Insight with Chris Van Vliet - Don't Keep Your Day Job - Cathy Heller On Turning Your Passion Into Profit

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

Cathy Heller (@cathy.heller) is a bestselling author, business coach and host of the podcast called "Don't Keep Your Day Job". She joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about how to turn your passion into a full time job, what she learned from interviewing people like Matthew McConaughey and Tony Robbins, how to overcome imposter syndrome and much more! Create a beautiful website for your podcast is just 5 minutes: https://www.podpage.com/?via=cvv If you enjoyed this episode, could I ask you to please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcast/iTunes? It takes less than a minute and makes a huge difference in helping to spread the word about the show and also to convince some hard-to-get guests. For more information about Chris and INSIGHT go to: https://podcast.chrisvanvliet.com Follow CVV on social media:  Instagram: instagram.com/ChrisVanVliet Twitter: twitter.com/ChrisVanVliet Facebook: facebook.com/ChrisVanVliet YouTube: youtube.com/ChrisVanVliet TikTok: tiktok.com/@Chris.VanVliet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All systems are good. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Van. It is awfully good to see you, my friends. Welcome back to another audio adventure here on Insight. I am CBV Chris Fanfleet, and we've all heard that quote, Do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life. And, well, I think that's true. I also think that's one of those things that's so much easier said than done.

That's why I love this conversation today with Kathy Heller. She has an insanely popular podcast called Don't Keep Your Day Job. She also wrote a bestselling book with that same name. And she's all about helping people turn their passions into profit. And she knows this isn't something that you can do overnight, but she can help you work towards this. And there's going to be so many nuggets in here that you'll be able to take and apply to your actual life. Give her a follow on Instagram.

She's at cathy. If you're not following me already, I'm at Chris Van Fleet on Instagram and TikTok and Twitter and Facebook, all of them, all of them. And when you're done with this episode, go subscribe to our podcast and check out some of her interviews with people like Rob Lowe, Matthew McConaughey, Tony Robbins, or Deepak Chopra. That's just to name a few. She's interviewed so many amazing people. But here we go.

It's my conversation with Kathy Heller. Kathy, thank you so much for jumping on with us today. I love your energy. I told you before we hit record that you're just radiant. You're just kind and handsome and cool. And I'm not surprised that you just have this very successful, yummy life because I think people just like you and want to be around you. You are far too kind, but I am simply a mirror of which you are. And what you're putting out to me, I'm simply just giving back to you. So you bring this amazing energy. And I know that everybody listening to this is going to get so. much out of this conversation. And I want to start with, I want to start with the title of your podcast, which is also the title of your book, Don't Keep Your Day Job. And I think there's so many people listening to this that are going, that sounds amazing. I would love to have a job that I enjoy going to every day. But it pays the bills and it has a good 401k. And where does the journey

begin for someone to actually live in their purpose and live in their passion? Yes. It's such a great question, isn't it? I mean, gosh, I once heard years ago my rabbi say that the opposite of depression is not happiness, but in fact, it's purpose, it's meaning. And this woman, Emily Esfahani Smith, who is on my podcast, she did a TED talk and it was called Why Happiness is Overrated. And it was all about how she went to Harvard and she did this research project where she studied thousands and thousands of people and ask them about the most wonderful, happiest moments of their life. And it turned out that it wasn't the moment that they were, you know, on a Ferris wheel or in Disney World or buying something from Cartier. It was moments of tremendous meaning and purpose. And so that is the

question what you asked, right? Because the reason I started a show called Don't Keep Your Day Job is because I believe that if you're here, you're needed. I believe that it's kind of like a puzzle. And we're each a piece. And if we don't do our assignment, then there's a piece missing. And if you've ever done a puzzle, and I have three little girls, five, eight and ten, and we do puzzles every so often. And even if there's one piece missing, just one, it just feels so just not whole. Of course, it's not complete. It doesn't feel good, right? Even if it's a side piece or a corner piece or whatever. And I think that on some level, each of us has always known that. I think that on some level, each of us has a part of us that knows that we are sort of walking around in this dream state.

And it's not quite, it's not quite all that's here. And so the more that I went on my own journey with meditation and studying Kabbalah and mysticism, and I found that if we widen the aperture, we can actually see through a greater lens. And there is so much more that's available to us, where we can kind of be in that state of alignment where we're just Stevie Wonder, as amazing and epic as he is, right, using him as an example. We were just listening to him on our drive home from a road trip the other day. Okay.

