Own your career own your life

Own your career own your life with Massimo Backus

Unlocking your personalized path to a successful life

I'm excited that you're joining me. I've got a little bit of a unique interview for you. We're going to be turning the tables. I'm joined by my good friend, Massimo Backus. Massimo is an executive and leadership coach up in the Seattle area. He's a good friend of mine and he read my latest book, Own Your Career Own Your Life, and asked if he could come on and interview me about the book, which came out on November 16th. It's available on Amazon. Massimo, take it away.

Andy, it's great to be here and I'm excited to talk to you about the book. I told you originally, I said I'm going to read it, but I'm going to give you an honest review. This wasn't going to be any softball questions about it.

Now I'm nervous. I'm in the hot seat.

Luckily, I thought it was incredible. Knowing you and being friends, the book sounds like you. For anybody who hasn't had the chance to meet you and get to know you, reading this gives you a view of how you see the world and this concept of owning your career and your life. I loved it. It's got a lot of great stories, resources, references to two other incredible thought leaders and mostly I found it to be generous, which is in line with how you are and all the work that you do. You laid it out there and shared your wisdom and perspective on things. I'm curious about how this came to pass.

Before we get into questions for me, first of all, thank you for reading it, for your support and for those kind words. I'm curious, and maybe other people may be curious when you say it's generous. Can you elaborate more on what that means? Any book they're giving you information for whatever price you paid for it, $15 or $20. What made you say that word?

A couple of things, one, you reference friends and colleagues of yours and generous support of their work. This book is not these are all Andy's ideas and Andy's the best. This book is a practice of what you preach, which is about network, community, relationships and learning, curiosity, and generosity. Throughout there are references to people that are probably luminaries and mentors of yours, people that are closer friends of yours like Christine and Hal. The reality is you didn't need to go as far as to reference them. Even Travis Dommert was mentioned. You mentioned people that are in your community that are real friends of yours and you do so in a way that's generous to say, "I want to support what this person has contributed to you as the author." That's one thing. The other is there was a vulnerability in sharing your story and I felt like you were generous in saying, "I'm going to share everything I can on this topic without pulling any punches." Those are the two things.

Own Your Career Own Your Life

That was definitely intentional on my part because there have been many people, books, groups, communities, and resources that have been part of my journey that have helped make me "successful" or who I am now. I wanted to give credit to those people. I also like recommending other books. There are a lot of book references in my book. One person gave me feedback that, "I was taking notes on all these books. I wish I knew that you had a bibliography at the end," which I do put them all at the end to say, "Here are all the books that I recommended." I want to give credit to other people because, for instance, you mentioned Christine DiDonato is a friend of mine. She came out with a book called Get There Faster. It's a fantastic book and career development, and it's different from mine.

If you're an early career professional that is trying to find direction in own your career, you should read both. It's not just about me, my book and my perspective. All of these were valid. I'm glad that you called that out. The other thing about the vulnerability in the story, I definitely wanted to make it mine and share some of the stories. I also think it's important. Sometimes we think that when we figure something out, we want to give advice to people that some of these gurus tend to act as they've always had it all figured out. We often get intimidated by that. We're like, "It's easy for them because they have it figured out." I'm honest in the book and interviews I do about it that I've gone through many of my own struggles.

I was drifting through most of my twenties. I had no idea what I was doing and where I was going. I've made all these mistakes and here's all the work that I did to take more ownership of my own career and my own life. Here's what you can do too. It's not like, "I was born amazing. Here's how you can be too." It was, "Here's all the work that I've done, and here's the work that you can do as well." I appreciate you calling that out.

The growth mindset

There's this theme of having a plan but holding it loosely because things change. As I read and learned more about your story, it almost seemed like it was a mantra for you. I'm curious, is that true? Am I making that up?

In the book and the talks I give, I'm big on having the right mindset and being willing to pivot, and realizing that we're all on a journey and challenges are going to come up. Things are going to change. Look at where we are. We are recording this in November 2020. We're months into a global pandemic that has caused a lot of people to lose their jobs. Industries changed, jobs have changed, and crazy elections going on. There are no guarantees of anything in the future. It's important to set a course, set big goals, and also be ready for changes to come, challenges to come, and be willing to pivot. When you adopt a growth mindset from the book, Mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck, which is one I referenced in the book, it's come up on the show many times. Once you adopt that growth mindset, you realize that when things don't go your way, that's okay because it's a learning opportunity and you can always pivot and move on.

