David speaks with Kelly Wilde Miller, an emerging writer and speaker giving voice to the necessity of authentic self-expression. She is a self-help author, who wrote and published her first book in 5-days, an award-winning speaker & creator of the growing newsletter Wild on Purpose.
They talked about:
🔑 The impact of intentional decisions
🕵️♀️ Kelly's secret life as Tori
🎭 The power of alter egos
🌱 The path to self-integration
🌪️ How Kelly found herself amidst the chaos
🎢 The unpredictability of career success
This is just one part of a longer conversation, and it's the second part. You can listen to the earlier episode here:
Part 1: 🎙️ Dreams, Doubts and Creative Conflict with Kelly Wilde Miller (Episode 105)
🎙 Listen to your favourite podcast player
🎧 Listen on Spotify:
📹 Watch on Youtube:
📄 Show notes:
[00:00] Introduction
[02:12] The consequences of every decision
[05:18] Kelly's path through multiple colleges
[07:19] The secret life as Tori
[11:19] The power of an alter ego
[15:40] The psychological impact of alter egos
[17:53] The suppressed aspects of ourselves
[20:26] The illusion of self-doubt
[23:27] How Kelly embraced her true identity
[25:20] Tori's influence on Kelly
[26:54] The reality of career development
[31:07] The struggle of transitioning from student to entrepreneur
[33:34] Lessons from building and growing businesses
🗣 Mentioned in the show:
Carl Jung | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung
Shadow self | https://orionphilosophy.com/the-shadow-carl-jung/
Craigslist | http://www.craigslist.org/
Airbnb | http://www.airbnb.com/
BCBG | https://bcbg.com/
The Alter Ego Effect | https://amzn.to/4d5sBgl
Nicki Minaj | http://www.nickiminajofficial.com/
Beyonce | https://www.beyonce.com/
COVID | https://theknowledge.io/issue7/
Batman | https://www.dc.com/characters/batman
Superman | https://www.dc.com/characters/superman
Clark Kent | https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Superman_(Clark_Kent)
Bruce Wayne | https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Batman_(Bruce_Wayne)
Hridaya Yoga | https://hridaya-yoga.com/
Vail Ski Resort | https://www.vail.com/
👤 Connect with Kelly:
Twitter: https://x.com/kellycwilde
Website: https://www.kellywildemiller.com/
Newsletter and Podcast: Wild on Purpose by Kelly Wilde Miller | https://www.wildonpurpose.co/
5-Day Creative Momentum Challenge | https://fivedaycreative.com/challenge/
Creative Regulation Self-Assessment | https://creativedysregulation.scoreapp.com/
Book: Creative Dysregulation | https://amzn.to/3xIbSAu
👨🏾💻 About David Elikwu:
David Elikwu FRSA is a serial entrepreneur, strategist, and writer. David is the founder of The Knowledge, a platform helping people think deeper and work smarter.
🐣 Twitter: @Delikwu / @itstheknowledge
🌐 Website: https://www.davidelikwu.com
📽️ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/davidelikwu
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/delikwu/
🕺 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@delikwu
🎙️ Podcast: http://plnk.to/theknowledge
📖 Free Book: https://pro.theknowledge.io/frames
My Online Course
🖥️ Decision Hacker: http://www.decisionhacker.io/
Decision Hacker will help you hack your default patterns and become an intentional architect of your life. You’ll learn everything you need to transform your decisions, your habits, and your outcomes.
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The Knowledge is a weekly newsletter for people who want to get more out of life. It's full of insights from psychology, philosophy, productivity, and business, all designed to make you more productive, creative, and decisive.
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📜 Full transcript:
[00:00:00]
Introduction
Kelly Wilde: Just like I think a lot of entrepreneurs get disillusioned on the other side of their success. Countless stories, people building the thing, selling the thing, making millions or billions of dollars, and then being left like, well, is that it? Who am I now? What the heck? I thought I would feel fulfilled here.
I was both of these people, I was both Kelly and Tori and everything in between.
This week, I'm sharing the second part of my conversation with Kelly Wilde Miller. Kelly is a writer and speaker advocating for authentic self expression.