I said to my husband, as in as extraordinary as he is, it's it's no effort because this is who he was meant to be you think about it we were on the may river in south carolina last week and we were swimming with dolphins and they are just so stunning like it is refinement to the hilt it is just there's no rolls royce that comes close to what it is to witness dolphins swimming in pristine water on the shores of South Carolina. They're just stunning. And again, I turned my husband and said, it's so simple for them. They're just doing what they were designed to do. And so I think that the dance of being here is really coming out of the trance of the ego. And the ego likes to tell us

stories about what's possible and what's not because it sees the world in this three-dimensional way. when everything, right, science and string theory and quantum physics and Einstein, everything that we now know about an atom even is that an atom is 1% particle and 99% its vibration. So we are now very clear that there are so many dimensions that we don't see with our eyes. But yet we forget that every second. And so when I had Deepak Chopper on the show recently, he said the greatest reason for sadness is a misunderstanding of who we are. And he said, the only thing that is true is that which never changes.

So when people identify with the ego and they say, well, I am Chris or I am Kathy and well, tell me about who you are. Oh, well, I have this quality, but I don't have this one. And I have freckles and I'm this tall and I have this much money. And we start defining ourselves. Well, those things have always been changing. Right. When I was eight, I dressed differently and like different food.

And when I was 20, I had different friends and like different music and my hair. my hairstyle was different. It's like the only thing that hasn't changed is the I am, right? That soul, that consciousness, that spark of life force when I was conceived. And it's not changeable because it's the note I was designed to play, right? Every human has a different fingerprint. And there's no scientific evolutionary need for that. And yet we have it. Why? Because we each, even if you have a sibling who grew up in the same home, they're different than you, aren't they? They have a different perspective. So we each add a slightly different yet very important perspective. It's kind of like if God was the sun, we're each rays of that sun. And then the way that we see light kind of flow

through a prism and it kind of has different shades and colors and tones. It's like we each, you might be teal, but you're not quite blue, but you're not quite light blue, but you're not played burnt sienna it's like we each have a note to play and so i think on some level it's so satisfying when you ask that question because we've known this like all of the things that i'm saying right now on some level a part of you goes yes that's that's for sure feels true all of that feels like the most familiar unfamiliar place that i've always known when i hit my head on the pillow and i'm thirsty to reach it so i thought to myself this show should be called don't keep your day job because because it's not about having a job.

It's about doing your life's work. And so what is that about and what does that mean? And I think we all have this incredible amount of purpose and potential, but we stop ourselves with these two lies. I'm not enough and it's not possible. And if Elon Musk were to think it's not possible and I'm not enough, we wouldn't be going to space, right? if John F. Kennedy thought I'm not enough and it's not possibly, wouldn't have landed a man on the moon.

Like, we're not supposed to make decisions from what we see with our eyes, but we make decisions from your imagination, right? That place of inspiration. And so I often say to people, if you want to do just that, you want to wake up every day to a sense of purpose, make a list of five things that would feel so fun. If you secretly could just do whatever, you didn't have to be responsible for how and they'll make a list just like that they'll say oh i'd love to be a travel writer oh i'd love to open a bed and breakfast in the south of france i'm like oh look at that look how fast that came right yeah and then i'll say now circle the one that when you think of it it just gives you goosebumps let's just start there and then they can guess what they usually can circle one and i say okay now

what if we just allowed ourselves to just build that what's stopping us from building that And then we sort of talk about the real how, which is in the world in the world of mysticism, the word Kabbalah comes from the Hebrew word La Cabal. And that word means to receive. And so my rabbi, David Aaron, said to me years ago that people talk about the law of attraction and the way that a Kabbalist would say it is the law of reception, meaning it's all, already done. This whole beautiful field of potential. It already exists. It's already done. It's just about tuning your receiver. So what does that mean? It's like if I had a radio sitting next to me and I tuned it

one degree to the right, I could hear hip hop, but if I keep tuning it just a slightly, you know, slightly more to the left, I would hear a sports broadcast, you know, talk show. Like, and that's literally happening right now as you and I sit here. Those, frequencies are all around me. I just have to sort of tune in. And the truth is, all of these things that we can feel that we can build, it's all here, right? It's here for us to start to resonate with. And then there is a little piece that has to do with the strategy, the concrete, right? We did say an atom is 1% particle and the rest of it is vibration. So the vibration counts for a lot. But then there is this juicy fun part we can geek out about on what are those concrete strategic steps to take?

