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Business Blasphemy
Sarah Khan, Business Advisor and Leadership Consultant, is calling B.S. on the hustle-focused status quo of business and entrepreneurship, and getting real about what it takes to grow a business or career and NOT become a statistic. In each episode, Sarah helps navigate the rampant B.S. that permeates business strategy, marketing, operations, and mindset that has business owners hustling and pivoting themselves into burnout. She cuts through the noise and gives you guidance on how to view the status quo with a more discerning eye. If you're ready for success without the B.S., buckle up for hard truths, fun rants, terrible puns and (more than) the occasional curse word.
Business Blasphemy
EP98: Unraveling Identity: Why Who You Are Matters More Than What You Do with Gregory Rutledge
What if success wasn’t about what you do, but who you are?
In this raw and transformative episode, I sit down with Gregory Rutledge (aka G Wiz) — a visionary, transformational leader, and master connector — to unpack why so many of us are trapped in identities that aren’t even ours.
We dive deep into:
✔️ The real reason ambitious women (especially women of color) feel unseen and undervalued.
✔️ Why the online business world is just corporate BS in a different wrapper — and how to escape it.
✔️ The hard truth: If you’re struggling to "find your niche", it’s because you ARE the niche.
✔️ The game-changing mindset shift that makes visibility, wealth, and impact inevitable.
This episode isn’t just conversation — it’s a call to action. If you’ve been feeling stuck, disillusioned, or exhausted by trying to play by the rules, this is your permission slip to burn them down and build your own path.
Listen now and get ready to rethink everything.
Guest Bio:
Gregory Rutledge is a clarity coach and master connector. He questions everything until all that's left is the right answer. Life is a game of fuck around and find out, and he does just that.
Connect with him here: linktr.ee/gregoryrutledge or check out his YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@theofficialgwiz
Love what you heard? Let’s stay connected!
Subscribe to my newsletter for bold insights on leadership, strategy, and building your legacy — straight to your inbox every week.
Follow me on LinkedIn for more no-nonsense advice on leading with power and purpose.
And if you’re ready to dive even deeper, grab a copy of my book Bite-Sized Blasphemy and ignite your inner fire to do life and business your way.
The Business Blasphemy Podcast is sponsored by Corporate Rehab® Strategic Consulting.
Welcome to the Business Blasphemy Podcast, where we question the sacred truths of the online business space and the reverence with which they're held. I'm your host, sarah Khan speaker, strategic consultant and BS busting badass. Join me each week as we challenge the norms, trends and overall bullshit status quo of entrepreneurship to uncover what it really takes to build the business that you want to build in a way that honors you, your life and your vision for what's possible, and maybe piss off a few gurus along the way. So if you're ready to commit business blasphemy, let's do it. Hello, hello blasphemers, welcome back.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is going to be a very different episode. First of all, my guest has the distinct privilege honor, whatever you want to call it of being the first non-woman on the show. Yay, yeah, you're the first dude. And second, we have already had, as we always do, just the most phenomenal start to a conversation and I was like we need to be recording, so I hit record. We're going to be talking about things a little bit differently than you're used to, because if you've been following me on social media, if you've been following me and my journey over the last few weeks, last few months, really, you'll know that I have been in a weird pivot and the more I kind of lean into it and just allow things to happen at their own pace which is hard for me, being a type A who needs to have control of everything the unraveling and the unfolding and the uncovering of things has been wow, that's all I'm going to say. I'm finding out things about myself and what I want to do and who I want to work with and just why I'm even here at a level and a depth that I don't think I was ever going to be able to do if I hadn't allowed myself to just slow down and stop.
Speaker 1:And let me introduce my guest. Then I will share a story. So my guest today is Gregory Relich. We call him G-Wiz. I can't even remember how we met, but it has been such a delight knowing you and talking to you. Every time we talk it's like mind-blowing, just kind of discoveries and realizations and whatnot. So can you introduce yourself, because I want to hear how you describe yourself, and then I want to read what you wrote on the intake form because I love it. So go ahead, tell the people who you are, my friend.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, sarah. And you're right, it's always mind blowing, it's always in the heart and it always makes us tear up and do the ugly cry.
Speaker 1:We always cry whenever we talk. It's just, it is what it is.
