The Karma of Success with Liz Tran

0:02 A listener production. This is Crappita Happy and I am your host, Cas Stunn. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher and of course, author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Liz Tran is an executive coach and she is the creator of an executive coaching company to CEOs and founders called Reset. Before she launched a Reset, Liz spent a decade or more in tech, most recently as the only female executive as a top venture capital firm. Today, Liz works with the CEOs and founders of the fastest growing companies in the world. She hosts the Reset with Liz Tran podcast, and she's the author of a brand spanking new book called The Karma of Success Now. For most of her career, Liz was sure that if people knew about her spiritual practices, they would never respect her as a business person. She worked in a world where numbers and spreadsheets were everything, so how could she admit that she believed in scientifically indefensible forces like the tarot, or functui or reiki. The point, I guess is that we all have aspects of ourselves that we cover up or hide because we don't think that they fit into the stereotypical picture of success or

1:35 what a particular profession should look like. And we think that we're improving our chances, but in reality we're actually doing the opposite. So in this conversation, which obviously I loved, Liz and I discuss why sometimes the logical thing to do doesn't make you happy, and while listening to your inner voice can propel you to the life that you envision for yourself when you stop worrying about external markers of success, how you can optimize your energy field so that you function at your best in mind, body, and soul, and why some founders succeed past the seed stage and why others don't. Based on what Liz has discovered working with many many of the most successful founders in the world, Liz and I go along like a house on fire.

2:23 We were chatting for about ten minutes before we remember to press the record button, and I hope that you enjoy Liz and her wonderful energy and her wisdom as much as I did. Here's my conversation with Liz Liz Tran. Welcome to the Crappy to Happy Podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you. I have just finished reading your brand new book, and congratulations. It is called The Karma of Success. It is so up my alley, and we're about to talk all about that. But I really enjoyed it. So well done. You've done a great job. Thank you. Thanks for having me here, and thank you for reading the book. You are so welcome. But let's talk about the book because one thing I think is really interesting is that you describe in the book the fact that you were six months into writing it when you basically just practically threw it all the way and started again. Tell me about that.

3:16 Yes, so I am someone who works very diligently towards a problem, and I think it's great because it gives me a lot of staying power. But it's also not so great when something isn't clicking right. And it felt like I was putting all this work in and I don't know if you had the experience of working on something, but it feels like you're driving a car with a parking brake on. You know, you're pressing the gas. You just can't get anywhere. It's so frustrating. I know that feeling, and so. I kept going instead of, you know, evaluating. And then one night, it was about six weeks before my book was due with my publisher, and I went out to the desert in California with some friends who were all so writing books at similar times, and I finally had some quiet and some space away from New York City and away from work. I was also working full time as I was writing the book, and in that stillness late at night, I had this thought, you know, this isn't working because the foundation is wrong. I'm trying to build a house on a shaky foundation, and that's why I keep stacking up these pieces. I keep writing and writing and writing these chapters, but none of it is actually holding together. And in this like late night delirium, I was sober, but it was just late at night, and I thought, I have to change the whole thesis of the book. And even though I've promised my publisher one book, I can't write this book and it's not working.

4:47 It's not what I want to say. It's not what I really believe and I think needs to be put into the world. And then within two hours of having this thought, I had outlined the whole new book that I was writing, and the flow happened, this really elusive flow that I'd been chasing for six months, and in the next six weeks I wrote ninety five percent of the book. I turned the book in on time. I mean, it was a wild period. I didn't have internet at my house at that point because I just moved in and we were doing major renovation. We're out in the country and without internet, kind of working at a coworking space, working out of a tent. I got the book done and it all happened because I had that one moment of quiet where I could admit, you know, Liz, this isn't very good. And I think actually a lot of my career has been made in those moments where I can admit that something needs to change. I can be a little stubborn in that way, but when I finally see, hey, you know what, this isn't working, it really has always freed me up to do something that is better for me and therefore is able to flow.

5:54 I love that story because it is the premise of the entire book is about that very experience, or that or that kind of experience being able to let go of all of that external pressure and expectation and kind of tap into what you know in your heart, like what you really kind of know to be true that in a genius that you talk about in the book. I'm assuming that at some stage the book proposal that you had presented and the title and the thesis of it, like you, you must have been into that at some point did something change. Along the way or how? How what was that about? That's a great question, And the book originally came from the work that I do so day to day. I coach founders and CEOs of tech companies that are growing, and so usually I start with them when they're maybe a handful of employees and they've raised a couple million dollars, and then we worked together through many years. Most of my clients have been with me for two or three years, and at that point they've have up to you know, hundreds of employees and have raised tens of millions of dollars.

