Lara Acosta - Viral Content Creator & Personal Brand Strategist | The Secret To Going Viral

Etsy failed, dropshipping failed. For my last try to kind of start something, I kept them here about LinkedIn. What does it take to become the hash one female creator on LinkedIn in just one year? For Lara Acosta, the answer is personal branding done right. This drive to go all-in on LinkedIn for no reason whatsoever, I felt drawn to LinkedIn so much. For a selfie post, one of them went viral and it changed my life. People just wanted something that didn't feel like there was being sold to. The education system is a scam. 99% of people I know of have not used a degree to the fullest extent. The most successful people I know, they haven't even used their one bit. In 2022, she was unemployed and looking for a way forward. By 2023, Lara had not only built a six-figure business, but also grew her audience to over 300,000 followers and 20 million impressions. Path of the degree, get this boring job, live the boring life and that's it, you're meant to stay. There's no ambition, there's no drive, they assign this role to you, of this person. I think that's always why I never succeeded at school. Now, she's on a mission to teach others exactly how to do it without the trial and error. In this episode, Lara reveals the proven strategies that propelled her to the top, from building content systems to cultivating authentic engagement. Having as much leverage as possible is the highest thing like the most important thing I could have done. Both way of teaching me, if you can't show me that you're obsessed with something and you can do it, then I'm going to give you everything you want. Welcome to success story, I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. I'm also a big user of HubSpot products. I've supported the show for over three years now and for all entrepreneurs out there, I need you to go back to a time and place when building businesses as tough as it is can be sometimes a little bit fun. When you're marketing, it should be fun. But marketing is not so fun anymore because it's very time consuming, it's very difficult, and it feels like there's just a lot of friction. Content was simpler to make, leads were easier to capture, and we weren't all spread so thin. As marketers, as entrepreneurs, the bottom line is that marketing used to be fun, it's not so fun anymore. But with HubSpots newly launched marketing and content hubs I've been using it myself, it brings a little bit of fun and creativity back into marketing for your business. They're going to generate better content, they're going to generate more leads, and next level results which really make marketing fun again. So with tools like content remix, you can turn existing assets into all new pieces with just one click. Lead scoring helps you shine a light on the leads that are most likely to purchase and analytic suites they built out will help you with reports, KPIs, and just a gold mine of AI powered insights. It's quick to get your results, it's easy to use, it connects all your teams in your data, so put the fun back into your marketing funnel with HubSpot. Visit HubSpot.com to get started for free. Lara, I'm excited that you came on. This is awesome. This is very last minute organizing this. I'm glad I got you before you went back home. I know, it's so last minute. Thank you so much for having me. No, it's my pleasure. This is going to be fun. So we're going to go through a lot. I want to talk a little bit just so people know your backgrounds. I think that your backgrounds are very interesting. You were all over the place. You were at immigrant. So you moved from Mexico to the UK at 15, correct? And from what I've read, it was without your parents? Yes. So tell me the story. Why was this? It all started. I packed a one way ticket flight. I booked a one way ticket flight from London to Mac from... I packed the one way ticket flight from Mexico to London and just back from one suitcase and never really looked back. From there, I was only meant to stay one year and end up staying 11. And one thing led to another, finished my degree in the UK, led me to finding intrapreneurship, which then led me to finding Lafara LinkedIn and then business of the back of it by accident. What pushed you to move though in the first place? I think it was my parents' goal to never have their daughter live in Mexico. They always saw opportunity in the UK and my mom's right as you can say yes. They have this dream and if they couldn't live it, who else to live it in their daughter? So they knew that it was either going to be the US or the UK for me to build a life that they saw potential in and it worked. When you move at a super young age, that's a very, very young age, were you entrepreneurial, growing... were your parents entrepreneurial at all? My dad is an entrepreneur. Okay. My mom isn't and I promised myself that I would never, ever, ever be an entrepreneur because I used to see my dad working hours and hours on end, one phone and the other one and like his laptop in the middle and I remember I would draw him when I was like born. He'd be like him with two phones and his laptop, non-stop, non-stop. I barely saw him for like the first 10 years of my life. He was working all the time. He had a job and then he turned into an entrepreneur and always like I've known him as a workaholic and I remember the day I was like I don't want to be like I want to have time for my family, I want to have time to have fun and here we are like 26 years later. I am equally as addicted to work as my dad and that makes me so happy. It's good to be addicted and it's good to be obsessed but I think that I've heard you just talked about this before and I don't want to get into it just yet but about escaping one matrix and then jumping into another, getting caught in another and this is really really what you're alluding to. It's you escape the nine to five or whatever you think we should do and you fall into something else but I think it's very important that entrepreneurs have seasons to their life or they understand seasons because it's good to be obsessed when that's in line with what you will want to accomplish in this season of your life but that can also negatively impact your future, your relationships with your spouse, your kids, all that so I think you have to be cognizant of that. I think that's very important but we'll go there in a second. We'll go there in a second that's too soon, too soon. So they didn't worry about you. Okay so what's the first version of entrepreneurship 15 years or no you went to boarding school first so okay so school's done. What's the first version of entrepreneurship? There was never a fast version of entrepreneurship the until I was like 22 so that was this like I finished school first like fast year of school 15 in the UK and I was deciding what I wanted to do for eight levels which is like I think the college and you get to choose three the three different subjects and I was like okay I think I want to choose business because I was always interested and it's also business in general is quite easy so I just went for the easiest was business geography, maths, English and something else and over time I just started hating more and more business like I hated it the way business business studies is taught at school it's just from the fundamental ways of like this is what muscle is hierarchy of needs is and this is how you create a system or like a document that you will never use like a they do competitions. Yeah and then they do like here's how to calculate KPIs and please analyze Siemens in the case study of how they built their business and that is essentially not the route to business so I hated it so much it felt like what my dad was doing was that and I was like I hated it all like I absolutely have no interest in this so I over time I did business management when I did my fast degree I hated it even more it was so boring I when they told us marketing even which was the only thing I was ever interested in realistically it was from the case of big businesses how they're marketing to do this and there was no ambition to the plants there was just like fact and logic and textbook you know things definitions like exams teach you how to learn the thing spit it out on an exam and that's it and there was no technique to it there was no beauty there was nothing. Well there wasn't so I think the biggest issue with education is there's no like lived experience in it it seems like the people that are teaching it not all the time but some they're majority of the time they have no experience in business they just know how to teach business and that was another problem like I remember once in my in one of my lectures like they were lecturing me about entrepreneurship and the person that had never started a business and I didn't care because I didn't know I thought I was going to be entrepreneurs just like that's something weird what are you doing here I can just do more about it but that's fine and yeah so up until then I had no desire I really all I wanted was a 95 job in a bank where I would have a why I don't know that sounds like though that sounds like somebody who's entrepreneurial why would you ever want a nine to five in the bank I wasn't entrepreneur at all like up until two years ago I hadn't had that that fire in me or like hadn't discovered it at all it's very interesting it just happened and the reason it happened it was just purely because of desperation I hit a time where I had a bachelor's degree from a good university in the UK and I had a full master's degree from one of the most prestigious universities in the UK I still couldn't get a job like rejections you know cover letter CVs all of this I had it all nothing was working mainly because I'm primarily disadvantaged because I'm Mexican so when you're applying for a job in the UK it's like they prioritize UK student UK people then EU people and then internationals so already I was in complete disadvantage even regardless of how much experience I could have my grades my dissertation grade whatever so it was just purely like what else am I going to do so during COVID I just finished my degree and I was trying to get a job I was back at home with my parents back in my childhood home truly truly felt like I've regressed in life all the progress that I made from 15 to 2020 to 22 to 22 years old felt like it was back like in the band back in back exactly in the same place where I left because you had set yourself up you'd set this like image of what a career should look like yeah well my life would look like my friends my everything I like the the I like London as a place to live my friends the boyfriend that I had the time it was just perfect COVID hits and it breaks that that dream into pieces back at 121 or even less like I was minus 10 because I've been going through you know COVID puts you in such a deep dark place of reflection and it you're lonely and you have no one and everything is chaos the news social media formal and I was like I don't know what I'm going to do with my life the 9 to 5 dream is done I'm never going to be this investment banker that I had aspire to be so my dad just looked I mean he was like why don't you try this social media managing thing like sweetie you know he always wanted to push me towards entrepreneurship there was never one minute he didn't try and he was like I know she's gonna settle for this at some point and I was like now I'll never be like you like please that I'll never I love my dad so much but I was like no he was my worst nightmare as a person or like a career and then he was like why don't you try the social media thing I've been seeing it on internet like apparently people are building businesses online and I was like okay I had nothing else to do and I dealt deep into the world some of the marketing I already like doubled in because I love social media overall social media has been yeah I'm like that yeah I grew up with it so it's all I knew so I've always been entertained by the way in people market things and stuff so cannot ask my dad for $500 to buy this social media marketing course and in that the course was shared it was the worst course I've ever taken it was $1,000 I spent $500 in 500 dollars from my dad I hated the course but it introduced me to a community of people who had a different mindset who were trying to all-girl and do different things the people that I was involved with before when I left university the first time it was all about drinking culture it was all about you know just living going to the pub getting back to work having a like a girlfriend and then repeat that also never really interested me I was I was lost but I knew exactly what I didn't want and it was that I didn't want to get lost in the drinking I didn't want to one my the highlight of my week to be going to the pub on a Friday night with my friends in like locally I didn't want that so then when I met these people online who were aspiring to do something and it was like oh um just boosting a win on the chat about how I closed a client today but like I did 10 cool cool love that felt different and so what changed a quick dopamine fixes from social media that was like so on so always and started getting dopamine from wins that I was creating so I sent my first proposal today I built my own thing and I was like okay there's this interesting I never did it to grow anything I was like this is just like a thing until COVID stopped so but what you were experiencing was okay so I