We had a really great first part of our conversation.
Now Kelly was challenged to write her first book in just five days. Uh, she's also an award winning speaker and the creator of the growing newsletter Wild On Purpose. So the first part of this conversation was incredible. I'd urge you to go back and listen to that if you haven't already.
In this part, you're going to hear Kelly and I talking about the impact [00:01:00] of intentional decisions. We talk about this idea of having shadow selves and double lives and the things that we run away from, the things we run towards. We talk about Kelly's journey, having a double life of her own.
We talk about the power of alter egos and how you and others in the past have actively used them to be able to get the things that you want.
And then we talk about the power of self integration. So there may be some times where actually you want to lean into having or using an alter ego and there are also other times that you want to be able to integrate your identity across the different things that you do.
So Kelly shared a lot about her journey, trying to find herself amidst the chaos of her life and I'll try not to give too many spoilers away because this was an incredible episode. Trust me, you're definitely going to want to listen to this.
You can get the full show notes, the transcripts and read my newsletter at theknowledge.io. You can find Kelly on Twitter @kellycwilde. I'll leave links to her website and her platforms below in the show notes and in the description.
If you [00:02:00] love this episode, please do share it with a friend and don't forget to leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts because it helps us tremendously to find other listeners just like you.
The consequences of every decision
David Elikwu: Something that I wrote about a while ago. I think maybe there's probably in the lineage of this idea, there's probably a few other ideas. One is Carl Jung where he talks about, like your shadow self, right? And so there's this like secret repressed part of your personhood that is down there somewhere.
And then I think I've also heard someone either writing about or talking about this idea of having like a shadow career, which is okay, there's the thing that you're doing and there's the thing that you really want to be doing and how do you manage the tension between that?
And the thing that I've written about, which could possibly be distinct from both of those things, but I referenced them because I recognized, you know, that there is some connection there was this idea of like, killing your alts. And I'm trying to remember exactly how I framed it originally. But essentially it's this idea that every time you make a decision, like the, the original, the etymology of the word decision means to cut [00:03:00] off in Latin. And it's this idea that when you make a decision, you're kind of picking one thing, you're cutting off all the other potential things.
What I was writing about on the idea that I had is this idea that whenever you make a decision, you're kind of plunging a knife into the heart of the universe and carving out, you know, the life that you want to live.
Thinking back to some of the decisions that you made or some of the things that you talked about, it's also this idea, even more importantly than that, every time you make a decision, somewhere in the multiverse, like, 50 versions of you die instantly. Because those are the people that did the other thing and lived with those different consequences and they took different paths and you didn't take that path. You took this path, you did this thing. And you know, when you think about that lens, Oh, when you ended up being stuck in traffic and you didn't get to go to that audition, you know, the version of you that went off and did the other thing, that person's not here anymore. They're not in this timeline. Maybe that's some, some other version of you did that somewhere, but you know, like you're now in [00:04:00] this timeline.
And I think the key part of that, got to me was this idea that if you don't kill your alts, like those alternate versions of you on purpose, you'll do it by accident. And if you don't intentionally decide to cut off, Hey, this part of me that isn't going to be brave and try this thing, or this, this version of me that is going to not make this choice and regret that decision. If you don't intentionally decide to cut off those strands of your timeline, something will get cut, something will happen by accident. Cause you only get to live one life. Like you only get to live in one version of that timeline. And maybe down the line, you can still have other opportunities to do those things, but there's only one version of that, that you get to live. And I know that, you know, just even from what you've shared already and from other things that I've heard you share about your background, there's been several of those kind of inflection moments where you kind of have to choose the life that you want to live and the way that you want to live your life.
And I've just realized I can probably also connect this to something [00:05:00] else I wanted to ask you about that I think you're the perfect person to ask about is, I would love to know more about Tori, if you don't mind sharing.
Kelly Wilde: You really did your research.
David Elikwu: And specifically, and specifically the journey that took you there.
