What do you do when the life and career you’ve built no longer work for you?
In this episode, I’m joined by Anna Holtzman, a former reality TV editor turned therapist, now life coach, who helps creatives and entrepreneurs release imposter syndrome and step into the next chapter of their careers. Together we share our own pivots and life quakes, and what it really takes to keep moving one step at a time. If you’re frozen in fear, stuck in the messy middle, or wishing life could go back to “normal,” this episode offers comfort, clarity, and the reminder you don’t have to do it alone.
Anna Holtzman is a therapist-turned-coach who helps sensitive creatives and entrepreneurs move through the fear of visibility and finally launch the work that feels most true to them. After 15 years in TV and publishing—and many false starts on her own creative dreams—burnout and chronic pain led her to the nervous system tools that helped her unblock her voice and show up for the work she loves. Now she helps others do the same: melt through imposter syndrome, bring their creative visions to life, and share them boldly. She lives in Queens, NY with her husband, stepdaughter, and three orange cats, and she hosts the podcast How to Trust Yourself.
Anna Holtzman: Zack, it's so great to see you again. Welcome back, and I'm welcoming myself back to because we're doing this mutual podcast episode. I'm psyched to see you again, and I'm just going to start off the most organic way I know how, which is to share with folks why I reached out to you again, because we haven't talked in a little bit since we recorded a previous set of podcast episodes together. I was, you know, I was like, looking at your podcast, and I was like, Oh, wow, Zack has done like a pivot. You even changed your podcast name from optimize to your, you know, current Zack Arnold podcast. And I was like, That's so interesting, because I've recently done a big pivot in my coaching practice, and I also changed the name of my podcast from from chronic pain to passion. It was back when you and I first recorded to now. It's how to trust yourself. And I was like, we've got to get together and talk, because we're on some parallel paths here, and I'll just use that as a way to tee up like, what tell us about your your your pivot, your process that you're going through?
Zack Arnold: Sure, yeah, and first of all, it was a very nice, welcome surprise to see your name pop up on my inbox, and wasn't terribly surprised when it was the rebrand that kind of brought you out of the woodwork. And then also when you share that you had rebranded. Because when I think about when you and I recorded, if I remember correctly, we actually did dual podcast where you were guest on mine, then a totally separate show I was a guest on yours, and here we are experimenting with something a little bit different this time. But when I think about when we recorded those, those were in what I now call the before times, and a thing or two has changed since the before times, now that we're living in the after times, and I just there, there's so many things that have transpired in my life in the last two plus years. And frankly, I think I've lived more life in the last two and a half years than I did the previous 44 or 43 I don't even know how old I am. You lose track after a while.
Anna Holtzman: You had some serious life behind you at that point.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, there's, there was a lot, a lot that I had done, a lot that I had accomplished, a lot that I'm very proud of. But there's a difference between like, life was happening. I was making things happen. You know, I was working on great shows, I was building a business, I was training for American Ninja Warrior, building a family. All that was wonderful. But I feel like life wasn't really happening to me against my will until about two years ago, and then life's just decided. And I don't know what kind of you know, clean or explicit filters you have, but basically, life decided it just wanted to repeatedly kick me in the nuts over and over and over and over again. And obviously that's been very challenging to live through and work through. And frankly, I don't even feel like I'm out. I'm outside the other end of it yet, but it brought up some really interesting thoughts, conversations, Revelations, and that's kind of the short version of what led to the choice to pivot and rebrand. But before I get into the nuances, I actually want to give you a lot of credit for this, and I'm going to tell you why. There's a conversation that you and I had. I don't even remember, I don't remember whose podcast it was. It's one of the two. And you and I recorded our show, and I refer to this all the time, wow. But when I met with you, we talked about the fact that I just could not start a journaling practice. And you may not even remember this conversation, but we started to dig into it. And you're like, you kind of said this, like, with a little bit of a smirk on your face. You're like, All right, so I understand you struggle with journaling and reflecting on these things. How long have you had a podcast, Zack and, like, I don't know, like, eight years, like, don't you also have a weekly newsletter? And I was like, Yeah. And you kind of looked at me and it was like, oh, maybe that's my version of journaling. So there's, there was an unlock that you and I had in that conversation. Wow, where since then I've started to develop a much deeper, more consistent, not as much as I'd like consistent, but more consistent journaling practice and doing reflection, and that is unlocked so much stuff, so much stuff like, I literally have it right here. Totally coincidentally, this is a journal that is finished. Do you have any idea how many unfinished journals I have that have four finished pages, seven finished pages 10 pages like, now, I'm not a journaler. I literally, it's a stack about this high. Wow, this is my first finished journal, and that's largely because of the conversation that we had
Anna Holtzman: That, okay, my mind is blown. That blows my mind. I've, I've, you know, I have so many questions that I want to ask about that that I think could just like, lead us into a million different wormholes, but I sort of want to set the scene for both your audience and mine about like, what are these pivots that we're talking about? Because your audience is pretty familiar with yours, and mine is with mine by this point. But for my folks, what is. Is this, this journey that you've been on from like, from what to what?
Zack Arnold: Sure. Yeah. So the journey actually began a little bit over a decade ago now, where I decided on a whim to launch this thing called a podcast. And at the time, somebody said, You should launch a podcast, and I swear to God, my response was, what's a podcast? And when they just, they described what it was to me, and I started being a guest on a few other people's podcasts. I thought this could be fun, so I started a podcast that was called fitness in post, right? The reason being that whenever I was a guest on people's podcasts, they always wanted to talk to me about editing, yeah. And I thought, but, but I want to talk about, you know, the state of our industry, and how everybody in Hollywood is overworked and burned out, and nobody's exercising like it just I always wanted to get on a soapbox. Nobody wanted to listen.
Anna Holtzman: If it's all right, I'm just gonna butt in for a second because I can hear my audience members being like, citizen post. What does that mean? So, so Zack and I have wheel we're kind of like multiple parallel pivots with each other. We both have. Are you still editing at all anymore? I don't want to misrepresent.
Zack Arnold: I have not edited a frame in over a year.
Anna Holtzman: All right, so Zack and I both used to be film and TV editors, and then both of us became life coaches. You did far earlier than I did, but it was like, Whoa, that's interesting. There's this, like, Guy on, like, a further along on a journey that I'm on. And so fitness and post, post means post production, which is
Zack Arnold: Exactly, and it's funny, because I was going to get into that, because that's one of the reasons that I had to learn rebranding. So I started this podcast called Fitness and Post. So people in post production, yeah, they knew that it was about fitness, and people in fitness had no idea what Fitness and Post meant, and it wasn't working for other brand. But in short, for about two, three years, I was podcasting, and I just started figuring out how to monetize the podcast through educational products. But it was basically talking about fitness in the world of TV editing, post production, if you live a sedentary lifestyle, how can you be more active? How can you use that to ignite your creativity? But I had this brand confusion where people in post hated fitness and people in fitness didn't know what post was. I'm like, crap. I got a rebrand. So the rebrand was not one of these extensive let's dive into survey results and psychology. It was I looked at the copy that I had on the homepage of my website, and the copy was, optimize the most powerful operating system you have yourself. And I'm like, there we go. Optimize yourself done. So I made a new brand, yeah. So all of a sudden my brand was optimize yourself. The podcast was and I started to build a coaching program out of that. And the Optimize yourself idea was that you are going to learn how to move yourself, how to focus yourself, how to advance yourself, how to balance yourself. I had all these ideas about how to kind of build from that. And for several years, I had a thriving coaching practice where I was doing both private coaching. I started doing live cohorts based classes. Then I started to build a self guided membership community. And all of that was going great until about the end of the before time. So we're talking probably, you know, early 2023 Yeah, where then the wheel started to come off the cart, just like they did for just about anybody that worked in the entertainment industry.
