards. I'm going to answer your second question first. I believe in both schools of thought. I believe that pulling up your putting on your big boy or your big girl britches and dealing with your childhood trauma means doing the deep work. Taking responsibility for your life is doing the deep work. If you and I I very rarely call people out and say if you disagree with this, you're wrong, and I am going to do it now. If you disagree with this, you are wrong. If you disagree with this, you are wrong, and I will stand by that. Because what happens is people say I don't need to deal with this, all I need to do is work harder so that it doesn't bother me anymore. All I need to do is stop caring about it. You can't. So let me break it down scientifically in two seconds, the best way I have ever heard. So if you're not NLP familiar, we have a conscious mind. We have an unconscious mind.
Speaker 2:What is it? What is NLP?
Speaker 3:NLP stands for neuro linguistics programming and the short answer is it was created by two therapists in the 70s that were tired of talk therapy not working and they started coming up with modalities to actually heal and communicate better instead of reactively talk about things. And that doesn't mean I don't think there's a place for therapy there is. I've been in therapy for a long time. I also think that NLP is another tool in the toolbox that helps us be better communicators and better business owners. So if you're not familiar with that, we have a conscious mind, we have an unconscious mind. So picture that iceberg that everybody's used in marketing material since the beginning of time. Your conscious mind is that 10% that you can see of that iceberg. Your unconscious mind is the other 90%, where all your values are held, where all your beliefs are, where all your communications are. Your values are held where all your beliefs are, where all your communications are. And one of the prime directives of your unconscious mind is to keep unresolved negative emotions and memories until you're ready to deal with them. So it will constantly show you lessons out in the world to see whether you're ready to lean into dealing with your childhood trauma yet. And if you push that away, it says OK, not yet. I'm going to keep this stored down here for a minute and then you might have, like the the. The way we believe it in NLP is that you constantly attract your lessons until you're ready to learn them. That you know if you have that person, that's always in shitty relationships and they always have shitty business partners like they're going to continue to attract that until they learn the lessons that they're meant to learn. That's going to allow them to value themselves enough to set boundaries to attract good partners and good business relationships. Right? So the best way I've ever heard this put is in a book called You're Invited by John Levy and he compares the conscious mind and the unconscious mind to an elephant and a rider, a human rider. So if you can imagine for just a minute a 150 pound man on a two ton elephant, that 150 pound man has trained that elephant. He has beaten that elephant down until he will listen to his commands. He gets on that elephant and he says we're going to go from point A to point B and it works as long as the elephant's on board. If the elephant's instincts get kicked in, do we have any misconceptions about who's controlling the direction that that's going. There is no way that a 150 pound man is going to be able to stop a two ton elephant if that two ton elephants fight, flight or freeze. Instincts kick in. Your unconscious mind is the same way.
Speaker 3:So what happens is we make decisions with our unconscious mind and then, so we can feel like we are in control, we justify them with our conscious mind. I want to lose weight, so I'm going to set this plan, I'm going to hire this nutritionist. I'm going to hire I'm going to get all the experts. We then start to lose weight and we start to get out of our comfort zone and we start to get into this new place that we don't necessarily live in. And then we deserve the taco Tuesday. I've worked really hard and if I let myself have the margarita, then I'll work harder the rest of the week. I need my cheat day. A cheat day is going to help me focus harder later.
Speaker 3:This is the negotiation process we play with ourselves between our conscious mind and our unconscious mind. So I say this to say that if you think that you can pick your, you can put on your big girl pants, you can take responsibility for your life and you can just forget all the shit that's happened to you. You are the 150 pound man on top of an elephant that thinks you're in control. We have to work with the elephant. We have to, and that's the deep trauma work. So that's the first answer to your question.
