Do you consider yourself resilient and what does that mean to you? In this podcast, Resilient Entrepreneurs with Two Four One, we chat with business owners about what resilience means to them as they share their inspiring stories and life lessons.
What we've learned running our own business, is you're never alone even when it feels like it. So tune in anytime to this podcast. We're always here for you celebrating resilient entrepreneurs just like you. We're Laura and Vicki from Two Four One - a marketing company for early stage business owners who want to launch, grow and be resilient.
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Well, I'm starting out today with a confession. I am unashamedly a massive fan of yours Jaemin and if you were a musician, I would for sure be your groupie. Listen, I have listened to countless episodes of your own podcast, The Insecurity Project and of course now rebranded as Unhindered. You are my go-to for my resilience manual, there's no doubt about it. So I feel really lucky and accomplished that you're here as our featured guest today on our podcast, Resilient Entrepreneurs. Welcome Jaemin Fraser, a professional writer, speaker and coach.
Thanks so much for having me. It's a real treat to be here.
Yeah. Great. Can we jump right into the conversation at the deep end? Is that alright with you?
That's my favourite place to start.
So you've said that you believe the thing that gets in the way of success for humans is almost always one thing and that's insecurity. What can you tell us about that?
Well, I'd say that with just one distinction - that may not be true before you are 35. In fact, it may be the performance-enhancing drug in your 20s and early 30s. I like to describe unresolved insecurity as rocket fuel. It doesn't happen like that in every case but a lot of the time, it is the prove-and-defend energy that causes young people to do their biggest risk taking, their most driven work and achieve things that previously had been impossible all because they're so desperate to prove, or their energy is against someone who said, “You will never do that”, or, “You can't do that”, and that is motivating to them, that slight on their character or that slight on their identity. But at the same time, that's toxic energy, it's energy against yourself, it's not sustainable and so if you had to do good work in the world from 35 on, then there is no way that insecurity is going to serve that. That is now limiting your performance and will eventually lead to madness. So it is the number one inhibitor of performance for ambitious people from midlife and beyond. But thankfully, it's a solvable problem.
So you talk about solving insecurity. But you're also in the other breath, saying most people go through life, and I love this phrase that you use, masking, medicating or managing.
I mean, it just seems like such a vulnerable subject and there's so much angst that gets built up with the fear of .. what if I'm not good enough, or what if I don't belong or what if there's something wrong with me. So I think the human condition is, we all want to be good, we want to feel like we're decent human beings, we're just afraid that if it was all exposed, there'd be some shortcoming and something lacking or limiting and so it's terrifying to have that confirmed. So most people run or hide instead, and develop a lot, devote a lot of energy to masking, managing medicating insecurity. It's very counterintuitive to actually turn and face it instead. But that is.. that's the most important adult work is to do that, that thing to go back and review the narratives, the limiting beliefs you've picked up about yourself in early years.
Yeah, it must be a massive hurdle for a lot of people to be doing this work. That fear!
It is and I say all the time, most of my day is spent coaching scared kittens out from under the lounge with a saucer of milk, it's gonna be okay, you're gonna, ‘no I can’t’, ‘how could I possibly go back?’. And people have devoted a lot of energy into separating themselves from the past. There's a lot of lightweight rhetoric around, ‘the past is the past’, ‘it is what it is’. ‘You don't go back there, what will be the point of going back, you can't change anything’. But that's, I mean, it's just all because people get so scared around reviewing that. I love thinking about this in terms of engineering terms and if your operating system was designed 20 or 30 years ago and had never been reviewed or updated then there's no chance it's still performing relevant to your current outcomes, goals, desires, you know, even if it was a good operating system 20 or 30 years ago, there's no way it can still be performing optimally. So of course, you'll have to go back and review and update it especially if you want to perform at your best, achieve your potential, do meaningful work in the world. That's all it is. It's just an optimization process, using your adult skills to do what only you can do and reviewing the limiting beliefs and doubts, fears and insecurities you develop is the heart of that work.
