Karolina Pelc - BeyondPlay Founder (Acquired by FanDuel) & Author of Her Play | The Real Reason Some People Get All the Breaks

When I sold my business, I also thought that I was lucky at first, but now I understand there's a difference between being lucky randomly and making space for luck to learn. Today's guest is Karolina Pelks, entrepreneur, investor, author, and speaker. After building and selling her startup to FanDuel, in under three years, she set out to answer one big question. Is success really luck? Why do we make ourselves smaller when we're so incredible? Our brains are naturally searching for patterns. They get attracted to randomness. When you achieve something that you didn't think was going to happen to you, rather than trace your journey back and try to understand what is it exactly that got you there, there could have been an element of luck. But we seem to just focus on the randomness and I think it's because our brain is naturally drawn towards that randomness. Most recently, Carolina launched her new book, Make Your Own Luck. In it, she challenges the idea that success is simply a matter of chance and shares the mindset and actions that help create opportunities in both business and life. Carolina, why is luck the most misunderstood word in business? I think in short, it's because people who think they got lucky, they also think that they are less deserving of their success. And I think that's something that needs to be tackled. And that's the main message behind the subtitle of my book, Her Play, Make Your Own Luck. And I always say I don't believe in luck. It took me a while to get there because when I sold my business, I also thought that I was lucky at first. But now I understand there's a difference between success being lucky randomly and making space for luck to land. Why do people who are successful, who are incredibly impressive entrepreneurs, they're so competent, Why would somebody, and maybe even like, if it's okay, use yourself as an example. Why would you assume that all of that is just luck, random chance, and not you and your competence and your work ethic and the tons of hours of energy and time and resources that you poured into this thing? Like when somebody just assumes that what happened to them is luck, it's almost diminishing how incredible they are. But the question is, why do we do that? Why do we make ourselves smaller when we're so incredible? I think it's because we were not taught to believe in ourselves. And I refer specifically to my generation. I'm not sure whether we are aligned in age, but I'm 42. And I think when I was a child, no one was giving rewards for participation and patting me on the back. Every time I did something, it was a pretty hardcore cold upbringing. So whereas that makes it quite resilient at the same time, it does not tell you how to share your self-limiting beliefs. On the contrary, if you do have some self-limiting beliefs, it probably amplifies them. So I think that's where it comes from for a lot of us. But there's another level of it. And I think it goes back to neuroscience and how our brains are wired. And I know this because I spend a lot of time working in the industry that is very connected to luck. Yeah. And the fact is that our brains are naturally searching for patterns and they don't they get attracted to randomness, you know? So when you achieve something that you didn't think was going to happen to you, rather than trace your journey back and try to understand what is it exactly that got you there, there could have been an element of lack, timing, circumstance, you know, things that you didn't control, but on their own, they wouldn't have gotten you there. But we seem to just focus on the randomness. And I think it's because our brain is naturally drawn towards that randomness. So limiting beliefs are interesting because what I see a lot of is limiting beliefs stopping people from even starting. But what you're saying is, okay, those same limiting beliefs, even if you start and you build a business and you're an entrepreneur and you're successful, those limiting beliefs can still make you doubt yourself. And I'm assuming make you doubt if you can do it again or if you deserve it, which is a wild idea because you've at this point proven to yourself that you can do it. But... Those limiting beliefs are, I guess, are toxic at any stage, even if you have figured out how to build a successful business and, you know, create more wealth for yourself than most people even thought possible. Yes. So listen, I love the way you open the conversations because there are a couple of messages that I love talking about. And one of them is why I don't believe in luck, which we covered right on the bat. And the second one is that whole reframe when you feel free. fear right um and that's very associated very connected to the self-limiting beliefs and this is where i always go to the moment where i realize how to communicate to people not to be afraid because it's one thing to tell people don't be scared just do it it's another thing to give them something that they can easily remember and sort of go back to in those moments where the fear is overtaking what they're feeling. And for me, that moment was when I was doing skydiving. I went skydiving in Vegas right after a whole night of playing crafts with my friends. And I happened to be in a tandem with a world record base jumper. because he was visiting and I was lucky to some extent to be paired up with him. And we went out in a plane and I was I've done it before, but obviously I was still quite scared because the adrenaline kicked in and you have these beautiful views of Grand Canyon. And right before we were jumping, he told me, I'm going to give you one important tip. When we stand there at the edge, Don't close your eyes because when you close your eyes or when you look down at your feet and at the height, you're triggering fear. And that also triggers fear response in your body. It activates the wrong side of your brain. It floods you with cortisol. And all you are focusing on is what's the worst that can happen. Whereas if you look up and you look at the horizon, at the view, and you focus on imagining how great this jump is going to feel when you're finally in the air, all that cortisol will subside and your brain is going to be thinking logically. You're standing here because you wanted to jump and you're perfectly confident to take that jump. So when he said that to me, I sort of started to go back to that moment every time I was feeling fear, I was feeling not good enough, not competent enough to try to activate different side of my brain, the logical part. And then I came across this poem that ended up right on my wrist, literally a couple of days after I found it, which literally reframes fear from rather than thinking, what if I fall? to thinking what if you fly and I can send you the link to that poem because it's four lines that forever will be something you'll remember when you get scared for irrational reasons The whole concept of not believing in luck or I guess making your own luck. Why was this idea so important to you? I mean, you're writing this obviously for somebody who is doubting themselves or doubting how capable they are. But what was the point in your life? And we can talk a little bit about, you know, all the incredible successes that you've had and we'll get there for sure. But what was the point where you realized that everything you've accomplished was not luck? So it goes exactly back to the self-limiting beliefs, because I think even though, you know, I probably have less of them because I've been proving myself that I can do certain things over and over again. Yet when I sold my company, it was my first startup. You know, I was a first time founder. I sold my business in a record fast time. It was under three years and it was to FanDuel, you know, one of the most respected and recognized brands in the US. So naturally, when people were sort of, You know, the backroom talk of she got lucky. It was the right timing all because they needed that. I started to believe that for a second. And I was hearing those talks and it was triggering to some extent because deep down I knew that that's not the whole story. But I started to believe that. And then people were asking me, you know, what's your playbook? How did you achieve it? What are the top three steps to get there? And I was doing a lot of keynotes and speaking on stages, and I didn't know how to answer the question. And I was like, I did it. I mean, I should know how I got there. And that's when I started to trace back my journey. And that's when the idea of the book was born, because the more I looked back, the more I realized, Oh, my God, that led to that. This led to that. I started to connect the dots backward, as Steve Jobs would say, and started to see that this was a consequence of continuous work, continuous hard work, you know, and going after difficult things, putting myself outside of my comfort zone. And it's after I written the book, the whole of it that I realize, wait a minute, if you look back at my journey over the past 20 years and where I started and all the things that I've done in between, none of this was easy. Where is the luck? The luck is the 10% at the very end. So I don't say that there wasn't any luck involved in my success. There has been in multiple successes I achieve in my journey, but it wasn't the defining element. That's the difference. So they were looking, when you were doing those keynotes and they were saying things like, what are the top three things you did? They were looking for like the hack, the shortcut that got you the exit. 100%. And I don't believe that, I don't believe in those hacks and shortcuts because I think that every business is so different and everyone's circumstances are so different. So the only commonality I see between those businesses is mindset. So that's why I chose to mentor people mostly on the mindset, because I think I've done a lot of work on myself pre-exit, you know, during the startup, post-exit, and I've seen the patterns. So this is where I think I can add the most value. But I think going after a startup business and telling them, you know, what their equity distribution strategy should be or how much they should be paying their CTO or things like that. It's so different for everyone. And also those founders, they will not take that advice because... when you're so deeply embedded in your business, experience is your greatest teacher and people can be telling you how to do it. And you're still going to think that you know better. And until you make those mistakes, you're not going to acquire that knowledge from random advice that people are giving to you. So I am not a big fan of those 10 steps, how to sell the company, 15 steps, how to get rich. I will never be doing that because I just I had advice and I ignored it all and I needed to find the hard way, find out the hard way. So I'm not trying to pass that advice to others because I know they will do the same thing. First of all, I think that you're 100% right that what makes somebody successful is their mindset. Just a quick story. I was interviewing Gary Vee, and it was mostly a mindset conversation. We were talking about different mental models that entrepreneurs should believe in and understand. And then I asked him a few tactical questions, and he kind of like... We were talking about some social media stuff, right? And obviously that's his bread and butter. And he kind of brushed off these tactical questions, not brushed them off, it gave like, you know, like 30 second answers. And I asked him, why did you sort of, you know, brush off these super, super simple social media questions? You're talking about Substack and live streaming. And he said, because that doesn't matter. All that matters is