My boss at the time basically told me if I work myself to death, I'm going to get all these promotions and bonuses and, you know, work myself to the bone which I did for a year. And nothing came together and I actually started resenting this job.

Hey, welcome to Lessons From a Quitter. Where we believe that it is never too late to start over, no matter how much time or energy you spent getting to where you are, if ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams.

Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Lessons From a Quitter. I am so excited that you are here. I have another guest on the episode. I know that these interviews are rarer and rarer on this podcast and I love when I have someone on to talk to, so I'm not just talking to myself in a closet, I had so much fun taping this interview with my guest today, Jordan Ramsey. I think his story is so inspirational and so powerful in a way that I haven't been able to feature before. So I'm so glad I came across this story night will tell you the interesting way that I did. So Jordan's wife, Shannon, is a student of mine. She is in my six-month program. And so she joined my program because she was thinking about a career change. And Jordan happened to listen in on my goal setting workshop, which is what she was first enrolled in, in January 2020 in the impossible goal workshop. And Shannon reached out to me a couple of months ago and said like, you know, we were talking about her progress and then choosing, but my husband, you should hear what he's done since he started listening to the podcast and he listened to this impossible goal workshop and he started setting these impossible goals and it blew me away and I wanted him to come on and I will let him go through, you know, what he's done, but the reason I wanted him and we'll talk about this as we go on, I think it's just such an important journey and example for you guys to listen to is that a lot of times it's easier to feature people who are, you know, a hundred steps ahead who have kind of did that transition years ago, figured it out, became quote unquote, successful at their new thing, whatever that means made a lot of money or whatnot. It's an easier story to tell. And usually those are the people that are kind of advertising their stories so it's easier for me to find them. And I'm always looking for people who are in kind of the thick of it and are like in the journey they're doing it. You know, like they're in the process. When Shannon reached out, she was telling me how in the last month, it's not as though he's quit his job and gone on to another job. And you know, is making oodles of money. He completely shifted the way he was thinking about his job. He ended up getting a promotion in his job, which is amazing. And we'll talk about, but the real story is he really started leaning into these things that he'd been so afraid to pursue because he was so scared of failing and what other people were going to say. And in the last year and a half, he's published two books. He is building a board game with his childhood friends. He has a podcast about video games. I mean, doing all of these passion projects that he loves, he's like allowing himself to fully show up, to fully take up space, to put it out in the world and the amount of joy that that is bringing him in that one, how it's changed again, how he shows up at work and how it's changed his life is just so amazing for me to see. It's such a good example. And I really want people to take away like it doesn't you don't have to wait to until you can figure it all out and start making a ton of money on some business that you start. You get to start figuring out what it is you want to pursue, what peaks your interest, what you're curious about, and like let yourself have hobbies again. Let yourself do things that you love. Let yourself show up fully. And I think that there is no better example than Jordan and his journey. So I will stop rambling so you can hear more from him. And without further ado here is Jordan Ramsey. Hi Jordan. Thank you so much for joining me here today.

Hello. So happy to be here. It's very exciting.

So exciting for me. I can't wait to share your story. It has been so rewarding for me to learn about, and so I'm sure it's going to inspire and help so many people. So since I know you listen to the podcast, you know, kind of the deal, why don't you start out by telling us what you do for a living and how you came across, maybe the podcast, or, you know, all things Lessons From a Quitter.

So about two years ago, I left my teaching position and I became a technical editor. I sold out and went corporate and it was a big change for me. And I became an actual technical editor instead of an English teacher.

And what does a technical editor mean?

It is quite a boring job overall. We review technical documents, meeting notes, reports, proposals, and we have our own editing department within our consulting company. And we basically review all those documents, make sure they’re client ready and get them ready for everyone to see them so our consultants don't get embarrassed by having typos or mistakes in their documents or deliverables.

But this is like, I mean, I'm just going to pause you there because I didn't even know this, but like that's already one, you know, quitter journey like you left teaching. And I think it's a good thing to just highlight. Maybe you can tell us, because I think so many people, we get stuck in one way of doing something. And I think a lot of times we don't realize how our skills or our resume can be uses to do lots of other things. So what were you teaching and how did you figure out that you can transfer all that to another career?

Sure. I will bring you back about 20 years to when I was in college. Uh, and I started out actually studying journalism and chemical engineering. I wanted to write for scientific journals, but I had some fear about actually talking to people. And so I could not be a reporter for the life of me. So I switched all my majors over to English, to the chagrin of my parents who did not enjoy that. And I actually studied you know literature, creative writing and all that stuff and got two degrees, one in English literature, and one in creative writing. With that I didn't think there was anything I could do with that degree. I thought I wasted, you know, a hundred thousand dollars on a degree that is absolutely worthless. I thought the only thing I could do was teach. So fresh out of college I got a teaching job overseas in Japan, like many of us college kids do, we go teach abroad, ESL and all that stuff.

That's a cool gig.