Kelly's path through multiple colleges
Kelly Wilde: Okay, well, I'm going to have to provide a lot of context here. That's funny when you talked about, tori popped in my mind when you were like, we make these decisions and then we like live into them and it's like, yes, we do. We really do.
Yeah. Okay. So just to connect the multiple timeline slices we have here. I really wanted to go to college. So to have the four year college taken off my menu, there's probably a lot of people in the world who would have been like, thank God I don't have to go to college. My mom said, I don't have to go like, that would have been the ideal scenario for so many people. But for someone who loved school ever since the first day I ever stepped into a classroom, having that option be taken away from me felt like my identity was just [00:06:00] stripped from me. So by the time I like was ready to finish school, I ended up going to seven colleges and a lot of them were junior colleges cause I was moving around, a couple of them are like online schools. It wasn't like seven universities. There was one major university. And then I eventually finished and got my undergraduate degree at a small liberal arts college in the mountain towns of Lake Tahoe. And Lake Tahoe is the California Nevada border. And I also still had no money to pay for college, but I was so adamant about getting this degree and having the college experience that I looked online to see, okay, what is, what job can I have where I would make the most amount of money and work the least amount of time?
And at the time, was like, okay, it's gonna probably be waitressing or bartending, or something like that. So I pop on Craigslist and Craigslist is this massive website where you can like buy stuff, trade stuff, and it's a weird website, but I don't know if everyone in the world knows what [00:07:00] it is, but I go on Craigslist and I look in the job section and there's an ad for being a cocktail waitress. And I was like, Oh, I could totally do that. And it said, you make like, a hundred dollars an hour. Like, great, perfect. And it said you had to wear bikinis and like a short skirt. I said, okay, I can do that. That's, that's fine.
The secret life as Tori
Kelly Wilde: And so I apply for this job. I get a call from the woman who owned the company and turns out it's not cocktail waitressing, but it's adult entertainment, fully nude adult entertainment. And me being 23 at the time, I said, "No way. I'm not going to do that. I can't do that at all. No, thank you." And then I was persuaded to just come watch, go watch a couple of the shows. So this business was providing strippers and dancers to entertain bachelor parties. So men would come and host their bachelor parties and rent out beautiful Airbnbs or hotel rooms and bring the [00:08:00] girls in to entertain. So it had nothing to do with a club. There was no pole. There was none of the like typical stripper environment that you might think about. It was actually very bougie. It was really quite nice. I went and saw a few shows. I'm just sitting there. Like I'm a background participant and just witnessing.
I really liked the girls. They all felt super normal. There was no drama. The men were so respectful. It was like so clean that my whole worldview was like, huh, this actually doesn't feel that bad. Obviously it's very revealing. But having been a dancer my whole life, I knew from a physicality standpoint, I could do what the job required. When I think back to my childhood, I kind of always had this like voyeuristic thing about me. I've also been a life drawing model before. So there's something where I feel more or less okay being unclothed around people. And so I said, okay, I'll give it a shot. And the girls were actually making closer to like three to 500 an hour. And I thought, this is how I'm going to pay for college. This is how I'm going to go to school [00:09:00] full time. I only have to work two nights a week. So it was exactly what I wanted. The max amount of money possible, the shortest amount of time as possible. And I did this job and my stage name was Tori, and I told myself I would just do it to get through college, but that it ended up becoming like, my very intense financial security blanket.
And so after college, well, let me back up a little bit. While I was still in school, I was still perfect student, straight A's. I had the most prestigious business internship, working at an angel investment group. I kept winning all these business plan competitions. I'd won like $65,000 in business plan competitions. And so it was like slaying it on the school front. I was almost a valedictorian and was like the president's like favorite golden girl student. He would parade me around at these banquet galas to fundraise for the school because it was technically a non profit and so I would get up and it's like BCBG beautiful floor length gown [00:10:00] with a microphone and tell my story about how I went to seven colleges and this was the one that I was going to graduate from. And I was saved by this school, and because of my story, everyone should donate to this school and keep it, keep it going. And no one knew that I had this whole other persona going on. Cause I felt it didn't even feel like shame to be honest, it just felt like, in my worldview, good girls don't do this. And so therefore I can't be both. And so I only told the bare minimum amount of people, which was my college roommate and just a handful of folks. And I wove a pretty intricate lie in order to keep it going. I said, I worked in catering, and I was able to maintain that for quite a while, but then eventually. I learned the hard way that our bodies can literally not hold a lie for very long. Eventually the lie will eat you out, like eat you from the inside out and destroy you. And so at the end of, I did it for seven years. I graduated after two years. So I did it for [00:11:00] another five years on and off because the money was so good. And I was flailing, trying to be an entrepreneur out in the real world. And it was just the only way that I knew I could like show up, be in flow, get the money and go home. I'm really grateful for that opportunity. I learned a lot about how we contain multitudes.