Yeah, that personal development is an ongoing journey, isn't it? I mean, it just needs to continue for a long time, that people need to take that time to go deep. I know, certainly over the last few years, it's been a big part of my life too - it’s going deeper, understanding myself better. So how do you help people get over those things you were just talking about? Like the imposter syndrome? That's so many people, especially in early stage businesses and when kids are starting out in careers, or in entrepreneurship, they often feel it's sort of the hardest thing to get over, you just don't feel that you're worthy, worthy of success. How do you get over that? How do you help people start that journey?
Yeah, the starting point is really key to understand. So using the language of the imposter syndrome as an example, when you consider that it's really imprecise language and because it's imprecise, it's very unhelpful but I think it's part of the problem, when you refer to fear as the imposter syndrome. I’ve had people tell me they are not insecure but they struggle with the imposter syndrome which doesn't even make any sense because an imposter is someone who is afraid of being found out, I am not who I say I am. So eventually, someone's gonna see you, who I really am. And calling it a syndrome says that it's outside of you, it's happening to you, you're not involved in it. So it just removes you from any sense of control around the problem. So to answer your question, how do I help? It definitely starts with being precise. What is it that you are dealing with? What is the problem here? Are you sure you have accurately understood what the problem really is? And people imagine they have. Yeah, it's the imposter syndrome. That's accurate, that's precise but that is not precise, that's very abstract and therefore not useful in any way, shape, or form to resolving it. To solve it, you gotta get more precise and see what insecurity really is. Otherwise, you have no chance. Yoda - ‘named must your fear be before banish it you can’. So that is the starting point, that precision around understanding in mind, most minute detail what insecurity really is.
Jaemin, has there been a time in your life that you can recall and don't mind sharing - that was a pivotal moment of you recognising your insecurity?
Yeah, well, the distinction around solving insecurity is that and back to your point Laura around ongoing personal development work, my conviction is that, not only can you solve insecurity en masse and it's possible to be completely free from insecurity at your current level of growth, and to show up with no hindrance. But if you do that and when you do that, you will take new territory and explore new horizons and step into a bigger space to play in and therefore, you will step in new uncertainty and then bang your head on the limit of your narrative around, I can be this good, but not that good. I can go this far, but not that far, I can work with these people, but not those people, I can earn this money but not that money. So there are times where I reached the limit of what my story has enabled me to do, frequently, and then break through that and then experience a period of great freedom and presence. But I think probably the most useful one to describe would be the first time I really uncovered insecurity because I didn't consider that I was an insecure human.
I was a church pastor for 10 years, got given the leadership of the church that I grew up in. I was well liked, I was good at what I did, I was wholehearted in that world. I'd reached the top of that world. Big Christian extended family and so as the pastor in a Christian family, I'm the hero and so the status of getting to lead a faith community as a young man, and do good work there. So okay, I'm doing what I was, what I feel like I was born to do, it’s working well. Okay, great. Then I get introduced to the coaching skill set and I'm stopped in my tracks. I realise that this is a missing technology. I’m convinced that it's important to participate in the journey of transformation whereas in my experience of Christianity, so many people were trying to outsource the change work to God, if I just have faith, if I believe, if I pray, God will magically zap me, fix me and solve all my problems. And I thought that was such a strange way of thinking but that was the prevailing thought. And so when I got introduced to the coaching skill set, all about choice, responsibility, awareness, I thought, my goodness, this is a missing technology, this belongs. So I was compelled to go study and learn that and very quickly went, this is me. I was a good pastor but I think I could be an excellent coach and so then off the back of that conviction stepped out into the world around starting my own coaching business, thinking this will be easy, this makes so much sense. But as soon as I stepped into that unknown world, this mountain of insecurity, it's like, oh, hang on a minute, but who am I here? I have no platform. No one knows me. I have no right to open my mouth. What if I put something out there and people don't like it? This doesn't work. What would that reveal about me? So that was the most startling experience of insecurity that almost stopped me in my tracks completely because I was so shocked and weakened by that fear. And so that really began the process for me to go, is this solvable? Or people just manage this stuff? Is this just universal? You just have to deal with it. Everyone's got this. You just feel the fear and act anyway. I just didn't like the thought that that was my only option and so that began the quest to go ‘has anyone solved this?’ And turned out, I found that they had, it just didn't seem like anyone had modelled the solution. So that was my work to create a model around this so that I could use it and others can use it. So long answer to your question, but yeah, that first time, first stepping out into my experience of business was the most terrifying experience of insecurity.