Anna Holtzman: And I realized, I'm going to interject again, because for like, folks on my podcast listening, who are, you know, maybe not even working in the entertainment field, or, you know, they're not, certainly not TV editors, most of them, like I was already long out of that field, but I still have a ton of friends who are TV, film and TV editors, and the the work just dried up. I mean, we're not going to go into the complexities of why, but the industry changed so dramatically unlike anything we'd ever seen before in the, you know, lifetimes of our careers, and suddenly everyone's like scrambling, and I'm sitting here thinking, like, Gosh, I really got out at the right time. Geez,
Zack Arnold: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you definitely got out at the right time. But for those that that would be listening in your audience, which it sounds like a vast majority, probably not connected to the entertainment industry, I think at least a part of our recent history in America that most are at least somewhat familiar with is what happened to the auto industry in Detroit and Michigan in the 80s. Essentially, what happened to Detroit is what's happening to Los Angeles in the entertainment industry now, and that essentially, if you work in entertainment, it is great depression level, kind of numbers like, things are really, really bad, yes. So that's one factor that led to this. But then the other one was that from the pandemic forwards, and really somewhat even before the pandemic, the word optimize started to get co opted by all of the optimized bros on the internet. Like everybody. It's all about grind culture, hustle culture, like, gotta optimize every aspect of our lives, and that was not the angle that I was coming at it from. But if the entire brand was built around the word optimize, now I'm immediately being associated with that feeling, yeah. So it wasn't the idea so much as the feeling where, if you connect me with some of those other like optimizer bro culture, like all that bullshit in the internet that I absolutely hate, yeah. My instinct was for a long time before I rebranded. Something about this doesn't feel right, and I can't I can't figure out what's not clicking anymore. But it was the combination of that intuition plus just the sheer numbers and analytics of the vast majority of my industry, all of my students disappearing like I've seen enrollment absolutely plummet over the course of the last year and a half, two years, not because all of a sudden my products suck, but because people can't afford my services anymore. Yeah, the world change. Yeah, exactly. And that's like the world change, living in the after times where, across all industries, when it comes to online education, coaching and otherwise, like that, industry itself has been hurt, where much fewer people are willing to spend disposable or discretionary income on personal development, because everybody's hoarding their resources. Because what the hell is going to happen in the world? So everybody's hoarding so that, being the case of these multiple Venn diagrams, were all coming together for me at the same time, and I said, I don't, I don't know what the path is through this, as far as, what's the business strategy, what's the marketing strategy, like, how do I hit all of my quarterly KPIs for revenue? But I said I know that I don't want to move forward with this under the brand name that I have, and my intuition was I've got to fix it. So basically, I've spent the last year burning it all down and rebuilding all of it and coming out of it. Essentially, the the intention behind all of my creative choices has been that I want the brand that I'm building to feel safer and warmer and not so like go getter, like we gotta get things done and like productivity masters. It's not to say that I don't still value efficiency and productivity, but I'm much more interested in how do I build a life around work life fulfillment, and how do I enjoy the work that I'm doing, not necessarily work life balance, but just how do I find fulfillment in the work that I'm doing and the way that I've designed my life? And how do I make a living around this life I've designed that has more fulfillment for my creative work has meaning and purpose, rather than just going towards whatever version of optimization I'm striving for. So it's, it's been, it's been a really big emotional shift in the kind of business that I'm building. But to be honest, I still kind of teach a lot of the same stuff, just through a very different lens, with a very different feeling,
Anna Holtzman: Yes, and and has like, has the population shifted of who's coming to you as well, or is that still
Zack Arnold: Starting to shift? Yes, I would say that for the most part, and it's I meant actively trying to work to make this shift. But I'm I'm seeing some people that are starting to find me that are not in the entertainment industry. The majority of my audience is still in the entertainment industry, but it's much broader than it used to be. It used to pretty much be people that were working in Hollywood post production, television and features, and now it's a much more broad swath of people across all of entertainment I have some people that are in completely different creative industries, and I'm hoping to bring more of those people, but by and large, the one through line with everybody that I work with is that not only are they creative, but they identify as being a creative and they want to make a living through the things that they they create, rather than creativity is just kind of a hobby.
Anna Holtzman: Yeah, gosh, this is I'm so I'm so psyched to be having this conversation with you, and like, getting to connect with each other at this moment in time for like, both of our evolutions, because, like, change can be really scary, and I'm sure that's going to be one of the main topics we talk about. And I always find that when things feel scary in my like, triggered state of fear, I tend to think like, I need a solution. I need a solution. I need a solution. I need a solution. And then, you know, and then, you know, and then I'm like, You got to talk to somebody, like, open up to a friend, talk to your coach, you know. And then I connect with someone, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, I already feel 90% better. Like, yeah, maybe there's a solution I need, but I'm not going to find it. When I'm spinning my wheels. Like, what I need first is connection and to like, remember that I'm not alone, and I'm like, together in this experience with others, and then things become possible.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that's something that I've really focused on amplifying with the community that I'm building with the resources that I offer. If you were to go through, let's say that you were to take every single newsletter that I've written over the last two and a half years, you feed it into chat, GPT, and you said, What's the most recurring theme and the most recurring phrase, it would be just a reminder you're not alone right now, and everybody else is going through this, and I've been doing my best to facilitate those connections so others feel like, oh, it's not just me that's dealing with these fears, these limiting beliefs, these challenges, generating income, supporting my family, because as soon as you feel like it's me, then the responsibility is yours, and this is my fault, that I'm in this position. But the more you talk to others, the more you realize, oh, all of us are going through this, and there's there is a way out. We don't even know what it is, per se, but we know the way out is with others and figuring it out. Together. Yeah, because I would, I would guess that most major life decisions and epiphanies have not come from Instagram feeds, playing video games or staring at the wall. Day long, it comes from that communication, even if it's just brainstorming that idea
Anna Holtzman: to find the way I'm scrolling,
Zack Arnold: Because that's the easiest choice. That's where the quickest dopamine hit is. So I know that there are hard things I should be doing, and maybe I'll find the answer, but Instagram and then we don't have to worry about it. So it's, it's, yeah, things are very, very challenging, I think, for so many right now. But I'm curious, without stepping too much on your flow, tell me a little bit more about your rebrand and how you ended up where you are. I want to see how these two parallels come together.
Anna Holtzman: Thanks for that. So, so I'm going to talk about that in one split second, but just want to share. This might seem kind of silly, but what we're talking about really makes me think about a book that's been coming to mind a lot lately, because, like, the world is going through a lot of change, and so a lot of my clients are navigating this in different ways, and I certainly am. And I keep thinking about this book, did you ever read Who Moved My Cheese?
Zack Arnold: I've heard of it, but I've not read it, but I know of it.