The power of an alter ego
Kelly Wilde: So what I ended up realizing with a little bit of psychotherapy support is that, you know, we have all these archetypes and energies inside of us. So yes, I have the good girl. I have the student, those are archetypes. I also have the bad bitch and the vixen, and the slut and all of these feminine, the whole spectrum of femininity, I think, lives inside of every woman. And what we are choosing to show is a choice. And there were nights where I didn't feel like being Tori. In fact, most nights, I didn't feel like being Tori because I had to like go to work at 8 P.M. I love going to bed at 9 P.M. So I had to find a way to step into this [00:12:00] role. I was the most of all the girls who did it, I was the one who didn't fit the mold, you know, I would talk to the men at the bachelor parties about their San Francisco startups, and I would talk about raising capital and, you know, what their marketing plans were? And they were like, this girl's different. And I had no drama with boyfriends and I wasn't drinking and I wasn't doing drugs. And it was just, I was such a different version of being a dancer.
Ultimately what I had to reconcile with is that I was both of these people, I was both Kelly and Tori and everything in between, and I needed to find a way to actually accept both of these identities and integrate them into one life.
Yeah, the nights where I didn't feel like working, there's a book called The Alter Ego. I forget who wrote the book, but it's all about like the power of having alter egos and the practices you do to get into your alter egos. And so my practices to get into the alter ego of Tori was curl my hair, put on [00:13:00] lipstick, put on heels, put on the clothes and listen to Nicki Minaj. And if I did those things, Tori was just there, right? I could go from Kelly who wanted to go to sleep to Tori who wanted to take leather belts and whip men on their asses with it in like a 45 minute period.
And in the book, the alter ego effect, the guide talks about Beyonce and her alter ego of Sasha Fierce. So in the beginning of Beyonce's career, she grew up like a very good, I don't know if it was Christian, but she grew up a very good religious girl, you know, from the South. It was not acceptable to be slutty and super sexy on stage, but yet that's a part of her wanted to express in that way. So she created the alter ego of Sasha Fierce. And Sasha Fierce, sexy. I think she has a whole album as Sasha Fierce. And that was her way of learning how to embody these nascent and dormant energies inside of her to the point where she could eventually drop the alter ego, [00:14:00] and it was just part of Beyonce. It was just part of who she was.
And because I had grown up such a good girl, straight A student, never disrespecting or upsetting my mom or anyone always saying, yes, ma'am to authority. This was my way of rebelling and finding more of who I truly am. And eventually that cycle needed to break, you know, seven years. And I was, I was done. I was so done. And that was right, actually around a little bit before COVID. It was like the year before COVID. So it's kind of perfect timing to like get out of that industry entirely. And I feel no pull to it, I feel no connection to it anymore. And yet I feel more whole because I did that.
I'll pause there. There's probably more I could share, but that was a lot.
David Elikwu: Okay, that was amazing. It was really great getting to hear you sharing that and there's so many threads that I want to pull on and directions to go in.
[00:15:00]
The psychological impact of alter egos
David Elikwu: In a moment I'll take two steps back and there's some stuff I wanted to ask you about the college part but just going off what you were just saying now, I would love to know your thoughts on, because I think, okay, thinking both about your journey and exactly what you mentioned about Beyoncé and perhaps there's probably a bunch of other, you know, stars or people that fit into this category as [00:16:00] well.