The other part of that too is I want people to recognize if you're someone that is like, "I'm starting to take ownership now. I've made all these mistakes in the past." It's not about feeling guilty for the past. It's about taking ownership now, even almost being grateful for the past that anything that's happened along my career, along my journey contributed to where I am now and where I am is perfect. It's where wherever you are now in your career and your life is the perfect place where you need to be. You don't need to be anywhere else. That's where you start and you move forward in the direction that you want to go in realizing that stuff's going to come up, we're in the pivot, we're going to need to change. Sometimes you got to go with it.

[bctt tweet="Discover your strengths, think about where you want to go, and be grateful for the journey. " via="no"]

From where you sit now, that's how you live your life. That's your orientation. You also talk about being a hyper-achiever and you went to get an MBA and you had high ambitions for running big companies. That's not the mindset necessarily of somebody who says, “I am right where I need to be today,” when you're focused on the big dream for tomorrow. How did you develop this growth mindset or this mental shift that allowed you to stay in the present?

It's a lot of learning and practice. I was frustrated for much of my time in my twenties where I either wanted to move up and I had that goal of being CEO one day and I felt like I wasn't making progress towards that because I was in jobs that didn't fit my strengths. Quite frankly, I didn't fit the corporate mold. There's no good or bad. I'm glad I discovered entrepreneurship and went out on my own because that is what suits me and fits me. I'm thankful for that and even all the mistakes and jobs that I didn't do well on the way that got me here. For other people it's different.

Part of it is discovering your strengths, what you're good at, what you enjoy, think about where you want to go, and be grateful for the journey but there's a balance and I've talked about this on my other show. The balance between ambition and mindfulness or the stoicism of being grateful and happy for where you are and present at the moment, as you said. Also, being ambitious and wanting to achieve big things and both are great what causes problems for people and what has for me in the past is when you start to tie your happiness to the achievement of goals.

When you don't achieve those goals, then you end up unhappy, depressed, stressed, anxious, whatever, because like, "I set my goal to do this. I see my colleagues achieving these things. My colleagues got these promotions and I'm not moving up in the ranks. What's going on?" You're unhappy instead of saying, "What can I learn from this with the growth mindset?" I read that book, Mindset, by Dr. Carol Dweck in 2016 or 2017. It's been a lot of reflection and thought process and practice since then, as we have to do with everything to adopt that type of mindset.

Adopting that then realizing that, "If things are not going the way I want them to go, then there's something I can learn from this. There's something that I can tweak." Maybe you have ambitions to get promoted and move up in the role that you're in, but it's not happening. What can you learn from that? There could be a lot of different things going on. It could be that you're not meeting the expectations that they have out for you and you can find out more from your manager of like, "What else could I be doing to move up?" It could be that the company or the manager is not recognizing what you're doing in a good way. If that's the case, can you either speak up more about some of your accomplishments and build more of your brand and reputation, or do you need to go somewhere else because quite frankly, the company is not good? They've not recognized it.

The whole other thing that could be going on is like, "Maybe this is not where you need to be. Maybe this doesn't fit your strengths or the things that you're good at and it's time to move on." I've been in many of those roles where I was not moving up. Part of the problem was that I had managers that weren't flexible and understanding my strengths and maybe letting me shift. I talk about that. The other problem was I was in the wrong place. It was not the place for me and it's unfortunate, but that's where I was and that was part of my journey. I had to continue to leave some jobs to find the next one and find the next one to get to where I am now. I'm grateful for all of that. It's easy to look at other people that have had this obstensively great career. It's still a series of steps, challenges and successes, and some people find that roles that fit their strengths earlier than others and that's okay because it's not a race.

Andy Storch Book: There are two different ways to go when you fail at something: you either let it define you or recognize that it defines a situation which you can learn from.

I find with the people that are looking for the definition within the organization, the organization doesn't give it to them, that there's frustration in that and it becomes a narrative of, “I'm not good enough or I'm not worthy.” What I'm hearing you say is that is one choice of story, but there are other stories which could be everything that you mentioned. That was a freeing thing for you when you realized that not being right for a role did not define your self-worth, but it created value in a perspective.

