EP8: Finding Silver Linings: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Better at Business (and Public Speaking)

[00:00:00] 

Zach: Hello, everyone.

Lee: Are

Zach: And today we’re going to be exploring how you can move about turning disasters into actual opportunities. And I’m joined by my co host Lee and Sarah. 

Lee: I’m Lee Zuvanich and I own a couple of businesses that involve helping founders take their tech projects to market. I’m going

Sarah: I’m Sarah Schumacher and I run a website agency where most of my time I spend squashing lots of bugs. Hopefully.

Lee: Show us

Zach: Today’s episode is going to be largely centered around that disaster can be okay. I know that may seem like a very controversial statement, particularly with the state we’re in and the way that things are going.

The challenge that [00:01:00] I have you today is that you don’t have to sit and just let things happen. There’s an opportunity or a silver lining, if you will, to be able to gain some value from the way that things went, because sometimes things are simply disasters that I’m not trying to refute. Undeniable logic. Things sometimes just suck. This is more the opportunity to leverage what you learn in each of those experiences or as things happen.
 

An excellent case. Very, timely in the sense of it just happened last week.

I was working on some grant and government opportunities. I needed some information, the entire application window is four weeks. I asked a question in the first week.

They didn’t answer for three weeks, leaving me four days to actually put together a cohesive proposal. It was crunch time scramble. I started throwing pitches trying to get a team together but in three days, I found somebody who has a background relevant to the [00:02:00] solicitation.

I found a guy who works on artificial intelligence research, and they both said, You know what? You’re giving us two days notice. We don’t know you, but hey, you sound like a swell guy, and they agreed to join. The silver lining is I was That close to just throwing out the entire opportunity because I only had such a small amount of time to do it. But I ended up finding two people who the surface and through some of our hour long conversations and numerous emails, they seem like really great people. If I would have knew these people a long time ago, I would have been way further along in this process . Post failure

Silence.
 

that I found is opportunity recognition, and that’s the process that’s been identified in some people who have strong [00:03:00] entrepreneurial drive. Those people find the wedge or the crack. If they’re facing in a seemingly insurmountable task, they can find that little, cracker, that pivot point, and they can adjust. Being able to. and move towards those opportunities is super important.

Last little piece here, because I’m just barraging information. There’s a difference, particularly in business owners and founders of trying to understand your narrative comfort level and your actual progress.

One of the things that founders and business owners can Find themselves doing is providing themselves comfort with a narrative, even if that narrative isn’t true. An excellent example would be if, I build it, they will come, that narrative that you’re just in your garage, cranking away at some 

Sarah: wheelless bike, 

Zach: some weird thing

that’s probably not going to market. You’re like, ah, it’s just, it’s not time yet. If I do it, people will think it’s cool. The safety blanket or the opportunity to comfort yourself. It feels good, but let me tell you you’re going to [00:04:00] waste a lot of time trying to explore that path. So I think it’s really important to actually line that up with actual progress.

So if you are in your garage making a wheelless bike and somebody across the street says, I want a wheelless bike. You have actual opportunity and you should go for it. So I think that’s something to be cognizant of for any business owner, any startup founder, anybody trying to start something is to notice and acknowledge the difference.
 

From there, there any stories or any kind of happenings from either of your lives that you can relate to for this this subject?

Sarah: Man, well, one thing I wanted to highlight really quick before I forgot is that you’re having to put together a proposal that quickly it might be crazy, but at the end you’re like, now I know I can do that. So I think that’s kind of an added advantage.

It sucks. You don’t want to have stuff dumped on you last minute, but once you’ve done it, it makes everything else seem more reasonable. Because if it’s a normal timeframe, you’re like, well, I got that done in three [00:05:00] days. I can definitely get this done in two weeks.

Okay. Okay.

Lee: of that is paying attention to few wealthy and famous tech entrepreneurs who left college before completing their degrees while ignoring the many people who have dropped out of college and then not been able to go find a career that in maybe the profession that they wanted to.

So you say we need to talk about survivorship bias regard to startup failure, I think that there’s a lot of that in this community. [00:06:00] And like you said, generate these stories because it helps protect minds as we fail and fail and fail forward. It can actually be like a part of resilience to be able to pivot and say failure is part of success but on the flip side of that is sometimes failure is just failure. So yeah, unpacking which is which I think is probably a lifelong journey. It’s pretty complex.

