Can You Learn to Be Lucky? (with Penguin / Portfolio author Karla Starr)

Audio Transcription

Can you learn to be lucky? Why does New York Times bestselling author, Gretchen Rubin endorsed today’s author, guest? How do you deal with the predictable chaos that life will throw it all of us, and why does delusional optimism always seem to become a self fulfilling prophecy? All of this and more on today’s interview with Karla Starr,

All right, thrive nation. Welcome back to another exciting initiative, thrive time show on your radio podcast download and Dr. Z. on today’s show, we’re interviewing Karla Starr, who’s the author of the new book. Can you learn to be lucky? Why? Some people seem to win more often than others. It’s can’t come at any time too soon. I get a trip to vegas coming up soon. I need. I need your help now. On today’s show, she discusses how random events affect people and predictably self-defeating ways the way to the best way to cope with the world’s chaos and constant change. And how we need to focus on improving the one thing in life that we can control ourselves and much, much more. Karla, welcome onto the show. How are you ma’am?

I am doing fabulous. Thank you so much for having me.

Karla Starr. Your book has received a lot of praise on the cover. Chip Heath endorses the book. It’s been featured in the Atlantic, the La Times, CBS News, Gretchen Rubin, a thrive time show guest has said great things about your book. Could you share with our listeners a little bit about your background before writing this, this, this book that is loved by so many people?

Of course. I am a white girl from buffalo working class. I went to Nyu. I studied psychology. Um, I’ve known that I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was eight and that’s pretty much all I’ve done.

So you’ve always wanted to be a writer?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

What’d you want to be when you were seven? Do you remember? Was it like I went from being a firefighter to a writer? Or is it something, a ballet dancer to a writer? I mean, was there some big event that happened when you were

then we can. I would want it to be a mechanical engineer and then I thought, you know what?

I feel like writing is stable. That’s a. that’s a common thing for seven-year-olds want to be. I get that. That’s very precocious, so that’s. That’s cool. No, Karla Starr, for our listeners out who are going to pick up

a copy of your book, there are the ones who are interested in maybe learning more about it. What first inspired you to write this book?

No. The big thing that inspired me was a fee about eight, nine years ago, I moved back to the United States after spending a few years in Buenos Aires, Argentina and I moved back and optimal time. It was right around the height of the great recession and things were just, you know, it was, it was tough. You know, obviously it was tough for a lot of people, but it just seemed like I was just having a harder time getting traction, getting things moving and you know, see about eight years before then something happened. I was in a horrible car accident and so I ended up getting depressed after that. Um, and so just the car accident and then a while later it was this big going back, having a hard time finding a job and I just felt like, you know, what, what is going on here? I just felt like the world is so random.

These things kept happening to me. I thought you know, what, what is one thing that I can study that could help every area of my life because I’ve been reading all these books on success and all these self-help books. I remember at the time I was reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and the Black Swan by Nicholas Taleb. Right. And so the one says sometimes you get lucky if you’re in the right time at the right place. And the other one said you know what? The world is random. And I just thought like, you know, neither of those really told me what to do. I was like, okay, great. So the world is random and sometimes you have to be at the right time at the right place. But like, what, where’s my Goto, you know, what do I do? So I felt like the book I needed to read didn’t exist, so I wrote it.

So you began to deep dive into the research, um, you, you really poured over research and really got a detailed and, and you, you know, you spent a long time preparing to write this book in the book you talk about how random events affect people in, in predictably self-defeating ways. Can you break down what you mean by this?

Absolutely. So I think one of the main things that I realized was that I learned was that, you know, we come to understand about ourselves and the world through other people, right? And through just the feedback that we seem to get from the world or would they say about us, what we think is possible or what we think we should do next. And a lot of times, you know, we’ll send out 50 resumes and know we won’t hear anything back and maybe it just happened to be that, you know, there was some kind of glitch in the matrix and you know, a lot of those got erased or you know, there’s some kind of bug or something, I’m just, it could be anything, but what’s the message that we get? We’re bad, we’re not worthy, we’re doing something wrong, right? So we go apply to starbucks and it just seems like, you know, people are so sensitive to the feedback that we get from the world.