Oh, it was, it was spectacular. Made lots of friends. Job was very simple. You know, you're in Japan so there's lots of karaoke and beer flowing. However, I came back to America and was kind of stuck. I was teaching at technical colleges, um, not really enjoying myself because I wasn't teaching literature and I wasn't teaching creative writing. I was teaching basic grammar, uh, to high school students who needed some refreshers, uh, before they entered, you know, their business writing classes or before they entered you know their dental school program. So moving forward to my career, I actually taught, um, at a university when I was getting my master's degree, which was also a big leap because I wanted to teach at the like college level instead of like for technical colleges and lower like community colleges. I want to teach literature, I wanna teach creative writing. And when I graduated with my master's degree in English professional writing I thought there was going to be a lot I can do with that. So my wife and I packed up and we threw a dart at the map and we moved from Southern Illinois to Portland, Maine. And we came here without jobs without a lot of money. Uh, we had just been married the previous month and we were just on a wing and a prayer trying to find something. And we actually ended up working at a grocery store for two years. So it was huge change cause like we, we applied for a position at this grocery store cause nobody else wanted our English degrees. My wife has a PhD and no, and nobody wanted us.

I mean, I want to stop you right there because I have talked about this so much before. And I just love that you're an example of this, that you guys did this because you know, obviously all I talk about is mindset, but really that's what stops most of us. And one of the examples I always give is like, you could quit and go work at a grocery store, at a Starbucks, right? But like most of us don't think that's a possibility because of the thoughts around it. Right? Because of maybe feeling embarrassment or shame or what are people gonna think? And I've had other people on the podcast like Phil Black, who was working at Goldman Sachs, he has like an MBA from Harvard and he quit and he became a personal trainer. Right he went to his local gym and got like an hourly job because he was so miserable and he wanted to move to San Diego kind of same similar thing. So I actually, it's so funny now that I'm in this side of it and I've been doing this work, I get so proud and geeked out over people that do something like this because I think what you end up proving to yourself is that, oh, it's not as bad as I thought it was. Right. Like I can do this, I'll figure it out. You know, it's all of these shoulds. I should be further along. I should have a more prestigious career, but you know, if I want to move to this new city, am I willing to just do what it takes until I figure it out? So I love that.

It is a big ego check. Uh, you have to really put your ego aside. And instead of me saying, I have a master's degree, I'm better than this. I can't do this. I had to reframe my thinking saying, hey, this is only going to be temporary. I'm going to make a lot of great friends, which we did. We have a great community of friends now because of this job. And I never brought any work home from work which left me a lot of free time in my evenings and afternoons. I didn't have stress. Like when I was teaching, you know, grading for four or five hours a night or, you know, having those finals due in two days after the end of the semester.

And I think this is the thing is I think one of the most important things you can do as an adult is have an ego death is do something that will force you to deal with all of the quote unquote shame and you know, the idea of your identity and who you are and how people view you. Because I will say the number one thing that I deal with with my clients is this fear of what other people think. And it is so freeing to do that. I mean, I feel like I had the same thing. I'm going to do an episode about this actually like next week, it's probably going to come out. But when I left to be a stay-at-home mom and to figure out what I was going to do. In my circle, that was very much judged. Like it was very much talked about in the legal profession, about women who just like quit to go stay at home. And it was very looked down upon. And I remember when I was at Berkeley in law school, there was a, a panel that I was sitting in on of women in the law. And I distinctly remember one of the women said like, if you're planning on not working, once you have kids, you don't deserve to be in this school. Like, yeah. And I remember, I mean, just at that, I had never planned on being a stay at home moms, but I just remember the gut punch it. Like it was so mind blowing to me, but that's for another episode, I'm just saying like, that was my ego death. When I quit was I had to really come face to face with all of these thoughts. These made up rules that I had in my head about what it meant to be a successful lawyer. And I can't believe I just walked away and all of this stuff. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me because once I was forced to deal with what everybody thought about me leaving the law for that, it made it easier to do everything else. Right. And I, and I'm assuming for you, it's like once you take that job and you decide like, okay, I have to put aside my ego and my identity as this professor or teacher master's degree, PhD, like you and your wife, and decided that I'm going to work in a grocery store. It's amazing how liberating that can be.

Yes, it was absolutely liberating. There's a lot of people that will, should you to death. Should you be working in a grocery store? You should be doing this. You shouldn't be doing that. But if you can kind of set those other people aside and like engage in your community that you actually want to be a part of. Then I feel working at a grocery store, served as purpose. I left before I was resentful at it. And I absolutely loved my time there.

I love that. Okay. So then you work at the grocery store and then what happens?

I applied for this proofreader position for just this consulting company and I did not get the job. However, they had somebody in mind that they wanted. I found this out later and this person did not work out. So a year later almost to the day they call me back and say, Hey, would you like to interview for this position again? I said, yes, absolutely. I applied for it. And I got it. So I became a kind of staff level proofreader for this consulting company. And this was a completely different frame of mind that I had to put myself in because I was not ready for corporate culture. Corporate culture is vastly different from higher education and it is completely different from a grocery store.

