Addicted to Uncertainty: The Entrepreneur’s Paradox

The comfort in the uncertainty, I could never do that before. And so I did become cynical when I was in that, like, really dark spot of, like, my whole world collapsing on me where I just couldn't get myself to believe the things that I needed in order to keep the status quo. That was really hard because those certainties was what made me happy. And then when that got taken away from me, I became cynical. And sad. It was hard, and I didn't want to be there. I wanted more than anything to believe the things I believed before. By the way, this happened in business.

This has happened spiritually in religion. It's happened in relationships with other people. Like, I'm not trying to, like, categorize anything into one category. I'm just sort of, like, talking about these different instances in my life. And where I have started finding peace is, Curt, you don't actually want to get that carrot. Welcome to the Soul Proprietor Podcast.

I'm Curt Kimpton, and I'm Melody Edwards.

Each week we dive into the ethical questions that keep entrepreneurs awake at night.

Whether you're building your own company or exploring life's big questions, you are welcome here.

Hello, Melody. How are you today?

Hi, Curt. I'm good. I'm carless, but good.

Carless? Why are you carless?

Yeah, that's one of the things that happens to me a lot is I'll leave my car keys in Nashville. It's hyper-specific. How many times has this happened that you've left your car keys in Nashville?

A total of one. But let me say, I was trying to be a grown-up adult. And what I believe grown-ups do is they put their important documents and things into a safe at a hotel. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to do that this time, even though I've never done it before. I won't forget. And I left my passport, my car keys, and my pearls. I don't know why I brought pearls, but I was like, just in case.

Well, you know what? I've used a few safes in my day. I have actually put a laptop in a safe, but I've never put pearls in a safe.

Well, why did I bring pearls? I'm not sure.

Well, pearls are pretty.

Well, you know why? Because I didn't know what kind of audience I was going to be around. And I just, in my head, it was either going to be super casual or very fancy. And I didn't need the pearls, so.

Let me guess, it was kind of in the middle.

It was. It was in the middle. Yep.

Now, how certain are you that you're going to get your pearls back?

Not very certain. And I care less about the pearls than I do about the fact that my car has been at the airport for 5 to 6 days now, past my trip.

Oh my gosh. And they're just billing you daily.

They are. But I think there might be a cap there because I parked in the far lot, which is good. But I will say I have called this hotel every day, twice a day, and I've gotten lots of nice people at the front desk who have told me lots of things. And it has now been sitting at the front desk in a package for FedEx for 2 days. And I keep calling and nobody is accountable for it. And so everybody says they're going to do the thing and no one has done the thing. And I have another trip to go on in like 3, 4 days, so I really need those car keys back.

Oh, gosh. You mean to tell me this hotel has not put someone in charge of mailing left items back to their owners?

I think it's time for me. If they don't put it in the mail today, it's time for me to go to upper management. Yeah.

I mean, think about that, though. Like, if you were going to create a hotel chain, I don't know, would it make it on your list of like, people leave stuff in the hotel rooms, have a system to get it back to them?

I actually think the reason that this happened is because they have a system now where it's called ChargerBack. And so if you leave something at the hotel, you actually file with this other company ChargerBack. The hotel says, yes, we have this thing. And then it's kind of like an accountability system in a way. What it doesn't do is get that thing out the door. And I think it must be new for them because it took me 3 days with them to even figure out how to make charger back work because they were like, you didn't pay. I'm like, I didn't get anything to say that I should pay. So yeah, I'm— maybe I'm the test case.

It's not working.

Oh, no.

See how calm I am about it?

Yeah.

Because, Curt, everything always works out. Yeah, it just does.

That's a great attitude, and I actually am with you on it. I do think that everything eventually does work out. To speak to those who may be dealing with depression stuff like that right now, that's kind of the big lie that a lot of us just really absorb. And maybe even right now, there's a couple things in my life that I'm speaking to myself about. Is it like, when you look back at all the times you ever thought, this will never get better, there's no way this could ever be better, you can probably think of a lot of times in your life that you're like, I remember it was really bad, but like, I'm so far past that I don't remember all the details about it. That's kind of a good way of proving to yourself that it will get better. And for those of you who have traumatic enough events that you do remember all the details and it was really awful, my suggestion in that is, is that have you had a good day since? Can you think of the time that you shared a laugh with somebody or you went out and enjoyed an evening eating pizza and telling stories? And have you done an activity that you enjoyed? And I think that it's really easy to lose sight of the fact that even really hard and maybe even traumatic things over the course of time, it will work out and it'll be okay. It's hard in the moment, Meli, like in the moment you're in, like I am very much working on holding things lightly.

I've talked about that on the podcast before, but this is one of those things where I would definitely look down and see my knuckles getting pretty white-knuckled around it and just really clinging onto it.

I mean, we have no control. This is something I have to practice all the time.. And it makes it easier now for me to just say, you know, I'm not stressed about it because of the reps that I've put in, of in the early years of my, you know, adulthood, really stressing out about things that I had no control over. And then as I've gotten older, realizing it might not work out the way that I want it to. Most of the time it doesn't. I'm still alive. I still have my businesses, my family. My health, the main things that are important, the relationships, all that kind of stuff, I still end up having.

And I guess actually it's a mentality that I've just adopted over time, probably maybe too optimistic. But like I say, I'm an optimist with a bad memory for those kinds of details. It works for me.