Um, you know, but a lot of times if you look at the neuroscience of how people make decisions, how people decide what’s rewarding, you know, how people decide whether or not you should get the job. A lot of times it’s about 50 percent of the variance in social situations, right? So about 50 percent of how people are evaluating us has absolutely nothing to do with us, right? It’s just their baggage. It’s just, you know, what their brain tap into experience in the past. Are they tired? You know, are they grumpy? If you’re grumpy and you’re, you know, you’re not going to like anybody who you hire or you’re not going to let anybody who you interview for a job.

I want to get your take on this. DrZ. , how would you describe how you grew up financially? Did you grow up rich? I grew up with several silver spoons. Oh, nice collector’s edition. Big Trust Fund. I haven’t found the actual location. Somebody stole your spoons to that? I think it was. I think it was boring. I think the dea got left. I think it was just trust fund. I just, that’s how I grew up. So now big family. Not a lot of resources but a lot, a lot, a lot and lot of uh, you know, a lot of, um, discipline. Karla Starr. I would say that both he and I grew up, uh, we’ll go with not rich for 5,000 points and between the three of us originally to the two of us, we’ve gone on to start a 13 multimillion dollar companies and growing disease. You know, you started, you hope to invest in early stages and in Regent Bank than the optometry clinic, your auto auction or haircut chain of photography trading. Go on and on. Listen to companies, and I think that both of us are missing our Amygdala z. When it comes to rejection, it’s like when people reject us, we don’t care. Karla Starr, could you please explain to us what is wrong with us? Because most people say, you guys are so weird. Why do you not care when you get rejected? What’s wrong for you? Wrong with people like us, Carla, that are somewhat numb were really dumb when it comes to rejection. A little bit of both. Yeah,

nothing. You’re doing it right. I love it. So many people are overly sensitive to these perceived negative things or you know, potential for rejection and they ended up over emphasizing all the possible downturn and they never try. And you know, the one common thing that you find across all of these ideas in psychology, like optimism, grit, resilience, competence, right? All these things are. You ignore the bad things, right? You learn from the bad things and then he shoved those aside and then you keep going toward the good things. Just keep going toward the good thing. So I think, you know, it sounds like you’ve probably done a good job of mitigating risk, right? Like if you want to go into, you know, open up a new business, you know, you’re doing it the smart way where it’s not like, oh, if this fails then you know you have to go live on the street forever.

Yeah, absolutely. So it seems like as a society we used to be a lot tougher or skin used to be tougher. Is it just an epidermis thing?

Is Our epidermis actually getting thinner? Karla Starr, do you know? Or, or what’s, what’s going on with society? Why? When I was a kid, I remember there was this fun statement that said, you know, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me kind of thing. And now it’s like even even a, even a bad look. I mean I grumbled for the day, it’s like a thin guy.

Do you even agree with his observation? Do you think people are getting a more easy to offend it more easily offended the density of.

I don’t know if they’re getting more easy to manage. I think that part of it is I would like to blame social media. I think that people, people really underestimate how much work goes on behind the scenes that you don’t see right? People. It’s everyone highlight reel, right? So we’re only posting like the point, oh, five percent of our life. That looks good. Right? So I think if you maybe be try really hard and you know, it takes me a while to get something. You think that there’s something wrong with you, but what you don’t realize is that, you know, everybody has to try really, really hard and persist through rejection and failure and then finally that one time they get that wind at one time they get there. That victory, that’s what they post, right? No one’s posting about all those boring days of practice.