Very true.

So my boss at the time basically told me if I work myself to death, I'm going to get all these promotions and bonuses and, you know, work myself to the bone which I did for a year. And none of that coalesced, nothing came together. So I was very disappointed after that first year. And I actually started resenting this job. I was very unhappy in it. And that is when my wife Shannon actually started listening to your podcast. Uh, she was unfulfilled in her position that she was in and she found your podcasts through some manner. I'm not sure how, uh, but divine intervention, serendipity, you know, something happened. And we started listening to your podcast. Admittedly, I didn't really listen too carefully when she first started listening. She was in the mode for career change. I was just being unhappy at my job. I was like, this is what I have to do. If I'm going to make good money, I just have to be unhappy in my position. And she started listening to your podcast more and more and more. And then in January, when I was still unhappy in my job, this is January of 2020 my wife actually attended your impossible goals setting workshop which she would listen to. And I would kind of eavesdrop on. So I apologize. I did not actually pay you for this one.

Listen, let's just, I think you've said this to me before too. And I'm like, I consider households as one. It's totally fine for me. I love that. You're not the first person. And I actually, one of the things I love is the ripple effect of this work. I had my husband on a podcast and really it was him getting into mindset work and personal development that got me into it. And I've had numerous people now tell me that, like they started listening and then their spouse like started listening. So I love that you didn't even have to use just the goal setting workshop. Then you're taking the goal setting workshop together. That's like the beauty of this work is once you learn something, the fact that you can really share it with the people around you and it starts changing other people's mindsets. I've had so many people tell me they use this work with their children now and like try to change the thoughts. And it's been, you know, helping their kids make it through school. So it's all amazing. I'm so glad you did.

But yeah, it made me realize that I was living with so much fear in my life. This was before I learned about, you know, life is 50-50, you know, sometimes it sucks sometimes it's great. It's always going to be a mixture and that's fine. But I was letting my fear control me from stopping me from doing a lot of things that I had wanted to do. I sat down one night, this was a crazy story. We were in Canada, living in a cabin in the woods, listening to your podcasts. And I was like, all right, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to make my impossible goals. So I was unhappy at my job. I was like, what do I have to do to get out of this job? And then I decided, I need to make, you know, about $50,000 a year to get out of this job. And I was trying to think, what can I do instead? Oh, I could freelance. I can go into this. I could go back to teaching. I could do all the jobs I'm supposed to do, but I decided, well, I have a lot of hobbies and I enjoy doing those things way more than work. So why not try to make $50,000 off my hobbies this year? And that was my impossible goal. If I could make $50,000 off my hobbies, then I could quit my job and I could go on to, you know, just explore my creativity and explore the things that I love to do.

I love that. I’m going to pause you really quickly for people who may just be tuning in or haven't listened in a long time to the podcast. I did a goal setting workshop. And when Jordan's talking about with this impossible goal is like, the idea is to pick a goal that you know is impossible, right? That your brain thinks is impossible because the point of any goal is not to get to that destination necessarily, but to become the person on that journey, right? To go through that journey and push yourself to do things and grow and change. And in that process, you will realize that goal at some point, right? Hopefully in a year, two years, three years, five years, it doesn't matter. It's just like, who do I have to be to push past this fear of failure? Because I think usually the way that we approach goals is let me pick something that I'm certain I can hit and then I hate my way to it, right. Dread every single day, but just want to get to this place. Cause once I get there, it's going to be great. And then we get there and it's not that great. So it's kind of flipping goal setting on its head and picking something that terrifies you and excites you at the same time and is really pushing you out of your comfort zone, knowing that like, whether you hit that or not is not the point, right? Like for you I think obviously at some point you'd love to hit the $50,000 to leave with your, on your hobbies. But the point is like, this is, this goal pushes you to get out there and do your hobbies, like do things that you've been stopping yourself from doing, because you're afraid of failing or whatnot. Okay. So you have this goal of making money off of your hobbies, which I love. Okay, so then what do you do?

Well, also, one thing I'd like to add to that is I accepted that if I didn't meet this goal, I was not going to let that be the end of me. Accepting that fear of failure as a real possibility, like getting over the fear. You know, if I fail, I can do something else.

Exactly. I mean, that's the point of it is that I think really why I stress impossible goals and why I do on myself is that, of course you're going to fail. Of course, you're going to keep failing at it like this absurd idea that we're just going to pick something and then never have any problems or obstacles. And like the first obstacle we have, we give up because it's like, oh, I'm not meant for this. Or I'm not good enough. It's like, no, it's because it's something new. It's something you've never done before. Of course you are, you're figuring it out. And so I think when you start putting something where your brain is like, oh my God, this is impossible. We're never going to make this money. It's like, of course it's impossible. Of course we're going to fail. That's the point. And we're going to learn and keep pivoting. And it doesn't mean anything about us. Okay. So I love that you had that mindset.