I think being an optimist almost requires bad memory, but exactly. Yeah, let's use this as a thread into our tapestry of our discussion today. I think this is going to be a fun one. You know, right now you're experiencing some uncertainty and like, am I going to get my keys back? Will I get them in time for my next trip? Will the next phone call result in somebody actually doing something, even though all the history of phone calls leads me to believe that they won't? We could take that into your business. Will this war that just got started and is cutting off oil make it so that I can keep driving a petroleum-based vehicle? Will somebody I know and love get called into war? Will my Filipino employees— they're already being affected, but how are they going to be able to deal with this? And now that's just done with the war, but there's like the economic conditions surrounding that. There's the political things, there's the social things in your community, there's the work culture things happening in your business, there's the financial drivers and everything around you. There are more spokes in your business wheel than you could probably sit down and count in any one sitting. But every single one of those spokes pulls hard.

They drive this constant uncertainty. I think when we first talked about this topic, one of the things I said is, as an entrepreneur, I wake up every morning knowing that the rug is going to get pulled out at some point today. Who's going to pull it? What's it going to be for? And am I going to be on my feet at the end of it? Can I hold my footing? Uncertainty seems to be the entrepreneurial glue that holds all of us together as entrepreneurs.

After you just said all that, I'm like, why do we even do this? It sounds horrible.

So we can own our own amazing destiny and be on a beach, you know, drinking nice drinks.

Ultimate freedom.

Yeah, ultimate freedom. Well, I'll tell you, Melanie, before we get into it today, we could also be an employee and just be at the mercy of somebody firing us who's also under the same tensions that we are. So Is it better? Is it, you know, employees think, oh, I have job security. And my question is, but who secures your job? The person who has all these uncertain things coming at them. And I don't care if you're Boeing, you know, big company that has planes falling apart in the sky, or if you are the U.S. government who, you know, you think those are stable companies are big and they, you know, whatever they're in government shutdown half the time these days. So certainty is not something that anyone employee or otherwise really has the luxury of, not in the business world anyway. There are things we can be certain of though.

Like, well, we've talked a lot with, uh, the spiritual side of being an entrepreneur, and one thing that really strikes me is that religion and spirituality, and I'm gonna go mostly to religion, I think organized religion is mostly focused on creating certainty. So if those keys get back to you in time for your trip, you can be certain that that's because God was looking out for you. But if they don't get back to you on time, you can also be certain that God had something for you to learn and that you're going to grow, and that's why it's going to work out okay.

Are you saying that's what you believe, or are you saying that I should believe this?

I'm being a little bit tongue-in-cheek here. The point is, is that my religion, my spirituality gives me some certainty about the big question of after this life, really.

Also, does God care about my car keys?

And depending on the frame that you use for the God that you worship and the things that you believe about that creator or whatever the person in charge is, that will determine whether you are just one of his creations that will just do whatever, or whether he loves you and cares, or whether he's unknowable and doesn't know you. There's a lot of things that that go into play there. But I mean, for today's conversation, the contrast I want to draw is that as humans have so much uncertainty, one of the things that we cling to, and I'm one of them, I'm not like, this isn't a mockery of anybody. I think that what happens after we die, our purpose for this life, the more certainty we can get around that really big, hard to know, hard to prove thing. I think the more it can guide us through our uncertain certainty that we're trying to get through.

I've been thinking, what if somebody's just listening to this for the first time and they're hearing you talk about this, but they don't know that, yes, your faith guides you. The thing that I am certain about is I may not believe in God anymore, and I'm definitely going to hell for that. That's my philosophy currently. Although I want to say something, Curt, As I have been stressing about the war and the struggles of the humanity and all of the things, I find myself speaking to something else. Maybe God, I don't know. So just having conversations—

Tell me more about that. I want to hear about that.

I don't even remember. I just remember yesterday being like, oh, is this like praying or something? Because I wasn't praying the way that, dear Jesus, thank you for this day. It wasn't that. It was like more of probably a plea to please make this end. This war, the suffering, the girls, the— in the school, the— just the chaos. Like, hospital, the hospital. I'm just like, it's so uncertain.

The new ICE murder.

Yeah. I asked my employees, because they're very affected right now in the Philippines, describe what's going on for you. What's your experience right now? And I got a lot of responses. One of them that sticks with me is one of my girls said, I'm doing intermittent fasting right now so I can survive 2 days without food. Now, please know I pay living wages. This person is getting paid well and they have benefits. They are worried about the future, the instability. Everybody mentioned, like, will we have jobs? Will Americans need people to help them anymore? Right? Because I have a virtual assistant company.

And you and I have been through many economic times of uncertainty at this point in our life. I have always not necessarily thrived, but done more than survive those times. You're still in business after many of those times as well.

Only because I can't fire myself. Yeah, my job always follows me around.

It does, but it allows me a level of certainty that I know how to get through crazy hard times when there is a lot of uncertainty.

One of the things that you did mention is, you know, you've been through some tough economic times. There were some things that I was— I'm just going to keep going with this theme of certainty because I'm just sure no other country will attack the United States, except for yesterday we found out that there were drone attacks scheduled to hit California.

So I didn't know that. I'm not watching. I can't.

Oh, mine is something else.

But yeah. So every day I can just, before I hop out of bed and just kind of see what happened in the world and not be completely under a rock, but it's really important to me that it's not being spun by any sort of pundit or anything. Anyway, I just felt like I was certain of it, but I think sometimes we use the word certainty interestingly. Not in the sense of, I am sure, 100% positive. It's, this is my reality. This is how it's always been. I've gotten through tough times in the past. So I'm, I mean, I, I think that means that I'll get through tough times in the future.