Karla Starr, I’m going to blindside you with a bunch of scenarios because your book talks about how to deal with a world of endless change and chaos. So I’m going to have you coached me or the listeners out there, but I’m going to use my life as an example and I’d like to see if you’d kind of coached me through how to deal with this deal with this. Okay. When I started my first company, Dj Connection Dot Com, that went on to become the largest wedding dj service in America at that time. Um, my partner and my roommate died in a car accident, like right after I started it. It was like he got killed in a car accident and I felt like that baby, that was a sign that I should not keep going. That was how I initially processed it. What advice would you give for somebody out there who just lost a loved one? A loved one and, uh, a seemingly random accident,

if anything, it should be a wake up call. That life is short. Yeah. When they would want you to go after your dreams.

That’s good for somebody out there. I know there’s somebody out there. I know that I needed to hear that when I was 18, 19. Going through that now. A Z, you know, this, but when my dad, uh, when we found out my dad had lou Gehrig’s disease, we knew he wasn’t dead yet, but we knew things were going to get a lot worse and they weren’t going to, they weren’t going to get better. They’re going to get worse. It was not going to be a good way for somebody out there who’s listening and they found out that somebody in their family or something, there’s some terminal illness or something terrible. They’ve just a medical diagnosis and again, it’s just thrown them off of their optimism. They’re just, they’ve read all these self help books and they were going 90 miles an hour in the right direction and all of a sudden they’re just struggling to cope with the world’s chaos. What, what advice would you have for someone like that?

Well, you know, my grandmother passed away a few months ago and I remember the beginning of the summer when her health kind of suddenly started to decline because she, she got an infection and then all of a sudden she couldn’t walk. And I remember visiting her in the summer and she was, she was in her hospital bed sheet, you know, at the time, she still had her wits about her and she just said, oh, this is stupid, this is stupid. And it almost seemed like, you know, in a second her life changed and she kind of knew that this was it. She knew that this was the end and it just seemed like a. But she had some regrets about things that she didn’t do. So the thing is we never know exactly when that day is coming, when all of a sudden we might never be able to walk again know. And when that comes, you know, what are you going to wish you would’ve done? You know, I think if you get some kind of notice that things were going downhill, this is your chance, you know, like life has given you a deadline. So make the most of it.

My final question I’d have for you and Z, and I’ve been in different industries so you know what I’m talking about, a law will change and all of a sudden it changes everything. Or in the DJ business, uh, Carl, I’m sure you remember napster, Napster came out in 99. I was building this big old DJ company and all of a sudden my competitors were downloading their music for free and I’m buying licensed music and it’s sort of given them like this unfair advantage. There’s talks that it’s going to be just free to download music for free forever and it just threw off the industry or Z, I’m sure in the optometry clinic you’ve had laws that have changed or competitors that have come in there. Karla Starr, what advice would you give to the listeners out there who are just rocked because of the constant change in their industry or something in their industries come in and really disrupted the way things have been for 20 years? What advice would you have for somebody out there?

Well, similar to the way that I said that, you know, one of the reasons that you’ve probably been to festivals that you’ve done a good job of mitigating risk, right? So if this thing changes, you know, you’re not going to lose everything. So I think that the way that you know, you’re starting a company, you have to just accept things will change, you know, don’t put all your eggs in one basket if you only have one client or if your entire income relies on one little thing or in the industry and never changing your. You’re not setting yourself up for the inevitable changes that will come.

And for talking to blockbuster, you should have bought Netflix. Oh, sorry. Hey, by the way, Karla Starr, do you have a family video in your community?

A family video?

Yeah. Do you have one of those? It’s like the world’s last video store. It’s a. it’s filled in the niche where blockbuster left or still do ya. Do you have those Karla Starr?

I do not.

CKarla, what do you call home? Do you live where we’re. We’re in, we’re in America. Deal live.

I live in New York.

Well, if you are ever planning a tourist, a vacation to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I know you are, you’re going to find two family videos. It’s unbelievable how they still succeed. But some people are still renting those dvds. No. Carla, from your perspective, why do you believe that we need to focus on improving the one thing in life that we can control ourselves

because I think that we should direct our energy where it is most useful. That’s where you’re going to get the best return, right? Investing in yourself,

curl and your your book. You talked about confidence. I want to get you going to tap into your wisdom here. From your perspective, where do you believe confidence comes from and why do we have more of it in some situations than than others?