Anna Holtzman: Yeah, this is a very popular, like, I think business psychology book in maybe the late 90s. Like, it's so outdated, I think it's considered maybe kind of cheesy now, but for some odd reason, I read it at the time that it was popular, and I think I was in high school, or maybe early college, and I just loved it. And the metaphor that they talk about in the book is they use, like lab rats in a maze as a metaphor for human behavior. And like they would have the this maze, and the cheese would be in a certain place. And as the rats went through this maze, you know, over and over again, they'd eventually learn where the cheese is, and they'd go, you know, right directly to the cheese through this they'd learn the path right. And then what they do is they would move the cheese. And some rats would just keep going to the same place over and over and over again. And, you know, they'd burn out, and they'd get frustrated, and they'd get very, very hungry because the cheese wasn't there anymore. But they just, you know, they didn't want to change. Other rats were more adaptive, and they would eventually realize, oh, it's not there anymore. Okay, it's going to be harder to find a new path, but it's also going to be more productive. So let's find the new path. And I just feel like that story is very relevant to these times and also to what you and I both are navigating personally.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, no, I've seen this pattern countless times through the email and zoom conversations I've had with listeners, readers, followers, students, where I was starting, I wasn't, I wasn't a doomsayer, but I'm a pragmatic optimist. So in early 2023 I started to see the wheels coming off the cart before most people did. And again, for those that are listening in your audience, they don't not really privy to all the politics and everything that happened, but kind of the instigator of all this was there was a major strike where both the writers and the actors went on strike for I ended up being for most of 2023 and the prevailing wisdom of most people was, we just have to wait it out, and then as soon as the strikes are over, everything goes back to normal. And I kept telling people months before this, I said, Nothing is going back to normal. You can't just wait and hope that things are going to be where they were pre strike, because the entire industry, the entire business, the economy, and more importantly, the way that everybody people in your audience, the way that everyone consumes content and entertainment, is completely different. So nothing's ever going back to quote, unquote normal. And it's only this year, two plus years later, where now people are like, gee. Willikers, I think maybe I'm going to need your figure something else out. I'm like, You just lost two plus years to start figuring out which lane Do I go to instead, because my cheese isn't there anymore. Yeah. So yes, I wasn't aware of the book or this specific metaphor, but so many people have been going to the same place over and over and over, expecting different results. You have to be willing to pivot and look elsewhere, because there the cheese is not there anymore.
Anna Holtzman: It's not and hey, like, I get it, it's uncomfortable to pivot. And, you know, I'm someone who has pivoted multiple times. You know, I've had many different legs of my career, and usually I delay until, like the discomfort, like the misalignment, becomes so uncomfortable that I just feel like I have to pivot, but I'll delay first, because it is, it's, it's scary to change things up, but so and with changing things up, the way that I tell my story has changed, like with, every pivot, you know, I've been thinking a lot about, you know, the well, you know, of course, but the audience may not know this concept from reality TV editing called soft scripting. So for folks who aren't familiar with this, this is like, you know, you get a mass of initial footage. People start shooting. They're like. Following their subjects, and you call the footage together, and you start to figure out, like, what are the what's the through thread? And then when you start to see a through thread, you're like, Oh, I see where the story is going. And now let's kind of soft script it to, like, keep going in the path that's already emerging. So somewhere between documentary and scripting, and I feel like I kind of wind up using that approach with like, what is my story and what is the story I'm telling? And as I keep getting more footage, there's a new story that emerges. And so the story that has emerged at this point is that I spent the first 15 years of my life as a creative professional for hire. Initially, I was working as a magazine writer and editor, and then I transitioned into working in television as a reality TV editor, something I did for 10 years. And looking back during that whole time, I never really wanted to be a creative for hire. I always wanted to have my own thing. I always wanted to, like, build my own brand, my own business, and I was constantly launching things, and I'd have these very promising false starts one after the other. So like, just one of many examples of this when I trans, when I was in the midst of transitioning from magazine editing to film and television, I facilitated that launch by making my own film. I made this really scrappy documentary about subway musicians, and I put on my own screening at this like little theater downtown in New York City, where I live, and because I was working at a magazine, I had access to all these press contacts, because I was constantly receiving press releases, and I would always save the email addresses, maybe I could use them, and I knew how to write a press release, because I was constantly receiving them, and I knew what landed and what didn't. So I wrote my own press release, sent a blast out to all these people, and it led to some absolutely incredible publicity. I got a full page write up in Time Out New York Magazine, which was a big thing back then. Yeah, so cool. And then that led to, I got invited to be on Brian Lehrer, who's an NPR radio host at the I don't know if he still does, but at the time, he had a live local to New York TV show. I was invited on there as a guest, and I was also invited to be interviewed on live radio by David Lee Roth of Van Halen, who had a radio show at the time. I mean, it was so exciting and so incredible, and this very promising, you know, launch into my lift off as a filmmaker after the screening. And these, like, you know, great publicity experiences. I googled my name, and along with all the cool stuff that came up, there was a some random person who had attended the screening who was probably a frustrated filmmaker themselves. Wrote a scathing review on their very obscure personal blog I read that went into like, you know, total freeze and like, just collapse, basically, yeah, and then it was like, I went into a fugue state, kind of, and like, a couple months later, it was like I woke up from that fugue state, looked in the rear view mirror and was like, oh, whatever happened to that film I made? I guess nobody ever picked it up. I guess that just didn't work out for me. And that pattern would repeat itself over and over again, flash for and I didn't really I was just like, oh, things just don't work out for me. It was how I was looking at it. I didn't see it as like, oh, I stopped showing up for, you know, I stopped promoting it. So flash forward to my 40s. I was pivoting careers yet again. From this time from TV editing to I went back to grad school to become a therapist, and I'd been getting these migraine headaches throughout my career in TV, but just, you know, just here and there wasn't a big deal when I went to grad school, they became like an all the time thing. It was totally taking over my life, and it was seriously hindering my ability to like work and show up consistently. So I had to do something, and I discovered this whole world of Mind, Body medicine and nervous system education. Dove into that head first. And long story short, I recovered from the chronic migraine. I mean, it was so life changing. It was amazing. And I decided, you know, I'm going to build a business now as a therapist and coach helping people recover from chronic pain, which is what I did for about five years, and that's what we spoke about the last time we podcasted. As I'm building my business, you've got to be make yourself visible to have a business, and you've got to, like, do PR for yourself, basically. Like I had done in the past, and I noticed this time around, that every time I would show up for some type of visibility, whether it was making a post on Instagram or leading a workshop or guesting on a podcast, I would experience the kind of like pre migraine attack symptoms. My neck and shoulders would tighten up. My you know, my armpits would get really sweaty, shallowness of breath and kind of like blank out and spike of anxiety, like spiral of negative self talk would would get into gear. But this time around, unlike, you know, back in the day, after the David Lee Roth thing, I was like, I know what this is now, because I am, like, deeply knowledgeable about the nervous system at this point. So I'm like, Oh, my nervous system is perceiving threat, and it's frightened and it wants me to curl up in a ball for safety, but I also know tools to help my nervous system Calm down now and return to a state of safety, and I can, just like I've used those to recover from migraine, I can use those to move through this fear of visibility, so I could show up consistently for my business and not, you know, look in the rear view mirror and be like, Oh, that just didn't work out. And long story short, after about five years doing this work of helping people with chronic pain, my clients were getting better. They were recovering, and once they were recovering, they wanted to start businesses, they wanted to write a book, they wanted to start a podcast. And I was helping them through that, and I was like, we're going to use the exact same tools that we used before for visibility fear. And I was like, I love doing this, and I'm not in chronic pain anymore. I'm, you know, that work is will always be so important and impactful to me, but it's not really what I'm thinking about all the time anymore, not what I feel passionate about anymore. And so, you know, I was working with a business coach, and she was asking me about what lights me up and everything in it. And she was like, you know, nothing you're talking about has to do with chronic pain or these, like, courses that you want to scale and expand on chronic pain, like you're talking about this other stuff. And I was like, damn it. Gonna have to, I'm gonna have to find a new route through the maze now,
Zack Arnold: Right where you gotta have find out where they move the cheese on me again,
Anna Holtzman: Yes, and you know, I don't want to go on too long, because I want to hand it back to you. But simultaneously, Instagram was changing, like levels of Instagram engagement were like plummeting, and where that used to be a place where I was getting a lot of clients from in my previous incarnation of this coaching business that wasn't kind of working anymore, to like, you know, there were a fair number of people have come with me from that work into what I'm doing now, but I needed to meet new people, make new connections. And the Instagram thing was like, not function, you know, the the cheese had moved. And so I've been discovering, like it was always about relationships, like Instagram was a vehicle toward forming relationships, but there are other ways to form relationships and so, yeah
Zack Arnold: Yeah. Well, I would say that if you're talking specifically about Instagram or insert name of social media platform here, not only have they moved the cheese, the cheese has become nasty and disgusting, like moldy, and I don't even want to find it anymore. That's how I feel. Yes, moldy, good way, not like blue cheese. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So yeah. And I think it's interesting, because there's a lot of parallels with your intuition about visibility and mine. And that was one of my biggest realizations about why I needed to rebrand, is I kept really digging into why is it that I don't want to go as a guest on other people's podcasts? Why don't I want to market myself. Why don't I want to promote myself? So I had a lot of the same fears and barriers you did, but for a very different reason. It was because subconsciously I knew I didn't want to promote and grow the wrong brand. Yes, so in as soon as I decided this is the new brand that I want to build, then I was, let's build a summit. Let's get a bunch of people like I just launched a summit a few months ago and got over 2000 people to register, and there was no amount of, oh, but is this really my brand? Is this who I am? Do I want to build this like all of that was gone, so now the barriers that I have to, you know, putting myself out there and being creative and building new things, they're all still there, but they have nothing to do with I don't want to put myself out there. That's what it used to be. Because I did want to put myself out there as the wrong business and, more importantly, the wrong person. That was my barrier. Now it's all the same problems, but different psychological barriers.