6:55 And it's fun because I just see their evolution and so the book I was writing was about this kind concept of entrepreneurship but through a spiritual lens. So what lessons from Buddhism, the now astrology can we take and apply towards entrepreneurship. And as I was writing the book, it felt so prescriptive, like do this, do that, and I felt that that wasn't true because every client of mine has a unique path and a journey that they take. And I really started to recognize that my job as a coach is not as much to tell them what to do. You know, people think, oh, you must know so much about you know, technology, or you must be so good at giving advice, and it's actually not that.

7:43 I actually don't know if I'm great at giving advice, but I am good at asking a lot of questions and helping them to arrive there themselves. And I thought, you know what, that's what I want to do with this book is I want to write this book as if I'm in a coaching session with the reader, where I'm asking them a lot of questions about themselves, asking them to look inward at who they are, see all the amazing strengths and gifts that they have, and along the way, start to trust their own intuition again, because I think so many of us feel this pressure to live up to our peers do better at the thing that other people are doing. You know, we say, okay, how can we study what all the best did and do those things? Yes, And while that information is useful, it discounts the fact that sometimes it's our own unique choices that come from you know, very little data, very little information quote unquote, that really come from intuition that are so strong. It's like, you know, the feeling of like I've got to move to a new study, or you know, I have to start this podcast. You know, those aren't things that you can find in data.

8:49 That is so true and I think I've talked about that on this podcast recently. Actually, like just your gut, just if you can tap into that in a knowing it really it will never see you wrong. But it is so hard for a lot of people to connect with that, and I know in my work that I do too. And generally speaking, people are so in their own heads and so in the intellectual thinking mind and pros and cons and spreadsheets and all of that left brain logical kind of decision making processes and it's not enough. And you have a great quote in the book. I don't know if it's your quote or somebody else's, but it's something to do with and you can correct me, but spending as much time in your internal world as your external world, and I thought that was profound. Can you talk about that? How does somebody do that?

9:40 Yes, definitely, I love that quote too. It's from Aviva Ram who is a friend of mine and she's also an entrepreneur. She's a doctor and a midwife and she also runs these amazing training programs for doctors on how to have more sort of holistic care. So she's a women's health expert and she's just incredible. And what it means is, basically, you know, we have a lot of opportunity to look outward, right, especially with social media and especially you know, seeing what our friends are up to on Facebook and Instagram all the time, just content from other people. The outside world is anything where we're interacting with others. So it could be you know, grocery shopping, it could be you know, going to work every day and seeing your peers so left unattended. The outside world could be everything, right, it can be. It can take up one hundred percent of your time except when you're sleeping.

10:33 And the internal world is in those moments where you go for a walk by yourself, or you sit down and meditate, or even if you're cooking a meal and you allow yourself to just be really present to the meal. Could be reading a book, it could be journaling, could be just having a cup of tea or petting your cat. It's all these moments where you slow down and you allow yourself the space to think and just be with yourself, and those are when the moments of intuition pop in. And so many of the greatest thinkers of our time have really relied on that intuition, from scientists like Einstein to artists like Georgia O'Keeffe. And while they exercise getting really good at their craft externally, you know, practicing doing what they're doing, they also made space for the internal.

11:21 And one of my favorite anecdotes from the book too, is that Einstein would really purposely get himself into that space of the internal world, where he would do that through napping and he would sit in his rock chair. I've gotten really into sleeping after reading this too, and he would rock himself to sleep and he would think about whatever problem he wasn't able to solve in his waking life, and he would hold some metal spoons in his hands, and then when he would fall asleep, they would drop onto a plate below him, and the clanging noise would wake him up. But he would have had that spark of intuition from sleeping very briefly, and he'd wake up just in time to remember it and write it down. He also took really long walks, he played musical instruments, and so it's all this time where your mind can become like a still pond and it's quiet, you can hear what comes in because most of the time it's there that voice. Have you ever had kind of a little bit of an intuition like oh, you have to call this person or do this, and we don't often hear it until we slow down, we're like, Okay, now we have the time and space to do it.

12:31 And so it could be that it's even just thirty minutes a day. You know, it doesn't have to be exactly as much time in the external as internal. But I think it's a nice goal to dry for and for me personally, I just hold myself to thirty minutes a day, and sometimes that's really hard, but at a minimum, it's great because it kind of compels you to keep going for longer. And when you say thirty minutes a day, are you talking about proper like metaation or just those various moments that you mentioned earlier, like when you're cooking or petting the cat or walking. Yeah, thirty minutes dedicated. So what I personally do is I usually like some incense and then I do a very short meditation, maybe five to ten minutes, and then I journal. And I have a specific journaling practice that I do every day, which is I write my gratitude, what I'm grateful for, what I'm grateful for, myself, my self gratitude, and then I reread whatever vision I'm trying to manifest currently in my life, and then I kind of just give myself the rest of the space to think and you know, whatever comes in. For me, I love writing my journal, so it's a written practice for me.