Well, confidence. I would generally generally they have a positive evaluation of our own actions, right? If the ultimate. But I got this, but where do we think that we got this? That’s where it starts getting a little tricky, right? So we learned about whether or not, you know, the cake we made is good or the song we sing on key or not from other people, right? We can’t help but pay attention to what other people say about us or how they’re evaluating us. So essentially we learn how to evaluate ourselves through what other people are doing and what they say about us. I think though, yeah,

I think a lot of people, because they don’t want feedback from a lot of people. I think a lot of times people make very small, um, uh, social circles and there’s been many books written about this, but you know, your network is your net worth, but you know, you go out there and you try to network, you try to expand the circle of people. Say you become the average of your five closest friends financially and you go, I’m going to go meet the millionaire Z. I’m going to go meet the millionaires. Carla, I’m going to go meet the new book agent. I’m going to go get that book deal. And then you get rejected and then you go, you know what, I’m just going to go on facebook and look for a picture of a cloud and I’m going to comment on it and maybe I’ll play a video game online. Could you kind of recoil? So for somebody out there who’s struggling to make new social contacts and to maybe expand their territory, their, their network, what advice would you have for our listeners out there?

So I would say just, you know, little steps one at a time. I think that the best advice that I got for the social situations or just how to expand your network is to, and this sounds silly, but just pretend like everybody you meet is attractive. Why? Think about attractive people, right? You liked them. You want to be their friend. You give them the benefit of the doubt. You learn more about them. Like they’re just, they’re a little more interesting. You know, you find out what’s cool about them and then you focused on that. And you know, this sounds silly, but you know, once you’ve done that, you know, once you treat everybody like that, it’s just amazing how much nicer people are surprisingly. Like you treat people well other night, right? If you’re helpful. I think this is a really important thing. I think a lot of people when they think of networking, it’s like, oh, what can I get from others?

You know, but think about the flip side of that, how would you like it if someone came up to you and said like, oh, so you know, what do you got for me? You know? Right. It’s me, me, me. We’re attracted to people based on what kind of rewards or we get in their presence. Right? Are they nice to us? Are they helpful? So I think it really is just kind of having empathy and being able to put yourself in the other person’s perspective and understand like, you know, they are also, you know, we’re all kind of self interested, but we’re also very sensitive to weather rap people are givers, givers or takers.

How did, how did you go about expanding your social circle and ultimately landing a book agent? What was your, what was your process for getting a book deal? Because there’s so many people that want to be an author, but how did you go about landing a book deal and Atlantic and agent?

Well, my process was I looked at the maybe five people whose careers I wanted to emulate and then I, I just googled them and I looked at what they were doing, you know, not today, but what they were doing five years ago, what they were doing 10 years ago. Right? Who are they writing for? And then I thought that, you know, every, there’s a very specific pattern, like every one of them had built this ladder, you know, they just kind of progressively written for you, no more national audiences, longer articles on their website, look nicer and nicer. And I realized, you know, if you just compare yourself to where other people are right now, you’re going to get very frustrated and you’re going to think it’s not worth it. But if you just kind of look at what, what’s the next step I can get, what’s the next step I can take to move up? You know, just keep doing that. Little by little it pays off.

So you deconstructed the success of people who were, uh, where you wanted to be, and then just broke it down into bite size little chunks. Is that what I’m hearing? Exactly. Do you remember one of your first big chunks or the first things where you go, Whoa, they’re doing this and I definitely am not. I need to get on it.

Well, I think one of the first things was I was talking to somebody at a party who had been published in a publication that I really wanted to get into and she said, you know, it took about. I had to throw them about 10 story ideas before they got one, and that was one. A little light bulb went off and I thought, oh, oh. So you know, if they say no to one, that doesn’t mean like you’re never going to write for this publication ever. It just means that like, oh, they did like this one idea. Right? So you gotta keep pushing. Again, it’s that we never see other people’s failures. We never see the rejections. So this happens all the time.