Speaker 2:It is what it is. Maybe that's why I'm amongst the females now. So my name is Gregory Rutledge, as she said. People call me G-Wiz. It was a name that was given to me in a download in seventh grade. I had one name for it and it turned into something completely different through a conversation that made me realize when I'm acting in my own ego or acting in accordance with a higher purpose, god's will ignites zeal. And I tell that because, like you, I've just had a higher purpose. God's will ignites zeal. And I tell that because, like you, I've just had a recent shift, so I don't even remember what I sent you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, I love what you wrote.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I basically bridge gaps, connect dots, break silos. I am a visionary, transformational leader. I provide clarity, I'm a master connector and I help people to connect to their hearts so that they can be who they were meant to be. Not what people expect of them, not this niching down, whatever that is. You are the niche and that's just what I'm here to help people realize is that she's got to be you.
Speaker 1:And I think that that's why we get along so well, because that's the journey that I've been on too, and it's something that okay. First of all, let me tell you what he wrote here. So I always ask my guests give me a short bio. It's going to go in the show notes and blah, blah, blah, but you know it's also. It kind of helps me contextualize the conversation Gregory wrote. I question everything until all that's left is the right answer. Life is a game of fuck around and find out. I do just that. Isn't that the fucking best bio you've ever read in your life? Because it just it sums up so beautifully. I think the journey we've both been on and and the journey I think a lot of people are currently on Like 2024 was such a shit show and a lot of people are still recovering from what felt like 12 months of just continually throwing yourself down the stairs and wishing that it didn't hurt, right?
Speaker 1:God, yes, we were talking about you know some some changes that you've made in your life, god, yes, I'll share another day, but I did the talk after the show was over. I had around a dozen maybe 14 or 15 young women from the audience come up to me afterwards and thank me like hug me, thank me. Some had tears in their eyes and the common comment was thank you for saying the things that we've been told our whole life. We're not allowed to say Thank you for validating our existence, thank you for speaking the truth not just my truth, but like the truth. And I had conversations with these young ladies. I had conversations after the show. A couple of them actually approached me before the show because they were on the committee. They knew what I was going to talk about and it was this idea of you know as women, particularly women of color, which, as an aside, I've had coaches tell me not to differentiate that because it alienates people. Guess what, I don't fucking care anymore. I'm a woman of color. I understand the journey. We're going to talk about that.
Speaker 1:But women in general, particularly women of color, we have often been told, particularly women of color. We have often been told and I think just people in general of a melanated capacity have been told your value is in what you can do, and that's where the line ends, right, like your value is in what you can do, and we create these identities around that. I was talking to one of the girls. She's a senior in university and she was in an engineering program and she was talking about how, even though she's like the smartest kid in the class, whenever they do group projects, she's always relegated to the role of secretary because she's the girl in the group. Like just shit like that.
Speaker 1:And I was hearing this and when I finished the talk and the event was over and my speaker advisor was like you know, make sure you take a day or two to just really absorb and digest what you've experienced, cause this was this was a really like I'm a fucking TEDx speaker, like that's clout, right. So I fully intended yes, thank you, I fully intended to sit in it and allow myself to really appreciate how far I've come in my own journey. And, as I was saying to you before we hit record, the opposite happened. Right, I actually woke up about four days in and was like because I couldn't understand why I was feeling so apathetic all of a sudden and I thought maybe it's because you're tired, maybe it's like all the adrenaline just crashing.
Speaker 1:But I woke up and all I could think was I fucking hate this, all of it. I hate all of it. I hate online business, I hate certain people. I hate the way things are done, I just hate it.
Speaker 1:And I struggled to show up, I struggled to post anything meaningful, I struggled to follow up on my sales, like I struggled with everything. I and this week more of the same are what they bring to the table, what their purpose, what their passion is, and it's just. It sparked in me this desire to like. I thought I was doing business differently all this time, with the business blasphemy brand and all of that, and this has turned into a confessional and Gregory's my therapist, just so you know. I thought I was doing business differently because I was, you know, bucking the status quo and, you know, talking whatever, but really I feel like I was still just doing business, but from the other end of the spectrum, I wasn't actually changing anything. And so I've had a huge sort of realization today. And then everything that you were talking about, because you, you had quite an interesting series of experiences recently. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:Interesting is an understatement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's. You know, I think everyone's at that same place. You're at right. We're tired of playing pretend, we're tired of playing dress up, we're tired of showing up and doing stuff that doesn't make sense for who we are. I had to get sober again. You know, weed's become legal in most places legal I'm making air quotes here and so for someone that's been in recovery for almost 20 years, there's always this hope. Someone that's been in recovery for almost 20 years, there's always this hope, right, that just one day it's going to be okay for me. But I had to come to the same realization I came to with alcohol it's never going to be okay for me. It may work for other people, and that's cool, I'm not them. It'll never work for me. And so getting sober gave me my wings again, and cutting my hair helped me to flap them, cause I had hair down to my butt. I'm five foot 10. Most of my back was covered with hair and it was heavy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You mentioned earlier, before we started, that it carries all this power and for me it was trauma. There was a lot that went into these dreads and you know, making that decision to cut them just came in that same moment of paralysis you had where it's like what am I doing, who am I, where am I going? And in in those decisions, those little micro decisions, they cause momentum. And so what happened is I started hearing from the spirit again. I heard a Bible verse. It was Jeremiah 117. I hope people are okay with me sharing my experience. I don't encourage people to think how you think, but this is me. It said get yourself ready, say exactly as I command you, and it's talking about the prophet Jeremiah, the reluctant prophet Jeremiah, which I relate to wholeheartedly. Say exactly what I command you and don't be terrified by them, or I will make you terrified before them. And the thing that my mentor, myron Golden, has been telling me is become the kind of person that people say yes to before they know what you're offering. What I realized yesterday when I ran this mastermind that came to mind after these slew of events was that I am already that person.