And I think that can be really helpful, but I think it's different than the certainty of like, this decision's made, never have to make it again. We don't experience that as entrepreneurs, no matter how But I do think we fight that a lot, and that's sort of what systems are all about, right? So, oh yeah, when I, when I hire a VA from you and then I put a checklist in place, my goal is to never have to think about how those items on that list will ever be handled ever again, because each one of them has a process. But my VA is going to get sick, my VA will have something happen, and I'll have to replace them, and I'll have to think about it again. Or there will be an outlier conversation over the phone or an email that comes in that doesn't get covered by that specific list.

You're forgetting the biggest one, which is as your company grows and changes, that doesn't work anymore. Yeah. So we, we pretend that this system is gonna— Curt, I spent the 3 first 3 years of Home Service VA thinking I was building the systems that would allow me to scale the company. And I spent so much time doing it and that's not how it works. Yeah.

So there's just, I guess, different levels of certainty. We're doing our best. I'm not a proponent here. I'm not like laughing at certainty because I think it plays a huge part of creating some rails for us to ride our life on. Look, I've been working on a project, a special project that has required me for hours to sit and answer questions to Claude. About something I'm trying to do, that the questions just come and come and come and come and come, and there's no end. I mean, we've created a checklist of items. They're all hard questions.

They all have maybe 100 questions underneath each topic. But in doing this, I'm trying to like account for everything I can think of. But the problem is that as I go through one set of questions, I have to like to do 3 more questions, and it does feel never-ending. But the energy of us trying to create a bit of certainty and these guardrails is, can I make it so that I don't— I mean, I already make 1,000 decisions a day. In fact, as I was just saying, I'm actually probably making closer to like 4,000 decisions a day, just a bunch of micro, but like more like written, like, like where a lot of decisions are just like, will I go ride my bike today? Will I drink Will I put water on my bike? Will I eat this for dinner? You know, like, and then around business, they're just coming at you so hard. And what if I could cut that number of decisions down to a third? Would that make a difference for me? Yeah, it'd make a difference for me. My wife gets to the end of the day and asks me, Curt, how did your day go today? And the answer's always good.

I went good. Oh, I say, I don't know. Literally, I don't know. I haven't even had time to process it usually.

Well, then that's what she wants to do. She wants to process with me, like, oh, what meetings did you have? Who did you talk to? What'd you do?

And I'm like, I should marry Rachel because that's what I want at the end of the day.

Oh my gosh, it's the last thing I want. I was just getting ready to say how much I hate it.

Oh, that's so funny because Matt would be a better— like, I shouldn't marry her. Matt should ask you how your day was because he'll accept that good and he'll be off, and then I can just tell Rachel all the things.

Yeah. What's funny is like, I'm exhausted from all the decisions I've made today and all the things I've done, and I don't wanna relive it. And she wants to talk about it and I'm like, I still got, I need to like get to a quiet place and go in the corner and sit for a second.

Are you an internal processor? I'm an external processor.

I actually may be an internal processor, but since I've taken up meditation, I just wanna get back to my nothing box. I want to get my brain completely empty.

Like it's tired.

Yeah. Now Rachel's like you and she does home care hospice and she'll say, and I'll be like, Like, I have a trick I use, and I think she's onto it, but this is the trick I use. She'll say, oh, tell me about your meetings and everything. I used to say, do I really have to tell you? Because I don't want to relive it. And then that hurts her feelings, so I don't want to do that. So then I'm like, oh, there's so much. Before I tell you mine, can I— and then this is in parentheses— distract you so much that you'll forget about the question? Can I just hear about your day? And she's like, oh, sure. Now I'm, now I have Hippolotas, so I can't tell you everything, but here's what I am like, great, thank you.

But then she goes, I was with a patient today and they had a multisclerosis associated seropenoprial that had a Latin word overdose of such and such diaprophyl that she had to have a transfusion of dopaminergic freeing. And I'm like, I don't even understand the words that she's saying. And she is saying it like I know. And I'm like, holy cow. But if I can just hang on, she'll get to the end and it'll be great for her. I can just kind of like, and then when she gets to the end, she'll be like, oh, and then the director of nursing ran into this problem and I just feel so bad for her. And I'm like, wow, she holds so much.

Sounds like it. The dopa sopra. Yeah.

That alone. I don't know all the Latin words and I don't even think it's all Latin. I think some of it just is invented words. Like the medical industry is like, we could call it the front of your brain, but I'd rather call it the prefrontal cortex.

And you're like, because there's more parts of the brain. There's a lot of parts, Curt.

But the front of the brain, the front of the brain. Is there anything wrong with front of the brain? No, prefrontal cortex is better.

Okay.

But are you just making words up now so that we can— anyway, that's the, that's beside the point. The point we're talking about today, as far as like holding all of this stuff that passes through us. All day, we create this important feeling of certainty so that we can have some stability in our lives. Yet I think that as an entrepreneur, I'm not bragging right now, I'm addicted, definitely not bragging, to instability and to this uncertainty. This, like when I talk about the rug being yanked out from underneath me, I have to stay standing. When you yank that rug, I gotta be nimble. And I got to be able to handle it. But it's not a badge of honor.

I'm not saying that from a badge of honor perspective.

