The Magic is You

Michelle Rohr [00:00:04]:
Welcome to the Magic is You podcast where we talk all about being the fullest expression of you and making the journey just as beautiful, if not more so, than the destination. It's time to say yes to desire. It's time to turn up your magic. The most powerful version of you is the fullest expression of you. Hey. Hey. Michelle here with the Magic IS You podcast. I wanted to come on and share a quick tip from a book I'm reading called Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte.

Michelle Rohr [00:00:40]:
And in the book, he has a section about coming up with your 12 favorite problems. And this really stood out to me because this is something that I do. I think we all do it. But now that there's, like, this little framework around it, I'm more excited to be intentional about it today and give myself a little exercise of coming up with my favorite 12 problems. And an example of them, an example of this is in the book, he has some questions his students ask themselves around this. So this is these are examples of favorite problems. How do I live less in the past and more in the present? How do I build an investment strategy that is aligned with my midterm and long term goals and commitments? How can I work through the fear I have of taking on more responsibility? How do I start reading all the books I already have instead of buying more? How can I speed up and relax at the same time? What can I do to make eating healthy easier? And the reason I love this exercise is because I feel like it gives people permission to do several things. Number 1, it gives you permission to figure out what you care about.

Michelle Rohr [00:02:13]:
So instead of going through life with things that you're trying to solve, like, how do I go to college? How do I get a good job? How do I, like, are those things that you actually wanna solve or are those things that society wants you to solve? So having the challenge of coming up with 12 problems that you actually care about solving can help you realize, wait a minute, this thing that I that I just wrote down, I don't actually wanna solve this. I don't wanna spend the rest of my life optimizing for this. I care about something else. Because your brain always wants to find something to work on. Your brain is always working on something. Your brain is always trying to solve something. But if it's not something that you decided is important to you, you're gonna end up solving the wrong equation. You're gonna end up like that phrase, you're gonna climb the ladder and realize it was leaning against the wrong building.

Michelle Rohr [00:03:13]:
I feel like this kind of happened to me in the last decade of building my business. I realized, wait a minute, I've been solving the wrong problem. I have been solving the problem of how do I build a successful business. And the reason for that is, I'm surrounded by people saying that this is the this is the thing we're all trying to do, we're all trying to solve. We're all trying to solve for the problem of how do I build a successful business. And I realized, I don't care about that. That is not the thing I'm trying to solve for. What I care about is how do I become work optional? So I wish that somebody went back to Misssell 10 years ago and said, hey, that build a successful business trope, switch that out with how do I become work optional.

Michelle Rohr [00:04:10]:
Because the byproduct of that will be that I had built a successful business. Oops, my calendar's falling down. If you hear a crash, that's what it is. The byproduct of becoming work optional, of becoming someone who doesn't have to work because I've made my money work for me, the byproduct of this is I will have built a successful business. But if I'm only trying to build a successful business, that doesn't necessarily equate to the byproduct of being work optional. That doesn't necessarily equate to the byproduct of having true financial freedom. So I think that having this exercise of figuring out what are your 12 top problems that really matter to you is super important. Because if you don't define that, you're just gonna end up solving problems that you don't even care about.

Michelle Rohr [00:04:55]:
And then the other thing that I felt was really important here was, it ties into something that I've been talking about more, which is stop trying to solve other people's problems in your business. We hear that a lot too. Like, what are your audience's problems? What are their pain points? How are you solving them? How are you becoming the go to expert? And I feel like that just puts people in a very disempowered place, especially especially if they grew up not being able to have the the freedom and safety to cultivate a self identity, to focus on themselves, to feel like they deserve to put themselves first and honor their own lives. The message of focus on your audience becomes very toxic. Because it just feels familiar. It It feels familiar to people who were never allowed to focus on themselves, to now go and focus on an audience. And if you don't have that foundation of being able to focus on yourself, and solve your own problems, and figure out who you are and what you want, if you give that person the job of figure out who your audience is, figure out what they want, solve their problems, it's just, it's a dumpster fire. It's it just creates this dysfunctional, disturbing reality where they're building this business, they're working so hard, but they're not getting anywhere, and it's because the foundation is all wrong.