Speaker 2:I came up with this idea on a whim. I reached out to 30 people. Eight didn't reply, 22 replied and said yes, they're in, and 20 showed up and then more were invited by the people there and when we got to the end and I was getting feedback, it was you know, I didn't even want to be on a meeting tonight, but I saw it was Greg and I came and I'm like what is this life right now? What is happening? Right, we always try to relate to people in the cerebral context of things.
Speaker 2:We want to think that you know, thinking and using big words and using this corporate jargon is going to attract people. But we don't even like that when we go to work and get paid for it. And using big words and using this corporate jargon is going to attract people, but we don't even like that when we go to work and get paid for it. Like we have a whole list of language, like you know, the proper email ways of saying these things, like the proper way to say F off is you know, per my prior email, that kind of stuff. Why are we doing it? Like, why do we start businesses and then run them from a corporate perspective or employee perspective? That's not how we're supposed to do it, right?
Speaker 1:Because there's no context for any other way. Everybody loves talking about my framework. My way of doing things is so unique and different it's the same shit wrapped in a different box, right? Because we don't have the context to do things differently. Because whenever someone wants to do something differently, what happens? Pushback, gaslighting, peer pressure. It'll never work. The number of times I have been told throughout my entrepreneurial journey that that'll never work, nobody will understand. My very first coach said to me when she said what do you really want to do? And this is I'm talking. Five years ago, I said I want to work with women who want to leave a legacy. Oh, nobody understands the word legacy. It'll never sell. You're good at this, so do this instead. And that's the path I took. Wow, yeah, wow, sorry, carry on. No, no, you're talking about this is great.
Speaker 2:It's a great segue that person. That was their perspective. Yeah, they didn't understand what legacy meant and what happened is they pointed one finger, but three of them were pointing back at them, right?
Speaker 2:That's their projection of the world. That's their perspective. There is a whole tribe out there that needs exactly who Sarah is, her power and purpose architecture. They need that. There's a whole world out there that need exactly what I have to offer helping people to live courageous lives.
Speaker 2:In the Bible it tells us, I think over 365 times be strong and courageous, do not be afraid. There's got to be a reason. That's repeated in this text, right, and it's not just in Christianity, it's every religion. The theme is love. Love comes from the heart. Courage means living from the heart. We have to do things. If it's placed on our heart, there's a reason for that, right. If it was placed on your heart and you got the vision, just like, joseph shared the vision with his brothers and they got mad at him and put him in jail, sold him to slavery, and he forgave them years later, right, like, still brought them right back in. Because that's the theme. It's like we have to go through those dark times to find who we are, who we are, we photos back in the day when we actually had to develop pictures.
Speaker 1:they had to be developed in a dark room in a toxic red phosphorus, right yeah and it couldn't see any light until it was ready, that's the same thing that is such a great analogy.
Speaker 2:Thanks, it just. It just came to me right now. I love that but in that darkness we find that, like through all these layers of bullshit that we put on, look, I'm like so scared to cuss.
Speaker 1:Oh, please Did I say it. This show is all about. If cuss words were not allowed, I would not be having a podcast. It's just how it is, please.