the mindset. I can talk about tactics all day, but if the person listening to this podcast right now doesn't get their mindset locked in, nothing's going to work. They'll figure out the tactic. I agree with you so much on this. And it's not to say this, you know, I'm an investor and I'm a mentor. So I have a portfolio of six companies. Most of them are very young founders. All of them are very early stage because this is the favorite type of the company for me to be involved with, because I think that's where you can make the most impact. And when they come to me with tactical questions, of course. I will sit down and, you know, I only had my startup for three years, but I had a 20 years career and some of it in pretty senior leadership. So I've been involved in multiple transactions, M&A, buying companies, selling companies, going IPO. So I have a fair level of expertise outside of what I did myself in my startup. So I'll sit down with them and we'll go through the, you know, leave a provisions, contract reviews, their commercial strategy, everything that they want me to go through. But for that, I need to dive deep and understand fully the nature of the business, the challenges, the current, you know, timeline of things happening. When you speak to people on a podcast or on social media and you're casting your message wide, it needs to be more universal. So that's why I go back to mindset, because I feel mentoring on mindset is universal. These are human behavior patterns that we can cast wide. Circumstantial, you know, company situations are not something that I think should be taught on social media or in mainstream media. I recorded something yesterday. I forgot to schedule it last night. And I'm telling you this because you'll listen to it. And it's about how the definition of experience, the way that we think about it, doesn't exist. And I'm just telling you, cause it's like so wild how this was literally a thought in my head last night about how we think experiences, listening to more podcasts, watching more YouTube videos, even, even. Say we work in a company for 20 years, and then we think we have enough quote unquote experience to go become an entrepreneur because we've watched enough, again, YouTube videos, podcasts, and done enough work in an industry. To me, that is not actual experience. Experience, that's knowledge, but that's only one half of experience. It needs to be lived. It's just accruing and accumulating knowledge. It needs to be lived. You have to do the thing. Going back, I want to go a little bit back to where you came from, because I think that how you originally looked at fear and luck and experience before you sort of went through this journey yourself, I think are pretty normal ways to look at these three ideas, right? Right. Fear is real. Luck is real. And if you don't have enough experience, you're not going to be successful. These are very normal ideas. These are ideas that I believed when I was young. These are ideas that probably you believed when you were young. So talk to me a little bit about, because you actually do have a very interesting origin story, where you came from and... I would say a little bit about, because a lot of what we believe comes from our parents and our friends growing up. And that's a whole other conversation about how parents are so well-meaning, but sometimes they sort of plant these ideas of... not just fear, luck and experience, but everything in our heads based on sort of their worldview. So I'm curious, what was, what was your upbringing like? And, and talk to me a little bit about where your belief system and what your, what you learned from your parents, because that's really what created, you know, the younger version of, of Carolina. It's a super interesting subject for me as well, because I also face the same doubts around what kind of parent do I want to be? Do I break the cycle or do I continue? Going back to the origin, I mean, I come from Poland. I was born in the times of communism and I grew up in the immediate post-communism era. My parents are both professional athletes by background, and then they were teachers at school. So naturally, very competitive, very performance oriented. And this was very much my upbringing. I was thriving academically without much effort, which I think was great because they didn't have to push me much. I was naturally sort of drawn towards education in general. And I was... without being, you know, arrogant, but I was just good at everything at school. I was one of the children that the parents goes to the teacher meeting and I'm always on the board as, you know, number one, which I think they appreciate it until they didn't. OK, because that came with its own challenges later when I was a teenager. I was pushed into sports because that I wasn't naturally super keen on. But my parents believe that sports is the only way to build competitive anger. And that's needed in life, probably based on their own experience. Right. And I do agree to an extent that sport is an amazing way, especially these days when we have the screen, social media. and all those threats to our children that sport is important. But I wasn't particularly talented, but my parents wanted me to be a pro in tennis. And it was a hard journey because, again, there was no patting on the back. My parents would be those that sit on the side of the court and shout at me from there, you know, Gary style, if I may say so. That, I think, made me very resilient from a very early age, because if I lost a match, my parents would sit down with me and tell me exactly why I lost it, what I was doing wrong, where I didn't perform, and they will go back to the steps I didn't take prior to the match, that I didn't put enough preparation physically, I wasn't waking up at six to go running, I wasn't doing any speed training, strength training. So it was that kind of thing, rather than, don't worry, everybody can lose sometimes, and we'll win next time. I don't think I ever heard that from my parents. And this is where it gets interesting because I do think it made me strong. And I do think it made me resilient that when I started facing even more difficult situations in life as an adult, when I started my first job and so on, which we'll get to, I already had some built-in mechanisms in the way I was thinking and in the way I was dealing with it. So I am a big believer that our character traits and who we are and how we act, our relationship with money, our relationship with risk, our relationship with pretty much everything is shaped a to some extent by genetics. And I tried to research to what percentage does it usually go to is your confidence, your resilience and your relationship with with fear and risk. And the only published. sort of data around this is very vague, but it varies between 20 to 30%. I don't know how scientifically backed that is. So please don't challenge me on that. But the rest comes from your upbringing and your lived experience. So my parents definitely shaped of who I am But at the same time, my parents were both risk averse because they had their own inherited trauma. You know, my parents history, my grandparents history is the, you know, the origin story of most of Polish and Eastern European people. Both of my grandparents fought in the war. My grandmother actually was sent to a labor camp. in Siberia as an eight year old girl, which to most of the people in the current generation is an unimaginable hardship. And I go into the in the chapters of my book into details of how that looked purely as context of certain inherited traits that I think I have because of the things my grandmother went through and then my parents during the communism and so on. So The question that I'm going back to because I try not to divert, but it's such a wide subject that is difficult not to divert is I am unsure of what do I want to do as a parent myself? Because from one perspective, I am very aware that the way my parents brought me up, maybe it gave me. some, you know, self-limiting beliefs. And maybe there is a level of that upbringing that comes very closely to emotional abandonments. Therefore, later in life, you start to face imposter syndrome and you become avoidant in relationships or overly attached if you're on the other side of the spectrum. But it made me strong. It helped me deal with rejection. It helped me push through, never give up. I didn't see risk as something to be scared of. I saw risk as something that needs to be overcome. And there's a chapter in my book in which I called I hope suffering happens to you because that is a famous quote from Jensen from NVIDIA, which says, I can't teach resilience to you. The only way that you can become resilient is through lived suffering. But he doesn't talk about to which extent. How much suffering do I need to let my child go through so that they become resilient in future, which will help them be successful? I want to spare them from some. I want them to have an easier life than I had. But where's the balance? How do we decide how much to let them figure out on their own and how hard should they fall on the bottom to really learn? And where can we guide them to take some shortcuts and be spared from the suffering that Jensen talks about? Does it make sense? It makes a lot of sense. It's a very difficult line that you have to sort of choose when to support and alleviate suffering versus almost when like a certain level of suffering will actually help the person become more resilient. I don't think first of all, I think that the fact that you're even thinking about it. is probably a good thing and probably more than most parents do. I think that most, like, listen, parents, I'm not a parent yet. I want to be a parent very soon. But parents are flawed humans. They're doing the best they can. Nobody gives you a playbook on how to be a parent. I had wonderful parents. I mean, I think that I've always said the biggest benefit my parents ever gave me was sort of the support and me being curious about trying new things, doing things that were different than what they had ever done in their careers and just sort of supporting any stupid idea that I ever had. That was such a gift that I don't think everybody gets, just like the absolute support. But... I mean, if I was going to ask them, and they're still around, if I was going to ask them, did you think about how to architect suffering in my life to create a certain... I don't think they did that. Consciously, I'm sure that sometimes there was some suffering, but I don't think they... Not many people think through that... Think about how am I going to create suffering for my child just to the point where they're, you know, a more resilient adult and not to the point where we've broken them and now they, you know, have all this anxiety and depression. I don't think that's a... I think we are the generation that has to think about those things because there is the biggest culture shift between my generation and the generation of my son who is eight. Because we grew up in a completely different world without technology, social media and all this and our parents didn't have child support. So they were bringing us up the best they could with the resources they had. And don't get me wrong, I also had wonderful parents. And I think... despite some cold traits in upbringing, they've given me everything that I needed to succeed in life. And the same way you said that, I think my parents gave me two greatest gifts. And one is for sure English, because my early success or my early opportunity has been tied to English because I started learning English when I was five and I was pushed really, really hard way before English was, you know, five hours a week at every school at primary level. I was having private tutors. My parents spent all their money on English for me, which means