13:44 But I know for some of my clients this practice looks more like quiet walk by themselves, or it looks like reading a book and sort of just passively reading it and letting more your thoughts come out while you're reading it, and so I think it's whatever brings enjoyment to you. It shouldn't feel like punishment. You shouldn't feel like, oh, I have to sit in a room by myself. You should feel like, oh, finally get this time for myself. I also make it a practice to meditate and journal every day. It's interesting that you said part of your journaling practice is whatever it is that you're manifesting or visualizing in your life. Can I just say, and I know this sounds really out there to some people, but when I write something in my journal that I'm visualizing, I can't tell you the miracles that happen in my life, the things that I just write in my journal and out of nowhere, they come to fruition. It's got to the point where I was just like anytime there was something I was like struggling with or anxious about or worried about, I would just Okay.

14:43 It's journal time. I just had to go on. Like I'd sit and I'd do my meditation or even just like really quickly like scribble something into my journal. And I was like, I treated it like this magic machine, but it works like it would be literally I would close up the journal and then the phone would ring and I'd get the phone call that I had been like stressing about and waiting days for. So anyway, that's just a little DIGRESSI it's amazing. Do you do it for big and small things, like little things and also bigger goals? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, and the bigger ones you know, like that don't turn up immediately. But I've got a pretty strong track record of you know, things happening in my life having visualized and journaled about them.

15:27 Well, there's actually a scientific reason behind that, and it's when we start to be able to see it in our mind's eye that we start to know that we can do it. So I love thinking about all the professional athletes who do this. So Michael Phelps, he visualizes every race in his mind, like he literally goes step by step through taking his headphones off, taking off his robe, walking onto the deck, jumping into the pool, stroke by stroke by stroke until he wins the race. And so when he shows up on race day, he's already won it in his mind one hundred times, and then he feels easeful. And I think, the things that we want, we have to ask for them. You know, and we have to believe that we're worthy. And so I think you writing in your journal, you know, one science of it is that you know you can see it, and therefore like it happens because you believe that it is possible.

16:28 Because obviously if we don't believe anything is possible. If you're running a marathon and you think I can't do this, you're actually never going to finish. And so you're saying to yourself, Cas, this is going to happen for you, and so subconsciously you start making all the right decisions and choices to back that up. And then from a spiritual standpoint, because I always like to compare this, you know, the science and the spiritual. The universe can't give you what you want unless you ask for it. And you're doing that and it's like, oh, Cass, this is what you want. Hello here exactly And I have, you know, the same spiritual beliefs that you do. And I sometimes have to remind myself, Oh that's right. I have to ask, like you know when you because it's the most basic thing, but we forget to do it.

17:13 Oh no, that's right. I can. I can create what I want in my life but I do have to ask if I want some energetic support, some help from the universe, because we just forget. And actually, I feel like if there's only one takeaway that people get from this episode is please ask for what you want and you'll probably get it. I mean, you will get it at some point. And I think a lot of the times, especially you know, for women, sometimes we're conditioned to not feel like we can ask for it, or maybe that we already have enough. Yeah, we should be grateful, like, oh well, like my life is already fine. Who am I to want more? That feels too much? You know, why should I want even more?

17:57 And I think the beautiful thing is that that want, the thing that you are aiming for, it comes from your intuition. It's not a selfish thing. There's a reason why, and it's the reason is that whatever that thing you want needs to come into this world. You know, all the greatest pieces of art science, you know, movements for people activism that come from this feeling of wanting the world to be slightly different than it is. And so I want to encourage everyone who's listening to just be very egregious and a little bit selfish about saying yes, this is what I want because it's going to help other people along the way too. That's great advice. And I think what you say is right because what I put out that I want it will be very different from what somebody else does. So even just that thought that pops into my mind, But what might be nice in my life is that's tapping into my own intuition too, because it's going to be different for me to what it is for somebody else. So it's all that kind of inner genius stuff, isn't it's just connecting with who you read.

18:55 Are Absolutely you talked at. The beginning about the book about and it is still very much about, you know, spiritual ideas, and you work with founders and entrepreneurs. How receptive is that group? I mean, I guess people know you by now, they know what you're about. But how well received are those kind of ideas that have typically been considered to be a bit out there, bit not mainstream wu WU kind of stuff. How well is it received by the people that you work with. Yeah, that's a great question, you know. I so before I started becoming a coach, I worked in tech for a long time and then I worked in venture capital, and I was really shy and reticent about sharing what I believed in because you know, it's a really I mean, it's finance. It's an industry that's dominated by data and numbers.