Anna Holtzman: I love this. I you know, I actually do relate to that a lot, because, yeah, there were all these other components of my pivot. But in addition, like I was trying to. To scale my chronic pain courses. And it just like I felt like I was trying to squeeze, you know, sweat from a stone, like it was just like the energy was not working. I felt blocked. I wasn't doing the visibility activities that I knew I needed to be in order to do that. And it was not until, like, this business coach was asking me, like, what lights you up? And it was like, I'm trying to scale something that doesn't light me up. No wonder it's not where, like I need to go, where my energy is flowing. And I'm this is something I'm very, very personally curious about, because I do come from, you know, having worked in TV editing for 10 years. And I do have a lot of friends who are still in that industry and who, you know, everything has like, the rug has been ripped out from under their feet. And how are you working with folks who are in that situation? And for listeners, like, even if you don't work in TV, like there's some way, shape or form in which you'll be able to relate to like, things suddenly changing and feeling
Zack Arnold: Everything is changing for everybody in every industry, I'd be hard pressed to find anybody that's listening that's like, what are they talking about? Things are so stable and predictable. And I just, I know exactly what my career looks like like. It doesn't matter what you do. Everything is changing, right?
Anna Holtzman: Everything is changing. And for the folks that are coming to you to work with you, who are maybe, like, still trying to go through the maze to the place where the cheese used to be, yeah, how are you working with them? Because you're also not that far away from having been in that industry, too, and so I'm sure you're just seeing the devastation among not just clients but friends. And you know, it's hard to get into a resourceful state of mind when you're like reverberating with that fear.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, no, there's very little abundance mindset with people right now. It's very much a scarcity mindset across the board. So I'll get to the point in a second about how I'm working with people that can work with me to work through this. But just to give everybody here, it's I'll keep this, this conversation anonymous, but it's the one conversation that I had with a prospective student that was perfect for the program, and I was perfect for them. Like all the challenges that they had, I felt I could solve for them. It was the perfect marriage. Then it came down to, well, you know, what would it cost for us to work together? And I shared the price, and he's like, man, like, I mean, this is perfect, but, I mean, my girlfriend is selling her eggs this month so we can pay the rent. So I'm gonna have to get back to you like that is the encapsulation of every conversation I've had for the last two and a half years. So that's where most people are, and there's a small subset of people that they do still have the means, or they're doing their best to try and find the means so they have something to help move forwards. And I think the place that I always wanna start with people is it, like you said, if they're still looking for the cheese. The question becomes number one, if you do end up finding the cheese in the same place, do you even want it anymore? Because what was happening before everything fell apart, as I'm sure that you experienced with your practice as well. When the pandemic hit, everybody started to question everything, because we were forced to hit the pause button. We no longer could just continue running on the rat wheel, right, like, just, let's just keep going down the rat rabbit hole. So everybody's just running the rat race. They're just on the treadmill every single day. They don't have time to think about is this what I wanna be doing with my life? Am I the kind of parent that I wanna be to my kids? Am I the kind of friend I wanna be to my other friends, it was just Nope, I got to focus, and I get the job done and pay the mortgage. And then all of a sudden the world stopped. And so many people said to themselves, what am I doing like? Why am I living my life this way? And things need to change, but we lived in a very different world, where so many people felt that way, where they felt they had the ability to go into their work and say, there's so many other opportunities for me, if we can't make this work, I'm going to go elsewhere. And there was this thing that was called The Great resignation. So everybody was making all these pivots, but there was an abundance of opportunities. The problem is that most everybody's still having that realization, but now they can't even pay their bills with the cheese that they used to, you know, use to pay their bills for years and years. So it's first if we do the work necessary in PS, the work is 10 times harder than it was three years ago to get the same jobs and make the same income. It's way harder just to be where you were. If we do all that work to get there, do you even want to be there anymore? And that's been a big realization for a lot of people, where I think there's still this, there's this belief of, well, eventually I can just go back to putting the effort that I did getting the same results, and it's like that world doesn't exist. You're going to have to work harder. Both options are hard. So do you want to work much harder to get the same thing you had before, or do you want to work much harder? Harder to try and build something new. And I'm always talking about this mindset. This is one of the core principles of my program, is that you need to play life like a game of chess, not a game of checkers. And I felt like as things really started to fall apart for so many people started to play Go Fish. They weren't even playing checkers anymore. It was just, just throw out the reel. I'll take anything that I can get right now, realizing that it's way harder to just do that when you might as well be putting all that energy into building something new, because it's not any less scary. So really, where it always starts is, well, what's the bank account telling you you need to focus on right now? And if the bank account is absolutely screaming, well then, yeah, we need to find you a gig as fast as we can. But as long as there's a little bit of breathing room if you're going to work your ass off anyways, build something you're excited about, rather than putting yourself in a world that you dreaded before all this happened. Yeah, and I'm also hearing, at least in, you know, in this side of the industry, and I'm seeing this anecdotally through reading other people's sub stacks, reading articles in different industries. But those that are working are all saying the same thing. Things are completely different than they used to be. Like work life balance and boundaries gone out the window. It is back to the grind. Is work 100 hours a week, and that's the reason being that the employers, by and large, across most industries, they now hold the power because there's way more people than there are jobs. So now they can literally hold the job over your head and say, Oh, you want to go see your daughter in a recital this Friday. Oh, you need a week off for a vacation. No problem. We have 10 people that we can replace you with tomorrow. Would you like to come into work? Or would you like us to replace you? So those that are fortunate enough to be working hate their lives, so it's a matter of figuring out where do you want to be putting that effort, and do you have the time and space to build something long term? Because if you're going to upheaval, is the best time to rebuild things, build new habits, set new goals. So as long as you've got the runway to do that, and you have to do the hard work anyways, I see a huge opportunity in all of this chaos and uncertainty.