I've talked about this when it comes to my money mindset of I feel most comfortable at the edge of like not getting by, at the edge of chaos, because that's the state that I have spent most of the time in. So my edge keeps going up financially It's also the same with my life. Like, if things are too calm, I feel very stressed out by that. I don't understand it. And I'm so high alert. And that's what we have to be as entrepreneurs. We don't have to be, but that's what we are. And probably that's why we came to entrepreneurship, is that feels very comfortable and good, even though we hate it.

Because I do hate that.

Could it be that— could it be that we've just adapted? Like, I don't know if I came into entrepreneurship hoping or thriving on that.

I think I never thought about it.

Okay. I think I got there and I just had to adapt. It'd be interesting to hear your perspective as a girl, but as a boy, I just knew that I need to be strong enough. And so when stuff started coming at me, my perspective was, look, this is what you do as the provider and protector, you hang on. And I think that that transformed me into I mean, I use the word addicted. I think that, like, this is now a big part of who I am.

When you've told your story in the past, it started with you starting a business, but also you were having kids right then. Like, a lot of stuff was happening. You had to hustle. You had to live in that chaos. And I don't think any of us is like, you know what I really love? At— in your 20s, in your early 20s, you're like, I really love chaos and stress and uncertainty. I'm addicted to it, so I'm going to start a business. Like, nobody would put those two things together. And I had the same story.

I was a single mom for a while. I literally felt like I had to work as hard as I could, even though that wasn't the answer. That's always continuous— continued. And I have a company that teaches people and give them the resources to not do this. And yet I continue to struggle. And I talk about it honestly because I don't think any of us who enter entrepreneurship— and yes, we have that dream of like, give us financial and time freedom— I don't know many people who don't struggle with that. You keep struggling with it too. Like, we keep creating— I mean, have you had moments of peace where you felt secure? I don't know.

I haven't.

Yeah, I have. I have. In fact, I don't know if I'd be here today if I hadn't discovered meditation to get to that. I mean, honestly, Melody, I went into some pretty stressful times, and it got so bad that, like, it did feel like I'm in the dark soul— dark night of the soul. I was talking to Bobby about it. It got to a point where it was like, I can't do anything right, and I am completely buried, and there's no point in even trying to dig my way out of this. So there is the meditative kind of piece, And then I've also experienced times in my life where things were so successful that it felt like nothing could stop me. I have experienced that.

And in those moments, I still was striving. But I don't think that getting the carrot at the end of the stick that I'm after— I don't think my body is conditioned to actually believe I'll ever get to that carrot. Because we don't.

Yeah. I have had many, many moments of peace, but they have come usually at the point where I cannot do it anymore. It's always like a reaction to where I'm at, so I will just take a month off.

Are you saying that peace comes at rock bottom for you?

It comes when I take myself out of the work, and I still have a lot of uncertainty in that time. But like, in September, I took space and went to a meditation center, and I can shut off work as long as I know that somebody is handling some stuff, I don't think, I just let it be. But I have to be all out. I can't be partway in. So those are the times when I can really experience peace. But I know that I'm coming back to not chaos, but like I'm the person who made the chaos by having ideas and having big goals that keep driving us forward.

Hmm. This might be the mountain biker in me speaking. You know, on a mountain bike, you can suffer and suffer and suffer. And then like sometimes it's shocking just to look and see that like I've already, I went from that mountain over there to this mountain over here. Like, and sometimes it's like shocking, like that's many miles away I've covered and I did it all on my little bicycle with my two little legs. But that carrot I was speaking of metaphorically, I think for me, as long as there's progress being made, if I'm reaching for a carrot and I'm not going anywhere, like my feet are somehow like concrete into the ground, that is the ultimate suffering entrepreneurial for me.. But if I'm reaching out and running toward that carrot and I'm huffing and puffing and I'm exhausted and my feet are like, my legs are like jelly and, and I look back and I see where I came from. I don't spend a lot of time looking back, but just to know, holy cow, I covered a lot of ground.

Cool.

Keep chasing the carrot.

Like what happens when you reach that carrot?

But I know I never will. I think that's kind of my point is that like, even though the life on the edge of the beach. If I'm being completely honest, that sounds like hell to me.

What if it was in a mountain?

I've been on long extended vacations before, and by the time I get down to the vacation, I am dying to work again. So I already kind of know that like this little picture I've painted of like reaching something and not working anymore, it doesn't— that's, it's literally my definition of hell. When I think of what some people's versions of heaven is, I just want to tell them like playing a trumpet all day, petting a lion all day, like Are you kidding me? That's hell. But anyway, that— I digress. The point is, is that I am fine with the suffering. I actually kind of like it and unhealthily addicted to white-knuckling, which is not good for your, your limbic— like, talking about medical invented words, but your whatever system it is that's like sort of got that cortisol— another, another word that we've invented— it's running through your veins and it's just not good for you and you feel stressed all the time and it's mentally hurting you, but I'm okay with it when there's progress. When I look at it and I see that I'm stagnant or that I went the wrong way or anything, that is incredibly defeating because all that suffering was for nothing.

Well, don't you just invent, like, lessons that you've now learned because of the suffering? And I'm not saying invent, but yeah, we do invent. I can believe the lessons in the most painful times. I'll look back and be like, well, that lesson taught me resilience. Or sometimes I learned the lessons 3 times.

Yeah. Gosh, that's embarrassing to think about.

I'm not embarrassed because I had to learn the lesson.