So tracking back to about six months before this, I actually started a podcast on my own. It's called Wow, What the Bell. It is a video game podcast, about two video games. We, I had such imposter syndrome for the first six months of doing that. I didn't think anybody was listening to me. Like I was scared every time I did it. And I was just talking to my co-host every week, we'd have a conversation about our two games and I felt like such a fraud because there's all these other podcasters out here that I was comparing myself to, and it's like, yeah, they're doing amazing things. I have a little rinky-dink podcast that is getting 30, 35 listens a week. Why am I doing this? And then in December my cohost quit. Uh, so that was a big shock to me. And I was on the verge of just shutting the whole thing down, letting it go. After listening to the impossible goals podcast, I decided, no, we're going to find new co-hosts, we're going to keep this going. We're just going to have fun with it. And you know, we're going to you know just continue on and do what we do. Our podcast is not professional. We swear a lot and we just have a good time. We decided that we were just going to continue on with this and just make content for people to enjoy.

I love it. Yeah. Just something that's fun for you too. You know, like when you take the pressure off of it.

The numbers do not matter. And because of this, you know, over the past six months, we've actually seen our numbers steadily increase, increase, increase, increase. Um, so it's been great. I also had, uh, two novels that I had written, but I had been so scared to release them. I had sought out publishers, but the publishing process to get like the traditional publishing process takes forever. It can take a year. I didn't hear back from one publisher for two years and just getting a form letter saying, Hey, thank you for submitting your book. It's not quite what we're looking for. Good luck. And that took two years waiting for that letter. So I decided, I ha I've had these books sitting on my shelf for too long. I'm just going to self-publish them. And I'm going to put them out into the world. And if people want to read them, they can, if people don't want to read them, that's fine too. I am not scared about my numbers anymore. So I'm just going to do it.

So you published both of them?

I published two books. I published one like almost right after January and I published one mid-February. The first comment that I received on my very first book was from a family member who said, I really hated the way that you punked away the first sentence of your book. I was like, thank you so much. I really appreciate the feedback.

I love it. I love it. They put that on a public place, like a comment on like, or like to you personally?

No they directed that to me personally via some chat.

Okay. Well that's nice.

Yeah, at least there wasn't a comment on like Amazon, the punctuates there's way too many commas, but I got, you know, a lot of feedback from mostly family members and friends saying, Hey, I found a typo on this page. Hey, I found a type on this page. And I was just like, I don't care. Um, if you find a typo, that's not a big deal. I just want people to enjoy my stories. Um, I did not have an editor for these books. I did not have you know any outside help with these books. I said, if they have typos, if they're messed up in some way, it's fine. Cause the story is still there. And that's the most important thing. So I released my books, made a very meager amount of money. And then this past six months have been just like a rocket ship shooting up. It's just been so fast and so quick. And there's been so much work involved. I posted on Facebook the other day that one of the benefits of this whole pandemic was that we, a lot of us actually reconnected with old friends. There was a lot of bad stuff that happened over the past year, but it allowed me to actually reconnect with one of my friends that I had before Kindergarten. I was best man at his wedding. He was best man at my wedding, but we hadn't really talked in a couple years. And when people are sitting around bored, they want to talk to people and Zoom became a thing so we started Zooming with each other and we started talking and we had an idea to actually launch a board game. We had no idea what we wanted to do. We were just like, let's just do it. We had created a board game in high school together, like a very crummy board game uh but we had so much fun doing it. We were like, why don't we just do that again? And if we get a publish, if we like somebody puts it out into the world, that's great. If we don't, then we just have this for ourselves. It'd be our special thing that we can have. So we started having regular meetings. We started talking all the time and you know, just, and it was so nice to reconnect with him. And we just worked and worked and worked since January I say I've spent like 300 to 400 hours on this thing. Now we worked on it so much that now we have a kind of a small team together. We have friends that are illustrators. We have friends that are cinematographers, all benefits of the grocery store. You know, people are very interesting that work there, everybody's creative and everybody has their own thing. All these friends came together and everybody got behind this project and we are actually about to launch like our Kickstarter in August.

Amazing!

