EPISODE 240 WITH STEVEN ZAVALIN: AUTHENTICITY & HUMANITY IN BUSINESS

Ready Yet?! Podcast with Stefan Zavalin: Authenticity & Humanity in Business

Transcribed with Descript

Erin Marcus: All right, welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet podcast. My guest today is Stefan Zavalin. Did I do it right? Yep. All right, we got it right. I always like saying people’s names right. I’m excited because when I joined you on your show, we had quite the adventure in a way that I wasn’t used to, and so I hope I did a reasonable, a good, a reasonable enough job.

Erin Marcus: But I enjoyed it. I, I really enjoy your perspective on things. And I think there needs to be a lot more different perspectives on things out in the business world. So I can’t wait to have this conversation with you that we’ve been chatting about. But before we get into the nuts and bolts, why don’t you tell everybody who you are and what you do and all the, all the cool things.

Stefan A Zavalin: Sure. So the company is called the professional unicorn, which talk about a different perspective, which before I get into what, what we do, let’s get real and human for a second. The title, cause everybody always goes, why’d you, why is it the professional unicorn who gave you that name? It came out of insecurity.

Stefan A Zavalin: So they talk about being vulnerable at the very beginning of a show. So, When I was starting it, I knew unicorn was going to be in some way, shape, or form in the title because I’ve been called a unicorn for a variety of reasons in my life. I’ve just seen things differently, doing different stuff, being magical.

Stefan A Zavalin: But I went, Oh my goodness, nobody’s going to take you seriously, Steph. And nobody’s going to be like, what this kid unicorn? Oh, please. So unprofessional. So to overcome that, I called it the professional unicorn. So that by default,

Erin Marcus: It’s

Stefan A Zavalin: very

Erin Marcus: professional unicorn. You know who that reminds me of? Eddie Izzard.

Erin Marcus: He’s an executive transvestite, right? He’s an executive, right? I love it. He’s an executive transvestite. It’s fantastic. Perfect.

Stefan A Zavalin: I love that. I love it. He’s got his stand ups are fantastic. Oh, yeah.

Erin Marcus: Yes. Yes.

Stefan A Zavalin: So now with all of that. What in the world is it ending up that that that I do? The main thing is getting people to truly be themselves and realizing how does that work in the case of your business.

Stefan A Zavalin: The majority of that has come down to creating content, especially video content, where just getting a person just on camera to be yourself, snap it in that moment and not give you a script and go away because you’re not an actor, you’re a human being. And it’s been evolving into more and more of how, how do we create experiences to get people to just be themselves to realizing that.

Stefan A Zavalin: When it comes to sales, when it comes to networking, all of these things, what we’re really trying to get you to do is be yourself and understand that you are enough. And you are what’s different about your business compared to so many others, which I know you and I are going to get into. But that’s the majority of what I do is create the videos with them.

Stefan A Zavalin: And then also working more and more for the future of some new experiences to get people out of their shell.

Erin Marcus: Well, and I think, you know, that focus on content, whether it’s written, whether it’s your story, whether it’s video in all the different ways is so important, probably now more than ever, because I don’t know about you, but I’ve become A armchair expert at identifying AI produced content.

Erin Marcus: It didn’t take long. I tried it. It’s fun. Don’t get me wrong. I use the tools, but I think there’s an opportunity and I can’t, I, I want to get your perspective on this because to me, AI not only is making my life easier, but it’s creating a tremendous opportunity. For the people who I’ll say are brave enough or done the work to be willing to be massively authentic because the marketplace is noisier, but it’s all so homogeneous now that it’s actually going to be easier to stand out than ever before.

Stefan A Zavalin: I’m going to put my thoughts into this from seemingly a roundabout way, but it’s all connecting. And it comes down to this is a buzzword version of it. Personal brand. But the idea that, but for me, it’s, it’s the consistency because some people will say, oh, that’s fine. If I need to be the one that’s on video, because that’s the first part, right?

Stefan A Zavalin: If it’s just an AI generated image. Oh, okay. Then I’ll just, it’ll be me. And then people say, well, we now have AI tools that will just deep fake me for now. It’s a relatively easy thing. And you can type in the script and it’ll say whatever you want it to say. And it’ll produce all these things. And what I come back down to is, but you’ve never practiced saying those things.