Anna Holtzman: Is there a story of hope that you can share with folks about maybe, like, I don't know one person in your coaching program that you've seen recently who has decided, You know what, I'm not going to keep going back down that same path in the maze for that like stinky old cheese that tastes terrible now, and there's not even that much of it to go around. And they've decided to do the thing that's maybe harder in the short term, which is figure out a new plan, but more rewarding in the long term, because, as you're saying, they've taken, they've they've used that, that act of will that it takes to in the midst of an like an emergency or a storm, to say, You know what? Sure this is an emergency. But I am gonna pause, take a breath and zoom out, because I don't want to be going, you know, to the fastest route to nowhere. I want to be going somewhere that I actually want to land at once I get there.
Zack Arnold: Yeah. Really good question. And the first challenge that I had was, which one do I choose? Because I actually have quite a few of those
Anna Holtzman: Just there, I kind of want to pause right there and let that sink in for listeners. Because one of the other things, you know, I'm always coming at things from a nervous system lens, right? And when something triggers our nervous system, and there's no shortage of things these days to trigger our nervous system, it will go into a, you know, this threat response state, and in that threat response state, some of the things that happen are black and white thinking, you know, it's like everybody is struggling. There are no opportunities available, right? That's black and white thinking that comes up in a fear state. And I forgot the other one, but that's enough like that that happens. So hearing stories of possibility is really good medicine for our nervous system when we are in fear.
Zack Arnold: And I think your timing is perfect to ask me to share these because my nervous system is in a state of focus on all the things that aren't working right now. Look at the plummeting enrollment numbers and the lack of cash flow. And sometimes I need to remind myself, Oh, I'm actually doing really good work. And it's funny, because over the last, I think just the last five days, I've had like, four students that have reached out with like, huge, long messages, life changing results. So and again, it's like this constantly putting in the work, feeling like I'm not moving the ball forwards and up moving the ball forwards, and then boom, stuff happens. So I I've got one specific story that I want to that I want to share.
Anna Holtzman: Sorry I keep interrupting you, but I'm glad you shared that, because it really normalizes and humanizes what a pivot is, like, like you can't like pre plan A. Pivot so perfectly that then it's like there's no fear that comes up during the pivot, like there are waves of fear that have come up for me during the pivot. And I love that you're sharing that that is true for you too. And if that is something that the listener experiences that does not signify that you're on the right, on the wrong path, or that you're going nowhere. It is a normal part of the process.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, it is the path. I have so many students that will feel like, Oh, well, I failed and this isn't happening. I'm like, this is the path. Welcome to the path. You're on the path. PS, the path sucks, but that's all part of the path, right? And that it's it's not this deliberate. I'm going to set these 10 milestones, I'm going to assign these dates, and it goes in this order. It's a much more emergent process, just figuring out what works, figuring out what doesn't, and this student is exactly kind of the exemplification of this process. So because I technically don't have her permission to share it, we're gonna call her Sarah, but she knows who I'm talking to. She has a very unique story. So Sarah came to my community and my academy, I don't know, give or take, about a year ago, and I found out after the fact, that the goal was that I wanted to join for the first 30 days, use as much of it as I could, and then exercise my refund request. That was the goal. Like all these self guided resources, I'm going to do as much as I can because finances are tight, then I'm going to request a refund. That was over a year ago now. But when Sarah came to me, she she worked in the entertainment industry and went from the jobs just kind of come to me. I get referrals, get text messages, and I'm, for the most part, I'm working on paying the bills. Things are fine, things are secure. Gone. Disappeared overnight. All of a sudden, nothing was there. So she just got into a panic state. She didn't really have the tools to be able to build her network, build relationships and find more of that same work. So the first thing she came to me for was help me learn how to reach out to people and expand my network, because I feel like I'm not I don't have opportunities coming to me, and I need to create opportunities. So she started to reach out to people, and her outreach response rate was about 100% for about three to four months, and she was reaching out to the biggest names in the industry and building relationships, but she was hitting the same wall that everybody else was. There just aren't opportunities out there right now, so I'm putting in all this effort and I'm not getting any results. But then we started to talk bigger picture, and I would say, Well, right now you're really focused on this one path to generate income. What are some other ideas that you've had? And boy, were we off to the races. And she started to say things like, Well, I've been thinking about starting a furniture refinishing business, and actually enjoy building furniture. But I also have been thinking about getting into real estate and maybe doing like a real estate video production company to shoot videos and photos. But I also actually, come to think of it, I've always wanted to build a photography business. It was just like, boom, like, this giant download of all these different goals, amazing. So she ended up joining my year long mastermind program because she wanted to get an answer to the question, What the hell am I supposed to be doing with my life? Like, who am I and what am I supposed to be doing? What's my calling? So we started to work together and started to hone and refine all of these things. And the most amazing unlock happened with a calendar exercise. So the exercise that I take my students through is that first they have to understand what is the vision for the life that I want to build, and what values are associated with it, so that how I spend my time is going to be in alignment with my values. So we go through this whole exercise. So a lot happened before we sat down with the calendar, but I said, All right, you're going to take the calendar and you're going to take a seven day span, 24 hours a day, and you're going to plot out how you're spending your attention, not your time. So I do what I call an attention budget. The attention being this period of time, I'm working on building my business. Here I am working on my health. Here. I'm spending time with friends so very, very broad swaths. But what are the things that you value the most? Put those on your calendar, and a week later, she came back to me, and she's like, Oh my god, I realize what my problem is. I can't get it all done. And I think that I can. I think I can start all of these businesses and I can accomplish all these things, this calendar exercise completely changed my mindset, and since doing the calendar exercise, I've decided I want to build my photography business. Whoa. So now she's completely Oh, just wait, But wait, there's more. This happened. Wasn't that long ago, maybe two months ago. Maybe it was okay. So once she had this realization, she said, I'm not even worried about trying to find income in my old world as an assistant editor, because I don't want that anyways. So she got a retail job at a bath and body store at the mall. The reason being, it pays her. It's consistent, but it's flexible, and for most of the day, she's just sitting at a counter doing her own stuff on her computer. Amazing. So while she's had this retail job, she's built a website. She started to reach out. She started to build a portfolio the one day a week that she's off, she's now building clientele. She's shooting photos, and now she's off to the races with building this photography business, because she realized this is really what I want, and I'm trying to do. Do too much, and I'm chasing the wrong cheese in the wrong maze. Just gonna keep going with this analogy.
Anna Holtzman: I love that. I got chills and and, you know, I hope the listener is just noticing how their body, because that's, you know, I'm always oriented to the nervous system, what's going on in the body, like how your body was experiencing that journey from like, the the panic, the fear, the frustration, the like wrestling with things, to that, that breakthrough moment that choose, choosing her focus, and then once she chose her focus, going for it, and then once she's going for it, like it's happening, things are starting to actually happen, and this is possible. And like, ah, like, okay, we're not at the finish line, but we're off to the races, and we know how to do this.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, not only off to the races, but I'm running the correct race? Yeah, I think that was the biggest thing, where you could just palpably feel and see the agitation and the anxiety. And I've only met her in person once, because she's she's in New York, and I'm in LA, but I do an in person retreat, so I saw her for that weekend retreat. And it's both my superpower and my kryptonite. I have a very high level of empathy. And I can really sense when people are feeling anxiety, fear, whatever it might be. And you could just sense a lot of anxiety in this person, a lot of uncertainty. I don't really know what I'm doing, what to do next. And even though I haven't seen her in person since this breakthrough, it's like a different human being on the Zoom conversations, the way she speaks, the speed at which she speaks, the level of confidence her life is still really hard. She's not making any more money than she was before. But what's changed is the perception of the value of how she's spending her time in alignment with her values and the vision that she wants to build. That's the only thing that's really changed. Is now she wakes up saying, This is how I should be spending my time. That's the only thing that's changed in her life.