Zach: It goes back to the apocryphal founder. Somebody can say that, I didn’t have any money, but I, spam for two years. And now I’m doing really well.

Yeah. Okay.

things that [00:07:00] can happen, which is fine, because you don’t want to be a Debbie Downer,

Sarah: Okay.

Zach: thousand people a year for go through funding, actually raise and do all the things that are seen as metrics of success in comparison to the thousands that come in there with an idea and it just doesn’t work out.

Sarah: One of the other things that I wanna highlight is there’s stuff that you don’t know about, or that they don’t talk about or that they omit for. Even the survivor stories that you hear, 97% of businesses will fail. And you no one’s talking about the 97%.

They’re talking about the 3%, which is the survivorship bias. But on top of that, they’re not always telling you the whole story. Amazon. He got 250, 000 from his parents to start that business.

Most of the businesses I know do not have access to that kind of [00:08:00] money. We don’t hear those stories in full context.

So we miss some of the resources that those people have that we don’t have. Oh, another great example of this is the time thing. There’s some meme or something I’ve seen going around where it’s like Beyonce has the same amount of hours in her day as you do.

That’s not true because when you are at a certain level of income, you can pay for nannies and personal chefs and you have more time than most people because you can outsource so much of your life cleaning, pay someone to clean your house, right? That most people are not afforded so the hours are not equal.

And I think that’s another thing that’s left out is the opportunities are different and sometimes you don’t see that behind the scenes stuff.

We were talking earlier about making up stories after the fact about some of these things?

The hindsight 2020 thing. Right. But I think there’s a lot of value in the moment, also being able to try to find those things . I can look back at stuff and be like, Oh, wow, that situation really, really sucked.

But also I learned this, this and this, and it’s easier to do. [00:09:00] Now, but the resilience, I think the key of being resilient, which is so important for being a founder is being able to do that in the moment. When the thing happens, instead of being like, Oh, this is the worst.

And then, maybe 10 years down the road, you’re like, turns out that was actually pretty good. It’s about being able to do that now and being like, Oh yeah, this sucks. But.

I was running a business on the side and I was working full time. And when I got laid off, I had so much work that week, side work. I had a full magazine to design and get into print and oversee and other projects and I was like how the heck am I gonna get all this stuff done this week this is gonna be crazy because I’m working full time then I gotta go home and work more and all these things and that was the week I got laid off and I was like well I can get all my projects done now.

A perfect example of finding the silver lining in that particular situation and being like, yep, I don’t know if I to get it all done. It would’ve been really stressful.

Zach: [00:10:00] Okay.

Sarah: of doing this on the side. So that’s my practical example of what that would look like for finding a silver lining.

Lee: Yeah, I have so many stories that I think are all that classic Hollywood setup of loss and tragedy and then great things coming out of it just over and over again. The first real business that made me realize I was actually a true business owner. I had already started a nonprofit, but it was more like a co op with friends and I was 19 and didn’t really see what that was or what it meant. But I got married and then my ex me, and I had an eight month old and a one year old and rent due and no money and no degree and no savings. No family that could help me really just was here on my own in Kansas City, and I [00:11:00] started a home daycare. And I was able to pay my bills on time and it took off and I did really well and got to stay home with my kids for years. and realized through that I was a real entrepreneur and ended up after a while shutting it down and opening a yoga studio because that’s what I was more passionate about. And that did really well and none of that would have happened and that would not have led me to where I am today owning a tech business and loving being an entrepreneur.

If my had not left me. and caused me to become a broke single parent that had to get scrappy real quick. have a lot of stories like that, a lot of silver linings, and Now when I’m going through something really difficult, I look back over a long past 20 years now of ups and downs and every single massive loss always precluded just the most amazing upswing later. What I’ve learned from that is not that life is magical and [00:12:00] that God opens a door and not necessarily that it’s that I can count on myself because I always find a way forward and not to say that my community hasn’t helped me or that not building on a lifetime of, privilege and, lessons, but it gets easier every time.

And I’ve proven to myself that I will work really hard until get paid and my kids are going to be okay. I’m going to be able to. Buy a house or put them in private school or pay for their medical needs or whatever it is. I’m going to be able to do it. I’ve always done it before. And so all of those tragedies, their silver linings are, I learned how to be really resilient and trust myself and be a strong parent and entrepreneur.