Stefan A Zavalin: You’re an hour, the way we write and the way we speak very different.

Erin Marcus: Oh yeah. I had, you’ll love this as a videographer. I once was given the best compliment. I went to, I went in studio to do a couple three minute videos. Right. And the, the gentleman In charge looked at me and goes, these are the most well written scripts that will suck on video that I’ve ever seen.

Erin Marcus: That’s what he said. I took it to heart.

Stefan A Zavalin: Yeah, that’s nice. That’s what a generous guy.

Erin Marcus: I was like, I have to me, I have no problem laughing at that type of thing. Criticize, I just think it’s like, I know, I get it. You’re not telling me something I don’t know.

Stefan A Zavalin: Right. And exactly that’s the point. But even if you get it to that point, the, the reason I brought up the personal branding is for most people that go, that’s all my social media is, is I just have AI created and it’s deep fakes of me.

Stefan A Zavalin: And I’m like, so then by the time that somebody gets on a call with you, it doesn’t feel the same way. No, because it’s not curated.

Erin Marcus: Yeah. 100%.

Stefan A Zavalin: So, so then the whole piece is then missing. So the authenticity piece of, of people going out there is that. How present is that throughout the entirety of your brand?

Stefan A Zavalin: Because if you’re like, no, no, no, I’m a real human being. And I look at your website and it just looks like another template and your face doesn’t appear anywhere on your site. And the domain name is johnsmith. com. And I’m going, but where’s John Smith?

Erin Marcus: It’s so true. Right. And I think it took me, there’s a million reasons why this happens. Right. And I know because it was. Probably painful at the time, very humorous looking back at it. Like when I was out of alignment with my brand versus what I wanted, here’s a perfect example I use all the time when I first had Aaron Marcus.

Erin Marcus: com. So trying to create what is now conquer your business. I knew I needed a logo and I was just going to use my name. Cause I didn’t know I hadn’t come up with anything yet. And the woman for however, you know, 8, she charged me, came up with a Blue and gray square with a paisley design and my initials in like capital letters.

Erin Marcus: And you, like, there’s nothing paisley about me. No. Like, I come right out of Pretty in Pink era and there’s still nothing paisley about me. Wasn’t Paisley in 86, ain’t Paisley now, you know, like.

Stefan A Zavalin: Yeah.

Erin Marcus: So out of alignment, but that brings me to like, why does this happen? I did it because I come out of financial services.

Erin Marcus: I come out of corporate and I had a very clear, very clear picture of what I thought it was supposed to be, regardless of me. I thought I had a very strong definition of what a business is supposed to be. I was wrong. It wasn’t.

Stefan A Zavalin: Well, and it’s, it’s interesting because if we think about it, we’re going to get like super deep and like big view all of a sudden, all of your perceptions, because I had the same thing. All of your perceptions. We’re not from a business owner or like a CEO perspective. So your perceptions of what a business should be were from the consumer perspective, sort of, and you were trying to create it from, you were trying to be a business owner from a, from an employee perspective.

Stefan A Zavalin: So how can an

Erin Marcus: employee perspective of a corporate. environment in financial services. So no wonder I did a bad job. And I’m a big fan of give yourself a break, but don’t let yourself off the hook. Like I’m real no judgment on all the lack of authenticity and the lack of connecting as a human first, because we’re very, we’re up against neuroscience.

Erin Marcus: We’re up against subconscious programming. So what, how does somebody tell when they’re not getting it? Like, it’s easy for me to look at your stuff and know if you’re getting it or not, right? And people all the time, you know, it’s one of the compliments I receive that I just value so much is how off this is it?

Erin Marcus: Like, The authenticity and the congruency through my brand, through what I say, like, I try not to swear on other people’s stages, and that’s about the most constraint I hold. Everything else is out there. That’s rude. I try not to do that. Doesn’t always work. But like, so, how does somebody start making sure, or how do they tell when they’re not?

Stefan A Zavalin: One of my favorite questions when I have just random, you know, meet and greet one on ones or whatever it might be, because it’s really interesting to watch people stumble over the question is what makes you different? And you have to be very unnerving in a way to be, if somebody goes like, Well, we really, I just really like taking care of my customers.

