16: My Story (How I Found My Voice In My Career)

Today’s episode is going to be a little bit different. Instead of having a video interview with a guest, it’s going to be just me and I’m going to tell you my story and this episode will only be audio, no video. I figured I would take this opportunity to share with all of you my, my own career slash life story that brought me to where I am today, doing what I’m doing today. It’s something that I ask all my guests I asked them were what their story is, how they found their voice in their career. And so I thought that it would be good to share with you how I found my voice in my current career and what led me to doing what I’m doing today and what are some key lessons that I’ve learned about myself along the way. And hopefully maybe you can resonate with my story and there are some things that you might share in common with me.

And there are some things that might help you understand yourself better after listening to my story and the discoveries that I’ve made about myself and the hopefully you can take away from this conversation today. Um, some insight into not only who I am and where I come from, but some things that may be true about yourself, some things that may give you more understanding about what is holding you back in your career and what is causing you to repeat the same problems. What is causing you to not have a say over your career. As I tell you my story, I want you to pay attention to the recurring theme that keeps showing up, uh, throughout different events in my life based on a belief that I had about myself. I want you to pay attention to what that belief is and maybe you might resonate with it and pay attention to how this belief affected experiences that I had in my life.

And I want you to focus in on how this core belief that I had about myself was affecting repeated negative experiences that eventually helped me realize and discover what was holding me back from career success and what helped me define my voice in my career. And so those are some things to watch for is I tell my story to use so that you can walk away with a lesson and maybe a few lessons that you can apply to your own life as you try to find your voice in your career and as you try to find your footing in your life. So here we go. I grew up with the belief that life was predictable and that it was safe and that my security was provided for by somebody else, my parents. And then when I was 13, my parents suddenly divorced. And I know that divorce is unfortunately nothing new or unique in today’s world.

Okay? But, uh, because of how I internalize that event, I created a belief about myself that caused recurring challenges later in life regarding my career. I don’t bring this up as my sob story is my. Hey, please pity me because my parents got divorced because you’re probably thinking, well, my parents are divorced too. So what’s the big deal? It is a big deal. It’s a big deal for kids, for the family to split apart because now their security is no longer intact in the same way that it was, so I created a belief about myself as a result of this divorce that caused recurring challenges later in life regarding my career, like I said, and that belief was that life is something that happens to you, that it’s unpredictable and you don’t have control over it and you’re just a victim. That’s what I believed, and other people, they give you the scripts for your life and you don’t get to write your own.

You don’t get to write your own scripts. So as a 13 year old with a family that was splitting apart, I felt powerless and I felt voiceless and scared and I didn’t have a say in what happened and that really angered me and that really annoyed me. I hated that I didn’t have a say in it, and as I tried to search for answers of why it happened, I concluded that the only plausible reason is this, it must be because I didn’t deserve to have security and predictability in my life. I didn’t deserve to write my own stories. That’s what I believed. That to me was the only plausible reason why that could have happened. So I also learned that I was on my own now since I no longer had the safety of the United Family and of course my basic needs, we’re still being taken care of.

And I had parents that loved me and supported me. And even though my dad moved out of the house into his own place, we still saw him often. He was in the same neighborhood and my parents were still really good friends. It was a very, uh, I was lucky in that it was a, a fairly friendly divorce where my parents were better off afterwards and you know, it was the right choice for them even though it caused me to form certain beliefs, it was the right choice for them. And they were, there was still a, they got along and they, they were still my parents and they still took care of me and loved me. But regardless of that, I still didn’t feel secure. And in the years that followed, I gained a spirit of independence, wanting to be in my own and wanting to provide my own security, and I was feeling that it was totally up to me and you can imagine why I’ve always wanted to be self employed and I’ve always been very entrepreneurial because that experience kind of started my thinking of I have to create my own life.

I have to support myself because my parents aren’t always going to support me. And that kind of started to give me a reality check. So for that, I’m grateful for the experience. I’m grateful for there, for my parents getting divorced in that it set me on a track of becoming very entrepreneurial. And so I’m grateful for that. So already feeling voiceless in my own life up to this point, entering into my teen years to make matters worse. I saw people in my family and I saw people at and kids at school using their voice to hurt people, their actual voice. And so I chose the silence mine because I was afraid that if I used it that I would hurt people too. And as I saw people used, use their voice out of anger and out of their own self hate and struggles I had made me very afraid to use my own voice.

And so I chose to be to be fairly silent and quiet, which only attracted more hurt to me through other kids bullying me because I didn’t have a strong internal voice or a say over my life because of that self-defeating inner talk and thoughts that I had. And I also didn’t have a strong external voice because I really struggled with low self esteem and interfered with my ability to actually speak with people and connect with people. And it really caused me a lot of hurt not being able to express myself. I, I, I hated not knowing how to express myself. And I had things to say, but I was afraid to say it. And you know, I would see other kids getting bullied at school and I was afraid to step in and defend them even though I really wanted to. And so I just had a lot of a harsh self criticism for me.