19:51 And I essentially was thinking to myself, you know, if anyone knows that I believe in astrology and crystals and energy healing, then they're not going to take me seriously. And so I kind of hit away these perspectives, even though they were really helping me in my life. I mean, you know this, but the power of astrology is incredible, and I would use it to pick, you know, the best days to launch projects. And I got really into hypnotherapy and I had this great hypnotherapist and it made me this amazing, confident public speaker. And everyone was like, what is how are you so good at public speaking? And I wanted to be like, oh, you know, it's my hypnotherapist who's also my astrologer. But you know, I held those things back. And it was only when I started coaching my own clients and I started to develop these deeper relationships with them that I started sharing more.

20:43 And I was always surprised by the fact that they were really interested, and they actually, even if they weren't you know, quote unquote spiritual themselves, they had a curiosity about it. Because I think a lot of what we're talking about here, even if if you don't put a spiritual name on it, we've all had these experiences in our lives, right, So I think everyone who's listening probably has the experience of asking for something, maybe writing in their journal or even telling someone, and then somehow it pops up the next day, right, And so I think that's like a very human experience as part of the laws of the way things work in the world. And so the way I operate is generally about I would say like seventy five percent of the session is very business oriented. So we might be you know, reviewing a board deck, or we might be looking at like a P and L statement, or we might be thinking about how to have difficult conversations with certain employees of the company.

21:39 We might be saying, Okay, you're going to let these people go, We're going to put these people on a performance improvement plan. And then the twenty five percent of it is the spiritual aspect, and that is actually the foundation, and so I might we might be talking about something like letting a group of employees go, but I'll remind them about something that comes from spirituality for me that is helpful for them. So, as an example, one of my clients has been really struggling with one of her investors, and her investor gives her a hard time, constantly makes her feel horrible about who she is as a CEO, makes her feel really bad about running the business. And you know, I said, think about this quote by Pemachodrin, who's a Buddhist nun, and she says, nothing goes away until it teaches us what we need to know. So what is your lesson here that you haven't been learning?

22:34 And she was like, I know exactly what it is. She said, the lesson is that I need to be not a people pleaser. I need to be confident in myself. And so she went in there and she's like, I haven't done that. I've tried every which way to make this person happy. Hasn't worked for the past three board meetings. And then she went into the next board meeting and she just stood up for herself and she depersonalized this person's critique of her, and in that board meeting, finally said, you're doing such a great job running this company. You're one of our best run companies. Thank you for doing this. And she then realized maybe about a week later, that this person had been going through their own journey that was impacting the way that she was being treated, and she said, Liz, you're right, Like that was my lesson.

23:19 I had to learn so little things like that. I'll weave into you know, for us food for thought. I'll drop in a story a zen parable a concept from Buddhism. Luckily, and you know this probably very well. Luckily, there's always a kind of a correlating psychology term to a Buddhist term, and so and so saying like, hey, you know you have you know, you're wrestling with like attachment right like a Buddhist term. I'll be like, hey, you know, in psychology, there's this understanding of loss of version. This is what's happening. And so sometimes it's easier to find that translation and it resonates more with them, and other times I'll just go straight for the spiritual and be like, this is what you need right now. Yeah, And you know what, as a psychologist, I've been really open about the fact that the Buddhists have got it all sorted. They always have, like all the fundamental principles of Buddhist philosophy, the principles we should all be living our life by, because it just makes sense, I mean, And then you know, you have all of these psychological models. Now, like I just did an episode on various approaches to therapy.

24:23 I'm talking about act acceptance and commitment therapy. Well, what's that. It's essentially Buddhism just wrapped up in psychological to me, that's the fact. Yeah, in Buddhism they always say that there's this concept of the two arrows. So the first arrow is unavoidable, it's something that bad that happens to you, it's disappointment, grief, whatever, pain, And the problem is that they say that, then we shoot a second arrow into the same spot. And that's the resistance, right, that's being like, why me, why did this happen to me? This is my fault? Did I do this to myself? You know, we cause an additional heap of paining suffering on top of that initial and avoidable pain and suffering. And then you know, I sometimes try to say this to my clients where you know, obviously, life is ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows, and so I try to say, hey, don't make it worse.

25:14 And so I might tell them about the Buddhist story of the two earros, or I might say, hey, you know the formula, which is that pain is pain times resistance equal suffering, And so you can have pain, but if there's no resistance, suffering is very little. But if you have the pain and you amp it up with your resistance, the suffering is going to be really strong. And so I find that it's actually kind of helpful to share both with them sometimes and let them see that it exists in both frameworks. Yeah, I love that I use all of those same metaphors in all of the work that I do as well, And I think it's great that you bring it in because I think also, I mean, I guess I think of a lot of people in you know, high pressure corporate environments, whether it's finance or you know, whether they're founder or whether they're working for somebody else, they will often they've got this kind of professional life a little bit like what you were describing, But then they might go off for a weekend retreat.