Stefan A Zavalin: Well,

Erin Marcus: the other thing about, I come out of working with families with aging parents, and I had a lot of networking partners that were in the home care industry. And that was always their differentiator is we really care like, dude, you’re in hospice. You’re amazing. You all care. I don’t even understand how you care that much.

Erin Marcus: Like. We got it. That’s not a differentiator,

Stefan A Zavalin: right? And so what it comes down to for me, the only valid answer, whenever I ask someone what makes your business different, especially for small business owners, that it’s just like it’s, it’s you, it’s maybe some kind of team, but you’re the, you’re the main reason is you have to put some part of you into it.

Stefan A Zavalin: There has to be a re because in the end they get you your past, your expertise, your biases, which buys you, they may be bad, but for other clients, they’re the perfect fit in that sense. Thanks. Bye. Which brings me to this point, authenticity versus humanity that I, that I harped on for a little while. So, I, I got my heart crushed by Seth Godin at one point because I, I, I put, I very much put my hat on to the idea of, oh, authenticity, you gotta be authentic, and I was using that word a lot, and then he said, I think authenticity is a crock, and I went, Seth, no, how could you say that?

Stefan A Zavalin: No and I was like, wait, let me listen to it, but also You never meet your heroes. Right? Yeah. But I, I understood what he meant, and so that’s why I say authenticity versus humanity. And I like to use Taylor Swift as the example because my wife loves Taylor Swift. So imagine you get a, a ticket to a Taylor Swift show, you paid three kidneys and a leg, I don’t know.

Stefan A Zavalin: Right.

Erin Marcus: Whatever it costs right now, yes.

Stefan A Zavalin: And you go, Taylor comes out on stage and goes, I’ve kind of had a bad day. My boyfriend said something mean to me. My throat kind of hurts. I really don’t feel like performing today. Thank you. Good night. Leaves. It was authentic. It was 100 percent authentic. You are not happy as a customer.

Stefan A Zavalin: It’s so true. You are beyond pissed because you maybe you got a babysitter. You called off work. You don’t know. Now flip side. Taylor comes out on stage, says I’ve had a rough day. My boyfriend said something mean to me. My throat hurts. But I’m gonna do my best to push through and give you the best show that I can give you right now.

Stefan A Zavalin: It may not be the best show Taylor Swift has ever done, but it’s probably going to be the best show that you’ve gone to, because all of a sudden, you can connect to her. to Taylor Swift. And I gave this example to an unbeknownst Swifty and her immediate reaction was, I would sing my heart out to support her and give her my energy on such a hard day.

Erin Marcus: And truthfully, just continuing this example. If you look at her, you know, now that everyone has Tic Tac, we all see the entire concert in 90 second reels. The level of authenticity that she shares I swear to God, half the time she puts her clothes on wrong. I don’t know if you, if your wife has shared those reels with you, like she puts her clothes on wrong and she’s doing all these quick changes and she’ll literally be there like, seriously, again, I missed this arm, like the sleeves hanging off, or the other day, the one, you know, she’s in Australia, the humidity has killed her, and the way she described it is the humidity has put her hair back to factory settings, right?

Erin Marcus: Like, and I think that is one of the reasons People are so connected to her. Is the humanity in her authenticity. And, and just, we spend so much time, now, here’s the thing, she’s a workhorse, and she’s a brilliant business person, and there’s 90 million reasons why, and what she had to go through to get to where, what she’s doing now.

Erin Marcus: But we forget, we’re so worried about one thing going wrong. We’re holding on so tight that we let go of bringing our connect as a human first is the way I refer it. Like we, we don’t bring that because if somebody were to see something they didn’t like, we think we would lose it all.

Stefan A Zavalin: Two quick things on that. My quote for this year, it seems that every year throughout January and then up to February, the universe delivers some sort of a quote for the year for me. And it’s not somebody else’s quote. It never is. It’s usually a combination of some things, but it’s this some sort of an idea that.

Stefan A Zavalin: Ends up defining the year for me last year was the concepts are few, but the methods are many meaning that many people will try to sell you methods. But if it’s fitting in the main concept, you don’t need to buy another method. Just keep on hit the main concept.