So it's very…

I just wanted to like pause because I think like what people are not really understanding is like in such a short period of time and like in a year and a half, it's been a year and a half since January, you've published two books, you’ve built a board game, you know, you're doing this podcast. And the reason I wanted you on the show and I told you this is because the people I tend to interview are people that have been on this journey for a really long time. They quit a long time ago and it's really easy to look back and gloss over certain parts. And then it looks like the pieces all kind of fit. And then they're massive successes and that's all great and wonderful. And I have no doubt that that's what your future is going to entail because this is the process, right. And this is what I want people to understand is even when you don't know how the money is going to come, or you don't know how you're going to turn this in, like part of why I do this is because I just want people to like, reconnect with what they like doing. Like, just figure out what it is that you want to do in this world and do it right? If that's writing a book, then write a book so you can prove to yourself that you can write a book and publish it right. Or, you know what you're saying right now? Like I think people don't realize how amazing the process of building a board game in the way you just talked about like reconnecting with people, figuring out every step, you know, I'm sure you have no idea how to, how this goes. Like everyone who comes to me is like, but I don't know how to build a board game. Of course you don't know how, you've never done it. That's not the reason not to do it. Right. That's a reason to figure it out. And what you learn in that process, like what you learned, I didn't even know you'd need a cinematographer for a board game. I had no idea that that was even part of it. Right. But like, as you do these things, you figure out the next step and the next step, and that’s how you build confidence in yourself. Right. That's how you reconnect with yourself. So many people tell me they don't know what they want to do. And I'm like, yeah, because you don't know yourself anymore. And it's in this process like for you, who knows what the next five years or ten years is going to hold. And that I find that like now to be one of the most exciting parts of life, but it's like with each thing you do, you will figure out like, oh, I actually like working with these team. I like doing this with my friends. I like the game aspect or I like publishing or whatever the thing becomes, but how would you know it until you start doing it?

Right. And just kind of harping back to like, you know what you said, that I taught myself everything, how to do everything about this. I researched and researched and researched. And I learned how to do illustrations. You know, I didn't even know how to do Instagram posts. I was asking my wife how to make an Instagram post several months ago. And you know, she was teaching me how to do that. You know, I didn't know how to do any of this stuff. It just seemed overwhelming at the start. But I was so excited to get going on it that I just learned this stuff,

The beauty of the moment that we are living in. And yes, there's terrible things about the internet. But one of the most amazing things is like, literally the information is there. And that's why I harp like so much, I'm a broken record on mindset because it's not that you need more information. That information is out there. Like, you know, anything you want to build, somebody has done, like, none of us are trying to go to the moon here. Right? We all have, we're not trying to be Jeff Bezos. We're trying to like do various simple thing is write a book or, you know, build a business or become a speaker or whatever the thing is, that's in your heart that you want to do. And that information somebody has done it's out there. You can Google it. There's a million YouTube videos. And when we start having the thoughts of like, I don't know how to do any of this and it gets overwhelming, we shut down and then we don't do anything. But if you can really get to this place of like, I just have to take the step by step. Like I can learn every single part of this. And the only way for me to know if it's going to become something if I'm going to like it even, if I want to continue it is by me giving myself an opportunity to do it.

Right. My wife and I, we talk all the time about people that are resourceful and then people that are resource-less. And I know a lot of people that are resource-less because I get asked all these questions that a very simple Google search will
like

Oh my God, you don't even know. I'm telling you. I get people where it's like, things are on my website and they'll email me and ask me about it. And I'm like, it would have taken you like five minutes to figure this out without asking me like, that is a real skill to kind of rely on yourself a little bit to figure things out.

Yeah when I was teaching myself how to do Canva and there are like, you said, many tutorials, I did not look at it and say, this is too complicated I'm giving up. I had a goal in mind the entire time and I was going to do my best to accomplish it. It's kind of like the hardest thing for me is actually starting something because it seems so overwhelming when you start, like, when I was younger and a bit more fit than I am now I would you know go running. But the hardest part was just getting off the couch and actually getting up and going running once I was doing it, it was fine.

Yeah, body in motion stays in motion, right? Like getting the initial push to start something is always the hardest.

Right. Starting it is the fear that was holding me back. At least I don't want to speak for other people, but fear of not succeeding for so long.

So how's that changed for you? You know, you've now put out these books, right. And it's not as though it's been like this huge commercial success for you. And we talked about this actually, me and you before, where, you know, I think sometimes people look at it like, oh, I put it out and nothing happened. But also it's because like, you don't know how to market it yet. You don't know how to draw attention to it. Like a lot of times, yeah it's not put something out in the world, like build it and they will come. No, like there's a lot more that goes into that. And so maybe, you know, you have to work on that part. And I think a lot of times we take things as failures that aren't actually failures. It's just like, you know, we didn't do part of it or we didn't know how to do it, but how has your mindset changed? You know, with respect to the fear of failing.

Fear of failure is still a real thing, but it doesn't hold me back anymore. That is where the push to keep going. That even if I fail, I can create a million contingency plans. Like if, if our Kickstarter fails, it's not the end of the world. You know, me and my friend talked, we still have a game for ourselves that we can play and be, it will be worth a million dollars as a collector's item someday. We can seek out other avenues, you know, we can do this, we can do that. There are other options if something fails and it shouldn't hold you back. I had a really difficult time in my twenties, you know, with mental health, uh, with, uh, like I'll be completely honest I had an addiction to alcohol and it was a very hard time for me, but getting over that was the hardest thing I ever had to do. And it was fearful every time that I tried to quit every time I tried to get myself better. And knowing that, that I have done the hardest thing that I'm going to do, presumably. So why should I be afraid if my board game fails or people don't like my podcast or my family members berate my book. Why should I care about that so deeply? And you know, I think a lot of people have a mindset that if a thousand people love them, but one person hates them they're going to focus in on that one person and say I'm the worst because this one person doesn't like me. 999 other people still adore you and think you're great.