Well, the thing is, is like, I was about to say something that— is it possible that we don't, as entrepreneurs, we're like immune from learning lessons? Like, the reason you learned it 3 times is because you didn't learn it. Or at least you didn't— maybe you, you learned it on a, on a mental level, but not like intrinsically made it part of your being or your system or your whatever.

Like, we're very stubborn people. Like, yeah, yeah, it takes—

I know I need to be critical of employees. I also know that firing someone can be the best gift you ever give to anybody. Yeah, but does that mean that I am not going to have to like keep someone on that I shouldn't? Like, I, I'm going to do it again. I'm going to, I'm going to make someone else suffer while I suffer and they keep doing the wrong thing on the bus, like, I know I'm going to do it again. And I actually, if I'm being honest with myself right now, I actually don't believe that's happening in my life right now, which is kind of good. But I'm still like hyper-aware of the fact that like, I'm probably going to do it again. And I think the embarrassing aspect for me is, is like, I know I have the knowledge that I have been through this hell of this type, and I don't want to do it again. But I don't have the wisdom to necessarily apply that knowledge every time because maybe I'm weak or because maybe I'm afraid or because maybe I am misplacing the value that I hold sometimes in a place that maybe it doesn't actually belong.

Meaning if I fire this person, I am no longer valuable, or I've lost some of my integrity. In one area to use my integrity in another area.

Over the past week, in various either agency or business, like, I've had to let 3 people go. And I don't let them go right away. It's not like a, you're out. Some graduate, some are for clients or whatever, but it's painful. I know what the risk is. Like, I care about people. And so, yeah, we should do something as a business person that is the right thing to do for the business. And we can say it's the right thing to do for the person who we are working with who we're making miserable, but we can't be the definer of what's right for them.

Honestly, that's an excuse I think we use. Like, you're gonna do so much better somewhere else. Sometimes that's true, sometimes it's not. But like, I think it's okay that we struggle over that. Because that means we care and that we're taking this seriously. I don't know if I ever want to get used to being okay with it and doing it fast, but my system adjusts all the time. I get better and better because what I do want is for them to always know that if it happens, they had things that they could have done beforehand, that it's not a surprise. That example is a little bit unique because there's a lot of pain involved in it.

There are other things I do in business all the time that I just keep learning the lesson over and over, but it's because I— sometimes you're not in the right space to take in the lesson.

And you just used the word unique. Like, I was like, is it unique? Isn't every single decision we make unique? It's kind of the reason we were making the decision anyway. If it wasn't unique, like, I don't have to decide if I jump up in the air, if I'm going to come back down to the ground or not. Like, it's not unique. Like, it's going to happen.

But with people, it always feels like the moment—

that's what I was just gonna say. We can keep using the idea of, like, letting somebody go because it's like, it's literally one of those painful things that you do as a business owner. Every person has their own personal scenario. They have their own business application scenario. They have the shortcomings. They have their strengths. It's literally unique, every single scenario. I think that that uniqueness is where a lot of that uncertainty and instability comes from.

But I used the example earlier of a hub and spokes. The cool part about it is that you might feel like one particular spoke is yanking you in, but that tension of all the other things, that's the thing is that like I just got done saying, we have thousands of spokes. Well, if you have thousands of spokes, one spoke can almost do nothing. Like you can tighten it as hard as you want and it'll almost do nothing. Now, that doesn't mean it won't have a lot of pain and suffering and cause things to pop and all that, but maybe that's why it's a bad metaphor because I know that sometimes things can really yank you out of alignment. But I do believe that to go back to sort of this, the beginning premise is that there are some things that are just so unknowable in this life. And I don't know what happens when someone actually dies. I've never gone with them and then come back.

And even if I had, I would always wonder, like, was that just what happens when you cut off oxygen from a brain and you come back with this memory? I mean, because I've been under anesthesia and come back. I saw Steve Jobs. I walked around with him and we went to a whole nother world and we're looking at stuff together. And I got back and my wisdom teeth were out. And, uh, actually that wasn't the wisdom teeth. Sorry. That was a different procedure. But the point is I came back and I told Rachel all about it after embarrassing her in front of all the other people about how in love with her I was.

How I couldn't wait to go home with her and said some stuff, but, but then I explained the whole world that I'd seen and all this. So even then I'm like, I'm sure I didn't actually go be with Steve Jobs at the time he was actually alive. And so he wasn't in that world with me, but I would always question it. My point being, I have modeled a lot of my life to just have some touch points where I can know where I stand in space. And Some of those touchpoints are about things that I am, air quotes, certain of, but it's certain from the sense of this is a rock I choose to hold. And in my case, it's very intentional. A lot of cases, it's actually just served up to you as a child and you just accept it. It is what it is.

But this is what I'm going to use to orient so many other things in my life. And it does seem like the things I can be most certain of are things I can't prove.

Hmm. I'm certain of the value of integrity to me. Like, I live by that, and it's not very helpful. I mean, it's helpful to me because I'm like, well, I know that I have integrity, and so decisions can be based on is this out of integrity or within the integrity. I don't know what integrity means or what values or morals means. I just know what it means to me, then there's all other questions there. But the things that I tend to hold on to, like, some people would hold on to the idea of, like, I can always make money, you know? Like, some people, that is, like, a thing they're certain of. Mine is I can always count on myself to have ethical beliefs and be inside of integrity whenever possible, which is not making me any money, by the way.

But, well, Melanie, I mean, I'm just having a little fun here pushing back.

Please, no debate and pushback.