It's two different ways to go when you "fail" at something, whatever you want to call it. Things don't go as you'd like, do you let that define you? Does that define the situation and then you can learn from that? I didn't move up. I was not as good as a product analyst at a large insurance company. I had other times when I wanted to be promoted and it didn't work out. A lot of times it was because I wasn't detail-oriented, which is something I learned about myself over time. Does that make me a failure or is that situation didn't work and I need to go try something else?

Now, I'm doing something that I love that fits my strengths and I can start to outsource and delegate the things that I don't want to do those detail-oriented tasks. I feel a lot more successful as a result. What you're talking about is important because people try things and "fail." It doesn't go their way and they let that define them and start to feel like a failure, but you should not let that happen. I write about it in the book, the three questions to ask. If things don't go your way, what's great about this? What does this make possible? What can I learn from this? Even if you get laid off, and I know a lot of people like you do, Massimo, who have been laid off during COVID.

For a while, it felt every week someone would message me on LinkedIn and say, "I lost my job." I'm sorry to hear that. I always try to help people reframe that from, “This is a terrible thing.” Especially from this defines you as a failure, because it doesn't. The company made that decision because of financials and strategy and all things. They're not judging you as a person. They're just saying, "For this situation, at this time, we don't want to pay for this job anymore." You're going to go do something else. The other thing is it creates an amazing opportunity for you to go find something else because there's a good chance or something about that job you didn't like anyway. It's going to be hard while you're looking for a few months and finances could be tough, but this could be an amazing opportunity to find and start a whole new career. I love to turn those challenges into opportunities. It's much more fun.

Taking charge

There's a particular line in the book that stood out to me and I loved it. You said, "Waiting for others to tell me what to do is risky and unfulfilling."

We do much of that in our lives. We wait for other people to tell us what to do. We did it as kids. Most of us chose our majors in college and our first job because our parents or someone else said, "You should go do this." There's nothing wrong with that. That's how a lot of us grew up, but the problem is that a lot of people are sitting around, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. When you're waiting for someone else to do you get tell me what to do, you're giving that power to somebody else. You're not owning your life. You don't have the power. You're giving it to someone else. You're allowing someone else to control your life. There are a couple of sayings, I'm trying to think of like, "If you don't run the day, the day will run you. If you don't plan your career, then someone else will."

[bctt tweet="If things aren’t going your way, there’s probably something you can learn from it. " via="no"]

You then don't have that power and control. There are some situations that are outside of your control. You can't go into the boss's office and say, "Here's my next role. Give me a promotion, I'm going doing this." You can take the initiative, have that conversation and ask what it would take. You can take the initiative and set some goals, decide where you might want to go with your career, start to build your network, and reach out to people who are doing the thing that you want to do. You can take the initiative and start posting an article on LinkedIn every now and then, building a little bit of your thought leadership, making some connections and owning it. Even if it doesn't work out, at least you took the initiative and you were being intentional about what you want to do and you weren't waiting for someone else. If you're waiting for other people, there's a good chance that you're setting yourself up for disappointment. That's the nature of it. 

Being let go, which is what happens to a lot of folks and they're blindsided by it. I can tell you a theme with a majority of the executives and leaders that I work with has to do with the fact that they have been following a prescribed definition of success. I get to this level, the next level of success is now I got to get to be a VP and then if I don't get it, therefore I'm not successful anymore. When you scratch the surface of that, and you say like, "How do you define successful?" It's what my company tells me the successful, which is the next level. Once that's taken away from them, they're lost and they drift in their career. What you talk about constantly throughout this book is getting clear on what that definition of success is. It may be the next promotion in your company and it might not be, but either way, you get to be at choice, as opposed to an aimless recipient of what the corporate culture organization is offering.

A lot of people don't realize this or think about it, but the definition of success is deeply personal. It is up to you what success is. No one else can define success for you. For some people, success is moving up and getting the best title possible. Being CEO one day, making a lot of money, driving nice cars, having a big house, and sending your kids to the best colleges. There's nothing wrong with any of those things that are a success for some people. For other people, success is being home for dinner with their family every single night and having a job that's fulfilling and allows them to spend time with their family and be at their kid's every baseball game. Those two things, I talk about that in the book a little bit, there are plenty of exceptions but they could be diametrically opposed.