Yeah. What a wonderful perspective shift. And I think like, you know, I obviously like, I'm sorry that you had to go through that. And I think so many people that have gone through really difficult things, it is the shift in mindset that they need, or that will help them later on realize like I've gone through so much that this is nothing. Cause it's for so many of us when we haven't had those struggles, but really, you know, somebody not liking you is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. And yet it completely paralyzes us. It completely stops us in our tracks. If we've always been liked, if we've always done the right thing, if everybody always has agreed with what we've done. Um, like I was saying earlier, like what I found the ego death for me and that liberation came from dealing with the quote unquote shame that I, you know, now I realize I didn't need to feel any shame, but I felt so much shame about leaving and all the judgment. And you know, all of the conversations from my family members who were against me quitting, and it's really going through that then realize, oh, it doesn't actually matter if someone doesn't agree with what I'm doing or what I'm saying. And I think so often we're just so afraid to even feel that, that we never do it to realize like, oh, I can make it through that. I can be okay if somebody doesn't, you know, if my family member doesn't like the number of commas that I put in my opening sentence of my book. Um, but I love that you had that to see that, you know, there's so many serious things, there's so many hard things. And I think sometimes really giving yourself that credit for having gone through that, you know, I think sometimes people use those things and beat themselves up more. Of like this I had these issues or whatnot. And they live in that trauma of that time, as opposed to realizing like, look how strong I am, right? Like, look how amazing I am that I was able to kick an addiction that unfortunately, a lot of people can't like, look how much strength I have. I clearly can rely on myself. I clearly can, you know, have my own back to do other things that I want to do in my life.

Right. And I know that I cannot change the past. I have complete control of my future. Like I can make choices to make it better or worse, but I can't change the past. And you said, I believe on another podcast that, you know, whatever happens is either going to be the outcome you want or the lesson you need. And my, you know, for 15 years I was living the lesson that I needed to be the person I am now. I will be honest that I am terrified of launching this Kickstarter, but I'm still going to go through with it. I have promised people that we're going to launch this thing and I'm still going to do it. There's that famous quote about, you know, bravery being acting over fear that you are still scared but you do it anyway.

I love that. I talk about that a lot in our group because everyone wants to be courageous. Everyone thinks courage is such a wonderful, you know, attribute to have. And we all want to be more courageous, but you don't need courage if you don't have fear, right? Like none of us need to build up courage to go shopping or eat ice cream or something like you're, you need courage when you're scared. And you're still forcing yourself to like, be the person that does it. And I think every time we get into like a little bit outside of our comfort zone, we shut down and I really love to remind myself too, like what kind of person do I want to be? Do I want to be the type of person that sees that fear that knows it's going to be there. And I still do it, even though I'm terrified and I'm shaking and I'm certain it's going to fail. What kind of person do I want to be in the future? And I think that is such a driving force for me. And so I love that you think about it that way. That like, even though of course you're scared, you've never done anything. You're putting yourself out there. You're trying something new. And yet, like that's not a reason not to do it, but we're going to make sure that this Kickstarter doesn't fail. So tell us like where people can go if they want to support you and get this game.

Absolutely. Um, so our project is going to launch on Kickstarter August 1st. Let's at kickstarter.com/projects/bountyrush/bounty-rush. I will send you the link.

Yeah. Send me the link and I'll put it in the show notes. So project slash bounty rush slash bounty dash rush. You guys all go check it out and support Jordan. Like this is amazing. I'm so proud of you for doing all this. I mean, I just, when Shannon reached out and told me, she was like, he watched the goal-setting and then he published two books and he does a podcast and he’s creating a board game that is the busiest year.

And more on the horizon. Other other plans as well.

I love that because I think that it gives, you know, I have two camps of people, people that tell me they have too many interests. And then people telling me they have no interests and both are actually the same camp. The people that say they have no interest, just don't know themselves because every human being like the way we are wired is for curiosity is to have interests. We've just told ourselves, like, it's not worth it. It's not going to make any money, whatever, because I was that person. I thought I had no interests. And it wasn't until I started going on this journey where I literally had to start keeping a journal of all of the ideas I had because I had so many things I want to try. And when you start letting those flood gates open and it's like, oh my God, there's just so many things I could do. It's a beautiful thing. And I love it that you're letting yourself do a lot of them, right? Like I think sometimes we think I can, okay, if I'm going to be a writer, then I'm going to be a writer. And I, and I do think there's something for constraint when you're trying to build something. Like if you're trying to build a business, I wouldn't recommend building two businesses at the same time. But I also think in an exploration phase, in a phase where you're letting yourself just see your hobbies in a phase where you're letting yourself just show up the way you want it, be, try it all, you know, like take the cooking class and then also start ceramics and create a board game or do whatever it is that you want to do. And like, let yourself get back in touch with the part of you that wants to play and be a child and be curious and like actually enjoy the life that they have.