Speaker 2:Right, we create. We have to create something that works for us, and you're doing that, but you're finding like it's like an onion. You have to peel the layers right, and every layer you peel, there's a new. You cry, right? We have to come from the heart and bring to the world exactly what we're meant to bring to the world, because there's no one else here that that is is going to do it the way we do it. There's no one else that can speak to the people me and you can speak to. There's people you can speak to I can't, and there's people I can speak to. That you won't resonate with. But I love that you shared the part about the melanated experience, right, because I don't share that. But for one reason I grew up overseas. I was born here in the US, in Tulsa, oklahoma. Can't tell you anything about Oklahoma except for it's boring. Had, you know, six years in New York and you know people are very edgy in New York. They're, they're very it's you know, it's it's
Speaker 2:you know you have to be on high alert at all times. And then to move to Texas briefly before I moved to France for five years, I remember in elementary school. I get there on the playground, my mom drops me off and they're just so happy for no reason got a new person here. His name is Greg and they're so excited to welcome me. Everyone's like just too friendly. I'm like what the fuck is wrong with y'all? That's what I said. I'm six and like oh, we have a potty mouth, and I'm like they're celebrating it. What? What is happening right here? Right, it was so foreign.
Speaker 2:But think about that as I, as I moved to France, right, and here I was the youngest and shortest and dumbest. When I moved over there, I was the oldest, tallest, greatest. People idolized me over there because I came from America. They see us as something completely different, and that was 89 to 95. And we did a lot of different things. We experienced different cultures, we learned different languages, we traveled. There's no borders. You know you can go from France to UK, to Spain, to Germany. There's no like, just go. And the only reason people need to know where you're from is so they know what language to speak to you so that they can communicate with you. Right, you have to know at least five languages to live in Europe.
Speaker 2:Then I come back here and I find out I'm black and for some reason that's a problem. For some reason, when I do something I used to get away with in France, now I get tickets, now I get probation, now I'm being like people are just looking at me weird and I'm like I don't understand. But I'm such, I'm so naive to it, that I just keep approaching the world with hey, I'm here to serve you, look like you're hurting, can I help you? And when, when you do that, it breaks down those walls, because that's all we have up here are walls of ignorance, and we just proceed as if everything is to be feared and if we don't know it. It's not good. I don't see the world like that and so I relate. I can see it, but I just don't let it be the way I approach the world. Yes, I have melanated skin, but that doesn't change the fact that you're human.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that doesn't change the fact that you're human, you have a heart, you have pain, and I have a solution for you.
Speaker 1:Wow, I mean, what a beautiful experience. And I'm sitting here and I'm thinking like my entire experience was actually incredibly different. It was almost the opposite of that.
Speaker 2:I understand and I'm not arguing. I'm not discrediting or evaluating anyone.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no, not at all yeah.
Speaker 2:Just that's. That's the world we live in, right Like yeah like it's just it's changed.
Speaker 1:So and I mean I think I think what's different is I also grew up in a, in a very small town very north, you know. We didn't have a lot of access to, to things, really. It was a very small mining town in northern canada where I was the visible like the most visible of visible minorities and and your survival. I actually talked about this in my tedx talk, which I don't know when it's going to come out, but I'm excited to share it. But this idea that you know, in order to survive, you have to be, you have, you need the approval of the visible majority, and the visible majority required you to be whoever they wanted you to be, and so I be. And so I actually lived life as a chameleon and told myself and this is going to sound how it sounds, but if I acted, white enough, they would accept me.
Speaker 1:And so there was a very very long period of my life where that's how I saw myself, and it's actually only when I moved to england after I got married that race really got thrown back in my face right like because I've worked very hard my whole life not to play the race card because I wanted to believe that everything that I was able to do was merit-based. And that isn't necessarily true. When you look back right and now, talking to people who have had similar experiences, I am realizing that it's not a unique experience. It's actually a very common experience. In that, I think in some way makes me feel A comforted, but B also very sad that that is still the world we live in and that you know it has to be acknowledged, because for a long time I didn't want to have to acknowledge it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But that's the reality of a lot of people's experience, and I think, even when it comes to business, especially in the online business space, where there is a lot of merit given to people who look a certain way, who fit a certain mold, who say certain things, who are from certain social groups I guess religious groups those people, they have a level of access, they have a level of support and resource that a lot of other people do not, and that kind of feeds into this feeling that I've been having lately, of like over the last year, I've met so many incredible people, yourself included, and it's like why are we having to continually prove our value in spaces when we have these purposes that are so big and so potentially paradigm shifting and yet, because we look the way we do, or we're associated with the people we're associated with or we've, you know, we don't have access to the places that we need to have access to, like people are missing out on our magic man.
Speaker 2:They really are.
Speaker 1:They really are.
