and I know that’s probably not the best
way to kick off the talk with a bunch of
you who don’t necessarily know me but I
promise I’m here to be honest with you
I’m the founder and CEO of a fashion
company called me denim based out of
Austin Texas our mission is pretty
straightforward we want you to get in
our pants and I love what I do truly but
that wasn’t always the case in fact the
entirety of my career up to this point
was predicated on a series of lies that
I told myself lies about what I was
entitled to lies about what I thought
success was supposed to look like and
worst of all lies about what I thought
happiness was and that’s not to say that
I haven’t had a pretty awesome career up
to this point I worked as a web
developer on Wall Street i worked in
economic development I’ve worked in
education but it wasn’t until I really
got back to the basics and was honest
with myself that I was able to find
purpose and truly be happy the first lie
that I told myself occurred when i was
working one of those college jobs at a
popular clothing retailer in the mall
and I loved that job I love everything
about it because it combines two of my
absolute favorite things working with
people and fashion and I worked there my
junior and senior year of college but as
graduation started to creep up on me I
started to get this feeling like I had
to go find a grown-up career job one of
those jobs with like a desk and like
Microsoft Office pre-installed on a
computer instead of pirated and while I
didn’t necessarily know like what that
job was going to look like I got it in
my head that I didn’t have a choice
because of that first lie that I told
myself that my retail job that I
it wasn’t good enough and yeah it might
not have been the right fit for me long
term in terms of a career there was no
upward mobility there were no benefits
you couldn’t work full-time hours but
when I got it into my head that I was
entitled to something more I effectively
dismissed all the parts of that job that
I loved that truly made me happy even if
they were silly things like helping
people pick out outfits and I’m sad to
say that this wasn’t the first or only
time that I dismissed a job is not being
good enough for obscure things like it
wasn’t related to what I’d studied where
maybe I wasn’t making enough money and I
know I sound really ungrateful for
saying things like that but I thought I
could be honest with y’all and because
of that I initially dismissed a lot of
value from these early jobs things like
learning how to code learning how to
navigate office politics or realizing
that my co-workers would become some of
the closest people in my life things
that would go on to help me as I founded
my business things that would have
allowed me to be truly happy if I’d
allowed them to and in looking back at
these situations I started to notice
there’s a huge huge opportunity to
recognize the things that are working
that are creating value and that are
making you happy be honest with yourself
about what they are lean into them no
matter how small or random they may seem
maybe really like happy hours with your
co-workers and you realize that company
culture is more important to you than a
huge paycheck I have a friend who
followed his passion to become a YouTube
star because he loved video conferencing
more than anything else in his job be
honest with yourself about what’s
working about what’s creating value
because once you identify those things
you can start to incorporate them into
your life and your job you just have to
be able to recognize them and be willing
to listen
the second line that I told myself
occurred around the same sort of
personal era for me two things happened
at the time this was in 2008 roughly
four months after I graduated the
economy completely epically collapsed
and this was around the same time that
Facebook came into prevalence as a way
to sort of like humblebrag your
accomplishments to other people even if
you kind of slightly inflated what they
were and I started to notice my friends
were getting these awesome jobs like all
around the country where they were
traveling to these exotic places or they
were coupling up and settling down and I
was doing okay you know not good not bad
but I say that tongue in cheek because
the reality is we were all struggling we
were competing with our parents
generation for jobs we weren’t traveling
we were going from couch to couch
because we couldn’t afford apartments or
homes we were coupling up with the
absolute wrong people because dual
income was just like slightly better
than single income all while straddling
you know massive amounts of debt but
what we were all really good at was
making it look like we had our lives
together and once again I found myself
entangled in this lie that was rattling
around the back of my head that my
success had to look like everybody
else’s success in order to be real and
this belief led me down a lot of really
really bad rabbit holes that make me
look like I’m incredibly susceptible to
peer influence but again I thought I
could be honest with you guys the truth
is we’re all guilty of this we all
compare ourselves to other people we
can’t help it so I’m not going to tell
you to stop because you can’t but I can
tell you how to use these feelings to
better yourself because the feelings of
jealousy and an adequacy don’t exist in
a vacuum they tell you something very
important about yourself and that is the
is that your most insecure about and
yeah it sucks to sit down and think
about the things that make you feel
insecure but that’s the first step and
being able to actually fix them for
example I surround myself with a lot of
very successful entrepreneurs and
whenever I feel compelled to compare
myself or that jealousy starts to sink
in my knee-jerk reaction is to be like
oh I’m just jealous that they make more
money than me and I could leave it at
that and I could resent them for being
rich but if I take that feeling one step