don't have like any professional direction anymore and you realize I mean you're not stupid you realize that if you have no professional direction then that's the alternative is doing it on your own you got to figure out something yeah because it's still it's like you're still ambitious but you still need that direction and I think a lot of kids coming out of university they feel very similar because they don't love the idea of working in nine to five for the rest of their life but they have no other model to follow and you fell into a really good community and I think that's actually a huge it's a huge tell for people like to do they spend time around is going to dictate their future 100 percent and I think COVID was the biggest blessing in this guy's for me because it forced me to face exactly what I was trying to avoid I was at uni you know hanging out with friends there's similar things that we all love to party we all love to do nothing my friends I had jobs at the time during COVID they would just sit in their beds and have their laptops open while they're moving it to pretend they're working and I was like that's just also not something I aspire to be like so forced to look at everything in my world I chose to try and find a different path and it kind of started as well from just delving into YouTube and finding self-improvement I need to see you have a lot of books I've also read them and it was from that that I kind of started creating an environment for myself of people who I would resonate with like Jordan Peterson or whatever it was like different poll patterns different different beliefs different conversations that I couldn't have with my friends and I could have them with my parents of course but with parents like conversations are different whatever my dad said I would like literally just so funny because your dad if he's been doing this his whole life he actually would probably be a very good influence yeah he he is now and I think overall the way he's read I have so much to say we could literally have an entire book as well my dad but I think the entire thing the way he's raised me as her her daughter and also my mom has led me to who I've truly become today but it's been a combination of different nuggets that I they've told me over time and I am so grateful for their patience because I was such a wreck for like 26 22 years of my life but a bunch of that point instead of talking to my parents because I just it's embarrassing fastly like I don't have a job you thought I would be like this cool scholar with a job in the UK I am not I was embarrassed about myself because I felt lost and no one wants to admit that they're lost in their life it's embarrassing and it's it's hard and so I was like okay internet like any Gen C we go and solve the problems on the internet how do I change myself how do I improve why do I feel sad slowly start finding joyous Spencer Bob Brockter Andrew Huberman then like Tony Robbins all these self-improving girls charged myself to read 52 books in 52 weeks and from those different conversations I started creating this true sort of mindset of growth and then there's something else out there I still didn't know what it was but it was something never thought it would be entrepreneurship again I was doing all of this in order to just get a job that that was it I never ever ever felt like I'd be a business owner or entrepreneur you still haven't like you said you you were in this community you see people winning at what point are you like okay like fuck it I'm gonna try to do this thing I'm gonna try and put myself out there I'm gonna try and make some money on the internet like and you're I think I actually read something where you said for I don't know if it was a tweet or something or maybe it was just in the past podcast you said for a long time you didn't identify as an entrepreneur I still don't there's so much trauma in that statement because you are you are an entrepreneur even if you don't want to identify as I find that just so funny that you have there's such a negative you have a negative association with a word to some degree and I don't understand why I think I was talking to Daran about this to me an entrepreneur is someone that has a full thing and and there's things that they can control let's say a car salesman who has their own thing their own business they built it they hide people they have the systems and there's things that can go wrong at any time and he's not there for in my world in my entrepreneurship I fabricate all the problems all the problems I create they're my they're my own fault I chose to take that deal I chose to hire that person I chose to start and build a launch and you know try and sell this product and if it fails it failed and it was my fault because everything I do is like self-imposed so to me an entrepreneur I really entrepreneur and maybe that's where I'm wrong but I think that's the line for me like I don't think I've ever had to experience hardship in the way that someone like you with sass and stuff I've never had that so that's why I struggle with it and it's not I don't think it's a negative connotation I just generally feel like I create more than I entrepreneur that's so interesting I mean it doesn't really matter it doesn't matter when people are like she's an entrepreneur I'm like really I don't know I just think so the reason why I find a fast ending is because obviously we define it differently so the way I define it is somebody that takes their own life on on ligging their own hands and and they take on all the risk and whether or not it was somebody else in the company or an employee that screwed something up you take on the risk but I mean if you have a business as one if you're selling lemonade by the side of the street if you screw up the lemonade or you screw or you or you forget where you put like all the cash you got all at the end of the day and then you and and whatever somebody stole it from you or whatever um you're still entrepreneurial you're still taking all the risk on even if all the wins and all the losses are just you but at the end it doesn't really matter it's just you are no longer you can talk about the matrix now you're no longer part of like the nine to five w two in the US um system right you're trying to build something outside of the system that is higher risk higher reward so first version of entrepreneurship whether or not you define it first version of building something creating something yourself was that on linked it no way started it my first dip into entrepreneurship world was you don't have to call yourself an entrepreneur you can call yourself creator if you want it was it he's on to the entrepreneurship business world it was October right before the pandemic hit so February 2021 um I was coming back home to visit my parents in the middle of like what in the start I just the start of the pandemic and I was like when my parents I was like hey I'm gonna come visit you I miss you blah blah they're like okay we're gonna go to this conference and I was like oh okay in Vegas do you want to meet us and I was like okay yeah very good let's go I wanna I wanna gamble whatever I was like in that mindset of like just having fun and partying and my mom couldn't make the the trip to the to the conference she was like she on bothered and then my dad was like do you know this guy called grand cardone and I was like no no I'm not interested right me and he's like okay well we've got tickets let's go and then I go in we go into the hotel and then he's like okay let's go for seven a.m. let's go we have to be there earlier and I was like okay and I'm there just me expecting this boring business conference with like suits and stuff those do exist that's not grand though no but I didn't know and so it's Las Vegas and one of the biggest places to host the thing it felt so I remember walking in there's like queues and queues and I was like okay there's a bit weird white people young here there's gonna be all people okay dress up right give my tickets a whole show give me pen papers vibes everything I'm like okay for your stuff nice and so I walk into the the we walk into the venue I see people getting tenex tattooed on themselves right there's this and look at my dad and I'm like he's like he's loving it because he loves grand they love them and I was like I have no idea what there's this sit down I see big stage running it's spinning the stage tenex in the middle I'm like what is this cult I am so interested I'm so hyped this music coming and then everything shuts down we see Elena Codone with a fire around her head like show and then is the show and I was like that is one entrepreneurship is that is what businesses is this entire thing where you create a live that you love and I love grand keep perform but also he brought flow me weather he brought who else he's brought everyone on for his uh growth concert yeah Kevin Hart and all these people normally these are celebrities but then I realized they're also entrepreneurs because they're like they're the other famous but they're making money off the back of it and then the thing that resonates with them with with the most and he was like my one of my penny drop moments grand cardone was when he opened he opened with his racks of riches and he was like I used to be broke I used to be an alcoholic I used to be blah blah blah and they identified me with depression a dsg 80 the all of these things and he said fuck those labels I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I want and that resonated with me at the time because I'd just been diagnosed with depression bp the oc the um all every single mental illness under the sun I got diagnosed with it and I felt so lost because I was giving all the spells that I didn't want to take and obviously that was the only thing that you could do for the depression or like unsite or anything like that that's what I knew and so him saying that made me very inspired to then join cardone university and all these things but then in that they joined they put in a Facebook group with people who are like mine that very hungry by the way cardones audience is just like they're go get us oh I know I know so being around those people even though it was kind of scary to me but that I was I was like like cardone the cardone attracts people that are more aggressive than most yeah they're very but that's not a bad thing no different kind of entrepreneur he was there he was a 360 from what I was used to which then help me see okay right there's people like that I'm going at it why am I not and then obviously then the cool eyeball more causes I start trying different things Etsy drop shipping failed it's Etsy failed drop shipping failed I failed done my first social media month as a mma failed all these failed I was like okay I'm not good at this I don't I'm really care I didn't really like the idea of running a business anyway I tried it was very hype red tenix rule very very inspired but also thanks grant for not for me well my last try to kind of start something kept on hearing about LinkedIn and I was I just wanted to go back to university at this point I wanted to do a master's degree I love learning I love being an academic I love the validation that it gave me from academia I love it and I it doesn't pay it doesn't pay but it made me feel smart and that then pivot perfectly perfectly onto I had deleted LinkedIn previously the year before because during COVID my ex my friends everything they were like oh we're so happy to announce that we're happy and you're not you're you're so broke I'm getting the job that you didn't get deleted I couldn't deal with it and then I need a reference for university so I ended up opening LinkedIn again and what I saw blew my mind there were like people out there posting different things it felt like social media it felt like Instagram in 2020 2012 so I go very curious about it and I decided to spend two weeks kind of sort of like researching this and all of a sudden I had this urge this drive to go all in on LinkedIn for no reason whatsoever I know the reason now but like I'll tell you later it was it just felt aligned I felt drawn to LinkedIn so much I saw this garbage key keynote speech and he said and he was shouting at people as he always is he's like you guys missed out on TikTok when I told you no one listened to me now go on LinkedIn because it's the next best thing you could do I listen to them on and post it post a few posts one of them went viral and it changed my life so LinkedIn's a very interesting platform LinkedIn's how I started actually too really yeah I started on LinkedIn that's because all I knew was just nerdy ass shit it was sales and marketing and that's and it first loves nerds LinkedIn does love nerds and I started off when I started this podcast it was all focused on sales and marketing and then I sort of expanded it and I brought in like personal development thought leadership how to get into flow state how to like all the different things that I think are important for entrepreneurs but it's not just like actively sales and marketing but when I first started I built the audience for the podcast off LinkedIn and I'm I have my own reason for why I started on LinkedIn I thought it was the only social that had opportunity because everything else was so yeah it's so so busy but I didn't build the business I didn't build a business on LinkedIn I just used it for like building an audience and then I tried to turn them into podcast listeners but you took a different route so you