Speaker 2:I can tell you the reason behind that. There's a good I won't say good friend, but I consider her a good friend, even though we haven't spoke. The article she wrote about. This just resonated so much in my soul because I tend to approach things from a spiritual, principle aspect. There are laws and principles in this world. I like to consider God's automation and gravity, for example. There is no universe, at least not in an earth, where I can drop this book and it won't fall down. Right, that's an automation Instead of God or the universe, or however you choose to express your higher power, saying you fall down, you fall down. He automated it, kind of like our bodily functions, right, we don't have to tell our heart to beat, we don't have to remember to breathe, and when you approach the world from that perspective and you see someone else that sees in that vision, that resonates on that wave, it's like there are things that have always worked and will always work.
Speaker 2:She wrote about critical pedagogy, where we really have to think. In our educational system there's four levels of oppression. There's ideological, systematic, intrapersonal and then interpersonal. We're always trying to address the interpersonal and the intrapersonal but forget that our systems and our ideologies are based in something that is inherently racist. Right, the whole basis of what America is built on believed that people could own other people and that one was greater than the other. And until we dig the root out, we can keep picking the bad fruits. But we've still got the same tree, we've still got the same root system. We've still got the ideologies behind it've still got the same root system, we've still got the ideologies behind it. We're not digging up the roots, we're just picking up the fruits, right. And so the ideologies are baked into our constitution. They're baked into our legal documents. The systems are built around those legal documents in that constitution. Then, you know, because all of that is in the school systems and the workplaces and all of our institutions professionally, people start to intrapersonally feel it right. You felt it, I felt it. Something's different. Someone's not picking me for their team. I'm the smartest one and they're telling me I'm not welcome.
Speaker 2:I remember one time running into a guy from a church that I went to. They were doing Bible study in a coffee shop. They said they had this men's group when I came and introduced myself and it just felt like I was an outsider, even though I'm a believer too. We go to the same church. I asked if I could sit in and join and they said, oh no, we, we talk about really personal issues and I thought that another man can't relate to. And so you know I was like, cool thanks, I didn't want to be a part of it anyway. But it's those kinds of experiences where it's like and of course it's a bunch of white males, right, they all had the hipster look, they all had the beards. I don't have anything against those people because I get along with those people, but they just saw who I was and what I look like and just assumed that I would fit the mold of what they thought someone like me would look like or do or bring to the group.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know it's in our movies, it's in our TV shows, oh yeah. And you know it's in our movies, it's in our TV shows, it's in our music, it's infesting our world and you start to feel it intrapersonally, between the people you relate to on a daily basis. And then that's that last level, the interpersonal, where we start to internalize these things and so we will deny ourselves before we even go out there and try anything, because all those levels leading up to it we just come to the world with that kind of stuff isn't for me or I'm not going to get that opportunity. You're a freaking TEDx speaker, a melanated TEDx speaker, right? What you did encouraged me to want to find out. How can I be a TEDx speaker? People have told me that I need to do it. People have encouraged me to go do it. I've been afraid because of that interpersonal, right. Am I going to be valuable enough? Is what I have enough? Is telling people to live from their hearts enough?
Speaker 1:Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. I mean that's so. That's so true, because when I was there, when I, when I saw the speaker roster, you've got a young person who is working with farmers in Kenya to ensure that we can feed 10 billion people by the year 2030. We've got another guy from Silicon Valley who's like, really like knee deep in the whole automated vehicles thing. We've got another like we've got these people who are really like they're, you know they're doing quote unquote important fancy things. And then you've got Sarah who's talking about unicorns and dragons. Like what the fuck? Right, right.
Speaker 1:And I honestly like the whole time, the whole time, I was like this isn't important enough, this isn't valid enough. And then my speaker advisor was like you got picked, though you got picked, though you got picked though, and she kept reminding me and reminding me, and then it was you know, well, I can't memorize it and she's like no problem, we'll get you some cue cards. Like you got picked, though you got picked, though you got picked, though, and when it was done, and when it was, and and when the validation came, that's when I was like, oh, maybe it was important, but there is still that little voice in the back of the head. That is like yeah, but when people see it on youtube, they're going to realize that you shouldn't have been picked like. It never ends that the, the indoctrination go of. You know the, the four, the four things you're talking about.