When you were mentioning the alter ego thing, I'm thinking there's kind of two parts of it. Because initially, you and possibly also Beyoncé, you're kind of put in this position where you have to cope with that. And this is a part of your life and a part of your existence now that you have to live with and live in and find some way to wrap your head around, right?
There's a part of you that is not really that person. Actually, you know, it's kind of in the back of your mind. So my trap back there, and some people might say the real you or whoever, like the you that walks around most of the time. And then there is a part of you that you need to either create or draw upon or figure out that you can put on in order to enter this other space. And in order to survive in a sense and in order to, to navigate this other world that you have to be in.
And I'm interested in your thoughts on the functionality of alter egos and balancing this idea of, okay, using the concept of an [00:17:00] alter ego to navigate maybe some elements of difficulty or difficult areas of our lives that we have to inhibit, but then also the potential of using an alter ego to people also talk about superheroes as having alter egos, right. And, you know, Batman people talk about a lot as an example, or I think, Superman like, is the real Superman Clark Kent, or is it Superman? And is the real Batman, Batman or is it Bruce Wayne? And is actually, is Batman just cosplaying as Bruce Wayne to get through day to day life so he can go be this other person. And so there's this other idea that, okay, in one sense, this could be a tool for coping and escaping and allowing us to inhibit different versions of ourselves in order to survive in certain spaces. But alter egos also have the capacity to allow us to break out and to do things and create superpowers that we may not otherwise have had and have a boldness we may not have otherwise have had. So I'd love to know your thoughts on that tension.
The suppressed aspects of ourselves
Kelly Wilde: Yeah, so many thoughts. So, you talked before about the shadow, then the shadow self. The shadow holds [00:18:00] all of the unaccepted, suppressed aspects of our psyche and of our being. And there's both what's considered the dark shadow, which includes qualities that are dark, you know, anger, violence, the capacity to rape someone or murder someone on the far, far end of that extreme. Like I would never say, that I would do that and there's a part of my psyche that's pushing that down in a way as an option, because it's bad to identify as that. And then there's golden shadows, so golden shadows are the things that are actually very light qualities, but that are also still pushed down and it's not accepted to be them, which I would argue is things like a woman with conviction or our power, or our big, strong, vibrant personalities. And so any aspect of us that was told, you're wrong, it's bad, you should be ashamed of yourself, [00:19:00] especially while growing up, is we start to push these aspects of ourselves into our shadow. It's a really unconscious process. And so shadow work is the work of excavating our shadow and reintegrating these pieces into us.
And I think ultimately, to know that we are capable of all of it. So I am as a human, as a member of the human race, capable of shining my light, changing lives, being so powerful, being full of conviction and clarity and killing. Not that I'm going to act on that, but it's part of me. And the more I can accept that, the more I actually accept the world exactly as it is. And I stopped projecting my own disowned parts out onto the world.
So alter egos, I'm working this out in real time right now, I think are a way that we can start excavating our shadow to start integrating these energies inside of us. It's not that they're going to take over our lives. Like, I don't wake up in the morning and [00:20:00] Tori's there, like, it's Kelly, and I've thought a lot about this where I'm like, there's really just this kind of neutral Kelly, more or less, where you're kind of seeing her right now, but there's even more of like a, a neutral part of me that's just like, I don't know, I'm just a person. And it is helpful for my own wholeness and psycho spiritual well being to know that I can pull on these different energies if the moment calls for it.
The illusion of self-doubt
Kelly Wilde: And so when I'm feeling self doubt, which is something I feel a lot, I came into this incarnation to really wrestle with self doubt and low self esteem. I can call on a Tori like energy who's just an absolute badass who doesn't have an ounce of self doubt in her to feel that in my body of like, right, confidence is also possible. Because self doubt something I've really practiced. And I think the way we feel is really just what we've practiced feeling and then we kind of have like this neutral [00:21:00] default state that's just the accumulation of what we practice the most.