Michelle Rohr [00:06:22]:
Your foundation needs to be that you have to solve your problems. You have to figure out what you want and the byproduct of that is the business that helps other people. Because if you're not starting from there, then you're just constantly disconnected from yourself, and you have put all of your power into this audience to buy the things that you make for them, and then they don't buy it, and then you're resentful, and you just keep try you think that the problem is that you just have to figure out what they want, and make their the thing that they want, and you're just chasing that audience. And you you start to feel like everything hinges on just being able to sell something to someone so that you can make some kind of money, so that you can throw that money at your problems. And that's the only thing that's gonna get your problems to go away. And it doesn't work for multiple reasons. One of the reasons is that you should not be waiting for your business to become successful, for you to feel like you are, you have the power to change your life. And a lot of people are starting businesses because they hate their life and they think that if I had a business that made money, then I would be able to change my life and that is not how it works.

Michelle Rohr [00:07:38]:
The business needs to be the byproduct of the fact that you went ahead and changed your life without the money Because the the root of your problems is not a money problem. The root of our problems is not a money problem and it's not gonna be solved by money. Money just makes it easier to tolerate certain things. Money makes it easier to to get, to get, to get things feeling a little bit better, but it doesn't make the problem go away. In fact, money might make you feel worse, because money will amplify whatever the situation is. So if you have problems in your life, an amazing exercise is to challenge yourself to come up with solutions to those problems that have nothing to do with money. And that's gonna force you to, like, really have, you know, a come to Jesus moment where you have to realize that, oh, I actually have to do something that is 10 times harder than building a business. And it's going to look like creating boundaries, letting go of relationships, having difficult conversations.

Michelle Rohr [00:08:55]:
It's gonna be all that kind of stuff that goes into the realm of healing trauma and deep inner work, shadow work, inner child work, like that stuff. We would rather spend 10 years building a business that doesn't make any money than do that other type of work. However, if you were to do that inner work, you would get so much better ROI on that type of work than if you just hustled like crazy in your business. Without doing that work, you would get no ROI. So there was another thing I wanted to point out with these 12 questions, but I, that's all I can remember for now. So if you want to join me, sit down and give yourself the space to come up with your 12 favorite problems. What are the things that you actually truly care about solving? Like, what are the problems that you deeply feel are present in your life that you would love to get to the other side of? Oh, I just remembered what I wanted to say. So if you come up with these 12 problems, you have a business right there.

Michelle Rohr [00:10:20]:
Those 12 problems represent an amazing business because it the fact that you can now focus on solving these 12 problems is going to do several amazing things. You're actually gonna solve your problems. You're actually gonna have a life that gets better without waiting on your business. And you will have a business that is the result of solving those problems and now you have solutions that you can sell to other people. Like, let's just take one of these questions in here. How do I start reading all the books I already have instead of buying more? That's a course. That's a program. That's a live cohort.

Michelle Rohr [00:10:57]:
Like, if that's something you actually solve for yourself, other people have that problem too. And now you can start sharing your solution. Like, let's say you do some sort of, club around like, let's like, let's say you start a book club, a book club for people to read the books they already have. But now you actually have a story you can tell around how you did it, and your transformation, and your system, and your framework. It's coming from a real place versus, let me think about this, invisible customer avatar, and let me come up with problems for them, and let me solve their, those problems, and let me tell them a fake story about their fake problem, versus you having your own transformation, telling your own story, and attracting people from a place of having had a transformation. Versus chasing people from a place of trying to get them to buy something that you're not even doing, and you're not even using. Okay. I will stop there.

Michelle Rohr [00:12:03]:
Thank you for listening. The book is called Building a Second Brain, by Tiago Forte. I will put a link in the description. And at right after this, I'm going to sit down and come up with my 12 favorite problems. Thank you for listening to the Magic IS You podcast. If you would like to join our newsletter, go to secretowlsociety.org forward slash newsletter. See you next time.