Curl your mindset. I wouldn’t, I don’t know if you would describe yourself as happy go lucky, but it appears to me is you have kind of a happy go lucky worldview and in your book you talk about this a little bit about having that. Is it a learned behavior behavior for you to have a happy go lucky worldview or or have you always had that?

I think for the most part it had that there had been a few times in my life where something really bad happened and I kind of had to shake myself out of it for a little bit, but absolutely. I think it’s definitely a learned behavior and I think a lot of it starts with attention, right? So it’s what are you paying attention to? Are you paying attention to the good things around you or paying attention to the bad things around you? And it sounds really cheesy, but you know, there’s so, so many studies showing how this is true and there’s so many studies showing this, for example, is why people who are instructed to keep gratitude journal and write down the five things, the data to thankful for this. Actually as a really lasting impact on people’s happiness because it essentially retrains your brain to focus on the rewards and the good things around you and that makes you happy.

There’s somebody out there that is a Z. we’ll call it a upset go non happy, lucky, upset, go non lucky. There’s somebody out there who is a. This freaking doesn’t work. I think I know that person. I swear this does not work. Can you help somebody out there, Carla, who is experiencing the self fulfilling prophecy of being an unhappy go, unlucky person?

Absolutely. Just keep a gratitude journal. Um, you know, try, just acting as it right. Just go do something completely different, right? If you think that things are crap and you know, everyone’s kind of try treating people in the opposite way, right? Try being like really nice and really positive. Um, and you know, I started doing that and then, oh my gosh, people were nice. You know, people were reaching out to me, my social network started getting bigger and I had no idea how much, how much I was doing to that. You know how much I was playing a role in that I had been in the center. Still am every single experience in my life, right? Every single second of my life. And I think because we do that, do you think of the scientific method? Right? There’s this experiments may change the variable and then there’s a control group where they don’t change anything. Right? We don’t get that. We don’t. There is no control so we can’t go through our lives and realize how much we’re putting into the situation. So I think unless people make a really big change, they might never know.

Carla, switching gears here just a little bit, we’ll go up to Alaska. We’re going up into the left. We’re going to the north west here, going from New York, hears eat over here to Alaska. That’s a long flight. And I want to ask you this question here, Carla. How Sarah Pailin happened. How did Sarah Pailin happen according to your book?

Well she, you know, she’s an attractive one, right? And like I said before, how do we treat a track? People were a little bit nicer to them. We grade them on a curb and so when that happens, no, I think good looking people can kind of go through life within a larger sense of what they’re capable of and that just kind of cascade the retired people thought like, oh, she’s kind of, she’s being ridiculous. Why on earth is she thinks that she has what it takes to be vice president. But if you think about it from her point of view, it makes perfect sense. Every single thing that she had done in her life, you know, people had been like rooting for her and getting behind her. You know, she was captain of the basketball team in high school. She was runner up Miss Alaska, you know, she was a newscaster. She’s the mayor. Like every single thing she had done. You know, people thought like, yeah, you can do this. You got this, so why not?

You’re something else when you see someone attractive

right away I think you use

no. What your, what are you trying to get the digits. You know what I mean? You try to get their, their digits know, like, Hey, what’s up? Is that a Mocha latte because you’re looking good. Started to. Oh, I love that though. That is a great line. Treat everybody as if they’re the one, right? The golden goose, or was a, there was a, a commercial fedex did years ago. I loved, and somebody was shipping the golden goose. I mean, it’s something very, very, very, very valuable. You remember this, you might not. And they lost which box it was in. So they stopped. They stopped the whole plan to. They said, listen, this is up from um, you know, the boss here, a treat every box as if it has the golden goose in it did have a good night. And so the point was, is that everybody looked at every box and said that could have, that probably does have, that, does have the golden goose in it. Treat it very, very carefully. And I love that attitude of treating everybody as if there’s something special before you even know them, you know, give him the benefit of the doubt. And, and that is a very attractive thing. And attracts that kind of energy. Attracts that kind of person who attracts good vibes just to tracks all that you’re talking about. So think that’s a great word for the thrive nation out there. So

curly you, you and your book has so many knowledge bombs here. I want, I want to get into Europe. To the proportion of your book. We were talking about why it’s so hard for many people to be flexible. Why is it so hard for many people to be flexible?