Erin Marcus: Right.

Stefan A Zavalin: This year has been, let’s see how it fails.

Stefan A Zavalin: Just let, let it go. Let’s see how it fails. Learn from it and it’s going to be okay. To your point. Taylor’s music is fantastic. There’s a lot that goes into it. There’s so much behind the business. There’s, there is a lot that goes into it. It’s a high quality product.

Erin Marcus: Yeah. Yeah.

Stefan A Zavalin: It’s, it’s absolutely very, very true.

Stefan A Zavalin: So I just don’t want people to come coming away from this thinking that if you have a shitty product and you’re just authentic, you’re going to succeed.

Erin Marcus: Yes. Thank you. That’s not how that, so I call that what you can’t do is what I call woe is me marketing, right? The product behind the brand has to be remarkable, has to be good, it has to be solid.

Erin Marcus: Otherwise, the authenticity almost, the humanity almost I don’t want to see deflects people, but it might not get you the result you want, right? We see that I never understood in the multi level marketing world where they teach people to go out and say, I’m only two sales away from my bonus. Help me get there.

Erin Marcus: Why the hell does anybody care? Right. You’re still running a business. Now you want to go call your sister and her best friend and say, dude, I’m only two sales away. I need advice. Totally do that. Right. Totally do that. That’s fine. That’s different. That’s totally fine. But if you’re putting this all in terms of a business.

Erin Marcus: The product’s got to be there. The quality’s got to be there. And then the authenticity and the humanity allow you to reach a bigger audience.

Stefan A Zavalin: And I think that’s, that’s the key there, is the audience. Is that the product solves the problem. And that needs to be the base. That the product service solves and helps in some sort of a way.

Stefan A Zavalin: The authenticity, just make sure that the audience that reaches you goes, yeah, I connected this person. This makes me feel safer and getting this, this thing from them. Because I also, you’ve, I’m sure you’ve heard the same thing many times when people go, Oh no, no, no. My business is unique. My problems. Oh, no, no, no.

Stefan A Zavalin: Nobody else. No other business has problems. Like I have problems. I love you. I don’t. It’s all the same. It’s all the same. Yeah. And that’s, that’s where even meeting with like big companies sometimes bigger companies, like I was trying to figure out a CRM for a while and I met with four or five different CRM people and every single one of them used extremes and absolutes.

Stefan A Zavalin: We have the highest quality, we have the best thing and it’s impossible for All of you to have the best. And when a small business owner says that,

Erin Marcus: there’s probably

Stefan A Zavalin: an asterisk that we can’t see it. And it says like within a focus group of 100 people that only work at this company.

Stefan A Zavalin: But yeah, so to, to that point of, of, because somebody will go, but nobody will want to ever buy my software if it’s not the best. I’m like, well, if you say that it’s the best, if we say CRM, for example, if it’s the best CRM or if it’s the best thing there, maybe not because there’s other options. But if you come in and you say, you know what?

Stefan A Zavalin: I have the absolute best CRM for accountants that love to go fly fishing. My first question is going to be, why did you make that?

Erin Marcus: And maybe you made it because you’re like,

Stefan A Zavalin: why? I used to be an accountant. I used to, I, I love fly fishing. Okay. Your niche is so perfectly, you know, you’re going to get them, you know what they need.

Stefan A Zavalin: And perhaps that’s exactly what it is. But you put your humanity into all of that.

Erin Marcus: And the other thing is, you know, just using that best example, because I think that is a, you know, what we were really talking about is perfectionism. You know, if you want to equate that to perfectionism and people who don’t go to market because their thing or their talk or whatever it is, isn’t perfect.

Erin Marcus: It’s a lack of authenticity because the truth of the matter is nothing’s perfect. That’s a shell game. It’s a moving target. And I always laugh because the first CRM that I purchased went in my, it was called Less Annoying. This was literally the best named product I’ve ever heard of. It was literally called Less Annoying.

Erin Marcus: CRM. It was 10 a month. It had half a bell and a quarter of a whistle. That was it. It was so, it was like, and it was exactly what I needed because everything else was overwhelming to me. I didn’t need the bells and whistles. And so for 10 a month, I got the best named product I had ever come across. Cause that CRM was very unannoying because I could actually use it.