went viral how many like how many people saw that post a thousand full thousand likes three hundred thousand in rest days in 42 hours absolutely insane it was I get from God so yeah so what does that do for you when you see that because there's multiple emotions I'm assuming because you're thinking like cool what do I do with this how do I do it again how do I fuck this up and you have all these emotions happening at the same time I don't know some are probably stronger than others but what were you thinking so I've been lucky enough that I've gone viral on different platforms before so the idea of reality or like the feeling wasn't new so I already knew how to manage it however I was like oh because the the police that were viral was just like an introduction pose there was no offer there was no science there was it above it's like hey hi everyone I'm Lara not Laura nor Clara and I just set my first four hundred connections on LinkedIn I had set this goal for myself two weeks ago for like two months but I hit it in two weeks hi and I introduced myself it was like sweet and it was like it was awesome and I think that really resonated and that just indicates like the entire way of building my LinkedIn presence like storytellers driven people weren't connection they don't want facts anymore especially this year but even then now people just wanted something that didn't feel like there was being sold to because LinkedIn at the time two years ago it was still promotions two spots left are high on me for this long paragraph nothing but sales B2BX all of these things and if you think about it from a social perspective just people they like the education but they also want to connect with you and I think that just broke me into a very nice thing into a very nice journey of sort of self exploration of what the idea of something new was I didn't even know I had no expectation for LinkedIn I was only looking for a reference that's it I didn't want anything else for a reference for university anything else was a blessing and then I never got a reference from my teachers still going to a university but you still went back to university I went back to university and I built a business alongside my LinkedIn yet why was it important for you to go back to university I think well I'm Mexican I'm also fast generation Latina and the idea of having higher the case shit is something that is very well ingrained in us asked simple as that it's just typical living my prime stream of having that as well on my in on my belt meant something to and there was a point in life where I didn't have anything to do for myself like I truly didn't want to keep on going live with life and from then on I kind of promised myself I would live this life for my parents and that was one of the dreams that I that we all had and I knew that if I went back to university in the UK it would open so many more doors for me that if I was still stuck in Mexico I know that if I sit in Mexico again I don't know where I would be I don't think I'd be here like not here in the seat right now or like anywhere else in the world so it was just I knew that that was my last chance at life like a proper life and it was like the breaking point is like it's now or never I'm gonna try my best to get into this university it was an Ivy League university as well so it was for me to prove myself that I'm smart enough and I could do it to prove to my parents that I was worth it all of this like investment and like time that I spent on me and just to do something else and just give it a go what could go wrong ended up getting accepted like I think a month later after when viral LinkedIn and everything you started changing and it was amazing. Do you feel like the formal education's worth it? No that's what that's just so funny because you were so you were so set on this and I have so like even when we were texting back or forth where we jumped out I think my views on formal education are very similar to yours I don't feel like I don't feel like it it teaches the things that people need to actually excel in life now I think there's things that it can do like I can teach you I management and it can but it's not it's even like a little bit of a stretch like all the things that I do now I can't think of a single thing that's helped me in my career build a company make money anything build my own personal brand network with people build relationship like I don't think I'll tell you honestly I just drank through university that that's pretty much it I partied and then you realize that life is not so easy you got to figure out work but I didn't figure out work I didn't figure out anything useful in university and I'm sure some people think I'm more seriously than I did at a good but the education system is a scam 99% of people I know have not used a degree to the fullest extent the most successful people I know they haven't even used their one bit so the entire route from it is to purely indoctrinate people to to was a route of again the 95 matrix you know path of the degree get this boring job live the boring life and that's it you're meant to say there's no ambition there's no drive there's no opportunities there's nothing else but what you know on a piece of paper and that's who you are they assigned this role to you of this person and I think that's always why I never succeed at uni at school I was always like kind of failing I always felt stupid I'm Mexican you know that I failed both GCC Spanish and A level Spanish so that single moment made me realize that it's never about me and it was it never was I was never dumb I was just always trying to get that next best thing I feel Spanish because I didn't put the exact answer that they wanted me to put in that paper even though you could speak Spanish even like a speak Spanish perfectly so I remember I was running around and it was it's this is a really crazy memory I always loved economics I I was like obsessed with even now I think behavioral economics is something I love and during school we would always I would always be so good at so good I always talking about it very interested in exams outfailed them and I remember once we were talking we were learning about the values of payments and I was like oh my god I could use this to take back to my country and fix the economy and I took this like entire essay for my teachers to read they just kind of looked at me they were like what are you doing I'm like I'm learning my own way and they literally shut that down so quickly if they I can't even imagine if they actually allowed me to pursue that curiosity and try and expand my full process behind that I don't know where I'd be maybe like I'd be somewhere else like an economist something that that would have driven me a little bit more towards that because I was pursuing something of interest that it wasn't just textbook but they wanted me to focus on textbook and I was going away from textbook in real life so that also kind of killed my entrepreneurship spirit and like the idea of pursuing on anything else because when I was learning it was like you need to not learn this need to do it in this way and otherwise you're gonna fail so it was very scared the entire time of trying anything else because that's why we were being taught in the education system a big shout out to HubSpot and the HubSpot podcast network for sponsoring success story if you enjoy success story you're going to enjoy a ton of podcasts brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network including hustle and flow chart hosted by Joey Fierre the hustle and flow chart podcast with Joey is all about how to build a business so it gives you the freedom and fuel for your life you're gonna join Joey as you discuss his systems mindset tweaks reframes and strategies for entrepreneurs and really anyone to enjoy the process of being in business and having fun this isn't for entrepreneurs looking to build a billion dollar business it's for somebody who wants to build a lifestyle somebody who is looking to build systems that work listen to hustle and flow chart wherever you get your podcasts what changed your mind because you that master's degree was only a few years ago yeah no I built a business through LinkedIn with LinkedIn on the side it was back yeah so what changed your mind about education at what point because you chose to do a master oh yeah so this like what you're telling me today is a huge 180 mindset shift about education so when when you chose to do your masters I was only a few years ago is what I'm saying so what was the thing that got you to think education is a scam I always thought it I still thought it probably went into it yes oh my goodness because again I was living in Mexico the best alley for me to build a life in the UK get a job get references would be a master's degree even if you didn't think it was going to be the best route it was it was the safest safest again if I'm Mexican a piece of paper that has that status going back to Mexico if I have to go it meant more than having a normal degree or 10 years of experience so having that status in Mexico meant is like worth gold and if I had the chance to give myself that opportunity even though I knew that what I was letting was absolutely terrible I know what it means to someone else that may be able to hire me so it was like my backup plan just in case everything went wrong because even though I know not a lot of people know and people still think having a degree is better than having a business that's making extra money in a year some people that I speak to from Mexico still they think that my degree is worth more than what I was like what I'm doing now and that's okay it's just me having all the leverage I can have again I'm like going in for the wins from my family in me so having as much leverage as possible it is the highest thing that I like the most important thing I could have done I understand it's so interesting because at the end of the day everything's just a game and you have to figure out a play that game and if that if if you want to play that game then you have to understand that that degree for other people is valuable even if you see no value in it but that's just a game that you have to play but LinkedIn is is is your growing LinkedIn through this at the same time so LinkedIn's going well it meant when they're connected I've never seen anybody grow that fast on LinkedIn so you're at how many people right now that follow you nearly and 190,000 how many years is that two years that's phenomenal thank you that's absolutely phenomenal and I say that because I also really tried to grow LinkedIn and I and you quit I didn't quit but I didn't I didn't quit but I didn't tailor content to LinkedIn I focused on different medium yeah so I built it to in the first this is going back because this is like probably about four or five years ago I probably built a two-round 50 or 60,000 followers and then in the past four years I built it to like 85,000 but I take my foot off the gas because the goal is now podcast and it's just more like a bandwidth thing and I'm sure with like AI or or a great copyrighter you could probably show up everywhere but my focus has been on the podcast so even the content I put on LinkedIn is not optimized for LinkedIn per se sometimes it is but like I'd say 20% is optimized for LinkedIn I just shot it out darn for that we I took his phone I was like no stop thank you posted the next day he had his most viral post that he's ever written oh I know I like I know that the worst part is when you know you're in the wrong and you're and I'll tell you like when I when I put together like a little clip from this podcast right I'm putting that on LinkedIn I know that's not the optimal LinkedIn content but it's bandwidth for me it's been it's something it's something it's something anyway but we can talk about my content strategy and all the things that I'm doing right if you if you if you grew to a hundred eight thousand three years there's a lot I can learn so LinkedIn's going well how do you actually turn that into a business I never thought it would be a business I was like this is fun let me just put some stuff start reaching out to you I'm assuming yes three months and I got my first inbound need then I started building an agency I had the previous experience of failing Etsy failing you know drop shipping failings as I made and I already knew that you could you know create content for all the people for a living and all the time I was just trying to get experience for university because I wanted to get into my master's ear I love how I love how um you do not let your goals go ever like it takes a lot for you to be okay even for a second pivoting focus is something though I think for that one um it was it was in the goal it was a need the master's degree in the UK it was my lifeline towards the life that I wanted to build and the life that my parents wanted for me so again living for my parents and also living for me my parents always knew that was meant to be in the UK and even if I had no drive I was depressed at the time I was in COVID I was all the way ten kilos everything felt like shit the the thing that I didn't feel like shit is how much my dad was involved to me throughout the entire way and I was like okay if I can do this one thing right for my dad I'm not doing everything in my power to the I don't care so I went on and there was this breaking point for me where I felt lost and it's like the dark night of the something like just dark like the darkness for the dawn that