Massimo, you work with a lot of executives. To be an executive, a C-Suite executive, or a senior VP at a big company often requires a lot of hours. I've met a lot of those people that work 70, 80 hours a week. By definition, you're not going to be with your family all the time. If you're okay with that, that's fine, no judgment, nothing wrong with that. If that's your definition of success and then you're missing out on family and that's making you miserable, you got to be honest about what success is for you and what sacrifices are you willing to make to get there. For me, I've adjusted my definition of success throughout my career to one aspiring, to be that executive, to wanting to be happy and fulfilled in my life, make an impact and be there with my family all the time.

I have created a life that does that, and maybe I don't make as much money as I could doing other things. I never got the titles that other people wanted and nothing wrong with any of those things. For me, success is living life with happiness and no regrets and I feel like I'm living that way. I want other people to live out their own version of success. The other thing worth mentioning there too is we touched briefly on comparison, and I have a chapter on that as well, is that we often let other people influence our goals and our idea of success.

We're always influenced by outside sources, by our peers, colleagues, friends, family. It's always going to be true. That's never going to stop. The problem is when we set our goals based on others. We see that some friend is moving up and got this nicer car, so I want to do that too, or so-and-so has set a goal to run a marathon so I'm going to go do that too, which is cool. Go give it a shot but take a minute and get in touch with yourself and think, "Is this in line with my vision for my career, with my purpose, with what I want to do, and if it's not, am I okay with letting that go?" Like, " I'd like to move up and get the promotion on the title like other people, but I see that they're working 60 hours a week and I'd rather work 40 and be home with my family. Maybe I need to be okay with that," and realize we're all on our own journeys. There are trade-offs always. 

Andy Storch Book: When you wait for someone else to tell you what to do, you don’t own your life. You don't have the power; you're giving it to someone else.

I see two other situations like that. One is, "I don't like this person and I know they're going to get promoted, so I have to get promoted."

This takes a lot of deep self-awareness. I've done a lot of it. It’s thinking about what decisions are you making that are driven by your ego and what is truly driven by your heart and your logic. That decision of, "I need to get promoted just because this other person is getting it that I don't like," that's an ego-driven decision. In the end, it doesn't serve you that well. Even if you want to go for it, that's fine too. I want people to be honest about what they're doing and where they're going.

The idea that you are focused on getting promoted, you get there and then what? You have more money, more responsibility, you're working longer hours, but all of those other values and priorities in your life, are they improved as a result of this? They may be or not be.

You've set the goal. You tie fulfillment and happiness to achieving that goal and then you get there and you don't know what to do.

Dealing with comparison

For you, when you decided to take ownership, step into being an entrepreneur fully, be innovative, and create new things, what were the concessions that you had to take? What humble pie did you have to eat along the way to step into owning your life that's fulfilling in the way it is now?

I still deal with the comparison issues like everybody else, but one is letting go of like, "I'm not going to follow other people's paths. I'm going to do my own." Another one is being willing to fail because I don't want to try big things like launching a podcast, hosting a conference, launching a virtual summit, launching a membership community, and publishing a book. These felt like big risks. You have to be willing to fail and also to be judged by other people who wanted to do that. I'm okay with that. It goes back to the growth mindset, but it took a big shift in my mind and my mindset to do that. Going back to the comparison, it's wanting all the cool, shiny things. I have friends that make a lot more money than me in jobs or spend a lot of money on a nice car or something like they get a Tesla and I'm driving a Honda.

[bctt tweet="What success means is up to you. No one else can define it for you." via="no"]

I'm taking every bit of money I bring into my business, investing it back into my business and my brand, while they're living this fun, nice lifestyle, which is fine. That's my decision but it's a little hard sometimes. You're like, "Other people don't see what all goes into this. There are a lot of sacrifices and putting back and building and investing for the future that isn't necessarily seen, but I'm confident it's going to pay off. Even if it doesn't, I have much fun." That's the important thing. I'm enjoying the process. That goes back to my goal, my definition of success is I want to enjoy what I'm doing. I want to have fun. I know other people do too. It's not about being an entrepreneur. There are tons of great jobs out there where you can love it and be fulfilled. I hope most people can find those. Also, realize that it's never going to be a 100% love it. It's going to be 70%. There's going to be crap that you have to do that. Maybe you don't like it, but that's part of working.

How do you deal with the comparison? I remember in 2019, I had to do a social media detox because it was overwhelming. Social comparison from everything to people's success was traveling in the world, the delicious food they're eating, how to fit everybody's looks and all these different things. That was something that I did that was helpful for me. What have you done to manage the onslaught of information that puts social comparison at the forefront?

