The Common Scents Podcast.

Experiencing transformation and overcoming anxiety: A chat with Jill Whalen

Once suffering from anxiety, Jill Whalen, an extraordinarily successful marketer, tackled her demons and overcome, and then lived to share the tale and teach others how they, too, could overcome. In this podcast, Jill and Tamar talk about anxiety, getting healthy, how different each and every single one of us are, and then deviate into our reality and past lives. TAMAR: Hey, everybody, I am delighted, excited, ecstatic to bring my old friend from, I don’t even know, like over a decade, we’ve known each other for a really long time. Jill Whalen. And she is she’s like this expert in her craft, but kind of walked away from it. So I guess I’m going to talk about that and has been making, been migrating lately, so, yeah, I mean, I guess I’ll give too much information out, but thank you so much for coming. Jill Whalen: Thanks for having me Tamar, yeah, I think it’s been more, much more than a decade, probably 20 years since we first knew each other. TAMAR: Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s that ages me. Yeah. No, it hasn’t, it hasn’t been. I got into it in about 2006, 2007, so it’s gotta be, it is over a decade. But it’s not that long. I kind of wish it was, you know, what benefits you would have had, I would have had if I started earlier. Jill Whalen: Oh, yeah, true. TAMAR: Yeah. So Jill and I know each other from the search engine marketing world, and Jill was this rock star of a SEO High Rankings, if you will, official. And it’s, no pun intended because she ran her, she ran a site called HighRankings.com and then walked away from it because life came and got in the way and no regrets. So that’s always the dream. So talk about your history a little bit on that. Jill Whalen: Sure, yeah, so I was doing a SEO thing for I think it had been about I was about 17 years at that point and this was 2013 and, you know, I loved it. It was my life and it was my passion. I lived and breathed SEO, basically was a pioneer in the industry, pretty well known, and went to all the conferences, spoke at conferences, and then I at some point in 2013 I was, I mean long before this I was gaining weight and drinking too much, never having really eaten very healthy most of my life and getting older. I was about 50 at this point. I was just getting very unhealthy and I knew I needed to do something about it or, you know, something bad or something really bad would happen. And so I finally, after years of thinking about it, I always wished that if you just thought about things that would happen, which actually kind of does now I know, but after years of thinking about it, I was like, OK, I got to lose some weight and I wanted to lose about twenty five pounds. I’d always been fairly thin most of my life, so I had never done diets and I always thought, you know, diets were weird or whatever. But I wanted to make it be like a lifestyle change. I felt like that would be sustainable, but I did have to lose the initial weight, so I just you know, Fitbits were fairly newer back then. I got a Fitbit and the MyFitnessPal app. And so as a techie, you know, it was kind of, it actually was kind of fun doing like, I just was counting the calories, using the apps and but always at the time still making leaving space, leaving calorie space for my two, at least two drinks a night cuz my husband and I were always going to bars at this point. My kids were grown up and the thought of like giving up those drinks was like, no, I don’t want it. I don’t want to do that. So with my limited like 1200 calories I think it was, I made sure I could have enough for my drinks and fit it in and I started I had been doing yoga already for a couple years, a little bit, a couple of times a week. And I think actually that kind of there’s something about yoga that’s magical that kind of changes your mindset a little. And I do think that spurred me on for the weight loss, so my goal was kind of in six months to lose the twenty five pounds. And basically I did it, but I, and I as through that six months, you know, I started I went from someone who used to think I was aller—I didn’t think I did, but I kidded that I was allergic to vegetables and exercise and, you know, to suddenly really liking, love those things. I was making all kinds of veggie creations for my lunch, and I was walking in the woods, you know, three, three, four miles a day and getting those 10,000 steps in on the Fitbit. And just like it was, I just I lost the weight and then it just started. I started really thinking about sort of identity, like how could this be? Everyone was saying, “you know, what did you do with Jill? ” Because I was such a different person. That’s my blog, actually, whatdidyoudowithjill.com, because that’s what everyone was asking me, my family and things like that, because I just became such a different person. And I found that really fascinating. But so, so what happened was I, you know, really kind of just suddenly, I had to write my SEO newsletter, which I had been doing for practically all of that 17 years, every other week. And I just didn’t want to do it. And just like, you know, I just don’t want to do it. I just rather go out in the woods and take a walk or do some yoga or eat some vegetables. And I just didn’t want to. And then I saw. I remember. I emailed my proofreader, who was always on board on Wednesdays to get that newsletter out, and I said, you know what, I just can’t do the newsletter. And this was like for me, like “what?” You know, that was the one thing I did every other week that was on my schedule that that was a non-negotiable. And she’s like, “um OK,” I said, “I don’t know, maybe I’ll do it next week or the week after, but I just can’t do it. I have nothing left to write about.” Right, soon after that, like a couple of days later, I just was like, you know, I just don’t want to do SEO anymore. And it was so weird because like I said, it wasn’t something I thought about. I had been loving it up to that point. But it just hit me. And when I kind of made that decision, I felt like it was just my inner guide or something, just like, you know, but you’re, you’re done. You’ve done it all. And at the time in the industry, you know, things were I had always been advocating for doing SEO, what I call the right way, you know, with just making a great website and that’s what search engines will want. You have good content on it and they’ll they’ll show your site eventually because it’s good. And at the time it seemed that that was actually finally starting to work. More like the search engines kind of came around finally to my what I had been saying all along and so it seemed like a really good time to to leave. I felt like my it was like my work here is done. And so that’s what happened with that. And that was in the very near the end. That was October 2013, I believe. And right away I’m there instead of writing my, I just like switched over from my SEO newsletter to just writing about my journey with losing weight and getting healthy and writing, putting in recipes of healthy things and and I just I just switched over to the blog like within a week and just any insights I would get, I’d start writing about. And so it was kind of cool because I just, I just sort of just transitioned right into doing that. TAMAR: That’s awesome. Good for you. Good for you. You know, it’s really helpful because if you think about it and I’m actually thinking of a startup concept based on this, is that if you think about it, you become more accountable when you have to basically put it out there. And I think people struggle with that, like I struggle with that. I used to say, if I’m going to put myself out there, what if I fail? Everybody is going to see me as a failure. But I also think that if you’re so committed, then that never becomes an issue. So, like, my whole startup idea is like creating this whole accountability type of like social network where people are going to be putting themselves out there in a way that, you know, they have community members egging them on and making sure that they continue to pursue their whatever goals that they have, whether it’s fitness, weight loss, a combination of the two or who knows, I mean, hopefully it can extend to things like smoking cessation and whatever else you might have that you want to basically get out of it. Jill Whalen: Yeah. I agree, I remember hearing I remember reading some book back and about losing weight and it suggested “mae sure you tell somebody.” At least tell someone because I normally like to just do stuff on my own. But there is something about that, when someone else knows that you’re at least held somewhat accountable and it makes, it does make a little difference. TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah. The biggest challenge, though, is that where do you tell somebody? So I think that if you’re posting to, for example, Facebook or Twitter, you have followers that are following you specifically for other reasons. So they’re not necessarily, you know, your advocates when it comes to this type of thing. So that’s actually why I’m trying to create a network that’s exclusive to that type of behavior change, because I think people would be the only type of people who would be interested are the people who like, you know, it’s like, you know, we got we don’t Facebook groups because we’re only interested in certain type of things, and we don’t necessarily care about, like the diverse personalities of friends. And unfortunately, you know, some people are polarizing in their politics. You don’t necessarily want to follow that kind of thing. So it’s like having the exclusive focus on these behaviors. So I’ve been toying around with this idea for a while and maybe see if we can materialize it because people will do it. But I think it’s so important. Jill Whalen: Yeah, definitely, I think from me to the being a lifestyle change aspect of it, it’s so good because, you know, so many people, they lose weight and then gain it all back and then they lose weight and then, you know, and then they always gain back another 5 or 10. And, you know, I’ve been lucky enough, having made it a lifestyle change. It’s, you know, it’s stuck, that was 2013. And I’m, you know, I’m going to be 60 in a month and, you know, I’m in the best shape of my life and and and look way younger than I am. You know, my daughter had said when I first lost the weight that I looked younger and seemed younger than when she was in high school and she had already been out of high school for ten years. TAMAR: That’s great. Good for you. Awesome. So I know you wrote about anxiety to some degree, and you were talking about that. [Jill Whalen: Mm hmm.] I would love to learn a little bit, I guess, I guess we’ll go into like, I don’t know if this is your adversity story, but assuming it is and if it’s not, then I guess you’ll let me know. You’re very open about that. And I think that issues like that are still very stigmatized. So being able to put that out in the open is something that I think a lot of people are grateful for. But, would love to hear a little bit about like where, a little more about that story. Jill Whalen: Sure. Yeah. So I ended up writing a book. It’s called Victim Of Thought: Seeing Through the Illusion of Anxiety. And it’s available on Amazon basically in all different formats. But that came about because, as I said, I sort of thought it was really fascinating how my identity changed so much in six months, you know, which was a very small portion of my life. And so I sort of started getting interested in that. Like, how how how does identity change? It feels so fixed in our minds. We are who we are and where this person who paints vegetables, where this person who this, I mean, we always every day we say things like that, well, I don’t like this or I like this or well, I’m the kind of person who does whatever. And I sort of started exploring that a little bit without, in hindsight, this is how I describe it, but. And I came across some interesting things online about about our thoughts, creating our experience and our thoughts on reality, and I was like, you know, just it sounded to me I didn’t understand really what it meant. I had listened to this guy named Michael Neil, which anyone can look up. He’s a really interesting, very well spoken. He’s got a lot of books out there, too. And he can’t say and I didn’t understand what he meant, but I it just it resonated with me. So I asked my husband to listen to this talk like this, this guy, he’s he’s super, he seemed like a genius. And I thought he was maybe talking about something sciencey and my husband, like science, like maybe you can understand what he’s saying and you can explain it to me. So he listened to it, too. And then, you know, at some point I was like, he told me he listened to and I’m like, OK, so what did he say? And he goes, “Well, I think he’s saying that thoughts create our reality.” I’m like, “I know, but what does that mean?” And then one day I was having we were I was making dinner and we had been, as I said, going to bars a lot. But because I had gotten healthy, I sort of was trying to avoid that food sometimes. So I was trying to cook more. But my husband still like to go out. So I was cooking and he and I said, OK, dinner’s ready. And he said, “OK,” but he said it in a, in a way that I thought was like, “OK,” or, you know, like I came in, so this one word, you know, OK, he said and then he, he came in and he ate. But we, it was like this silence like between us there was this tension in the air and in my whole head was going in, was he mad at me? Or you know, he doesn’t want to eat at home? He wants to go out? And had this whole thing going on in my head. So the next day when I had heard, when I heard, again, listening to something that said, “your thoughts create your experience or your reality.” I was like, “oh my God, that’s what happened last night.” Like all my husband said was one word. And yet and I, and I was just like the whole night in this tizzy of, you know, blahblahblahblahblah all the stuff going on in my head of what might be happening. And I felt horrible. He did, he ended up going out to a bar and stuff, and I stayed home. But the whole rest of the night, I was just in my head when, you know, with all this anxiety going, “what’s going on?” And then I got it. Like, I understood what that meant. So that’s what that means. You know, if I’m feeling crappy, it’s because it’s just thoughts happening in my head. And it’s one, how can one, one word from somebody else isn’t actually what’s creating me to be anxious. It’s my thoughts about that one word and the story that I created around it. And so once I started to really understand that concept and how much it’s thoughts creating, just like everything, anything that we feel, it’s, you know, for feeling a certain way, it’s a gauge of what’s going on in our head, what what thoughts are ther. And because of that, I started observing my thoughts more like I had been listening to a lot of Eckhart Tolle too, which you heard him, The Power of Now. [TAMAR: Yeah, Presence.] And he, yeah, he’s really good. And he always said, you know, “observe your thoughts during the day. Just just observe them. And you don’t have, you can meditate and stuff if you want. But but just every now and then during the day, observe your thoughts and just notice what’s going on there. And I always thought, “oh, that sounds like a good idea,” but of course never did it. But at this point, I finally started doing that. And just every now and then remembering, “observe my thoughts” and realizing just how much was going on there. And there was something in the observation of thoughts that quieted down my thoughts. I felt like, it’s like I liken it to like cockroaches when you shine a light on them, they scatter, and thoughts are kind of like that as well. You, you shine awareness on them and they scatter. So my mind overall just started getting a lot clearer. Like there was one point where I was laying down in yoga in the Shavasana at the end, and usually my mind would be above the blah blah blah. But all of a sudden one day that the thoughts parted, was like clouds parting and it got like super silent. And then I got scared and they all kind of came back and I was like, “whoa, what was that?” And that’s how I realized when I started living more from that place with a much clearer head, I realized how much anxiety I had had in my whole life that I didn’t even know because it was my normal. Like just when, you know, I had this clump of thoughts going on in the back of my head my whole life, ever since I was little and thinking that anything could come around the corner and make me anxious, always looking for the next thing that’s going to disturb my peace of mind and, and somehow when I got this “thoughts create my feelings, not the outside world, it’s an, it’s an inside job,” it’s just like, the anxiety just fell away like that the big clump in my head just kind of dissolved at that point. And that’s not to say that I don’t get anxious. I still do. But it’s like it’s a different thing because deep down I know that it’s not coming from the outside world, it’s coming from within. And and it’s not who I am. It’s just crazy. You know, we all have a crazy person that lives in our head and and it’s, it’s that crazy person. And I don’t have to listen to what the crazy person says. It’s no different than if I don’t have to listen to the homeless guy on the street yelling crazy things at me as I walk by. It’s, you know, it’s it’s kind of the same thing, all those, that noise in our head is is 99% not valuable and you start to see that more. So my book kinda outlined this whole experience and, and the whole journey. And I do get a lot of people that email me and stuff and say, hey, and that’s the same thing when I was little, I went through this and it’s fascinating, we’re all, we’re all going through this. We all have anxiety. You know, any time I meet someone on the street or in a store and I happen, if we get talking and I mention I wrote a book on anxiety, they’re all like, “oh, I need that.” Like every single person, it’s, and yet everyone feels like they’re alone with it or that they’re the only one, or that theirs is worse than everybody else’s. But it’s, it’s really, it’s just it’s the human condition, I would say. TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. It’s hard, it’s so hard because there’s nothing positive in terms of the stigma. It’s still there. Just people don’t want to expose themselves. They don’t wanna put themselves out in the open. And we’ve been doing that for myself. I’m getting the same thing privately. But it’s interesting. A lot of people are also like, “are you OK? Are you OK?” I’m OK. But, you know, I still struggle. And I actually had you know, I’ve had pretty bad anxiety and I had depression. This past weekend, I had, there was an unknown that could have potentially upended my entire entire world. So without knowing what was going to happen, I had extreme anxiety. Thankfully, things aren’t as bad as I hoped, but that’s the way you are, and I kept going back. It’s like it’s like when you start to rationalize and whatever, but that’s obviously the extreme. And I would say for me, that’s that was my extreme. I think for other people, there’s no reason to to have that level of anxiety, it’s really how you interpret other people’s feelings and thoughts and that’s a very difficult one of the books that I’m a big advocate of besides Eckhart Tolle, which, by the way, I’ve never been able to really kind of focus on my thoughts in the way that he talked about. He’s very, I just can’t do it. I’ve tried. I’ve tried. Or rather, I just don’t have the patience to try. I’m not sure what it is. But one of the other books that I really like and I’m a big, big proponent of it is, is Stephen Covey’s “”The Seven Habits of Essential, Highly Effective People.” He, one of the chapters I really like. It’s one of the things that I stick with, keep with me all the time, it’s that optical illusion or you see the old woman and then you see the young woman. [Jill Whalen: Yeah.] The point is that everybody sees the world differently and it’s how you like it’s ultimately you have to be respec—appreciative of the fact that, the diversity in the world. But I think it’s also it really kind of lends itself to what you’re talking about in the sense that our perceptions are not usually the reality. Everybody has their own lens and they see things differently. Jill Whalen: It’s key. That is so key. I mean, that’s why we all have separate realities. I say it’s people who don’t quite understand what you’re saying, it sounds kind of crazy when we have separate realities, but we literally do because our conditioning, you know, like everything that’s ever happened to us and our genetics to a certain extent as well, everything that anyone’s ever said to us or anything that’s happened to us, it it it just it’s a program