Speaker 1:It runs so deep, yeah, and I see so many people. I mean, if we want to just talk about the online business space, yeah, who? I think they? They operate from that space of like. I'm gonna do it like everybody else, because they look successful, right, they look like they know what they're doing, so I'm gonna do that too. And it goes against every fiber of their being. It's not aligned with who they are, it has nothing to do with their purpose and it's again you're. You're denying the world the truth of, of the power and the magic that you have the potential to bring man I we do this girl, you wow, yes, yes, and I'm so glad you brought up youtube, the.
Speaker 2:Did you know that youtube started as an online dating app where people could post yeah oh really host. There would be like people posting basically like profiles or videos of themselves so people can pick through people. Obviously, that didn't work, that's wild though.
Speaker 2:Right. What ended up happening was people would post like videos of animals and videos of silly stuff and people would actually watch it, and so they were smart enough to pivot and make it YouTube. I forgot what it was called before, but I was reading the YouTube formula by Daryl Eaves and the thing I noticed the theme I noticed is that a lot of YouTubers did exactly what you said. They said this looks like it's working, and so they did that putting on all of the armor that doesn't fit them right. Let's take it to a biblical reference just because I'm a dork like that, david was given the armor from his brothers to put on. He's like I can't wear this. This isn't me. And he had a slingshot and five smooth stones and he took down a giant with one shot. The first shot yeah, that has been the theme that I've seen in anyone that's successful in doing something that's truly innovative and truly groundbreaking is they stop trying to put on all the stuff that doesn't work for them. They stop trying to do and be whoever they think they need to do and be, and they just say fuck it, I'm going to be me.
Speaker 2:When I blew up on LinkedIn, I just I was like you know what. I don't even care anymore If I post this and they blacklist me or blackball me or whatever that is out of this community. I don't even give a shit anymore. I posted something about they talked about stakeholder experience isn't user experience and I said yeah, and if you think about the acronym, it's SEX and it's not even the good kind. And I looked at my wife, I showed her the comment and I said I'm posting it, I don't care anymore. Posted. She looked at it and she's like Gregory, what did you do? And I'm like I don't care.
Speaker 2:I went to sleep. I woke up. I see a LinkedIn notification. Biggest guy in the Dallas Fort Worth UX community is like Gregory, I like your comments, let's do lunch. Wow, I was like what just happened. And so I tried it again. I was like is it just me or are, like you know, everyone else, tired of being pressured? Your email text then called while you're reading the email and looking at the text hey, give us the birth date and year and last four-year social. We have a position for you. And then you give them all this stuff in a rush. You're in a hurry to get it so you can get the job or get the interview, and then you get ghosted.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And my idea was maybe it's because they're expecting purple unicorns for squirrel pay. And it was so funny. It blew up 28,000 impressions and views in a week and like 300 and something likes, 80 something comments. And then a company reached out to me, said we're so sorry, this was your experience. We didn't mean to do this to you. I have never heard of the company, so they're apologizing for something they never did. They put me in in with someone that would assess my, my skill level and then they offered me two interviews. I failed the first. I got the second. I got into the industry. It was just like, like, like what's happening in our life right now, that that I'm going to be me and if it works, it works. If it doesn't, I don't even care anymore. And then it's just this snowball of things just work out when you're yourself. So why do we try to be anything else?
Speaker 1:I don't know. I mean, I do know we've talked about it for the last half an hour, but you're like, yeah, like, why, like it's. I think the big sort of takeaway is the hardest thing you can do is be yourself, but it's also the easiest thing you can do.
Speaker 2:Yes and easy feels wrong, because we're taught all lives that if it's not hard work, yeah, if it's not, if it's not my, my mentor says only give people enough necessary for their transformation and nothing more. Anything else is just your ego, basically. And yeah, like you're just trying to prove to people with all of this confusing stuff that you can help them, why don't you prove that you can help people by actually helping them?
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm going to be an ass right now and I'm going to direct that comment, that brilliant fucking comment, to all of you people who host like 27 webinars but then add 1800 of fucking extra value, like please, come on if, if, if you want people to believe you're the best, you won't be the cheapest.
Speaker 2:And if you're the cheapest, people will not believe you're the best. Do you know what? Okay, so let me tell you about this mastermind, because we didn't talk about it on here.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:My wife came up with this. Well, she didn't come up with it. My wife gets these divine downloads where she just starts shaking, uncontrollably, sweating, and she's just like babe, babe, listen, it's coming. I'm like, oh, here we go, okay. So she's like you know how you went to meetups in the beginning and that's how you broke into UX. I think that with your business, you just need to go to meetups and just be you, because people are attracted to you. And I'm like, oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I have fun doing that. It's not the online business hustle. So I go to the first meetup available. It was this that next Tuesday from when she told me three days later I meet a bunch of people Um, there was a bunch of new faces, but a lot of my mentors I look up to were were congratulating me on how many waves I've made in this industry by just coming in and being myself, and I was just like Whoa, whoa, like all the confirmations just keep happening.