that when I applied for the job in London, I was handpicked from all the people that applied because my English was so much better at the age of 18. So that's the one gift. The second gift. is a gift of reinvention, of understanding that it's never too late to reinvent yourself. Because my mother and my father, as I said, they were teachers at school because after the professional sort of athlete career, there were many job opportunities and that wasn't bringing a lot of money. And my father got a job at a gaming venue at the age of 40, which required him to learn English as a 40 year old adult man in six months. So I observe him sitting there, you know, with the little pieces of paper. And that's before Duolingo. You know what I mean? Like there was no platforms that made it easy. He was learning this the best way he could and trying to get the conjugations and everything late that night, because he knew that job is going to open financial stability for his whole family. And he has no other choice but to learn that English. My mother, on the other hand, she started a weekend side hustle and she was selling secondhand clothes. And for many years, and that was on a market, which if she had a stall, she would go to, you know, a place where they collect all the secondhand clothing. She would pick the best pieces that she had a good eye for. And then she sold them on the market. And for many years, I was embarrassed of that. And only as an adult and only when I wrote this book and I traced sort of all these stories back, I realized my mother was an entrepreneur. She was the very first role model for me. She had a side hustle. She had a business. She did her accounting. And eventually that led to a full-time business that she's opened because she became this celebrity sort of hotspot with the finest vintage clothing available. But I didn't realize that wasn't embarrassing at all. That wasn't. the way I saw it as a child, that was what taught me that you can always want more in life. It's never too late. And your background is not very liability. You can always use it to monetize your background into your next opportunity. And that I'm forever grateful because I look at everything like that. And I now reinvented from tech founder to author. And I think it's all going back to the fact that I observed them doing this at home. The idea of reinvention. Did your parents know that they were giving you that superpower? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think my parents were focused on tactical, you know, send her to English, let her play tennis, let her play flute, let her try as many different possible things as possible. Did they know that this is giving me those deep internal superpower of seeing things differently? I doubt it. I know that this is not a parenting book, but the way that you look at parenting is a very healthy way to look at parenting. Just if you can, when you think about what your parents did for you and say you could pick the idea of reinvention as one of the most important ideas that they sort of left you with, how does a parent give their kids the psychological safety or the environment that encourages reinvention? I think there's a dual way for this because one for sure is opening up the world of opportunity within whatever means that you have. And that's going to vary between different people. Some are more privileged to offer things to the children, some are less, right? But I think there's always a spectrum that you can offer and let them try new things. Let them see what they like, but at the same time, don't make it the... pick and choose and give up for no reason type of things. I think there needs to be a level of commitment and there needs to be a level of depth that you go into to fully understand whether this is for you or not. And I think that's what my parents did. There was no such thing that they would... pay for some lessons for me and after three lessons that come home say I don't like it. And they will say, Okay, now we're gonna sign you up for something different. They will be like, No, you're gonna do this for a year now. And you're gonna try to get good at this. And if you don't, then we'll talk about it. So I think that's the balance. Open the world of opportunity, but also teach them through whatever your own parenting, gut and intuition tells you, because that's similar as with a startup. You can't tell parents how to be tactical with the children. You can only tell them what mindset is helpful based on your experience. So showing them the different things, but not letting them give up too soon would be my When did you ever, if you ever, had the conversation with your parents about being an entrepreneur or a founder? Never. I didn't know what an entrepreneur meant until I was about 32, you know? I never heard the word in English or in Polish. Just to me, the actual translation of the words in Polish meant someone that, I don't know, has a construction company or... produces carpets. That's how we saw entrepreneurs in Poland, you know? And I think that's the main difference in our upbringing as well. To give you a perspective, we didn't sell lemonade as our sort of early entrepreneurship play. We didn't. We ironed shirts for money. That's the difference. If you sell lemonade, you have to buy the produce, you have to make it and then you sell it and then you see what your profit is. That's entrepreneurial thinking. If you iron shirts, you're coming there and you iron them and you get paid per shirt. That's employee versus entrepreneur. And in post-communist Poland, that was the thinking we had. So I had to be exposed to a completely different culture. It was outside of Poland. It was a good 15 years after I've left Poland and worked corporate jobs and still thought that I was in the lane of this corporate employee. I was a high performer and I had big dreams for my corporate route. But at no point I thought I was cut out to be an entrepreneur because I was not... American, I didn't go to Stanford, I didn't drop out of Stanford, I didn't have a garage to found my startup in. All these preconceived ideas of who is an entrepreneur startup founder, I just knew that isn't me. If 19 year old you could see you now, what would she say? I know that this is probably a controversial way because most people would just go, Oh my God, amazing. You got there in life. I always knew that I will get there. I always knew that I will somehow get successful. Whether my definition of success was the same when I was 19 that it is now, No, back then, you know, I going back to my origin story, I started working as a casino dealer, dealing cards in a gritty Warsaw Casino full of questionable characters and even more questionable vocabulary being thrown at me. because I was paying my way through university. That was also going back to my parents. My parents had the means to pay for my university education, but they said that if I chose to party so hard as I did in high school and didn't get to the free education option, then I'm free to study, but I will have to pay for it myself. And if I finish it, they will refund me the money. If I don't finish it, then they won't. So I had to work to pay for my university. And that was a job that my father suggested as something that at least gives me a long term profession that I can always fall back on. So, you know, working the job, I thought that the successful look like I'll finish this university. I'll go through five or 10 years as an intern making tea and coffee for 60% of my time. And then I'll climb the corporate ladder and that will be success. But I knew I was going to get there because I knew that I am conditioned to work hard enough to get there. Did I think that I will end up as a founder that sold the company and now a book author? I wanted to be a book author, so I would probably hope for that. But no, that wouldn't have crossed my mind, not only when I was 19, but that wouldn't have crossed my mind six years ago. 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It's your nutrition. You can have everything else dialed in, but if your nutrition is off, your energy, your recovery, your mental clarity, they all take a hit. That's why I use MyFitnessPal. It makes tracking your food incredibly easy. I can log a meal in 10 seconds and the database is so big that whatever I'm eating is already in there. And here's the thing that actually got me. When I started tracking, even though I'm pretty good about my diet, I realized that if I don't pay attention, I weigh under eat protein. That explains every single afternoon crash that I will be blaming on everything else but my food. Again, MyFitnessPal is not about restriction. It's about awareness. And when you start using it, you start noticing patterns. It also connects with 40 plus apps and wearables. So it slots right into whatever it is you're already using. So if you actually care about your health as a founder, as an athlete, as someone who just wants to feel better, your nutrition has to be part of the plan. Go to podcast.myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott, all uppercase, for 15% off MyFitnessPal premium. Start tracking and see what you've been missing. So what was the thing, I'm curious, what was the thing that changed your definition of success that made you realize, I want to be a founder, I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to escape corporate? Was there an event, an inflection point, an influence? What was it? I write about all those defining moments and all those defining people in my book because I'm very clear. Again, sometimes it might come across as I, you know, you gave me the questions before the podcast because I have pretty clear answers to most of them, but it's not that. It's because I've traced my journey with so much detail to write the book. I told you before that my book was initially 650 pages. So I traced them in a lot of detail, you know, now it's not that large, but there was, I Malta, I lived in Malta. So I lived in Poland, I immigrated to UK, the first opportunity where Poland joined European Union, and I could get a job legally in the UK. Then I spent a couple of years working on the cruise liners and having a lot of fun as a 21 year old. Then I went back to London to study, dropped out of university again because I found it boring and I didn't want to have the student debt. And I went straight into work and work took me various places. I lived in Malta, I lived in Philippines, I lived in Spain. So I lived a lot of lives within my one life, but it was Malta. Malta was a big gaming hub and it was a big Swedish, Nordic in general, expat community. And there was a lot of founders there. That's where I first came across the word founder, because in the UK, I focus mostly on CEO job is pretty cool. I want to be a CEO one day. When I went to Malta that switched and I started working for a company that was, I started working for them where they just came out of their startup phase, probably being around seven employees and started to scale. And I was there working directly with the founders all the way to IPO. And then Um, started, you know, they were buying companies and then they ended up in a hundreds of millions type of acquisitions. I've seen all those, uh, levels of company growth and I was exposed to the founder mindset or find their mode. We call it now, but that wasn't a buzzword back then. through working with them. And initially it infuriated me because I wasn't a founder. So obviously I didn't have the my way or the highway. So I had to do what they tell me, but I think it also created that desire in me that I want that level of passion and accountability one day. I want to be able to be in the driving seat of my very own business. And I want to be able to build things because I also started in marketing and then switched to product and