Because it is an integral part. It's just a smaller part, but it is integral to creating this whole thing. I'm just so fascinated by the idea that when we're growing up, we're all asked the question, what do you want to be when you grow up? And then we grow up, or we get a little bit older, and then we get defined by a different question, which is, oh, what do you do for a living? You're defined by this job that for a lot of people, they don't even enjoy doing. And I think that a lot of people wish they could have a job that they were excited to go to every day. And I think that that's certainly now more possible than ever.

What do you think of like three things that we can do right now to start to step into that and start to step towards doing a job that you actually are passionate about? Yeah, I mean, that's so interesting because, again, it's so fast. fascinating the what do you do versus what do you want to be? Yeah. Right. And I'm going to go back to say this that when we just talked before about the way the universe is, right, the model and the structure of how all of this works.

And you said it right when we came on, oh, I'm just a mirror of you. Right. But it's the frequency of things that carries information, right? If I were to text something, it doesn't get to you unless there's Wi-Fi. If I want to call someone but I have no cell signal, it doesn't work. When Matthew McConaughey was on my show, I remember him telling me how he began. And he tells me the story of how he was going to law school. And he just did not want to do this.

And he calls his dad, he's like Texan, strong. masculine dad and says, I didn't know how to tell you this, but I don't want to be in school. I want to be an actor. And he waits for this like, you know, thunder. And his dad said, well, don't half ass it. And so he gets off the phone and he's so liberated. He's out. He's done. He said his truth. And he says to his friend, let's go celebrate because I feel so authentically myself right now. And it's the best feeling ever. And I'm done with law school. And I'm out and they go to the top of the Hyatt hotel to get some drinks and they're sitting at the bar. And he is radiant.

He is fully magnetic. And this guy at the end of the bar comes over and says to him, are you an actor? And he says, yep. And he says, I'm in town producing a movie and I need an extra. You're a handsome guy. Would you come down tomorrow and be an extra in this movie? And he says, hell yes. And he decides to go early because he's never been on a movie set before.

And he's checking it out. And the director walks over and says, are you that extra that we brought in for the day? And he goes, yep. And he goes, you've got great energy. Could you put a mic on? Can I mic you up? And he says, yes. Hell yes.

He's like, great. I'm going to put you in this car. I'm going to put a mic on you. You see that girl, would you ever ask her out? And he says, absolutely. He goes, great. That's all you're going to do. I'm going to say action.

You're going to pull up in this car to this spot and you're going to ask her out. And he goes, got it. Never been on a movie set before. Puts him in the car. Mike's on. Looks around. And he thinks to himself, who the hell is this character? And he's like, Kath, I didn't know anything.

So I thought, well, this guy, he's about three things. He's about hot women, hot cars, and good weed. He goes, so they call action. I drive up, roll down the window, and I think he's got three of these things. All right, all right, all right. Comes out of the car and the director goes, can you hang out this week? Can you stay here? He goes, yeah.

No one gets that he wasn't supposed to be in this movie. Like, this movie Days and Confused, like this is his big break. Great. Sure. Everyone remembers him from this movie. Be cooler if you did. Cooler if you did. I mean, it was a fade of complete that wasn't supposed to happen at all.

Yeah. But it's in the energy of showing up at the bar and you are it. Because here's the deal. I used to be a songwriter full time. I used to write music for TV shows like Pretty Little Liars and Grey's Anatomy for 10 years. I was a songwriter living in L.A. writing music for TV shows and films and ads. And before we would go to the hotel cafe and we would get on stage and perform, we would tune the instruments.

And how do you do it? You tune to each other. So the guitarist, you know, plays a C note and we all tune up. Well, here's what's fascinating. If you took two guitars and you put them on a table next to each other and I pluck a G string on this guitar, the guitar two feet away, the G string vibrates. that's residence. If I take this guitar and I pluck an A string, the A string on this guitar moves because we live in a field of residence. So when you listen to Oprah talk and she says,

thoughts become things, I read the color purple, read this book and I was like, I will be in this, this will be made into a movie, I will be in this book, I will be in this movie. It is my story.