So now it’s almost like I can see, can forecast this mental image of the next silver lining when something bad happened, helps me stay resilient.

Sarah: I definitely think that’s a practice that you can learn and you [00:13:00] can teach yourself. I have a very pessimistic person in my family. That’s the kind of person to be like, I’m not a pessimist. I’m a realist, but they’re just a pessimist.

And which is just.

Lee: everybody all the

Sarah: Yeah, exactly. It’s just very obnoxious. And so as a reaction to that, I have trained myself very intentionally to see silver linings in things. It is a practice that I have cultivated my entire life and I’m very good at now. So you can teach yourself to do that to where it is just a way of seeing things.

I’m also extremely hyper independent too. So part of it is just like, well, I’m going to figure this out now.

There’s always something you can find if you have that mental mindset, but I think it’s important to highlight that you can cultivate that. Even if you don’t have it now, even if you don’t know what that looks like, even if you’ve never seen an example of it, you can be very intentional about changing the lens. And you feel the world in.

Lee: next

Sarah: over time it will become second nature.

the

Zach: An art form and being able to objectively look at if there’s an [00:14:00] opportunity or something good can happen.

I think the 1 of the most critical skills that you can develop in that area, is being able to separate the emotion from the analysis. Say you do a pitch competition, you’d never pitched before you’re like trembling. You’re nervous to do it. The opportunity or the event that you got up there and you able to pitch is eyeopening and revealing about your own qualities and characteristics in itself.

One of my first pitch competition, there was a room of a hundred or so people, it was just three minutes. No written, no context. You just go out and talk for three minutes about your business. I think people gravitate towards when they can feel authenticity. If you go up there and you’re just putting on this big top hat, like this whole routine. And you’re doing a bit, sometimes I feel like people could perceive that as a unnatural.

Sarah: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Zach: think I almost tripped up the stairs. My voice was wavering. And I think I got 30 seconds into what I was talking about. I was like, this is hard. I just said [00:15:00] that. And there was a resounding, receptive, from the audience. Yeah, I know. Keep on going. So is this okay,

Sarah: Support.

Zach: you guys are just regular people. So anyways, this is my business and I felt so comfortable and able to continue my presentation. It was being able to separate after the fact, the emotional part of it is like, man, I went up there, I was so nervous.

I’m never getting on the stage again. Then the analysis I had, it was like. people like when you’re authentic just, talk, don’t teleprompter it, just be genuine. People will be more receptive to that.

Another very similar instance that I had, I was in, I was like speech or writing one on one or whatever.

When I was working on my degree, everybody had to come up and do an unscripted five minute talk about just whatever you couldn’t prepare it. I was just sitting in the back, getting all clammy, getting nervous, started feeling a little woozy.

I was like, Ooh, I gotta get out of here. So I ran out i’m like leaning in the [00:16:00] hallway. And then I just like, nah, what’s the worst that happens?

That he go up, you go in there and you fall over Somebody will, yeah, somebody will either pick you up or drag you out of the classroom. So you’ll just get over it. And so I went up there and I was like. This speech is hard and then everybody was like, tell me about it.

Sarah: It’s really the same. I’m going to separate the emotion and the analysis after the fact. And I can just build on that. What lessons can you take from it? 

You said that, you know, maybe if you bomb the thing, it’s not worth it. But I see a silver lining in that too. If you go pitch for the first time and you completely bomb and you do terrible and embarrass yourself, you still learn something.

Sarah: You didn’t die. The reason that public speaking is so difficult for people is because there’s this social evolution or social acceptance thing that needs to happen being cut off from the tribe feels like death. And so you’re so exposed up there.

That’s why people are so afraid to get in front of people and talk. Even if you fail at something, you still are like, well, I mean, nothing bad happened. Like, it was embarrassing [00:17:00] or maybe I learned I need to plan better because I didn’t prepare ahead of time or whatever, but you didn’t die.

There’s somebody I saw the other day where they were talking about getting over fear and they said, okay, here’s your exercise. Go to a coffee shop and ask the barista for a discount.

So someone’s like, yeah, I did it. I asked the person for a discount and they were a little confused because I said I was doing it as part of this class But it was fine. You know what? I did it and I didn’t die.