Not Speaking up a lot of times. So, fairly soon I found my way around my problem, uh, since I couldn’t write my own stories from my life. I started writing stories for lives of fictional characters that I then made into movies and you want to know a common theme for all my movies to this day, it’s all always been about a character, finding his voice and deciding to create his life instead of being a victim to it. And I’m only realizing recently that that has been a common theme in all the stories that I’ve written for movies that I’ve made ever since I was 12. I’ve been making movies and it’s always about some character who is in control of his life and is having a say in it. And it’s interesting now that I look back and realize why I was writing those stories because that’s what I wished my life could be like.

I wish that I had a say in my life and I didn’t feel I did, but this kind of put a bandaid on it. You know, I gained a, a real passion for filmmaking as a kid and I’m still passionate about it. Um, and it was my dream to become a film director in Hollywood and I had really big dreams and it’s just interesting that I, I gained that passion because of a pain because of a pain of not being able to express myself. That led to me discovering something that I was passionate about with making movies and the movies did become a bandaid to what I was feeling on the inside. But it also provided some healing and some temporary coping. It also gave me a platform by which I could express my voice since I wasn’t comfortable expressing it through my own mouth.

And overall though I was excited to actually make a career out of it and I had really big dreams and I was chasing those dreams. But I was unaware that deep down I still didn’t believe that I deserved to achieve those dreams. So I was always the kid. I mean, you can ask my friends, my parents, I had big dreams, you know, they always knew that I would grow up and become a film director in Hollywood and direct the next star wars and that I would make it because on the outside I, I acted as if I believed in myself and I acted as if I was enthusiastic about my goal to become a film director. And I was very excited about it and I was constantly making movies. And so it seemed as if I had it all together. It seemed as if I, um, nothing was gonna stop me because of my passion and my parents supported me in that.

Um, I was lucky and blessed to have parents that said, yeah, chase your dreams, do whatever you want with your life. Um, but regardless of the support I had, I still believed deep down that I didn’t deserve to achieve those dreams. And that’s nobody else’s fault. That’s not my parents fault. My parents were supporting me. And it’s amazing the beliefs that we can so that we can create for ourselves even when other people are actually supporting us. You know, like it’s, there’s just so many reasons why we create certain beliefs about ourselves that hold us back and we don’t always need to understand why we created the belief. We just need to understand and discover that we have that belief and then we need to get rid of it and replace it with a belief that actually serves our life. So along with making movies, um, I got involved in acting all throughout high school and for the first time I felt as if I had a voice through somebody else’s shoes.

So through writing and acting, I felt as if I had a voice temporarily and it gave me momentary relief from my poor self image because I was able to all of a sudden have a different view of myself through another character. And again, super interesting looking back now and realizing why I clinged on to those certain hobbies. Um, and so maybe that will. So that just telling that part of my story might help you think about your own life and various hobbies that you’ve developed and maybe you develop those hobbies that certain bandaids to pains that you’ve had in your life. That’s something to reflect on. But does it mean to get rid of that hobby, keep the hobby or read the rest of your life? It’s great to have these hobbies, but it’s interesting discovering the reason why we develop certain hobbies like for me with filmmaking, making videos and movies will always be a primary function of my new company, Arrow light, you know, as it continues to grow, I’ll be able to make larger movies within, uh, the themes that I teach through workshops and events and mentoring an airline and it’s now going to be roped into my current career.

So I haven’t abandoned filmmaking. I’ve just transformed the method by which I’m executing on it now that I understand more about myself and who I am and what I enjoy. So, you know, I get onstage and I’d act and various plays throughout high school and I really enjoyed it and even though I was really shy, a 24 slash seven, um, in, in my normal life, I wasn’t shy on stage, um, and so it was just a house having a lot of fun with it. But when I walked off the stage and the play was over, I went back to my normal voiceless self and acting as well, you know, of course was a bandaid but not a cure. So in my senior year of high school, a worldwide event happen that just solidified my belief that we cannot control our own security and it was the 2008 market crash.

And my dad at that time lost his secure salary job. And I say that with a tone of voice, of putting quotes around it because being self employed most of my life, um, I really don’t believe that salary jobs or any more secure than self-employment. Um, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s just because to me it’s, you know, you put all your eggs in one basket with one company and if they fail or if they shut down or if they downsize, now you lose your entire job all at once when you’re self employed and you have different clients, you might lose one client because they no longer can afford you or something, but you still have 90 percent of your work and you can just easily replace that client with somebody new. Um, so I, I have always claimed on a self employment for that reason and it, it again, this, uh, this 2008 market crash pushed me even further towards entrepreneurship and self employment as I saw my dad instantly losses lose his secure job.