But you are so sure of that? Well, I know a guy in my window cleaning company who, he was my customer, such a nice guy. Next time I heard that guy's name, I was reading the newspaper. He had slipped and fallen in the bathtub. He went into a small coma for a week or something. He came back, he enjoys completely different foods, He didn't recognize the woman that he was married to. He had a completely different personality. Turns out he actually was still a nice guy, but just was very different than the previous nice guy. So luckily the wife is married to someone.

But to me, that was like, wow, I always believed that our spirit controlled our body and we could always count on ourselves being ethical and kind and doing the integrity things that we believe. But I also learned that actually you can hit the brain in a certain way. Like, you know, remember back in the '80s when you're trying to get your TV to get reception?

Didn't work for me.

And all of a sudden you could be wired very different. And then I went back to the house to clean the windows and I talked to the wife about it. And I was like, I read about him in the paper. Oh my gosh. And she's like, it's been quite a road, but yeah, he likes me enough to stay married to me.

That's good. I mean, my concussion that I had 3 years ago did not give me the ability to speak fluent French or allow me to change my ethical beliefs so I only care about money. Like, not that I would do that.

What if it did? That's the point.

If it did, I would be thrilled and we wouldn't be having this conversation because we wouldn't have this podcast.

But now you don't have that certainty anymore that you'll always be the person you say you are.

I do have that certainty because, okay, I plan to never hit my head again, and I'm certain of it.

Oh, okay. I'm gonna talk to all the people who hit their heads and told, like, you guys are idiots for doing that, hitting your heads.

This is the girl who slipped and fell, fell twice last week in slippery puddles of something. So in Nashville, once in Nashville at that hotel that it's still like, they just didn't put the wet sign where it was supposed to be, and I had new shoes on. And then the other was in my brother's kitchen because they had something slippery on the floor. But I think it's a me problem.

I think the hotel is losing points every second for me.

They were nice though. Yeah, nice. Nicely incompetent. Can I tell you one thing? The certain thing that happened to me also that plays into this certainty— the cleaner, I was having a conversation, just she was in the area I was sitting in, in the common areas, and we started to converse And she said something about faith, and then I don't even remember what we were talking about, but suddenly she was trying to save me in a very gentle way, but not gentle all the time. She got very into it, and I played along. And I also said, I just want you to know, like, nobody can save me. I grew up in this faith. I know— it's almost like I could read what the next thing was going to be.

Oh wow, you did it! You actually jumped in and stood up for yourself here a little.

I just said, but I'm willing to have the conversation because it's interesting to me. I'm curious. But then also, I already knew, like, I can't change her belief system right now because I've experienced that mindset, that belief, like Bobbi talked about in one of our previous episodes. And then that made me understand that what I would want to say to her will have no impact and therefore is not worth saying. And then I was like, why am I having this conversation? But then it was because she really wanted to. I gave her my email address and said, you're welcome to— I don't do phone calls, but you're welcome to make your case over email. But she lived in such certainty about the goodness and the evilness of the world and how even just thinking of something bad makes you in Satan's realm or whatever, super, super born again. That being said, she felt so certain, and I just thought, I wish I was that certain.

I love that for her. I think that binary thinking will come back to haunt you, but it can be really, really helpful from like a present-day context.

It makes you feel like you understand the world when it's almost— it's not understandable, but you feel like you understand.

Simple. I think there's tons of danger in thinking that the thoughts that you have in your head are God, are God or Satan. That can be extremely harmful in the sense that like this guilt for having a thought.

Well, and you lose your relationships too because you see it all around you. But yeah, it was an interesting experience, Curt. I just wanted to bring it up because that was the latest sign of somebody. That's the latest experience with certainty. On such an extreme level that I've had with somebody.

I think that as we kind of look down from a really high view of today's conversation, I think that it's worth doing an assessment. Are you chasing this certainty that you know will never come?

So there are micro-certainties, and then there's the macro-certainty that I don't think I'll get. But I have been chasing all of these little— like, the event I was at last week was learning social media algorithms and how social media works from the person who has the most views on social media, billions and billions.

Is that, is that, uh, uh, MrBeast?

It's not MrBeast. I think he has the most views on YouTube. It's Adley Kinley or something. We wouldn't know her necessarily just by that. Her views come from lots of different platforms. The point is, I feel really certain right now in a way that I've never felt before, that I understand how social media works for the first time in my life. Really? I understand a lot of different things that I didn't understand, not because of, but because of the room I was in with the experts that I was learning from and the people that were around me. And so it was so interesting this year.

I'm really seeking micro-certainties, I'll call them. Trademark. I feel like I really got them in— I've been to like 5 events this year. It's too many. But some of those events really led me to certain beliefs that I've stuck with.

You've done a lot of traveling and you've talked to a lot of people this year. A lot. Like, literally, I think every time we've texted, you're in— I'm somewhere else. Yeah. You've probably spent more time at airports this year than Maybe I have my whole life, but let me ask you this. Yeah. If you're chasing these micro-certainties, how does that affect your happiness or joy as to whether you actually catch these butterflies?

It makes me feel really good because it's not like I just chased them this year. I've been wanting to understand this stuff. And it's not just that, it's like psychology. It's all sorts of things about people. And what they're attracted to. One of the things they said is people will tell you they want to see a certain content. They don't. They want to see cat videos, essentially.