It sounds it. And you were not leaving something that you weren't enjoying or that you felt that you'd outgrown? I mean, it sounds like it was going well but you just wanted to do better, you wanted to do more, you wanted to reach further. Is that an accurate…
That’s exactly how it was. I just thought, yeah, this is the next step. The next evolution in me being me and doing good work in the world, this is a natural step. Not everyone thought that, in fact, there was probably no one in my world who thought that was the good next step for me to take, but I knew that it was right for me. So that also increased the insecurity, the fact that I'd lost all my cheer squad. And now I had to look internally for resources around whether I'm doing the right thing or not. So another key component of why the insecurity really showed up.
And was there ever a time when you second guessed it and maybe regretted that decision?
I definitely second guessed it early on because it was much harder than I thought and I got a lot scareder than I thought. I've never regretted it and that's the truth because I think, the idea of success in my mind is being true to what's inside. So even if it's costly, I've never regretted listening to my own heart or going with the life is. And so it was much harder than I thought but still always worth it and to experience the great growth and then to be able to feel like I was being useful to a bunch of people, that was expanding, there was so much life and excitement in that process as well. No, there hasn't been a day I've regretted following my curiosity and my heart into the coaching world.
Yeah. And when was that? How long ago did you start?
2010 was when I was first introduced to that and I tend to make change quickly. When something makes sense to me and I can see a practical application I'm all in quite quickly. And the fun of the coaching world is that there's no barrier to entry so I literally called my wife day two of my first coach training intensive and said, I'm going to start a coaching business, I'm going to quit my job. I was working as a school chaplain at the time as well as a pastor, I’m done being a chaplain, I'm going to be a coach and just let's go, let's go all in. She cried, she thought that was a crazy idea, but I said no I've got this, this is gonna work. But it was so much harder than I thought.
And 13 years on, you've written five books. No doubt some or all of those are bestsellers, you're travelling the world speaking, heading off to the US this year, holding retreats. So it's interesting the power of conviction.
It really is. And there have been times along the way where it felt like nothing was working and no one was listening and that I was not making a difference anywhere, and that I'd run out of money and this was not sustainable. And those moments were really pivotal because processing, okay, what do I do from here? And how do I end this suffering that I'm experiencing by not having success in business that I thought I was going to have, or that it was going to work. I just remember thinking, Okay, well, quitting what I feel born to do doesn't make things any easier. If I go to be a plumber, which I'm not good at and don't enjoy, I'll still suffer or suffer more there. At least here, this is what I'm good at and what I love doing, I haven’t worked out how to make any money yet but it's still my best plan, it's still the thing. And if I sell out here, if I get to a point where this is too hard and I can't do it, that doesn't mean the next thing is going to be easier. In fact, I think that'll be worse to do something that I know is not me. So those kind of key moments sustained me along the way to go, okay. Just do your work and just keep showing up and I think that has served me well over the years because then I just kind of get over whether it's working or not and just go back to being wholehearted, and keep producing content, keep writing, keep speaking. And I was saying off air before we started recording that a lot of my clients have watched me for years before going okay you seem like the real deal Jaemin. And so the client journey sometimes has been up to five years of people just watching, reading, listening and I'd have no idea that they're even engaged. And then they're ready. So that's lovely to hear that if I'd given up along the way, then I would not have been able to provide an opportunity for these people to be ready for change when they were.