26:10 They might go off and have this kind. Of yoga break to destress, but there's this separation in people like I can do that on my own time. I can go off and I can have a massage or a reiki session or something, but you know, when I come back to work, it's this is work. And I think opening people up to the idea that these things can coexist, like these they don't have to be separate. And that's essentially what you're saying, right like, this is all part of who you are, You bring it all, and that you're no longer trying to separate this aspect of yourself from that. Yes, and I agree with you that that separation is so intense, and so sometimes it takes months or years of working with someone where I don't tell them we're actively working on it, but I kind of just play it back for them. I say, oh, wow, look, did you notice how much more effective you were at work this week after having gone on that yoga retreat or had that RESTful weekend, And just kind of sort of setting a mental image for them and making that connection and just saying, oh wow, great job you did that.

27:15 Did you notice how that connected together? And you know, I think at the end of the day, our lives are just so interconnected, especially after the pandemic, where everyone's just started working from home, right, and it's sort of like where's the line, Where does it blur anymore? And this idea of work life balance, I think is actually like a little outdated, right, and it's kind of more just just take care of yourself, you know, like that actually is the priority. Let's not try to balance it. Take care of you as a foundation, and everything else will fall into place after that, Which. Brings me to self care. You talk about self care is not just caring for your physical body or even your emotional well being, but tending to your soul. So describe that for me. How does one go about tending to this soul?

28:05 Yes, so, I think the first part of tending to your soul is to realize that you have a soul. Good study and then you have a really beautiful soul. And you know, we kind of walk through lives with these to do lists and this never ending email box that we have to tend to and a list of dry cleaning, grocery shopping. It gets busy and it feels kind of like a drag sometimes where you're just literally checking through all your responsibilities and to zoom out first and to remember that we have these very beautiful and precious human existences. It is such an honor to be born as a human. In the theory of karma, so the Buddhists believe that we are all reincarnated. We have the same soul that persists, but then we're reincarnated into a new form. And they say, to have this birth as a human, you've got to have done a lot of good things in your life, you know, your previous lives to be here now as a human. And it's cool because like, we're the only animals out there who dream and plan for the future and who push ourselves to evolve consciously. Of course other animals are doing it, you know, automatically, but we're the ones who think, okay, like, what are we building here? How do we work together?

29:23 Like we're intentional about it. And so we have this opportunity to do some amazing things, whether on a big, big scale or a small scale. So I think first pausing, thinking, wow, I'm a person that happens to live right now in a time where I've got actually a lot of freedom and a lot of potential. I think about this all the time, where if I had been born just even forty years earlier, I'd have a very different life in Vietnam, where you know, the country would have been you know, just recovering from the war, or at any period of time earlier, I would have been born without a lot of rights as a woman. And now I get to live in the US, and I got to go to college, and I got to like you know, and now I get to run in my own business. And that's not necessarily true for lots and lots of people. And so I think first just thinking, yeah, we have all these responsibilities that are bogging us down, but how beautiful, how beautiful that we're here right now. How beautiful that you and I are sitting here, Kaz and we get to have this conversation like as work and get to talk to each other real fun and get to you know, connect with all these people who listen to your podcasts, and you have this podcast that has technology where you can reach all these people. So I think the first thing is just sitting in the awe and the wonder of your life, where it's like, gosh, we get to drive cars, we go to the beach, you know, all these little things, and so that's first where you start, and you remember, I'm in this beautiful soul, I have this beautiful human existence. And then the self care aspect of that comes from. If I have this one, very

30:54 very precious life, how do I make sure that I'm really experiencing it to the full. And for my clients, I often look at them and they are these people who have worked really hard and also sacrificed a lot to have this amazing position where they can build these companies with tens of millions of dollars of funding. It's very rare, you know, to raise that amount of money, especially at a young age. But a lot of my clients are between I would say twenty six and forty. So they're building these tech companies. They're very privileged, yet they don't make time to eat lunch. They get on a call with me and they say, oh, my gosh, I haven't gone to the bathroom all day. Do you mind if I just go to the bathroom. They're like, I'm so hungry, I haven't eaten anything. And look at my watch and it's five o'clock where they are, and they're running themselves into the ground, because they're forgetting that life just isn't about checking things off the to do lists.

31:51 It's also about caring for this beautiful, precious nature that we have. And the way that they phrase it in the idea of Chinese medicine is that our bodies are actually three treasures and we have to take care of all three of those treasures. The first one is jing, which is like, you know, actually the physical body. It's like, are you caring for your body? Are you giving it the right food, the right rest? You know, like do you just feel really nourished? And that's the first thing that actually a lot of my clients could do better, right. And then the second treasure that you have is about your chi, which is like your energy, So is your energy flowing And that's why doing things like yoga and reiki or spending time with nature they can get your energy moving. I think we all have that experience where even if we feel fine physically, we're like, eh, my energy is just low to day, or like my energy is off, so it's just kind of recalibrating your energy.