So that was like one of the things they talked about is we're always building like end-of-funnel kind of content a lot of times where we're talking directly to our person when really we need to start at the top of the funnel and build things that seem to make no sense for our business. But that's how you get people in. And to start following and then trusting. That was interesting because I definitely focus on like, you know who I am and you know what I do, and now I'm going to tell you what I—

why you need me or whatever. Yeah, actually a lot of stuff just came in my head that was like, yeah, that is so true, right?

So like these little things that I've learned, like the first time I learned to do a budget that really worked, that was like, wow, now I understand how business math works, right? That kind of blew my mind. So I look for those times when it helps me in business to understand business better, which helps me also understand the world better. But I do not believe that I will ever understand all the things about the world. I just know one thing for certain: I'm here and I need to work within my purpose, which I think is to help people, support people, And I don't know what that means exactly, but that's what I've come up with so far. What about you?

Well, I think that we always look for opportunities to be a little different from each other, and this is an area where I'm pretty squarely opposite. I think in my life, the more things I become certain of, the less I am actually certain of, and including the thing, and I'm okay with it. I'm a very literal person, Molly. I wish that I could make sense of everything. But I have found so much discomfort and sadness in thinking that I got it and then I didn't. And I'm not just talking about like abstract things. Like there's very concrete things. If you go up a mountain and you get closer to the sun and the air is thinner and heat rises, it should be hot at the top of that mountain, but it's not.

You go up a mountain, you get closer to the sun, air gets thinner, heat rises, And there's where all the snow's at and it's cold. And I know that there's a scientist that could explain to me, I could probably, I've actually asked the AI to explain to me once. I still don't quite understand. And I know it's true. I know that it's true that even though what I believe or think should happen doesn't actually happen, I just feel like there is so much of that in my life where it's like, I think I got it pretty well figured out, but that is not how the world works. A lot of the stuff that you mentioned, I look at and I go, like, how— and I asked you how it makes you feel. When I get really certain about something is the first time I start getting skeptical of it because like, oh, if we're that sure about it, then now we got to start looking at outliers, start understanding.

That's my norm though. That's where I started. And now I feel like I have to rely less on other people's view of the world because I've relied a lot on other people's views, learning from other people, and I need to learn less from other people and just understand I already know what I need to know. It doesn't mean I know everything. And I definitely think wisdom is understanding that you know a lot less as you get older with certainty, but you come back to like being more cynical about the— or like trusting it less. That's like the norm of how I exist.

What I'm trying to bend towards though, is that like the comfort in the uncertainty, I could never do that before. And so I did become cynical when I was in that like really dark spot of like my whole world collapsing on me where I just couldn't get myself to believe the things that I needed in order to keep the status quo. That was really hard because those certainties was what made me happy. And then when that got taken away from me, I became cynical and sad. It was hard and I didn't want to be there. I wanted more than anything to believe the things I believed before. By the way, this happened in business. This has happened spiritually in religion.

It's happened in relationships with other people. Like, I'm not trying to, like, categorize anything into one category. I'm just sort of like talking about these different instances in my life and where I have started finding peace is, Curt, you don't actually want to get that carrot. If you did get the carrot, you'd be sad anyway. You like the journey of the carrot. And I know you complain every day about how hard the journey is, but you wouldn't have it any other way, buddy. And I know you think you understand how heat works at the top of a mountain, but the fact is, is that like, if you want to be cold, you need to go to the top of a mountain. Okay, and it's okay, buddy.

You don't have to understand it. I think throwing that cynicism aside and saying, look around, pay attention, there is a lot of advantage to it. But do not get obsessed with any kind of certainty. Because surely that certainty will end up folding on you and determining that it's not real. And so yeah, that happiness being tied to certainty has created a lot of problems. So now it's a physical thing I have to do. I have to truly fight for it to not allow my happiness to come from certainty, even though that's the tendency. And to say, I am happy with what I know, and I'm super happy to learn more.

And uncertainty is actually going to lead me to being more well-adjusted and, and happier if I can just get comfortable with it.

Yeah, I hate to ruin everything you just said with what I'm about to say, but if there's one thing I learned at Attention Hacking, it's to say something like, Curt, I'm about to destroy everything you thought you believed in. And then I say something simple like, Curt, I agree with you. That's the whole thing I was gonna say is I think when I say I have micro-certainties, really all it is is it brings me back to, you know, I have concrete knowledge at this very point about certain things that I've learned that allow me to have these little micro-certainties. But also, I understand that I will never have certainty about everything, and I'm okay with that because I do want to continue to be a curious person. I'm always But there are wins sometimes, Curt. Nothing can ever be certain. So I don't even know if the word can have any meaning if we say that there's nothing that's certain.

Yeah, I mean, I was gonna, I was gonna just poke a hole earlier and I'll just do it now just to kind of maybe underscore the point that maybe certain isn't even the right word, but like right now you're certain, micro certainty of how social media works. Like, Melody, that's going to change tomorrow. Tomorrow, like you wake up tomorrow and everything you knew, Facebook's in charge of that, YouTube's in charge of that, Instagram's in charge of that. Like, you don't get to pick what that is. Now, I understand that they're hacking the human psyche, but once again, everybody has their own human psyche, and we've evolved as people.

It's more about knowing how other people think. That's really what it comes down to, because they will always find a way to, to figure out a new way to attention hack, right? People who are good at that, they always find it. Really, all I wanted to understand is how do they think about the world of this thing when every algorithm is always changing, when everything is changing all the time? And there are certain truths that are consistent, and that's kind of the knowledge I was looking for. It wasn't like the whole thing they told me. They gave me a lot of info. I'm not going to take all of that with me, but it's that if you understand basic thing, or one or two basic things, you can always figure everything else out. Don't you kind of learn that about life in a way as you go along?