Yeah, I mean, as marketers, we definitely understand that because we'll say you know that you need a certain amount of touch points that people need to have with you before they're going to buy or engage with whatever you have, your service or your product and it can take years. Like you said, somebody following you, watching your content, reading your books, until they're ready to take action at the right time for them. And that's why growth in businesses can be exponential, right, it can be really, really, really slow and then all of a sudden it's like that hockey stick, it starts going up. And no one really knows when that curve is gonna be, right? You don't know, it's different for everybody but it takes that consistent work. And I'm sure for you writing the books has made a big impact. So tell us what writing books has done for your.. for your business and what you do?
Yeah, well, I think it's a big piece of credibility. Okay, you've done the work around consolidating your best ideas on a subject, how to publish, put it out there. Okay so, immediately, if someone writes a book you consider them a thought leader on the subject and so I think number one credibility. But then then it's given people a lot of structure so, I love thinking about the idea that you can't think a new thought about a subject until you have a new framework to bring that new thought on. So I think it's just provided people a believable plan to go, ‘Okay, this is a solvable problem and here is a roadmap, here is a blueprint for how this work gets done’. So people have really valued having that solid thing in their hands to go, ‘if I follow this plan, then I'm, I'm not special, this is not a special problem, this is a predictable problem’. And then as soon as I can see it as a predictable problem and hear stories about other people facing this, well, then I could apply this and have the same experience as well. So the books have been able to give people a lot of confidence and certainty that they are able to solve these problems as well.
Yeah, and one thing that's so important is to feel that community, that connection with others, which is what you offer. It says this is a problem that lots of people have and here's some solutions to it. And speaking of.. I had the opportunity to do your latest quiz, a scorecard that you have for Unhindered and it was fascinating, it was really insightful. And it's sort of a new-ish marketing tool, the scorecard marketing and so could you tell us, our listeners a little bit about why you have it, what it's been useful for and also, what insights do you get from the people that take it because and as a person who take it took it, I got a 72% score, which I thought was pretty good. Yeah, not bad. But there's definitely areas I recognised that I need to work on in insecurity and it was great to get that insight and dive a little deeper into myself because it's something I'm fascinated by. But tell us a little bit about the scorecard and why are you using it?
Yeah, well, firstly insecurity is a subject lots of people don't want to touch because it's really vulnerable. And then when they do touch it, it feels very abstract and hard to measure so the scorecard can give some quantity and qualification to say Okay, so how unhindered are you really? Where are you actually stuck? How is insecurity getting in the way? Would you like to see some data and these questions have been designed based on over 15,000 coaching hours, over 13 years. So there's some real patterns that can be identified and if you can see how that applies to your life, then that helps you know where you are and then where you're going to go. So it's been a really useful tool, I've had a few different iterations of it over the years, the current one is your unhindered score. So just find our top performers, people who are really at their, hitting their straps, scoring 75 and above, that's the benchmark. And so that's, it can be a bit confronting to go, oh, wow, some people are scoring 20s and 30s will go, Well, I didn't realise how catastrophic it was but you can't change what you can't see. So to get some numbers on it goes, Okay, then you're right, there is a real problem here and now I can see what the problem is, I can now understand what the solution is. So I think a scorecard like that is so beneficial in identifying what is in the way. And for the audience, when they feel like you understand their problem, they automatically assume you understand their solution as well so I think it increases the trust.
For me, it's been the prime lead magnet, so when you think about the structure of a website, you don't have very long to capture people's attention and more than their attention to capture some form of detail so they become part of the community. So that's been the lead thing, they go, okay, test yourself, take this test, find your score and then they become part of my world, they can then generally get my book and listen to my podcast and then you get a chance to nurture that community and build trust. So it's a really great tool, I've really enjoyed it, the data it enables me to gather is very useful. And I've found the market enjoys that it's a fun thing as well, to be able to take a test and 25 questions doesn't seem a lot, but you can do a lot with 25 questions if you work hard at creating some high quality questions based on your experience. Yeah, I really enjoy it. It's very useful for my business.
Yeah, well, be sure to share it in the show notes of this episode so people can take the quiz if they like.