further to where I become accountable
for it the reality is it has nothing to
do with money I’m insecure about the
fact that maybe I don’t know if I can be
successful as an entrepreneur and it’s
really hard to admit that it’s hard to
admit that in front of a room full of
strangers but it gives me a hell of a
lot more to work with and things that I
have control over then just playing the
victim of circumstance and placing the
burden of my feelings on somebody else
getting into the practice of taking
these feelings one step further to
figure out where you become accountable
for them is hard but it’s incredibly
rewarding I challenge you to stop
thinking about and stop saying how can I
be like other people start to think
about how can I take accountability for
my actions and my thoughts how can I
influence things that I actually have
control over and start to break down my
insecurities the first step to this is
being honest and acknowledging that
they’re there one of the last lives that
I told myself and probably one of the
most profoundly damaging is one I hear
people telling themselves all the time I
look back on my career which spans you
know roughly 12 years it’s not super
long and I had it pretty good I had a
lot of really awesome jobs I worked in a
bunch of incredible cities but I always
had this sort of abstract
miserable feeling I would say it’s kind
of like you have a really expensive nice
dress but you’re super uncomfortable
wearing it because it’s the wrong size I
was wearing this life that was good but
maybe didn’t exactly fit me correctly
during the holidays in 2015 right before
I founded my company I was sitting with
this sort of abstract sad feeling and in
what would have been the oscar-winning
moment in the movie of my life I looked
at myself in the mirror and I said is
this what you want to be doing and at
the time I was working as a web
developer for an ed tech company in
Austin Texas and things look good on
paper I had a good paycheck I had an
awesome boss amazing co-workers but
again just sort of abstractly sad in the
hundreds of times that the scenario had
played out before I would fall back onto
the same lie that you have everything
you want you everything you need you
have no right to be sad and then I would
be angry or I would go sleep it off or
I’d go on like a mini bender at one
point I started running so much I ran
marathons and then I would just sort of
continue on my life without changing
anything and these feelings would
inevitably bubble back up to the surface
but not this time for some reason this
time I answered myself honestly I said
no this isn’t what I want to be doing
for the rest of my life I’m good at it
but I’m not happy and that’s heavy stuff
and then I had this feeling of
overwhelming sadness and I’m like okay
let’s take this one step further then
it’s like well we’re at it and I asked
myself I’m like well you know what would
you do if you could do it all over again
so fashion get into fashion love fashion
I loved that silly retail job that I’d
worked 12 years
air and that was the first time I’d ever
been honest with myself about that in
over a decade and again that feeling of
sadness just swept over me I felt like
I’d wasted my education maybe my entire
career there was no way at this point I
could pivot into something else I was
stuck so I understand why people don’t
have that conversation with themselves
it sucks sometimes it’s easier to just
keep on lying literally 72 hours later
in the most like random and oddly
specific way this idea popped into my
head for a tech enabled fashion company
it came out of nowhere that would later
become the foundation of my company read
on him which actually combined a lot of
things that I’ve learned with my love
and passion for fashion and I’m
convinced that this idea came into my
head in this random novel way that I did
because I had had that really hard on
his conversation with myself because
I’ve made space instead of continuing to
perpetuate the lie that I had told
myself dozens and dozens of times before
that I had no right to be sad and again
this is a lie that we most consistently
tell ourselves and it’s one of the
hardest ones to stop because sometimes
when you’re really honest with yourself
about what makes you happy it flies in
the face of everything you’ve let
yourself believe maybe it flies in the
face of all the time you spent working
or educating yourself maybe it lies in
the face of a relationship that you
think is everything we don’t want to
feel like we’re just sort of throwing in
the towel on one phase of our lives to
start another but that’s hardly the case
ever is it because it’s the culmination
of music’s be
mrs. up to the points that you find
yourself having have these honest
conversations that allow you to truly
embrace them and to be successful again
you just have to be willing to be honest
with yourselves I couldn’t have started
my company if it wasn’t for all the
random little things that I took from
jobs that I had determined weren’t good
enough for me so I encourage you to take
a critical look and find what is working
for you in your life and figure out how
to create happiness from that I couldn’t
have started my company if I didn’t take
a cold hard look at my own insecurities
so that I could start to fix them and
address them and I challenge you to do
the same thing to look at your own
insecurities to acknowledge that you’re
there that they’re there so you can
start to actually break them down and I
certainly couldn’t have founded my
company if I didn’t have that one honest
conversation with myself about what
truly made me happy and so whatever path
you end up going down whether it’s into
entrepreneurship or new career or hobby
or maybe you just find a way to look at
what you’re doing and find more value in
it it all starts with a few honest
conversations with yourself and I
promised I wouldn’t lie to you and I
stuck to that and I hope now that you’re able to find happiness truly thank