Um, his so called secure salary job. And it was devastating for him to do, to, to lose that. And it was very difficult and I was just about to go off to college on my own being on my own anyways. And so that only solidified my belief that life is unpredictable. That things just happened to you, that the market just crashes. And there’s nothing you can do about it. You don’t have a say over it that you can’t affect your own life is what I believed and my reaction to this point was it’s all up to me to provide my own security. And so I better get out there and become the film director that I want to become. And going back to the salary secure job thing. Um, I don’t, I’m not being cynical about salary jobs saying that everyone should be self employed.

No, not everyone should be self employed. And I’m growing a car right now. I, I own a company, but I’m the only employee. Eventually I intend to hire employees and build more of a team. And so I’m grateful that there are people that are willing to work for somebody else’s company. We need people that are willing to line up behind somebody else’s vision for a company and support them and help them realize that dream. Not everyone’s meant to be an entrepreneur or not everyone’s meant to be self employed. I am, I was. And I am. Um, but not everyone is. So I’m not being critical of salary jobs. Saying that it’s stupid and no one should go work in the corporate world. Now there are plenty of great opportunities in the corporate world and that might be your path, but it’s worth exploring the possibility that may be your path of self employment or entrepreneurship, um, that the corporate world is not the only path, um, but it’s a totally valid path.

So after high school I ventured off into college to officially pursue my dream of becoming a film director and a writer so I could write whatever stories I wanted so that I can bring them to life so that I could have a say in stories even if I couldn’t live them in my own life, at least I could write them and I could direct them, I can put them on the screen. And I liked the idea of being a filmmaker as well, being on my own. Basically being self employed, not relying on one company to give him my job security soon after. So I studied film in college and after college I was getting nowhere. I was putting a couple of films that I did into film festivals and it wasn’t working. There was nothing, you know, I wasn’t, I wasn’t, you know, I actually, I even got some awards with some of my movies, but I wasn’t getting handed the opportunities to make bigger movies that I thought I would just get handed because again, I believed that life happened to you, which means that I believed that negative events just happened to you and so do positive events.

I believed that positive events also just happened to you, so I was waiting for a some studio executive to just hand me a directing job to say, Hey, I loved your movie. Here’s a job for you. Here we go. Here’s a bunch of money. What movie do you want to direct? And we’ll give you a crew and we’ll give you money to do it. And it doesn’t work like that. We create our own life. You create the negative in your life and you create the positive. You create all of your experiences with your life. You don’t always create every event that happens within your world, within your sphere. And the people you’re interacting with, but you create your experiences with all the events in your life and you can experience life as a joyful thing or as a miserable thing and that’s your choice. I’m at this point, I was.

I was experiencing it as a struggle because I was choosing to just let. I was just waiting for somebody to hand me opportunities rather than going and creating those opportunities. I was waiting to just get lucky because you hear about. You hear about that a lot in the, in the film industry about all. You just got to get your big break. Somebody’s just going to hand you your big break. If you just stick it out and that’s not the case. Nobody hands you a big break. You’re in the right place at the right time because you created that opportunity because you talked to people and the biggest thing holding me back was that I would go to film festivals, but I was very hesitant to talk to people and to actually network and it takes that kind of effort. You can’t just make a good movie and make it you gotta be willing to talk to people and form those relationships and that’s why I have this whole show now so that I can teach people how to connect and make relationships a priority because it was never a priority for me because I was very shy and I had a hard time connecting with people.

With that said, you can be outgoing and still struggle to connect with people. It’s just the opposite end of the spectrum. Those that are very extroverted tend to force their way into relationships through talking a lot, but not really listening very well. Those that are very shy tend to avoid connecting with people entirely. And um, they as well actually struggled to listen because they’re always in their own head too much. That was, that was me. I was constantly worried about what to say next that I wasn’t actually listening when I was talking to people. So just know the outgoing people and those who are shy both equally can struggle to communicate and connect with people informed via relationships. This is not just something that those who are shy struggle with, there’s just as many outgoing people that struggled to really connect, inform valuable relationships with people.

So with that said, I was on the shy end of the spectrum, meaning low self esteem, which also caused me to be quiet. And that’s what caused me to, uh, uh, not connected. Now, with that said, there are also people that can be very outgoing and the reason why they’re very extroverted is because they’re covering up the poor self image they have about themselves and so they’re overcompensating for that poor self image. So it’s interesting the different directions that people can go when they don’t love themselves enough when they have that poor self image. So anyways, I wasn’t succeeding as a film director and um, and I kept asking myself the question, why is this happening to me? Why is this happening to me? Pay attention to that language and pay attention to whether you’re using that same language in your life by using the word things are happening to me or using the words I’m creating things in my life.