became a product manager, then CPO and so on. And I started to feel this. Itch inside me. I want to build products. I want to do innovation. I want to do things that no one has ever tried. And I want to be the one that has the final say and it's in charge of the company destiny. So I can get away from all the politics and corporate bullshit. You know, that was growing in me throughout that journey of working there, even though I love the company my whole heart and stayed for almost four years. And once I've seen it, I couldn't unsee it. And the next job after that was a consultancy, which was a very small first step into running your own business. And I run that for about a year and a half, which was helpful, you know, learning how to get your website, trademark, admin, finances, all this stuff. But the next one after that was, yeah, I'm going to build products. I'm going to raise investment and I'm going full pelt after being a successful entrepreneur one day. When you first pivoted away from jobs, just jobs and being an employee, and you felt like you had to be a founder and an entrepreneur, beyond play, that was not your first version of entrepreneurship. So what was your first version? Just give me a little bit of a story about the things that you've tried before something was actually successful. But it wasn't a lot because I had two years between, you know, quitting my corporate job and starting Beyond Play. And in that time, I ran a consultancy at first. But what I didn't like about that, it was that I was coming up with ideas, but I was never seeing the fruition of that because as a consultant, you know, You analyze, you create, and then the customer has the right to take it or leave it. And I didn't like it. It felt like a waste of time for me. So I tried that. Then my second startup idea was something very deeply rooted in my experience from the industry. I'm not going to go into the specifics because it wouldn't be interesting to mainstream reader, but it was something that I was specializing in when it comes to product, you know, specific area of product. And I thought I could only do that because that's the only space that I have authority in. Now, Beyond Play is an interesting one because... It was a complete breakthrough idea behind this product. No one ever has tried it, and no one has even believed that this is a thing until I started to create that trend within the industry. So I almost went out and told people at conferences while I was still a consultant, I think this is the next big thing. And because I was the only one saying that, I must have been pretty convincing because more people started to say that. And all of a sudden, we were all talking about it as the next big thing. So when I actually didn't see this come to fruition from anyone else, because initially I was still thinking, OK, I'm going to put the idea out there because I just think it's a gap in the market. Someone is going to build it. But no one was. So then I went... Well, okay. Well, I'm a product manager. I kind of work with founders and see how they operate. I have a lot of connections that know my track record, not just, you know, from this job, but from jobs in the industry before. And they are investing. So I have a chance of securing investment. And I'm also an authority on that particular trend I want to build in. I added this all together and I thought I might just have the package to get started. It didn't mean that I... went to business school, did any courses. I had no idea how to incorporate the company. I had no idea about legal elements, you know, equity to advisors. I've made all those mistakes, given too much, given too little, hired too fast, all this stuff. But the most important thing is that that was the moment it switched. And I went, I don't need to be a specialist in that because no one is a specialist in that because no one has ever tried that. So I am just going to go and see where it takes me. That was it. And you just bet on yourself. Yes. And I also went, I already know that I'm a very strong performer when it comes to corporate jobs, but I also know that I am a difficult person to work with because I'm so focused, you know, and I, tend to believe that most high performers are, to some extent, difficult people to work with. You probably agree. And it was a conscious decision. And it was also against the trend because people were saying, you need a technical co-founder. No, I don't. I will hire a CTO eventually later, but I'm not getting a technical co-founder because I want to be fully in the driving seat because I do not want to have additional level of drama. And back then, before we had AI and you could make Claude your technical co-founder, that wasn't. normal, that wasn't typical. So it was frowned upon when I was raising. And I kept being challenged on that, like, you don't have technical expertise, I have enough. And I have enough expertise to know who's got the technical expertise that I need. And I'm going to hire the person, but I do not need a co-founder, because I don't want to face the conflict that will inevitably come from that. So it was quite strong self-awareness from my side, I feel. And I have no regrets about that either. Talk to me about. Your build to sell from day one philosophy. Yeah. Again, it goes back to lived experience because I was your untypical startup founder, you know, I started the company when I was 39? No, no, no. 38. I think yes. Or 37, something like that. I can't really do the math in my head right now. Even though I was a casino dealer, I should be able to do it on the fly. But I can't. Anyway, and I had years of corporate career. So this is not such a typical pivot when you're already successful in corporate, not that many people go into entrepreneurship, where they have to take a pay cut and take that massive risk. And I was also But you know what? The best ones do, including Jeff Bezos, who was making a lot of money on Wall Street before he started on Amazon. So it's interesting when you have high conviction in something, you will take the pay cut because you trust it'll figure itself out. For me, there was a couple of challenging elements. I had to take the pay cut. I was already well performing. I was C-level already in corporate and then I had to start a company. I was also a mom of a three year old. You know, probably not the best time to start. And it was the beginning of the pandemic. So all these three things got thrown at me at the same time. But I felt like I made the choice myself. So in Polish we say the way you make your bed, that's how you're going to sleep. Jak się pościeleś, tak się wyśpisz. So if you basically choose bad mattress, that's your own fault. You're not going to get a good night's sleep. Where were we at? Sorry, I lost track of. But no, you're fine. I was just asking about your bill to sell from day one. Yes. I think I've seen enough acquisitions happen in my corporate career where I would compare myself to those founders. And I saw myself as equal in competence and in strength. my first observations of entrepreneurs at work was that company that I talked about with those two founders, the Swedish founders, and that company was flying and it was hitting milestone after milestone. So I didn't see it at the very early beginning and I didn't see as much of the... grind and hard work behind it first hand because they were public faces and obviously they had to present certain front to the company but I was seeing the success so I just assumed that I wanted to be entrepreneur because I want that success and when I founded my company immediately I was thinking so what do I want from this company do I want this to make me a lot of money in revenue or do I want to sell it and I sort of be fulfilled after building a company that someone wanted to buy. And maybe I watched too many movies, but for some reason I immediately was identifying potential targets that could buy me. And yes, the buyer that ended up to be the buyer was on my vision board among a couple of other companies because I knew that this is financially a suitable target. And generally it was fitting the strategy that I had for the product. They would have been a great extension of that strategy as a buyer. Why was FanDuel so comfortable with a two-month due diligence process? What did you do right when building BeyondPlay that even outside of the exceptional amount of work that you did to facilitate the exit and the acquisition, there was something in the way that you built the company that allowed FanDuel to also be comfortable with a two-month due diligence process, which is incredibly short. So think about this from the perspective of the founder who's building, building so it's sellable. You mentioned that you weren't sort of last minute putting together all this paperwork. Just for a founder that's building right now, what is the most important lesson so that, you know, hopefully if everything goes right for them, they can also entertain an offer? What should they be doing right now so that they can, if they put in the work, get an offer over the finish line in two months or less? I think it's, again, and this is going to contradict a little bit to what we said, because this goes back to don't wait until you're ready. And you don't need to do all this prep before starting the company. I do think that my prep came from my lived experience. I didn't do the prep, but I just seen it in real life. So I knew what things needed to be in place, you know, to avoid problems. employees conflict or team members conflict around share allocation and the vesting conditions and the lever provisions and all those little tiny details that I thought everybody kept in consideration when they started companies very early, but I work with startups now and they don't. So, you know, and the fact that we had everything trademarked that we, had the right domains in place, that we had a really well-structured board with some powerful board members on it as well, who were very, very helpful during the acquisition talks. You know, even though I negotiated the deal myself with the support of my lawyers, we had some people that I could call with substantial or extensive, I should say, experience in M&A that could guide me through it. It's hard to say to founders, you know, because I don't want anyone to think that they need to read an encyclopedia of startups before you found the company. But I do think it's very good to educate yourself on early structure, legalities, and how to keep things tidy, because that will prevent you from having to turn it all around in the future. And I'm almost self-conscious saying this because I can just hear Gary watching me going, said, bullshit, just go fast and hard from the beginning. I wouldn't be where I am now if I ignored those early obsessiveness about detail when it comes to contracts, details and things like that. And, you know, and not to say that the buyer was comfortable with such a short due diligence, but they also... understood my previous track record which again is very important and it's not something you can say to the founder hey be successful in something else before you start your first company um because it's not a prerequisite but it helps uh for a first but you weren't you weren't this is sorry just one point it's not like you had three or four exits before this no so you're saying you had a Track record more of within the corporate environment because I was already semi within my industry. I had a personal brand and I was recognizable for things that I built. You know, we were winning a lot of awards. We had performance that was just flying. So people knew that, the things that have been involved with in a past, in a sort of significant decision-making capacity, were doing well. So they were willing to trust that this company is doing well enough that when