You can bomb the first one, you can be slightly better at the second. But all of those, you’re getting better at, again, the public speaking is kind of context here, but that could go for a lot of different things. I could go for an investor meeting or something. And you’re like, Oh, I didn’t sell the story very well.

Okay. Well now, you know, to go work on it. You got some feedback on what doesn’t make sense. There’s always something you can learn.

Lee: I’ve noticed that about the three of us, that we all seem to able to find the silver lining, which is why we wanted to do this topic, I think. This is maybe part of key components that form a resilient entrepreneur.

Sarah: 100%.[00:18:00] 

Lee: So yeah, I’m just curious do you both see yourselves as glass half full kind of person. Is that how you perceive yourself? Is that you’re maybe a little overly optimistic sometimes? Or do you see yourself as a realist or a

Sarah: Yeah. I don’t, I don’t think I’m overly optimistic and I don’t even like the concept of the glass half full. Optimism is different to me. We should define it then.

To me, an optimist is just someone that’s like, oh, it’ll work out.

I see optimism is naive. I don’t see this as optimism. I see this as being realistic based on prior experience and just an understanding of human behavior. Something happens. There’s always something to learn because that’s how life works.

You’re on this journey . So it’s being realistic with a bent towards learning and growing and developing and finding ways to do that in a way that’s self encouraging instead of self defeating. To me, that’s not the same as optimism.

Lee: I think that some people would say they’re realist based on statistics and facts and the [00:19:00] science by looking at

Zach: Okay.

Lee: Statistically, all three of us are going to face a lot of barriers to getting funding, VC funding in particular. I think we’d have a one to 5 percent chance or something in any room with any VC. All the statistics about businesses failing, that has never stopped.

Yeah. Any of us from doing what we’re doing. And I looked it up. The National Institute of Mental Health says that public speaking is more feared than death.

Sarah: Yeah, yeah.

Lee: into survey, right?

Zach: Silence.

Sarah: I want to highlight really quick for people who are like, there’s no way, not me. I’m an introvert. . I actually do really well at public speaking, but it’s because I’ve done enough of it. It’s a practice thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re an introvert.

It doesn’t matter if you’re the kind of person that is fine, never leaving your house, which I am. You can still learn to present well, even if that’s not something that you love [00:20:00] doing. If you have a business or a concept or an idea that you’re passionate about, you just need to lean into that and into your expertise and knowing that you’re providing something of value and then just tell people that.

That’s literally all that it is and you don’t have to overcomplicate it. You do have to learn how to present it well, but you can do that and you just take the next day off to decompress, you know, but it’s doable anybody can learn to do that.

Zach: That’s such a big part of it is, like you said, lean into your expertise. I think one of the pieces of feedback I got when I was going on a pitching circuit some guy told me, assume whenever you’re pitching the most about whatever you’re talking about. And that was like, removing Atlas, Boulder, the rock or whatever, I do know the most about this, and then it just gives you the whole power stance thing. If you stand with your arms, whatever, it just gives you a sense of confidence. I think personally for myself that helped remove a lot of the nervousness about being able to do public [00:21:00] speaking.

Sarah: It’s so funny we’re talking about public speaking, finding the silver linings in public speaking, huh? I wonder where we went this direction with that cheat code for public speaking is if you are nervous, you reframe your nervousness as excitement. It’s the same kind of emotion. So if you’re about to walk out on a stage and you are incredibly nervous and shaking instead of being like, oh man. I’m so nervous. I’m excited I get to get out there and I get to present my business and you completely reframe the emotion It’s the same kind of emotion, but you reframe it in your mind and then you channel it. 

Lee: I the last time I did public speaking and my body still was like, I’m so excited. I’m gonna throw up in front of everyone.

Sarah: Man, that is a lot of excitement!

Lee: I’m just, yeah, they’re all gonna see my excitement in about 10

Sarah: So, maybe pair that with an anti nausea medic No, I don’t know.

Lee: did, it was 2000 people more than I’d ever spoken in front of, and last time I’d done anything like that, it was [00:22:00] maybe 500 people and I really did almost throw up, I think,

Sarah: Was this a social ventures thing that you did?

Lee: so I,

Sarah: That was great! I saw the video, that turned out great!