And I was wondering why I wasn’t succeeding as a film director, and of course, deep down it was very difficult to make this film. They can dream a reality because I still believed that I didn’t deserve it. I wanted it and I kind of believed that I could do it, but I didn’t fully believe it. And most importantly, I didn’t believe I deserved it, but I didn’t. I didn’t know about this belief. I wasn’t aware of this belief that I had about myself. So I was unsure of why I wasn’t finding success. So despite my lack of confidence and lack of communication skills, I did have technical skills as a video editor that I gained is ever since I was 12, editing things and then also throughout college. And those technical skills did land me a salary job after college. And I was married while I was still in college actually.

And so I already knew that I was starting to form a family and I needed to. I needed to support my family. So I needed to. I needed to find a job. I couldn’t just keep chasing this film thing without bringing in any money to pay the bills, and so Atlanta does salary job with one company as a video editor and for seven months I was supporting my family and feeling kind of safe, but underneath it all I had the belief that having a salary jobs not actually super secure, especially since witnessing my dad lose his and so I was a little uneasy about it and because I always wanted to be self employed, I also knew that I was going against my own voice. I was going against what I knew was right for me and that made me uncomfortable, so I was a little insecure and then one day my fears manifested and the company that I was working for made a large downsize and I was let go and I lost my job and in an instant I felt like a 13 year old boy.

Again. Powerless and voiceless and scared. I literally. It’s like I just flat. I remember sitting with my wife on the couch telling her about this and I felt as if I was a 13 year old boy. Again, when my parents told me they were getting divorced is like everything just circled right back around to that event and because I didn’t have a say in what happened, I didn’t have a say in losing that job. It was the kind of situation where I didn’t do anything wrong. I was doing my job perfectly well. Um, but the company just hit an unfortunate time and they had to shut down large sections of their company, which made my job no longer a top priority. Um, so I mean, I really didn’t have a say in it and I really hated that. I hated being reminded of that. I hated being reminded that I didn’t have a say in my life.

And to make it worse, to make it way worse, I was three months away from my first child being born, you know, I was, I was having a good salary job right out of college. So I was like, okay, let’s get pregnant. It feels like a good time. Do you have a kid? And of course I lose that job three months before my child was to be born. And the same feelings I had when my parents divorced came back, but a thousand times worse because of the pressure that I had now to support my own family. When my parents were divorced, I was still being supported by them financially, you know, there was still feeding me and giving me shelter. But now I was supporting my own family. So the feelings of being powerless, voiceless and scared was a thousand times worse this time in this experience, during this event.

And so I, again, I asked myself the question, why is this happening to me? And I also thought that like the same thing that happened to my dad during the 2008 market crash just happened to me and I swore out, never let that happen to me because I’m going to be self employed and going to be an entrepreneur. I’m never going to experience getting fired from a job. And then I did. And I’m sitting there thinking, is there no way out of this pattern? Is there no way out of this pattern, this pattern of career and financial struggle? And I’m sitting there thinking, man, to me, self employment is actually less risky. So why the heck that I take this salary job, even though I knew I would rather be self employed? Oh yeah, it was because I didn’t believe I was capable or deserving of creating my own path and in believe I could succeed as a freelancer or an entrepreneur and I didn’t believe that I deserved to write my own story from my life.

And because of that I had a lot of fears and so I didn’t go after self-employment. I ended up getting that salary job. And of course, once again I was not aware of this belief yet. I’ve only became Ireland. Became aware of this belief recently, a couple years ago and, and, and so the pattern continued. This pattern of career failure continued in my life because I had this belief at the core of it that kept causing me to create these, these new experiences. So what do I do? What do I do? I’m three months away from my baby being born. I have a family to support. We are already decided that my wife was not going to work, that she was going to a stay at home with our kid and be a full time mother and that’s something that she was wanting to do and you know, she’s the kind of person that eventually wants a career, but while kids are young and small, we wanted our children to have a full time parent at home to not hire somebody out to take care of them and so I was the only one that is going to bring in the income and I was sitting there just wondering what I was going to do.

I could go get another salary job, but my fear of losing that again, who was greater than my fear of failing as a freelancer. So I chose to attempt freelancing and I started my own videography business and I discovered this freelancing platform online. It’s called upwork and there are many other similar to that where you can make a profile and you can find clients within a few weeks of after aimlessly applying to over. Must’ve been a hundred different freelance gigs. I finally got my first client and then a couple more and I was excited because I was actually getting some clients, but that joy soon plummeted after I realized how underpaid I was for my work. I had no idea how to determine my value or set boundaries for myself or set boundaries with my clients and I didn’t even value myself enough to find better clients.