It's done. It's done. And of course, she gets this part. It doesn't make any sense that she gets it because all these Academy Award winners have to audition for this part

and she was not Oprah as we know her. And after this movie is out in the world, she gets her own show. It's like a once in a lifetime level of a show. Thoughts become things. It's a resonance. So the first thing we have to know is that's the heavy lifting. The heavy lifting is the difference between Jay-Z

and the kid next door is that Jay-Z is going, claiming it, here for it, raising my hands. for it, let's go. And that's most of the story, right? That's 99%. Then the next thing is taking that inspired action, right? So often the ego is so hung up on the ROI. Well, what if it doesn't work out? It's like, just get the momentum going. So I say, it's like, what are five things that you could do today to just move into action. It's like, well, I could put this out on Instagram. Well, I could email. And then I say to people, now, again, when you do this, don't say like I'm trying to start a podcast. Say, I'm doing a podcast. Yes. Right. And from there, it grows. And I'll also

say that relationships, intimacy is currency. And so so much of the momentum that comes in our life comes from being generous with our energy and connecting to other people. And when we raise our hand and we are available and we start to give and we start to pour out and connect and think of that next thing that we could give away. So I'll say it this way. If you want to start a business and I've helped thousands of people at this point, literally after they've listened to the podcast, they've come through progress of mine. And in 12 weeks, we go from ID to income.

So let's break this down a little bit for people who are like, I really want a granular structure. there's three steps, right? You're going to sell it. You're going to scale it, right? And, well, you're going to test it. You're going to sell it. You're going to scale it. So what's the first thing, test it?

The first thing is you need to give a sample of this. So whether you're going to teach a class or you're going to make granola or you're going to have a service where you do organizing or you paint people's cars, the first thing you would do is beta, right? You need a focus group. You need to test it. And so that's easy because you just start saying, well, my sister-in-law might need her car painted in detail or wrapped.

Let me just offer that. See how it goes, right? In exchange for maybe a testimonial or some feedback, right? And everything that's ever been sold, whether it was an iPad or it was Skippy Peanut Butter, they love data, right? We fail forward. We want the feedback. That's the answer key.

We get excited about that. We test things. So the first thing you do, whether you have a job right now that you can't stand, you don't need to quit first. You're going to build the runway. And while you have this job that you don't like, you start to like it because you say, this job right now is the investor for my dream. And after work and on Sundays, I'm going to do these three steps. So I don't need to feel scared because I'm just going to start offering. I'm going to find five people that I can offer this gluten-free cheese cake to and just see, get the feedback.

Cap, I like the crust, but I don't like the consistency of the. These examples are amazing, Kathy. So we test it, right? Great. Once we test it, we can see if we can get it to a place where people like this flavor the cheesecake. And they're satisfied with the rap you did on their car. And now you say, can I sell one of these?

Can I sell one cheesecake? Once you sell now one cheesecake, and by the way, you don't have to get scared about that. There's a price for everything. There's already a market for everything. There's a market for microphones and artwork and knitted dolls and sweatshirts. There's a market. So you can look at the market and say, this is the high end, right? Cardier is $8,000 for one little bangle.

And then you can go to Target and you can buy a bangle for $18. Okay, so where do you want to be? You can start out towards the lower middle if you just want to get some confidence, but there's already a market. You're all good. You're not making it up. But you see if you can sell it one time. Now here's what's really freaking cool.

when you sell one thing to one person and they are satisfied, you're done. And here's how we know. When you leave Target or Starbucks or wherever and they say, could you fill out this survey? Here's what I've learned. They're looking for those nines and tens. Anyone who says a one, two, three, not interested. Because if you're a hot, hot, hot, hot, so satisfied customer, you will be compelled to tell someone else. You will not be able to help it. And here's how we know. We've all heard about

the CDC and Fauci more than we wanted to, right? We went through a pandemic. And it was just so hard. And what is one of the things that we heard over and over? They talked about the virality rate. And they were saying, it can't be over one. And it was like, what's that about? It was like, well, if it's over one, that means it's going to be to the point where hospitals will be crowded and we won't be able to contain it. Mark Zuckerberg, when he was just starting out at Facebook, one of my friends, Britt, she worked there, one of the first employees. And he said to her, oh my God, we just got the data back. Our virality rate is 1.4. And she's like, 1.4. I thought you're going to say 98. What's 1.4? That's not even 2. And he's like, no, no, no, it's so big. It's so big.