I think yeah like the dawn like the dark night all the soul would you just looking at yourself and I said on my stomach and the moon I was like I hate you I hate this like what are you doing and I came to my senses something happened and I prayed to go further fast I mean in my life I've never spoken about this before but I was like I don't know you I don't know who you are like I've never hit but please help and so I was like I'll give everything up if you give me this one chance right and then it nothing happened like it's like okay I just literally just promised you everything for it for for one thing and I was like the master's degree acceptance I was spraying and praying and praying for it to calm I didn't think it would come because it was too late already it was like already September and no yeah and school started in September and I was like please like I'll give it all up the life the parties the socializing the friends that I had the toxic habits for this thing and then two weeks later almost I fell into the LinkedIn rabbit hole and for something I was obsessed no reason whatsoever just in my head I was obsessed and then a month later when viral on LinkedIn and then two weeks later my acceptance letter came through and I think it was God's way of teaching me if you can't show me that you're obsessed with something and you can do it then I'm gonna give you everything you want and so the master's degree is like I thank you to my parents and also God like I have to do this and then the business grew up grew on the side of that because it was like my form of creative expression and I how was like building this new interest that I truly always saw it in the back of my head obviously because of my dad and it was a combination of both so when people ask me like why did you do the master's degree is like I had to there was no other choice you really was all or nothing and it was and then I was looking off to be able to build my LinkedIn on the side I think there's something that's actually really beautiful about how you thought through what things you take on even the master's degree it was honoring yourself it was leverage it was safety it was honoring your parents and there probably could have been a point where you could have seen while you were getting the master's degree even if I stopped the master's degree if I drop out and just focus on LinkedIn I'm sure life will be okay but I think that when you I think that when you do things for the right reasons and you honor your commitments to people and and I mean whether or not you believe in God or you honor commitments to God I think the life ends up working out in a very nice way and if you're too short-sighted and you do not honor the commitments you made to other people in pursuit of something that seems like a shiny object I think that that has a very short life attached to it I don't know how else to say it I just feel like and it may sound it may I may sound crazy saying this but I feel like it was a good thing that you finished your master's degree even if you never touch it or use it for anything else for the rest of your life I think that it just shows that your heart in the right place when you focus on doing anything I think that's really how I see it I know it's a hundred percent I think the master itself was slightly redundant to me we had we had so should be a lessons I failed at the content creation and I failed at marketing and I was like why is this and again it was spawned for me it was like a little cute sight thing to do while it's trying to gain back control of my life it wasn't just building a business building a business game after after I regain control of who it who Lara is I broke out of all these boxes that school society my friends my family have put me in of Lara Lara is you know average maybe a little bit smart can go this way I broke out of all of these boxes and I created the Lara that I always knew I could be and then my parents always knew I could be and that's the biggest lesson and then being at university like if you ask anyone in my year if they ever met me they'll say no because I went to went to lectures left to went to the gym left and was always in my house I was fully in mock mode for literally a year like I didn't see anyone I was just working working working assignments work assignments work gym and having that a year to truly spend time alone and enjoy solitude and find out who I truly am without the influence of alcohol without the influence of societies or like trying to fit in was the most trustworthy thing that I could have done for me and my personal brand and then my business and then everything else that created along the way because I know for force who I am and who I'm not and it comes back to the values thing where I don't let anything else move me besides my intuition and honestly being happy with solitude is the most powerful thing you mentioned a few times that you'd never wanted to be an entrepreneur you never meant to build this on purpose do you think that's what allowed you to be successful when so many people fail yeah I think there was no expectation I didn't even now like what's your next like was a dream I'm like I just want to make my parents probably whatever they are the whatever they want or like I just want to be happy and people are like what I just really want to be happy I spent so much time of my life being unhappy that being happy right now is the best thing I could do for myself and I can repeat that tomorrow thank god that's it if that means building another business okay cool is it fun sure I pursue fun over profit any single day so you know like that's that's huge so fun over profit because I think a lot of creators the way that I started the podcast for example I was building a business I did not need and could not even focus on the podcast making money at the time and that allowed me to do it and still actually allows me to do it I mean I split I put six years into this and there's a lot of businesses that I could spend six years on they would make a lot more money almost any business actually podcasting is the advertiser plate right like you have your CPMs you know advertises pay for how many downloads you get but didn't start it with the product now I'm thinking about productizing it and building community around it and there's different ways you can do that but yeah I know yeah oh trust see like he has ideas he has ideas for me trust for six years it was I was very fortunate because I didn't I mean this is not the situation everyone finds himself in but I didn't have to worry too much about how do I milk every dollar out of this creative endeavor and I think that a lot of creators go into creating like how do I make money as quick as possible I feel like you can feel that as as an audience you can feel when someone throws out their first post and they already have like of course and like a community and they have all these things that they're trying to sell you I think it turns I think it turns audience off and it's like it's very hard to quantify it when is the right time to turn from creator into business owner but I think that if you do with the right intention I think you'll just be more successful at other creators will afford you more opportunity to build businesses on the back end of it the post in one viral there was there was no CTA there's no there's no link there's no chorus there's no nothing and I think that's actually very important that's a very important takeaway because I think people look at you know the the saying is like don't compare your whatever your your one to someone's your like yeah Billy mister beast yeah me a billion there creator you're like oh how do I get on YouTube trust bro it's gonna it's gonna be a minute so you even make a hundred dollars on YouTube let alone a billion yeah I think that's the creative mindset that entrepreneurs have like entrepreneurs are and creators and creators are in entrepreneurs we both have different goals at the at the start obviously creators then become entrepreneurs entrepreneurs then become content creators ideally in what I tell the clients all the time clients want to be influencers without acting like influencers content creation is literally becoming an influence nowadays even in the V2B space every single puzzle run like with Stephen Bartlett are it smoothies they're all acting like influencers posting stories sharing like storytelling things like past trauma whatever that is what an influencer before was doing now business owners are adapting that mindset but obviously take time because you can't you can't quantify the ROI there's no direct you know investment into why how much is the story going to ring me it doesn't matter is that connection that matters that then amplifies how people are willing to then choose you over a bunch of people have your exact same title your exact same knowledge the exact same sales process it is you um I had I've had this experience so many times where someone connects with me six months passed and then they just luck in the shadows they like looking at me I don't know with them I don't know who they are they messaged me or email me even email me because they're they don't want to mess with me or LinkedIn like be following your story how can we walk together above anyone else a personal way experience of me even then when I was just starting my LinkedIn journey three months in my first inbound lead connected with me because he liked my story didn't care about how much experience I had how many the case studies nothing he just wanted to work with me because he recognized something in me don't know what but it mattered I love that I think that that's so important to when you think of a business owner and actually I'm curious because you probably have these conversations you probably have CEOs of go to you and you're like this is this is the framework this is my LinkedIn strategy this is how we make you famous on LinkedIn is how we turn you into a thought leader you know build your personal brand and then they're like what's the ROI in it I'm assuming that's like 99% of your conversation other style is now luckily because I have a strong runoff they don't even dare to ask I'm like that's so funny yeah so if you look at sort of your come up and your growth what would be the things that you've worked looking back outside of just being authentic authentic's a buzzword that could turn around too much agreed your first post was authentic you've had multiple viral posts right so there is a little bit of a system to it now there's been three ways I've created content one is educating my past self so at the start because I didn't know who to educate I didn't know what I was doing I was just creating content that I thought someone like me five years ago two years ago even a week ago would have found useful so then you're being immediately useful to someone that knows slightly less than you immediately with no strings attached so always give 99% of what you know away for free there's way too many people that think that you need to save the best for clients we need to save the best for a paid product etc and I disagree every single paid person that I've learned I bought something from they've given it all away for free and I'm paying them for it to be productized and specific to me that's it but when you're giving everything you know away for free you're not only forced to learn more because you already give that for free so you now need to learn more and better but you're giving people something a value that could literally change your lives and they have you to thankful and I've experienced this now like to the masses where people are making tens 20 like thousands thousands thousands of dollars through my free content and they prefer me 10x the clients or they pay me 10x the money that I would have charged them like last year for that one piece of information so that is heavily important if you I don't believe in hiding everything I do believe in sharing everything because knowledge is knowledge it's free online you can ask chat GPT for the exact same form that you probably have it doesn't matter what matters is how willing you are of telling it and how will you tell it so people remember you when they apply it and they make the money or it changes their life is there a way that you is there a way that you communicate or write on LinkedIn so that people do remember like do you have a style or a writing style content delivery teacher pass self I love that but how do they make sure that how do you stand out I guess it's the best way to put it stories so I have this amazing framework that me and my friends developed when I was like just shapping to them as I am at least this framework in the like Lara that says slay you know slay yeah yeah yeah I got it I've got I've got 40 year old men saying slay on the on the night with all the girls and it starts with the story lesson action or piece of advice and then you turn into a you the thing that makes this work specifically is that when you tell a story naturally and by science people remember stories better then you educate them on the back end of that then it makes them feel like they understand your point of view and why you done it and the results you got and then how they can achieve the same goal by applying that same framework so if I say here's exactly how to write a good hug this is what I used for my clients over the last 20 years and I made over 10 million doing this and then you indicate how to write a good hug and then you're like