Anna Holtzman: Yes, and when we're in that fear state, that that, you know, threat response state in our nervous system, another thing that happens is like, this has to work and be figured out and be completed today. Otherwise, I'm totally screwed when we start to feel a little bit of hope when we're like, co regulating with a coach and other people in a cohort, our the fear is coming down a little like our nervous system is just getting a little bit more bandwidth, and then we can step back and remember, like, oh no. Like, things take time. Like, if, if this career is not up and running at 100% by day two that I'm working on it. Like, that's not a sign that it's not working. It's a sign that it's in process and it's building.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, exactly. And that's it's really hard in the moment to embrace that, especially because we look at our bank accounts and we're like, there is no time. But here's something that I found really, really interesting. And I don't know everybody's financial situations in my community. I haven't looked at their bank accounts. But if I were to go back to calls that I've done with students, maybe, let's say, about two years ago, when things started to fall apart and they're like, holy shit, like, I might not be able to find work. And then you have a conversation. And this is a conver a question that I often ask my students when we're trying to figure out, where do we focus our attention next? What's your runway look like? Ie savings, whatever it is, how long do you feel comfortable or you're not freaking out before you have to get another paycheck job? And there isn't a single person where I asked them that question in 2023, and they said, I feel like I should be good for about two, two and a half years, nobody said that. But guess what, unless there's a lot of things that they're not sharing with me, none of those people are homeless. Yeah, none of them, because we figure it out. We find a way. Maybe some of them had to dip into retirement. Full disclosure, I had to dip into my retirement fund to fill a gap like it sucks. It pisses me off that I have to pay the government 10% of that money, but I needed to, because that's the world that we live in. But in our minds, go back to 2023. Was I've got six months emergency savings, but when that emergency savings is out, I'm done. Life is over. I'm out on the street. I'm homeless. All the people that said I have six months or less, it's over two years later, none of them are homeless. So I've had to kind of step back and realize, like, I feel the same pressure on myself. I think, like, you know, the with enrollment going down in the community, with there being less interest in coaching services and online courses, and much, much harder to find any form of work whatsoever, even from my former life of editing, thinking to myself, well, I don't have that much longer. But then I think, yeah, but like I've, I've got just as much room as anybody else does. And ultimately, I believe in my ability to figure it out, like I've been in really dire financial circumstances before got through it, and it's hard to, it's hard when you're in it, to kind of have that outside perspective. But now that I have the. Evidence from my own life that says I've been through hardship like this before, and I'll get through it. Yes, it takes a little bit of the pressure off, and this is something that I'm still very much susceptible to. But this idea of looking at the calendar, for example, I just got back from a summer vacation for a couple of weeks with my family, saying, All right, I've got some breathing room, but I need to have my life figured out by Friday, September 1, right? Yeah, well, but this is when it all needs to be figured out, realizing it's probably not going to be. So I've, I've become a little bit better. I'm not great at it, but better at just embracing the state of the situation. And the state of the situation is, I've got some ideas. I don't have a solution to all this. I have some things I'm going to try and I'm going to experiment with, but no longer setting the expectation because of my circumstances. This is the date on the calendar where I must have all of it figured out, because it just never works out that way.
Anna Holtzman: So I feel like you have offered both of our audiences and certainly my audience, a vision of hope and just some, some, you know, really relatable scenarios of moving through the fear that comes up with very relatable problems that are real life problems, and moving from the problem into, you know, just to simplify it, like from problem oriented to solution oriented. And I think maybe something that I can share with both of our audiences, too, that might be new for your audience, is a tool that I have been using to help me myself move through my own pivot process, which, you know, also involved an income dip. And it's, it's like a core tool that I use with my all my students and clients. And it's full circle to what you and I started with about our first conversation, because it's, it's journaling, like journaling is always my go to it's my anchor. It's my way to recenter myself. So earlier in the year, when I was at just at the very beginning stages of like, realizing that, oh my gosh, I've been trying to scale the wrong thing, because my heart is not in this business direction anymore, and I need to give it, you know, it felt very frightening, so like, well, now I'm going to have to figure out a new path through the maze. Thank you Who Moved My Cheese that provided us such a great structure for this episode. But it just it triggered so much fear for me. And then in the initial stages, I, you know, I had my moments of questioning, like, am I going to be able to actually execute on this pivot? Because there's so much fear that's coming up for me and like, I am a person with very sensitive wiring. So for me, you know, it was often waking up in the very first thing that I'd experienced in the morning was just like, crushing, like, fear spiral thoughts, and a lot of them were about money. Like, am I going to be is anyone going to want to pay me for this, like, new version of things that I'm doing, like they all knew me for this other thing, I'd feel just like, kind of feel like my body was on fire. You know, the physical manifestation of that anxiety was so intense and it there were many mornings where I was like, I'm not going to be able to get anything done today. Like, if I want to make this move, I need to get into motion to make this move. Because certainly, no one's going to find me and work with me and pay me money to work with me if I am just like, you know, frozen, and not doing it, not making myself visible, but I don't know if I'll be able to do that, because I feel so frozen, and so, you know, I'd panic for a moment, and then I'd be like, oh, right, I need to use the tool. That is the tool I used, you know that I teach to clients, and so I would go, I would take my morning walk, which is also one of the ways that I get back into motion. I find a bench, I would sit down. And I'm very fortunate to be near the ocean. So I'd sit facing the ocean. And I would do, I have lots of different versions of this journaling practice, but the one I was using back then is, I would say, Dear ocean, because for me, like the ocean just embodies groundedness, lovingness, wisdom, you know, not the triggered state, but the opposite of it, right? So it was just like, a way to, like, co regulate with another energy and tune into it. I'd say, Dear ocean, I'm freaking out. I have so much anxiety. I'm scared of this, that and the other, this is what I'm feeling. I feel like my body's on fire. What words do you have for me? And then I would just like, let the ocean answer on the page. Which might sound weird to some listeners and maybe not to some others, but I would just tune into like, what would the ocean say? And I would let you know, stream of consciousness and the ocean would you know, most of the time, be like, I'm right here. You sit, sit by me, and just hearing that, it wasn't a solution, but my heart rate would start to come down a little, right, you know, and then I'd write some more, like, dear ocean. I'm feeling kind of sad because i i Actually, I'm realizing I have this, this probably false idea in my head, that if I shift gears in my business, I'll lose the friends that I made when I was doing business in the, you know, in this other framing, and I'm feeling like, a lot of sadness about it. And then, you know, let the ocean answer like, I'm right here. I love you. I'm not going anywhere. The fear comes down another notch. By the end of the session, I'm like, releasing tears. I'm feeling this full body release. And I'm like, Oh, and, you know what? And I got an idea for a podcast episode I'm gonna put out, and I'm gonna write about this very experience in my newsletter. And I'd keep going, and you know, the next morning, I'd wake up, locked up in an anxiety ball, and then do the same thing again. And that is how I move through those early stages of the pivot.