And so I was, I was continually working with people that I didn’t like working with that we’re just looking for cheap work there. The kind of people that they’re, they’re going on these websites to try to find a freelancer that’s just cheap, but that somehow is still going to deliver quality work and that’s rare. You pay what you, you get what you pay for. Um, unfortunately I had the skills of a high quality video editor, but I was massively undervaluing myself. So I was attracting very annoying clients. And so after nine months of extremely inconsistent income of sinking into debt, of working with many annoying clients, being underpaid because I didn’t know my value, having constant stress, I literally was having frequent anxiety attacks. I thought I had a heart problem at first, but then when I went and got checked out, I didn’t have any heart problem.

I literally was just having anxiety attacks that felt like a heart attack and I realized that freelancing was not working at all and it was causing a strain on my family. I couldn’t be present for them because I was always worrying about work so I wasn’t really there for my kid and my new baby and my wife because I was always thinking about where am I going to find my next client was always on my mind, so once again the patent or failure showed up in my life. Why is that happening to me? Why are these money issues happening to me? Why is career failure happening to me again? So conveniently, right around that time when I was ready to give up, I was ready to give up on being self employed. My previous employer who fired me originally told me that their business bounced back and they would love to have me come back and work for them full time again and with the pressures of a young family to support and provide Ford and despite really intense internal conflict over the issue, I accepted another salary job with them with the same.

I didn’t just accept another salary job. I accepted another salary job with the same company that let me go because they had to downsize. And somehow I convinced myself that that was a secure choice, but it’s because I literally, because of the pain I had experienced freelancing. I was, I was always willing to do anything. I was willing to accept this job and obviously I had some anxiety about it. Um, but I was earning a month. I was earning money again, but I was earning a consistent paycheck. Now I can finally pay the bills. But I felt just as insecure as when I wasn’t earning money. Because guess what? Money does not create security. Relationships. Create your security in life. And when I finally realized that I was a lot happier, regardless of my inconsistent income, um, that in other words, I’m flashing forward a little bit because obviously I went back to self employment later and we’ll get to that.

Uh, but I learned a powerful lesson that relationships create your security in life, not money. You can have millionaires and billionaires have plenty of money, but they’re not secure. They’re not secure because they don’t have those relationships with themselves and with other people. So one year after this, I’m doing this new salary job with the same company I was working for before a year into it, I realized how unfulfilled I was. I wanted to be self employed. I really did. And, but I was too scared to do it because a failing the first time. And I wanted, I really wanted more control over my daily schedule to pursue other passions and I wanted. I wanted all the perks that come from being self employed, with being able to just create my own schedule from the ground up to be able to take a Wednesday off if I wanted to and work on Saturday instead.

I mean just to have that total control so that I can have more work life balance. You know, I’m a millennial and as a millennial we millennials, we love, we want more work life balance. We we love and want jobs. They’d give us more flexibility and so we will seek out companies that respect our desire for flexibility and for work life balance and if those companies don’t give it to us, we will likely seek self employment like I did and luckily I did work for a company a that actually allowed me to work at home and I had a little more flexibility but not the amount of flexibility that I wanted entirely, but they exist. There are companies that exist that if you don’t want to be self employed, there are companies that do a respect kind of that millennial desire for flexibility and autonomy over their career, a little bit more and work life balance.

And if you’re in, if you work for a company and you have a lot of millennial turnover, it’s probably because you’re not giving them enough flexible options to have that work. Life balance. So yeah, I’m sitting there on the back of my head. I have this niggling thought of didn’t you decide it was merged more secure, diversifying your employment? Uh, and I felt really uneasy about the fact that I was in a salary job. Again, I wanted the safety, the perceived safety of a salary job, yet the flexibility and the autonomy of a freelance career. But since my previous experience, freelancing, freelancing was not any more secure at all. And then I thought, what could I have both? Could I, could I be self employed and be secure and have consistent income and have predictable income and predictability in my career? So the feeling of an unfulfilling career and my voice not being expressed was way more than the fear of failing at freelancing again.

So I made a decision to attempt freelancing a second time and you know, Solo preneur ship, whatever you want to call it. And for the first time in my life I had to say I chose to leave my salary job. I wasn’t let go. I chose to leave. I wasn’t kicked out. It didn’t happen to me. I used my voice to make my own choice. I used my voice to make my own choice and that felt very different. This time though, I decided that a freelance and was going to work. I had to discover why I wasn’t successful before and I needed to and I needed help to be able to do that because I was at a loss. I was like, I have no idea why it wasn’t working. I need help. So I found mentors. I finally was. There’s entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, freelancers, those that are are like to be on their own regarding their career.