Erin Marcus: Yeah. They knew their market. Right. And if you’re waiting for perfectionism, perfectionism is the opposite of humanity. When I first started the podcast, I would worry. I would lock the dog in the bathroom. I’d lock the cat up. I would, you know, tell the whole, all the neighbors to be quiet now, like all sorts of stuff happens.

Erin Marcus: And I don’t even, we don’t even edit it at this point, unless like all hell breaks loose. Because it’s the reality of it. It’s the humanity of it. It’s connect as a human first. And when I teach sales, I don’t care how high level B2B sales you’re doing. I come out of corporate where I was putting together million and multi million dollar deals between banks and broker dealers and insurance companies.

Erin Marcus: And that sounds all big and fancy. But what I was doing was putting relationships together between a VP of long term care insurance and a VP of sales at a bank, humans who had jobs to protect, who had reputations to protect every single time. The perfectionism only makes you feel less authentic. I,

Stefan A Zavalin: I, I feel that we also, we don’t notice perfectionism. In others as much. Like if we had a meet if we had a job meeting where we accidentally smeared muffin on our tie or on our shirt or blouse We will remember that versus all the other ones that went better, fine, but whatever. And who knows, maybe that’s the one that you get Is where they’re like, okay, they they That’s fine.

Stefan A Zavalin: We all, we all smear. It happens.

Erin Marcus: We’ve all dropped ketchup at Portillo’s from the fries on our shirt. I, I get that a lot

Stefan A Zavalin: with, with videos. When getting people on video is one of my favorite, because we, we do a lot of batching whenever we record, because we’ll record the same stuff. And so people go, but I’m wearing the same shirt 10 videos in a row.

Stefan A Zavalin: And I’m like, if people are worried about the clothes you’re wearing, your content sucks.

Erin Marcus: Right. I got over,

Stefan A Zavalin: we

Erin Marcus: used to do, I used to do podcasts where I have, and I still chunk them where I do a lot of them on a day and I would change clothes and I would change jewelry and then I, you know, the house would be, the house would look like a, that David’s bridal sale that they have once a year, right?

Erin Marcus: But it looks like a lunatic went through my closet. And now I just, because now I can focus on just what I’m talking. And there was an evolution, right? There was getting used to it, getting comfortable with it. I honestly think the Zoom world helped many of us with this situation, right? I don’t, if you see how I talk, I, I no longer sit like a robot staring into the camera.

Erin Marcus: I’m allowed to move even though we’re on film, you know, even though we’re on a camera here and not in person, I’m still allowed to actually move. I don’t know that I could sit still if I tried though, but so what do people need to do? How do they? One, see their awareness, but what’s some things they can do?

Stefan A Zavalin: I think, because this is a process and not a flipping a switch, the usual thing of like, be you. I love when people say that, but I, I feel like we’ve already put so many layers of, of stuff on ourselves that we don’t really know what that even is.

Erin Marcus: Most people don’t know who they are. I mean this.

Stefan A Zavalin: No.

Erin Marcus: 100%.

Erin Marcus: And it’s an, by the way, it’s, it, it, it’s iterative. I’m coming up on a birthday that’s not a normal big number and I feel like I’m morphing in, like there’s a different thing going on. I think it’s iterative as you get older, as you get different experiences, as different things happen to you, who you are kind of changes.

Stefan A Zavalin: Oh, 100%. Yeah. And it’s, I mean, sure, your personality might, whatever the number is, six, seven years old, maybe, but I think a lot of it also, we, we think about everything we are, and a lot of times we forget about what we’re not. And then society bends us into this thing we’re not and we’re like, I don’t know why I don’t feel like myself.

Stefan A Zavalin: So I almost urge, if you can’t think of who you are, think of what you’re not. Think of what you’re just vehemently against. I’m not fancy. I’m just

Erin Marcus: so not fancy. So not fancy.

Stefan A Zavalin: But yeah, like that’s, that’s fantastic. And I think. As you, as you express that more of what you don’t like not to make it a negative thing, but then formulating it eventually into what you do like, and as you express that more and more, that uncovers it further and further and further and further, but to your exact point.