32:49 And then the final treasure is your shen, which is basically your connection to your intuition. It's the way that you shine and your brilliance. And I think that we sleep on that a little bit, right, We like don't let ourselves have that intuition come through, or we hear something intuitively and we ignore it, and then the more we ignore it, the more it goes away. You know, have you ever had that moment where you're like, I think I should call my mom or you're like I don't want to, I'm not going to do it, Or we think I should call my son whoever it is a close family member, and then you call them and they were going through something. And so those moments of shan are always trying to pop into our minds and they want to be heard. And so when I think about self care, it's so much more than making a night to have a bath or getting yourself on a run or to a yoga class. It's more of this reverence and this pride in being these really beautiful, remarkable creatures.

33:44 Like we have our human bodies and we're so hard on them where we think, oh, I got to lose weight, you know, I need to be stronger, my body is failing me, when really it's just like, wow, I'm here, I'm human, Like, how can I just worship this ex experiences that I'm having right now? Yeah, I love that. I hope that you're enjoying this conversation and realizing the benefits of positivity in your own life. If you are enjoying the show, please be sure to like and subscribe so that you get notified when you EPs drop and head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and leave us a rating and review.

34:29 I should say, like, for a book that you just came up with in the middle of the night and outline in the middle of the night and then wrote it in six weeks, it's so beautifully laid out. It's just so neatly ordered into these little sections and headings and beautiful diagrams. It's like, it's did you feel like it kind of just I though this sounds really weir weird as well, It just came through you, like you know, it just feels like it was inspired for by something greater. And that's my disrespect to you because you wrote it and it's all based on your own life experience and your knowledge, but the fact that you were able to just like kind of document all of that in such a short space of time. I am really impressed by Thank you. Yeah, I one hundred percent believe that it was flowing from, you know, a source outside of me, and it came so easily that it was actually a little disturbing because I'm used to like, I'm like a person who's like, let's grind, you know, Like I worked in tech for so long, and I was working these crazy hours for most of my career, where I'd be in the office by eight and I'd sometimes be there till ten or eleven with my colleagues, you know, we'd be working really late at night. Especially when I worked in venture capital.

35:41 It was always on it was always on culture. And now I felt like I had to retrain myself to realize that suffering doesn't equate to success. And so the book just came so easily that when I sent it to my editor, I was a little bit like, I love this book, but is it really bad? It could possibly be really bad because it felt like too easy or something. And then my editor read it, and I was nervously waiting for her to reply back, and then she wrote back, this is one of the best manuscripts I've ever read from a first time author. I felt this huge sense of relief, and it was like this lesson that the harder you suffer for your work doesn't mean that you're going to be more successful. It's actually the opposite. The more you can have ease and joy and happiness around it. I mean, I was having a great time when I was writing. I was like, this is so much fun. I couldn't wait to sit down and write it. And I actually think, you know, that is accessible to all of us. Like do you ever have that experience with the work that you do where you're like, hey, like I don't know how I know this, but like I got to have this person on my podcast, or like I know what I'm going to talk about.

36:46 You're like, oh, I know, I'm going to do this this segment on the different types of therapy out there, you know, and like you just that information. You could spend five hours trying to think about your next podcast topic, or it could just flow through you. I don't know what do you think? Yeah? No, I totally agree. And when you said at the beginning, do you ever feel like it's like you're just driving with the break on? Like I I when I feel like that, I know, I just need to take a break and step back, because it's in it's when I give myself the space. And that's something. That I have had to really am constantly working on dismantling is that idea that you just said, like that it's got to be hard or you've got to if you're not doing anything, you're just being lazy and unproductive.

37:30 Because I find I can be the most inspired and productive and get more done when I give myself a break, when I'm not just working hard all the time. But there's a lot of. Conditioning there that that you've got to be working hard all the time if you want any kind of success. There's so much conditioning around that. And you know, you hear that narrative in like self help books even and the especially business books, where you know they show these role models of people who were just like you know, ignore or with their family, you know, worked all the time. I think about Steve Jobs. People really revere him, and he wasn't the nicest person. He was actually like quite mean to his family and quite mean to his employees.

38:13 And so that was another thing I wanted to do in the book was to showcase people who have found a lot of success in their careers, but they've done it in their own way, through their own path, and done it without having to torture themselves in the process, and all of that is accessible to us. And that was my whole thing. You know. I published this book with Portfolio, which is an imprint of Penguin Random House and they do business books. They write books for ambitious people. And originally my agent was like, do we put this book with the spirituality section, you know, do we try to go with a publisher who does spiritual New Age books or do we do it with a business publisher. And I felt really strongly, let's go business because I want people to know that all of these like spiritual woo wu concepts, these will unequivocally help their career. And I was like, we have to go business. We have to go business.