We also are fairly stubborn regarding getting help. A lot of times we often we’re like, oh God, just do it on my own. I got to make it on my own because we’re afraid that if we get help, if we hire a coach or a mentor and seek help, that if that, if that person that helps us get success, that then somehow we can’t claim that success is our own and that’s a total myth. You’re the. Even if you have a coach and a mentor helping you, you get to still claim that success, that success is yours. You created it. They just helped you discover things that were standing in your way and they just helped train you on certain skills you needed to to to achieve your goal. I mean, it’s the reason why we go to school. We’re hoping that we learned skills and gain education from teachers to help us get to where we want to be, but we still get to claim the success and so if that’s.

If that’s your belief. If you’re afraid to hire a coach or a mentor to help you overcome your career issues because you have that pride standing in the way. Just know that even if you get help, you still get to claim the success because you’re still the one doing all the work. You’re the one that ends up a very good coach and a good mentor helps you discover what you need to do next. They don’t just tell you what to do. They help you discover your next step. They help you discover obstacles. Um, they don’t just as consulting is where you just tell somebody what to do, coaching, mentoring. You’re helping somebody reach their full potential. And obviously, um, that’s what I enjoy doing today. Uh, because I found mentors. I finally decided to hire, hire, not just, I found certain people are helping me for free, but I also was willing to pay with money.

I did barely. I didn’t have for mentors and coaches to train me on how to overcome my communication skills issues so that I can finally connect with people and also just how to gain traction in my career. People that knew the steps on how to find career success. And I got that help and I found teachers and I went to training programs that I took online courses and I just, I got on and I read books. I did everything I needed to do to get help on how to find success in a career and especially being self employed since south. That was the route I was taking. A coaches that I, that I was working with helped me discover that I had this limiting belief that I carried with me my whole life. That I didn’t deserve success, that I wasn’t helpful, that I wasn’t capable and deserving of writing my own story from my life.

I believed that I didn’t deserve predictability, but it took an outsider’s perspective to help me discover that I believed that about myself because most of our beliefs are so deep in there we don’t even recognize we have them, but they’re creating all of our life experiences. Because of that belief. I kept struggling to my career. I kept failing at my career attempts, and having an outside perspective helped me discover that I had that belief. And then because I discovered it, I was able to replace it with a new one and, and, and, and a belief that actually serves me better and let me add some specificity to the belief that I discovered that had, that was holding me back for a long time. It wasn’t the, it wasn’t that I believed that I didn’t deserve success ever or at all. It was that I didn’t believe I deserved success yet because I was living a story that you’re supposed to struggle for 20 to 30 years working really hard, making just enough money to get by and pay the bills and then eventually in your fifties, then you finally deserve to have success in your career and have a financial stability and have extra income beyond what you need to just pay your bills.

And then you can have a nice retirement because you spend 20 to 30 years struggling to finally deserve that. Because that’s, you know, that’s, that’s the story that my family has been playing out for generations. But then I realized that if I have value to offer now that is equivalent to the income that I want, that I have knowledge and skills that people are willing to pay that amount for. There’s no reason why I have to struggle for the next 20 to 30 years that I can choose to deserve that type of success in my career now. Because then once I discovered this belief in all made sense and it made sense why I kept failing because I kept sabotaging myself. It was nobody else’s fault. I stood in my own way. And that belief is what caused this pattern of career failure to keep showing up and me not achieving my goals.

So I made a choice that I deserved success, that I deserved to create my own stories that I was no longer expecting for someone else to just hand me success. Because I had developed skills over time that allowed me to have value to offer people. So as long as you have knowledge and you have skills that you can exchange for money than you deserve to receive that money. And I had plenty of skills. I had plenty of skills to be able to succeed as a freelancer in exchange for the money that I needed and wanted for my family, but I didn’t believe I deserved that success and I didn’t know how to market those skills because I didn’t value myself. I mean it’s an because I didn’t value myself. I didn’t know how to communicate the value of those skills to other people, in other words, sell myself so I finally found my voice and I safely transitioned into a freelance career and I discovered my value and I raised my rates accordingly and I actually found better and more clients with higher rates because people know that they get what they pay for the know.

If they pay a higher rate, they’re likely going to get higher quality. Yeah. There are people out there that are scammers that are charging enormous rates for things, but they don’t deliver, but those people, they. Their survival in their career is very short lift. It’s a very short life. Okay. You, you don’t survive very long. Charging people a certain rate for something and then not delivering that value because then they will trash your reputation and that client will not recommend you and you will have, you will struggle to find people. You can only repeat scamming so many times before you get shut down by the fact that no everyone is trashing your reputation. It doesn’t work. So make sure that you have valued, offer people, make sure you deliver. Um, but I had that value to offer, but I didn’t believe I deserved it. And so I didn’t charge people accordingly.