When it comes to comparison, it's been going on for generations long before social media. It's not new, but it's heightened because you can see what everybody's doing all the time. They can make themselves look even better than they normally with a lot of filters. They only post the best moments. I always like to say you shouldn't compare your whole life to someone else's highlight reel because what you see on social media from that cool trip they took was the best moment. They didn't tell you about the argument they'd gotten with their spouse. They were screaming at each other in the hotel room about where to go next. They then figured out a place and they got there and they took that great picture like, "Their vacation looks awesome. I wish I could go on a vacation like that." You don't know how much is going on.

The mountain with the sunrise and it's epic and otherworldly. The hike up there was miserable.

That's one of the things. I always remind myself that everybody has their challenges. You never know what's going on behind the scenes. I wrote an article on LinkedIn once because I was amazed by this whole thing because there's a family I know. Great family. I know the husband and wife are having some serious marital issues, like major challenges, sleeping in separate rooms. This stuff happens. No judgment. They take these holiday photos together.

Andy Storch Book: If you believe that there's an unlimited amount of success in the world, then you are not really competing with anybody.

They look loving and they post on social media. It looks like the best family and I'm like, "I know what's going on behind the scenes, come on." We have to that social media is the highlight reel. The other thing is and I talk about this in the book. One thing that's been helpful for me is to try to make the mindset shift, one from a mindset of scarcity to a mindset of abundance. If you believe that there's an unlimited amount of success, an unlimited amount of money in the world, which is true, then you are therefore not competing with anybody because there are no awards or trophies for having the nicest car or the best job or anything like that.

There are some times where you might be competing with a colleague for a promotion or something like that, but those times are rare. We're over a new job. You're interviewing for a job. Maybe there are four other people interviewing in the final round. Technically, you are competing against them, but there are thousands of other jobs out there. There's unlimited money, success, almost unlimited jobs out there that you can get and when you think about that from an abundant mindset, you think, "You look at the other people that are doing things. I'm not competing with them." Number one, you're not competing with them. That's a mindset shift.

Number two, a lot of the times you could do the things that they're doing, but you're choosing not to. Get in touch with your own priorities and choices because they're on this great trip to Europe and you're jealous. I've been here many times, but could I book a trip to Europe? Not now. I can't in the middle of COVID but under normal times, I could. Maybe it would not be a good financial decision, but I could do it if I wanted to, but I'm prioritizing something else. The big one is for me when I see people may be doing things that I want to do like they're getting that promotion and they're running that business or conference or their podcast is successful or whatever. I try to look at them and congratulate them.

Be happy for them and also ask, "Can I be inspired by their success? They achieved that, that means I can too. What can I learn from their success?" If that is not true, if you can't learn from their success, they're not inspiring. They're making you miserable, then get them out of your life. Hide them from your feed so you don't see them anymore. That's another thing. On social media, people don't realize that you are in control of your social media feeds. The algorithm works on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Instagram. It responds to what you like, what you don't like and what you comment on. If you hide people, if you ignore people and ignore certain subjects, it responds.

It’s the end of an insane election season here in the US. I can tell you that for the last few months, I have only seen a handful. I'm on Facebook every day as well as LinkedIn and Instagram, only a handful of political posts. I've seen hardly any political arguments I haven't gotten in any. I know they're out there. They don't show up in my feed because I've curated my feed. I've gotten rid of those. They're gone because I don't respond to them or I hide them. People say things I don't like, I don't agree with like, "You're gone." I'm here to make my life better, not to make my life worse. I don't need the anxiety. I don't need the stress.

Even though I do post and share a lot of content, I've learned not to time my happiness and fulfillment to the number of likes and comments I get on a post. That's silly. I want it to be good and give value to people. We've got to be thoughtful about how we use these things and mindful because I love social media. There are many benefits. You and I met on LinkedIn originally. I've made many friends from social media. You’ve got to be mindful and cut out the challenging downside stuff.

[bctt tweet="Don’t compare your whole life to someone else’s highlight reel." via="no"]

Andy, there's a funny link in the book about how we met. You emailed your friend, Adam. Your friend, Adam, connected you to BTS and you got a job at BTS. We met through Kile Dyer. I suppose in a roundabout way, we have your friend, Adam, to thank for meeting us.