And so Tori gave me an outlet for practicing other types of energies. And now, still a little shadowy because I, it was a lie. It was a double life. It couldn't be out into the light. So I've had to do a lot of work on that. But it's, it's actually pretty remarkable when you talk to someone who's feeling low. You can have them step into those other qualities quite easily by just have asking them to conjure it up. You know, you could ask a little kid, be Batman, be Superman right now. And all of a sudden that kid's gonna stretch his arms, and he's gonna flex his muscles, and he's gonna fly around. He's gonna feel on top of the world. And that's so healthy for us to know that we can feel that way. And I would like everyone to find their inner Tori and their inner Batman and all of these pieces, and I don't think it's artificial. I just think we're practicing other modes.
Ultimately, what [00:22:00] we'll see, maybe, is that all of it is an illusion. The personality structure, the egoic structure, they're just these structures that we create to get navigate this world and to be here and to learn and to face the external world, but the true self, the most authentic self, it's our essence. I believe it's always radiating through, but it's a lot harder to grab. It's a lot harder to put your finger on it. And at that 10 day meditation retreat that I was in, after I published my book, the teachers, the Hajananda, his this is Hridaya Yoga, which is at in Oaxaca and in France, he was saying that there's, the most external level we have. We have the ego, we have our neuroses, we have our personality constructs, we essentially have the masks that we wear. And then behind that, we have our individual soul, who also has a personality and [00:23:00] different aspects and the shadow self and the unconscious. It's not all pure love and light on the soul level.
And then behind that, we have the one. We have source, we have our true essence. So all of that is like pushing through, and the more we can integrate all the different parts of us, they have control over our lives from an unconscious, shadowy way.
Let me know if that doesn't make sense and I can try to explain it differently.
How Kelly embraced her true identity
David Elikwu: No, that does make sense. And I think, okay, so I'll share a thought on this and I'll go back to the other question that I had, but the thing that I am still potentially struggling with a bit or still trying to wrap my head around is this idea of integrating. And I think you use that word as well. It's like, okay, to what extent does feeling whole, in a sense, come from bringing together these different parts of myself and inhibiting all of them equally and saying, oh, you know, this is me. I am this person that is equally all of these people or is it better to completely sequester and [00:24:00] say, actually, this is a completely different person. I'm only gonna jump into that body, you know, at the times when, when it suits me and actually the rest of the time, I'm going to inhibit this self and by erasing the boundary between the two or making the boundary more distinct, actually, and creating that hard line and that harder separation, there is also a firmness in that where, Oh, I have both of these identities that I believe in and inhibit fully, but they are completely distinct.
Kelly Wilde: Yeah. So I'll just give you my personal opinion on that, given I'm not a spiritual teacher or a psychotherapist. So as I was healing and reconciling the seven year chapter as Tori and telling the truth and getting it out there and integrating it, part of my integration path was truth telling.
So it was coming out. I came out of the Tori closet and, I had this process called micro truth telling, which we can talk about, which was essentially me gradually telling people so that I could work through all the fear and the shame that was coming [00:25:00] up to the point where now I can just talk about it on this podcast and feel totally cool about it.
So I think Tori is integrated in me and that I'm not trying to shove her away and I can just be here and I can reflect on it and I can talk about it and I can even like embody her a little bit too. While I was in that process, I thought, wow, I really want to write a book about this and I'm going to call it compartmentalized.
Tori's influence on Kelly
Kelly Wilde: And I don't think that's a good title anymore, nor would that be the title of this book. But I was really fascinated by this idea of compartmentalizing our different identity structures. And it's like very distinct slices of the pie. And there's kind of like a barrier in between each slice. Or there's different closets that they're all in or something.
And my intuitive hunch is that that's not a healthy psyche. I want to open all those doors. I want to take away all those barriers. I want to feel the natural flow of energy moving in and through and around me, which includes my expression and my different parts. So as I integrated Tori and that experience and those archetypes, I actually [00:26:00] noticed that I didn't even need to go and like, be them anymore.
It's like she did what she needed to do. I got the experience I needed to have. And now I'm, she's there, but she's not running the show. There are probably other energies that are running the show that are still trying to have their limelight out in the, in my life now. But to me, integration is welcoming all of them home so fully that they just kind of become a part of you. And I don't consciously think like, I'm going to call in Tori right now so that I can do this podcast.