Well, your ass gay woman who has only wanting to be a writer since she was eight when I was eight, I won my third grade science fair project. I did on the difference between boys and girls Brain Graham and I was chosen as the class representative for a writing conference. It was the first grade we’d ever had, you know, some representative for this. So I was the class writer and I won something about, you know, a little psychology project and here I am a little while later and that is my job. Right, right, right. About writing about psychology. So what happened was I just got this idea that like, oh, I’m good at this, this is my thing, you know, this is worth devoting my time and energy and attention to. So over the years I kinda just kept on doing that, kept on devoting more of my resources toward this thing.

Right? I got better at writing, not butter and other stuff, but, you know, I just did all the sense of like, this is, this might have, you know, this is who I am, this is what I was meant to do. But really it’s because that’s what I thought I was supposed to do. So that’s where I’d put all my time and attention. So I think it really is just people, you know, people really get committed and they really get attached to their idea of who they are, what they can do and what they’re supposed to do.

And so there’s somebody out there who’s, let’s say their late twenties, early thirties, and they’re struggling to gain traction with their career. And let’s just, for the sake of this, because you’re an author and they want to be an author and they’re just struggling to get published or struggling to gather an agent to represent him. What, what advice would you have for them?

Just show your work to a lot of people and just get better. Just get better and better and better. And I think I used to think, oh well, you know why it’s not just skill, it’s networking, but really it’s kind of everything. You know, I have the one chapter in here find your thing and it’s all about expertise and how like in order to get a gold medal at the Olympics, it’s not like one thing has to go, right. You know, like Oh, they just happen to get to the finish line, like a one slash 100th of a second before the other person if the every single thing has to go. Right, right. They have to fall in love with the sport further. James, when they’re young enough to be able to develop that skill just in time to reach their physiological peak. Right as the Olympics are going on, right, like every single thing has to line up. So I think for anything I’m like, really, it’s just kinda like maybe have a little compassion, you know, realized that in order to get traction it’s not that one thing has to go, right, is that all those things apply it up.

Chapter two of your book is called the Charlie brewer principle. How that warm fuzzy feeling leads to look. What do you mean by this?

So what are the really cool things that I learned when I was doing all the research was that, you know, our brain, there are all these different networks going on in our brain at the same time, right? There’s a tension there is our action, there’s what, what we’re thinking, our emotions and we’re feeling, um, and all of these things kind of interact with each other. So we get the feeling we don’t really know where it’s coming from, but we’re like, hey, we got this hunch and we’re like, we’re completely sure that it’s right. But really it could just be some. Maybe that guy looks like, you know, a really good friend of yours from elementary school, we don’t know, but what did we end up doing? So many times? We just kind of end up acting on our hunches as though their gospel. Right? And so that’s, that’s true. The back. And then we ended up choosing a thing and then boom, we’re right. Who knows what came first, right? It’s the feeling, but we don’t really know where that comes from. But then, you know, the more we do something, the more it seems. Right? Right. So like, I got this feeling about writing, you know, and then I just kept doing that. And then, you know, that’s just conflict. The right thing to do.

Oh, you curl it. You are a person who is, uh, your, your career. For the listeners out there who aren’t aware of this, your book again has been endorsed by, by chip chippy’s, who’s a big. The stick is a book that I love. He’s a best author, a Chip Heath Ledger book. Gretchen Rubin bestselling author loves your book. You’ve been signed it to your book, was published by Penguin portfolio. Uh, you’re, you’re, you’re a rising star and a lot of things are going well for you and I think a lot of listeners out there and go, Gosh, she is where I want to be. Someone I’d like to ask all of our, all of our guests, uh, this question, how do you typically organize the first four hours of your day?