they start their due diligence, they're not going to uncover a house on fire. Yes, that makes sense. But even then, I mean, like... You had a corporate, you had, you know, you had corporate sort of like a really strong corporate resume. And that still sometimes is not enough for, you know, an acquiring company to just completely bet on a founder just because of their past corporate. Usually it's like if they had like past exits and whatnot. So I think that, yes, that helped. But I think that your second point about being obsessive over details is. especially when you're first getting started, that probably helped quite a bit too. I will tell you what helped the most. And it's hard to explain it again, because the industry is specific. And when I explain to industry people, it makes sense, but I'm trying to put it in generic terms. There was my track record as a leader and as a product builder. I've built some really well-performing, innovative products in the past. There was the fact that we had everything by the book, so it was easier. for the due diligence team, mostly the M&A team to go through and check, check, check, check, check, all of that works, right? But then there was the technology itself. A, it was innovative. It had innovation value. B, it had a part of the technology. One of the products had an amazing commercial momentum. And we had a huge pipeline of customers, which... To get to that point, that was the element that was unsustainable for me and my whole team. We paid the price to get to that point with exodus of people who weren't aligned with the hustle hard and go really fast values. But I was going after every customer that I could think of at a speed that was not successful. sustainable for anyone. And probably at some point I would have had to slow down. But at that time we were reaping the benefits of that because someone wanted to buy us and our fallback was, well, we have a number of customers that are, you know, super excited and super keen to sign contracts with us and get us on board. And then there was proven, scalability of the technology. And a company like Fundio would have never bought us if we didn't have that scalability in place. And that also meant that we paid a price because we took on, from the first day, we took on one of the biggest customers on the other side of the pond, in Europe and serve them with that technology, which meant that the first weeks of that was an absolute nightmare of PagerDuty ringing me every five minutes, alerting me to potential incidents, database falling over, no one was sleeping, no one was eating, we were all stressed out, but we've gone through a period just six months before. And we identify our weaknesses and what was causing those potential and actual incidents and we fixed it. And that also meant we had to work even harder because the fix was a whole infrastructure overhaul, because we've made a mistake with the choice of technology early, then we had to do a different choice. So by the time that a big buyer from the US was interested in us, we had proof that we're not only are supporting this transactional volume, but we have the foundations in place to support whatever volumes you're going to want. This tech is scalable. So that was those three elements added together, I think was a no brainer. And it was more of a case of, well, let's do this now, because otherwise this company is going to grow and it's going to be more expensive. So this is an opportunity. If they're willing to talk, let's talk. Now, it all worked out, but looking back, obviously not everything was perfect when you build a company this quickly and you scale it this quickly. So... look at this as a teaching moment for an entrepreneur. What was the biggest mistake that you made when when scaling and building beyond play that, you know, going back, you'd have done differently. But hopefully it's like a lesson for somebody who's the biggest. The biggest mistake I made was thinking that if I hire more people, I'm going to be able to build faster and grow faster. And this is one of those things where when I was doing that, there were people telling me don't and I didn't listen. And there were specifically people from tech background who are telling me, listen, more developers doesn't mean faster delivery, especially when you don't have the processes and, you know, internal infrastructure to support more human resource. And I didn't. And so that ended up with a lot of complexity added and the what we call the people that were on board when it was a small boat versus going to like this Navy ship. Not everybody wanted to be part of the Navy ship. Not everybody wanted to be the bigger company with more structure. They wanted to be the startup company. face, they didn't necessarily see themselves in a scale up. So that was the biggest mistake, because it didn't make us build faster. It made me more anxious, it made me very close. It took me very close to burnout, psychologically, because I I don't know how to explain it. I couldn't handle all the drama that was being offloaded to me. And I wanted to be the leader that everyone loves and everybody can come to and talk to and I like to comment on that by saying that my open door policy with every single team member in my team ended up with an open door policy between me and my therapist who kept ringing the bell and saying, you're going to burn out. And by burn out, I don't mean that you're going to wake up one day and say, oh, I don't know if I can do this anymore. You're not going to be able to do this anymore. You're not going to be able to get out of bed because I see all the warning signs in you. So that was the biggest mistake for sure. And then there is another one I like to highlight because I think within my. Vision and mission of empowering women, I'm not a hardcore feminist or I don't see myself as a female brand by any means, but I do love to help women because I feel they face a lot of more of these self-limiting beliefs and and things. I was super keen on creating a startup that is going to be very diverse in gender because there's not enough women in tech. And I was a female CEO and then I managed to have my whole management team female. My CTO was female, my COO. And that gave us leverage in attracting female tech power and generally be seen as a very inclusive and gender diverse company in the industry. But that came at the price. And what I always try to say is if you want to champion women, you need to have infrastructure in place to do so. And you need to have expertise because that comes with its own complexity, because championing females also meant that we were an attractive workplace to different sexual orientations, different sexual identities. And we didn't know how to deal with that. We didn't know, well, I would know how to be inclusive, but not every other team member do. And I didn't have the right tools in place to make sure that everyone is. So that ended up with a whole level of added anxiety for me. And I don't think we've handled it very well, which meant that those women would come to us. And then when one of them would leave... all of them would leave because the ratio was dropping really fast. And you signed up for this gender diverse company with a lot of women in tech, and all of a sudden, two of them move on. And then there's only three of you and they move on. So that's something I didn't foresee. And the main lesson from that is if you want to be supporting minorities in your company, I think it's a very noble cause. And I'm very proud that I tried to do that. But make sure that you have someone with expertise to tell you how. So this is a complete contrary. In that aspect, you don't run before you're ready. deliver on what you're promising and not just preach, not just put it on your deck of we champion women. We are a diverse tech startup. It's not enough. No, I think that's important. I think that the lesson is, is to, I mean, you always have the mission statement or the values of the company, but. People have to remember that a company is just a collection of imperfect human beings all trying to figure it out. So it's nice to have the values to attract the investors, but ultimately, like, how do you live those values? Whether or not it's the experience you had or another mission statement about, you know, whatever you want your company to stand for, it's a lot easier to say it and a lot more difficult to live it. On that subject, I had to change the values of the company midway through. I literally had a meeting with my team and said, scrap the values that I put in place at the beginning of the company. Because that's not true anymore. Because when I founded the company, I had a dream of being this work-life balance oriented company. Yeah. you know, you're going to be able to work from home remotely. And I almost preach that this is better than corporate job because you have more flexibility, because that's what I genuinely thought when I was starting out also for myself. And then, you know, two years in when we were driving at 100 miles an hour, and doing all these things, I had to call in the people and saying, hey, we're going to change what we tell people when we recruit because it's not fair. We're not setting the expectations right, right? So we cannot tell them these things at the recruitment stage and then drop them into this boiling pot of stuff. And I said, so now from now on, there is a very different value and the number one value in this company might seem controversial to you, but it is a hassle. And we're going to all hustle hard for the next couple of years. And if you don't want to do that, because you don't think that's going to take you places with us, or it's not worth it for you, or it doesn't align with your current desires in life, that's perfectly fine. But at least you know that this is what we're trying to do. And that's what's going to take. And you can decide for yourself whether this is for you or not. And I think that transparency is Even when it means that, you know, you've over promised before, you have to admit that I wasn't right about the things I was telling you this company is going to be about. So I had to some extent take accountability for my mistake. But at least I felt we're transparent from here. And then whoever stayed on board was on board with full eyes open. Odoo is a success story partner. Now, before I say anything else, just let me get the pronunciation right because they told me that like five times I need to get this right. It is Odoo. Odoo. Here's why I actually care about this one. A few years ago, I was running my company with a video editor, one city, a designer in another city. I had a VA overseas. Every Friday night, I was logging into three different platforms to pay them. It was different fees, different invoice formats, a Google sheet. I was updating at midnight to track who got what. That was my payroll. Odoo is a platform I wish I'd had five years ago. It's not a tool. It's basically an operating system for a business. Accounting, invoicing, project management, inventory, HR. There are over 45 applications, all connected, all running on one platform. And here's the part that got me. The same platform that runs your books can also build your website, e-commerce, signatures, the whole stack. It's one login, one source of truth. And the kicker is that the first app is free for life. Unlimited users, hosting included. And after that one subscription unlocks everything else. So if you are stitching six tabs together to run your company, Like I think most of us are sometimes. Just go look at this thing. Odoo.com. Start with one free app. Huel is a success story partner. Now, I'll be honest with you. I am terrible at eating well when my schedule gets packed. I'll look up. It's two in the afternoon. I haven't even had a real meal. And then I'm just useless for the rest of the day because I'm hitting a wall. So I started keeping Huel around. It's been an absolute game changer. They just launched into Target stores nationwide, which is huge. You can walk right into your local Target right now. Grab the Black Edition ready to drink and the Daily Greens ready to drink. The Black Edition, this is a full meal, 35 grams of protein, 27 essential vitamins and minerals, no artificial sweeteners, gluten-free, and it's under five bucks. I grab one of these in between recordings, done, I'm good for two hours. And the Daily Greens is more of a health thing. 