The confidence, the conviction, the things she embodied, they're just more a part of me now. So they're part of Kelly. Like, it's just Kelly, but Kelly is more whole now because she welcomes Tori back home.
And I know there were other questions in there around school and goals and if I knew what I was working towards so happy to go back to that too.
The reality of career development
David Elikwu: Yeah, no, I mean, to explain part of where the other part came from, I mean, first of all, thank you for, for sharing all of that, [00:27:00] but was, I mean, even thinking about my life, I can give you some examples. I think the core idea is just this idea that, you know, I remember it might've been a year or two ago, I was teaching this course about, you know, careers, career development, et cetera. And at one point I just had to, it was, it was funny, I had be the revelation and I knew I just had to write about it before our classes the next day. And so I just sat down and I just wrote and I wrote and I wrote, and it was like several pages long. It ended up being maybe two or three different blog posts that I then published, but then I also shared with the students on the course. I think it came from someone asking me about, you know, how I developed my career or something like that. But they was, the direction they were coming from was as though I knew the whole time what was going to happen and I just had to make it extremely clear that I had no idea and I think that's the key point and part of what I was trying to get at is that you know, sometimes if you were to ask someone a question in the moment about, what they think is [00:28:00] going on, what are the lessons they're taking away? how's it going? The lessons that you learn at the time are completely different from the lessons that you learn in retrospect.
Sometimes they're the same, but very often, sometimes it's only with the, the additional contemplation and when you look back, you can say, Oh, you know, there's a bit of a narrative fallacy there where it's like, Oh, here's what I was really doing, and this is what I was thinking, and this is the way, you know, I thought it was going to happen. And it just kind of went the way I thought, but actually at the time, sometimes you're floundering and you have no idea what's going on. And I was recounting in that moment, some examples for me, because for example, I still don't have a degree. I didn't, I never graduated from anywhere. I tried, you know, a few times, but work wise I've been relatively successful. I've had graduate jobs, you know, I ended up getting a graduate job and I just kept going from there.
But it's interesting because that creates this strange duality in my life where, it feels like you have a bit further to fall because you kind of have to keep being able to get the next job and you have to find another person that will, you know, just take it for granted or whatever. Maybe it matters [00:29:00] a bit less now because I've had a few jobs, but I think at least towards the, the beginning of my career, there were just a few stages, you know, first of all, even leaving university in the first place. I remember having my first graduate job. I remember the first time I got fired from a job. You have no idea what to do. You can't go home and say, you know, I don't have a job. I had to find another job the same day, you know, you have to go figure out, okay, how else am I going to get hired? And that's a whole story in itself.
And similarly, I remember being at Google at one point. And again, you know, I could tell a very well structured story that sounds fantastic. And it's like, Oh, I was doing this, and then I was doing that, then I decided to do this. In the midst of each of those moments, there are a ton of mini moments where you might have been wracked with fear or anxiety, and you don't know what's coming next. And actually, you know, in the moment, you have no idea what's going on. In retrospect, you do. And in retrospect, it's very clear. Now that I already know that I survived and everything was fine. I can tell you with a clear head, this is [00:30:00] exactly what I should have done, this is exactly what I should have thought. And here's how I would do it again. At the time I didn't have a clue.
So I think that that was kind of where I was coming from and just trying to understand because, you know, sometimes life happens and things come about, but it seemed like, Hey, you were really trying to get a degree and you were really trying to do this specific thing. And meanwhile, you are clearly very competent because you've done well at school. You're actually doing quite well in entrepreneurship. You're winning these competitions. I think one of your ideas was something about designing jeans in 3d or something like that. And so, yeah, it's this idea that, Hey, actually, you were displaying a lot of this, this hyper competence in this domain, but simultaneously, maybe, I'm not sure the extent to which you were still trying to figure yourself out or figure things out while doing this other work as well.