in us, you know, and we’re just computers like and or robots and we get programmed by all these things and so that creates our experience, our thoughts, what thoughts come, our triggers, all those things based on all that stuff. And so everybody is different. We have overlaps, of course, but it’s, it’s so often so hard to see from other people’s points of view. Like, like you can kind of think of it like when you like a certain flavor of ice cream you don’t like. I like chocolate and, you know, and I think I used to, and my husband would like like something which I thought was gross, you know, maple walnut. And I’m like, “what? How can that be?” Like in in our minds, it doesn’t even compute that anyone could like maple walnut, right? And we do, and we, but we do that about everything. And, and, but in our minds, we are so right. And but we’re not. It’s just our, that’s just our program. TAMAR: Yeah. So the other, the other book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson, and yet no apologies for the cursing, don’t worry, you can even do it too. But he talks about in his book that you know, five hundred years ago, I guess the research that we knew to date was at that point was like sophisticated research and now we look back at it like “seriously?” Like I was reading another book, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to throw books out here, but Bill Bryson’s body, “Our Body: A Guide for Occupants,” which is a great book. And they were talking about like in the 1700s, this one guy was insistent that we needed to, that doctors needed to wash their hands before any type of medical procedure. And the doctor at the time was was ousted. He was ostracized. They thought he was crazy. And it wasn’t until after he died that he was quote unquote redeemed. But by then he was like nothing. I think his name was like Semmelweis or something Jill Whalen: Yeah, I heard that that even took like two, 200 years to actually become like a actual real human thing that doctors did. I don’t know if that’s true. TAMAR: Crazy. So, like, just everybody, like our reality is insane. And like in five hundred years now from now, we’re going to be looking like I mean, we have a pretty like happy and healthy, sophisticated reality. I mean, ignoring covid and everything. But, you know, like, we we’re very lucky to be the best time to be alive right now. Five years from now, hopefully the world will still be in a good intact and everything will be will be good. But that, that just, it just blows my mind that this is this is the way of life. I don’t really know. Yeah. Jill Whalen: It is it’s it’s fascinating. And the more you can understand that separate reality thing, like it makes relationships just so much better because you can. And first you can really see it in yourself. I think like that how we’re creating our own reality and how it’s our thoughts that are doing it and it’s not other people. And then you can start to see what’s happening in other people and have a little more compassion for them that they’re not purposely, most of the time, not purposely trying to bug the crap out of you or, you know, they’re just living their own reality. And also that their words don’t always mean what you think they mean to, you know, like the whole Mars and Venus book. But it’s, it helps relationships so much. It was, my next book was if I ever get around to it, it’s me being on relationships because it just takes so much out of relationships of all kinds. TAMAR: It’s it’s it definitely fosters this sense of empathy. And it’s really I’m glad I’m having this conversation with you because I’ve been trying for very many months and even years at this point to articulate this this mentality that people they see things in their way and their tone, like, for example, that, OK, you know, you interpreted it one way and it was meant potentially, you know, another way. And we need to get, we need to be at the point where we understand that everybody’s a victim of their own circumstances. The word “victim” doesn’t even sound right, but. Jill Whalen: Of their own thoughts. That’s my book. TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. And then, there’s a, there’s a meme or something out there I’ve seen on LinkedIn or perhaps elsewhere. But like, they show you this big, long line and they say, and then they color out like a color like a little tiny sliver of that line. And they say this is the only stuff you know about this other individual. They’re dealing with other things, have some empathy or whatever it is, and try to understand that you don’t understand what a whole person is dealing with. Yeah, it’s so it’s so important. And I try to do that. I try to kill with kindness now. It’s sometimes really hard, you know, people. [Jill Whalen: It is really hard.] Yeah. And people in general, like they’re out to disagree with you and. Yeah. Like, you know, like I said, no one’s really right. That’s that’s the Mark Manson mentality. Like nobody’s right. Jill Whalen: Yeah, I, I have a million blog posts about all these things. I’m just looking at my site now like some of the topics where why is it so difficult to agree to disagree? You know, like it’s so hard. You don’t want to be the one to, to just because because you know so much, you’re right. TAMAR: It’s you know, it’s really interesting because like, I embrace the diversity in such a way that I appreciate the fact that people will disagree with me. And I’m having respectful conversations, respectful disagreements on Facebook. Not that I can change anybody’s mind, but I definitely have, recently, I had an argument about a political not really so much of a political matter and more of an international affairs matter. And, you know, I had a conversation and was very respectful and I said, here’s here’s what’s actually going on in that area and instead of like having that conversation in a way that was a positive thing, it was like, “let me unfriend her” and she unfriended me. And I was like, “you know what? I would totally have beaten a dead horse with you respectably.” But like, you don’t, you know. It didn’t hurt as much as it would have potentially done, because I recognize that I doubt I would be a victim of my own thoughts, so. Jill Whalen: It’s so yeah, so interesting because very few people I’m like that, too, like you say, I want to hear all sides of the story and I try to keep an open mind. I still have my biases, of course. But I do want to hear if we live in our own little bubble and won’t listen to anybody else’s things or we unfriend everyone who disagrees with us, you’re never going to grow and learn. And so I do, I’m like that. But I think it’s fairly rare, especially in this very, very polarized world we live in now. You know, it’s sadly. TAMAR: Yeah. So I’m going to tell you something about that, you know, this whole growing and whatever. And this is going to this is going to be the weird part of the podcast. So I was interviewed for a different podcast. This woman I met at one of these online digital events, connection digital, connector whatever, online zooms, and she like she she loved the fact that I’m talking about leveraging all five senses and whatever else, and she said, you know what, I, she a very big advocate of Brian Weiss, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him. Jill Whalen: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. TAMAR: So you’re familiar. Jill Whalen: So I like the weird stuff. Don’t worry. I can get really weird if you want. TAMAR: Have you done that? Have you done a past life regressions ever in your life?. Jill Whalen: I did the in-between one, in between lives one that doctor, doctor Newton, doctor something, Robert New, I forgot his name. I forget his name but. TAMAR: Moody? No, I don’t know. Jill Whalen: Go on, though, finish. TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah. So I’ll get a little bit of a background for anybody who’s into this, she’s very into this. And she’s like, I met Brian Weiss and like he changed my life. And she was like, she’s like, she tried to sell the whole concept. I will say I am, and I was and still am, but like maybe less so a skeptic. I had the book. He writes this book, Many Lives, Many Masters so I read that, and I actually tried one. And the hypnosis definitely worked because physically I could feel all that stuff, but I was never able to. And I think that’s because I have lots of lines of defenses. So. Yeah, so, so sorry, Brian Weiss. Let me, backing up, Brian Weiss is this therapist who a traditionally trained Columbia, I think he also Columbia University-trained psychiatrist, and he had a patient who wasn’t getting better after many, many months of therapy so he decided to hypnotize her and he asked her about her early life, early life, and she started talking about some abuse that she endured. And then he asked or anything before that, and she started talking about previous lives like ancient Egypt and like random places that were not in the current twenty first century. And I, and she was like, and he was like, he, he was he was a skeptic also. He was in such disbelief. But he kept doing this and each time he he regressed her, he learned more about her. So she had eighty six lives. And the interesting thing about her is that you can either go into your life or you can go, right, as we’re talking about the in-between. So the in the actual like lives, she learns their lessons that she takes away. But in the in-between it’s like voices that aren’t from her and it’s like the soul is kind of talking. And so they talk about growing, growing, growing, and that’s the whole idea is like the soul comes back again and again and again, it becomes eventually perfect and then quote unquote, immortal again. There’s a lot of skepticism that I have because this is like still outside of my element. So I tried. I did. I did one. And I think there was too many defenses. I think I was making things up as I went along. I didn’t really see anything. Jill Whalen: That’s funny. Yeah, that that was the same for me. And like, I’m skeptical too about it. But I feel like there’s so many people that have these experiences that it seems true. But as you’re doing it yourself, that is very much the same as what you said. Like, I was definitely hypnotized because at the time went by super fast and but I did feel like I was making it up too. I mean, the guy’s like, well, just ignore that fact. TAMAR: Yeah, he told me, “just go along with it.” So this actually happened to me literally a week ago today. [Jill Whalen: Oh cool.] So it’s so new. But at the same time I feel like I still can’t get around the concept that I actually have more than one life. Like, I just, I really, I couldn’t see much. But yeah, in terms of the hypnosis, he did a test. He’s like, put your left arm up, put your right arm up. Let your left arm, feel like it’s being lifted and let your right arm feel like it’s being hit by like, like being like a light like lead, land. And like the way my hands responded. Absolutely, the hypnosis was there, and my Fitbit, sorry, not my Fitbit because I don’t have a Fitbit, my WHOOP. I have a WHOOP, heart tracker and I have a, or I’m a nerd when it comes to this, I have an Oura sleep tracker ring and have a Garmin watch and all three of them thought I was taking a nap because my heart rate was so low so it definitely had that. But like, it was just, I couldn’t I still think there’s just so many defenses that are preventing that access. So it’s really, it’s it’s interesting. Jill Whalen: Yeah, it it is interesting, I mean, I love it. Have you ever read the Seth books by Jane Roberts from the 1970s? She supposedly channeled this entity named Seth and I actually was [TAMAR: I’m scared.] I do, I do a book club, I mean, just we’re she, tomorrow, finishing the last session of it on the book called “The Nature of Personal Reality.” It’s, to me it’s not the best book I’ve ever read, and which is why I wanted to do the book club on it. And anyone who’s interested in this kind of stuff about creating your reality like that, I highly recommend that book. TAMAR: OK, I will check, I don’t know. It’s a little bit scary… Jill Whalen: Well, I know maybe it’s scary. It does take, I find that you have to kind of gradually come to this stuff like, like, and then it becomes more and more what your beliefs are. Because I mean, it’s in the Seth books, she basically says everything is based on beliefs, whatever we see in the world is completely based on our beliefs. TAMAR: That’s so true. I mean, like there are certain things like you and I, all of us have been wrong by people. And like I had to come to terms with some stuff that I’ve dealt with. And I remember my psychiatrist saying, you know, you and I see it as completely illogical. But, you know, this happened and this is this made sense to this person. I still can’t wrap my head around some of those things, but that’s their reality. Jill Whalen: Yeah, well, in a lot of times, if it’s bad things, you know, they were bad, bad things done to them. And so you don’t know what what’s going on to them as well. And then there’s also the fact that if you do believe in the past life things or even that we could if you believe, I believe that this is sort of a dream that we’re in or a virtual reality that that we’re we’re experiencing here and that, you know, well, we’re actually somewhere else with our goggles on and and we’re going to wake up and be like, oh, wow, that was wild, let’s do it again. TAMAR: There’s an episode of I Chicago Med, I think, with that. Keep going. Jill Whalen: Yeah. Yeah, it’s, it’s but the interesting thing with that is you also, because if if it is a dream or game. Right. Then we could choose to come in as some as, as a invalid or something, you know, just to experience that. Like if you were playing an actual game, you might want to try a different character, you know, and and people supposedly make plans together to be, you know, I’ll be the mother, you be the the daughter who has the problem or, you know, and and when you when you hear about some of the people who had near-death experiences, stuff like that, there’s so much of that kind of thing. Another favorite book of mine is Natalie Stedman’s book. She had a near-death experience thing and it helped me see, it changed my perspective, like with my adult daughter that lives with us, still has a lot of issues. And I had the perspective of it seems to me like, why would you just come into this world and kind of waste your life, like just by doing nothing and just have this wasted life? But then after reading that book, I and thinking about what if she chose, it’s actually pretty brave to choose to come in with it with a, you know, a kind of mental condition that nobody would really choose to have in on this level in this world but if, if, at a different level, if you if you know it’s a game, you just want to experience that, you know, and then you have to go through it together too? It like, there’s so much, it changes your perspective on life. And I know some people don’t like that. They don’t, they think, well, no, “well I would never choose to have these bad things happen.” And that’s true at this level. But it’s another level. It’s a different perspective you’re looking at it from. TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. That’s really interesting. You know, another thing, I think it would be interesting for you to know, at least in the context of this, you know, again, being a skeptic, whatever it is, what it is. So Stephan Spencer, I don’t know if he’s into this whole mysticism type of life these days. Oh, I think this just started about five months ago. I, I was sitting there one day and he randomly reached out to me. He’s like I had I had a vision to speak to you. And I’m like, and he told me all about this whole thing. And I’m like. “Holy crap,” like it was just such a random message from him. He’s a mutual friend of ours for everybody who is listening. It’s so, so random to just hear from him, but like he had this, like, vision and he’s basically aligned with this whole thing. And he’s like, “I was told, like, I got this voice” and I’m like, “all right, I don’t know.” But it’s like maybe solidifying this stuff. He’s like, “once you let these voices..” Like he’s very into this angel, like angels communicating, once you let there, let them speak to you like you’re you’re going to feel better. He was living in Israel with his wife and his child, and they were told right before all of the violence in Israel to move to get out. And he made it out just in time. [Jill Whalen: Wow.] So, I mean, he says it’s all about this whole system of belief. So it’s really interesting. Jill Whalen: Mm hmm. And I think it’s good to be skeptical, like you say, I’m skeptical, too, and skeptical. Does it mean that you still have an open mind about it? You know, as long as you leave a little crack open that, well, maybe this is true or what if it is true? Then you can explore it and still, you know, but you don’t have to just go along and drink the Kool-Aid. TAMAR: Yeah, it’s funny. My son, my 12 year old son is just like “I don’t believe it.”” And my nine year old daughter is like, “I think it’s so cool.” [Jill Whalen: Yeah.] I didn’t want them to watch, so the hypnosis session that I had was over Zoom, and I did not want my kids, I said, I couldn’t, I couldn’t possibly go and watch this, have them watch it. I don’t think I could go back to that, I mean, there was nothing exciting there. It was just like really kind of just creepy. Jill Whalen: Did you get away or did you get a recording? TAMAR: Yeah, I did. So I was I started watching and I saw myself laying in bed and I was like, “not going to watch it anymore.” Jill Whalen: You didn’t want it, you didn’t want to hear what you said? Someday, listen to it. TAMAR: I mean, I remember. And he took notes as well. So there’s that. But like I said, I still feel like I just made it up just to go along with the whole idea and feel like I had to do something at that time. And it didn’t go so fast for me. It went actually pretty slowly. It felt like real time. It’s really interesting. Yeah. So OK. Yeah, I guess we’re going to maybe get close to wrapping up, but I wanted to know like, so self self-care, yoga, like, is this your self-care regimen, what, how are you surviving these days, is it different from what was mentioned? Jill Whalen: Yeah, I just yeah, still just kind of, my, my things have changed what I’d like to do, like my, when the coronavirus hit my yoga studio, a place which also did barre classes, went virtual, and so that was good. I just kept doing those classes and then they added some they added this infernal hot pilates class that was awesome that I was doing. So I was actually getting an even more shape during that time. Now we moved out of state, but I could still I was still doing those classes for a while. Now I’m exploring what I might do here in the new area, either sign up for new gym or just keep doing some online stuff. But I just, yeah, I walk and I just try and, I just yeah, I mean, I’m I’m basically retired, so I have the luxury of pretty much just doing what I want. I listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks and just kind of living the good life right now. TAMAR: And I guess you’re still exploring the new hood. Jill Whalen: Yeah, that’s awesome. We’re in old town, Alexandria, Virginia, it’s a great place. TAMAR: Awesome, awesome. Yeah, you have a good view. Jill Whalen: But I also happy to speak to anybody. I don’t really do this for work. I don’t charge people, but if people just want to, if they look at my book and have questions or read my blog, or, and just or just have an issue they want to talk about, I’m happy to do Zooms calls and stuff with people. So. TAMAR: Yes, well, let’s talk about that. The next step is how do people find you? Jill Whalen: They can go to whatdidyoudowithjill.com and or just look me up on Facebook or Twitter. Even now I’m back. I had been off Twitter for years because it was all SEO for me years ago. And I just recently got back on and and there. But yeah. Or just Joe Whalen at Gmail dot com. TAMAR: Yeah. Cool, cool. And I guess I have the final question for you is: if you can give an earlier version of Jill some advice, what would you tell her? Jill Whalen: Oh, wow, huh? TAMAR: The loaded question. Jill Whalen: It’s interesting because I feel like in some ways I had to go through all the things I went through to get where I was, to get where I am. So I’m not sure that I would want to know stuff. I don’t know. I guess I would, I guess I would say: you create your own reality, even though I wouldn’t have gotten it. So but I think that’s like the most important thing for people to know in life. TAMAR: Yeah. Awesome. Cool. Well, thank you. This has been fun. I really, I really enjoyed this. I hope you did as well. Jill Whalen: I did. I did. Thanks. It was nice to catch up again. TAMAR: Yeah, definitely, definitely. Cool. All right. So. Jill Whalen: Thank you.