And so, so it also, what I learned is through training and going to different trainings and taking courses and hiring mentors and coaches that as I learned how to manage my focus and use my time more effectively was another skill that I gained that I was not using very well when I was trying to attempt self employment the first time. And that’s why I was failing. I wasn’t using my time very effectively. I didn’t know how to control my focus. My focus was so concerned and all of my worries and my fears that wasn’t concerned. It wasn’t focused on my goals, I wasn’t pointing my focus on, on, on my goals and the things I was trying to create. I was just constantly worrying about my fears, so I learned how to control my focus and I learned how to communicate with people on how to communicate better with myself.

I learned how to clear out the noise in my head of all that negative self talk that was massively interfering with my ability to achieve my career goals and I overall I just chose to stop being a victim to my own lack of self worth. I chose to stop being a victim to money and time and all of it, and within a couple of months I was thriving as a freelance filmmaker and I was getting plenty of referrals and I was earning way more money than I did on my previous salary and I was only working with my ideal clients and enjoying the freedom of creating my own job and my own schedule. And I had a healthy balance of work and home life and my life just like it was before my parents divorce. It became predictable again. But this time I was creating it to be that way.

I was creating predictability in my own life. I was earning enough income that was stable and predictable while also having just overall sanity. I wasn’t I all my heart. I used to, when I be going to sleep during that first attempted freelancing and even during the salary job because I’ll still really unsafe, insecure I, my heart was just randomly start racing throughout the night and I’d randomly wake up with my heart going super fast. That’s why originally I thought I had a heart problem. I didn’t, I just had anxiety. I had anxiety because I wasn’t doing what I was meant to do in my career. I had anxiety because I didn’t feel I had a voice and a say over my life. And that’s a scary feeling to not feel that you have a say because you feel like a victim and everything and that causes anxiety to feel like a victim.

So I was finally able to support my family financially, but also emotionally. And that was really important. And I’ve been writing my own scripts for my life ever since. And I’ve been making them a reality and I am still passionate about filmmaking and I’m incorporating a lot of video into my new company Arrow light because I transitioned from. So I, I had a freelance videography business where was doing video for other people’s companies and always. And I was successful at that for awhile, but after, after only about a year of doing that, after only about a year of just successfully being a freelance videographer, I realized I meant for more now I’m now successfully freelancing and I’m being self employed and I have stable, consistent income and I’m and I’m enjoying it, but I’m realizing that there are others that are struggling like I did. There are others that are struggling to be self employed and to make it work.

There are others that are on the verge of giving up in their career or giving up attempting freelancing or solo preneur ship or being self employed because it’s not working. And I wanted to help them in my heart went out to them. So I decided to exit my videography business and create a new company called Arrow light that’s completely devoted to helping people like me, to helping people like I was overcome career struggle and finally gained a footing in their career and be and be able to customize their career from the ground up and have a say in what they do in their career and how they do it and when they do it. And, and, and at the core of it. I’m passionate now about teaching people about how to communicate and connect their way to career success. Because the key for me and finally finding success in my career was that I started connecting with people.

I started forming vulnerable relationships. I finally knew how to network. I finally knew how to build those relationships that I was getting referrals continuously that I, I didn’t have to loan one no longer spend time looking for work because one client led to the next because they knew how to communicate with people. Finally, I knew how to form those relationships. And so now teaching communication at a very deep internal level and coming out to the external level, that’s my passion now to really teach that ha ha to teach you how to find your voice in her career by teaching you how to find your inner voice and then also your outer voice. And again that applies to whether you’re shy or outgoing. That applies to whether you’re shy or outgoing. If you’re struggling in your career, if you’re struggling financially, all of that, then you’re struggling to find your voice period that you’re struggling to communicate your own value to other people because you’re struggling to understand your own value.

So this is that. That’s what leads me to where I am now. But now I teach your workshops online. I love teaching them online because I’m a millennial and I know a lot of other millennials. They like the convenience of connecting into a workshop through any device, through their phone, through the computer. They don’t have to drive somewhere that there are benefits to in person workshops. Eventually I’ll be doing live events in person, but I like utilizing the technology that we have today to, uh, teach, uh, things online. And so I have this show, this podcast that is a platform by which I can teach these things and interview other people so I can learn from them. And I have videos that are released every week and I teach online workshops. I do one on one mentoring for those that need help in their career and I’m, and I’m loving it.