Lee: what I did was a couple of things. I took a ice cold shower right before

Sarah: Don’t

Lee: and I was like, how do I wake myself up? But also I think resets your vagus nerve, which is where your fight or flight response comes from. And it gives you a lot of dopamine and adrenaline and makes you feel amazing actually.

So I did that. then I visualized over and over again myself because I realized I had been visualizing myself for two weeks, getting on stage and throwing up in front of everyone. So I was like, how

we don’t do that? How about I visualize confidence and I walk out in front of everyone and I go, good morning.

Okay. [00:23:00] Okay. Okay. Okay.

And I felt amazing afterward to such a degree that now I’m looking for more speaking opportunities.

Cause it was actually fun once I got through it taught me, taught my body that I will not throw up or die and humiliate myself and be excommunicated all the things my nervous system is afraid of.

So my whole life, I’ve also like you were saying, Sarah, learn to find the good in things throwing myself in headfirst to things that are terrifying because I do believe that I will learn something, I’ll grow and I’ll train myself that actually I didn’t die. that’s what your body’s trying to tell you and so you just go do it and then you don’t die and then you become this person that everyone’s oh my God, I don’t know how they do all those things. We do it scared probably with a little bit of vomit,

Zach: Okay.[00:24:00] 

Lee: Whatever, stress, sweat and we just do it anyway and get up on stage

Sarah: Hmm. Mm.

Zach: the situation to the best of your ability. Obviously, it can be difficult if you’re nervous. But like you said, reframe from nervousness to excitement, bursting at the seams to be able to talk about something. Just being able to control it. So I think there are things that people can do realistically to control the way that things are going. If there’s something going south, you can redirect how things are going.

And I think having that sense of control gives you better capacity to address and actually see the silver lining sometimes. ’cause if you’re constantly in this state woe is me. Everything sucks. I’m always getting the short [00:25:00] stick the cobbler’s kid if you’re always feeling like that, you’re going to always be in that state.

But if you can control how you’re perceiving your emotions, how you’re perceiving the event this can be applied in a multitude of situations, if a bad deal, bad client engagement or even career exploration, like I have a friend who’s going through a bit of career exploration and I go, I went and got a

a degree in computer science, and everybody and their mom has a computer science degree. What am I going to do now? And I was like there’s a tremendous opportunity where you can lean away from conventional tech jobs. Where is big data and computer science not being applied?

So I think my question I have for both of you is what are some early warning signs that you’ve devised in your business and professional life that lets you know things are going south that allow you to wake up to regrab the wheel.

[00:26:00] Silence.

Sarah: You’re like, Ooh, this is, this is not going to be a good client. Those things are sometimes hard to put into words cause you just get a vibe or a sense of something that’s off.

So a lot of it is just doing the thing, just doing the thing and being intentional and being mindful and you’ll pick up on stuff over time and then you can kind of codify that into your system. So I don’t know if I have a good example of codifying this per se but we’re very consulting driven so I run a website agency but really what I do is business strategy and tech consulting and you come to us and you say what you Need or you think you need and I will tell you what you actually need so one of our rules is that our clients have to be people that are Wanting to work with an expert and [00:27:00] partner collaborate on this thing.

So if someone comes in and they are very clearly the kind of person that wants to direct everything and tell you what to do, I don’t work with those people. I will straight up be like, we’re not a good fit. Were too booked. Sorry. Booked out. Don’t have any room for you. I won’t work with them. I just won’t do it.

Cause that’s not what we do. If you want to go boss somebody around, by all means do that. Your results aren’t going to be great cause you’re not an expert in marketing or web design or tech or whatever the thing is. And if I have clients with those expertise things, it’s still a collaboration, right?

Tell me where you’re trying to go and I will help you get there. But that’s one of the things. That’s a red flag to me. If someone comes in and tries to drive the whole conversation, you don’t respect the expert. And you’re also not going to respect the time. And you’re also not going to respect the bill that’s comes due because you’re not going to pay that because you don’t.

There’s all these things. That I’ve seen happen so many times. So I would say pattern recognition is really, really big. So pay attention to the common denominators. If you work with clients and you’re like, man, this client, did this again, it was the same thing with [00:28:00] what, what was common between those In the beginning, that will be harder to pick up on, but the more you do stuff, the more you’ll pick up on that.