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I think that's, it's such a great and important practice, and I want to help, because we're kind of CO hosting this, yeah, I want to, I want to break this down into pieces, because I think for myself included, but for a lot of my students, and I think people in general, they do get caught in that freeze response, especially now, because things are so scary and uncertain. And I believe that everybody is waiting for the motivation to take action, and it's actually in reverse, where action leads to motivation, but then that's where kind of the self loathing spiral starts to take over. Well, I know that I need to take action, and Zack said on the podcast that action leads to motivation or not the other way around, but I just can't do anything. I feel stuck, therefore there's something wrong with me, I'm not strong enough. I'm not brave enough, whatever it is. And what I always tell my students is that when to kind of zoom back, when I start working with them, at least on the big picture, strategic things and really shifting mindset, not the more tactical stuff, but if they really want to kind of figure out the path for the next stage of their lives, we start with the larger vision again, like, what do I want my life to feel like? Look like? What do I value? How am I spending my time? In a broad sense? That's all well and good, but when you're ready to ask yourself, What am I doing this afternoon, from one until 145 that is way too big and overwhelming. So I do the opposite. I say that with whatever the action is that you're taking. It should be so small and so minuscule that you say, this is silly. And going back to quote, unquote, Sarah, I just had this conversation with her this morning, just today, where I had asked her we did kind of a journal prompting exercise, and I said, here's what we're going to reflect on today. What do I need more of in my life, and what do I need less of in my life? And now that she has all this focus and all this attention, she said, Actually, what I need is a little bit less structure and just more space to be with friends and chill out. She's like, basically what I need is more me time. Yes. So I said, well, great, let's figure out what's the very specific manifestation of that, because that's a very emotional need. I need me time. I need space to breathe. I don't need to I don't want to feel like I'm doing things all the time. And she said, Well, you know, one of the things I love to do is I just, I love coloring. So coloring is just like this, this meditative practice for me. It helps me reduce my anxiety, and sometimes, like I even will just go on Tiktok somebody's live streaming while they're painting or doing whatever, and not even participating, but just kind of body doubling while they're doing their thing. I love doing the color. I said, Great. I said, What? When's the next time that you would be able to do that? She's like, well, you know, I go to work for like, 10 hours here, and then I go to the gym for two hours, then I come home, then I cook and I meal prep, like, I guess I could do it after all that at like, 10pm tonight. And I said, what if it was instead of something? So she said, Well, I guess tonight I don't have to answer the emails. I don't have to work on the photo editing for this weekend, etc, etc. So I'll, I'll do, I'll do coloring for an hour at nine instead of 10. I said, What if we made it like 15 minutes? And she said, Well, that's just silly. I said, Great, now we're where we need to be, because it just seems like it's almost too easy. Yeah? So what I'm always trying to find is, what is that smallest easy win that's going to build momentum? So when the motivation isn't there, the action leads to motivation. So What? What? And this is something that I've written about in my newsletters. I'm sure you have with yours. Yeah, it's not about what, and this is where, again, going back full circle to the idea of losing optimized from the brand before was what is my potential? What is the most that I can be doing right now, today, this week, this month, this year, to realize my potential and optimize myself. Now I. Look at it through a very different lens. Not that there's anything wrong with those things, but I think that there's another way that we can approach it. So what I'm asking myself is, what's, what's the hardest version of what I can do? And if the hardest version of what I can do is wake up and take a shower and go back to bed, that is your day. That's it. That's your day. If you're burned out, if you're overwhelmed, if you're frozen, pick one thing to break out of that pattern. But it shouldn't be a matter of, well, if I can't take a shower, I should be answering the email, and I guess that means I should be doing this. I do have that lunch I need to schedule. Nope. Your day is waking up, taking a shower and going back to bed. If that's more than you would have done otherwise, anything to find action that can lead to motivation. Eventually you get to a point where you realize, well, I can do the shower. I'm not going to do anything else, but I do actually feel like I could clean up the dishes. Great. Take a shower, clean up the dishes. I just I think that society and the expectations we have put upon ourselves have just led us to a place where either we're doing everything we possibly can, and if we're not, therefore we must be a failure. Yeah, just pick the smallest thing and build off of that. And that's, that's essentially how I've been getting through this. And the smallest thing for me, usually is writing something down in the journal, which, again, I credit totally to you, where I say I just I'm stuck, but All right, let me just open a page and say I'm stuck. But what am I stuck? I did it. Oh, four pages later. Oh, okay, this makes sense. Well, shit, now I can respond to this person's email. It's the weirdest phenomenon, yeah, but yeah, that, to me, the biggest unlock for me, probably in the last two to three years, has been journaling by far, no question.
Anna Holtzman: And I love that. And and for me, the the way, the way that I do journaling and the way that I teach it is i i do it and teach it as a dialog between two different parts of the self, between frightened self and like the wise, grounded self. And so I love the story that you just told and and another metaphor that I often use with my clients is what kind of like you are, both the frightened inner child and the adult coach, you know? And sure, I'm coaching you, but I'm really coaching you to coach yourself. So what kind of coach do you want to be for yourself and for that frightened inner child, like think of a little league coach. Do you want to be the little league coach who's coaching that little kid who's saying, Just do it, just knuckle through it. Just, you know, and I'm gonna, you know, you're really gonna be in for it. If you don't perform like that kid is not gonna do very well, and it's not gonna enjoy it very much at all. Do you want to be the coach who's like, oh, you know, I see that you're scared. I guess you're not really cut out for it. You're just going to sit on the bench for the rest of the season like that kid is not going to flourish and develop or have any self confidence either? You want to be the coach who's like, Oh, I see that you're afraid. That's totally normal. I was afraid when I was just starting out too. I still get afraid sometimes, even now, I can totally relate. There's nothing wrong with fear. Hey, you want to, like, sit down with me for a moment and let's talk about it. Like, what? What are you afraid of and, you know, let's just have a conversation. And then when the fear comes down a little bit, just through connecting and empathizing and normalizing, it's like, oh, you know, I notice your your breath has gotten a little slower, and the colors come back to your face. I think you I completely believe in you. You can totally get up there and try again. I'll be right behind you. Go for it. That's the kind of coach we want to be for ourselves.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, if my little league coach had talked to me like that, I'd probably have a very different life. Yeah, because I definitely came from the world where all of my coaches were the old school coaches you see in the movies from the 50s, all of them like that. That's the voice that I heard from everybody growing up, which makes it so much harder, especially when you're highly sensitive, highly creative, surrounded in a world by suck it up, like, just get down there and do it like, that's, that's all I heard my entire life. So those are still the voices in my head that I'm have to, having to rewire, trying my best, where I'm now both a coach and a father and father is just basically being a coach. 24/7, trying to bring a lot more empathy. But what I really liked about what you shared is that it wasn't this binary approach. Either you're a drill sergeant or you're an incredibly affectionate, compassionate coach. There's that third version, which was, Oh, it's fine. You don't have to try. You can quit. Because I feel like that's usually the opposite. It's either the drill sergeant pushed through or I'm going to give myself permission to not try because it's scary and it's uncomfortable, and the discomfort is where all the growth happens. So I always tell my students that my specialty is making you as uncomfortable as possible in the same. Safest space possible, where you feel like I can safely be uncomfortable and push through, and if something doesn't work out, I'll be fine, but it's still scary. That's the environment that I like to create where I challenge my students all the time, and an example would be in the retreat that I did with my year long mastermind students. I did a Spartan style training regiment with them for an entire morning, because I've trained people for Spartan Races and Ninja Warrior for years. And I say that my coaching style is that you're going to hate me while we're doing it literally, and then you're going to hug me in tears afterwards. And every time I do this, there's at least one student and Katie, if you're listening, you know I'm talking about you, but literally, daggers shooting out of her eyeballs when we're doing this work. Like, I cannot believe I'm doing this. I hate you, right? And then afterwards, Baker, like, oh my god, this is so great. I feel so much better because I helped her realize something that she was capable of, but doing it in a safe enough space that she could experiment and try things that she wasn't good at. And I think that's the sweet spot for a coach. So if anybody's looking for that, it's not, Oh, it's okay. You don't need to try it all. You just be you. I feel like, unfortunately, that's what a lot of life coaching is. And life coaching has gotten a very bad rap, because you're basically a cheerleader and giving people permission to not be doing anything.