It's so big. Oh, my God. It's going to blow up. Why? Why is it so big? Why is 1.4 so big? And he said, because it means that every user has to tell. They're compelled. It's a fate of complete that they tell 1.4 other people. So we don't have to do anything else. We're done. That's so powerful. Think about it.

So if you're a photographer and you satisfy one person to the point where they're like, we have to tell so-and-so, this photographer was just, this is amazing. What an incredible experience. They were so thoughtful. They were so conscientious. They were so collaborative. They were so creative. they were so good with it. Your business is gold, right? So people get overwhelmed.

How am I going to scale a business? It's like, can you satisfy one person with this course or with this cheesecake or with this organizing service by the end of the day? One, but satisfied. You're done that. Right? My podcast, your work, right? It's a tipping point. You get in there, right? So that's really, really exciting. I want people to hear that because we make great the enemy of good. It's like, oh, I need to be. And I also want people to hear this one last thing, which is Seth Godin, who's like such a mentor to me. He shared this with me. He said, would you rather chase the popularity of Taylor Swift or the Grateful Dead? He said, because the Grateful Dead, they didn't have one number one single. They weren't radio. They weren't radio, you know, songs. And most of the people, they didn't

people would say, I'm building this business. I'm building this app. And I have to get millions of users. I have to be vanilla ice cream. I have to be Taylor Swift. I have to be the thing that everyone talks about. But here's what people don't realize. Taylor Swift fans might say, she's so good. I've seen her like twice. I've seen her three times. Grateful Dead fans say, are you joking? I see every show. I've seen them 49 times. I have 65 of their records. I have the B sides. I have the, what? Like that one is obsessed with it and one really likes it. Right. So a lot of times people are shooting for this thing that's like it's going to be vanilla. Everyone will think it's their favorite. Everyone will want it. It's like actually, if you made

gluten-free kosher vegan ice cream and only a small portion of the world loved it, you would very quickly be a phenomenon, right? Because it's the intimacy, it's the depth. You don't have to worry about the width. There's 8 billion people in the world, and there's enough people that if you could find a small little crew in the world, you have no idea how quickly you can scale that. So I hope that some of these thoughts just kind of help to sort of burst some of these

myth bubbles and start to make it a little bit more accessible. Well, I think that for a lot of people, it's like, that sounds great. I'd love to do that, but they like live in this world of like pretty good where they're like, my job pays pretty well. And, you know, I need a place to live and that pays for my rent. And I think that they're scared to step out. But what you're saying here is you don't need to quit your job right now. In fact, keep your day job for now and allow it to fund your side hustle.

until your side hustle becomes your main thing. Exactly. I mean, absolutely. That's what I say to people is there's so much cool stuff that you can start getting going right now over the next 90 days. And by the end of 90 days, you've got like some traction. And now you can literally sit down and do the math and say, well, I have this many people taking my yoga class.

So how many more yoga classes of 15 people apiece would I need to be able to quit my job? Right. I worked with this woman. She was an actor and she decided, I don't want to wait tables anymore. And I want to be able to use my craft. And she decided I'd love to teach acting classes while I'm working on my acting career because I don't want to be waiting tables. And we did the math.

And I said, well, if you had one class that was $50 with 15 people, right? That's $750 a week for an hour. So if you did two classes of 15 people at 7.50 a week, that's 1,500. By the end of the month, you're teaching two hours a week, two classes of 15, that's $6,500 a month. She goes, that's four times what I'm making right now, waiting tables, and I hate it. So she did. And she quit her job, and then she had all this more space, and then her acting career took off because she was just in a totally different frame of mind.

So I would say use what you have, and what people do is they say, well, I have no time. And the truth is that we know for certain that everyone's spending at least several hours a day on their phone. We also all have the same amount of hours in a day. Right. But like everyone's on the freaking phone for hours now. So there's no excuse. Like you do have hours. The real thing is there was a study done at Harvard where they looked at what actually makes people productive.

And it wasn't more time. and it wasn't more sleep and it wasn't more money. It was energy in terms of that feeling. When you feel bold, when you just come from somebody you love, there was a funeral and it kind of wakes you up or you just went to see Hamilton on Broadway and for a night you just feel riveted,

you'll get more done in 11 minutes than you would if you're not feeling energized. Like, what happens is every single day we wake up and within like four minutes, we think what we thought yesterday and we feel the way we felt yesterday. And that lulls our brain to sleep. And what we've learned from studying the brain is that every thought is not contained inside the brain. It's actually felt by every cell.