Speaker 3:The second, the answer to your second question, I think, goes a little bit deeper and it's individual for each person. If I was to pick some pieces out that I think run through every person that I've met, it's that by going through those shitty things that we've gone through, it's that by going through those shitty things that we've gone through, we've learned to think outside of the box. We don't, and some of us get to the point where we realize it's not thinking outside of the box, it's acknowledging there isn't one, that there's not a right or wrong way to do things. Um, so let me decide if I want to go this deep. Um, we have I mentioned values that we get programmed with from the ages of zero and seven. But society also gets programmed with values, and one of the societal values that we know is values.
Speaker 3:Level four in NLP is religion, military and nine to five jobs. There's rules, there's right and wrong ways to do things, there's SOPs, there's steps that we follow. If you do this, then this occurs and entrepreneurs cannot exist in that environment. The next values level is what we know as a values level five. That's where thinking outside the box first starts to peek its head up.
Speaker 3:So I think that what has happened is those of us who have decided to jump into entrepreneurship or business ownership have been pushed out of the values level that believes that if I do everything right, then I'll be able to retire with a 401k that's healthy and the government's going to take care of me to realizing that we have to be self-reliant, because we've needed to be self-reliant our entire life.
Speaker 3:And in order for us to be self-reliant, we have to acknowledge that we are in control of whether we make money or whether we don't make money. We're in control of where we live, and this freedom no longer becomes working nine to five and going home and not having to think about work anymore. It becomes the stress of knowing that I'm in control of what I do with my business, that I have location freedom, and both of those are a double edged sword. You hear the phrase all the time that an entrepreneur will work 150 hours a week for themselves, so they don't have to work 40 hours a week for somebody else. Right, but we will, because the payoff is the freedom that we want, instead of being told what we're going to do by somebody else. And I think that comes with the trauma and the experiences that you're talking about as a kid.
Speaker 2:I have asked that question about why is it that entrepreneurs tend to have not a rosy childhood? I've probably asked that to 10 different people and that's the best answer that I've gotten, or that seems to make the most sense to me, and you hit it from a lot of different angles. And one of the things I want to back up is and I think this is worth listening to to again is like addressing the childhood trauma is taking control and picking yourself up by the bootstraps. It's not a this or that. It is their complimentary actions which, on the surface, may not seem that way, and so, okay, I do.
Speaker 2:You are a wealth of knowledge about business and this has been an awesome conversation. I wanna turn the corner a little bit and talk about some of these lessons as it relates to business, and one of the things that I've experienced I know a lot of listeners in the show have experienced is feeling stuck. You're doing all the right things, you're showing up to work on time, you're working Saturdays and you feel stuck. You've plateaued Any advice for people going through that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the first thing is do you have the data that allows you to actually understand if you've plateaued or not, or are you lying to yourself?
Speaker 3:So a lot of times, what will happen is we will convince ourselves that we've plateaued to justify slowing down. Because so every person, every single person, has an income ceiling. It's an amount of money that you have never made more of before. And if you think of your comfort zone as this place, one of my favorite quotes is don't give up your peace because chaos is comfortable. So our unconscious mind learns how to protect us, how to operate, how to exist inside of our comfort zone. And when we start to become more successful than our comfort zone is used to, our unconscious mind starts to panic a little bit because it doesn't know how to protect us in this new set of circumstances. Yet we have to sit through the discomfort of figuring out how to exist in this new reality which is making money, before our unconscious mind can say oh wait, a second, I do know how to do this here. It just looks a little bit different than what I'm used to. If we're not willing to acknowledge what's going on from a programming standpoint and an unconscious mind standpoint, then we can start to fall victim to the behaviors that pull us back into that comfort zone, which is spending excess money, convincing ourselves that we've plateaued, convincing ourselves that the networking is not working, and then we, our behaviors, follow this belief that it's not working. So I'm just going to give up. To bring this back into a health conversation. I haven't lost 40 pounds in the last week that I've been at the gym, so the gym doesn't work, so I'm going to stop going. Right, we expect these massive results.