Stories of the entrepreneurial journey with Brandon Snower

Brandon Snower left a cushy job on Wall Street and decided to reinvent men’s fashion. In this podcast, we discuss his early journey, and watch as Brandon just gets started. TAMAR: Hey, everybody, I am super excited. I have Brandon Snow here. He is a jet setter. Came, flew in just for this podcast. Right? Thanks so much for joining. Brandon Snower: Only for you. Only for you. TAMAR: Yeah. So you’re in New York City, right? Brandon Snower: I am. TAMAR: OK, so we’re we’re local, but we’re not really local. But he did take a red eye to kind of get here on time and was on time in a different time zone. So. Yeah, yeah. So so tell me a little bit; first of all, where in the city are you? Brandon Snower: I live in Chelsea. I have been out here for two years. TAMAR: Nice. Nice. Brandon Snower: What about you? TAMAR: I’m actually in Westchester County. I was in Morningside Heights and the Upper West Side for a while and then I made my way slowly up as I moved. I guess it’s it actually coincides with the different milestones in life, the marriage and then the having kids. And it was Riverdale first and then it was Westchester. So. Brandon Snower: Awesome. TAMAR: Yeah. Cool. So Brandon’s here and he has an entrepreneurial journey that I definitely wanted to share because he did I guess the unlikely and he did something especially like that is extremely gutsy and pretty fab. So I, I don’t even know how to introduce it. I’m going to let you do that all. Go ahead. Tell me a little bit about your story. Brandon Snower: Yeah, well, thanks for having me on. It’s always great to speak with other entrepreneurs and just discuss kind of the facets, the obstacles and kind of the journey, you know, just to help others. And so essentially, starting out, I’m twenty four right now. I graduated from Northwestern University a few years ago in twenty nineteen. And like every person in college, you know, you don’t really know what you want to do. Brandon Snower: You know, very rarely, like people are like set as, like if you’re an engineer, you’re a doctor. You know, you’re those are kind of like set courses that you take, then you know where you want to be. But like most I didn’t know, I studied learning and learning and organizational change, which, you know, it’s very like a broad not very niche kind of path in terms of you can go to X if you study organizational change. Right. It’s like understanding human behavior. And I didn’t want to be a psychologist, but I liked understanding people and leading and seeing what what works and what doesn’t in terms of like the human psyche within organizations and just interactions with people. And but with that I’ve always had this like business mind and kind of business acumen. My dad always had small businesses here and there. He’d start one, quit, and then started back up again and and then just move all over the place. But from there, I, I knew I wanted to either build something at some point or I knew I had a business savviness from just watching him work hard and get up at 5:00 and do all these things that you don’t really get to see growing up that much. And from there that kind of just took me to the spot where, OK, what’s the what is it going to lead me to a path that will give me a lot of opportunity down the road. And I thought, well, you know, finance, banking, they make a lot of money. It is a challenging environment. They’re smart people and they work super hard. But that’s the trajectory I want to go to. So I went for it. And I didn’t have any finance background. I didn’t know what an income statement was. Yeah, I was really underqualified. But that kind of shaped me to, like, really grind and really learn about, OK, I have to learn all of this, all this information in order to get a career that I want. And so ultimately, I ended up with a job. Someone took a shot at shot on me on working on Wall Street, a pretty large bank. And from there, I started working as an investment banking analyst. You know, I was the happiest person in the world. And I had my career that I wanted. But there is a massive learning curve, right, like I started learning organizational change and and everyone else was studying finance, math, accounting, but that just meant that I had to wake up at 5:00 a.m., go to the office, study, you know, learn as much as possible, be a sponge and literally be the last one and turn the lights off. And I did that every single day because I knew I wanted to progress. I wanted to learn and take on this challenge. And so, you know, six months and seven months and I’m still happy. I’m still absorbing and learning. And then it kind of just hits me kind of randomly that I know that this isn’t the path for me. You know, I wanted something that embraced everything about business, not just one aspect of it. You know, I like the creativity. I like the design. I like thinking in different creative ways that might not necessarily be the case and an investment banking or corporate world. So. I left and that was March of 2020, and that’s when covid was creeping up in the US, but it wasn’t as significant around the world. There was Italy and and China and Asia. And obviously it was— TAMAR: You weren’t in Westchester. You had no idea. Brandon Snower: I had no idea. Yeah, no one really did, you know, like we would hear on the news and I’d remember like making reports to our clients, about the impact of covid to the markets. And, you know, like everyone was saying, oh, it’s not going to be that bad. And then this was early, early March, maybe late February. TAMAR: And we just you know, I’m connected to the patient, our index case here. I was part of an outbreak where I started having symptoms the beginning of March also. Wow. Yeah. So we were in the quarantine as of March 3rd. Brandon Snower: Oh, yeah, I mean, my dad had covid, I think, without knowing that he had it, you know, [TAMAR: it’s crazy] in February but yeah and I didn’t really think anything of it. I just knew that I didn’t like where I was. Where I was and what I was doing and what that was going to lead me towards, so I quit, didn’t give two weeks notice, quit that day. People were not happy, but they were supportive. They were very supportive, actually. TAMAR: They should have seen the writing on the wall. It wasn’t even about you. It was just the nature of the the world. And, you know, if that is the biggest disruption they had, if they got lucky, I don’t know. Brandon Snower: Yeah. And I never I’m not the person to show that I don’t like something like I’m going to work as hard as I did the first day to my last day. And people were shocked that I quit. It took me two hours to quit. Yeah, everyone wanted to talk to me. Yeah. Yeah. There was something wrong. TAMAR: You had a plan in place or you just decided you were going to quit and you were going to figure it out later? Brandon Snower: I had a plan, I wanted to move into marketing, and I was interviewing at different places and technically I thought I was going to start at a new marketing agency in April, but it was like more of my optimism that I was going to get it rather than it was going to happen. And and so. You know, when I quit, I was under the assumption I had it and hen everyone was taken back about covid, all the offers were rescinded, everything was going away, and especially digital marketing was severely impacted, and so they took away the potential offer that I had. So I didn’t have a job and I was 23, had a pretty good degree at Northwestern. You know, if you told me I wasn’t going to have a job a year out of college, I would have laughed because that’s just I just never expected it. Brandon Snower: And but at that point, I kind of, I don’t really know what hit me, but I always wanted to start and be an entrepreneur, and at that moment I just felt like it was the best opportunity to do it. Like, I didn’t have a job and I just kind of went for it and I had no idea what to do, like what to build and what to start. And I just kind of thought about it. I’m the type of person I know a ton of people are they just write ideas in their, you know, iPad or your iPhone, like in your notes. And I just had a list. And I just went through the list and then just one day, you know, I saw, like I remembered having this contrives collar shirt from, like high school. It was like a very casual, very elegant, like untopped Oxford buttoned down. And it was blue with a white collar. And I was like, OK, like, I, I lost this shirt. Let me let me try to find it online and it didn’t exist. I spent a week looking for it and. And just genuinely didn’t exist, and this was my favorite shirt, favorite style of all time. And so as I was looking at all these online menswear brands, Instagrams like trying to find a shirt for a week. It was like a light bulb hit me where indirectly I was seeing how all these menswear brands were targeting 40 year olds and up, like they were very traditional, very outdated in their marketing, their branding and as a 23 year old, I looked at every single one. I was like, “they’re not talking to me, you know, like they’re not resonating with me at all.” I’m a 23 year old. I like to, you know, look at things and enjoy and connect with the brand that is more than just selling a product. [TAMAR: right.] And and then I looked at like the competitors and the most popular DTC apparel brands and they were so cool, like they were so fun, they spoke to this millennial, young, fun, creative, personal audience in their own respective niches and I was like, why can’t this happen in classic menswear? Why can’t there be a really young, fun, cool, sophisticated style and brand that connects with all of these guys from 20 to like 35 and not even that, but it will resonate with people that are older than that because they want to be a part of like the young fun hip culture. And so I started. And from there I was kind of just building every single day, let’s make the coolest, most unconventional. Young fun brand possible while still having this high quality elegance and sophistication that all these luxury menswear brands have. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since for about a year. TAMAR: That’s great, that’s so cool, so I guess I’m going to have to ask you that journey, because, I mean, you you found an opportunity, but the next part was the supply chain and the logistics and I mean, growing the team. I’m not even sure if it’s just you still. And assume it’s probably more. So what’s the process to build a company from? Brandon Snower: It’s tough. It was really hard. TAMAR: This is adversity, and we’re going to hear this. Brandon Snower: No, this is adversity. It’s resilience, and it’s failing a million times. And you don’t understand, like, you know, people like aspiring entrepreneurs, like I was an aspiring entrepreneur and I would always see these articles and and read these I read these articles and hear these stories of, you know, these entrepreneurs just failing and failing and going through so much adversity. I was like, oh, yeah, it’s not going to be that hard. It is. It’s very difficult. But you have to have a certain mindset and it builds your character every single day and you just have to push through it. So to answer your question, I mean, it is still just me, but to start, the first thing I did was Google like, how do you start a clothing brand like Google? What’s what’s that like? TAMAR: That’s very millennial. I’m not even sure the reaction is for that one. It’s awesome. Brandon Snower: Yeah, yeah. No, but it was I was so unprepared and had a lack of knowledge for anything in the space. I liked fashion in terms of I’m conscious of what I wear, I see what other people wear and I have a good eye. I think, you know, that was it. I never read magazines. I never kept up with the trends. I didn’t know what was popular. Like, I didn’t know really any of these menswear brands, except except for like the basic big ones, like Ralph Lauren and Brooks Brothers or Tommy Hilfiger And it started out with, yeah, what how do you start a clothing company or what is a supplier? What’s a manufacturer? I had no clue. Wow. Absolutely no. And then it just built on OK, what a supplier actually does, who are the people involved and supplier. And then it just builds from that. Right. Like you learn more and then you read, you read and research, you learn a bit more about a different aspect of starting a company. Right. Like incorporate, like it got to like so many things where it was just going all over the place because I wanted to learn everything right. And a lot was most of it was common sense in terms of like what to research. Right. Like, I know I want to be selling online. So like, how do I build a website? What platform do I use? What’s like this sales funnel from like like the customer seeing my content for like keeping them engaged and having them through this funnel of like email marketing and social media presence. Like all of this was just things that I kind of knew had to happen in a company just based off of just my common sense. But I had to actually know how to do it. And research. And there are obviously things I had no clue. Right. Like I had no idea that, like what Klayvio is. I had no idea what, you know, like a 3PL was . TAMAR: You need to explain it to the people who are listening. Brandon Snower: Yeah exactly. So like a 3PL, like third party logistics, was basically, the transportation from you know like where your manufacturer is to a warehouse that distributes your shipping when a customer buys it, or Klayvio is an online software service that makes you build your email templates and creates a sales funnel for your email marketing campaigns. So like when you purchase a product or when you get an email, like we build it in Klayvio and send it to you, there’s so many things. There’s millions of things that you have to think about and research and learn. And luckily this was my full time job, but I, I needed income. So I was doing, you know, things here and there, you know, selling, flipping TVs, flipping furniture, trying to keep you know, I also I had a lot saved up just through banking because, you know, a benefit about working in finance is you don’t spend the money because you’re just too busy working. [TAMAR: Right.] So I had some saved up, but it wasn’t much. I only had a year of experience of work. [TAMAR: Right.] But yeah, I mean, it just progressed and progressed, but in terms of the failures and adversity, right. Like finding that manufacturer, there were so many times where I had no clue what I like, how to build the shirt. Like, how do you make this idea that you have in your head a physical product without any experience? TAMAR: That’s a lot. Brandon Snower: Yeah. And it’s and I’m not saying that’s not I mean, it’s very much possible. I think every person or most people who start a product or, you know, a brand, like they don’t have experience in it. Like much like yourself. Right. With like your perfume. You went from idea to concept and had the vision of I’m going to build this and I need X steps to get there. TAMAR: Right. Yeah. I knew I wanted to do it. I spoke to a guy who created it for me because I wasn’t going to sit down in a lab and lose ten years of my life to just figuring out if. You know, this peppermint goes with like vanilla like that was in I think. I did outsource that, just like you have to kind of get at the supplier and to to to focus on the creation of the product and then from then, I mean, the hardest part right now, and I’m still trying to figure it out, is to make this more global because at least you get shipped your stuff. I can’t because flammable. Flammable. I can’t speak. Flammable fluids is dangerous goods. And that challenge is everything. It really does. Brandon Snower: No, I’m sure I haven’t even thought about going international yet. I want to just one step at a time. TAMAR: Yeah, well, I mean, it’s not even that. It’s like I had a crowdfunding campaign for that part and I have a personal buyer in Ireland and I keep trying to do it. It’s been returned to sender a few times and. Yeah, Canada was hard enough, it was an argument is, in fact, I lost a couple couple of bucks a couple of times, in fact, shipping it out, even though they promised me that they weren’t going to incur any charges if it doesn’t lead to state but they reneged because it’s covid and you can. Brandon Snower: Right now, right now, it’s things that you just have to have to fail to actually learn. Yeah, that’s a lot of that’s how I learn and that’s honestly how I built my company is I’ve failed. Over one hundred times and I learned from it, and that’s the thing is you can’t make the same mistake twice or else you’re not going to progress. Yeah. Like, if you keep making, you know, like, for example, like one of I spent, you know, maybe I lost like a few thousand dollars because I jumped the gun on what I needed. Right. Like, I thought I was going to have this manufacturer forever. And it turns out that the communication and just the partnership wasn’t there in terms of scaling this business. So I bought thousands of boxes from him. I bought rolls of fabric that I’m not using today like it’s and those are thousands of dollars of just me making mistakes and and looking back and saying, OK, let me slow down, actually assess what I need. I know how to speak to manufacturers. This is how I mess up. And how do I change what I did in order to, you know, like progress and actually execute and a better and more effective way. TAMAR: It’s iterative. Now, I remember like having my first conversations with people who are going to supply the bottles. And I mean, it was very embarrassing. I think I know how to have that conversation, but I’m not doing it on an ongoing basis like you really are now. Right. TAMAR: Talk about your SKUs. How many how many items do you have right now? What is what is what is the inventory look like? Brandon Snower: Yeah. So I had 6 SKUs when I launched and then it turns out two of them didn’t sell well. So now I have four. But like so they’re their contract colors. They’re, you know, the best Portuguese Oxford fabric that you can find. And they’re in four styles, all with a white collar, like very casual, very sophisticated. And, you know, I learned right. Like in the beginning, I wanted 12 SKUs. I had, like, this vision on so many shirts and everyone’s going to love every shirt and then, after talking with people, they’re like, no, 12 is way too much. And I’m like, oh yeah, small, medium, large. XL, XXL times twelve is crazy. I don’t have enough money for that. So I mean the less SKUs you have, the more you know, the better chance that you can have limited inventory and really you sell more units because there’s less options. TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. That is complicated. And I hear that, you know that I am also one of those people who prefers a lot of options. But you hear that when you watch a Shark Tank and you also don’t believe it. But it’s true. Brandon Snower: It’s true. It’s true. And I watch Shark Tank every day, almost every day. I’m going to be on that one. TAMAR: But you should. You should. I have like twenty five still on my TiVO that I have to get through. Brandon Snower: Yeah. No I applied. TAMAR: Oh really? Brandon Snower: But I’m still waiting. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It’s, I told a funny story when I one of the last weeks I was working in banking, they was Shark Tank on the desk floor and I was just telling all my associates and I was like, I’m going to be on Shark Tank one day and I just was like motivating know, yeah. TAMAR: People have told me that I should be on Shark Tank. They say my story is very apropos for Shark Tank, but I don’t know if I can subject myself to that. And I’ve I’ve heard, you know, that My First Million podcast, they did Everywell, they did an interview with the from the girl from the chick who was the CEO of that founder and CEO of that. And I think she was talking about how she was on Shark Tank. And like you said, she got out or she didn’t. But the prep is crazy. It’s not just like, you know, you show up. You’re obviously besides the presentation, the their team psych’s you up for, like, four months to prepare you. It’s like it’s a very rigorous program. [Brandon Snower: Oh, sure.] Yeah, it’s just I just mentally cannot I don’t think I could put myself under the microscope in that way, although it’s such great PR and right for me, I might actually sell out and that’s hard. TAMAR: We were talking before we started and you were saying that sometimes you do feel the struggle of like motivation. I want to talk about that also because I think you and I as entrepreneurs and first time entrepreneurs and we basically you launched this last year, I also pretty much launched last year, made the official announcement last year that my product was finally available. So, you know, I was like pretty much in the same boat. And, you know, it’s it’s very, very difficult. You found a need. I found the product that I think has this need, but it’s not quite… People understand it once they get there, but they don’t like they don’t realize it. And I think it’s partially my challenge, is partially because there’s no real science validation and there’s a lot of education specific to this particular type of product, like people do not see perfume, cologne, this is unisex for mental health. And everyone’s like, oh, yeah, “the perfume audience is very cutthroat and it’s very competitive.” But I don’t see myself as a perfume product. And it’s so hard because right now I’m still like I go it’s like going back to the same conversation that I have earlier. Who’s my target audience? Is it right, mindfulness people or people who like I need to bring into this mental health fray of like who burn candles and incense and sniff essential oils all day. Or is the people who like perfume and would buy it anyway? And I honestly, I’m going at the former audience, and that requires a lot more a lot more effort, a lot more education. So I struggle a lot with that. Like you saw something and you saw that people already are buying. So I want to hear from you, first of all, you talked about like building out your supply chain and building out the 3PL doing all of that, but, what for you, your next step was obviously making people, making your audience aware of who you are and that you exist. So a little bit about like how you educated the world that you are around. Brandon Snower: Word of mouth, me going out with my sandwich board on the weekends when people are drinking at bars and having fun and have a sandwich board with a funny quote or a funny sign that they can follow me on Instagram and I’m launching on. But going to these bars with this sign and and showing them the shirt, showing them the product, telling them a story of, hey, I’m just a regular guy like you. I worked in banking, I worked in the corporate world, you know, like, let’s do something amazing. Let’s do something in fashion for us. And I still do it. I have pictures. I’m still just starting. Right. It’s not like everyone knows about me and it’s still like the hustle of, you know, me getting my name out there beyond my friends and family. But, you know, in that regard, like, I am not embarrassed at all to text as many people as possible, people that I haven’t spoke to in 15 years or ten years since grade school or high school, just showing my vulnerability on LinkedIn, showing my vulnerability on Instagram of, hey, I can’t go out, I’m working and I’m doing all these things, I think. A lot of people would just feel uncomfortable doing just exposing yourself or just feeling judged that you’re doing things that are a little out there. TAMAR: Yeah. You’re doing something that’s one hundred percent outside your comfort zone; really, really it comes down to that. And going back to this whole thing about like that, I don’t know if the word is negative self talk, but for me, it is it’s something that I struggle with on my with the perfume still kind of figuring out the right audience. And I always go back to reading the books by Robin Sharma. He is a fantastic author. He wrote a book about the Monk who sold his Ferrari. It was basically like a guy giving up fame and fortune and the prestige of his working at a really prestigious company. I don’t even remember, maybe a lawyer or whatever it was. And then I’m reading the leader who has no title of The Leader Without a Title right now or a variation of that title. TAMAR: But it’s all about like even even though it’s about like how you can work as a housekeeper at a hotel and still be the best, best in your own class, like every single person and every organization can be the best at what they do, but like they reinforce things. And he says so many good quotes that I dropped them down as I’m reading them in Google Keep. And then I tend to like like to to either write a social media post because I wrote my my whole philosophy of the brand is like that. You can overcome all odds and you can be positive and embrace your who you are kind of thing. So it really aligns with my mission and the values. But truthfully, it’s not just about the mission, it is about me as the entrepreneur in my personal life. So like for that purpose, I would say you should follow my brand. But that’s not what I’m trying to do here. I’m trying to say for you personally, like, you know, that is it’s about it’s about the hustle. It’s about really pushing yourself and getting yourself, making yourself aware that you can just be awesome and just chugging, chugging along. I’m not really sure, spinning the wheels, moving forward, I’m not really sure where I’m going with that, but. Brandon Snower: Yeah, I mean, you’re right there. I mean, there are so many times you’re going to self doubt yourself like every day. I mean, especially. Especially when things don’t go right, right, there’s, that’s obviously, you know, maybe common sense, but when when you’re actually going through it, you realize how impactful that self-doubt is to your competence, your decision making. And just the quality of the work that you put out there, right there. There are times when like I just you know, I posted something that I think so many people are going to resonate with and so many people are going to like and it gets like three or four likes. Right? And then I’m like, what did I just do? I thought I spent an hour, two hours maybe on this email or on this, like designing this poster, drawing this shirt from scratch. And, you know, people see it for a second and they don’t care about it. TAMAR: No one wants to know the detail that you put like four hours into it. Brandon Snower: They don’t, they don’t. They have no clue. But like they shouldn’t. Right. Like I, I learned that it’s not expected of them. Right. Like, they’re just we’re just another brand that’s trying to make an impact. And if we can get through you, that’s great. And that’s what we want. But there’s thousands of other things that people are scrolling through every second, like, we can’t really blame them for scrolling, right, but it’s tough, it’s mentally exhausting to just see how maybe insignificant, your work may be to some people, and that’s really hard because you’re dedicating your life, your time, you’re literal blood, sweat, and tears to this and you see this vision and then someone just shrug it off is like, you know, it hurts a lot. TAMAR: Yeah. So last Friday, my social post was that you don’t have to necessarily vote with your wallet. You should support your fellow entrepreneurs with a like or with some sort of sharing it or telling your friends like it’s so minimally friction. That’s minimally frictionable, for the friction there in terms of that kind of engagement versus, you know, you can’t afford the product, you don’t want to buy the products, at least do that. And, you know, I might have gotten one like and I went out of my way to, like, thank her for doing that. TAMAR: I mean, she knows the struggle because she’s also an entrepreneur. And I think entrepreneurs identify with the entrepreneurial journey, but others do not. And unfortunately, we’re the minority here now. Brandon Snower: And that’s true. And like you learn that very quickly, that people who aren’t entrepreneurs don’t or maybe haven’t seen or been a part of a startup like a very early stage startup. They don’t know the work, the effort, the things like the straps that goes into it. And it’s it’s every day, it’s not it’s not just like, oh, it’s three times a week. It’s I’m working Saturdays, Sundays, I can’t see my friends like it’s something they exhumed it. Brandon Snower: So that’s the right word. But it consumes, consumes your life. TAMAR: It could it probably would exhume if you do it, yeah, it’s not healthy, but yeah, you know what I think the struggle is, is just trying to get that massive break where everything is just a snowball effect from there, because right now you and I are climbing a mountain. And I it’s this is something that was I drafted a social post on this last night, and it’s like climbing that mountain and you’ll hit sometimes you’ll hit like a slippery part of the side of the mountain and sometimes a little bit of the rock under your foot will fall off and you’re going to be stumbling and you’re going to be falling and then you’re going to fall back on and really tired. TAMAR: And you’re not going to want to you’re going to want to sit on the other side of that mountain for a little while. And people don’t realize that because they get a job, they get stability, they deal with the toxic workforce, and then they deal with their colleagues that throw them off the bus and, you know, steal promotions instead of them. And they’re not realizing that, you know, that company that they’re working on, maybe 15, 10, 15 years ago, 30 years ago, there was somebody on the other end like you and I who are really trying to push this and to make that company big and some of them do. But other ones, you know, and you just don’t want to be is really what it comes down to. And for me, like, I was just I had just stumbled a little bit and for a while I kind of had to take a breather. And that’s that’s negative self talk, like, you know, saying it’s very identifiable because it’s like I still like I just I’m like paralyzed by what fork in the road do I traverse? TAMAR: Do I traverse this mindfulness perfume thing where people will find my perfume and think about mental health? Or do I just want to be another perfume bottle on the on the wall where I know that you all get buyers, but it’s just a lot more competition? And every single day I wake up with this and now I it’s like it’s now I’m at the point where, like, I have to set a daily goal that I actually work on the brands and try to tackle this problem. TAMAR: But it’s literally like this has been like maybe nine months of no sleep kind of things where I’m still still in the same position. Everyone’s like I took a class on defining my target audience probably about a year ago during a time really covid times. And I’m no further today than I was like a year ago because everyone’s like it’s so competitive, but it’s not because of the way I want it, but nobody wants to buy it. The hell do you do, you know? TAMAR: Yeah. These are the struggles that we all have. Just visibility is the biggest thing. And the best way to do that is, is honestly you got to get an infusion of some sort of venture capital and put like all that money in marketing. That’s why Shark Tank is very appealing for me, because I could potentially sell that story right then and there. But I don’t know if I want to do that. And I think I think for you to be perfect still for you, but like, everybody wants to take a different path and that journey has to be very different and very personal. Brandon Snower: So now, yeah, I yeah, that’s one hundred percent. And like I had a conversation with someone that I was networking on LinkedIn and he’s like a brand strategist. And I started his own beauty brands and he said, your target audience is different than the people who are going to who might buy your product. And with that being said, like in terms of your your perfume, maybe it’s the people that care about mental health that want to support that, buy it, rather than the people who actually are going through it. Brandon Snower: Right. Or they’re buying it for the people, a loved one or someone that they know that has gone through something. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the most extreme case. But maybe something has happened in their life, like a death or or something that is uncomfortable. [TAMAR: Right.] And maybe they give that to them. Right. And there’s so many ways to think about it, but like who you’re trying to sell to might not actually be the people that buy it, right? TAMAR: Yeah, but I’m in the same boat with you as like friends and family. It’s like, you know, so yesterday, like I said, I had been really kind of facing that self-doubt really head on. And I had this todo item to post about my launch on Reddit. There’s an indie group, but not for not for this. I would say that I wonder if you can post on the entrepreneurs subreddit, but I announced that I’m an indie brand in the indie perfume makeup IMAM r/indiemakeupandandmore yesterday. And I pushed myself to do it like it was something that was on my to do list for literally like eight months. I kept pushing, postponing it, postponing it because I was terrified, because I don’t know, like I want to be more mainstream. I don’t want to be an indies and still figuring that part of that audience that was like a struggle. And then literally like maybe like three minutes after I hit the post button, I get this email from somebody who said, I wanted to let you know I bought your perfume back in the day. TAMAR: I hope you remember me. Well, she even said, I hope you remember me. She didn’t think I remember her. And she said I put it on and I put on right before I take a shower and I love it. And I was like, wow. Like, this is like it’s sort of like meant to happen. But like, I honestly, I’ve had like weeks of, like, dry spells where, like, things aren’t like moving because of the struggle of these target audience challenge and getting beyond that. TAMAR: But that was like that was to me, it was like a little bit of a cue to like keep going and keep pushing this because it’s still about figuring that out. But the perseverance is what happens. And now to push away. And I’m going with I’m going to put the microphone back in front of your face in a second. But one of the struggles just in figuring that out, I, I, I just bought a haven’t gotten yet. It’s being prepared, but I bought a wall decal for my office that now is going to like remind me again, like I had a story and I was really kind of reeling through, like the trauma of like losing something and it was really precipitated the launch of this brand. But like this is that’s sort of becoming more numb and it’s obviously more pronounced. And like you lose sight of like where it’s coming from, or at least I was for a while, so I had to remember where I was going. TAMAR: And so I bought this decal that says “how badly do you want it?” And I’m going to put it on my wall and hopefully it will remind me [Brandon Snower: that’s awesome.] TAMAR: So, like, when you have negative self talk you gotta figure out how to negate that. And there we go. Brandon Snower: A hundred percent, I have the exact same kind of thing that I do. I always have like inspirational either image or quote that I make on my phone and I wake up every day or even like reading it, if I’m on my phone right now and I try to open my phone or unlock it like I read this quote or it’s there, right? Like I know it’s there. Maybe I don’t read it, but it says, make a million. Brandon Snower: Am I allowed to curse? TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah. Go for it, it’s funny, like everybody apologizes. It’s like I don’t care anymore. Brandon Snower: I mean, I’ll curse all day. I don’t know if it was – it says “make a million fucking mistakes, but don’t waste your time making the same mistake twice. Successful people know how to get back up after shit happens. How are you going to respond? Move forward. It’s done.” [TAMAR: Yeah.] And like I have this with, like my logo underneath and like my colors and everything. But like I’ve made this quote because, like, I started from nothing in terms of like knowing anything about what I was doing and I made so many mistakes and mistake after mistake after mistake, it literally was just deterring me from continuing. TAMAR: That’s right. It’s really, really, really hard to pull that out. I love how you tackle, like, so many different things of that in that quote, you’re just like, you know, like make mistakes, not don’t look back. Just look to the future. Brandon Snower: Yeah, it’s done. Like who gives a shit? You made a mistake. Like, move forward. Like it already happened. You can’t do anything about it. TAMAR: Yeah. And I think I think most of us spend our lives looking back at our behind our shoulders versus moving to the present and everything. I find that suggestive quotes are really, really helpful. And they say, like, I used to think that was cheesy stuff, like I would read Noah St. John or Napoléon Hill, not so much Napoleon Hill, but Rhonda Byrne of The Secret. Napoleon Hill, I mean, he’s the guy kind of like pioneered this movement of like mindset is everything. [Brandon Snower: It is.] It one hundred percent is, but they also like this whole Noah St. John thing is all about like writing affirmations. And I always I always was reading I had read his books in the past in this moment where I I wasn’t believing myself. So I wasn’t going to believe in the affirmations. And nowadays I just have like up in my bathroom, I have another one that says “be awesome today.” And even if I if I walk in my bathroom, I don’t even pay attention to it. It doesn’t make the impact. But I do believe that if I actually just take a quick glance and recognize that it’s there, it really does have that suggestive nature and it turns things on for me. So I thought [Brandon Snower: a hundred percent.] I think that I think that these things are so important. And you just it’s not even about, the Noah St. John thing, I guess that’s why no one knows who the heck he is. He’s just one of those other guys who just like in that book and that’s in that space. TAMAR: But it really is about not necessarily like, just just having it there to suggest without doing anything else, and, yeah, it pushes it pushes its way into your psyche and you figure it out and you make yourself look, as most of these guys say, you make yourself get to that point because your mind wants to convince yourself that you should. Brandon Snower: Right, people, I believe that everyone’s smart enough to do something to to start a company, to do like to build what they want to create. Obviously, you have to do the research, you have to work super hard, you got to, like, learn everything, but if you don’t have the mental toughness to do it, then you’re not like that’s what differentiates like a successful entrepreneur to from a non successful entrepreneur, like in hindsight and like in the natural, like if you have the same idea. Brandon Snower: Yeah. Because it is all mental when it comes down to like after the fact of like actually executing it. And like that’s also another thing that I mean, it’s also lonely. It’s super lonely. Right. Like I’ve done this all on my own and you know, I’m sure I had I’m sure you’ve done a lot on your own. If not, you’re still doing it. You know, it’s. There’s a lot of, like, self doubt and it’s hard to, like, lean on people that aren’t necessarily like trying to do this with you. TAMAR: Yeah, I mean, there’s so many quotes that I can read out loud to you that I’m just saying you should read Robin Sharma’s books. I think you would relate so much to this stuff. And they’re easy reads. They really are. Brandon Snower: Yeah, no, well, I mean, I’m also the type of person that, like these mental things, like, yes, it’s embarrassing maybe, but like who gives a shit because it’s like helping you, right? Like, I had it was I was at a point I was it this was at a point in investment banking, like I had a really tough time in investment banking because I had to learn everything the same way. I had to learn fashion and supply chain and building a website and all this stuff, like I had a ringtone or like a alarm that was like an inspirational quote from just like a random YouTube link. Brandon Snower: But like, I had it for like a moment because, like, I needed it. To get me through, I’m just like, wait to back up, you know, like I can do this, but like, it doesn’t like, you know, it doesn’t matter if you have these things right. Like, if it helps you, if it benefits you, do it. Like people are scared or embarrassed or had this thought in their head, like, oh, this is super cheesy like who gives a shit? TAMAR: Yeah. So I’m going I’m going to actually read to two quotes from him. So I have: “no one’s unimportant. There are no extra people alive today. Every person and every job matters.”” So that kind of like talks to just the roles that we have. But some people make our roles, gets better, but everybody needs to feel that they’re significant. And the other thing tied to the excellence of leadership is: “no excellent leader ever got to the lofty platform they reached by feebly clinging to a fear filled excuses.” So that to me is like a way of making sure we just have to persevere and carry on. Brandon Snower: Right, that’s true, and and so to the first quote, you know, I’m maybe not like thinking I’ve never heard of that quote, but like, you know, it’s a great quote. And I think of it in terms of I’m not trying to hire, you know, people right now and like, I’m just envisioning and want to create an environment that is worthwhile for everyone who’s who’s in it, right? Like, yes, I’m the founder, but it doesn’t matter if you’re the founder or you’re not the founder. Brandon Snower: You’re part of the team. You have just as much creativity, say. You know, autonomy as me, in a sense, right, because like I want you to perform and be so comfortable and have the greatest time while obviously executing and progressing, but like there are so many times where people and they’re all over the world are just felt like they’re insignificant or their opinions or thoughts don’t matter because they’re an analyst or an associate or a lower level than someone else. Brandon Snower: And I’m constantly thinking, OK, I want to create an environment because I understand that people want a voice. People should have a voice. And people don’t realize that when they’re starting companies because there’s so many things to do. And you have all this experience as a founder, but you’re like the person below you doesn’t. But your job is to have them up to speed and contribute as much as they can. And that’s not going to happen unless you commit your time and create this working environment that builds this community. TAMAR: Yeah. So another book and it’s early for you to read, but at the same time, it’s interesting, I connect, I sync up every Thursday morning with a group of entrepreneurs that we met in the same group. By the way, we kind of forge this group back in the day and we and one of them really kind of, he mentioned that he tries to dictate his organization based on this EOS, which stands for the Entrepreneurs Operating System. And it comes from a book called Traction written by Gino Wickman. Now, I’ve heard about Wickman’s book because I’ve read the other Traction first by what’s his name, Gabriel Weinberg, the DuckDuckGo guy. And I was like, oh, yeah. well, that sounds like the more corporatized version because Gabriel is a startup guy as far as I’m concerned. And I read it and I will say that it’s really a really a fantastic read about, like setting aside really having like this like cheat sheet for, like, everything about your organization. TAMAR: Now, you and I like I said, it’s kind of early for us to kind of think about. But at the same time, it’s sort of it’s really relevant because it talks about how when your company has enough people, you’re going to want to have people who align with your specific company values but also are in the right seat, so like, for example, some people might align with your company values, but like there aren’t in the right so like maybe you have somebody who’s like an operations person and the CFO role or you have somebody who doesn’t align with your company values but who is great at the CFO role that they’re sitting in, but they don’t really care about the company. So you really want to find someone who really kind of checks out both of those boxes and you might have to shift your company. So the idea is like, you know, you have like 17 people at your company already. Are they all in the right place, are the perfect for your company? And if you have this alignment of of all these goals, all of a sudden, you know, the people have seen year over year growth in the percentages like massive, massive growth. TAMAR: And it’s pretty, pretty cool the way the way you do it, especially if you’re in the moment of growth and you’re looking to bring on people. You want to kind of think about this philosophy and embody that right then and there. I think it might simplify things later. You know, he talks about how he’s hit the clients that he’s had. It’s like companies the size of like three all the way to like seventeen hundred. And I’m like, I’m I still consider myself a company of one, even though I have like a couple people helping me here and there, but yet it’s given me a foundation upon which I could potentially build this thing and especially think that at least you don’t necessarily need to implement it today, but you can especially understand it and get to that point. So my thought was that for you is just to say, go ahead, take a read. I know I’m not I never used to be much of a reader until this entrepreneur thing bug hit me. Yeah, there there’s so much value that comes from these these pieces of paper. Brandon Snower: No I will, no thank you. No, I think building the right team is one of the most important things. It’s not the most important factor like actually conveying your brand and making that good product, because that’s what’s going to get you from where you are now to where you want to go. You can’t do it on your own, right. It’s impossible. And you need to surround yourself with people that are better than you. TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. You don’t want to be the smartest person in the room. Brandon Snower: No. And I don’t I don’t. I want to be the dumbest person at my company. Right. That’s my goal. Because there are so many people that know marketing and supply chain and like design, product development that like, yes, I, I started this, I have the vision, but if I can facilitate and be the conductor which I think that’s one of my greatest abilities to actually understand and create this environment team and people around this like an idea but that’s like my goal, right? And that’s how I’m going to get from now, like a one person selling out and 50 units to like thousands of units down the road. TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. So I’m still figuring that out, too, because I’ve had people come and go and kind of get there, don’t completely align with the values and the hustle culture, because especially now you think about that. It’s it’s also the millennials versus the older, if you will. Brandon Snower: Yeah, I know it’s hard too because what I’m seeing and it’s very apparent, I think just above the broader audience by. I mean, it’s hard to find people that are going to work like no one’s going to work harder than you, right? You’re the founder, but you can’t expect them to do that. Right? Right. Like, you have to, like, take a back, put your feet in their shoes. And say, OK, I’m like, imagine me expecting to work all these hours have like all these commitments and I’m not like really starting this company. Brandon Snower: Yeah, right. Like I mean, that’s one reason why I couldn’t do investment banking or frankly, I can’t really, it’s hard to do another job because I don’t know if I can. You know, like work for someone or do something that wasn’t mine. And it’s difficult and it’s a hard challenge to face. TAMAR: And the passion isn’t there for a lot of people like you hope that they align with the values. That’s why it’s like I try to really the first thing I do when I talk to people is get in touch with my values like, you know, but not everybody likes that. I’ve had people who really like buy it, but then they don’t work for like three weeks because I don’t necessarily need them. And all of a sudden, the night before this project is due I have outstanding questions about something that, you know, they had worked on and all of a sudden they freak out. That’s not a lot of cultural alignment. But then again, I have to respect the people who do have like have to go out in due time. But like when you have nothing to do for a while, you know, like there’s a question because that’s the thing that’s that’s their culture, their culture. You really have to understand, as someone who works for a startup, that not everything is your standard nine to five. Brandon Snower: Oh, it’s not. TAMAR: And I think that especially the elders, if you will, don’t really get that. They don’t really embrace that. And they don’t understand, you know, the things that they’re going to be ebbs and flows based on what’s required at certain times. So they’re very they prefer that they want stability of those normal times, but yet they want to live in the startup culture and that they’re not ready to mentally. I guess conceptualize what that really looks like. Brandon Snower: No, no, not at all. I mean, I worked for a startup just as I need money, and I thought it was a great opportunity to show I worked at a startup from January to and then I quit about a month ago and it was like an Amazon ecommerce FBA the start up. And like, I knew I should be working a lot, you know, and there were people at the company that thought it was going to be a nine to five. Brandon Snower: And it’s it’s not the case at all, it’s it could be eight to nine, it could be eight to eight, it could be nine seven, but it’s definitely not nine to five. It could be nine sometimes work until midnight. TAMAR: Yeah, it’s hard, you know. Brandon Snower: And you’re not getting paid that much either. TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. It’s the nature of the beast. And hopefully people understand that’s what that’s required to get the company off the ground. You know, you’ve got to do things in a very, very different systematic way. And that’s a systematic way, if you will. But it makes it makes everything it makes everything better, I guess. Yeah. So I realized we were over an hour now, I think. And I want to kind of I would have asked you other questions, but I guess really the big question is at this point, you know, I want to make sure people support you and you get that visibility. TAMAR: So first, before I do that, or I’m going to ask you one question. And especially now, because I think you have the experience, but if you can ask an earlier version, if you can tell, give advice to an earlier version of Brandon, what would you tell him? Brandon Snower: I would say start start something and actually do it. Like find something in your life and it doesn’t matter if it’s it’s not making money. Right. Like start a hobby if you like. Watching sports then start a blog, right, or like start making like a funny, cool Twitter account and just like tweet what you like doing because so many people are just in this position of: I don’t like my job or like I don’t like what I’m doing and they’re trying to find things that they like and building off of that, but like start a side hustle or like start something that you genuinely enjoy that takes your mind off of it. Brandon Snower: And it will build. It will grow like people will start saying. And don’t be afraid to tell people about it. Like that’s a thing people are so scared of telling someone that they’re starting something because they don’t want to be judged that, you know, if they won’t like it or it’s cheesy or dumb or stupid, like, who cares, right? It’s like your life. You’re going to regret it if you don’t do it right. Why are you going to let other people dictate that like it’s your life? Brandon Snower: And I am like, very passionate about this. Yeah. Because I see so many people like this. TAMAR: Yeah, there’s the there’s another quote about how people who mind don’t matter and people who matter don’t mind. I don’t know who actually said that, but it’s not Dr. Seuss, that’s what I know. Yeah, so that’s that’s really important. And it’s funny because right now I’m in this moment of like this perfume thing. I really want to make big, but I have all these little, like, ideas that I think will eventually come back to the perfume and support the perfume. TAMAR: And I feel like very serial entrepreneurial right now. Serially. I don’t have to say it, but I’ll try to use it as a descriptor here where, like, I feel like I could do this. And like I’ve been talking to people with advice I like for advice and they keep going back to me. What about the perfume? I’m like, well, honestly, this would supplement the perfume. This is an aggressive, this will promote the perfume but like because the perfume is like I’m going to say, it’s like there’s so much more I can put life into but all of this together. I don’t think there’s anything like deviating from it. I think it’s just pushing propelling things in a different direction. So who knows? But yeah, don’t hesitate and don’t worry about how people judge you, because if the only person who matters is basically yourself. Brandon Snower: So, yeah, and it extends beyond like what you’re doing. Right. It’s like what you wear, what you say, you know, obviously be conscious of what you say saying like your situations. But, you know, just people are so conscious of what other people think about them. TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, cool, so how do people find you? Brandon Snower: Yeah, so my company is LeCollier, it’s French for the collar, hence all the shirts are contrast collar. And so I have a website lecollierclothing.com, and then Instagram, the same @lecollierclothing. I’m working on building a TikTok. I’m not TikTok savvy, so that’s what I’m looking for, someone for it. But but yeah. I mean those are really it. And then I’m on LinkedIn if you want to follow the journey I guess and just understand like what it’s like to be an entrepreneur, I’m starting to post some some things that I’ve been through just on my personal LinkedIn. Yeah. That’s that’s really it, keep it simple. TAMAR: Yeah. I love it. I love it. I’m looking at your socials right now. I like I like your little fancy you really. You make it like very, very sophisticated looking into the backgrounds. Brandon Snower: Yeah. TAMAR: I don’t know, I don’t know the descriptor if they are looking for but uh traditional, contemporary, whatever. Brandon Snower: It’s not, it’s not a traditional brand. I said it’s like a very cool version of a menswear brand that you’ve never really seen before. And that’s how we like to do things like because I’m a banker. Right. I’m not a fashion guy. But like we’re creating a really sophisticated fashion brand in New York. So, you know, we want to play to our strengths. TAMAR: Yeah, yeah, and you will, and you will, and you’ll get there and I have faith in you and I know I mean, listen, as entrepreneurs and a similar journey, we should definitely keep in touch and keep each other apprised and support each other in whatever way we can, because I think that’s that’s the most important thing for this journey that everybody like we build upon each other. TAMAR: So, oh, I’m here for you. Whenever. Brandon Snower: As well as me. TAMAR: Yeah, thank you so much. Awesome. Cool. Brandon Snower: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me. It was great speaking with you and always happy to chat and get back on your way when we’re both successful. TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll get there. We’ll get there. We got slow and steady wins the race. I realized in the beginning it’s going to be a lot more of a marathon, not a sprint, but it’s like the slowest marathon you’re ever going on, because if you’re doing it literally from your life savings, you don’t have the foundation to kind of do things in the way that you maybe otherwise expect. And and I’m ready. I’m ready to move. I’m prepared for that, you know. Brandon Snower: Yeah. Keep reading those quotes and we’ll get there. Yeah. Well now we have now we have each other so we’ll talk.