Stefan A Zavalin: It changes and it also takes time. This is not something that you’re just going to go that this is me. This is what I like because it’s scary because immediately you’re saying, if I say something that the general people around me that I’ve collected over all these years are going to push me away from an evolutionary standpoint, that’s scary.

Stefan A Zavalin: I’m pushing out of the tribe. Society doesn’t like me. Whatever it might be, but that’s, that’s when you get into all the cliches about your friends, right? The true friends are gonna be like, yes, there you go. My wife recently said one of the best or worst compli, kind of like the the, the compliment about the scripts almost sort of where she was like, I finally see you.

Stefan A Zavalin: I haven’t seen you in a year. Like I, you’re finally kind of back. I saw a glimpse of you this weekend. And I was like, Whoa, what’s this is my wife and my best friend. She tells me everything. We don’t like, we don’t have this tiptoe relationship at all. So for her to say that I’m going like, my goodness, how have I not been showing up as me in all these other ways whenever I, I am in business or doing any of those things.

Stefan A Zavalin: And so as you uncover it, then finding how can I slip the things that are truly me and then make it different into the various ways that I do business. So to give some easy examples, I play music during my zoom calls. So zoom allows you to share sound. So I’ll put on little instrumental music. It’s usually kind of magic key.

Stefan A Zavalin: And it’s all the way like that back in there. My my calendar, the first question is, what’s your big dream? I want to know about the person’s big dream. And on those all those kinds of things. One person has ever commented on this. But whenever I introduce or connect people or anything like that, I ended with And let’s see what magic may follow.

Stefan A Zavalin: And one person went, that’s so on brand for you. Cause I’m like, yeah, cause I want business to be a little bit more magical, a little bit more fun. But as you develop these little things that give you a little bit of joy, you realize that that’s, what’s from the beginning of a conversation, forming that personal brand where people go.

Stefan A Zavalin: Yeah, but this person does stuff differently, like when you meet Aaron, you, you’re going to remember Aaron.

Erin Marcus: I have a friend, I have a, well, I have one friend who’s a life coach and she’s, she is a soft place to, to land. I am not a soft place to land and we have a mutual friend who says she wants Aaron to marry her.

Erin Marcus: She wants me to motivate her in the morning and she wants Tammy to read her a bedtime story at night. It’s so on brand, right? It’s for both Tammy and myself. Like that different. And my hair’s the thing, Tammy and I agree on 99. 9 percent of our views of the world. And you couldn’t be more different. Right.

Erin Marcus: And, and I think kind of like what your wife said to you, there’s. Just a huge, I think one of the things that we miss in this world is being witnessed, authentically witnessed, like, and I’ve been lucky enough to be in certain mastermind groups and stuff where you’re truly witnessing other people’s growth, their ambition, like there’s something about that.

Erin Marcus: And so when someone comes to me with a Compliment one of the things I get a lot that at first I was a little offended by like, well, they think I’m mean But then I’m like, well, no, that’s not what they’re saying is I can’t, I want to, I want to talk to you cause I know you’ll tell me the truth.

Stefan A Zavalin: Yeah.

Erin Marcus: And right.

Erin Marcus: And at first I kind of was like, oh wow, they must think I’m really brash. I mean, none of those things were false by the way. It wasn’t like, I thought they were wrong. I was like, but now, you know, It’s all part of, I will not blow smoke up someone’s skirt. I will not tell them they’ll make a million dollars.

Erin Marcus: If their idea is barely a 20 idea, I’m not going to tell them just do this one thing and you’ll be, and it’ll be easy. Cause that’s not how business works.

Erin Marcus: And so I think. If you can kind of your point, if you just put little pieces out there and you get that positive feedback, it ends up encouraging you to do more.

Stefan A Zavalin: We’re going to learn everybody. We’re going to learn a little bit about our host. Let’s see. Let’s see. I want to I want to I’m curious about your answer to this. Okay. Since you’re so brash.

Erin Marcus: Is that a word? Did I make that up?

Stefan A Zavalin: I, I think I know what it means.

Stefan A Zavalin: Do you feel like you’re enough?

Erin Marcus: Sometimes, not all the time. Sometimes.