how do you find this are you having problems writing a hug you're giving them different entry points to understanding your full process and if they can relate to the framework itself maybe they can relate to the story or maybe they can relate to the question so giving people different angles to end their own because I don't understand every market all the stars at different top of one or middle for no bono with one all every post acts exactly the same in itself so how can I get people's interests and how can I funnel them onto me and who I am in their interests so that's what we do with the slay framework if I look at I guess the other big the only other big creator I know on LinkedIn be Justin Welsh nothing I love Justin I mean he comes from a very similar background to me so he was the hero of I think patient pop and that was like a medical software company then he just like burnt out and left and now I think he runs a I think his business is doing over 3 million in just selling courses about LinkedIn so if people are very in the weeds and they know Justin and they know you as well what yeah what are the differences and similarities between his strategy versus how you grow and how you write I think I'm a little bit more personal than Justin Justin is very factual and very logical and he appeals to like that systematic brain that I don't know how when I was creating my own digital products I was like looking at Justin I don't have them but I've had the entire system he delivers the process I am not logical whatsoever I am a creative like nice like a lot brain by brain thing yeah so I have to figure out a way to make it work for me without the systems without the template all of these things so what I do is the storytelling emotion based but logically and how can we use psychology to create interest for a for a customer or an audience so more story based a lot of frameworks involved but it's all about how can you say something from your point of view that tragedy can't say itself and to do that I want to talk about psychology in a second but to do that I'm assuming you have to bring in lived experience yes because chat TPS no lived experience no and that's where you get in trouble if you're talking with things you haven't done before because you can't bring an experience to that and I think that's the most beautiful thing about building a parcel right especially for someone that's young ambitious or doesn't even know what they want to do is you are forced to go ahead and have to live those experiences so then you can talk about them I personally think that I wouldn't be where I am if I wasn't driven by a chipmode shoulder of jealousy of other people seeing all the people doing the thing that I wanted to do first talking about on social media second and then getting praised for it like I was like no no no no no no no no me so I went ahead and got all that experience so that I could talk about it online and be like no I actually know what I'm doing I have a master's degree and they just told marketing and then all the time I saw I was talking on those experiences to talk about on social media and now obviously I put myself every single month I forced myself out of my comfort zone in my house and I'm like I go to three events so I can then talk about those experiences I do work for free for clients as well like even though I don't need to I get more experiences with different types of people so then I can talk about things I go to conferences so a hundred percent you architect environments that you're going to do something that's going to turn into content everything is content and that is the creator mindset like every single thing we do in our lives can be turning to content as long as it is in alignment and is relevant to your audience so this right here for me is piece of content right now taking my mom to Miami right now it's a piece of content itself because it talks about being an entrepreneur, remote work, productivity conversations so when you turn that lens off how can I use my daily experiences to actually create content that is relevant to someone that either aspires to be me which is most followers or wants to work with me then everything becomes simpler I have to ask has there been anything that you've learned in your master's degree that you actually apply in your day today I'm so curious I learnt a lot about just doing one of the fuck I wanted so I got bored at uni when it came to essay writing and I was like I have nothing to lose if I fail that's fine by whatever so for essays I turn the essays into self case studies of my current interest so we had to do this essay for a marketing module was talk about social media in a very boring way and I was like no liver king is being cancelled right now I want to talk about liver king and how it's affecting the socio economic impact of the United States and how this empire is falling so I turn the entire essay into a speech the TikTok I love that and I remember my teachers were just kept on me like what white but they passed me because they gave me points for creativity and then I think that pursuit of winning the game like hacking it and getting my way around it was so exhilarating because I was like I could either fail read about me or I could win really hot and I did so shout out to the teachers that didn't fail me for like my ambitious pursuits on my random rabbit holes but by the way like finding ways around or hacking the system I mean that's how entrepreneurs all win I was listening to one of your YouTube videos and I think it was something along the lines of like seven once I pulled all the titles of like the videos that I thought were interesting yeah seven LinkedIn hacks that are so good they feel illegal now I'm not gonna lie I I listened to the first one and then I'm like you know what I'm just gonna ask you about this live because I think they're so fast and I mean the first one was times on half yes so if you post then you have to repost it I don't even know you could repost on LinkedIn which is like I can tell that I'm no one my knowledge is a little bit it's a lead knowledge the lead knowledge well I know it is a lead knowledge because you said that you got 20 percent boost in impressions or views or something for people that are listening what are some of these hacks that you've discovered and you can talk about LinkedIn specifically because this is where you play but if you have things that's idling getting that's great too but something like that is so niche and so nuance I've listen I I create more content than probably like 99 percent of people on this earth and I did not know that and I was like when I when I heard that I'm like shit yes let's let's chat do it yeah do it like if I would come on no because there's not many people that study and learn to that degree and it's hard for a business owner that has to figure out like 50 different marketing channels that on LinkedIn but I think that's the most valuable because that's where you can that's that leverage that little bit that you can really use to sort of stand out amongst everyone else the best link being hot anyone could use is master the art of the pattern interrupt so we have this collaborative articles that came out on LinkedIn last year and if you collaborate and you write in these articles you get a little badge right me and my friends couldn't get them so what we did next and one of my friends look like is we discovered this is you start writing stuff that actually makes no sense to what you're being asked in this collaborative collaborative article so the collaborative article would be like how do you increase client retention in 2025 and instead of saying like oh you increase client retention because like this way this way you'll be like you don't it sucks fire everyone uh live a life that you won't whatever in that creates a pattern interrupt because whenever anyone scrolling on LinkedIn they expect the same boring mundane type of thing and when you have something us polarizing as don't fly on type of team you get them and get to engaging with you in a different way LinkedIn people are in the mindset of just learning and thinking okay there's gonna be a little bit of straw like boring when you introduce them to something that makes them laugh and makes them react a different way then they form this connection with you that nothing else could build and that is why we partner interrupts so they can remember us and you create if you're creating a positive reaction or even negative it's a win for you hence why people who are polarizing let's say annotate um libelma whoever these like all brown card don't even that's why they stand out the most because they stand out by being polarizing and breaking patterns I remember this ad that grand card on had with like burning and like hundred dollar bill why did he do that to break a pattern of like you can't burn money oh yeah no I'm gonna do it so the same on LinkedIn every social media if you're able to partner interrupt anywhere it works so that's the biggest hack the second one I would say is mastering the art of connection people are forgetting that LinkedIn is a networking platform and they think there's just a B2B business platform where people just post themselves no LinkedIn is naturally a networking platform where you get to connect with people that's exactly what the the thing is called connect you don't follow you connect with someone and send them a connection request I see LinkedIn as the biggest event in the world that never sleeps is a 24 hour networking event and you get a chance to meet someone else every single day at any time in the day so the best thing you can do is be prepared to have an honest and kind conversation with someone not with the aim to sell but the aim to connect and then once you master that you can create true connections that they support you they may have buy from you in the long term but the ad is to not burn connections down just for the sake of selling your product which is something that LinkedIn server was a lot there's a lot of co-pitching obviously you probably get so many emails like do you need this product that you need no but then if you approach it like hey really like your voice about your car I also have a car do you guys do you want to have a car they yeah yeah that's funny that's cool I'll give you the funny example and then we can move on but you can get more hacks by the way I was so bored a few months ago with LinkedIn and I get bored like I'm on the platform about 10 hours a day so me and my friends always like me I have I'm lucky that I'm friends with all nerds and we all like nodding out trying to hack LinkedIn and seeing what's new and how I was like okay I'm gonna send more DMs to see what's the most optimal way to for my clients to send connection requests and get accepted right and so I saw this kind of with the gym because always the connection requests are so boring like hey we love to connect exchange synergies boring hey we love to connect boring hey so you think boring like no one cares platinum dropped I saw this gym owner at send him a connection request how much do you bend that's good and he did using I don't think he was flat so it was like probably a bit confused however six months later he sent me a message hey Laura would love to have you as a keynote speaker for a event it works it works you stood up you wouldn't have gotten that you wouldn't have gotten that yeah didn't say some ridiculous shit like exactly exactly and I think people take themselves way too seriously on LinkedIn and you showed a hundred percent like your Ryan is like super important position is important but if you do this once in a while we're just like just trying things out it may actually turn out the best way I don't I think there's a big difference between being an asshole on social media and just being yeah I thought yeah asking how much somebody benches is not it's not gonna ruin your brand it's not like people are gonna cancel you for asking how much you bench I would love if anybody slid into my LinkedIn DMs with anything more than like three paragraphs of text asking me and like a loom video I can't stand LinkedIn I love it but I hate it at the same time because it's just so it's so like a robotic nerdy it's just too much and I like nerdy don't get me wrong I like learning but there's very few people that I actually like reading their content I don't think it's not I think it's Chelsea yes that's a fairly better answer a better way to describe it it and the DMs are just horrible they're absolutely horrible nobody puts any effort into it and I can tell everyone can tell and I read all of them but it makes easy for you and me that know what we're doing to actually stand out yes I get this on Twitter more than LinkedIn but it's like hey name are you interested in product for your inside business like actually saying getting send the templates of that this is my competition in your competition like if you're able to beat these type of people you're gonna win regardless because people are lazy they think business is easy and hence why people fail I never thought it was gonna be easy I actually always saw as the hardest thing in the world and why I never wanted to do it so even being able to do this now for a living and like never take it for granted never really let like drop the ball well Mike my bad biggest lessons from one of my mentors Richard Moore he said never drop the ball and that I take so seriously good what do you what do you think he means by that it's all about momentum you