I’m loving where I’m at now. And am I bitter towards those negative experiences with my parents divorcing and losing my job? No. I’m grateful that I had those experiences because they led me to where I am today. And if I never had those experiences, those experiences are what led me to having the independence in my career that I’m at now, that I now have. And so it’s my passion to now share what I’ve learned through years of struggle in my career and years of struggle financially so that you don’t have to take as long to learn it so that you can learn from my mistakes. So they can shortcut your progress so we can accelerate your progress. You don’t have to spend years, you can in a matter of months, you can completely flip your career, you can completely, you can get out of, of the, of the pit that you might be in, and you can finally gained traction or career.

You can finally gained success in your self employment, if that’s the route that you’re taking. And I want to help you get there faster than I did so you don’t have to have as many setbacks. So you don’t have to. Because at the end of the day, the one thing that held me back the longest, if I would’ve just from the get go, found a mentor to help me gain traction in my career, the second I graduated college, I would have avoided all of that struggle and I would’ve gotten success so much faster. But for some reason I felt that I needed to do to my own. And I felt that I needed to learn the lessons that I did and that. And I’m glad. I’m glad I did. And um, but it was a struggle. It was very hard and it was hard on my family and I don’t want you to have to go through the same thing and so I encourage you to find a mentor and a coach to help you overcome your career, struggle, to help you finally have total satisfaction in your career and where you’re heading, and know that even if you get help, you get to claim that success for yourself, that you still get to be self made.

Even with hiring coaches and mentors, every other you, any Olympic athlete, just look at all the successful people around the world, Olympic athletes, successful people in business. They have all had coaches and mentors along their journey to help them. You don’t get to that level of success without having a coach and a mentor. You don’t. You need somebody who’s been there who’s done that, who can help navigate through your own crap in your head that’s holding you back. All these limiting beliefs that you have and help you realize your own true potential and then also these people help train you on skills. You legitimately need to actually achieve these goals. And then also they are also there to give you knowledge that you need to be able to achieve your goals. So just just the one thing I want you to take away from this conversation today from my story is that you get to write your own stories for your life and you get to make them true and, and you get to have a say in your own life.

You get to create it. You get to write the scripts for your life. No one else, not your parents, not your grandparents and your uncle and your cousins, not your best friend. No one gets to give you scripts for your life. You get to decide how you want to live your life and what that life looks like. You get to decide what you want to do in your career. Somebody who has found their voice in their career as somebody who knows where they’re going and they believe they’re going to get there, and they also believe that they deserve to get there. When you’re sure in your direction, when you know where you’re heading, you automatically express a certain air of confidence that other people see and then all of a sudden other people, they want to be your friend. They want to collaborate with you, they want to hire you, they want to work with you because they see that you’re somebody who knows where you’re going and you know you’re going to get there.

That’s the type of confidence that allows you to create the kind of relationships that will connect you to your goals. So I encourage you to explore all the different programs that are out there of people helping people find their voice in their career. You can. You can also check out my programs. I have online workshops that hit different aspects of finding your voice in her career, especially related to self employment. Since that has been my career path for the most part, but even if you’re not self employed, you’ll still get a lot out of it. I have a free class I do almost every Wednesday called The Soloprenuer Journey and it’s all about learning the foundations for becoming a successful Solopreneur, uh, and I also do one on one mentoring for those that are sick and tired of being sick and tired for those that have a lot of pain regarding where you’re at right now and you want to overcome your problem fast.

You want to get to where you want to be in your career fast and you’re sick and tired of not achieving your goals. And you have that high level of urgency. One on one coaching and mentoring is for you. And I encourage you to go to my website at arrowlight.tv/mentoring, and you’ll be able to just follow the links there. Click whatever box kind of applies to you the most. And just follow those links until you get to the page that allows you to schedule a strategy session with me. I want to offer anyone listening and watching a free 30 minute strategy session where we get to dive into what may be standing in your way to you achieving your career goals and then we get to strategize on a great next step for you and also it gives you opportunity to find out if any of my mentoring programs are a good fit for you and it gives me a chance to see if your a good fit for my programs and so go ahead and explore that.

See what I have to offer on my website. I released videos every week. I have this show and I encourage you to go and subscribe if you haven’t already to the Youtube Channel ArrowLight TV so you can follow this show and also on itunes and stitcher. It’s on all the different itunes APP. All the different podcast apps. Subscribe to the channel and I hope that you got a lot of value out of my story today. I hope that as I told my story to you, that you not only know me a little better so that I’m not just this random voice that’s interviewing people and you’re not sure who I am, but that also you learn some lessons today as I shared with you key lessons that I’ve learned in the last few years as I’ve gone through ups and downs in my career and what led to me finding my voice in my career and I’m excited to help you find me on linkedin. Connect with me. I want to help you. I want to have a conversation with the use of that. We can learn from each other. Thank you for listening to my story today. I’ll see you next week on connect up. Have a great day.