On scents, COVID-19, and being across the globe

In this week’s Common Scents podcast, TAMAR connects with Dan Prasad, who is based in Australia and works in the home fragrance industry. In this candid conversation, we tackle the crazy time difference (14 hours), our scented histories, covid and scent, and more. TAMAR: Hey everybody, I’m so excited. I met Dan Prasad on LinkedIn of all places. I think we did, right? Dan Prasad: Yeah, that’s right. On LinkedIn. TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. And he’s actually, we are doing this at weird hours for me, and normal hours for him, but I would consider it a weird hour for me too at 6:20 in the morning Australian time. [Dan Prasad: Yes.] So kudos to you for showing up and doing this. You’re in your car on the side of the road, podcasting. So that’s, that’s really some serious, serious discipline, I will say. Dan Prasad: Dedicated to the cause. When there’s something cool to talk about sometimes you gotta stop and have a chat about it. TAMAR: Yeah. So let’s talk about that. So I will say that Dan and I met, like I said, on LinkedIn, under the fact that we both are fragrance aficionados. It is not my standard podcast’s type of “rise above adversity.” But, you know, this is the Common Scents podcast. And since being scent, the actual smell scent, s-c-e-n-t, everybody’s like, “what does that mean?” And I have to explain that. Every so often there happens to be times that I have conversations with fragrance people, so then is here and Dan is going to share that. I guess I’ll have you introduce yourself. First of all, I know I mentioned that you’re in Australia. Talk a little bit about where you are physically, what it looks like, what it looks like outside for you, maybe even. Dan Prasad: Okay. I’m in the state of Queensland, which is on the northeastern side of Australia on the coastline, and Brisbane is not exactly on the beach. It’s like an hour from the beach, but yeah, southeast Queensland. Queensland is like a massive state. You can fly out for two and a half, three hours and still be the same same state. That’s how big Queensland is. It’s a beautiful crisp morning. Again, for us, “crisp” is like, you know, 10 degrees Celsius as you walk around in t-shirts in New York probably when it’s 10 degrees Celsius. TAMAR: Now I have to Google that. What is that, 10 degrees Celsius is how many degrees Fahrenheit? Dan Prasad: I’m not sure. I’m not good at those conversions. TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. I’m going to do it right now. There’s some cool way that I read on Reddit a few weeks ago, but it didn’t sit with me, so I don’t remember it. So I, I’m going to C to F. It is fifty degrees Fahrenheit. So that’s actually about what it is right now, fifty three. [Dan Prasad: Oh, okay.] It’s about fifty three right now. It’s pouring rain. It’s been a fun day. Dan Prasad: Yeah. There you go. It’s been raining a little bit here as well so it’s interesting. So this time of year is a similar kind of thing as everyone else. So that’s good. TAMAR: Yeah, interesting. What season is it there? I don’t even know. Dan Prasad: We’re, last season of autumn, which you guys call fall. [TAMAR: Right.] Yeah, winter starts next month. TAMAR: That’s crazy. So how cold does it get for you in winter? Dan Prasad: Oh, nothing. In the nights, the coldest it’ll get is maybe three or four degrees in this part of Australia. Other parts of Australia gets really, really much colder in the evenings, 3 or 4 degrees Celsius in the daytime. The coldest it is going to be like maybe 16, 17 degrees Celsius, that’s as cold as it is gets. TAMAR: Oh wow. We’ve gotten zero degrees. Global warming affects things. I don’t think we’ve had that for a while. [Dan Prasad: Okay.] I grew up in Florida. Now, I have to do more conversions. It’s hot. 10 degrees Celsius is probably the coldest it gets and you’re wearing sweat pants and all this crazy stuff and just that’s just the nature of the beast. Dan Prasad: Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. Because when they’re in the environment, and then go onto another environment. Initially, it’s super hard to adjust. But then the body regulates itself and there you go. TAMAR: Yeah. It’s funny because now I go back to Florida and I get sick because it’s not my natural habitat anymore. I was born in New York, so going from New York to Florida, living in Florida for 17 years and then going back to New York and then traveling to Florida. It’s like a jolt to my my physical, whatever, my nervous system. I don’t know what it is. It’s a jolt to something because I always get sick. Dan Prasad: Hmm, interesting. [TAMAR: Yeah, yeah.] So, fragrance, eh? Because we’re gonna be on a weather podcast. TAMAR: We could. I’m getting there. We talked about how we knew each other and how we met in the context of fragrance. Explain I guess your background on that. Dan Prasad: I’ve been in the home fragrance industry for like, I started in the late 1990s, in the wholesale, retail, because I had my own retail store and also worked for importers in home fragrance. When I say home fragrance, I talk about incense mainly, then there are candles, oil burn, fragrant oils, melts, all that sort of things. Basically people’s love for. It’s such a huge industry that it sort of a little bit overlooked sometimes, but it’s a multibillion dollar industry, the home fragrance industry and people just want their environments to smell nice. Obviously in the last few years with what’s happening in the world, so many people at home are locked down, all sorts of things, this industry has actually been thriving TAMAR: Yeah, it’s really amazing. And it’s funny because you say that and I’m looking at the five candles that I have, which I never light at the same time because they’re all different. But I’m just staring at my five candles, which I basically unboxed within the last six weeks. [Dan Prasad: Oh yeah.] I have four children and I’ve been a little nervous to light candles around them. And in a way, I’ve been also sort of traumatized by the college fires that have happened, that have been spurred since people, burning incense. So I’ve been particularly cognizant of that. And I’ve kind of avoided it, even though I love that. And I prefer that the candles and the incense to the aromatherapy, everybody says, aromatherapy, for example, is the big thing. And when we first talked and you were telling me about home fragrance, I’m like, I like to believe that you have it on your person versus having it in your bedroom, because I think about it in the aromatherapy context and it’s my misspeaking. There are candles and there are essential oils that are kind of there and you don’t even know that they’re there and you might smell something, it’s not powerful anyway. And then there’s like incense and the candle and they’re like, holy crap. That actually smells amazing. Dan Prasad: So, yeah, so so many varying degrees of A. quality and B. presentation, all sorts of things that all come along with it. And it’s interesting what you say you feel about it’s stronger when wearing it on your person like a fine fragrance or perfume, and but especially with the whole incense history and culture. When people burn incense, either in traditional form of granules or resins or the snare or stick form, or the incense current form or whatever, that fragrant smoke is something that becomes on your person because a lot of people, in some cultures, women, when they’re doing their hair, they let the fragrance smoke go all through their hair and almost invariably have fragrance themselves so when they’re out and about, you can smell that on them. TAMAR: But do they remember that it’s there? So my philosophy is very different than the way people see it. And it’s really it’s also very hard to sell this philosophy because people don’t think about it. The idea is: you put on perfume in the morning, cologne in the morning, whatever it is, you put it on and then you forget that it’s there. People might smell you throughout the day like the incense being in your hair. But what do you get out of it after the fact? It’s like you’re doing it for other people. But my philosophy is that you put it on in the morning, you actually have an intention, you revisit that intention throughout the day by sniffing your wrists. If you don’t sniff your wrists every two seconds, you’re going to get anosmic, you’re not going to be able to smell. Anosmic for those who are listening is meaning losing that sense of smell. You’ll become numb to it for a while, but then you can come back to it in a few, ten, fifteen minutes and it’s back there again. So if you do that enough times, not too much, but enough times that, you know, with that aligned intention because of scent and memory being so well, well, intertwines like that would potentially change your life. You could do that. And the thing is you don’t have to limit yourself to, to perfume. I like the idea of carrying it with you throughout the day. But like, let’s say in the morning, you can’t leave your candle unattended. So I don’t know if it’s the candle’s the right thing, but when you put on some sort of, I don’t know, wax melt or something and you put on in the morning, you do the same thing, and then you come home from work and you feel the same way. It’s just a matter of revisiting the scent with the right vibes, really at the end of the day. Dan Prasad: Yes, yes, yeah. Most definitely. TAMAR: Yeah. It’s hard, though. It’s really hard because people don’t see the perfume. I’ve been mentioning this to people. “I’ve never thought of putting perfume and mental health together.” Well, I mean, there’s the aromatherapy industry. It’s huge. Dan Prasad: It totally makes sense. It is exactly like what you say. From the retail side of things like I was telling you, direct customers in my shop, I could see just how much people love certain fragrances or whatever it might have been, whatever the product was. They had to have it every few days or every week. It’s like “I gotta have this. I don’t feel right without this, burning this, or whatever. In that form of fragrances, it had the same importance for their own feeling good in their own well-being. They had to have that product every time. They ran out, they had to run back and get it. TAMAR: Yeah. I was just going to ask you, what brought you this whole world? How did you get into it? Dan Prasad: Uh, just naturally really. With my background in, I sort of stumbled, well, really, when I came to home fragrance, I kind of stumbled into it because my background is, I’m part, my father was Indian from Fiji, rest in peace, Dad, he’s gone about ten years now. And my mom is Dutch. So we have a very mixed culture in terms of growing up and cultural backgrounds and all that sort of thing. The Indian side of things is, there’s a lot of incense involved in spirituality in the prayers and stuff. So that was always sort of around from the 90s onward that I actually started paying more attention to that sort of thing. And then I started, because I have a natural love for certain fragrances and then I just got in the industry in terms of first selling it at markets, a shop, and then going to the wholesale side, waiting for someone, it just kind of went from there. And then you just get educated about all the products within the home fragrance market. It sort of naturally progressed, really. TAMAR: Yeah, well, it’s nice that you have that culture. I’ve been having conversations with people and they’re like, “elsewhere in the world, fragrance is a very big part of people’s identities, like you were saying, the Indian culture. When I first announced my site launch, I had somebody, a brand new perfumer guy, I don’t know if he was a perfumer or just a perfume entrepreneur. And he’s like “I’m opening a store in Oman can you give me some advice?” I’m like, I don’t know. “I’m just as new as you you have forty fragrances and I have two,” He really had, he started at 40, 40 different scents. I said “you should sell online, you should do this. Maybe you can ship to me and I’ll help you get it in the US market.” But it’s so hard, it’s so extraordinarily difficult to start this, especially in the U.S. market. Dan Prasad: This is a billion different options. And like I say, it’s usually 99 percent of it is all marketed the same way. And when you try to do something outside the box like you’re doing, people are going to just like “hang on, what’s this about?” and then really try to just kind of get them to open their minds up from a different point of view, which is an awesome thing to do. Because for you it was such a critical thing. That’s why I started chatting to you in the first place, reading your story, about how, literally, the importance of fragrance pulled you out of what you were going through. That’s powerful stuff. That shows you how powerful this can be. TAMAR: Yeah. And people have said it to me. Two people have actually said come up to me because I’ve shared my story openly and they’ve said the same thing. “Cologne brought me out of depression, perfume brought me out of depression.” I want to potentially interview these types of people to really get their stories. There’s my anecdotal story and there are other people having the same story. I am also potentially seeking funding, ideally, if I can study the scents, the effects of scent on depression, and if aligned with a mindset, could that change everything? Of course, there are external factors. I need to do like a very big study. We would be talking about thousands of participants in order to do it right. I’ve reached globally, on a global scale, to professors and researchers to potentially help me validate this hypothesis. And everybody is like, well, “covid is not letting us do anything.” And I’m getting a lot of pushback, so I’m applying, I’m thinking of applying for to a grant at the National Institute of Health, which is one of the United States governmental entities. I’m not really sure about those folks. I know there’s just quite a few departments and some departments underneath there. I don’t know. But there is there is there are grants there. I want to speak to somebody and kind of get some advice on it, because it’s more integrative. It’s more alternative medicine. I think there is an alternative medicine play here. I really think that there is. And I don’t know if it’s attributed, though, to any specific scent, like walking in a room and smelling some lavender and frankincense or whatever else you would be smelling, mint, or whatever it is. I think it’s more about, it could be completely new. Nothing you’ve ever tried before. And could it still help if you align it with the specific perspective? That’s where I come from. TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah. Dan Prasad: The particular fragrance that helped you initially. Did you have a history with that fragrance or was it just— TAMAR: So that’s a great question. So I’ve had this conversation a couple of times. But what’s interesting is, so I went through my postpartum depression and started in 2009. I actually won that perfume in 2012 in a mommy blog contest. And I was probably still postpartum depressed because I was entering all these giveaways as my way to kill time. But I didn’t really have the awareness of it. I put it on and I liked it and I put it in the corner in a cabinet, and I revisited it maybe once or twice in the interim. And then put it on again when I was at my dark day in the summer of 2018 and this is like six years later. And whatever it was, it wasn’t about that. I didn’t have like that history. And it’s interesting because a few months later when I was talking to these two people about my story and she was like, you know, maybe the idea is that it was tied to the whole amygdala and the fact that scent and that it might have triggered something based on an earlier memory, and I’m thinking, well, first of all, it doesn’t smell like anything. Second of all, the only times I’ve tried it out during the worst, depressed times in my life, maybe it was about mindset. And then I realized it’s probably true because after that, after I really got excited about scents in general, I went to the perfume stores here and I started trying on a bunch of perfumes, literally from my wrist to my shoulder. I would put on like four or five as much as could fit. I didn’t want to use the spray, the fragrance strips because I wanted them. I wanted to smell myself, it was about me. And every single one I tried I liked and I got more excited about it. So it actually made me more excited to experience scents in a different way. And it had to be variety of scents. But I think that this was an impetus, so with that being said, and I have my two scents, I’d love to get like, you know, 20, 30, 40. I think you could do this alignment, put the perfume on and whatever else. You could probably do this alignment with different perfumes, or yeah, you could establish this as your signature scent and just visit it, and hopefully there is still something there. I still think that can validate this hypothesis. I’d really like to think that I can—as long as you like it in the beginning, you can’t just hate in the beginning if you hate the scent and can’t do it. Dan Prasad: No, obviously not. It’s not gonna make that positive change within, so. TAMAR: But, that’s actually an interesting thing. It’s one of my LinkedIn posts. I scheduled this one. There’s a shampoo that they were selling at Costco. I think there are Costcos in Australia. [Dan Prasad: Yeah, there is.] OK. This specific shampoo was actually not a good shampoo, I don’t know how it got there, and I saw complaints online about it. That’s how bad it was. I don’t know what Costco buyer would have bought this because it smelled so bad. And I bought it and it wasn’t going to return it because I’m not that kind of person. And so I ended up trying it, trying it, trying it. And I would hold my nose basically to put it on, you know it’s covid. I’m not going out. People are not smelling my hair. It’s fine. I don’t care. So anyway, maybe about a week ago, it hit me that I could tolerate it. It used to be intolerable and now I’m just like “I can tolerate it”. So I think over time you could adjust to smells even if you hate them. But like that was probably like five or six months, no it was probably less, maybe three or four. But the bottom line is that’s not something I would recommend to the average human being that you have to get used to something you don’t like. So just wait for that one. Dan Prasad: I think it’s interesting what you said that it wasn’t really a fragrance that you had an issue with, it still was something you liked, but it still had that powerful result for you, so thats interesting. Obviously, maybe chemistry-wise, something clicked someway. TAMAR: Yeah, I don’t know what it was. I honestly don’t know. One of the things I say when you’re depressed. You don’t care what you look like. You definitely don’t care what you smell like. And maybe I was just at such an emotionally low level that anything, you could have given me a chocolate chip cookie and I would have been an advocate for chocolate. I mean, I don’t know about that. No, I don’t think so. But I do think that in terms of that, it was something that did awaken me. And it wasn’t an overnight thing either. It was a slower process of just feeling reinvigorated to experience the five senses as a whole. Dan Prasad: Yeah, okay. Mmm. So how did that perpetuate onto the other senses? Was it more— TAMAR: It just made me appreciate things more. Dan Prasad: Ah okay. TAMAR: It’s not like I have any type of like synesthesia where you can see colors and stuff like that and all of a sudden listen to music [and see their colors]. I would just say that I think as humans we have five senses, and if we don’t think about [them and] we take [them for granted.] If you ask any person and I think you’ve probably