Yeah, what greater tool as a resilient entrepreneur wanna-be or if you feel you are already resilient, to be able to measure it. I love the measuring aspect of a scorecard. So Jaemin, Unhindered, what is your definition of that? What do you mean by that? And what is the holy grail of unhindered if we were to achieve self actualisation?
Yeah, I love the idea that it's the ability to be at your best where it matters most. I think we all have magic inside of us and people often have experiences of that magic showing up, but not necessarily at the moments that matter. There's opportunities that pass people by that, ‘I'm just not ready’, or ‘I'm on the backfoot’, or ‘I'm nervous’, or ‘I feel like an imposter’, or ‘I don't know, I’m just not ready’, whereas to be unhindered is to have nothing to prove and nothing to defend. It's just to be able to show up, I'm here and I know who I am and I'm able to contribute out of the overflow of who I am. So I love thinking about it as there's no handbrake, there's no internal resistance, you have full permission from yourself to be you. And often that's a big dilemma in the midlife season, there's this discord between conscious and unconscious, the head and heart, mind and body. There’s parts of you at war - part of you wants to succeed, parts of you are terrified, parts of you are confident, parts of you are sabotaging, a part of you is motivated, a part of you feels tired, and so there's this hindrance, this internal hindrance and you feel like you've got to manage yourself to perform. And the great dilemma around that management energy is, when you're in midlife, that's exhausting. To manage yourself requires extra energy and that's fine when you're young you can, you've got energy to waste when you’re young; you don't have energy to waste in the midlife season, it's all about optimising. So if your best energy is proving and defending and managing, where's the energy left for growth and development and progress. So unhindered, your best energy is devoted toward the most important things as a natural overflow of you connected to meaning and purpose and doing what you were born to do.
Sounds like freedom to me, just total freedom.
Absolutely.
Purpose and being, doing what you were born to do, do you help people find that? It sounds like that's.. in my experience and personally and with people in my circle, it's something that we'll talk about finding… is purpose something that you find, talk us through that a bit.
I got to do a TEDx Talk on the subject of Purpose and I approached it by going okay, in order to solve the purpose problem, you will need to solve the insecurity problem first. Because what looks like purpose for a lot of people is actually an attempt to validate their existence. So there are a lot of influencers and people who are drawing attention to the work they're doing in the world, claiming how purposeful it is, but it's still an attempt to go look at me, I'll show you I am a good person by the work that I am doing, that's how you will know that I'm good.
I'm convinced it cannot be our purpose to prove that we're good. Our work is to know that we are good, that's our work, and when you do that work, then you're free to connect with purpose. It's not even about you and it's bigger than you. So I love Rumi's quote, “what you seek is also seeking you.” So I think finding purpose, purpose finding you, sometimes it's hard to know the difference. But I find that people who encounter true purpose do so, not because they need to, not because they're on a journey to prove they matter by doing good work. They already know they matter, they know that they are good, then they're free to actually show up and contribute in a way that's really meaningful.
So I used to have language, when I first started the work around insecurity, the language I use was ‘I'm on a mission to eradicate insecurity’. And then I heard myself say that one day on a podcast and vomited in my mouth a little. No, I’m on a mission…when people say that, I’m like oh dear, here we go, a cowboy, some Messiah trying to save the world. You don't warm to people like that or messages like that. And I realised for me, there was still, like there was some energy around proving and defending, by this work. So that was useful for me to confront that. And now it's like, I'm ruined for anything else. It would be very unkind for me to stop talking about insecurity, people suffer greatly for not knowing it's a solvable problem.
There are people sitting on incredible solutions to the world's most significant problems right now that are not bringing it out because they're afraid that they're not good enough or they don't belong and so we're all missing out, we're all suffering. Our world leaders are some of the most insecure wankers alive and we're suffering because they don't know that they don't have to be like that. So rather than ‘I'm on a mission to’.. it's like, oh boy, yeah, I'm ruined for anything else, I'll keep speaking about this subject and keep being wholehearted and this is not about me, this is bigger than me. And I must. That's how I think about purpose.