don't drop the ball when it feels like it's easy you don't drop the ball when you made it when you made it it's exactly when you're about to crash so you keep on going and you keep on going you don't stop I never ever ever disrespect momentum it is the one thing that I value the highest so today I just launched this product as a course I hadn't slept for like three weeks and people kept on asking me how are you going to celebrate because you launched it work to some people I might seem a work of a work of a colleague and that's fine I identify myself as one is probably the highest compliment someone could give me because I think I look at my dad now in his grow and I'm just not I'm not letting that the thing go I once didn't have the opportunity to be here so why would I drop the ball when it's actually just bouncing out as high as knowing I absolutely love that I've never heard it said like that but I don't disrespect momentum that hits that really hit and then from this book the compound effect yeah where you like you compound wind slowly slowly over time and then once you get the wind of it people just drop the ball because it feels like you they won and that's what people fail and that's why so many celebrities like kind of like make it then don't and never want to be that person I had a conversation with Nathan Barry who was the founder of Converkit and one of the things that he said to me that really stood out there's some things like I talked a whole bunch of people and different degrees of whether or not you're impressive or not or whether or not you have some really really prolific advice some things I'm like I've heard it before some things when you when they say them it's like shit that makes me like rethink how I look at life and he says something that had that effect on me it was like there is there is no required amount of time to achieve anything like you can achieve whatever you want in as short a time as you can you don't have to take 10 years to build a business you don't have to take X amount of years before you get married like you can do whatever you want in whatever time span you can figure it out in and that it's a common sense is a common but when you hear it you're like shit yeah you're right and just a good context why I was speaking about that was I think he wrote he wrote a blog every day I can't remember how long for like two or three or four years or something like that and then on the back end of writing a blog every single day he wrote a book and he published it and like the next day he started his next book and like and he just like jumped into everything everything everything everything with zero breaks in between and he just like yeah I never really I never really subscribed to the idea that I had to pace myself or I had to give myself time or I had to give myself a break because I enjoyed the work that I was doing and for a lot of people that are listening maybe that's like controversy I don't think it is but I'm waste people how a negative connotation would work and that's why we get judged yes but that to me was like shit you're right I can get this I've been doing this podcast for six years this could be as big of this could be as big as Tim Ferriss or Joe Rogan in six years it's not but it could be it could be if I figured it out if I figured out the game and I figured out the game to a degree but I haven't figured out that game yet so now build a studio roll out three episodes a week I could even do more than that if I had bandwidth and I'll have to find a way to have that bandwidth right so there's there's unlimited ways to win in life and I think that by benchmarking yourself against someone else's expectations or timeline it's not it's not it's not going to mean that you don't succeed it just doesn't have to be that way so you grew on LinkedIn faster than 99.99% of people there's no there's no required timeline for how to get for how long it should take to get from zero to 189 8000 whenever you can get there as fast as you can you can get there in two months you can get there in six months doesn't matter you can write five pieces of content per day you're ever the fuck you want which is the most beautiful thing about entrepreneurship is a most beautiful thing about the internet yes we have unlimited potential and opportunities out there for free like it cost me several dollars to build my LinkedIn presence yeah when people are paying thousands and thousands and thousands for advertising so just being hyper aware of that and understanding that if I do this once a day and I commit three hours a day to do this for the next year I think I'll be somewhere as a creator how do you manage your time between creating versus business operating selling fulfilling don't I work all day every day I don't I you were mentioning flow states and that's something I hired a coach for because I felt like I was about to burn out yeah I don't believe in burn out but I feel like the idea but it's near I understand but I was being burnt out because I was working on things that I hated I hate operations I hate sales I hate funnels I hate all that I love creating and launching things doing the marketing I'm in love with the marketing and then now I'm lucky enough I work with this company called Gemflow they are my operators now for everything else and so they've taken off the load that I didn't want and I can now do they're creating if I want to do the selling I'll do it but that's up to me if I want I don't have to and so that's been brilliant but before that like during my uni days you'll see I can send you a screenshot of my calendar it was the entire day blocked with meetings I created work writing client work I gem in the middle somewhere food somewhere in between that and then sleep somewhere but I don't mind that because all of it is fun to me it feels like a video game every single day I'm on LinkedIn I feel like I'm on the indicator Olympics and every day I'm like just playing to end and it's all a game and I'm winning and sometimes I lose but then I can start again tomorrow it's fine and how am I mindset of it's all a game it's like the Olympics I get to you know stack myself up with the best you know gear and then go for it what we're talking about now is really like just going all in into something just being obsessed with it which I think is a beautiful thing again you have to figure out if this is where you want to you know if this type of work and at this type of life is what you actually want um and I want to break up that point that clip that I saw that just like hit home with me which was when you're leaving one matrix you have to be careful that you don't fall into another so what advice do you have for creator is or entrepreneurs that are leaving one matrix leaving the nine to five they're jumping into entrepreneurship like when you when you say you have to be careful about falling into other matrix like I think we've both fallen into it but I don't hate it so if somebody is trying to figure out is this for me what is the advice to them I think when you're building a business you want you will be in the matrix where you don't sleep you don't break you don't breathe you hate your life everything is hard you're you're dealing with check lines you're you're not getting paid you feel like an idiot because you don't know what you're doing because you're pretending you knew what you what you were doing to get that client and then you had to figure out at the end that's exactly what I did and I was stuck like yeah hey did everything but I loved the the journey and I think if you don't feel like that that drive with it like immediately or at least like within a few six like six months and then entrepreneurship may not be for you because it's not for the week and for me I never wanted to get entrepreneurial but I always want to have something and I never had a purpose entrepreneurship brought me that in delivered then does it will put it to me so entrepreneurship may not be the goal but always having something a purpose was and like purpose became first you know getting through COVID and building a business and the second purpose was like I'm making my parents proud the next purpose is growing as big as I can at next purpose now is and it's very identified for me I want to make girls that look like me who are Mexican if we never felt represented women in business or anyone else that has had a similar journey to me to feel like they can make it too that is my purpose right now is so strong you feel like I feel like fire so so strong and it makes me so happy and I can then now build if I'm tired I can revisit why am I doing this for and if the purpose if the why is strong the how is easy and that is how I built upon everything else so entrepreneurs if you feel like you don't have it within you just think about why you're doing it for and revisit the why and then you'll figure out how I think that's very wise because I think that when you feel burnout it's it's a lack of that is a lack of purpose yeah I never felt but I burn myself to your ground like so be with it like are you tired yes and I am so grateful I just not burnout no tired is not for I could do this all day and I could be physically exhausted but I can guarantee you I'm gonna sleep like a baby I'm gonna wake up and do it tomorrow do it all over again yeah I never once felt burnout in the last two years I felt near it but it was because I was hating the things that I was doing and then it can completely change the burnout doesn't exist unless you're like doing the things that you hate and it's why people quit their jobs and then pursue entrepreneurship I think another important thing another reason why people feel burnout if they're doing it for the wrong reason so far as I was doing it for money money yeah and you do not feel like the energy you're expanding is in sync with how much money you're making first of all you got into it for the wrong reasons but yeah you're one two three sometimes even four you're gonna be working hundred hour weeks and you're gonna be barely making what you made in your corporate and you're nine to five and if you feel burnout there that means that you're in it for the wrong reasons because it shouldn't be about the money you will make the money if you if you if you stay in there for long enough if you stay in there for an unreasonable amount of time the money will come because we're all pretty smart we can all figure out what's working and what's not we can all iterate we can all pivot we can all improve we can all learn yep still all that but in the short term you will be putting more like your your your dollar per hour will not be will will not make sense to you it will not make sense to go get a job I know I know entrepreneurs that we're a hundred hour weeks to make a hundred grand you don't have to work a hundred hour weeks to make a hundred grand now in three four years now maybe that a hundred hour week can make you three to five million plus ten million whatever it doesn't matter on unlimited amounts of money but if you do it for money in the short term it's gonna be very good I think maybe that's why creators have the biggest unfair advantage of all because we're so busy creating art and with content to me everything would be single piece of posts or whatever I do always art I spend so much time being intricate with YouTube they spend 10 hours for each video five hours crafting two hours filming three hours post production all the two hours like back and forth with my editors making this lightest changes to the music and the audio and the white haters like and I love it but it's not easy and it definitely not making I'm losing money with YouTube a hundred percent maybe you'll make me money in 10 years maybe two years hopefully this year yeah but it's a creative pursuit for me how can I make this the best piece of content that the internet or like people in this niche have ever seen to me is everything just art and how can I pursue how can I push the limits of entrepreneurship business and also fun I love it you you started on LinkedIn now you're now you're still on LinkedIn obviously but you're building on YouTube as well yes so why did you pick YouTube as a second media it's actually my fourth so I built LinkedIn fast to 50,000 followers then I pivoted to Twitter just to have a like twin audience like built because it's LinkedIn stacks Twitter stacks so it's easy to create content the only reason why I wanted to build on Twitter was because Twitter car sales were going viral on LinkedIn for some reason I don't know if you've seen them so like okay so it was more like leverage talking I made my content to create creation experience easier so then by accident and default I grew up to I think it's 15k now then after that I started building an email list so I'm on b-hive right now I love b-hive and build that up to 15k then the fourth one was YouTube and the intention was purely because I saw one of my friends doing the thing that I wanted to do better than me when I thought I could do it better than anyone else so shout out to him that goes out of it so he was the pinnacle of my YouTube success I guess yeah so I'm always inspired by people who are either better than me or I do anything or just wait for it and I think it's an amazing thing to be able to take jealousy and turn it into energy or inspiration instead of thinking like why then like why are they doing that how can they is like how can I do it to I want a piece of that I saw Cody such as doing this I don't know podcast she's like I want