He got me the job at BTS. I met Kile through BTS and he introduced me to you. Shout-out to Kile Dyer.

I hear you talking about the agency, being a creator and a choice. You get to choose what you consume, what you pay attention to, and how you react to the stories that are being shared around you. You were talking about judgment as well, and you're building a big brand. Every week it gets bigger and bigger. With the launch of this book, many more good things have come from that. How do you handle judgment, good, bad or other ones?

It's tough. It's something I've built resilience on and gotten better. I talk about in the book, it's important to get feedback but it's still hard to take sometimes. I spent much of my life being afraid of rejection and judgment and part of that's natural. You have to realize that this fear of judgment and reaction is in our brains from thousands of years of evolution, where for 95% of human history we lived in tribal cultures where you needed to be around other people to survive. You could not survive on your own. Therefore, if you got rejected and cast out of a tribe, you were dead. You're going to get eaten by a dinosaur. I'm kidding. Humans never existed at the same time as dinosaurs. You wouldn't survive.

A saber-tooth tiger is more accurate.

Whatever, it could be bad weather. We come to now and people do live on their own and you're perfectly fine. Even people at your company hate you and they fire you, you can go get another job somewhere else. It's not as big a deal, but it's still ingrained in our brain. Part of that is like, "It's natural. Let me try to use some logic to process this and figure out how important is this judgment." Some of it, let's go to feedback, can be useful, positive and negative. I've gotten a lot over my time and it has been helpful for me. Sometimes it's the stuff that you need to toss aside.

Andy Storch Book: When you are building a brand and you're putting content out there, you need to be clear on who it's for, which means you need to be clear on who it's not for.

All that being said, I've made a lot of progress in shifting and I've come to peace with the fact that I'm putting this book, this piece of work, 256 pages out into the world. There are going to be some people that love it and they're going to be some people that don't like it. I have run the concepts by many people throughout the process. I've seen what works for me. I've woven my own stories into it. I have high hopes. It has the potential to help a lot of people to change lives. At the end of the day, there's going to people that don't like it. I have to make peace with that. I'm okay with that. I also know that feedback can help me.

I put the book out there to a number of people in my network, on my email list, and things like that to join the advanced reader team to read the book early. You were on that. I had 450 people, by the way, sign up to read this book early. I started getting people who have read the book and then they're sending feedback. Every time I get one of these emails, I recognize, I feel it's a small twinge of anxiety that someone's going to say, "This book sucks. What were you thinking?" No one has said that. I've had many people supporting me saying, "This book is great. I love this part." Some people are like, "It's okay," which is fine. It's not for them. I've also had a lot of people who read it quickly early on and found a bunch of typos and little things that didn't quite make sense.

It's easy when people email you and say, "I found these six typos,” or a couple of people sent twenty. A lot of little nitpicky things they found. It's easy, going back to tying failures to your own success or failure and be like, "They must think I'm an idiot. I can't believe I left all these typos in.” Quite frankly, I hired a professional editor and he did a great job, but he missed some things. I could blame him but what would be the point of that? I like him. He's a friend. He did a great job. Instead, I look at these and go, "They're helping me make the book better." That's the way they felt too. A couple of people said, "I was honored to be part of this process." It made them feel good to be able to find these little things and help me fix them before I published the book so that the book can be as good as it can be. I take all that in stride and realize that they're coming at it with great nature and they want to help me. I've taken all of that feedback and I've made corrections.

I made some final tweaks so that it is as good as it can be when I publish the book. As you're reading this, the book is out. If you go by the book and read it, you might still find a typo or something you don't agree with. I'm okay with that. Eventually, someone's going to read the book and leave a one-star review. I'm okay with that too. It might be a little stressful in the moment, but it comes with the territory when you're building a brand. One thing I learned from some mentors along this way is that when you are building a brand and you're putting content out there, you need to be clear on who it's for, which means you need to be clear on who it's not for. When I put stuff out there on social media and my little brother makes fun of me for it, that used to cause me stress. I realized, "This is not for him. This is for other people." When people don't like what you're putting out there and it's not for them, they can move on. That's on them if they want to be judgmental and criticize. It's not always easy, but you come to peace with this stuff.