Yeah, it's a passion. You speak with such passion about it and it is, I think, important for people to know that there are solutions. So what, what is the way for them to find this solution? Where does the solution lie? Is it within themselves going deep? Working with a coach? Counsellor? What? Where do you think it lies?
Well in my model the Seven Essential Practices for Overcoming Insecurity, practice five is ‘get help from someone who doesn't care about you’. I think because insecurity is so insidious, and so terrifying and is built on - it's built on a work of fiction that doesn't feel like fiction. So the insecurities that hold people back are always developed in the first years of life, often before seven. But the brain finds evidence for whatever you believe is true. So if you form these opinions about yourself when you're young, then you'll just find evidence that's true and then you'll develop a case that that is true and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. So it becomes very concrete and very evidence-backed and therefore to see it objectively, is so difficult. So the value of having someone who's outside of you, and who has no vested interest in your results, that is really important because, you imagine, to solve insecurity you’ll need someone who loves you and cares about you, and believes in you, and encourages you, and hold you accountable. That is not who you need. That might feel nice but that person will get in the way. And when you understand the heart of insecurity is actually your own opinion of yourself, that's what it is. You are not afraid of what others think about, you are afraid of what YOU think about you. You just don't want it to be confirmed by the world. That is the heart of insecurity; your own worst opinions. You think you're afraid of failing, you're not; you're afraid of the personal implications of failing; i.e. if I was to fail, what does that say about me? You think you're afraid of being rejected? You're not afraid of being rejected. You're afraid of the personal implications. If I was to be rejected, oh dear what does that reveal about me? My lack, my inadequacy. So it's our own worst opinions about ourselves that terrify us and we don't want it confirmed by the world. So when you kind of understand the problem, then you realise, hmm, this won't be solved by someone else's opinion. If this could have been solved by someone else's opinion, my mum would have fixed this for me years ago. I’m sure we’ve all had plenty of nice people tell us how wonderful we are, and we’re like.. That's just my mom. Well, that's just, you know, they always say that. So then back to the ‘get help’ piece, we all need help - if you overlay the Hero's Journey metaphor onto the process of solving insecurity, the Hero always needs a Guide. There's always a wisdom character, there's a Gandalf, there's a Yoda, there's a Dumbledore, there's a Mr. Miyagi, that helps guide the hero into their destiny. And when you first see the wisdom character introduced, your hope is on their shoulders, you think they are the one who's going to save the day, because the hero is so fragile, so weak and so small, but it's never the wisdom character, they're always gone too soon. And you're back to Frodo from the Shire, he's got to save the world. And you're like, oh boy!
So that's the same with insecurity, you created these terrible opinions about yourself and you will be the only one who can deconstruct them, confront them and replace them, and that will be a journey into your deepest fear about yourself. You will need help to understand the process of getting there but eventually, you're going to have to be the hero in this story, no one's coming to save you. And you're going to have to go work out once and for all, who are you? Are your worst opinions about yourself true? Or are they the assumptions of a scared child that you've just never reviewed? And you have lived as though they are true? So yeah, that idea of actually understanding what the problem is, and understanding the general nature of how anyone solves this, and what's involved is just the process for a predictable problem and a predictable solution.
Yeah, a person building a business, this sounds like a lot to go to.. am I building my business or am I building me? And can these things be done in parallel? And, yeah, I'll let you answer that.
Well, especially for the solo entrepreneur, you are doing the same thing. You're building you and your business, you are your business, you are your brand, you are your reputation. If you are solving problems with the handbrake on, then that's going to be bad business. If you are doubting yourself, second guessing yourself, assuming you're not good enough, fearing you're going to be found out. Okay well, that's not a big stretch to think that's affecting the bottom line of your business. So I think it's impossible that someone could really thrive in business, especially a business that is them bringing their essence to the world, solving a unique problem, creating a unique.. a unique niche and a unique solution. And yet, they're not sure that they've got what it takes or they're doubting their capacity to do that. It's hard enough running a business, let alone running a business with the handbrake on and so I think they are one and the same.
