Transcript:

I hope this story helps you realize that the “No's” have to come. These strong inner choices when your dad looks at you and says, “You owe me money and you're turning down a $65 an hour job?” Have faith in yourself. That was a moment I had to have faith in myself and I did.

Hello, hello again, it's Monica and yesterday I talked a lot about my big backstory and it went on for like lots and lots of years and there's a lot of details in it and I got some questions about it and I just, I'm, one of them was about like, you know, when did you realize that your beliefs were really starting to change? And so I just want to share a little story with you about a time when that really became clear to me. Here I was back in Missouri from Los Angeles. I had left my six-figure developer salary job to start a business that was a hot mess and failing. And then I tried something else and then I tried MLM and then I tried something else and I was picking up some consulting gigs along the way to pay some of the bills.

But really, I was struggling. My dad was paying my truck payments. I was living with my aunt rent free even though I promised her that I would pay her rent and I was really down on myself like, “Why can't I make this work?” And feeling like a complete and utter failure. I mean, I went from like $100,000 plus a year. It was like 120 to 28,000, I think it was. I'd have to look at my tax returns, but it was a sharp like, plummet. I still have some bills that matched that six-figure salary. And so I was really struggling and I'm trying to figure out all this stuff and just, trying and trying and failing and failing and then came the knock on the door from my high school friend.

I mean, we weren't close friends but we were good enough friends with. She's like, “Hey Monica, you know, I'm, I'm here to serve you some papers. And I was like, “Oh, okay”, and I was getting sued by the credit card company that I couldn't pay. So I called her lawyers and I was like, “Hey, I don't know what to do here.” And they're like, “Well, you gotta pay us. That's how this works.” And so I worked out a payment plan that was pretty aggressive for the fact that I was making no money. So at this point, I was like, “Alright, I cannot have my high school friends knocking on my door serving me papers. ” Right? It's not okay because this is an unacceptable thing. And so I decided I'm going to go get a job and not just any job.

I'm like, okay, I want a consulting job that way I can still work on other stuff and basically, it's just going to pay my bills. Right. At this point, I had really believed that a job is just over broke, which is how Robert Kiyosaki describes it. I got that from him. And I'd been sort of working through it long enough. It had been like four or five years that I've been processing this belief that I had started to internalize it and truly, truly believe that, but I did need to go find some money, right. So I just thought about it that way, like I needed to find some money. The fastest way for me to do that is to use my skills and you know, go get a consulting gig and I call them gigs because I'm in the tech world.

You can get like a three-month gig and it usually goes on longer, but that's generally the start and it's a contract. I wouldn't feel guilty about leaving the company because if I commit to something and I feel obligated to stay and I think that a lot of people do, which is good, right. But, so I didn't want that level of commitment. So I was like, “Okay, I'm gonna get a job. And I was in Southeast Missouri and so I was like, “Okay, well Memphis is the closest place.” So I'm in the software development world. My actual role at the time that I was really, really good at was, I definitely coded, but I was really good at talking between the business and the developers and analyzing what the business need and telling it to the developers and that's called an analyst role and so I was really good at that.

And so I went to interview at this huge corporation in Memphis. Right. And like the job offer was for $65 an hour, which is like amazing. That's back to over six figures a year and I'm so excited for the interview. It's a three-hour drive. So I'm driving and I'm giving myself like four extra hours, which I ended up meeting because there was a horrible, horrible thing that happened along the way. I'm actually like dead stopped traffic for two hours. And what had happened was that a police officer was shot in like a routine pullover, so my heart was breaking for their family. So I was just in traffic. I didn't know what was happening and I was checking twitter. I was like, “What's going on? I've got to get to this job interview, got to get there. This is the way that my life is going to get saved.”