42 vitamins, minerals, and superfoods in one bottle. It's developed by a registered nutritionist, 25 calories, four grams of fiber, and one gram of sugar. I'll have one first thing in the morning. It's the easiest win of my day. Now, 15% off for new customers. Use my code Scott at Huel.com slash Scott and do the post checkout survey. It helps to show. Go to Huel.com slash Scott, code Scott. HubSpot is a success story partner. Now, customers are using traditional search less and less to find the businesses they want to buy from. Now, when a buyer or a customer asks AI for a solution like yours, does your business come up? They're looking for a product, they're looking for a service, and they're going into some AI chat tool, and they're saying, hey, help me find the best one. If your company isn't showing up, you're missing out. And most companies have no idea if their business is showing up or even how to show up. And by the time they figure it out, they've already lost a deal to somebody that figured out it. AI. This is what AEO is. Answer Engine Optimization. HubSpot AEO helps you show up in those moments with the right answers that your buyers and your customers are looking for. It could be before the first click, before the first form fill. That's the moment HubSpot AEO is built for. So check out HubSpot.com to learn more about AEO. HubSpot is the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. When I sort of understood how you were, when I researched how you sort of operated in your companies, there's a few frameworks that I really respect. Transparency, but sometimes even transparency to a fault. There was a point where you told your team that you may not pay them in two months because things weren't going the way that you wanted them to be going. Um, the fact that, you know, you, you openly speak about how difficult it was to champion this diversity environment, not from a place of not wanting to do it from a place of, I don't know how to do it. I'm a first time more or less founder. I'm trying to figure this out as I go. And I think that these are really important conversations because for people that are building companies right now, it's so lonely. Um. for that founder. And I can guarantee you there's somebody who's listening to this right now, who's going through any of the things you went through and they're not, you know, they should have a therapist. I'm a big believer that founders should have therapists because it's very, very difficult and it's super lonely. I didn't have one from the beginning. I got one when I started to feel heaviness, you know? Yeah, I know. But there's people that are going through these things and they are now listening to you thinking, oh, thank God it's not just me. That's what they're listening and they're thinking right now. And it's so obvious when you say it. Obviously, it's not just them. It's not just you. But when you're living it and you're going through the shit and you're dealing with all these problems... You start to question if you're even doing the right thing. Like, should I even be building this company? This is more headache than I thought it was worth, right? This is the, all the self doubt. This is where the self doubt creeps in. It's like one problem at a time. And each problem in isolation is not going to create enough doubt for you to want to stop being an entrepreneur. But when they start to add up and you think about problems, when you start a company, you don't think the problem I'm going to have is I'm not going to understand how to properly manage a diverse team of employees. That's not the problem that you think you're going to have. How do I pay rent next month? That's the problem that you think you're going to have. And then all of a sudden you have all these other problems and you're like, oh, my God, they never end. But a couple other ideas. Your ideas. So the idea that we are a football team, not a family. So empathy and ruthlessness or just radical candor can exist at the same time in a company. But talk to me about that one line. We are a football team, not a family. I think it went back to the fact that I at first considered myself to some extent a mother for this team and that my loyalty had to be with them no matter what. And there were situations in the company where My loyalty had to be somewhere else. My loyalty had to be with the external capital we raised and I promised to return. My loyalty at times had to be with customers whom I convinced on certain terms and timelines. And that didn't necessarily translate to the loyalty of the customers. Hours that my employees were supposed to work, right? So I started to realize that, yes, we have to be the team. There needs to be communication. There needs to be delegation. There needs to be very clear roles we are playing, but we are not emotionally attached to the level where we cannot detach. Because with families, detachment is probably your last resort. With teams, if someone is underperforming or doesn't have the right attitude or doesn't agree with the coach and overall team strategy, that person leaves and is replaced by someone else. There's a difference between the team and family. And it took me some time to understand it as we grew, but I think it was a very important lesson and something that once I understood it and started to approach it with that in mind, it was easier to let go of certain people or wanting to be loved as a leader. It was easier to just say, I'm not here to be loved. I'm here to make this company a success. And I will be transparent and authentic and fair, but you don't need to like me. You've mentioned a few times that one of your biggest early mistakes when starting Beyond Play was that you hired too fast. And this is a very classic founder mistake. So everybody does this because... They think somebody is greater than they are. They probably don't have a great hiring process in place. They hire, then they realize that, oh my God, this is not the right person, but then they give them a million chances and they do the opposite. They don't hire slow, fire fast. They hire fast, fire slow. One framework that I've heard that I thought was a really interesting framework. So after you've hired a whole bunch of people, this framework was from John Morgan. He's a billionaire at this point. He's built one of the largest personal injury law firms in the U.S. And I just heard a clip about this on Instagram. and I actually want to talk to him about this because he's going to come on the podcast as well. But he said a framework that's helped him a lot is list out every single person in your company and have a little, put it in Excel and in the first column you have all their names. And the second column just to have a blank column. And for each person write down Knowing what you know about them now, would you hire them? Not would you fire them, but would you hire them? And if the answer is no, then you let them go. Very interesting framework. I will definitely take note of that because that would have saved me a few. It's a reframe, right? It's a reframe. Like, and that is the answer to, is that person a fit for this company, knowing everything that you know about them now. And it's not going to, you know, it's not going to let you go back in time and make a better hiring decision, but it'll first of all, allow you to really understand who should be on the team and who shouldn't. Because if you wouldn't hire them knowing everything you know about them now. then they shouldn't be on your team. But also it'll give you clarity on who you should hire next time. But I bring this up first of all, because hopefully it's useful for listeners. And I think it's a very wise way to look at the current employees that you have. But also I was going to ask, do you have a framework or an idea about how you hire and how you find the perfect talent for your company after, you know, self-admittedly making all the traditional founder mistakes when you first started out? No. I was hiring based on... And that was also a mistake. At that time, the only people I hired where the personality traits mattered were non-technical people. So, and I hired people that I worked in the past with. So I didn't need to evaluate those traits because we worked together really well. I knew those people were successful and it was, you know, I cherry picked and I was like, hey, let's do this. Come and work with me. And that was it. The rest of the people, majority of the company at that stage were technical people, right? And I was hiring. 90% based on technical expertise because the products were complex. We had two different tech stacks. It was, as I said, challenging the status quo. So I really needed the best people. It was in the middle of the pandemic. I didn't have the big tech budgets to compete with. I didn't have the big recruiters budget. So for a long time, I was hiring off LinkedIn and producing recruitment ads myself in the early versions of AI that you could do. So, and that. between the us later because exactly for those reasons, because we didn't evaluate the character and ask the right questions. The reason why I don't have a framework to hire people is because I have no desire to hire any more people anytime soon. So it wasn't something that- No, that's not fair. You have to give me something. I understand where you're coming from. That's not fair. I'll give you an answer to that because on the other side, because I do evaluate people, I evaluate founders that I either mentor or invest in. And that I have a set of criteria and a framework for. I'm just saying for hiring people as team members, I don't because this is, I need to recover from, uh, my PTSD, uh, before I go there again. Okay. Um, so when it comes to founders, um, arrogantly, I look for people that are similar to me. I look for similar drives. I look for their past, um, um, the history that I want to almost read a book about them. As I wrote myself, I want to know how they were at school. What's the relationship with risk? How were they brought up? You know, because that's at the early stage. I think that kind of research tells you so much more than their, uh, growth and scaling plan and they're completely made up projections, especially now when they're all done by Claude and they really don't require the logical thinking and market trends knowledge as they did still three years ago, you know? So I really look at personalities. Signs of proven record, network, because I think network is super important as well. And I use mine firsthand to my success. These are my criteria more than there's two startups in my portfolio that didn't open the deck off. Um, but I did take the founders to a retreat with me to a business retreat where I had a chance to connect with them deeply. And the other two I met at a similar retreat. And again, I connected with them deeply and those I did look at the decks, but my mind was already made up that these people. are someone that I want to invest, not just to mentor them, but I also want to learn from them because I saw qualities in them that could be beneficial for me as well, because I feel it's always a two-way journey. I'm not a mentor and I'm not teaching them anything. I'm sharing my lessons, but I'm learning with them