Stefan A Zavalin: And I think that’s a beautiful answers also just because so many people may look at what you’ve accomplished and what you’ve done and be like, of course, she’s enough. Look at, look at all the success and look at all these things. And I think the reality is That’s the truth is sometimes for all of us.

Stefan A Zavalin: It’s sometimes none of us is it all the time. I feel it’s it’s a constant

Erin Marcus: and I think it’s it’s in certain categories and my approach to a lot of. Self improvement, all that stuff is. I just, build on your wins. Borrow the energy, right? So if I’ve got, Yes, I’m enough in this category. Can I borrow that over here?

Erin Marcus: and work on this category. And I also, I think it ebbs and flows with what’s going on in your life. And so here’s a question, here’s something that popped in my head, you want to talk about pure authenticity, but we can discuss whether or not it’s a good idea. Going just in coincidences, the woohoo festival I went to last week, books I’m reading, all this stuff, and I do work on this pretty regularly.

Erin Marcus: For the first time, I’ve always stood pretty solidly in who I, in who I am. My personality is pretty dialed in. Like, it’s always, I’ve been for a very long time very okay with my personality. Like, I, what is the comment being too much? In real life makes me just enough for the internet. , right? Mm-Hmm, . I get it.

Erin Marcus: I’m too much for some people, I, I, I am totally fine with that. That’s, that’s been okay for a long time. But something the other day in a book I was reading made this question pop into my mind and do I know who I am or am I this person because I was forced to be this person? And what’s the difference?

Erin Marcus: And I think the more you can just answer those questions, there’s no wrong answer. There’s no wrong answer. I think the more you can do that reflection and ask yourself those types of questions. And today I feel like I know this is who I am. This is, and the next day it might be, you know what? This popped up, this popped up, okay, I’m responding this way because of that thing.

Erin Marcus: Maybe that’s not who I want. I think we have a lot more control over who we want to be than we exude.

Stefan A Zavalin: The only thing that I will say, I agree that there is not a right or wrong answer, but I think there is an honest or not answer. Yes. And that’s, that’s the, the metric to go by in that. I

Erin Marcus: understand.

Stefan A Zavalin: Because we lie truly the most probably to ourselves.

Erin Marcus: Oh, a hundred percent. I said the hardest conversation you’ll ever have is an honest conversation with yourself. Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And the thing I love about, you know, I, it’s part of the entry fee, right? It’s part of the entry fee into the small business world. The fact that we are in control of so much of our lives is that your business will never grow beyond you.

Erin Marcus: And, and they say it about money. I’m curious what you think they say, you know, how it applies to authenticity and humanity. If you want to know how you feel about money, look around yourself. You know, how much of it do you have? And I think there’s. A step further, if you want to know what you think about yourself,

Erin Marcus: look around about how you feel about money is how you feel about yourself.

Stefan A Zavalin: Yeah. Or anything. I think, I think money is a good one because of the amount of pressure society puts on us, but anything. How do you feel about how other people judge you? Are you the type of person that will say, yeah, yeah, I will donate 10 hours of my time.

Stefan A Zavalin: You don’t even have to pay me. They should, they should pay you, like, I mean, unless you’re, like, if there’s something, some crazy reason, the majority of the time, oh yeah, let’s just do that for, let’s collaborate, that, no, like, that’s, you’re saying you don’t value yourself, because wouldn’t it be much easier to just say no, we do it because we think of opportunity, oh, but it may open up a thing, it almost never does, and so you would have been better just watching some more Netflix and relaxing, because, Equal amount of payoff.

Stefan A Zavalin: I get it.

Erin Marcus: The, the brutal truth bomb about that whole thing that I learned resentment, which is what comes out of saying yes to those situations. Resentment is always a lack of personal responsibility. If you find, I mean, that’s another good place to, are you being authentic? Well, are you resentful? Of the things that you quote have to do, then you probably weren’t authentic in what you wanted to be doing

Erin Marcus: and I mean in this just there’s no separation in small business and entrepreneurship between this and your business. There’s no mask, right? It works in corporate. You can go to your job. You can put your mask on. You can perform according to their rules, but our businesses as entrepreneurs are so tied to us.

Erin Marcus: I don’t think the separation is as possible as it is in a job.