I think absolutely that often we do run a business with the handbrake on and we have that, people say Fake it Till you Make It and all those things, just terribly unhelpful messages that we get when we're just still trying to figure it out. It's within the building of yourself, that building of your confidence, building of your business, building of your personal brand, like you just said, I think is really key, because as I'm seeing a lot of evolution in technology lately, I mean we're all talking about ti and it's going to change, it's going to change the way we do business over the next few years, I think rather drastically and rather quickly. So how do we continue to create, build, grow thriving businesses with all this massive change that's going to come, and I'm believing and thinking a lot lately about the importance of personal brand, because people are still going to want to connect with people. So your brand as you, as a person, is going to be even more important to share, you can't hide behind a faceless, nameless brand because people are going to maybe not trust it as much, because they're going to think it's all created by robots and AI. So how do you still connect with people, people will always want to connect with people, I truly believe that. So building a personal brand is going to be really key for any business, especially if you're in a service business. When you do talk face to face with people, you're gonna need to show your face more, and be, so you're gonna need to step into yourself, into your confidence and work towards growing your personal brand. So I think it's gonna be really interesting the next few years in how people are going to be able to make that shift where they can't hide behind a brand, they have to put themselves out there. We have all the tools to do it. There's all the social media, there's all the content availability, everything is out there, AI is going to make things easier to create the content and to get out there, to write books, to write blogs and all these things, it's easier and easier, it's going to give us a lot of freedom. But it's also going to take a lot of personal development to get the confidence to put ourselves forward. Would you agree?
Yeah, I really agree. And it's one of the ways I've thought about trademarking and protecting my IP and my branding where lots of people have suggested the importance of that, but I think well, if someone steals the name The Insecurity Project, okay, that might be a little bit sad for a day but they can't steal me. They can't replicate who I am or how I show up. No one can steal that. So I'll go on that is the essence of my business. And I think about the importance of being wholehearted and embodied in my work. In fact, when I think about being a Life Coach, I used to resent the fact that there was no barrier to entry and I'm competing with people who've done a two day course online and printed out a business card and now they're a life coach. But now I'm thinking oh no, that's my advantage because they will undermine themselves when they open their mouth. And OK if I've embodied my message, that's my gift to the world, that's what people are looking for, they're looking for certainty and they’ll find certainty when they hear me speak and look into my eyes and just go, okay, this guy is smoking what he's selling. I'm showing up wholehearted. So I think that's an inescapable part of success and will continue to be successful.
Just one more thing on that, the challenge is for people who go, Yeah, but I'm just starting out so how do I get there? I haven't lived this for years and years, this is the beginning of my journey so do I have to wait for 20 years before I've got enough credibility, before I'm going to be successful? And the way that I think about that is how I thought about my own inception point, the start of my coaching journey, where I felt it was okay for me to start a business, a coaching business after two days of my coach training journey and why I thought that was a good idea. And the logic I had was, Okay, we’re ready, this is, this makes a lot of sense to me and I was a church pastor so I've already got a lot of skill set in terms of being with people and the empathy and the skill of communication and the desire to be useful. So none of that's changed, now I've got some better skills. I've only just learned these skills but already these skills make sense to me and already I've thought about the application of that so, okay, that's what qualifies me. It's not that I am perfect or it's not that I know anything. What qualifies me is that I'm wholehearted and the stuff that I know, I am wholehearted about applying to my own life. So I will not show up and ask someone to do something that I haven't done myself. I won't give a solution to someone that I've never explored from my own life. So as long as I am speaking out of my own experience, even if my experience is just beginning, that's useful to people because there are some people who have not experienced any of this. So I will be further along in the journey than them and therefore able to serve them out of the overflow of my experience. And then I'll quickly reach the limit of that and that'll drive me to go learn some more. And then I'll have some fresh stuff to be able to share and I'll just need to be a little bit ahead and that'll be enough. So that wholeheartedness to me, is the centre of a personal brand and people feel that, they understand that, just as much as they understand faking it and no integrity and not embodied work and people who are not wholehearted and the hypocrisy of giving advice that you're not living yourself.