39:05 Yeah, I'm glad that you went business. Well, you talk about cleansing and protecting your energy and kind of amplifying your energy. Can we talk about that because I think that's really important and really helpful for just everybody. Yeah, definitely. The first thing I'll say is that we all have energy around us, and think about how sometimes you can feel another person's energy where You can walk in and see a friend and before they even say anything, you feel if they're happy or not, or you feel if they're having a hard time. They're like, oh, I know exactly what's going to happen here. Or maybe you walk into a meeting with some colleagues and without even seeing their faces, you know, you walk into the room and you're like, Okay, I know what I'm in for today.

39:51 You know, it's really palpable, and you know, we give it off all the time, like we can't see energy, but we can feel it. And I think it's why we say things very colloquially in our language like oh, she's got such a great vibe right, or like you have to go visit this place, Like the energy is just so good and so we may not be able to consciously identify it, but we really feel it in the same way that like, you know, we smell something in the air. And so that's what I want to say, is like, first trust, trust that you can feel the energy around you, and so knowing that years exist and it's there, it's so powerful. And essentially every ancient tradition there was some sort of framework for understanding the energy body and in you know, traditional Hindu tradition, it's the chakras, where we have these seven chakras that are run along the spinal column that we can't see, but they all impact different parts of us. So if you go to yoga, you've probably heard about the shark, the heart chakra, and the crown chakra, and those you know connect heart chakra connects to you know, you're feeling connection with others. The crown chakra connects to you know, your downloads and your intuition, and so really everyone's been talking about energy since the beginning of humankind, except for us in this medical western world that we live in. It's like, hey, you go the doctor and they're just like okay, like what's wrong with you? But then you go the acupuncturist and she really feels for your energy and she might say, okay, you have a blockage here. So I'm a huge believer in energy, and this is just like a little bit

41:22 of an aside. I tried to get pregnant for many, many years and went to all the best doctors in New York and did lots and lots of fertility treatments, and everyone was like, I don't know why you can't get pregnant, like you have lots of eggs, your husband's sperm is fine. This is very weird, but like, just do IVF. They didn't ask too many questions. They're like, we don't really we did the test, we don't know. Just go straight into IVF. And so I did three rounds of IVF. It wasn't successful until I started working in my energy and I went religiously to my acupuncturist and she really worked on unblocking a lot of channels. And once we did that for like three months, I got pregnant. So it was kind of amazing. And so I really am someone who was skeptical at first, but I really feel it in my own life. And so we all have these energy bodies that we need to take care of, and just like the physical body, we have to take care of it. We have to cleanse it in the same way that we take a shower, because the energy actually picks up everything around us. So if you've ever gone to see, you know, a really sad movie, it's hard to shake it off, or you're with a friend who is just really down in the dumps, and then afterwards you feel it on you for a really long time think about how we accumulate that all the time around us, especially if we live in cities where you're constantly in other people's energy, and so every once in a while you need to just kind of squeeze and rinse it all out, like the same way that you're squeezing a sponge, and then get back to

42:55 your own energy again so that your own energy can shine. And Cass, I feel like you are a really empathetic person, especially with your libra rising, where you're like, I can fit in anywhere. And part of that is also your energy is sort of harmonizing with theirs, with other people's energy, and that can actually be a lot right because paths empaths are people who have a very kind of deep energetic connection with other people. They especially absorb other people's energy, and so to get back to your own you just need to cleanse it out. And for the way I think about that is you need to move your body, You need to rest, like which is sleep where you know, just taking some downtime, and then you need to be in nature. And because nature is like a very you know, nature cleanses our oxygen and so it cleanses our energy.

43:43 Bodies too, So that's the cleansing portion of it. The second piece is protecting your energy. So it's kind of just putting up a boundary around the type of energy you don't want to be around. And I think we all know this, Like boundaries have been so hot in psychology recently, just the idea of like saying no right, and so it's the same thing. You put a boundary around you, don't one around you. And then finally, the last step is to amplify, and that is when you get back to that core energy of yours and you do that by doing the things that you love. And it could be like, you know, going to a yeog class, talking to it, you know, a friend that really lights you up, doing work that feels really good. But it's all these things that get us back to who we are.

44:25 That amplifier energy, you know, it makes your energy more, you like, allows your energy to shine. And so I think about my energy a lot because I used to be someone who really didn't protect my energy. I gave it away a lot, especially my job when I worked in venture capital, I had to relate to a lot of founders that we had invested in and just help them with whatever, and so I felt like I was getting pulled into whatever drama they were experiencing and letting myself just sit in their energy. And then now, especially as a coach too, I really create a strong and ergetic boundary where I'm like, Okay, I'm here for you. That's your stuff and this is my stuff, and I think that actually makes it better. Oh, I'm sure you must feel that all the time.