It’s funny that your little brother gives you a hard time about this, Andy. It humanizes it. It's not for everybody. You and I talked about this before. You're a go-getter. You dream big, you're ambitious. You want to rally people to live their best life. There are some people that don't want to enroll in that type of thing and that says nothing about you. There's no judgment. It just is. You are finding your audience. I also want you to know, I include myself in that group of people that were honored and felt fortunate to be a part of the advanced reader team, frankly, to be involved in supporting you in your growth and continued success in any way. There is an entire team of people that want to be champions for you. I don't think it's a stretch for me to assume that it's because you inspire them in some small way or maybe some great way. I do think you're inspirational in what you're doing and all the things that you're creating and that you continue to go. Small bumps along the way, typos, there may be, you're still out there pushing and creating value and community. I know I can put you on the list of people that inspire me. Who inspires you to dream big and continue to pursue all these great ideas?

Many people and I have mentioned many of them in my book and I will throw you in that, Massimo, and the way you have left your job and hung up your single as an executive coach, gone out, tapped into your network, and started building a client base right away. You do it the right way by building real relationships and still spending time with your family and everything. It inspires me. It's awesome. I love talking to you. Other people that I follow inspired me. I mentioned Hal Elrod, in the book who wrote The Miracle Morning. He's been a great mentor and inspiration. Gary Vaynerchuk or Gary Vee is a great inspiration to me. I love everything that he puts out into the world. He runs VaynerMedia in New York and his Chief Heart Officer, Claude Silver, has been on this show a few times. She's an inspiration to me as well. I have many friends and mentors, coaches, who help me and inspire me all the time. The list is long because I know many people. I don't want to start naming a bunch of names and leave people out.

I'm always looking for that inspiration. This goes back to the question about comparison when I'm on social media and I see people doing cool things where I connect with them and they're doing seemingly cool stuff that I might like to do. I try to focus on that question, “What can I learn from them? What can I learn from this? How can I be inspired by them and learn as much as I can?” All the things I've done since COVID, I launched a membership community, hosted a virtual summit with 32 speakers and 2,000 attendees, published a book. None of those things I came up with on my own or figured out how to do on my own. In all of those cases I hired or had mentors and coaches who helped me along the way, who gave me the information that I needed. I ran with it and took action, which goes back to one other thing I have in the book near the end, that the most successful people I know have a bias for action. That means you learn it, you set the goal and then you go do something instead of sitting around, spinning your wheels. I learned as much as I can from other people and then keep moving forward and taking action.

Are you already working on the next book idea? Have you already got the next big project in mind?

I do have ideas for other books and this is the problem when you get into doing stuff like this is, there are many ideas, but I promised myself I would get this book done and out there first. There are other versions of it. I have an idea for a book on leadership. I want to write based on everything I've learned along the way. We won't get into that now. There definitely are other ideas and I only want to create stuff that is going to be helpful for people.

Is there anything else you want your readers or future readers, the people that are reading this to know about the book before it launches?

No, I don't think so. We covered much ground, Massimo. I do appreciate the questions. The book is called Own Your Career Own Your Life. It's available on Amazon. You can get the Kindle and the paperback. I'm working on an audiobook. There's a Companion Journal I've created as well because I want people to take notes in every chapter, write down thoughts, reflections, ideas, goals, and take action on those.

If you don't have a notebook of your own, I'm creating a Companion Journal that you can buy. It should pop up in the same space Own Your Career Own Your Life Companion Journal. Check that out. Make sure you connect with me on social media, LinkedIn, Instagram, to get updates on everything that's going on. If you're in the corporate space and you want to bring this to your employees, I'm creating a webinar and a corporate learning program from this and hoping to build a business out of this. There's much potential to impact employees and organizations and make a big difference, move the needle on things like attrition, productivity, and engagement. I want to get it more out into the world. I'm excited about it. Massimo, I appreciate you reading the book, you supporting me, being on the early reader team, and doing this interview. It has been awesome.

It's been great. Congratulations. For everybody who's reading, pick up the book. You can jump in at any point and there's value. Great job, Andy. Thanks for having me.

Thank you and thank you for reading. I hope you get the book. If you do read it, send me your feedback. I'd love to hear from you.

• OwnYourCareerOwnYourLife.com
• Massimo Backus
• Amazon – Own Your Career Own Your Life
• Get There Faster
• Mindset
• The Miracle Morning
• Claude Silver – past episode
• LinkedIn - Andy Storch
• Instagram - Andy Storch