Well, the first thing I do when I wake up is I work out and I’m a big believer in physical health, just being the base for everything because I used to think that’s just a waste of time, but honestly I just, I have so much more energy when I prioritize my physical health. I just don’t understand why I wouldn’t do that now. So it’s definitely a wake up. I hit the gym and then I come home, then I have breakfast. Um, and then I, I plan out all of my to do’s for that day that that’s what I do. What time are you waking up at? Seven 30.

So 7:30 wake up. And what would you have a, a, a healthy breakfast you eat everyday? Do you have. It’s kind of a routine for that or what? What do you like to eat for breakfast?

Egg Whites and other kind of toast,

egg whites and all baccato toast. That’s your move.

Yup. That’s my go to

now. What else? Because you’re achieving success in a lot of people. Statistically there’s a, you know, very few people that I think I think everybody can get to where you are, but very few people do as a, as a percentage of the whole. So I would like to ask you this, I mean, what, what is something that you do on a daily basis that you feel like allows you to achieve success that, that, you know, most people choose not to do or just don’t know to do?

Honestly, I think I should just keep going. You know, I mean, I know so many people who are better writers than I am so much smarter than I am, but you know, they just got sidetracked by other things, you know, like 10 years ago, you know, they got a really good job offer at this advertising agency, you know, and they just kind of like, you know, what I’m going to take the money and honestly like if we’d trade places and they had come out with the book, third book will be so much better than mine, but I just stuck with it, stuck with it. Yeah. I just kept going. I just kept going through the rejection and trying to get better and, you know, writing a lot of different things. Um, and I just, I just didn’t give up

curl. Dr Z has a tough question for you, Eric. Eric trump does to. Eric loves, interrogate all of our guests. Do I have one more question? I’d like to ask you a Carlos Star. You’ve just, you have a book that’s doing well and you’re having success as an author. You’ve been wanting to do this since you were eight years old. What can we expect to see from you in the next 12, 18 months? What does it look like?

Oh, very well. I’m going to be doing some more speaking and consulting and I am working on a project with a potential collaborator. It’s going pretty well.

Okay. So it’s a uh, we, we cannot mention the specifics, but we can be, we just do a Google search for Karla Starr. We can kind of follow you in and we’re in the next 18 months. You have a lot of exciting things happen.

Absolutely. I’m going to start a video series on my website, but I’m very excited about.

Nice. Yeah. Are you amped? Are you pumped up?

I am so pumped up. I just got my lighting fixtures today, so yeah, it’s happening.

Okay. Dr Jay, Dr Jay. Tough question from you and we have enough time for a tough question for Mr. Eric Chop back to you sir.

The Karla, if you could go back in time and talk to a younger version of yourself that maybe your seven year old self. No, I have to be a rather. If you could go back and and now that you’ve lived the life you’ve lived, if you could go back say 10, 15, 20 years and, and sit down with yourself and talk to yourself, what advice would you give yourself?

I would say keep in touch with everybody and what does that look like? Keep in touch. Like I think I’ve met so many amazing, interesting people in my life and then we just kind of like, you know, fall out of touch shirt and you know, I think the people who keep in touch, it’s just like imagine if like your social circle as we were saying, like people who want to expand their social circle don’t. Probably the easiest way to do that is to keep in touch with the people you’ve already met.

That’s a good word. Yeah. That is a good word to be purposeful in that because a lot of times we’re busy writer but he’s busy and so you can’t drop a note, which is easy to do an email or text. How you doing good work. Well there you go.

Just, you know, so little. Then that email like, you know, couple times a year and then you know, who knows where they’re going to be,

right? Yeah. And what door that can open for you or you or you can open for them, which in turn lets them open one for you down the road. So that’s a good word.