And the magic thing about the impossible goal setting workshop is that I don't even care about the money anymore. I'm having such a good time doing what I'm doing. My job is better now.

I was going to say, now tell us about that. Cause Shannon told me about this job aspect too.

Oh, it was crazy. So I sound like such a goalie shill that I'm just like feeding back all the things that you’ve just said.

Yeah, that’s actually why I’ve brought you on. I actually paid him. I paid Jordan to come on and only sing my praises.

Well, so like we had discussed that you can either stay in your job, be unhappy, stay in your job, be happy, or leave your job and try to find something else. Once I started doing these side projects and you know, I I'm an early bird riser. I make time for my, my projects. I get up at 4:00 AM every day, work four to seven on my projects, go to work at eight, work till five, and then spend time with my family after that. But my job became so much easier when I was doing something on the side that I enjoyed. I had other things to look forward to. I looked forward to getting up in the morning and you know, people that say, I can't get up at four in the morning, that is absolutely trainable. You can train your body to do that. If you really want to do something.

Yeah, say it louder for the people in the back. I don't even think you need to wake up in there. Like maybe for me, I've always been a night owl. So like I, when I was starting my photobooth company, I would wait until my son and my husband loves to go to bed early too. So like a lot of times I would wait until they wanted to go to sleep. And like, I would work from nine to 12 on my project at night because I'm actually more awake at night. So it's like, it's not that you don't have to do it. But what you just said is so key is that when you're starting to do other things that you enjoy, it bleeds into the rest of your life. You are a happier person. You show up at work happier, you know, you're fine doing the job that you have to do because you have something else to look forward to. For so many of us we’re so unhappy because everything we're doing, we just keep in this negative feedback loop of like, I hate this job. I'm going to go home and bitch about the job. And then I'm going to get up and do the job again and then go home and bitch about the job. And then it was like, well, of course you're unhappy. You know, like either leave the job, figure out how to like it or do something else that makes you happy in your life.

I swear that the winds of change sweep quickly, uh, because just as everything was lining up on these side projects, when you start focusing like a positive mindset on things, you start seeing positive things come back because you're focusing in on those things you know and you were seeing the, all these great things coming. And then all of a sudden, my boss left work. My senior coworker, who we thought was gonna become the new manager. She left to go work, her dream job, which is spectacular. And all of a sudden I was put in a position of being promoted and being put in to implement all these changes that I want to do at my job to make it better for everybody. And that is, I believe all mindset. Um, I, I just chose that I was going to enjoy my job for what it was and I stayed with it and then boom, everything changed.

Amazing. It is so amazing. I want people to really hear this. And I, and I don't mean this. Listen, I've been in a job where I was extremely miserable and I'm not trying to say like put on a happy face and almost be positive, right? Like nobody's trying to say that. And that's why I'm saying like genuinely having to figure out, like, what can I, not as a pretend positivity, like what can I start doing? And changing my mindset to make me happier in life because all of our energy kind of radiates out. Right? And I think so many people I've heard this over and over again, it's happened to me. There were studies about it. There's a study on luck where they asked people whether they thought they were lucky or not. And they gave them this task of counting the number of photos in a magazine. And in the magazine halfway through, there was a half-page advertisement that said you can stop counting, there's like 49 photos, go, go collect a hundred dollars. Right? Overwhelmingly the people that thought they were lucky saw the advertisement and the people that thought they were unlucky didn't, right. That had nothing to do with luck. That was there for everybody to see. But we have this thing called an attention spotlight. And the more you are racked with like anxiety and stress and worry, your attention spotlight becomes smaller. Like they've tested this. They see so you miss all of the possibilities. You see all of the opportunities you miss how you can maybe step up and provide more value at work or be whatever the thing is. You're missing it. Cause you're so focused on like, I just gotta get through this miserable day so I can get home and like be miserable or whatever. And when you start changing that mindset, not to just like fake positivity, but to really see like the gratitude in your life, find the time to do the things you want to stop stopping yourself from, you know, whatever it is like your hobbies, it's unbelievable the, you know, you can call it whatever you want. You can say the universe, you know, in your favor or whatever. But like things happen to people, right? They have more opportunities. They start seeing it more. They start seeing the possibilities, things change. You know, there's a lot of times, no explanation for it. But I think that when you can get yourself into that mindset and into that frame of mind, you start reaping the benefits of that in your life. Plus you're just happier, like who doesn't want to go through life, being a little bit happier so.

Yeah, you wake up with a smile on your face because you know that you're going to start your day or finish your day with the things that you love. And it's a really great feeling. And I highly encourage everybody: if you're an artist, go do your art. If you're a musician, go do your music. You don't have to sell it. You can just, you know, promote it to people. Like let people see your things.

Yes.

Be an active creator. Don't just create things. You know put your stuff out for the world cause everybody needs to see it.