Speaker 2:And so my mentor, like the guy that runs the big design conference, brian Sullivan's like you should go talk to that person. He just kept sending people to me. The one guy he sent to me that didn't come to me at first, he left. He came back because he didn't want to say bye, like leave without saying bye in person as he's coming back. I can't let people pass by me without being acknowledged by me At least. I want to know every person. I want to know about them, I want to meet them. And so I was like hey, paul, I didn't get to talk to you, man, let's chat. So he starts asking me really good questions about my business that break my brain, and so I'm like, let me think on that. So then I message him later. He's like let's just hop on a call.
Speaker 2:By the time I hop on this call with this man, two days later he's got a whole fig jam worked out for me with you know my I help statement. I sent him what I am a clarity coach at, basically, and you know the problem state my people are in, which is basically a demonic loop, right, and then the ideal state they want to be in and the question that changed everything what is the fastest thing that you can prototype in a week. And then I realized it he just worked UX, that I work on companies every day to help them make billion dollar breakthroughs or million dollar revenue on my own business that I couldn't do for myself. And then it hit me that's what's missing in the market. People are inundated with information, they're paying for information, they're getting free courses, they're watching millions of hours of YouTube and they don't do anything with it. And like you have to, like, even if you do something and it's stupid, it feels dumb, it's a complete failure, a mockery of your intelligence. At least you're gaining feedback to iterate to make it better.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So be horrible. You're never going to get to great if you don't go through horrible. Yeah. So I was like you know what? This is a genius idea. I think I'm going to turn this into a mastermind. So I reach out to two people, said I'm going to do this mastermind. They're like I'm in Cool, Reach out to another one separately Doing this mastermind. This is what it's going to be Rapid prototyping, so we can test ideas. Google Glass, basically.
Speaker 2:How long do you think it took Google Glass to come up with their first prototype? I said 10 years. Most people say 10 years, one year, two years. One day they had a coat hanger, a pair of glasses, a wire, a mini projector and a mini laptop and they put it on them and they said what's wrong with it? And they got all these things. And then what did they do? They went back to the drawing board. They made it better and they just kept doing that process. That's what we do with design thinking Empathize. What's the problem, Define that problem, Come up with ideas on how to solve that problem. Prototype something real quick, even if it's just like whiteboard sketches. Then go test it with real people and let them tell you this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. Why? Okay, Because of this, this, this and this. So I do this mastermind. I think of it.
Speaker 2:Yesterday in the morning I was like, all right, let me go, just go ahead and reach out to 50 people. So reach out to 30. And I said all that to say they're on this mastermind. They're seeing the value. Everyone's helping each other out. People are coming out of their shells, they're being courageous, making their offers for the very first time, feeling like they need to come up with the perfect thing, and then, when they move from their hearts, that's when the real thing came out. They thought they needed this, but what they really needed was to be themselves, because we are the niche. At the end, I asked for feedback, Girl, don't you know? I got enough feedback to turn this into an actual offer. And then the magic happened right. And this is where this whole thing stemmed from. You talked about the price $1,800, $27,000 worth of value for only $27 or $7. My favorite is the $7 one. Like, get the F out of here, man.
Speaker 1:You get $8,000 worth of bonuses and freebies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay. So I'm like how much was this worth monetarily for you? So I noticed that a lot of people don't know how to price their own offers, much less someone else's, because there's all this BS out there about this much value for this much money and you can't trust that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:One lady said I would have easily paid a hundred thousand dollars for this. When I first came back from offer mastery Live with Myron Golden in May of last year, I gave a lady a clarity session and I asked her how much she thought it would be worth. She said I easily would have paid $20,000 for a few of your minutes. And then I told someone else this is going to turn into a $25,000 mastermind. She said I definitely pay that, especially if you kept up the energy you you had tonight. That would that let me know.
Speaker 2:Is that me just being me and showing up and loving on people and teaching them how to work from their hearts and be themselves. I don't have to try. I don't have to try at all with that. That's just who I am. That lets me know that there's wealth out there for me, for me just being showing up and being me. My mentor charges anywhere from $28,000 a year to a million a year. I'm in this $55,000 a year program right now. Why do I believe, or why do I not believe, that I can charge at least that?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Why do we do that to ourselves?