along the way. So I want to go back to one of the original ideas that we were speaking about luck. So you said you don't believe in luck, but does luck have any place in success? I think it does. So, you know, the, I don't believe in luck, it's a very strong headline. I like to refer to that as engineered serendipity, cause that's the word that I think carries more, I've earned it, I've made it happen. But luck definitely plays a part in success when it's accommodated with different elements. And this is what the title of the book stands for. Interestingly enough, the L in the title of her play stands for luck. but it forms a bigger word consisting of H-E-R. And each one of them is associated with the elements I found crucial in my own success. And I found as patterns in the successes of others that I've observed. Hustle, execution, risk, passion. Luck adaptability, so pivoting, and most importantly, you as your greatest asset, which sounds fluffy, but I think it's one of the most important things for people to understand if they want to bet on themselves, they need to know their own uniqueness. So engineered serendipity, this is creating your own luck. Yes, making space for luck to land by constantly moving, creating momentum, searching for opportunity and probably on another time, but this is in the book. Or look it up, the etymology of the words luck, risk and serendipity. Once you dive deep into that and understanding when those words entered the human language and on what circumstances, you're not going to be able to stop thinking about it. And you're going to see the word luck completely differently. And you're going to be using serendipity instead as well. I'll leave you with that little homework post. What about the critic? So speak to the, not the critic, but speak to the skeptic who says that success is just hard work plus timing. I don't think I would completely object that because I do say that majority of success is hard work, right? And timing could really be wrapped under that element of luck to some extent. But I think there are other parallels to the elements that need to be there as well, because if it's only hard work without passion, then it's got a limit on it because If you don't have passion for what you do, you're not going to have fulfillment. Therefore, the sustainability is going to be much more short-lived and you're going to burn out faster. It's only when you have clarity, purpose, and that translates into passion, that you're going to be able to do it for longer and work as hard. Because if you're not seeing that light at the end of the title, whether that's fulfillment or actual financial outcome or whatever your goal is, the motivation levels are going to drop much faster. So I think passion is very important. If you don't have self-awareness to the point where you're able to challenge your what we talked about, self-limiting beliefs, internal demons and blockers. So without that you element, understanding what your strengths, weaknesses are, do you need to heal from certain things in order to be a better human, entrepreneur, business person? no amount of hard work is going to help you. So I think there's a combination. And again, my formula isn't a magic one. These are not unknown concepts. You know, I, that's why the book, Let's not be mistaken. I didn't write the book about the framework and the seven elements. I wrote the book about my life. But when you read my stories, you'll see how important each element of that framework was in it. And you're going to find your own story for each element. That was the idea that you read almost like a novel or a fiction book. I didn't want to write another Steve Jobs book or those that you have this linear narrative of success that sits on the bookshelves. Although I love the books. I'm not in any way taking away from them. I wanted to write something different. I wanted to write a life story that shares the lessons that people can find mirror. It's interesting because you said that you sat with these limiting beliefs for years and years and years, and you were still successful in spite of them. But through the process of actually writing this book, you actually uncovered like that you were actually like, explain to me actually, When was the point? And I think I asked you this at the beginning, but I just want to clarify something and you'll understand where I'm going with this in a moment. But you sat with these limiting beliefs. You wrote the book documenting your journey. It sounds like through the process of writing the book, you actually further identified these limiting beliefs and understood that they were significantly impacting you. And then the book almost acted as a little bit of therapy, helping you overcome some of these limiting beliefs. A hundred percent. Now, what I want to get your advice on is for somebody who is living with these beliefs right now, which I'm sure many of us, myself included some days. Um. What is the process of starting to uncover, understand, and then get over some of these beliefs so that we can actually understand how great we actually are? Actually, no one has ever asked me that question, so I don't have a ready answer. But I think for a long time, and it's not that I shed all my self-limiting beliefs in one go now when I was writing the book. I was shedding them one by one, and probably... Not so intentionally. They were shedding by themselves because I had no choice. Because my circumstances in different scenarios were such that I didn't have the luxury of walking away from taking certain risk or putting myself in certain discomfort. And once I did that, that self-limiting belief would... fall off as a result. But writing the book was just the biggest enabler for me because as I was writing the book and I was trying to understand why I had that relationship with risk, I started to dive into research around neuroscience, psychology, and all these things. And that gave me much greater understanding of my behaviors. So I would say to people that the best process is to... Really look at your life almost through a lens of someone else to get out of your head and your preconceived perception of yourself and almost imagine that someone wants to write a book about your life. What questions would they ask you about the stories of your life? And what conclusions would they draw without the full picture, without being you? And you'd be surprised. I think if you answered these two things on a piece of paper, you may come out with a very different story of who you are than you have ever. inside right now. I believe that a lot. I think that too often we get stuck in our own head. I think a lot of this, if we, that's it, I think it's actually a beautiful perspective. By the way, you don't have to have an answer for everything. That's the whole point of the conversation. But I guess, but you know, you watch your podcast and everybody has this really smart, you know. That is a very smart answer. Concepts. I think that removing yourself and almost applying this third party perspective of your life and the decisions you make and the wins that you've had. I think that's a very smart way of overcoming imposter syndrome of, of improving your own self belief, almost like understanding your own self worth. Like if you objectively looked at your life, if it. You said it in a different way than I've ever described it before, because I've always said something along the lines of to get over imposter syndrome. I want you to look back at all the times you've been successful in your life. And I just want you to literally like write those down, like write down all the wins that you've had in your life. And then you start to sort of. C, over time, well, I took this risk and then I succeeded and I took this risk and then I succeeded. And when you itemize those and put pen to paper or write them in a notepad or whatever the process is, you start to realize how competent and how competent. how and why it makes sense that you were successful in all those previous endeavors. And then you almost logic yourself into understanding that, well, I was successful in nine out of 10 things that I've done in my life. Why would I not be successful at the next thing? That's sort of how I've helped people come up, overcome imposter syndrome. But I like the way. Can I give you my strategy for imposter syndrome? Well, no, no. This is what, yes, yes, yes, please. But I was just saying, like, I love the way that you framed it. Like, don't even just look at your past successes through your lens. look at them as if you were a third person, like a third party. I'm going to use it in my speaking now. I need to write it down, what I just said, so that I can incorporate my messaging. That wasn't too bad. Thank you. But I have a very simple way of overcoming imposter syndrome. And you might have to believe that because my strategy for that is imposter syndrome, because I don't think that it should exist in the dictionary. I think the fact that imposter is tied with the word syndrome in that phrase is ultimately flawed, because it indicates that is an issue and that is a problem. And at the same way I think the definition of luck is misunderstood. The fact that it's called syndrome and in my language, in Polish, it's even worse because in Polish it's called a fraudster syndrome. So it immediately indicates that you're cheating your way into something. So you're already on the other side of it, which you need to reverse. Rather than that, I always say when you feel that you're not good enough because I don't like the word. I think the word has been made up to make people be able to name it and stop doing things rather than going forward. When you're feeling not good enough, when you're feeling self-doubt, when you are feeling you don't belong in the room, look at that and think that means I am growing. That means that I am on the journey of creating space for luck, for success. The moment you look on the positive side of that feeling... you're automatically going to overcome it and move forward. If you're going to be feeling, I have a syndrome, I have a disease, I have an issue, then it's much easier to say to yourself, I'm going to let it stop me. I'm going to let it block me from going after my dreams, betting on myself, whatever it is. So don't use the wording even. One of my reframes on this, erase it from your dictionary. And you know what, now that we're putting all these ideas together, If you have imposter syndrome, you don't even say the word, I understand, but just so that people understand what we're talking about. They think they're not good enough, right? They think they have imposter syndrome or they feel like they have imposter syndrome. They feel like they're not set out to do the thing that they're trying to do. That's why they believe that if it happens, it's luck because they believe that they're never meant to do it in the first place. On point, on point. That's why these things, it's so fascinating how a little change of word can change the whole way we see things. Right. And again, the same way as we talked about the etymology of the word luck, risk and serendipity, look at the etymology of the word imposter. Why, why would we name this feeling with that word? It doesn't make any sense. When somebody feels that feeling, what does that mean? That feeling of not being good enough of building a business isn't for me. It's for someone else. I'm not qualified. What does that mean? I think that means that they haven't trained their confidence as a muscle enough times to feel fully confident in themselves and not need external validation. So while they're not getting that external validation and they don't have enough of internal validation, they feel not good enough. And the two ways to deal with that is either search for that external conviction we talked about from