And Jaemin to your point, I believe insecurity is worn on one’s sleeve just as one's heart is worn on one’s sleeve, the wholeheartedness is valid, it's obvious, it's tangible, just as insecurity is and if people are going into the world doing their thing and obviously insecure and not trying to, not working with that, or through it, then their clients will see that and make their choices accordingly. So as long as we're wholehearted about our own growth and who we are and our place in the world, then we can't really go wrong, yes?
Yeah, that's right. And sometimes you'll hear me talk about insecurity, and they feel pressure to go, Oh man, another thing to do, another thing to work on. I've had these conversations with my wife at times, around when insecurity gets in the way in our relationship. And there's a conversation I can clearly remember where I said to her, Look, there’s some insecurity that’s showing up in your world that is actually undermining the intimacy in our relationship, you’re showing up at your most unattractive, because of this insecurity, and her comment was, well, that's really hard, because now you're putting pressure on me to change and I'd be just changing because you're telling me to, rather than me wanting to change, and so there's so much pressure. To which I replied, Well yeah, tell me a situation that has no pressure. Tell me a person who gets to work on their own stuff in a pressure free environment, there's always pressure. And and so yeah, you're in a business and there's pressure to show up at your best, yes there is, that is true and that's part of the fun of the game. It's high stakes. It matters. It's real. The great news around insecurity is, if you can just zoom out a little and see it as a universal issue then it does dial down the angst one feels toward this problem, because people experience their problems as complicated and unique. They're the only one who's had their past, the only one that had their upbringing, their woundedness and so it just feels so insurmountable and unsolvable but if you can zoom out and say no, no one escapes their childhood without developing limiting beliefs. Even perfect parents do not protect their child from developing insecurity, and nor would they want to because that is the gift for the adult - to go back and bring your best skills to yourself. You go into the gym, don't lift air, you find heavy things and heavy things build strength. So the heavy things in your past are the opportunity for the adult strength. That's the game. That's how it's set up. So when you see that you're gonna realise that, Okay yeah, life's happened for me, not to me, insecurity is there is an opportunity, yeah, there's pressure, it's high stakes, if I don't deal with this it'll ruin everything. True, but I can deal with this and it's a predictable problem with a predictable solution. So okay, let's get on with the business of eradicating this from my life.
Wow, that really wraps it up. That sums it up. So all we need to do next is look for your podcasts, read all your books and we'll be on the right track. Thank you, Jaemin, this is a great conversation.
Well, I mean, I make it sound simple sometimes but it is simple. It really is simple. Simple and hard. I tell people all the time it is such a boring problem. I am so bored with insecurity. I talk about it, write about it, read about it, every night without fail, I have coaching conversations in my sleep. I watch myself run seminars on insecurity in real time. And so yeah, there's no surprise in this. I never hear someone's story and go, Oh yeah, my goodness, yeah, yeah, you're screwed, yeah, you're gonna be.. it's gonna. It's just part of the game. So yeah, it's simple. And it's important to hear that. You go, Okay, then perhaps you could get over yourself and realise you're not special, your problem’s not special, and then yeah, you can trust the process that helps you show up in the world at your best, where it matters most and we all win.
Yeah, I love that show up where it matters most. We're going to leave it here Jaemin, I would highly encourage our listeners to pick up your books, any one of them. As I said in the intro, you are my go-to resilience guy. If I ever feel like I need some guidance, I'll pick up a book or I'll listen to a couple of episodes of your podcast and it is absolutely game changing. And we've also, in full transparency, I've worked with Jaemin as a coach and it was incredibly helpful. So thank you, thank you for your wisdom, for sharing it with the world, and I just look forward to what the year has in store for you. We'll keep following you.
Thank you. That's lovely. Thank you so much.
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