Speaker 3:So my first question is what do you define as a plateau? How are you measuring these metrics? Do you have your? Do you know what your key performance indicators are for your business? If you're going networking? I'm going to go back to intention. If you're going networking, do you know how many people you want to meet at that networking event? Do you know how many people you want to follow up with? Do you know how many networking events you need to go to in order to get a specific client? Do you know, if you get that client, how much you're going to earn on an investment? You know who your good referral partners are? Most people can't answer these questions. So then, what they do is they take this idea of a plateau and they say this isn't working. I'm stuck, I don't know where to go from here.
Speaker 3:So the short answer is I heard somebody say once that the difference between Fortune 500 CEOs and the average business owner is that Fortune 500 CEOs would rather make a wrong decision than no decision at all. So if you're feeling stuck, just make a decision. Forget right and wrong. Take an action, because stuck like you can't be stuck and take action at the same time. So I would rather make a wrong decision or a decision that I don't like the word wrong. I'd rather make a decision that doesn't work out and be able to evaluate that choice than make no decision at all and be stuck.
Speaker 3:The other thing I heard and this and then I'll stop talking is I heard a podcast actually this morning where somebody said they were talking to their mentor who was a billionaire and she said what is your biggest success metric? And he says the amount of time it takes people to make a decision. So she said this changed my life. Where he said the distance between deciding an action will decide who makes the most money and who doesn't. So when she's on a call with her team and her team says I don't know the answer to that, I'll get it to you next week. She says can you have it to me by tomorrow? And the people who can have it by tomorrow will make more money than the people who can have it next week. So if you feel stuck, the antidote to feeling stuck is taking a step, whether you think it's in the correct direction or not, just do something. Just do something.
Speaker 2:That is a really good point and I had asked this question as perhaps something for the listeners that would benefit. But I also am personally feeling stuck in one particular business that I run and as you go through that, that feeling stuck, you had mentioned like look at your KPIs. You had mentioned like look at your KPIs, and that's something I haven't done. It's more of just a feeling, and one of the results of that is inaction, is I'm not sure what the next step I should take, and I haven't taken one, and so no, I think that's a really good, really really good answer. So, amber, I think we could probably podcast for two or three more hours, but I do want to be respectful of your time. If, before we get to the fire round, if anyone's interested in working with you or having you speak at one of their engagements, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, my website at successdevelopmentsolutionscom is a good spot. We're about to go under construction, so I'm also just going to throw out my email, which is amber at amberfermancom. It's amber at my namecom. You can email me there or find me on any social media, so there's a multitude of ways to reach out to me no-transcript.
Speaker 2:All of that in the show notes. Now, amber, before we wrap up the episode, there's four questions that we ask every guest at the end of the show. We call it the fire round. Are you ready? I am always ready. Yes, all right, what is your favorite book?
Speaker 3:I have two that I recommend for people in business ownership. The first one is the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson. The second is I Hope I Screw this Up by Kyle. Cease those two, and then I would be a really horrible author if I didn't put mine in there as well. So Break your Bullshit Box. By me. There we go, there we go, I like it. What are your hobbies? By me. There we go. There we go, I like it. What are your hobbies? I love dancing. So country dancing, line dancing, anything my dog popped on before we were recording, so anything I can do with my dog, taking her out hiking. I've also recently gotten into like wine and paints or like painting things, which is really cool, because I failed sixth grade art and I convinced myself for a really long time I wasn't creative, and so to find myself going back into that creative space is really cool.
Speaker 2:Awesome, Awesome. Number three what is one thing that you do not miss about working for the man?
Speaker 3:Answering to somebody other than me. Answering to somebody other than me like not being able to pick my clients, not being able to fire clients, getting the shit into the stick because a boss is happy they hired somebody that they get to like. The shit rolls downhill to, so, yeah, being in control, which is again a double edged sword.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, Absolutely. I agree with that. And final question what do you think sets apart successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started? The willingness to be uncomfortable and the willingness to fail in public. Very good Mic drop. Let's end it there, Amber. Thank you so much for being a guest on the Firing the man podcast and looking forward to staying in touch.
Speaker 3:I enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