And so when you think something that's kind of like giving you that self-doubt or that feeling of hypervigilance about worrying and fear and scarcity, it actually leaks cortisol into your body. And then we've learned now that cortisol is more addictive than nicotine or sugar. So we're literally addicted on a cellular level to feeling like garbage. And then four o'clock comes around and you realize, oh, that's why I'm so tired because I'm feeling literally, not metaphorically, I'm feeling bad all day long. Now, when you have an expansive thought, your brain actually leaks dopamine and oxytocin. And what's really interesting is that when Dan Boutner was on my show, he explained to me and he discovered these things called the

Blue Zones, which is just amazing. He used to work for National Geographic. And he discovered there were five places in the world where there were the most amount of people in their hundreds. And they weren't all in the same hemisphere. They weren't all in the same religious beliefs. They weren't all in the same anything. And he's like, if they're not in the same climate and they're not the same religion and they're not the same race, they're not, why are they all? But like, specific, one of them is not too far from you. It's in Loma Linda, California. And one of them is in Okinawa, Japan. I mean, these are two very different places. So what is it about them? And what he found is that there's less cortisol and cortisol is responsible for inflammation and inflammation

causes all disease and what's stopping the cortisol is that all of these five places there's a meditative practice every day which means that the mind has the only pharmaceuticals we need and if we are just sucking in like an exhaust fume all this cortisol all the time it creates inflammation and it literally makes us sick. But we can be the driver of that if we have these more elevated, expansive, fun feelings and thoughts. And then what happens is we have more energy

and then what happens is we start to take more action and then it feels so good because we see how the momentum starts and feel so exciting and we do it again, we do it again and we do it again. I want to talk about your podcast because it's so impressive of what you've built with it.

And look, I always say the best thing about podcasting is anyone can do it. And also the worst thing about podcasting is anyone can do it, like the vary of entry is so low. But there's a big difference between just having a podcast that, you know, six people listen to and having a podcast that's been as successful as your podcast. And I know it didn't happen overnight, but what were kind of some of the steps that led you to where you're at now? I love podcasting so much. And, um, me too. Yeah, it's so fun. And, you know, there's a line in the Talmud that says that words from the heart

enter the heart immediately. And I think that we are so highly refined that we can hear when something is just coming from a genuine place. And I think that people crave intimacy. And what's fascinating about podcasting and why I think everyone should really consider a podcast is intimacy really is velocity. And what they've now seen is like advertisers notice that the old ways of advertising were like in the middle of your Thursday night watching friends or the office, they put up like a Colgate commercial. Well, that model doesn't work anymore. Nobody's really watching through the ads. And we see that when somebody needs,

has connection with someone. If Adam Crollor or Joe Rogan shows up, and every episode, those people are listening, like, this is my man, this is my dude, this is my girl, I listen every episode. And then he says or she says or I say, hey, you know, Casper Mattress or away or whatever, they see that like they get tons of sales, right? Because that person trust this person. The intimacy is unbelievable with podcasting. With YouTube, if you can keep someone's attention for four or five minutes. It's like a Herculean, you know, thing. Right. The podcast, people are self-selecting that they want to take you on the journey to the gym. They want to listen the whole time. They're on the treadmill. They want to listen on their

commute the whole time. Yeah, it's very habitual. Yeah, it's built into your day. It like becomes a part of you. So it's such a beautiful thing to be thinking about, you know, creating. And it's such an incredible thing for your business because when people know and like and trust you, then whatever you have going on, if you're selling an event or you have merch or you are going to do some kind of another piece of content, you want people to come and watch it. They have this connection to you. So they're in, right? So when I started, I always tell people, if you're going to start a podcast, you want to like batch record maybe 10 episodes so that when you start, let's say you decide I'm going to start first week of September. You don't have to

scramble. You've already recorded 10 episodes. And now you can start putting those out once. How many would you release at the start? I would just do one a week. And what I would do before I release that one a week is for a few weeks before, I would just put up a trailer, like a three-minute trailer. And hey, I'm so excited. This show is coming out. Subscribe. Get excited. And I would start the conversation. And one thing I think that's really important is when you do a podcast, remember your audience is who you're doing it for. So I would bring them into the podcast by thinking, I'm their ambassador. So if I'm recording an episode, I'm always thinking, what is their greatest pain point? That's what I'm speaking to versus just kind of having to