read it, I’m sure you’re familiar with the research, that if you ask and I think the Pew Internet did a survey that people would rather give up their sense of smell than anything else. But there was also another survey that said that teenagers are more willing to give up their sense of smell than to give up the Internet. And you don’t realize that. I was reading a Bill Bryson book. He’s a fantastic author if you don’t know who he is, and the book, it’s called Body: A Guide for Occupants. I’m sorry. It’s called Body a Guide for Occupants. And it’s a great book. He talks about how like taste is literally 80 to 90 percent smell. You don’t realize [Dan Prasad: Exactly.] how much, how well integrated that is. Dan Prasad: Yep. Yeah. You lose your smell and yeah, all of the sudden, food ain’t gonna be the same. TAMAR: So I did lose my smell during covid and I did have that experience for a while. Dan Prasad: How was that for you? TAMAR: It wasn’t the most ideal. I kept eating to think that maybe the next bite will taste… good. I was facilitating a lot of restaurant deliveries to my neighborhood. I actually paid a lot of money for this brisket joint to deliver to my neighborhood because we were all in quarantine at that time. And I was just, I was like, “this food sucks!” I didn’t realize it was me. It was me. I’ve been there before and I’ve enjoyed it, but I’m like, “what is this? Did it not travel well?” And then I’m like, “wait a minute. I think I have covid.” That was March 13, 2020. So March 15th, 2020. I went and I confirmed that I had a positive diagnosis. Wow. Yeah. Those were some crazy times. Dan Prasad: How long before you felt all right again? How far did it go in terms of symptoms? TAMAR: So I it’s interesting because I used to document every perfume that I’d wear every single day and I stopped. It was probably at least a month that I stopped. As I put it back, just speaking to the smell for a moment. I don’t even know if I have it 100 percent back or I never really have the strongest nose to begin with because I feel like I’m going through my the perfumes that I wore, I have a bunch of samples, I literally have hundreds of samples, and I’m going through them again. And there’s some that I’m discarding now and I’m not sure if it’s because I just don’t experience the scents the same way I used to or if the fact is that I just realized the second time around I don’t like them. I will say that my children are pretty perceptive and my husband’s pretty perceptive. They didn’t get covid and they smell things that I don’t so I don’t know what it is. It could be me. It could it could very well be me. It probably is. So I’m not sure in terms of in terms of smell, I would say I feel like I’m more like maybe 80 percent of the way there. But you don’t really put that out there, because regardless, I’m still appreciating the fact that I have it. [Dan Prasad: Yeah, of course.] Yeah. In terms of the other, I tested negative on April 1st of last year, so I started donating plasma right away, but the smell thing came and went. There were times when I smelled things and the smell would be very profound. And there were other times where it just felt very subtle. I don’t really have that on and off that much anymore. I did have like a few more symptoms for a while. Thankfully I’m not a long hauler that some other people are still struggling to breathe and walk in and overcome. Dan Prasad: Yeah. Dan Prasad: But it’s hard. It’s so crazy how it reacts differently to really different people [TAMAR: Yeah] and especially now with so many different strains, like who knows now. TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah. Did you have any experience in your in your neighborhood or anything like that? Dan Prasad: Oh we’ve been super blessed in this country. It is like hardly happening, really. There’s a few peakings here and there, in certain areas, but we are walk in the park compared to most other places in the world, so we’re pretty fortunate. TAMAR: Yeah. Did you vaccinate? Did you have to? What’s the vaccination schedule?. Dan Prasad: They’ve only just started rolling it out. TAMAR: Wow. It wasn’t a priority. Dan Prasad: The majority of the population haven’t had it yet. TAMAR: OK, yeah. So New York is a little bit accelerated on that front. I actually did get my vaccine this year, April 1st. They rolled it out to thirty and up two or three days prior. So we rushed to get it done and I felt like I had covid. The first time for real. That was it. It was a very it was, it wasn’t a good recovery. Yeah. Dan Prasad: Yeah. I’ve got a few friends that are health care workers and when they had it, they felt the same. They felt like total crap for a few days and then they’re okay. TAMAR: Yeah. It’s very variable. Because I had covid, the Johnson and Johnson shot was not easy for me, but my husband, again, he didn’t have covid. He doesn’t have antibodies. He might have antibodies now, but he didn’t have any then. He was totally fine. And I’m sitting there with, I don’t know what a fever is, 38.9, I think. I think? Dan Prasad: Wow. TAMAR: It was one hundred and two fever. And I actually converted that one. That’s how I know it by heart. I converted that one in advance because I was talking to my other friends in Europe and it was I couldn’t, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t get up and it was hard. But thankfully, and not going back to the scent thing, I didn’t lose it that time around. It was just feeling like I actually got the virus for the first time for real. Dan Prasad: Yeah, yeah, wow. Really interesting how it works. How’s New York at the moment? Is it locked down, or not really? No, no, we’re opening up, which is crazy. Restaurants are at 75 percent right now. Curfews are being lifted because forty six percent, I would say, of new York is has it has been vaccinated at least one dose, twenty three of whom have both doses. I only was a one and done because of the Johnson and Johnson. We’ve been getting emails from the governor here for the last year and it used to be like you’d see these numbers surging of those people who test, were at eight percent of people who tested positive and now we’re down to less than two percent so I think it’s giving him the confidence to open things up. But that being said, it doesn’t mean that people have to go out and about and doing things. I still realize I have to be super careful. Dan Prasad: Yeah. It was interesting what you were saying about the sense of smell thing and how a lot of people disregard that one the most but there’s another person I’m connected with on LinkedIn and she’s got a perfume boutique in, I think she’s in Manhattan or somewhere, and she’s actually helping people regain their sense of smell— TAMAR: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I read that. I think she was in a newspaper recently. She’s very expensive. Dan Prasad: Yeah. TAMAR: Good for her. Dan Prasad: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I saw some of the posts she did, a few people have really sort of, she’s helped a few people get their sense of smell back so that’s kind of interesting as well. TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah. That was really fascinating. They talk about how she sends them home with their own concoction and I’m just like [sigh] because I’m still new. Dan Prasad: Yeah she’s over the moon in terms of those things happening. TAMAR: I have to ask you, how did you, I know because I’ve shared my story but it’s not like I’m going overboard with hashtags. LinkedIn is a very hard place to share this stuff in general and I guess you’re surrounding yourself with the fragrance people on LinkedIn, but how did you come across my story and all that stuff? Because I know we did meet there and we’d been conversing there. Dan Prasad: It just popped up. It just popped up on the feed. TAMAR: Oh, wow. So the algorithm seems to be very, very… I guess I have to post more about, I don’t know, because I post more about mental health more than fragrance in general. But I guess posting about, it’s interesting. It’s interesting how they consider it. Dan Prasad: Yeah. Most of my connections on LinkedIn are uh, I don’t even know if it’s the majority but a lot of them are fragrance related people so I don’t know. It just popped up one day and it’s super interesting so I started reading and reacting to your, you know how it is, you reacting to someone’s stuff and then every time there’s something new that comes that’s on your feed again, so. TAMAR: Yeah, and I’m grateful for that, I will say, because it’s so hard to share this stuff and just a thumbs up makes a world of difference. Dan Prasad: No doubt because sometimes I say to you of what you’ve put on, no one’s says— TAMAR: No one says anything. It’s because it’s so raw. Dan Prasad: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s right. TAMAR: I feel for folks and people are saying, some people message me like, “are you OK? Why are you sharing this on LinkedIn?” I’m like, “because humans use LinkedIn.” I don’t know how to answer that, honestly, because they think about it as such a professional network that you shouldn’t ever integrate your private life there. But nowadays I feel like covid has kind of forced that, thrust us into that. We really need to— Dan Prasad: Think about it. LinkedIn has changed its whole platform to being much more of a social thing more than just a business thing now, it’s all integrated, intertwined now. TAMAR: Yeah, it certainly is. But that doesn’t mean the expectation is really. The alignment in terms of what people want to use LinkedIn for. I just did a podcast with my friend Tris a few weeks ago. And he’s like, why are you sharing this stuff on LinkedIn? That was the point of our conversation. He wanted me to explain that we’re marrying the fact that t’s not just about the professional self and the little the little sliver of yourself that you’re going to communicate, but it’s about really showing that we are people, and especially now when we’re at home and we’re on a Zoom call and your kid is in the background like mine right now, I can hear him. He’s upstairs and he’s I don’t know if you hear this, but he’s like stomping on the floor. It’s right above my head. This is the reality we’re dealing with. We should embrace it. Dan Prasad: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. There’s so much interesting stories when it comes to fragrance, not just mental health, but just how things have produced one thing and the nature of the whole, as a matter of fact, sorry, from the growers all the way to the farm of product and the journey these, all the stuff takes. This is why I’m connected to so many people within the industry from A to Z so I just find the whole thing fascinating. TAMAR: Yeah. I’m trying to figure out where like where to go. I guess I would want to take a step into your home. What is your home fragrance right now? Dan Prasad: I like the kind of woody, spicy fragrances. They’re my favorite. All those combinations, the leathers and the sandalwood and the agarwood and all that sort of thing. Both of them are my favorite combinations. It’s more than the florals and stuff that’s sort of musk and sandalwood is sort of based off of it. That’s my favorite combinations. [TAMAR: OK.] So you’ve always smelled that kind of thing coming out of my house. TAMAR: Yeah. Do you put on perfume or cologne or do you just limit to—. Dan Prasad: Yeah, I do, I do. I’m not someone who goes out actively looking for that kind of stuff much. Usually, a friend will recommend and say “try this” and give me half a bottle. Some of my friends, have got like, you walk into their place and they’ve got like 200 bottles of perfume lying around or cologne [laughs]. TAMAR: Yeah, that’s me. That has unfortunately become me. If you ever said this to me three years ago that I’d be doing this, I would be like, you’re out of your mind. TAMAR: I think you you were the one who recommended that I share some videos of my life and I have, I have a few. The thing that I’m embarrassed about is that they say don’t put your perfumes in a bathroom because the humidity might not be good for your perfumes. Mine have seemed to last. And I have I have them in drawers and I have them in my bathroom. So I’ve been embarrassed to actually post these stories, the LinkedIn videos of my experience, because God forbid, somebody in the fragrance industry is actually going to post about her bathroom collection. Dan Prasad: Oh, I don’t think it matters, to be honest. However your media, you choose to get your story across, I think that video’s a powerful tool. That’s why most people use it. [TAMAR: Yeah.] It catches the attention pretty quick. TAMAR: It’s true. There’s just this purists out there that want fragrance to be this exclusive beauty product, but then again, that’s not who I want to be. I’m trying to be a product about: you wear it for yourself. You don’t wear it for anybody else. You don’t need to attract external approval. You need to feel good for yourself. Dan Prasad: Yeah, and ultimately that’s why you put, well, you would think that’s why someone would wear something in the first place is because they love it themselves first. Maybe they have a motive to get the attention from others with it, that might be there as well, but but ultimately, you gotta love it yourself, otherwise what the hell’s the point? TAMAR: Right. It’s annoying when you love something so much and then your significant other hates it. It’s funny because I will say that the fragrances I don’t like I give to my husband. Dan Prasad: Oh, OK. TAMAR: Because there is the body chemistry change. He’s really getting all my rejects and he seems to be OK with them. Yeah. Dan Prasad: Yeah, the body chemistry thing is interesting, how they’re even on yourself, how it can just change over time. Definitely. Smell the fragrance when you first put it on, and then, after a little bit of time, it can change, how it smells. TAMAR: Well, I think that always happens. I think top notes, middle notes and base notes are never, that’s, hopefully, unless you’re like a Juliette has a Gun one note fragrance show. What’s interesting is Juliette, she’s actually the brand that I’m having difficulty sniffing right now with the covid reaction. I’m not sure if that’s what it is, but, when you put it on, it could smell amazing on you, it can smell like crap on the person right next to you or just the opposite. But I don’t know if that’s a limit or whatever it is on how it’s being concocted. There’s layers to it. There’s whatever evaporates in the first 15 minutes and then within the first 15 minutes to two hours or so, or two to eight hours. It depends. And then the last two hours or so at the end. Dan Prasad: Yeah. What’s the general for people who’ve bought one of your two fragrances, what’s the general feedback you’ve been getting? Is there one that’s a lot more popular than the other, or is it pretty even? TAMAR: Right now it’s pretty even, but I get some interesting feedback. It depends because, the smoke in the vanilla is not an expected, it’s not what they’re expecting there. It’s different. And the pear and patchouli, people don’t even know what patchouli is. It’s supposed to be something you could never have had. It might have a memory to something, but it’s not something you can potentially base on a past memory. I was actually surprised. My mother hates one of them. I won’t say which one. She’s like “this one is not for me.” And then I’ve had other people who are like, “I love this more than anything, like a snowflake. And I’m just like, “Mom,” my mom is very plain Jane. So I think that’s part of the thing. I grew up never eating anything like really delicious, because my mother gave me the same plain, a little little bit of flavor, but everything was pretty bland, so my life was very bland. So it’s sort why I also I’m appreciating things more in life, food and everything else, since then, so yeah. Dan Prasad: Also the combinations of, the two combinations that you made, they’re pretty, they sound really cool together, regardless, even if you don’t have any idea of what the smell or the fragrance would be, but just the pear and patchouli and the smoke and vanilla, they actually sound really good together, so. TAMAR: Yeah. And I’m sure you would like them knowing that you have a nose for these things, I think you would love them. I wish I could ship them to Australia. I can’t ship them anywhere outside of the continental United States and Canada. And it’s super hard. I don’t know what struggles, if you have any struggles with that. But FedEx, you have to like take a training course and it’s super expensive and I already am doing everything right, so why do I need to take the course? Dan Prasad: Yeah. Fragrance can be, unless you’re one of those big players that ships stuff internationally and whatnot, these big corporations, companies, certain products, It’s the same with home fragrance. There’s some products in there that got a lot of restrictions on international shipping as well and I don’t understand why but there are. TAMAR: No, they think that it might blow up the plane or something because it has alcohol. Dan Prasad: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That kind of thing. That’s right. TAMAR: And I think to myself, it’s totally not that much alcohol. I think the requirement is like five liters or something like that, I’m shipping out like how many milliliters? Dan Prasad: Yeah. Yeah. TAMAR: It’s crazy. Dan Prasad: Yeah, interesting how it works. TAMAR: It’s been a fun conversation. I really enjoyed it. And I hope we conquered or tackled a lot of the fragrance convers—topics. If there’s anything that you want to add or how people can find you or learn about you and home fragrance, please share here while we have that chance. Dan Prasad: Oh, no worries, no worries. Nothing, not really. Just always interested to have interesting conversations with people. That’s the main thing I’m connecting with you and others about. Just chatting, get each other’s stories and how we see things. It’s always interesting to get other people’s perspectives and stories and relay it in relation to fragrance and what it means to them in their lives and how it’s affected them in their lives. I’m always intrigued by that sort of thing because it’s such a personal thing, the whole fragrance journey. TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah. Dan Prasad: That’s the beauty of it. TAMAR: Yeah, absolutely. Dan Prasad: Like anything really, it’s an art form in its own. TAMAR: It really is. Dan Prasad: It’s so personal, like any type of art form is, some people are not going to actually get it or connect with it at all and not understand why someone else is so into something. But that doesn’t matter because it’s a very personal thing. But someone out there might connect with it and on a certain level, talk about it and express about it, so that’s why we share it with someone, that’s why we share it ourselves. TAMAR: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I’m hoping that I can sell this concept more in the United States. If you have any thoughts on that, please, by all means, because yeah, like I said, culturally, it’s just not something that the United States embraces on a regular level to make that more of a mental health level, even with mental health being such a rampant issue, it should be easy to do. But I am doing it on a shoestring budget. That’s partially the string is even more frayed than it was before. [Dan Prasad: Yeah.] I had to be creative. Dan Prasad: Most definitely. I think there’s ways but we’ll talk more about it. It’d be cool to have another conversation in a few months and see how things are going. TAMAR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely Dan. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking the time and in your early morning hours. Dan Prasad: Not a problem at all.