Speaker 1:Sarah's brain is going okay, the one way I really want to work with people going forward. I need to rethink that price. Yeah, that's. I mean you know what. Okay, to everybody who's listening, we could legitimately talk for another two or three hours about this, because this is what we do. Unfortunately, I have to go pick up my children from school.
Speaker 1:But the big takeaway here is when you actually lean into who you are and what you want to do, like where your actual joy is. We talk about legacy, we talk about purpose, we talk about impact. All of that. It has to start with you really understanding who you are and what you want to do, and that is so hard to answer. We all think we know who we are and what we want to do, but it is some of the hardest work you will ever do, because all of our lives we have been told who we are. We've been told how we're supposed to show up. We've been told what we are supposed to do. I mean I'll tell you now, like I remember I never had any other option in my head other than to be a teacher, because that's what my parents always said, that's what you're going to be, and I mean I'm not going to.
Speaker 1:I enjoyed it. I found great joy in it. It's something that I did genuinely love. I lucked out in that way. But if I had had other opportunities or options to think about other things that I could possibly be, other than you're being molded towards being a teacher. There are so many other things that I would have done with my life.
Speaker 1:Not to say that I don't appreciate every moment of my life as it's been, but you know what I mean. Like we are in one way or another, told who we are by everybody, like our identities have been built for us. Yeah, and if you can do the absolute back-breaking, soul-crushing work and I say that very intentionally it is of uncovering your actual, true identity, like the essence of who you are, it will be the most liberating fucking thing you ever do in your life for each girl, and all of that goodness will stem from that. All of the shit that you are chasing, all of the stuff that you are trying to hold on to, like holding on to sand, it will just, it will come to you so easily when you just embrace and embody who you actually are. You got to figure out who that is first and for everybody who's listening, who's like I know who I am.
Speaker 1:I can guarantee you dollar students. You probably do not, because I guarantee you. You probably still equate who you are with what you can do Job titles, roles, people pleaser, high performer yes, ma'am, project manager, operations person You've given yourself a title. You have no idea who you are without that title. I can tell you that right now.
Speaker 2:So true. Can I leave one exercise for your listeners?
Speaker 1:Absolutely yes, please.
Speaker 2:This has been the most powerful thing I've ever done for myself, and I'm going to leave it here and then we'll drop the mic. If you did not have to make money, what would you love to do? Don't think of a job, don't think of a title, don't think of a responsibility. What lights you up more than anything? That's going to tell you who you are? What lights you up more than anything that's going to tell you who you are?
Speaker 1:And then find people that have a problem in that area and go be you while you solve that problem. I mean that's a mic drop. I mean it's such an easy and such a hard thing to do and it's funny as you were saying it. I remember the day that that became clear for me and I've ignored it since then because hashtag the world. I remember someone asking me once what's your dream Like? What do you want to do? And I jokingly said I want to be that old crone in the corner of the bar who has a regular table and she like chain smokes cigarettes and people just come and sit at her table and ask for her advice and she just gives it to them. If I could do that for the rest of my life sans the smoking obviously not in a bar like that would be like that, which that would make my entire heart sing. And so thank you for that reminder, because that's the vision that came up when you said that and that's the, that's the energy I'm taking into the world now.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's like I don't even think. You see that you're doing it. You're just doing it with all these other things on top of it, like people want to come to you. You said it became therapy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You feel like therapy.
Speaker 1:Well. I've had someone say that you know someone said to me I give them better advice than their therapist does, and I don't even charge them for it.
Speaker 1:So there you go bad part, bad part bro oh man, yeah, okay, if you, if you did not listen to this episode and have at least half a dozen aha moments, you weren't paying attention. Um, gregory, you're gonna have to come back on the show because I think there's so much more we can talk about, and I want to talk more about your experiences and just creating the kind of business experience that you've created, so we're going to have to have you back on. Thank you so much for being here and just sharing from the heart, because, honestly, this is what we've been missing, I think for a long time.
Speaker 2:Aw, thank you so much. I'm so, I'm honored to be the first male. I wow Well, thank you, thank you it was my pleasure. Look forward to coming back and listen to this again.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I'm going to listen to this one on repeat and, as I say every single week, y'all, you can have success without the BS. I will talk to you next week. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening to the Business Blasphemy Podcast. We'll be back next week with a new episode, but in the meantime, help a sister out by subscribing and, if you're feeling extra sassy, rating this podcast, and don't forget to share the podcast with others. Thanks for listening and remember you can have success without the BS.