Oh my God, I love that so much I'm going to like scream, like, because just think about how profound that is like, we have these tools like Instagram and you know, whatever in there. And so many of us are just so terrified to put anything out there and it's like, you know, people don't even have to like it let's say they do, it's your page. I remember thinking about that. Like I was so nervous about what people were going to say. And I'm like, it's my page. They don't have to come on my page. Right. Like I get to put out into the world what I want and see what comes back. And I just love that you say that it's like, don't just do your art and hide it. Like put it out. You have no idea how it can affect somebody, how it will, you know, somebody else will receive it. And just that, I feel like that energy for yourself of letting yourself be seen of taking up space of putting it out there of being proud of the things that you're doing can shift so much within you. And I think we all need like people to do the things that light them up that to just put their art out there, to put their work out there, whether they're making money on it or not. So I, I couldn't agree more.

Yeah. And of course there will be people that are going to say, um, your work is terrible. This board game is so horribly made. Um, but you know, focus on the people that really support you, like look for those positive things and those positive things will come to you.

I agree and I also think sometimes it's overblown. Like, I don't think there's as many trolls as people like, we're not on that big of a level where like, people are just seeking you out to tell you how terrible you are, you know, I was so afraid of how many people, I'm sure people talked behind my back. But the number of people that have told me negative things to my face is really like none, maybe one person, you know, who accidentally DM’d me instead of DM’ing their friend or something. But like, other than that, I'm not getting a lot of bold people. And so I think that sometimes it's overblown to see like, think that people are just gonna be out and telling you how terrible you are and still it's still worth it. I mean, obviously like we're not going to be for everyone. And like, there's, there are tons of people who hate Louis Vuitton and then there's tons of people that hate Walmart. And then there's tons of people that love both. And it's like, you don't have to be for everybody. So. Wonderful, wonderful advice. Thank you so much, Jordan, for being here, because I think you're such a wonderful example of someone that is just doing the work. I'm so glad I won't take any credit for this. I'm glad that something I said maybe helped shift something. Cause I know most people listen to the podcast or even my classes and may not take the same action. So the fact that you took something from means the world to me, but I just love that you're such an example for people that it doesn't always have to end up being a million dollar business and hopefully it will be, but it's like even seeing the beginning of it and seeing that you can enjoy the process and seeing that it's for your own fulfillment and growth and how that can affect your job and your life and your you know home life. And all of that is such an inspiration. I know to so many people that are maybe holding themselves back and maybe after hearing this will decide that it's time to publish that book or to build that game.

Right. When you invited me onto the show, I told my wife, why would she want me on I'm a nobody. Um, but you know, I had a talk with myself, you know, to be like, to be in such like, you know, graces of like your other esteemed guests who have accomplished so much, it made me, you know, realize I am somebody, everybody is somebody. Um, you just have to find out what you want to put out into the world. And you know, people will appreciate the things that you have to produce.

Oh, absolutely. I think you are more than somebody. And I think that, honestly, I know for myself and I am certain that the people that are listening stories like yours are I think more inspiring than, you know, even stories of people that are maybe a hundred steps ahead of us. Just seeing someone as an example, two steps, three steps, five steps. Like, hey, he's out there doing this and he's right. I don't need to worry so much when everybody else thinks and I'm allowed to do the things that I love. I'm sure that you're going to have such an impact on so many people. So thank you so much for taking the time and joining me, it's been my pleasure and I can't wait to see all the other stuff that you accomplish. And, uh, just as an aside, Shannon, his wife is in my group and I can't wait to tease Shannon a little bit.

Oh she's going to be so annoyed at me.

Shannon jokes. We joke about how our husbands, I had the same thing with my husband. He took personal development and it was like a rocket ship. And for me it was a lot slower. And so it's always, while we want you to succeed, it's always frustrating that you do it with such ease and so much faster than we do. So, um, I'm glad that Shannon has you as an example though, as well, and that you guys are doing this together. So thank you. Where can people come find you like beyond the board game? Like, are you on social media where they can come reach out?

Yes, I am very socially ubiquitous. Uh, so I have a website, uh, tophatgeeks.com, um, has links to my books, to my podcast, to our Kickstarter. Everything is on there. Um, but if you do are more interested in finding like a personal level with me, um, my Instagram is JordanNotGordonRamsey. So come say, hello, I'd be happy to talk. Um, and that's pretty much where you can find me.

Yeah, I love it. Well, I'll put all of that in the show notes, including the GoFundMe. And I really encourage everybody to go with support because, um, we really should be supporting more people who are just out there trying their dreams and seeing what they can make of it. And so I'm all for that. I will put all that in the show notes, if you can't write it down. Jordan, thank you again so much for joining me today.

Thank you, Goli. This was so nice. I had such a great time. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for listening. I can't tell you how much it means to me. If you liked the podcast, please rate and review us on iTunes, it'll help other people find the show. If you want to connect or reach out, follow along on Instagram and Facebook at Lessons From a Quitter and on Twitter at QuitterPodcasts, I would love to hear from you guys and I'll see you on the next episode.