“No one really knows what they CAN do until they’re in a position where they HAVE to.”

Nigel Asinugo was once 435 lbs, ready to end his life because he felt like he needed to end it. But his support system came through, brought him out of his dark place, and now he’s in the Navy and crushing it. “Yesterday doesn’t exist. Tomorrow doesn’t exist. All that fucking matters is what you do right now.” ~Nigel Asinugo … “No one really knows what they CAN do until they’re in a position where they HAVE to.”Read More » [https://tamar.com/nigel-asinugo-common-scents/]

This former introvert now rocks his habits and happiness

You may never know looking at all that David Henzel, a serial entrepreneur focused on conscious capitalism, has accomplished, but he was once an extraordinarily fearful introvert. Today, he’s let his shy past fall by the wayside, and keeps himself sane through living a life filled with good habits. [00:00:16.470] – TAMAR: Hey everybody, so excited. I have one of my old online, but I don’t know how to describe it, industry entrepreneurial type friend dudes here. David Henzel. I don’t know the best descriptor, but I’m really excited that you’re here. And thank you so much for joining us. [00:00:38.190] – David Henzel: Thank you for having me, Tamar. It’s good to catch up. [00:00:39.300] – TAMAR: Yeah. So, yeah, it really is. We have been doing that a lot lately, so I’m excited. I hope we can keep that cadence going. [00:00:46.680] – David Henzel: I hope that we will meet at conferences again on a regular basis as we did 10 plus years ago. [00:00:51.630] – TAMAR: Yeah. Well 10 plus years ago, because it’s funny, because once I had started having kids, I stopped traveling and then covid kind of kept you from traveling. So now we’re really looking forward to having that face to face. So I’m looking forward to that, too. In some way, we’ll have to figure out way that’ll happen. Hopefully there will be a South by Southwest next year. That’s something that that’s always exciting. Yeah. So where are you in the world? So let’s talk about our distance because we do have some. [00:01:15.390] – David Henzel: Yeah, I’m from Germany. I lived in Los Angeles for 8 years and now I live in Bodrum, Turkey. [00:01:21.900] – TAMAR: What, Turkey? I don’t even know, I didn’t even know you were in Turkey now. [00:01:25.690] – David Henzel: Yeah, after we sold MaxCDN, my wife wanted to go back to Germany so we’re closer to family and our daughter grows up with family. But I couldn’t go back to German weather conditions after eight years of L.A. and so we decided to move to somewhere that’s close to Germany but warm. My initial thought was Spain. But my wife has Turkish parents, so she preferred Turkey. Even though my my Spanish is much better than my Turkish, we decided, “happy wife, happy life,” [so] we decided to go here and we’re very happy here. [00:01:59.580] – TAMAR: Very nice. So what’s the city in Turkey? I never heard of it. [00:02:03.390] – David Henzel: Bodrum B-O-D-R-U-M. Um, it’s it’s a vacation destination where the wealthy Turks have their vacation homes. It’s as far south as far west as you can be in Turkey, close to the Greek Islands. We’re like twenty minutes from Kos. [00:02:17.700] – TAMAR: So how many languages do you know? Because you talked about Spanish and Turkish and English, German, I assume. [00:02:23.910] – David Henzel: I mean, English and German, then some Spanish and some Turkish. [00:02:30.570] – TAMAR: Wow. That’s pretty impressive. And you picked up Turkish? [00:02:36.010] – David Henzel: Yeah, I mean, my Turkish is very basic. I like go to restaurants and stores and say, “hey, how are you doing? blah blah blah,” like small talk stuff. No deep conversations. Initially, I was very ambitious when we moved to got like a a private tutor one hour a day to learn Turkish, but since all business is happening in English and abroad, I just lost interest. [00:02:58.330] – TAMAR: Oh, well, yeah, I’m starting to learn Spanish with the help of Duolingo and I feel it’s actually cool because I feel like maybe my level of Spanish is your level of Turkish, because I could like I could read things on signs. It says like viernes [Friday]. They talk about specific days of the week and when things are open and closed. The one time I had to understand and I didn’t understand, it [said] you have to wear a face mask, and that’s like it’s a weird word, but I’m getting there. Yeah. That’s not something that they teach you in like level one of Duolingo, the face mask part. But yeah, that’s cool. That’s cool. I guess if you if you ever wanted to get a little more fluent, you can either obviously, you can talk to the natives, but I don’t know if you have any reason to at this point, but Duolingo seems to supplement that pretty well, except you do have to execute. You have to actually talk. [00:03:49.650] – David Henzel: Yes, I like the app, I used it for a while as well. That’s cool. [00:03:53.530] – TAMAR: Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Well, I know we met, but I couldn’t give you the right introduction. I’m sorry. I know that some podcasts they have this lengthy introduction. I like to wing this. I want to make it casual. [00:04:07.770] – David Henzel: That’s totally fine. [00:04:07.770] – TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah, but but I can’t really give you the right introduction because you’re like this dude who does all the things. So talk about that because you have, when I talk about career trajectories on the podcast, some people are like, oh, a lawyer now a baker, and then I have, you. I don’t know what to do there because you’re everywhere, you do all awesome things. Tell me, how do you want to describe that? [00:04:33.150] – David Henzel: So I describe it by: let me tell you how we got here. Initially, I co-founded MaxCDN, the content delivery network, this is also how we met. I think back then you were at Mashable and we were the CDN providers for Mashable. I think this is how we got together, or via the WordPress community. We sold MaxCDN and I moved to to Bodrum, Turkey. And then I read this book called Conscious Capitalism, which talks about that the old way of doing business is that a business has to increase shareholder value, it has to make the owners of the business rich, and the new way, the conscious way of doing business is you take care of all stakeholders, meaning suppliers, employees, customers, community, the planet’s environment, all these things. And if you do this, then the business is the best vehicle to have a positive impact in the world. I thought that’s pretty awesome. I decided to go back into business and start an outsourcing company called LTD plus, we provide live chat agents and support agents for ecomm and SaaS companies. [00:05:38.500] – David Henzel: Then I bought TaskDrive, which my business partner Samir, who is also business partner at MaxCDN started because it’s also a people business. It’s lead research if you do outbound sales. Then I invested into shortlist.io to become a co-founder there, which is a agency for SEO and backlinks, and somehow ended up with a few more businesses that I invested and that I started. So I have this portfolio of businesses. Then I started to coach the leadership teams of my businesses to make sure they’re on their A game, and I couldn’t find the software that was doing what I wanted to do, and so I took the CTO of one of our businesses and to build me something which ended up being this coaching platform called Upcoach.com. And I showed it to a buddy of mine who is a very well-known coach. His name is Todd Herman. He wrote the book The Alter Ego Effect and I showed it to him, I’m not a coach by trade, but a business coaching software. What do you think about this? And he’s like, “that’s amazing. I want to invest and make this big” and I do want to end up with another business. And I’m really passionate about Upcoach, I think I’m most passionate about this one, because this allows me to have a positive impact in lots of people’s lives, because I can empower coaches to help more people better. And that’s why I’m super stoked about about this one. [00:07:10.160] – TAMAR: That’s awesome. Yeah, I didn’t realize that it was the impetus of that was reading this book about this conscious capitalism thing. But I think it’s so important and I mean, especially when we see the distribution of wealth right now and some of these variety of companies and how especially in the context of covid, the rich getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. I never like to make it too political, but I think it’s true. It’s true. I like the way that you’re philosophically aligned in a way that builds, that’s focused on the whole company versus the people at the helm. So I love that. I love it. I had no idea. [00:07:47.720] – David Henzel: Yeah, I do like being a net positive in the world, you know, even if you would take good care of your employees, etc.. If you sell cigarettes, then I think it’s it’s also not a good thing. You also I should do something that actually doesn’t harm the people or the environment and provide, I want to provide lots of jobs to lots of people. That’s why I picked an outsourcing business. My goal is to get to ten thousand employees. We’re only at three hundred right now, but steadily growing. So at some point in our 10 year goal is to to get to at least ten thousand and to provide a cool job, remote job with a good culture and put food on lots of people tables. This is like something that just gets me excited. [00:08:32.870] – TAMAR: Well, if there are hiring links, you want to bring yourself from three hundred to ten thousand, let me know. I’ll put in the show notes. [00:08:40.610] – David Henzel: Thank you. I appreciate it. Actually, we’re bringing everything together. I don’t know when this airs. Right now, I have all these different businesses and I’m bringing it all together under one umbrella, which is howwesolve.com, which is currently just a podcast. But I’ll have different resources, like my portfolio companies that help people scale their businesses, then content, blog, podcasts, webinars, etc., and then also masterminds around several topics to help people scale. [00:09:11.390] – TAMAR: I love it. [00:09:12.350] – David Henzel: It will be on howwesolve.com. [00:09:14.480] – TAMAR: You need to talk to the Gravity Forms guy. He also did this thing very overtly. I’m sure you’re familiar with who he is. Dan? I don’t know. [00:09:23.090] – David Henzel: I’m familiar with Gravity Forms. [00:09:25.100] – TAMAR: Yeah. So the background is for anyone who knows: he basically shirked his salary so that everybody can get seventy thousand dollars in his company. And I love that. It’s the same concept. It’s just one guy has the potential to make a million dollars and his staff has the potential. They’re making 20, 30. But if you could change that, if you can skew the scale and make it so that everybody’s on an equal level playing field, it changes everything and it makes people happier to go to work. Because you believe in, obviously the boss believes in you to do that and you believe in the company to show up. It does a lot of things. [00:10:06.200] – David Henzel: You can do things that the CEO can only make certain multiple of what the lowest paid employee does to kind of like keep the scale. But with some companies, it’s like I don’t know, the CEO of the company makes like a few thousand times more than an employee. [00:10:29.480] – TAMAR: Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, I think it’s great and I love that you’re doing it and I’m definitely going to be following along, you know what you need to do. I think it’d be kind of fun. You should you should journey this, you should document this journey from 300 to 10,000, like something like that. That would be fun. It’s a good goal. But then again, if that’s a hard thing and it’s funny, I was thinking of creating a site that will also make me accountable to some of the things that I want to do in my life to do. I’ve done it, but I haven’t done it as overtly, and I think the overtness is going to be the accountability. You’re talking about, the Managing Happiness stuff that’s like an accountability component. I think everything in my life right now requires accountability. [00:11:15.260] – David Henzel: It just become so much easier if you have accountability in your life, for example, working out. I’m pretty driven to work on a regular basis. I work on three times a week like clockwork. But only since I got the personal trainer, I really became much fitter because he pushed me to do even more. When he’s not there, then it’s like, “yeah, I’ll just go running today.” I will not push me so hard. But if he’s there, he just murders me for an hour and a half and he always shows up at six a.m. in the morning. He’s in front of my door. [00:11:47.060] – TAMAR: Oh, wow. [00:11:47.540] – David Henzel: And then even though if I didn’t sleep well, I went to bed late or whatever, there’s like no excuses. He’s there and I just do it. [TAMAR: Because you got to make it happen.] It makes it so much it easier. [00:11:56.090] – TAMAR: Yeah. So I’ve been toying around with this idea. I know I talk about this in the context of Tamar the perfume brand, but my perfume brand is a mental health perfume brand. But I think mental health also comes from a component of physical health. So I’ve been thinking of like sort of an offshoot with this concept to kind of create a social network that kind of has the fitness and health accountability. So weight loss, if weight loss is your goal, or just fitness. I know Strava exists. I know MyFitnessPal exists. I want a hybrid of both with a lot more visuals. [00:12:30.260] – David Henzel: OK, you’ll like Managing Happiness, which hopefully you’ll join on the next cohort, which actually, I didn’t mention in the things that I’m doing. It’s a group coaching to help people to figure out their personal mission, vision, and core values, to figure out their goals, what they want to do the next 10 years, one year, 90 days, 60 days and this week to kind of really break it down and then the habits that they need to actually achieve this. Their goals, because I’m a big believer that habits determine everything in your life if you’re rich or poor, happy or unhappy, obese or in shape, it all boils down to which habits you cultivate. My big vision for Managing Happiness is to become something like Toastmasters for itself, organized groups where people hold each other accountable, that actually doing the stuff that they’re setting out to do, help each other to figure out what are these things, who do I want to be and to become, have a definite purpose in life, aka their mission and their vision, and having like a peer group that holds some accountability, move towards this. I think that’s super important that you don’t drift in life, that you kind of figure out what you want and that you go for it. [00:13:40.430] – TAMAR: All right. Yeah, no, I love it, I love it and, you know, so the thought process that I have is really like sort of like an integrated tool that you ask yourself questions, but it’s sort of like the stuff that you’re going to be coaching about. But like it’s in like the social network format where everybody is like it’s very feed driven. So I’m going to I’m going to I want to talk to you about this separately offline because it’s so early. I was reading, I have it on my desk right now Nir Eyal’s book Hooked. I don’t know why, it’s literally how to build habit-forming products. I’m not trying to build like when I was thinking about it, I was the only thing I had in my mind was the Tamar perfume. Tamar is a potentially habit forming product, but it’s not going to be a habit forming product, really. When I started reading this, it was about Pinterest and Twitter and Facebook and Google and the sites that people are using on a regular basis. All of a sudden, I hit chapter three and I’m like, wait a minute, I wanted to be accountable to myself in the fitness realm. And I am. I’ve been diligent since December 24, 2018. Every single day I show up and I walk and I run. But can I do more? Even those of us who are so committed to our health might actually have like a month or two where we really deviate from our path. Is there a way, and then and then all of a sudden either you spiral out of control or you get control, you redirect yourself and you actually start finding yourself. I want to potentially avoid those issues because if you spiral out of control, you might be totally screwed and I mean, if you’re redirected, you’re in a better place. I needed my own redirection. And this is a means—[David: I have some hacks for this.] Yeah. Yeah, I would love to hear it. We definitely should talk about this. This is not the context of the podcast, but maybe we should discuss it. I don’t want to talk about it now. I mean, totally. But I want to we probably should sync up as well. I want to run this this concept by you because it’s early. But I think habits and it’s mental health and mental fortitude and physical, all this stuff comes in tandem. Really, you and I, I know, we totally align with the stuff. So feel free to elaborate now if you want. If not, we can— [00:15:44.760] – David Henzel: Yeah, really really quick. I have a restart routine once I fall off the wagon, I’m not sticking with my habits. I have this self-care restart routine, like get the massage, get a haircut, whatever, get a manicure, pedicure. I would do something that’s good, makes you feel good: self-care. And then from next day I’m jumping back onto your game. OK, now we have reset and then I jump back on the good behavior. And I have an early warning sign for my habits, which is my inbox zero. If I’m not at inbox zero for like three or four days or a week, then I know that I’ll have too much on my plate and have to kind of reconfigure stuff, take something off my plate. Otherwise I will fall off the wagon with my good habits. [TAMAR: Yeah] Like the canary in the coal mine that tells me that I’m pushing it too much. [00:16:36.140] – TAMAR: Interesting. Interesting. So I’m an inbox zero person and I get it. I have to do the same thing. I have to snooze my inbox so I get it out of sight, out of mind and it gives me like a refresher. So that’s my little hack for that. Self-care is always a big part of my life, but, I can’t figure out if, for example, if I feel like I have to have some chocolate, sometimes that chocolate will be a few days longer than I expect, so I don’t know how to reset myself mentally for that. But if you were to, the thought process of where I’m going in, this is if you were to articulate to yourself why you’re having this food and then you ask yourself how you feel after that and you start reinforcing the good and the bad, and hopefully it becomes more habitual. There’s some science to it. There’s some stuff that I’ve been kind of reading and studying up on in the last 12 months that lends itself to that. I’ll share also this concept with you a little more. [00:17:26.120] – David Henzel: Yeah, please, looking forward to it. [00:17:27.590] – TAMAR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would love to, if I assume I end up doing something like this, I would probably need some beta testing, so I’ll send it out to you. I’ll keep you posted. We’ll see. I mean, this is this is the first time I’m talking about on the podcast. It’s literally like something that just hit me and I’m like I should have been an end user for this. I’ve been thinking about journaling, this kind of stuff anyway. If there’s a means of having a journal that’s more community driven and aggregated and everybody supports each other, that ties into the Hooked philosophy of social reinforcement. Why not? So that that was anyhow, that’s where I was going. Yeah. All right. [00:18:03.260] – David Henzel: Cool. [00:18:04.670] – TAMAR: Let me deviate and shift on the podcast side. I know we talked about your rise above adversity, which is something I think is very relatable for a lot of people. But I think at the same time, we like it’s very unique because we struggle. A lot of us struggle. I do, even. So talk about your story. [00:18:27.140] – David Henzel: So I used to be very introverted or shy, which was holding me back a lot in business especially. I noticed this when I moved to America. And, you know, people here more are more extroverted than people in Germany. I felt it was really holding me back, I was even uncomfortable in a conference call. It was ridiculous. Actually our mutual friend Syed kind of like really showed me how he went to a lot of conferences and [from] where he was as well, and seeing how he was networking and how he was just acting. It was like, “holy cow, this is so effective.” [00:19:02.770] – David Henzel: And it’s actually fun. So I want to really change this introvertedness to to be more extroverted. And I did it by two things, which, one was kind of exposure therapy, doing, going to networking events, two a week in L.A. and just like talk to everybody and their mom until I was kind of over it. And then Toastmasters, which is like a club where you learn how to public