Take notes. Maybe sit down ahead of time and write out what is the ideal situation. You can do a premortem for stuff too. So you don’t have to wait till things go wrong. If you have a big project that’s stressing you out and you’re like, man, this is going to be difficult.

Sit down and write out a list of everything that could go wrong. A premortem of things and then go, okay, if this goes wrong, how do I prevent it from going wrong? Ahead of time. So you can work through a big project before any of that stuff happens and then avert most of the stuff.

Lee: Yeah. And I would say include in your pre mortem how you’re feeling in your gut and take stock of that. in the beginning when you’re trying to make intuitive decisions about things like hiring or partners or other business decisions that are pretty impactful. you won’t necessarily trust your gut because this is all new. but you’ll learn pretty quickly. Oh, my gut told me not to hire that person and I did it anyway. And I know now what that feels like and I’m going to listen next [00:29:00] time.

For me, even after 20 years in business there’s still things that are just not intuitive to me because I am pretty optimistic, I see the good in people. So something that helped me was reading Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power, which is a pretty intense book that takes you through a lot of different historical references to people who gained and kept power, mostly through really horrible means, read it.

Sarah: of horrible advice. 

Lee: If someone reads it and says it was good advice, watch out for that person. But I

Okay.

like, God, this is depressing. and then realized it’s such a good resource for, Oh, this is how some people think. Yeah.

Business works. This is how some people move through the world and they really believe it’s like dog eat dog. I’m more like it’s a doggy dog world. And so there’s these two types of people and if you’re like me, you really have to learn how to watch out for the dog eat dog people [00:30:00] because you don’t see him coming and they believe that taking you down is just a part of what it means to survive.

for instance, I never understood the rule of not telling people about your wins because I felt so grateful to be part of an entrepreneurial community and finally identify with that. Oh, I’m part of this crazy group of people. That’s why I’m like this.

And I feel so seen and I want to share and look at my new office. I feel so excited and I want to share my excitement or look at, I just hired my first employee and learned partly through experience, but partly through reading this book some people really hate to see other people win. You

Yeah.

negative energy by doing that every time, unfortunately, and you’ll attract people even as clients or employees or network people, friends, supposed friends who actually they’re there for a variety of negative reasons that have to do with your [00:31:00] success or the money that you’re making and nothing to do with you or your values.

So yeah, reading and listening to other people’s stories has also helped me with that pattern recognition that Sarah was talking about, because I never in a million years would have intuited that it’s bad to be vulnerable and share your feelings with people.

Sarah: Is a little bit of a tangent, but one thing about that there are some people that will have a tendency to think that something’s wrong with them or they did something wrong and that is not the case. So often people are projecting their insecurities onto you.

So if you share a win and someone in your life is trying to tear you down, that has nothing to do with you. That has everything to do with them. That is really important to understand. Move on, keep grinding, keep doing it.

Just go, just go do the thing and ignore the people that do that especially if you are a founder, if you are in some entrepreneurial capacity and you’ve got a friend that works full time job or they have all these dreams that haven’t been realized or they can’t take action on what they actually care about and they see you doing that, that really threatens people and it’s frustrating to me to see that happen. And then the person be [00:32:00] like, man, my best friends not talking to me. And I don’t know what I did. It’s not you, man. It’s not you.

Lee: Oh,

Sarah: so it’s important to understand these. You have to understand these things so that you can recognize it and not internalize it.

Cause I can really hamper you. Reading, the 48 laws of power is like sneaking into a secret club meeting for evil business owners. 

Zach: Putting

Sarah: That’s literally what it feels like. You feel gross. You have to take a shower after reading that book. It is gross.

Zach: Yeah.

I read it and it gave me a lot of context, like you’re saying Lee the way that a lot of people are there, but there are certain things I think that could be leveraged from some of those ideologies in there. But also talked to people who said it’s just a prison survival guide. So it’s a.

[00:33:00] Hello, everyone.

Oh, I can’t tell someone about a grant opportunity that I’m going after because they might get it

Of the time in a nonprofit. There are a gazillion people working on the same problem that’s not going to be solved anytime soon. So if one more person puts out their hand and is trying to help get it done, by all means, like I reached out to somebody. I was like, Oh, there’s this grant thing. And at first I was thinking like, Oh, let me be super cryptic and secret. I’m looking at a thing. You have any advice on it? What’s the thing? That’s the guy. He has money. I’m just looking at it. What do you think? They’re like, I need more to go on than that. And I was like, Whatever. If this guy goes out and gets it, then by all means, they’re going to go address scarcity, food insecurity or whatever [00:34:00] Bravo. I’ll be the person in the front row and I can applaud their efforts.