Anna Holtzman: Or it's the opposite, like, yes, like trying to scare that person in a rough way into which is
Zack Arnold: Exactly also, yeah, and my style is very much, you know, a compassion based approach, but be ready to be challenged.
Anna Holtzman: Yeah. I love that. I love that it's the growth zone. The growth zone is not under the covers permanently or hiding under the bed forever, and it's exactly, it's also not being yelled at or yelling at yourself perpetually. It's that stretching yourself and being stretched in a safe environment where there's trust and compassion and care.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, exactly as well. I'm gonna I realize we're probably, you know, getting close to time, so I want to be respectful, but
Anna Holtzman: We are, and I want to invite both of us to share a way that listeners can delve more deeply into into our respective work. Is there something you'd like to share with with listeners?
Zack Arnold: There is, but I wanted to peel back the curtain on something that I feel most people probably wouldn't share, but I think that the meta of all this would be really, really helpful for both audiences. That thing that's right on the precipice of this is the hardest thing, but the thing that I can do, that's what this interview is for me today, because you sent me the email, and when I saw it, I'm like, I just can't. Can't like, the putting putting that summit together and recording 15 interviews over the course of a month and doing all the marketing like it just broke me. It's the hardest thing I've probably ever done, and I was spent and a week after, went on a vacation overseas with my family, got back, got your email. It had nothing to do with you. I'm sure you can relate, but I'm like, No fucking way, like I like me being a guest on somebody else's podcast, that is too hard, so it took me, like, two weeks to be able to respond to you, but it was a matter of all right, what do I need to do? What are the small actions that I need to take to build the motivation to enthusiastically and authentically respond to your message? And then once I did, it was like shit. I'm gonna have to figure out how to get myself into a state that I can be useful to you during this conversation. But that was it like again, it isn't either I'm building the vision and I'm all out and I'm optimizing, or I'm doing nothing. It was I can find a way to get myself into a place where I can be valuable to you today. So that's peeling the curtain back where it's not just how did you do it? It's partially just going through doing journaling, and then just like, trying to find little things, like, all right, I just, I need to do a little bit of exercise to get going. And, all right, I'm literally using the shower analogy, like, gonna take a shower an hour before, that'll wake me up, that'll get the juices flowing. And I think it also helps that there's a level of familiarity between the two of us and kind of knowing getting a sense of what the conversation would be. But for those that are listening or watching thinking, Well, I don't have the energy or the motivation that he does like I just this is all great, but that's not me. Trust me right now, getting through the day and figuring things out is just as hard for me as it is for everybody else.
Anna Holtzman: I love that. Oh, thank you so much for sharing that. And also I'm like, I feel like this reconnection with each other is even more special knowing that. And it's funny, because now that you mention it, I wasn't really thinking about this in this moment, but looking back so you when, when you finally did get back to me, there was, like, a very short turnaround time when you wanted to meet. You're like, what can you meet this Friday? And I was like, Oh, I don't know, because I already, I, I already had an interview scheduled today where I was guesting on someone else's podcast. Yes. And I was like, I kind of wanted to just have, like, I don't I, I don't think I ever before have scheduled two recording sessions in one day where I'm the guest. I mean, this is a collab, but I'm, you know, so we're both guests. And so I almost said I wasn't available, but then I was like, Well, if I, if I'm not available, then it's like, the next weekend I'm not available, and then I don't know, you know, people get busy, it might not happen. And I really want to have this conversation with Zack. So, you know, I was like, I'm just gonna show up as me, like, so what if I'm a little tired? It's, it's okay. And I know Zack and like, you know, we're gonna, like, connect with each other, and that'll make me feel safe. And it's so funny that you told that story, because by the time we got on and started talking, I had forgotten that I was nervous about it.
Zack Arnold: So there were you and I were in very, very similar places, and I appreciate you, you know, finding a way to make the schedule work, and I'm glad that we did this, and I'm glad that we could be valuable. So now to go back to your question, I guess this is, at least on my show, what I call the shameless self promotion portion of the program.
Anna Holtzman: Yes, de shame promoting ourselves. I mean, that's one of the things we help our clients with, right?
Zack Arnold: Yeah. So there's a couple of places that people can connect with me and find me there few and far between, because I'm doing my best to live a much more analog life, and I'm essentially abandoning most, if not all, the social media platforms. But if people want to connect with me or get a sense of what I'm putting out into the world, by far the best place to go is just do a search for the Zack Arnold podcast on iTunes. If they want to get a sense of my writing. I also have a sub stack newsletter that kind of, sort of pairs with the podcast, but kind of sort of doesn't and is a little bit more free form figuring it out. What do I want to write about? What's my brand? It's, you know, basically talking about pivots in the middle of my own pivot. So it's kind of little all over the place, which is where I think a lot of people are, and then if they're more interested in really learning about actually digging in, doing the work, working with me. The best place to go is thearnoldacademy.com where I offer self guided coaching services, course materials. We do live, cohort based classes. I lead masterminds. I do private coaching, but yeah, the simplest place to just get a sense of what I do and who I do with would be thearnoldacademy.com
Anna Holtzman: Awesome. Love it, and I will have your info in my show notes. And if folks want to get a taste of what it would be like to work with me or learn my journaling approach and have me kind of hold your hand through it, step by step, stretching you, but with the safety and support of me being there with you. I have a free workshop that I run consistently, regularly, and you can sign up for that workshop at annaholtzman.com/beseen. The workshop is let yourself be seen. It's a place to safely stretch your nervous system's capacity for visibility. So Anna holtzman.com/be, seen. You can also connect with me. I still am on social media. You can come hang out with me on Instagram. I'm @anna_holtzman. You can subscribe to my podcast, which is called How to Trust Yourself. And you can also email me. I love connecting with people. I will answer you personally. And my email is anna@annaholtzman.com
Zack Arnold: I love it. Well, thanks for coming onto my show, and I'm thankful to be coming onto your show. Yeah, I'm not really sure how to close one of these episodes.
Anna Holtzman: So thank you for hanging out with me again, Zack, it's such a pleasure, and I look forward to the next time and whatever that is gonna bring and unfold for us.
Zack Arnold: Yes, this has been wonderful, and I appreciate you popping up in my inbox and helping me crawl out of my little hole. So thank you.
Anna Holtzman: Love it. Talk to you soon.
Edited by: Curtis Fritsch
Produced by: Debby Germino
Published by: Vim Pangantihon
Music by: Thomas Cepeda
Sandy shares the mindset shifts that gave her the confidence to take the leap, along with the strategies she still relies on to overcome challenges, stay focused, and continue growing in her new career.