a piece of that I want a piece of that because you saw so many million is in her job before I think it was JP Morgan or whatever and she was seeing all these people that had that they weren't any small than her they just knew how to play the game do you find that one has served you like I know that LinkedIn is the largest audience but do you find that for business purposes there's one that serves you better than others YouTube has definitely given me the edge of a lot of LinkedIn creators don't have because there's something it's easy to write words behind the screen and pretend that you're someone when it comes to video you can't you can't hide that you can't speak or like you don't have the the swagger like the way or whatever you portray yourself as on the on LinkedIn or in red text so it's given me that extra layer of connection that people are missing from all the creators that are text based so I did my foot onto video content when I started going on podcast and I realized how much people resonated with my story and I was like really not like yeah they remember what I wore like the ponytail like the little detail and I was like okay this is interesting that I was like right YouTube then and so YouTube has allowed me to do many things one of them is connect from out it's a little bit more I don't tell many stories on LinkedIn to the depth that I would do on a podcast simply because he just it doesn't make sense from a position in tactical way when he comes to LinkedIn you can only use as many characters and I want to make my content educational and punchy but for those who are interested in getting to know me slightly more into a little bit of more depth they get to watch my YouTube's or listen to my podcast which is really cool yeah I think that I mean from my perspective I just love podcasts and captures like kind of what you said the captures the whole person all the context people can't yeah people can't edit themselves yes hopefully not unless you're a sociopath but usually when you sit down with somebody for an hour and a half you get a pretty good idea of who they are it a pretty good idea of of genuinely like what they know what they don't know that to me is my favorite kind of content to learn from because then you understand also what's important to you what means the most to you what you focus on actually I've actually stopped reading as many books and now I like to listen so I like to listen to the author that jumps on a podcast around the time when they release their book because then I have they have all the ideas in the head they have all the ideas they care about yeah now what they're editors editors about now what Harper Collins or Simon Schuster care about what they care about yeah not all the additional fluff that was added to hit the page count so whatever author that's who I like to actually listen to now podcasts are a next step because now I can actually interview the authors themselves but that's cool yeah it's very very it's very cool yeah there's a I love listening to Joseph Spencer's podcast because he gets very deep into things but it's not as technical as in his books and he's a conversational so he obviously then turns it down to more stuff as level fifth grade introducing introduction level whether you can actually learn it's like a conversation what would be one story about your creator life if people don't know yet something that a lesson a shit hitting the fan moment a win it doesn't have to be negative or be positive too but something that really and it could be recent something that's happened more recent I just finished the launch of my third ever launch for a product it was a course literature academy puzzle running course being working on it for over six months is the third iteration of my cool called programs where we teach people how to build a restaurant and on LinkedIn how to leverage it whatever there were like live very intensive eight week programs and then I shut it down because I felt like I liked it but I wanted to create something more accessible for people so I have a large audience I and I'll never ever take it for granted a hundred nearly a hundred and 190 thousand followers I know a lot of people can't afford courses or like 2.5k worth of a program especially they're beginning the journey I was one of those people I had to borrow money from my dad to buy my first course and so for the last six months I shut doors to any program not really doing a lot of coaching really not taking any kinds on and like focused on creating a curriculum of a product that could truly emphasize my entire journey of how I built a puzzle run that wasn't just about profile demonstration and joining any engagement partner and you know creating content contemplates none of that my approach has been purely psychological tactical in ways leveraging all the things that I've seen on all the platforms like the YouTube effect and how thumbnails work and that had been taken my life over for less six months then filmed it over last month I couldn't I hadn't left my house for like literally because I was filming it it was long hours it was exhausting recording a course in itself it was a completely new experience and finally launched it scored eight modules over 50 lessons on exactly the eight to set the blueprint of how to build a puzzle run or the longest time I've been celebrating my wins on my own because I've been away from home I don't have my family around I don't really have that many friends and if I do they are in all the cities they're in all the content they're all online friends or just generally I just keep to myself and everything will win I've had my first client my first time I had to get deal my first 100k I celebrated on my own and over the weekends when we close launch and we hit or I hit my goal I had my mom that to celebrate with me and I was like damn I never want to celebrate again on my own because I felt I feel so comfortable by myself but having family to truly share those wins with that I know are truly happy for me and then the world and obviously I wish my dad was always not but I'll see him soon and then being able to be like we made it to my family amazing I think it also I think it's important to know like listen again tell about seasons right yeah me seasons where you are in monk mode on your own building on your own but then again I don't think anybody wants to be on their own not celebrating wins till the day they die I think I can brainwash myself to think that but ideally we all won connection and it's all people are social creatures if you made a hundred million dollars tomorrow and you had no one else to spend it with you would be happy for a period of time and you can buy experiences and you can buy friendship but I can guarantee I know a lot of people that are worth a lot of money and it's very hard to find I think fulfillment and happiness when you don't already have that circle around you because now you have this stress about why are these people even in my life are they just trying to take advantage of me so you have this whole other apprehension that you have to deal with like every single person you speak to it's like see how much money I have do they know like it's it's not fun to go through life thinking that everybody wants something from you either so genuine relationships and genuine friendship and genuine and sometimes I mean you can build that after you are successful but if you can keep those people around you like while you are becoming successful I think it makes everything easier for me yeah I think friendship's a hundred percent family it's been so crucial I neglected my family for so long so I was away they were fine they loved it they were both independent and I never thought I'd need family but something clicked a few years ago where I just became so interested in being there from a family and they were there for me because they've seen me I'm a worse and they never judged me and my parents were always supportive of me so I think I hold them in the highest regard and I won them with me everywhere I go and they're like the reason why I do everything so I'll tell you something else too when when stuff is not going right and like what think of all the things that can go wrong in a business there's a lot of them I think that having people around you if you are on your own you will get stuck in your own head and you will think that that thing that is happening is 10x as bad as it actually is and you need people to like it's put life out pull you out and and just help you understand that like life is an over it'll be okay it'll be okay I usually need someone to tell you it'll be okay yeah yeah and that's why you have to have those people around you a hundred percent one thing I did not ask you about that I really do want to actually ask you about and I know I probably should have brought it up earlier you speak a lot about psychology and human psychology so for creators for people that are trying to create great content what should we know about humans people how they operate how they consume content what's the psychological X factor in creating stuff they really hit for me understanding the law of reciprocity bias where when you give something up for people for people with even if it's for free they are more likely to reciprocate back in the long term or short term so building those elements of goodwill over time will bring you the highest returns even if you don't notice it straight away and that is something that a lot of market is trying to do but because they they try and get the win so quickly they miss out so it's on the standing reciprocity bias and just find that out just quickly miss out so reciprocity bias if anyone who wants to have a little bit more like an inside just read influenced by Robert Childini is my favorite book I literally mentioned it in every single blog I go to but it's just the art of giving so how are you in the book they explain as I think people will give free samples at Costco and then you're more inclined to actually buy the product just because they gave you the free thing right with your content everything acts as a free little ham and cheese burger that Costco will give you because you're giving them a taste of what it would look like to work with you be your friend or just simply have even in the podcast so that is one thing the second thing is how can you turn your content into something that creates emotion the opposite of anger isn't like happiness or love it's apathy same with everything so when you're trying to create an emotion just try and create something it's never apathy if your content reads boring no one's gonna care no one's gonna remember you no one's gonna do so when you inside curiosity anger happiness joy anything then people are more likely to actually be connected with you or what you're saying so every single time you write a pose just think is this actually making me feel anything and if not remove it I call it the condor racer where whenever I write something and I reread it and it doesn't look like my favorite create a post I scrap it because why would I solve something to my audience that I want to read myself and that is something a lot of people do because they post and goes they just post just posted they post just because they're social media manager and their team told them to post five times a week you're disrespecting your audience in respect is something that goes a long way in this game so why would you waste your ideal audience this time by reading a pose that you didn't even read or proof check or anything just because you have to meet your goals of post respect is truly everything I think that there's too much mediocre yeah in content totally and the thing there's there's no competition at the top because a lot of people just put up mediocre content including you know if I if I repurpose is something that I'm guilty of if I repurpose a real that I put it on LinkedIn without much effort that's my pet peeve I know I know and then I hate it when people forget to take their TikTok watermark off I'm like you have one job I don't do I don't do that okay I'm not that bad you can you can do a little audit I was at all to you yeah I know I'm not that bad I am I am a marketer but what I'll do is I'll take like a real but then I'll write a post yeah that's good yeah I saw yeah so I saw right yeah nice but I mean short from video content is not optimal I guess now it kind of is for LinkedIn but the longest time it wasn't really so it was not listen I don't think any of my contents lazy compared to a lot of the stuff I see but still for me in my head I know that if I had written something for LinkedIn as opposed to turn to take something from another platform and repurpose it for LinkedIn it would be 15% better for example so I mean there's always more you can do it's always a balance right do you show up with reasonably good content or every single day or do you not and you focus on one exceptional piece once a week it depends on who you are and how much you like how high you got you put yourself in for a while I was boosting so much quantity but it was still a good quality like 50 70% quality quality a lot of quantity but that then allows me to now post three times a week with the highest quality I could ever deliver because I got my reps in earlier like you were saying it doesn't take it doesn't take you a limited time of hours to do to understand something is much is more about how often you do it how quickly like I think there's like this a thousand hour rule where if you