Kelly Wilde: Yeah, well, I don't, know, I think we're going to be figuring ourselves out till our last breath, but it is unknown how much of what was driving me was my own authentic, intrinsic, empowered desire to do college [00:31:00] versus the imprinting that we have in this generation to go to college.
The struggle of transitioning from student to entrepreneur
Kelly Wilde: And if I had been a good student since I was four years old, it makes sense that the identification as a student would carry on through, kind of the end times, you know, I never felt drawn to a master's or PhD, but I know some people feel like they're so committed to the student path that they just need to keep being a student forever.
By the time I got my bachelor's degree, I was so disillusioned by the whole higher education thing, because I did everything right. And then I had one job offer, which was to work at a water fountain company, like doing operations to build water fountains. And I was like, Oh my God, what, what did I just do all this for? And I was very entrepreneurial, you know, I'm winning these entrepreneurship competitions. And then I learned, entrepreneurs don't need a degree. They really don't. Depending [00:32:00] on I guess your, your zone of excellence and expertise and what you want to build in.
I graduated at 25. So I was a slightly older student when I graduated and I'm 35 now. I think earlier I said I'm 34. I just turned 35. So I'm learning how to identify with that. Um, so 10 years, it's been 10 years since I graduated. And I'd say it's been a lot of that time unlearning at what I learned in school, unlearning the structure, the idea that someone's going to tell me what to do and that someone's going to give me a grade and someone's going to tell me I did a good job and if I didn't do a good job, they're going to tell me exactly why I didn't do a good job. And wow, is that conditioning and programming so deep. And so actually I was awful entrepreneur up until I think about the last six months, I've started to actually like, get it together and feel what an entrepreneur is like true energy is. Not what a student's interpretation of entrepreneurial energy is, which is what I was doing in those contests because they were still very structured with, you know, a contest kind of focus.
And so I was blindsided and so [00:33:00] surprised after I graduated college thinking, I am the shit. I literally won an award of entrepreneur of the year right after I graduated, even though I had no business at all. And then I literally couldn't launch anything. I couldn't build. And I then had to file bankruptcy. And I just went through this whole deep depression, deep collapse. Who the heck am I? I went from the top of my game to absolutely no game whatsoever. And then the humility of like, no, you were a really good student. You were not, you were not an entrepreneur, even though that impulses in me.
Lessons from building and growing businesses
Kelly Wilde: And again, this goes back into early years. I wanted to build my first business when I was young, like you, I wish I had, I wish I had had an apprenticeship to actually learn how to build. Um, so that's why it's so cool that your business was making 6,000 pounds. If that's what you said when you were 14, like at least you had a bit of that felt experience of what it's like to create something so important, I think when we're younger, so I think a lot of the failing [00:34:00] entrepreneurs are struggling entrepreneurs now I'd be curious to what degree all of them were really good students and now need to shake all that goodness off and be paradigm disruptors. And learn to, to not have that validation from some arbitrary authority figure who's looking down on you.
You know, and entrepreneurship is just the next arena for me to learn and grow through, but it too is a trap. You know, I don't want to say entrepreneur, being an entrepreneur is superior to being a student. We just, we step into these arenas to learn about ourselves and to grow. But at the end of our life, we're going to hopefully shed all of those identity structures and just come back into a sense of like, I am everything. I'm one with it all. And I've just chose these outlets to grow and transform. And so for a long time, for me, that was school. And then when I got it, you know, there's kind of a disillusion, just like I think a lot of entrepreneurs get disillusioned at, on the other side of their [00:35:00] success. Countless stories, people building the thing, selling the thing, making millions or billions of dollars, and then being left like, well, is that it? Who am I now? What the heck? I thought I would feel fulfilled here.
And so, it's really not even about any of these games. It's really letting us play in these arenas just for the journey in and of itself, but knowing that none of it is the one answer for our life. They're just maybe more aligned to help us kind of figure out who we are.
I hope to be figuring out who I am until the very end.
David Elikwu: Thank you so much for tuning in. Please do stay tuned for more. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. It really helps the podcast and follow me on Twitter feel free to shoot me any thoughts. See you next [00:36:00] time.
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