Stefan A Zavalin: I think with AI, we’re getting to the point where just because newer and newer and different types of businesses are able to be created, that can get you separated from it. But in the long term, you, if you listen to any of the big companies or anything, I don’t know if the biographies, movies, whatever you want to watch and take in as content, the vast majority of time, it all came down to culture.

Stefan A Zavalin: It all came down to the mission vision wasn’t what it needed to be. We changed the mission vision. We focus it on this, this, this, it aligned with people. That’s how, that’s how it worked out. So it comes back down to it. I want to circle back to something that’s been interesting for me. I wanted to create a whole slew of videos about it last year.

Stefan A Zavalin: Is this idea of cliches? You said your business, but we’ll never grow past you or we’ll never outgrow you. And I found that there are two cliches, basically two, two ways to every cliche. There’s when you hear it, it’s meaning and when you live it and it’s meaning. And once you live it, the meaning is different, but the words are the same.

Stefan A Zavalin: You’re like, Yeah, that’s the best way to say it. But also, you don’t get it until you’ve lived it. Like, I can’t explain it to you, but that is the way to And you’re you’re cut.

Erin Marcus: Right, and and the way that I think about stuff like that is, I understand it, and I said this to oh, I said this to the COO yesterday, because she was talking about, like, it doesn’t even have to be in personal development or anything like that.

Erin Marcus: This was about processes, and I don’t even remember. I can’t even come up with what we’re talking about. But what I said to her, there’s a difference between academically, I get it, and I’m embodying it. Those are the two different levels, right, that you’re describing. Academically, yeah, I understand, but do I embody it?

Erin Marcus: And so, I forgot what we were talking about yesterday, but We decided she was going to be the one to have to take care of the problem, because while I understood the definitions of the words she was using, I didn’t actually understand anything. I’m like, take it individually. I understand the definitions of the words that you’re using, but when you put them like that together, I don’t know what you’re talking about, so why don’t we just go with, yes, you can work on that and let me know how it goes.

Erin Marcus: Right? The difference between Okay. An academic, I can parrot back to you and an embodiment of it’s a habit. It’s a default. It’s a now I just think that way

Stefan A Zavalin: to to bring it all all together into an interesting because you asked me something that people could use that I’m just, I’m hearing both of us kind of saying this.

Stefan A Zavalin: I think one of the best first steps is learning to truly say no. And it actually made a post about this today of how do people say no. And it’s very interesting how many caveats people give because we say no and give an excuse as if we’re not allowed to just say no. If somebody invites us to an event, like we’re not allowed to just go, no, I don’t want to.

Stefan A Zavalin: That’s that’s a, it’s a valid and the closer you can get to just straight up being no and not feeling that you have to justify why and put all these barriers around it. Why? Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s going to get you the closest to the authenticity. That’s going to get you closer to the actual personal development as opposed to feeling like I have to outgrow this.

Stefan A Zavalin: That boundary of truly learning how to say no can be so powerful and it only takes two letters.

Erin Marcus: If only it were that easy. You make it so sound so easy when you say I 100 percent agree. I think that is. If you do nothing else but practice saying no for the next 30 days to things you don’t want to do, like life changing.

Erin Marcus: Absolutely. Well, let’s leave it there because I think that is a fantastic piece of advice that I’ve never actually talked about on the show in all these years. So well done you. If people want to continue this conversation and learn more about how unicorns do business, what is the best way to get ahold of you?

Stefan A Zavalin: Stephanzavalin. com and stephanzavalin on all the social medias. Find me on LinkedIn as well.

Erin Marcus: We’ll have all the show notes and the links in the show notes. So you’re just one click away from everybody. Thank you for hanging out with me today. You’re awesome. I love our, I love our conversations. We always, we could just keep going.

Stefan A Zavalin: Yeah, it was a blast.

Erin Marcus: And we’ll find out. When you get to laugh

Stefan A Zavalin: on a podcast, how much more do you want from life? Especially

Erin Marcus: at myself. I mean, but people don’t understand is most of what I do is to amuse myself. This is how this works at this

Stefan A Zavalin: point, so. And now you understand my show as well, good, yes.

Erin Marcus: Exactly, and why we get along. So thank you again for your time, your energy, your effort, your input, all of the things. Thank you.

Stefan A Zavalin: My pleasure.