generate every time a new topic. It's like, no, this particular audience, this is their pain point. And quite often, your audience is you. So it's like you before you had this breakthrough, you before you got healthier, you before you got a better relationship together, right? Mark Merritt, like, or I was going to say Mark Manson, you know, he was talking to himself for a while. Like these are the things he needed to know about dating when he didn't know. And then he figured it out. So Gretchen Rubin, her whole thing with happiness, it's like she was a self-identified, like, I'm not happy. And all of a sudden, she went on a journey. So now it's not look at me. It's come with me. This is what I figured out that we both, right? So my show was all about finding purpose because that was the

road that I wanted. Right. When I moved out to L.A. at 23, I was like, I want to be able to get paid to use my gifts and I could identify with people who were in that same place. And I'll just say really quickly for people who don't know because I think it's helpful and relevant. When I moved to L.A., I wanted a record deal. And my songs were okay. They weren't amazing. And I wrote better songs and better songs. And eventually, I actually got a record deal with Interscope. And I got signed to Ron Fair. And I was sitting with Lady Gaga. And she was recording paparazzi. And I was like, I can't believe I'm here. and then I got dropped.

And when I got dropped, that's where everybody was like, I told you, you have to grow up, be realistic. Like, now you put that away. Right. Like, get a real, like put it away. Like, you're a bright girl. Don't be starving. Just you tried it.

It didn't work. So I got a bunch of day jobs and I worked in a casting office and I worked in an interior design firm. And then my friend said to me, if you really want to make money and you're not going to do what you love, you should work in real estate. I was like, so I worked in. That's such an L.A. thing to say. Yeah. So I worked for this guy in Brentwood selling commercial real estate and I drove my little CLK Mercedes and he's like, you're so great with people and look how easy it is for you to sell this

stuff. And I'm just like, yeah, until one day I was looking at myself in the doors of the elevator. And I just started to cry because I was like, I don't even recognize myself. Why am I wearing this pantsuit and high heels? And I don't want to do any of this. And so I quit my job, which I now don't recommend because success leaves clues and I now know like I wouldn't have had to put myself under all that stress. I could have done it differently with that money I was making. But I quit my job and I wound of asking a question, which is, is it all or nothing? Is it Beyonce or bust? And about a week later, I was reading an article about people who were licensing their music to TV shows like like we mentioned before like Grey's Anatomy. And I thought, I've never thought that thought before. Like, what if I cold called

and emailed and started making relationships of people who were choosing music for ABC and Paramount and you know, Coca-Cola. And I did. And I made relationships and I started a business and I started writing music and I started making a few hundred thousand dollars a year. And then from there, one day, I was featured in Billboard magazine and it was a full page story.

And all the other songwriters were like, how have you started making all this money? And my husband's friend said, you should teach other songwriters. And I was like, I would never do that. Like, I'm an artist. And one day, I want to be on stage again. Anyway, more and more artists started asking.

And so one day I decided to teach in my living room just to 10 people. And they each paid like $300 for five hours. It was so fun. I was like, wow, I just made $3,000 just to share this. And they wanted more. You know, they want it. For everything you do, there'll be a line of people who want to know how you do what you do. Yes. So then I was like, oh, and then a friend said, I don't live near you and I want to learn

how you license music to film a TV. Would you do something online? And I was like, online. That sounded so sleazy and marketing. And I was like, I don't do online stuff. Anyway, I decided I would do a webinar, but with no slides, because I didn't know how to do them. And I wasn't a marketer. And I just was straight to camera. Here's what I've learned. I've written music for all these things. I'd love to show you how. No script, no curriculum, just let's hang out. You can pick a. my brain, let's do this. Yeah. And at the end of the webinar, I said it was like a thousand dollars to take this class. This is six years ago. And 147 people bought it. I made $147,000 in a night. And I was like, that's amazing. And then the class went well. And a bunch of people got songs and

ads. This one guy, John was like, I just got a song in a Starbucks ad. It was $52,000. He was crying, a grown man crying. And I was like, great, amazing. So it got a really good reputation. I did it again. I charged 2000. And then this woman in the class said, you should start a podcast. And I was like, but I don't want to do a podcast

about the music business. And she's like, well, what do you want to do it about? Like, I don't know. And I decided to record this podcast called Don't Keep Your Day Job because that's what I did. And that was the audience I related to. There's all these people who came to L.A.