I think as we look at silver linings, finding them and how we navigate, I’d be curious to hear what is your takeaway from how you’ve approached silver linings in the fast.

I’ll go first. You always have an opportunity to learn. Whether it’s in favor or whether it’s in misfortune, I think that there’s an opportunity for you to be able to get some insight from something that’s happened. Whatever happens, that should be one of the things that you try to do. Obviously, after the dust has settled at what you can learn and what you can benefit from. That takeaway. 

Sarah: all about learning and growth and personal development. For me, it’s always the learning thing. The other thing I would add is that it helps you determine the direction of where you go next because you can’t just sit down and build out a perfect plan or decide your journey ahead of time.

That’s just not how things work. So if you see the [00:35:00] setbacks as being these guardrails and this thing has happened, it’s going to knock you back to the direction maybe that’s direction you need to go.

If you have a certain type of client that you’re working with and things just keep going wrong and you have all these disasters, maybe you’re working with the wrong kind of clients or you have a product. The offering that is just draining you, and there’s a final straw of something that is a disaster with it.

Maybe this is not a product I should be offering. So all these things add up to create this roadmap. You have to do the things to learn to keep moving.

So whatever the setback is, it’s going to help you pick a direction, whether that’s, we need stricter security procedures around this particular thing so this doesn’t happen again, or we’re going to eliminate this thing entirely and move over here.

Lee: I would say my biggest takeaway is a difference between optimism and finding the silver lining in things that are [00:36:00] truly a cloud of the silver lining, like the traditional sense of that was difficult or horrible, but look at this wonderful thing that came out of it. childbirth and a baby, right? Traditional kind of concept versus something where you’re painting it to be something that it’s not think the biggest thing that jumps out for me is a toxic relationship that you put too much positivity on to keep it going, or that can even be in business too, something that should have died a long time ago and you’re just keeping it on life support because you can’t stand the idea of shutting it down and moving on to the next thing, it’s just too painful and you’re putting the pain off.

You’re putting a breakup off, whatever it is. And I’m guilty of this. I’ve mostly done this in my personal life. I’ve been pretty good about shutting businesses down when it’s time to just move on, but in my personal life am what you call I’m just a writer die and I might die. So in the past I would stay [00:37:00] with someone way past when I should have, when it was toxic or abusive or whatever, because I just had this value that was like I see the good in them and I see what they’re trying to do. And the biggest thing that I learned about how to get out of that kind of situation that sometimes is not redeemable is that cognitive distortions and cognitive dissonance will make you crazy. This is all about coming back to your gut using that to make these business decisions and understanding everything’s got a little bit of a cloud and a little bit of a silver lining this is the good decision for me.

And this is where my energy should be versus the more that I do this, or the more that I pursue this, the more dissonant everything feels. And yes, there’s

Sarah: [00:38:00] Silence.

Lee: in a down economy when no one believes in your vision, but you, an important part of resilience.

But then being able to see the other side of that and say, but. If I keep doing this, I’m going to go crazy. So it’s time to stop. Time to move on. And just knowing what that line is for you and honoring is how you can holistically approach this concept and use it to your benefit.

Zach: Yeah, being able to look at everything from a holistic standpoint, I think we can sometimes get locked in

Lee: Are

Zach: focus, but I think we have to give everything consideration with all factors. And there’s certain things, obviously, that are non negotiable, but certain degree, as we’re talking about business and the opportunity to find a silver lining, something that just, you Could work out or just gives you an insight that you didn’t expect, because that’s all.

Sometimes the silver lining is, you just get information you didn’t anticipate. So I think being able to [00:39:00] leverage the holistic approach consider your business happenings and things that you go through is very important.
 

Lee: We’d love to hear from our listeners if you have had a situation where it was a disaster, but you found a silver lining reach out and drop us a comment or DM We’d love to hear from you.

Sarah: And make sure to subscribe on whatever your preferred podcast platform is.

Zach: Until next time, folks, we all

Sarah: all have problems.