do something for a thousand hours you actually master it no one's limiting you to how quickly you can get those thousand hours in the quicker you get those in you're able to progress like that so I got my thousand hours in three months because I was writing for myself writing for agency clients and writing for like even my friends sometimes so that allowed me to push quantity at a decent quality yeah and then go from there how long to take you to put together like a post now um between 20 minutes and an hour is it bad it's not bad but that's not where you started no no to be fair like I think it used to take me less time to write than now because I'm more meticulous I really do care wonder how to be as best as possible and I I enjoy the creative process of writing in itself so when people are like always taking you so long and I'm like yeah I enjoy love is my time off time one time off I don't know same difference sometimes same thing um what would be something that I didn't ask you that I should have asked you about your process your journey I know I don't think you call it a lot of it I tried to yeah okay good um what can people look for in the future from from Laura what do you what are you putting out you well you mentioned you had a course that you scrapped but now you're trying to redo it so that it's it's launched it's launched now yes we had a very successful launch which I'm really happy about this is the one you celebrated with your mom yeah okay good together the weekend we like I was like very very recent yeah let's get very fresh memory so it's a puzzle running course on how to people can turn their LinkedIn into a six-figure channel by building the puzzle run so I got my all my love inside of it we're already getting so many people involved there's already 500 people inside so if you want to be one of those people you can check it out literallyacademy.com okay we'll put it to the semi-lengths for show notes yes I will but that course really truly has my heart in it I spend I didn't know if it was going to work I didn't know if people were going to like it but the feedback that we're receiving has been exactly what I dreamed of as a creator so you put out a course the first was going to be 2500 the first iteration it was a so I always wanted to do courses because I was educated on courses like that's all I know I'm a course addict my dad is a course addict I have that from him we buy courses like it proc cocaine like we are addicted I'm addicted to coaching as well you must get the good and the bad you see what's good what's garbage yeah I've seen everything I've taken all like ask of the fold I've seen my dad go through really bad programs really good programs and I so so so have I and I always just wanted to contribute to the education system because I if I want to fix the education system I need to do it from outside I can't do it from within so what else can I provide besides my free content and my story that actually educates people and creates a path from them for them where they can build the life that they dream of without relying on the education system so the first cohort that I built was like literally LinkedIn it was 97 it was an eight week program where I was educating life it was fun it was a great iteration of like what I had and then the second one we did it bigger because it was a proven concept and I I brought in everyone that's ever told me anything I brought my mentors I brought my friends I wrote like my sales coaches I wrote my productivity coaches wrote like my all the creative friends so they could teach them what I couldn't like I'm not sales experts what brought my mentor who's a sales bro I couldn't teach cooperating so I brought my cooperating friend who's brilliant for Microsoft so all of that in the entire way that I build things is a love letter to everyone that's like look I did it like this you can have it too and you can also have access to all the mentors and teachers that taught me that you couldn't get access to because they don't even sell their time or it's got like it's worth five thousand dollars in full so this course now is the cheapest piece of like course program community that I've ever seen in the market that's got everything from course that educates you on how to build a puzzle run from A to C at community from people to support you like I like I found in my Facebook days and the mentors that I had access to because I discovered them along the way I literally like I think we priced at 399 you get our community you get the everything I learned and my love forever because it's like a lot from like a lot better for me literally I love that yeah it's fun and the the best thing is I'm so grateful for the people that took part in the creation of the first two programs like my friends and my mentors who are like literally the pinnacle of how I've been able to grow so much I always say that my growth isn't just mine but it's also theirs the people that supported me when I couldn't support myself I recorded a video on YouTube that's gonna go live next week but it talks about how even though I was doing all the work and I was reading all the books and I was creating this slide in my head think we're still I still didn't feel like it I didn't still feel like that and it took so when I was doing all the work in like the reading books and like 52 books for two weeks I didn't feel like the person that I was meant to be when I was reading all these books like the promise of like having this author's here telling you that you can become whoever the fuck you want and then the reality of you being like no you're not your friend can get I see that a lot I see a lot of people just like consume yeah and they don't live it now I wasn't living it I wasn't quite that yet and then one thing led to another my mentor Richard Moore reached out to me from Noah like I'd seen him on LinkedIn he was big he recognized me and he was like hey do you want to have a high I asked him he said yes he gave me his time and from that moment on he believed me so much like he gave me mentoring for free never asked never ever asked for it he gave me his time for free for like six months and that thing that he saw in me I didn't see in myself until he he showed me that he saw it in myself and always in my part is there always three years and they remember they never know and it's my part so having all the people that did that for me just fully let this fire up of confidence that I didn't have and then all people started doing for me my friend Yasmin my friend Luke my friend Dakota Jake whatever all these people saw it and then I was forced to see it and then live up to the idea of who they saw me as which has made me I guess grow so fast because I again I think I'm more driven by the energy that people give me than the energy that I have within myself and it's very powerful and I'm so thankful for that like gifts or friendship and not it changes people's lives when they have the right people around them yeah if you if you do a good job with this community I have to understand the opportunity that you're going to give people because now you're going to have this it's not just ours again you can find the information in a lot of places but what it is it's in some of the people I'm sure that it remembers it's very hard to actually access some outside of that it's a community it's like they're showing up and it's that people holding you accountable when you don't even believe in yourself and that is truly priceless and if that yeah I think everything I create now is like a reflection of my journey and I'm like let me give this back to you and so that's why I'm again I'm a creator no entrepreneur it could have been a thousand dollars could have been two the cake could have been three cake could have been a mastermind but I truly wanted to make it accessible and the future of course maybe we'll raise the prize I'll create a different product that's higher ticket but for this one I truly just wanted to because I get so many questions like hey can't afford this can't afford your coaching call can't afford your service I'm like okay here if you start here and then you prove to me that you've gone through this then we can talk I think it's important I think that as a creator trying to productize you have to build your thousand true fans you don't have to go to the top of the market immediately either and you can find a way because that group first of all you're going to have success stories in that group again yeah exactly right you're going to success stories in that group you're going to have people that you can and if you do have a high ticket you want that to be beneficial to people so that means that they have to do the reps so that when they're ready to do one-on-one with you or whatever the high ticket is they've already been through it they've already been through all the the basic basics so that there's like a much higher chance of them actually being successful nobody wants to sell a high ticket product the person that buys it is unsuccessful has buyers or more just feels like you you you con the amount of 2,000 3,000 5,000 10,000 20,000 so you have to make sure that they're a right fit for that program too yeah and now you have this little like entry level that's why I never like I say cause that I've taken a step but I never like go and slander them in public because I'm sure they work for someone I'm sure that drop shipping calls that I bought like for $99.99 dollars work for someone it wasn't me I'm sure that Facebook group course I know that it worked for one of my friends so it's just different type of people at different stages different seasons different mindsets um that caused help me the first one I took just to understand that I could find new people on the internet and we went from there where should people go find you uh larkos at everywhere and think then you do uh that's literally it's for my newsletter and Twitter are you gonna build your Instagram? no I'll put some clips you can call out right on notes we can go all right but I don't think I ever seen me on Instagram I was like feeling four posts on there yeah that's so funny and they're all like reposts they're not mine they're different darren's box yeah yeah that's on my my Instagram account is that darn on page at this point it's all good I think Instagram before we leave like it scares me the it's all vain it's all fake even the way I post that it's fake it's it's it's orchestrated I posted a photo on that's where it's so aesthetic but I had to take to get my mom to take in at the perfect angle it's not real I rather get judged on my intellect then my looks and Lincoln has a lot to do that Instagram just I hate Instagram I always find it's a necessary evil but even what I've tried to do so it's a podcast so I've tried to get people to move off my Instagram into the podcast so now I have like a system set up where if you if I post a new show if people write podcasts in the comments or the CTA to write podcasts in the comments and then I DM them a link to the show so I'm trying like yes actively trying to get people off of off of Instagram it's so stupid because everybody judges who you are as a creator by your Instagram but I mean for somebody that's trying to build yes so that's why I don't give them a chance to judge I agree I think it's no I think it's smart because if you play that game it's like you have to keep up with content and the I mean there's there's smart people everywhere but I'm trying to again kind of like you I rather be judged on my intellect and the conversations I have and and the insights and the thought leadership that comes out of the content I create not if I I look good in whatever it's not it's not my type of content right it's not the key pack yeah exactly where you are yeah private jets lifestyle it's and I hate that too but guys got I mean you're talking about like bikini pick and like perfect picture and right guys that unless you own a private jet congratulations you've killed it but if you're like renting your life and posting on an Instagram you're a fucking clown and I can't think it's like even now when I go back I'm like I'm starting to think okay maybe I can go to the shop and I can take this photo and I'm already thinking like it's just a natural culture that it's there and I can't change it so I'm just not gonna take part in it until I can and maybe I can have a team managing you for me in the future yeah but it shouldn't be the focus not the type of content you want to create not for the not for the YouTube isn't it one YouTube is a goal grow it grow it to 100k and maybe we'll see me back on Instagram last question I asked you've had a great career you're still very young so I usually ask this question somebody who's like 50 years old and I say like what would be the lesson you tell your 20 year old self I mean 20 years old was not super super long ago so just younger self what would that lesson be it would be something like you don't fit you don't feel like you fit in because you don't belong where you are right now I always felt like the black sheep in my house in the school I was bullied no one really understood me I didn't really understand myself I was in the wrong place and I then learned that it was just because I was in the right place so move as quickly as possible from your environment get out as quickly as possible and then find yourself because then when I did everything just made so much sense and my life improved and I just going to be happier than I left that I left my hometown