A bunch of door opening.

A lot of doors being opened. A lot of different. Yeah. Why not? Well, Hey Karla Starr, Eric here. I had A. I’m going to one up. Everybody with a two part goes. Here we go by the job. I wanted to ask you where, where do you think that

ability that you were talking about to keep going, what do you think that came from? Were you born with it? Were you taught that mindset? Is it a combination? What do you think that came from for you?

I’m just stubborn, honestly. I’m kind of stubborn, but I’ve also been a little adaptable. Right? So when I was in my early twenties, I thought that the way to be a quote unquote writer was to write fiction. So I wrote to really bad novels. Um, you know, I tried, tried editing them and then I thought, you know, what, I want to be a writer, but maybe I could write about something else. So I just started reading about other subjects, actually started out as a music critic and I started out the book critic and then I started writing about technology and then I, you know, eventually I started realizing like, oh, hey, I studied psychology in college, why don’t I write about that thing that I happen to know a lot about. I think that’s, that’s been really helpful, right? So it’s kind of like stubbornness and keep going, but also like just kind of finding new ways around within that being adaptable,

very good that, that. So you kind of knew what you wanted and just no matter what, you’re going to keep finding that path. That got you there. Now my second part of the question is we work with a ton of business owners. We have a lot of business owners and managers that listened to the show. Is there one piece of advice as far as, uh, that they can implement with their team? Maybe they could give to their team members to try and help them build up their ability to overcome obstacles and kind of break through walls.

Yeah. I think, um, you know, like, you know, you’re saying in the beginning like, oh, Las Vegas, you know, like, what’s the one key to getting lucky? Honestly, you think the one key to getting lucky, faith is the Bible of lottery tickets, right? Just kind of diversify. And I think that people don’t do that a lot. I have no idea why. But the thing is when you diversify, then you might start getting a little bit of traction in one area and so, you know, instead of just kind of over coming obstacles, um, you know, just thinking about like maybe there’s a path where there aren’t any obstacles. Maybe you should go that way.

Karla, there’s somebody out there who’s saying, I’m going to do a google search right now. I’m on the fence. I might see. I might be willing, willing to spend the $20 that I would normally spend on random carbonated beverages. I’m thinking about contemplating with 20 hard earned dollars of my us. I might have US dollars or $4,080, you know, 30, 30 Canadian dollars. Carl, why? Why should everybody, why do you ready? You’ve worked so hard on this. You poured your heart into this. Why should everybody pick up a copy of your book? Can you learn to be

lucky? Well, I can honestly say that doing the research for this and readiness like every single area in my life has improved like every single area of my life. And the hilarious thing is I have actually been referring to the last two chapters this year. Um, and it’s been helping me, like I’m thinking I’ve taken my own advice and things are going well.

Nice. Nice. Yeah, a lot of people don’t do that. So the last two chapters of your book that’s kind of a, the t is for listeners out there, the last two chapters, you’ve been referring to those yourself throughout the year and it’s helped you.

Absolutely. And it’s actually really weird because there been a couple of times, the last few months we’re going to have to come in at a crossroad and I had to make a decision and then I just kind of flipped through my own book and it was like, oh, okay. I answered that. I’ve a couple of years ago and there it isn’t black and white, so I got to take my own advice. So I did. And it’s going well.

Carl, I appreciate you so much for, uh, for being on the show. Do you have any one last word of wisdom or encouragement or any advice you want to give for all of our listeners before we wrap up today’s interview?

What life is like? Lotto, you’ve got to be in it to win it.

There we go. Bam. Bam. She was ready for it. Excuse. Well Karla Starr, the thrive time show, we’d like to end every show with the phrase boom. Which around here stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. So, uh, are you prepared to bring us a boom from New York? Oh yeah. Chuck, are you ready? I’m ready, man. Zero. You read it from the other side of the studio. Absolutely. There we go. Great.