who were like, I don't get it. So you're now writing me because for 10 years after I quit my real estate job, I was making about $400,000 a year. paying a mortgage, having children in LA from writing music for Disney movies, writing music for Target commercials. And it was so fun. And people were like, you can do that. I was like, yeah, it's not Steven Spielberg or nothing. So I start the podcast and then the podcast blew up. And it's led me to, you know, sit with Deepak Chopra and Tony Robbins and Matthew McConaughey, we talked about before. It just been, you know, now we have like over 30 million downloads and we just

sign this big network deal. And it's just incredible because I started a show in my closet. And again, all of these things that I just said that I did from licensing music and starting a business or teaching other artists or starting a podcast, I was literally just willing to say, let's try this. Right? Instead of talking about it, just do. Yes, I always say, just start. Like so many people have so many excuses as to why they don't. You just got to start. Like, take the first step. And then the second one becomes that much easier. Well, what I often say is like fear is so boring. It's so boring.

Like, of course you're going to be scared. When I was first cold calling all these different networks and talking to them at my music, I was so uncomfortable. But I remember I used to think to myself like, so am I willing to let being uncomfortable stand in the way? Or can I tolerate being uncomfortable? It's like, no, no, no, I can tolerate it. And again, what? we really crave on a soul level is growth and expansion. So greatness and comfort don't go together.

It's not like anyone's eating a chocolate cake on a treadmill. No. And then the reason it does, right? And it's like the reason you actually feel satisfaction, it's not because you have the million dollars in your checking account. The satisfaction you feel is because you push beyond what it scared you. You went beyond your comfort zone. And then on a soul level, you're just like bouncing down the street. Like, I remember after giving birth to my first daughter and going through labor, the way I felt, you couldn't take it away from me. It was like, I can't believe I pulled that off. Like, it was so intense. I'm here on the other side. And every time, you know, I interview somebody who is somebody who I've admired for a long time.

And I remember interviewing Howard Schultz. And at the time, he was running for president. And I was like, this is good for me because it's pushing me out of. And then it doesn't matter. People equate their happiness to winning the Oscar or a certain amount of money. No, no, you get that jolt from simply finding the spot in your life where you, you feel you have an edge and you just go past it. Yeah.

There's been so much value here. And like, again, congratulations on everything you've built with your podcast. And I think that the title of your podcast is a message to a lot of people. Don't keep your day job. I end every conversation with the same question because gratitude is so important to me. I start and end every day saying out loud three things that I'm grateful for. So I end every conversation with that. So, Kathy, what are three things in your life?

that you're grateful for. Oh my gosh. It is so beautiful. And gratitude is like the ultimate signature of receivership, you know, of really tuning in. I'm so grateful for the people in my life, my husband and my daughters, my sister. I mean, that's just such an incredible gift. I often think like, what could I have done to earn this? Like nothing.

It's just such a gift. I'm so grateful for health, right? like just being in the season of life where you don't have as many aches and pains and you're young and you're that's such a gift. And I'm so grateful for the opportunity to get to do this assignment, to play this note in the orchestra. It's so fun to be doing this work. And I'm grateful for it every day. I love it. Kathy, thank you so much for such a great conversation. Thank you for just making such a beautiful space and asking such great questions. Well, there we go.

Thank you to Kathy for joining us. And thank you, as always, for being with us on another audio adventure. And now that this episode's done, go check out Kathy's podcast called Don't Keep Your Day Job and snap a screenshot. Let us know what you liked about this episode. Let us know what little nuggets you're going to be applying to your own life and tag us so we can share it. Kathy on Instagram is at Kathy.

dot Heller. I'm at Chris Van Vleet and Oprah Winfrey said it best. Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you. Be great and be grateful. We'll see you on the next one for some more insight. The Hammer Alley podcast, an 80s flashback mockumentary. Back in the 80s, there were a thousand bands trying to make it in the world of rock, but there was one band that had it all. Hammer Alley. Whatever happened to Hammer Alley? How did they go from top of the rock?

I'm looking for a music video. They're a band from 1987. Hammer Alley. Ever heard of them? To Rock Bottom. Dude, I was born in 1987. I can't believe he's doing this. Hammer Alley.

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