speak. toastmasters.org. It’s pretty cool. It costs next to nothing and they’re pretty much everywhere. I did this also twice a week and it’s kind of helped me to overcome. But the real change happened when my yoga teacher said “everything in life you have to do out of love or fear, and if you do it out of love [it’s] the right path and fear, the wrong path,” and this was something I always knew deep down inside, but I couldn’t articulate it. And she gave me the tools to articulate this. [00:19:51.510] – David Henzel: And, you know, ever since, you know, I used this, for example, being on the podcast or speaking on stage in front of a lot of people, I would have never done this before, but now if I do this, I can give a good presentation when I think about the audience and how I can provide value to them and make it about them. Like what they can see. What I say here can help them in their life and their business or whatever. I provide value to them, then I’m acting out of love, versus if I’m acting out of fear, and only think about me. I think, do people think I have a weird German accent? Do people think I look weird? Do people think what I’m saying is stupid? Then I freeze and I can’t give a good presentation. So that’s the thing in my mind that just makes everything easier. In sales, I used to hate sales with a passion, because I always felt like a used car salesman, but if I sell out of love because I know this product, what I have here can really help you to help you in your life and your business, then I can even be pushy and say, “hey, Tamar, freakin buy this. Freaking do Managing Happiness, I think you’re going to get a lot out of it” versus if I sell out of fear because I sell because I have to hit my numbers, I have to pay my mortgage, whatever, if is the motivating factor, then it’s going to be super hard for me to do it. And the other person will also feel where I’m coming from. I could go on with examples about this, the love and fear thing, but that became my mantra and has been really powerful for me to get easier through life. [00:21:23.620] – TAMAR: I’m actually a big fan of Toastmasters, it is close to nothing. It’s like thirty dollars a year. And you have weekly meet ups with a specific agenda and you public speak, you talk in front of people. They’re very mindful of how you talk, so you have to avoid those filler words like umm, you know, and like. You get scored on these things based on, the audience listens. So now you’re making me think I have to start talking like a Toastmaster instead of casually. That might change my podcast philosophy here. You’re supposed to avoid saying things like saying things like saying things like say—you want to avoid those types of things as well, repeated words. That was intentional, just in case you were wondering. And it’s very, it’s great. It happens to be very difficult to do. But you do have to make more of a conscious investment in your articulation, which to me is not very natural so you can’t really do it normally. But at the same time, it’s the fact is you are standing up in front of a group of people and there’s some sort of agenda whether or not it’s prepared or more improvisational, that’s the difference. So I think that’s great. Are you still involved in that? [00:22:39.530] – David Henzel: I haven’t done Toastmasters in a long time, I looked at the one here. They have only one in Istanbul, an English speaking one in Istanbul. Where I am, there is none. I would have had to start one and didn’t feel like doing this. But yeah I love Toastmasters, I think it’s totally cool. [00:22:57.240] – TAMAR: I was actually thinking of doing one as well in an area that was a little more convenient to me. Not that the one that is is not. It’s literally like a mile and a half down the road. It’s just the timing and stuff wasn’t so great. So I stopped doing it. I also just, I gave birth to my child. So it just like I couldn’t. I had to choose one over the other. And I guess the easy decision was that. But globally there are much more difficult to access and you have to put an investment in that. I was curious to know, given that you’re not involved in any more, you don’t really know. I was curious to know how how they transitioned in the context of covid. [00:23:35.730] – David Henzel: Oh, I’m still in Facebook groups of the previous groups. They just do them on Zoom. [00:23:42.630] – TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah. So it seems like it’s more practical for it to be more global reaching. It was always one of the things you had to do it in person. And I always thought, “oh, we need to do it face to face.” I didn’t want to do the face to face thing and I always wanted to do the remote thing. So I wonder if what they’re seeing and in terms of attendance, based on the fact that people it might be more accessible to other people, especially locals near you, who might be interested in such a program like that where they don’t have a local chapter which is close and is able to serve them. I wonder. [00:24:19.680] – David Henzel: Yay remote work. The positive side of covid. [00:24:23.940] – TAMAR: Yeah. So how did you, just curious, going back to the networking thing. How, I mean, finding those, just to get two a week. I mean for me, right now I can’t even fathom one a week. How did you, we’re in April 2021, so it’s seems just so far off to have these networking events. But how are you finding those? Just were they random? Were they aligned with your business? [00:24:52.680] – David Henzel: Yeah, yeah. It was always like some marketing thing, SEO thing, tech thing. In Los Angeles, it was like a meet up. There used to be meetups like there’s no tomorrow or conferences, etc. So there was a lot of stuff to go to. [00:25:07.710] – TAMAR: Yeah. Well, I guess L.A. lends itself to a lot of that as well by nature of where it is. I never pursued that in New York just because right now I don’t live in the city, but I always knew that there were always things I just was never so keen on. It would be commuting wise, would just be already like two or three hours. [David Henzel: Can’t do that.] I don’t live that far away. It’s just that, you know, just the nature of the beast. Even though I love those events, I consider myself pretty introverted, too. I don’t know if I could get from where you go from introvert to extrovert. I think I’d be in the middle. But there are sometimes where there are events. I’ll have a conversation with one person. I’ll be like, that’s a win. [00:25:58.010] – David Henzel: No no no, I talk to everybody. [00:26:00.250] – TAMAR: Yeah, that’s awesome. Good for you to be able to do that. Do you have any advice on anybody trying to get there? Besides the steps that you’ve taken? Because that thing your yoga teacher taught you about doing things out of love, out of fear, how to break out of that mindset, that was it for you. But what do you think for other people? [00:26:23.340] – David Henzel: For me, when I talk to another, before I was taught, again, love and fear. I talk to somebody who they think that they probably don’t wanna talk or they probably think whatever I’m weird or whatever. The fear aspect. But if I see this person, I see, “oh, there’s another human that I can provide value to,” and ask a few questions to see if there is like a hook that I can bring in my area of expertise or like if I can help this person. It’s always about like, how can I provide value to this person. If this is what you think about, then the fear of introvertedness goes away at least for me. [00:26:58.210] – TAMAR: I like that. I think everybody wants to help. So I think it’s true. [00:27:02.971] – David Henzel: When you can provide value. [00:27:04.220] – TAMAR: Yeah, and I will say I’ve gotten a lot of help from you and I’m very grateful. So thank you. And you’re like you’re extraordinarily altruistic in many, many ways. There’s a lot to emulate, because you’re just very inspirational. So very cool. Thank you. [00:27:22.600] – David Henzel: Thank you so much. Make me blush. I’m German. I can’t take compliments. [00:27:27.050] – TAMAR: We can’t see each other anyway, because right now I do see your, we’re on Skype for the record, and I see you’re holding a tiger head or something. [00:27:36.740] – David Henzel: Oh, that’s you remember the MaxCDN mascot. [TAMAR: Oh, it’s a MaxCDN.] The MaxCDN cheetah. It’s a real live thingy. It’s actually really funny story. We had an intern back then. I think it was even South by Southwest. I think where we saw each other last. We had the the cheetah costume and we were preparing the GDC Game Developers Conference and we were preparing the trip, and the booking, the tickets for people, etc., all the stuff that we need for the booth. My intern at the time reads through the list of people who are attending and he speaks out loud, “I wonder who’s going to wear the cheetah costume.” And he goes like, “fuck” because he realized it was him. Sorry for cursing on you, on the show. Yeah. [00:28:23.920] – TAMAR: Oh, yeah. I didn’t realized that because it’s sort of cut off. But yeah, that’s reminiscent and it’s funny. I guess, have you gotten a haircut yet since the last time we saw each other because you have very short hair [in the icon]. [00:28:38.680] – David Henzel: I have covered hair. I had my first haircut today in like a year and some. I have really long hair though. [00:28:45.940] – TAMAR: Is it still long? So you’ve got your covid haircut. That’s still long. You just got to trim. [00:28:51.190] – David Henzel: I just got it trimmed. It’s still really long. [00:28:54.550] – TAMAR: Okay, well, good for you. Yeah. [inaudible] So I don’t even remember you, this is such a long time ago. This is what happens with this technology that’s that still works for podcasting. And yet it’s really old technology. Like you said, you haven’t used Skype in years. I only use Skype for, well, that’s actually interesting, I work with some Asian companies, Pakistan, and they’re still using it, but there’s the software that I use happens to do good stereo recording if I use it only on here. I can’t do it on Zoom. The Zoom quality doesn’t meet my criteria and I can’t do it on Google Meet. So this is it. And I’m happy with it. [00:29:34.230] – David Henzel: But it works. It works. [00:29:36.040] – TAMAR: Exactly. All right, cool. Yeah. So let me let me ask you the final question, because I know you talked about how your make yourself accountable. Self-care, I guess, fitness for you is part of self-care. Working out. Talk about a little bit more about your self-care regimen, what you do when you work out, for example, and what that looks like. [00:29:55.450] – David Henzel: Yeah, self-care is more than just the workout. It’s a very key thing to work out on a regular basis. Just if you have little endorphins being produced and other things in your body that make you feel bad being destroyed. But for self-care for me, as I mentioned, I’m a habit nerd. Planning the next day, super crucial for me, so I know what I’m doing the next day. Inbox zero, super important. Eating the frog, meaning doing the task that I least likely want to do the first thing in the morning, are really important for me. Then yoga, meditation on a regular basis, also everyday. Not eating after 9pm, really important, because if I eat after 9:00 p.m. it’s not about gaining weight, it’s about getting an energy boost and then not going to bed until like 2am, and then, my trainer’s in front of my door at 6am, it doesn’t really work that well. Then I have a gratitude rock that I use every day in the morning. I pick it up and then go through the things I’m grateful for. And then at the end of the day, I go through the things that went great this day. And the Maui habit, which is from the book Tiny Habits, which is in the morning, you just get up and tell yourself “today it’s going to be an awesome day.” So this, you know, just kind of walks you through my habits of the day. This is the thing that makes me be on my A-game and feel good. [00:31:23.280] – TAMAR: I love it, I love it. I’m very aligned with you in so many different things. I use the, it’s an open source app right now called Loop Habit Tracker. Very, very obsessed with it right now. The gratitude thing. I have another app I’m looking at, Presently. I journal every single day what I’m grateful for and I try to make it different. I try to, every single day I want to realize that my life isn’t about like the same constant stuff to be grateful for my family, my friends, like, for example, I’m just going to open my app right now: What was I grateful for yesterday? A walk with a friend. Getting started on the thing that has been driving me insane. You talked about how you do the thing that you least want to do first thing in the morning. Well, I’ve been procrastinating on the one thing like I don’t usually do. I never procrastinate. But this is one thing that, like, is totally, totally giving me so much anxiety. I started doing that yesterday. So, like, those are like things that, you know, I articulate that. Inbox zero, very, very similar. All the things, though. I like that. I like that we’re very, very aligned in our goal settings and what we try to get done in it. It totally makes you feel better. One hundred percent. So really, really cool. And you have a lot of things, food for thought and you’re very succinct in how you articulate what you’re saying and what you’re doing. So it’s great. [00:32:39.720] – David Henzel: We have in Managing Happiness or in Upcoach, we also have a group habit tracker because we talked about accountability before, having this positive peer pressure where people see if you’re doing your habits or not. It’s like another reason to push you to be good. [00:32:57.890] – TAMAR: It is. It is. Accountability so important, I think people don’t realize that. I don’t know when you have to realize that, you have to hit a certain age, like in your 20s, you don’t care at all. But when you’ve hit your 30s and 40s, you’re like, “wait a minute. I can live my best life. I just have to do things the right way,” Live your best responsible life for your family. [00:33:16.730] – David Henzel: When you’re young, it’s more like negative peer pressure. And now, accountability equals positive peer pressure. [00:33:22.280] – TAMAR: Yeah, I like that. I like the way you put that 100%. And it’s so great, especially when you have a group, a regular cadence with individuals that that changes everything. It totally, totally changes everything. So my recommendation is for anybody out there who wants to do something, you have to have, first of all, it shouldn’t be one on one. I don’t recommend one on one. I think there should be a group of people. And you have to regularly reinforce that by showing up. So everybody needs to show up. You and I talked about this separately, but like, I have two accountability groups, one with four women every single Wednesday. It’s the accountability to myself as a founder, and then I have another one actually on Thursday has just ended and it’s seven guys and me. So I’m the only woman. But the fact is, once you start the rapport, in the beginning it’s just meh, you don’t really feel it. And then like maybe by the third and the fourth you’re like, “oh, I’m starting to derive value.” And then you’re like, that’s the one thing you might look forward to the entire week. It can’t be forced. It can’t be like a team meeting with your colleagues. You need to do this for yourself and not do it for everything else. And I think it changes everything in terms of mindset. [00:34:35.120] – David Henzel: Yes, it’s very powerful. I can confirm, it’s highly recommended. It’s going to push you to be on your personal best. [00:34:43.070] – TAMAR: Yeah. So take take take a look Upcoach if you want to build something like that, because David has has the solution for you. [00:34:50.300] – David Henzel: ManagingHappiness.com, in case if you want the mission, vision, values, and habits and also accountability coaching. [00:34:56.402] – TAMAR: ManagingHappiness.com. Yup, you got it. Cool. So I got I got one final question for you. And the question is, if you can give an earlier version of David some advice, what would you tell him? [00:35:11.030] – David Henzel: It would be figuring out the love and fear thing earlier and a very personal thing, but my mom passed away like seven years ago or so, eight years ago, and I wish I would have spent more time with her, not being so focused on work. And also, you know, we moved to Los Angeles and she was still in Germany. Well, one of the regrets that I have. I think, kind of being really mindful about what matters. [00:35:36.970] – David Henzel: Also maybe another advice: finding early in life what you really want out of life and what you want to do, because most people are like a leaf in the wind, and also figuring out what actually YOU really want, not what the dream of the world or society or whatever [wants], kind of keeping up with the Joneses or just gotta figure out what’s what’s your thing, and then everything becomes much clearer and easier. This is what what I would tell 15 year old David. [00:36:09.470] – TAMAR: Yeah. Yeah. It’s powerful stuff. And I’m sorry to hear about your mom and yeah, that’s tough. [00:36:16.880] – David Henzel: I have a condition called aphantasia. I think we talked about this. [00:36:21.530] – TAMAR: Yeah, we talked about this in a previous call. [00:36:24.470] – David Henzel: Yeah. I cannot in my mind, it can’t create images. So when I close my eyes and think of what happened, I can’t see anything. Everything in my mind is text based. And this also has a side effect for me because I have an extreme case of aphantasia. I can also not relive feelings. Which also makes it, I don’t have trauma. When my father died, when I was 12, it was sounds like a dick, but was not not really hard for me, I just accepted it. But my brother is still suffering from it, so it’s like a positive side effect of this condition. [00:37:03.590] – TAMAR: Yeah, yeah, wow, it’s crazy how everybody’s minds are like how they process things is so variable. And, you have some people who are like, oh, you know, they can never drink this habit stuff, this habit following Kool-Aid, which is great, Kool-Aid. It tastes the best. It’s the healthiest. But then there’s other people who are just like completely, you have to be in the right headspace, but I think there are some things that are changeable and some things evidently aren’t and it’s just insane. It’s fascinating all the same. Yeah, cool. So where can people, you mentioned a bunch of these websites, but if somebody wanted to follow or find you, contact you, what’s the best recommendation you got there? You can check out howwesolve.com, there you’ll find all my portfolio companies, they can also check out DavidHenzel.com. Actually, now you can check out Henzel.com which I just bought, I’m very happy about. I paid, I got a good deal, I paid thirty seven hundred. I would prefer my first name even though my first name is pretty common, don’t think this would fly. [00:38:08.870] – TAMAR: I know who owns it! I know who owns david.com. [00:38:12.530] – David Henzel: Really? [00:38:12.950] – TAMAR: Yeah, he’s in the industry. I met him at a few Mashable meet ups. [00:38:22.460] – David Henzel: Oh, David. It’s the founder of the phone system Grasshopper? [00:38:30.650] – David Henzel: Hold on a second. Why do I have? I haven’t spoken to him in so long. Gotta find this dude. David Blumenstein. Why do I say that? Yeah. So he’s not, he just, I don’t know what he did. But yeah, it’s funny, there’s so many people who have mentioned this that I’ve always said, “oh, I know the guy!” But I know the guy who owns it. I have a David. My son is David. My grandfather’s David. I’ve lots of Davids. There’s definitely a lot of people who want that domain. I can tell you that. Yeah, but Henzel is the next best thing. So yes. [00:39:09.370] – TAMAR: And you said howwesolve.com? I want to make sure because you said it quickly and I want to make sure it’s transcribed. [00:39:16.930] – David Henzel: Howwesolve.com. [00:39:17.410] – TAMAR: Yes. OK, perfect. Awesome. All right. Well that sounds good. Anything else you might want to add and share? [00:39:25.190] – David Henzel: No, just make decisions of love, not fear. Do yourself a favor and leave a comment and like the podcast. It helps to promote it. Do Tamar the favor. [00:39:34.580] – TAMAR: Yeah, absolutely. Share the podcast. I don’t really have buttons on my social posts. I guess you can go right on Spotify and iTunes. [David Henzel: on Spotify and iTunes] [00:39:43.190] – David Henzel: Go in there, leave a review. [00:39:44.540] – TAMAR: That’s a good point. Yes, good idea. Thank you for the recommendation. I don’t even I don’t promote it. I think about it on my platform versus on the platforms that I distribute to. So good thought. Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so, so much, David. This is fun. I enjoyed it. [00:40:00.660] – David Henzel: Likewise, Tamar, thank you very much. Yeah, forward to having you on the Managing Happiness group, and let’s chat soon [00:40:04.890] – TAMAR: Cool, thank you, all right, take care.