45:10 Yeah. Look, that's interesting that you say that, because it took me a really long time to realize that some of what I was feeling was not mine, some of what I was carrying or if I was just in an off mood. Oh I didn't. And you know, we all have good days, bad days, you know, down days. We all have days we feel a bit more anxious or worried or whatever. But it actually there was a point where and it was probably through doing what I do with meditation and just checking in with myself and my own energy, that I actually realized, Oh wait a second, I actually I am pretty sure that this is not my stuff. I think I'm actually kind of absorbing this and I had to get much more diligent. And it's a good reminder because I've probably been forgetting to do that, and reading your book, I was like, oh, yeah, that is really important.

45:57 I love that phrase that you use, which is, oh, that's not my you know, like I love that You're like, oh, yeah, this isn't mine. I'm just gonna leave this, you know, leave this baggage behind. It's true most of the time it's actually not ours. But we carried around and we just we just think, oh, I'm just obviously having a shitty day or whatever. But maybe it's somebody else's day. Just it's nice to think about that way, even if just psychologically it helps you to kind of shake it off and move on from it, you know, like whatever. I completely agree. Yeah, even imagining it as like someone else's suitcase that you've been carrying like lugging on your back and you're like, oh, I'll just yeah, put this down. I can put this down. No, I love it.

46:41 And I think that when you're talking about like amplifying your energy, like even that is just such great life advice. I mean, in the in the woo woo sort of world, we talk about oh, raising your vibration, but it is really it's just filling filling your life with more opportunities for joy. Isn't it Like it's just really putting your intention and your energy and you effitt into the things that really fill you up, because is enough that kind of can drain us and drag us down. So it's being really conscious about that and deliberately kind of amplifying your energy. Yeah, and I love that we kind of talk about it without knowing it. You know when someone says, you know, do what lights you up right? Or they say, oh, she has such a bright smile, It's like those are energetic things and we need them. Like we're here to express our energenious We're here to express our talents. And my goal and all the work I do across the board is if everyone can connect with their energenius and be at their greatest potential, I think the world would be a really amazing place. You know, everyone is so gifted.

47:52 It's like that is something that I know to be true after all these years of working with different founders. Some of them come from very impressive backgrounds, but actually a lot of them don't. But it's just finding that spark of energenius. You know. It's doing those things that you do really well, but not just that it's also doing them in the style that is unique in all your own because you know, there's like plenty of ways for someone to, let's say, be a writer, but every person is going to bring their own flavor to it. There are a lot of different podcasts out there, but the people who listen to this one, there's a resonance, right, There's something about you and your style that they really are attracted to. And so the more you can actually be true to your energenius, the more people can find and connect with you.

48:39 I think that is actually a really great place to end this conversation, because I know I could talk to you, Liz, all day long, and I did mean to ask you, because it's the premise of the whole book is about connecting to your ergenius. I think what you were sharing is you have a chaptical becoming brilliant, but what you specify that you don't really talking about becoming brilliant because we are already brilliant. It is about remembering your unique brilliance. I guess living your life as much as possible and doing your work as much as possible from. That place, Yes, everyone is so talented, it's crazy, like even just think about the people in your lives, Like if you kind of do a quick scan around your family members, your partner, and you can see so clearly how they're just genius at something right. It could be like making food, where it could be like at their job.

49:35 It could be in the way that they are able to connect and talk to people. There's something that we spot in other people, and I think that the sad part is it's like we're really not good at spotting it in yourselves. And that's why in the book, I love tools like personality assessments, astrology, numerology, all these different ways to give us language to explore who we are. And so maybe I'll say, if you can take this and try to articulate what your energenius is, and you know, if you haven't, take the Meyers Briggs tape Indicator personality test doesn't take very long. It'll give you some language, have your astrology chart read, let someone else give you some verbage for how amazing you are, and then you can start to learn and understand it yourself, because it's a treasure.

50:24 Liz, congratulations on the book. Thank you so much for your time today. It has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much, Cass. Liz Trans book The Karma of Success is available right now now. If you're in Australia, you can right now get the kindle or audible version of the book. If you're in the UK or US, the paper version is out right now. Australia you will have to wait a couple more months to get the paper version of. The Karma of Success. Meanwhile, be sure to follow Liz on socials. Her Instagram account is Hey Liz Trans or her coaching company is Reset NYC. I'll put the links to both of those in my show notes. Her website is Liz Hyphentran dot com.

51:11 As always, please do come and connect with me. Subscribe to my email list, and I will let you know every time a new podcast episode is released. Castone dot com is where you can do that. Follow me on Instagram, Cast done underscore XO, and the same on TikTok. If you enjoy the show, press at plus button so that you don't miss an episode, give us a rating or a review, and I cannot wait to catch you on the next episode of Crappy to Happy