And so finally the traffic breaks, I see on twitter what's happening and then, I start to cry because my Stepdad's a police officer and they've put their lives on the line for us all the time. And they literally just pulled somebody over and died. So here I am kind of an emotional wreck. I pull up to the place half hour at a time because I'd given myself so much time, which is good. So I do my little mirror pep talk, right? So here's my mirror. I'm like, “Monica, get your self together. You have got this.” I literally am like self-talking myself into getting this job. And I was like, “You will get this job and you will solve everybody's problems and you will figure out this business thing with money because you're going to need somebody and you're going to go in there and you're going to rock their socks off, like they're going to love you and they're going to offer you this job.”

So that's my, in the rearview mirror, pep talk going on. So I get out of the car, I get to the interview and I come in. My background is exactly what they need and I'm talking to them, this sounds good. And then, and then it changes. And they're like, well Monica, how do you handle conflict? And I was like, “Oh well, you know…”, And I get them this nice answer. And then, they go back to a couple of other questions and then come back. They're like, “Well, what if you know two people want completely different things from you.” And I'm like, “Well, I mean that happens quite frequently, right?” There's a difference of opinion a lot. And these questions kicked getting like more and more like this and finally, one of them was like, seriously came out of nowhere.

They're like, “Well, we should let you know that it's kind of a political nightmare here now.” They didn't use those words. That's just how I interpreted it. “And we kind of want this person to work a lot of overtime and there's a lot that goes into this.” And so of course now I'm thinking this job is the answer to my problems. So many problems that I was like, okay. So, I answer all the right questions. And at the end of the interview, they were like, “Okay, we're going to reach out and you know, you'll be getting a job offer.” So I did it, right? Except that on the drive home I was like, “Yeah, that's not gonna work.” So by the time I made it back home, I pulled it up to the garage and my dad is standing there.

He's like, “So did you get the job?” And I was like, “I did, but I'm turning it down.” He was like, “You're turning down a $65 per hour job when you owe me money?” Yes. Dad, like, thank God I have the best dad ever because he just kind of shake his head and walked away from me. And that's what I realized that that was not going to get me where I needed to go and this was a test to see if I really wanted to go where I want it to be. And I've found these little tests all along my life and I've started to recognize them now. I mean, this was what, eight years ago, so I was still pretty, pretty new to this, but that's one of the reasons I want to talk to you about it is that like these little tests pop up and sometimes it's like you have to say no to the bad to get to the good or even no to that. ‘Okay'.

Like nobody thinks that are working and so you have to say, “Yeah, okay, that's working, but that's not what I really want and I'm actually in the middle of one of those tests right now and I'll be talking about that in the future. So, I stood behind my ‘No', I turned down this company. Not all was lost. I then was like, I really need to go get close to the co-founder I'm trying to start the startup with and she's in Los Angeles and I love Los Angeles. So, I used my old roommate's address. I called her up, “Hey, can I use your address to job hunt? And she was like, “Yeah, sure.” So I got submitted to Disney and booked a flight on December ninth. I can remember that because it was my best friend's birthday and got out to Los Angeles, aced the Disney interview.

They gave me the job and this job was so much easier like that. The politics at Disney, I was not involved there. There's definitely something. There's something in every company that's not a dig on Disney. But, I was pretty removed from it and I stayed there 10 months and paid my bills and got everything caught up and failed in the startup I was going out there for, but have started another startup and then started my next business and did all the things, but that gig at Disney was definitely the right choice because, multiple reasons, Disney is an amazing company. And it was something that I could do pretty easily. So it gave me a lot of time and energy to work on the things that I really, really wanted in my life.

So I hope this story helps you realize that the “No's” have to come. These strong inner choices when your dad looks at you and says, “You owe me money and you're turning down a $65 an hour job?” Have faith in yourself. That was a moment I had to have faith in myself and I did. And I have paid him back by the way, and my aunt. So I hope this story helps you think about that. And let me know what you thought about it.

This is my second day of publishing, so I'm really just trying to help you, with the stuff that I've already learned and went through because I can shortcut your journey then, that is what I'm trying to do because I want you to be successful and live the life you want, not the life that you've been told, which is what I did for so long. So I hope your day is great and I'll talk to you tomorrow.