those people who understand how important that might be to someone, those allies that are out there to give people wings, you know, because there are many people like that, or we do work on our internal confidence. And maybe you're at the place where you need to take small steps and you need to be building up that confidence through smaller acts of discomfort. Maybe not that huge jump straight away, but the more you train, the stronger you get. The more reps you do, the easier it's going to become. So if you really feel that feeling extremely strongly, start small, but start. One of the ideas that ties into this is synchronicity, not coincidence. So explain this to people, explain why they should look for synchronicity and not just assume that if two things happen, it's just random chance, coincidence luck. Because, and this, again, I always felt that because I've done a lot of things in my career by pure intuition. You will see, you know, I've done big things. I've left Poland at 18, quit university, went on the cruise ships, quit cruise ships, mid cruise in Alaska against all regulations, went to Philippines, packed my bag, you know, moved my life. I've done a lot of moves that led me to, in combination to great success. but it wasn't calculated risks. Most of the time they felt reckless and there was just something internally that was telling me to do it. Only now that I got interested in the science behind it, I am of an opinion, as many other smarter people than me, that intuition is data set that you already have internally. And that's why it's being pushed into this gut feeling that you should or not should not do something. So synchronicity is basically allowing that intuition to act or acting on it and not believing that this is just complete randomness. If you felt something so deeply, and I like to use this phrase of If doing something was keeping you, if not doing something was keeping you up at night more than the idea of doing that, then you know what to do. And I don't think it comes from nowhere. I think it comes from internally written set of evidence from your past experience that you should listen to as data. We also spoke about this at the beginning, but the reframe of fear. Again, I wanna just bring that back because I think that's a very important idea. So you were talking about this experience where you were about to go skydiving with a very experienced base jumper and he reframed sort of the fear of jumping out of the plane with you. Looking back on your own life and what you've achieved so far, what has been that fear reframe? What was that moment in your life where your relationship with fear, not... about to jump out of a plane, but just building a business, taking a risk, taking a chance. When did that sort of reframe of fear become real for you? That it was like, yes, I have to, when I look at fear differently, this is the moment when I realized that my whole life can change. This is a final chapter of my book. So I am giving away the spoiler I read in here, but I think there's enough reasons why people would wanna read it. So I will tell you because it's, again, It's such a memorable moment in my memory, especially after writing it, because I cried when I wrote that chapter and many other people who read it cried when they got to it. It was a moment where I was thinking about doing a startup. I already started to have first conversations, but the pandemic hit and I was also in the interviews for a C-level role at a very respected company. And I had a lot of doubts about, is this the right moment to go after being an entrepreneur? Because, you know, with this uncertainty everywhere around, is anybody going to be investing? Am I going to be able to hire? It's literally an unprecedented world situation. And I'm trying to do something that I've never done before. Maybe I should just stick to a well-paid job that I know how to do with my eyes closed, you know, especially being a new mom. And I had that interview for the job and I was pretty sure I was going to get it. And I was sitting in my living room, well, actually in my studio apartment in Poland, where I got stuck for almost 24 months during the pandemic because there was always either lockdown in Poland or UK. So we couldn't come back from there. Yeah. And my son was two and a half at the time, and he didn't have all his toys because the toys were left in London. And he grabbed a couple of Brio train tracks and he was trying to make them into a track, a square track that a train could ride around, you know, and he didn't have enough of these tracks. There was no way that track was ever going to close. but it didn't stop him to try to put this track together. And I was sitting there and I was watching him doing that. And I was looking, how come my two and a half old is not scared to keep building this, even though he's got limited resources in his hand, because all he can think about how fun it is going to be to ride that train around, uh, whatever track he builds, you know, even if the train is going to stop for a while until he figures that. And that was the moment where I thought I'm not taking that job. I'm not taking that job. I want to found my own business. I want to go after this itch that I've been feeling for years and the pandemic and the motherhood and the self-doubt and whatever else I'm feeling is not going to stop me. And I remember this. I get emotional when I talk about it now because this isn't a made up, you know, narrative for the book. It's something I remember like it was yesterday. You're happy, you bet on yourself. Yes. I keep betting on myself. I'm nowhere close to being done, you know? So this was great chapter and an amazing achievement. I'm probably scared to try again at that scale with full teams of people and everything just yet, but I'll eventually, Won't be scared enough, but now I'm doing something else and I'm betting on myself again in a completely different, you know, area of, of, of business that is publishing books, whatever. That moment though, where you were on the fence, you could have taken the job or you could start your company. There's people that are in that moment right now in their life. What do you want to tell them? It's a really hard one because if you just say, don't be scared, just do it. It's so vague, right? But I think look deep inside you and understand, do you want this more? that you're scared of it. That's the key question to answer to yourself. And you might have to spend hours on it. We might have to spend days, months on it. I would recommend not to because the longer you spend on it, the more you're going overthink and complicate. So your instant answer, if you ask yourself, am I more scared or am I more, do I desire this more than I'm scared? whatever is the first thing that comes to your mind shows you the path, so follow it. So now at this stage of your life, you've written this book, you speak. So this is sort of, this is the next season of your life as well. And I just want to, I want to point out, and hopefully I'm not incorrect in this assumption, but whenever you have success in one arena, I think that it's healthier to have this, not hesitation, but thoughtfulness about the next thing that you jump into because, and I think that you're a very thoughtful person. I think that from just getting to know you, it sounds like when you chose to write a book, when you chose to speak professionally, it's not like you just jumped into it with hubris and, and ego and assuming that you're going to be good at it just because the last thing was good. I think that's the smart way to go into any new project, regardless of your past successes. I think that it's actually, um, uh, I think that there's a high chance that you can fail when you just assume, because I was good at one thing, I'm going to be good at everything. It's a little bit of like an ego thing. And I don't, I'm going to quote, I'm going to quote Jensen again, because I quote him all the time, he's a smart guy with a lot of smart things to say. And he said, the superpower of a first time founder is their naivety. I don't have that naivety anymore. And I'm not arrogant enough to think that if I succeeded once, I will succeed the second time. So there is still, I haven't shared all my limiting beliefs. I am completely aware that at the moment I'm too scared to do another tech startup, even though I still love building things. I will arrive there, but I'm not as scared right now as I'm aware. that my resource levels, mental resource levels and physical resource levels haven't recovered from the last journey. And if I went into another one of that intensity straight away, I'm setting myself up for failure. So I'm trying to be just aware of the different elements that are needed. I don't have what it takes for execution right now. I don't have what it takes to be passionate about it right now. Therefore, I went into the book... because it's slightly less intense, let's be honest. But also it's a way to empower others, pay it forward to a bit. And it's the first time in my life because I worked since I was 18 and I didn't have a break. I had probably three months break from my maternity leave. where I can do something for impact and fulfillment and not for financial stability gains. And that's very important to me that I've arrived in a place in my life where I can't do that. So I want to do that for as long as it gives me that feeling because it feels good. So your book titled Her Play, Make Your Own Luck is available now. I mean, this podcast drops and we'll put all the links in the show notes as well. So it's available wherever you get books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, all major retailers worldwide. If people want to connect with you, if they want to follow you on social, consume more of your content, where do you want to send them? I do two things. I obviously share a lot of business advice on LinkedIn. But I think more me and more expressive side of me is Instagram, because I love taking videos and that's where you see the real behind the scenes of who I am. The last question I like to ask, you've given over a lot of wisdom, mindset, operationally for entrepreneurs and just for people in general. But say you could only pick one piece of advice and you can pass that piece of advice on to your kids. The most important piece of advice doesn't have to be business. It can be, but it doesn't have to be. What would be that lesson you leave with your kid? It would for sure be the reframe on fear because I think it's applicable to everything. So, um, just whenever you get scared, really, really look deep into that fear before you let it overcome you. Uh, because half of the times it doesn't need to, and that I teach my son, um, daily as well with everything. The more you put yourself outside of your comfort zone, the stronger you'll become and the less things you're going to be scared of. The one thing that I think is so interesting about fear. is that fear is learnt. Most fear is learnt. We are not intuitively from childbirth, as a young kid, like scared of taking chances, taking risk. I think the biggest fear outside of death is speaking in front of an audience. We're not scared of these things, but then it's learnt. The little children pick up spiders and they wanna eat them. They need to see a movie with spiders being scary to start being scared. You're totally right. So for somebody that has all this fear about taking a risk, taking a chance, starting a business, fear about anything in life, what would you tell them right now? You could be talking to your son or you could be talking to anybody who's listening. So I'm going to follow on what you just said. If fear is learned, that means you can unlearn it, but you just need to understand where you learned it from, reverse engineer and step by step, remove that fear.