The point of my question there is like really that like certainty about a thing has 20 more things applied to it. And that's where I think that like you're, the point you're getting at is that maybe it's not even the right word. The fact that we're, I think both in crazy agreement on is that Being open to learning new things and being open to the fact that everything you learned ahead of time, you have to hold it in the regard that you have it. Because otherwise, every day you wake up a newborn, you don't know anything. That's not productive. And I think that's an important statement to make on this particular podcast is that like, while we try to be flexible and, and have open minds, you do have to cling to something or else you're not clinging to anything. And that's just not productive. Like you have to, You know, right? So let's not, let's not pretend that we're like these crazy open-minded people that can be throwing everything we knew away yesterday for something new today.

No, but the idea that like what you just said, I think was, you know, really hit home for me, which is I know I'm not right about everything, but I'm trying as hard as I can to be right about as much as I can. And then just holding space to say, Give me new facts. Show me something new. Have it. Let me have a new experience. I read everything in the book that told me that it's hot at the top of a mountain by those facts. But then I had an experience and that experience has borne out over time. And that's okay.

And by the way, you can also read in books about that experience that I had as well. So it's just about accumulating things and not boxing yourself in to say, I refuse to accept this information. Because it would conflict with the worldview that I hold. And that's the part I'm doing my very best to not do.

Same. Yes. Because that's where I see when I look at human— humans or humanity is what I was going to say. When I look at humans, that's where I see the biggest problems is when people are holding tight to their worldview. We need more openness. So do you think you and I both agree that entrepreneurs are addicted to uncertainty? Are we certain of that?

Great question. I don't know. I do know that as I look back on my journey, I feel comfortable with, with saying that I am.

I am too, but I would love to hear somebody tell me that they are not addicted and then tell me how they did that.

You know, we see a lot of people in around us who progress in certain ways. I'm kind of uncomfortable bringing up specific names of them because I haven't talked to them, but there are people who, you know, you think you understand the story from the outside and maybe you really actually don't, and that's probably at play here. But I've seen people who are systematically getting the carrot and then getting another carrot and then getting another carrot and then getting another carrot. And the carrot doesn't always have to be life on the beach by any means, but I see people who are just achieving and achieving and achieving. And I, I'm not jealous of them. I'm happy for them. But I also am like, what do they, what do they got that I don't?

Aren't they just chasing more carrots though every time they do this?

Yeah, sure. Because again, I think getting a carrot and then being done is the definition of hell as far as I'm concerned. Same. So yes, but I think the only thing I would, as opposed to yes, and I would say yes, but. This person has certainty in this particular thing all the time. Like, they, they chase it, they get it, they chase it, they get it. And just like I know when I go to the top of the mountain, it's going to be cold, they know I get my carrot every single time. I'm sure of it.

Every life experience shows me that. And while they would probably disagree with me from their own perspective in life, it's their reality, and we all have our own reality. Every experience I've ever had in my life where I achieved something, I've done some stuff I'm really proud of. I was just talking to my wife the other day. I cleaned the biosphere. I restored the biosphere to—

I think it's the coolest thing ever. Yeah.

Still do. And, and I remember when I did it, like, there was a sense of achievement. Like, I cleaned so much glass with this greasy covering out in the middle of the desert. There's no access to anything. And I, and I got it. I figured it out. And then like literally the day after, it was just something I did. Yeah.

Yeah. I rode my bike from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon. It's just something I did. It's not like, do a resume here. But literally everything of any note while you're doing it is so big and cool. And then for whatever reason, I think we're all wired this way unless someone maybe is different, but— Not everybody. I can't revel in a success that long.

So we live in the gap. We're always looking ahead. Yeah, this was a good conversation because I think we're both living in a lot of uncertainty right now. I mean, I can speak for myself, I feel very much like I am living in tons of uncertainty, which is probably why I'm like, I came back from this conference and I know two things for certain, you know. So this was very helpful for me. How was this conversation for you?

This conversation did not take me to a new place. But I feel really good about what I understand about this right now. And I believe that I'll be reflecting on this conversation a lot in the coming week. What about you?

I'm just living it right now. So this is almost giving me like a certainty about like, it's okay, Melody, you're going to be in the uncertainty and that's going to be okay. And I would've thought that anyway, but in the moment it can feel very stressful. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. So I'm not just gonna think about it, I'm gonna continue to live it and, uh, I'll let you know if anything changes.

Okay. Well, I'll count on that. Thank you so much for this conversation today. One of the things that I think this podcast is really good at is allowing somebody who's in the middle of that daily war, the battle of decisions to be made. I really love that we take time to just understand a little bit about what's driving us and what is this whole war that we're fighting all about? What's it for? And I'm just thankful to have someone like you to be able to talk about it with.

Same, Curt.

Thank you. Thanks everybody for joining us at the Soul Proprietor Podcast. It has been an absolute pleasure having these discussions with you. If you wouldn't mind taking just a few minutes to rate and review us wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. It would mean so much to us. We really do read each of these reviews, and it gives us the opportunity to get the word out to more people who could benefit from hearing about topics like this and so many others. If you want to engage with us at our website and maybe share some topics or ideas of other people that you'd like to hear on the podcast, feel free to go to Soulproprietorpodcast.com. And share with us your thoughts and ideas about what we could do in the future to bring even more light into the world.