QUESTION EVERYTHING You Hear Online - Pick Only What Applies to You Right Now w/ Sinem Gunel

Nov 02, 2021
 
 

Welcome to episode 18 of the Mindful & Driven podcast! It’s all about how to not lose sight of what really matters whilst chasing your dreams.

Episode 18’s guest is Sinem Gunel. She’s a successful online content creator with millions of views and tens of thousands of followers. She has since founded and ran multiple successful businesses including the Medium Writing Academy, Personal Growth Base, and the Freedom Business Accelerator. The latter is an intensive coaching program over six months designed to help people go from beginner to running their own successful and thriving business too.

Sinem is a long-time collaborator of mine and I’ve worked with her on a project called Write Your Future. She started her entrepreneurial career at just the age of 19 and has already helped so many people. I’m sure you’re going to find a lot of value from her words today.

I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation! I’d love it if you could subscribe, leave me a review and follow me on social channels. 

Topics discussed in this episode:

  • Why you shouldn’t trust advice you find online.
  • Why you should question everything you hear online.
  • How to find advice that works for you.
  • What advice to follow and why.
  • How to choose who to follow online.
  • How to identify good advice for you.
  • How to find what works for you as an online creator. How to approach online content.
  • How to filter online advice.
  • What business advice you should follow and why.

Keynotes:

  • Introduction (0:00)
  • Disagreeing with bold statements and not following everyone’s opinion (1:47)
  • Consuming content, persona, and targeted advice (5:37)
  • Seeing behind the number and doing what makes you happy (12:05)
  • Talking about productivity, balance, and dealing with the transition(19:12)
  • The right time to stop and live the lifestyle you want (26:10)
  • Something that keeps you going (29:34)
  • You can have more if you want more (32:10)

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Intro Music:
“Himalayas” by Mona Wonderlick — bit.ly/youtube-monawonderlick
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free download: bit.ly/himalayas-download

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Transcript


[00:00:00] Sinem: I think it’s really hard to tell herself to stop if you can, theoretically, work all the time, but it’s just, at some point you got to ask yourself, especially at a young age, what am I doing it for? Because if I am working all day, every day in my twenties, you know, I obviously want to be able to pay my bills, but I also want to do all the other things and also have room, time, and the mental capacity to care about other things.

[00:00:38] Amardeep: Welcome to the Mindful and Driven Podcast, where we help you to not lose sight of what’s really important whilst chasing your dreams. Today’s guest is Sinem Gunel. She’s a successful online content creator with millions of views and tens of thousands of followers. She has since founded and ran multiple successful businesses including the Medium Writing Academy, Personal Growth Base, and the Freedom Business Accelerator. The latter is an intensive coaching program over six months designed to help people go from beginner to running their own successful and thriving business too.

Sinem is a long-time collaborator of mine and I’ve worked with her on a project called Write Your Future. She started her entrepreneurial career at just the age of 19 and has already helped so many people. I’m sure you’re going to find a lot of value from her words today.

Welcome Sinem. So for the people listening, this is round. Sinem’s laptop decided to stop working, but I’m sure it’s gonna be just as good the second.

[00:01:27] Sinem: Yeah, hopefully even better [unintelligible] test run now, as he said, but yeah, thanks for having me for the second time.

[00:01:36] Amardeep: So me and Sinem worked together quite a lot over the last year and a half I guess, so I know what her opinions are and what she agrees or disagrees with, but for the listeners out there, what do you disagree if of common advice?

[00:01:49] Sinem: So what we talked about before is that I think you can disagree with a lot of common life advice. The thing we talked about was stuff like never give up because whenever you have those bold statements, you can always have that counterpart as well, like yes. If you have big goals that can make sense to be persistent and consistent, and not to give up. But on the other side, there’s always, that there can be good reasons to give up too, because if you realize that you are pursuing a goal that’s just not fulfilling for you anymore, or you just realize that you are not really, you don’t have the skillset or the strengths, or you don’t want to invest that much into a goal as you thought, but then you will be better off if you give up. And I think you can use that thought pattern for every piece of advice that somebody could give you, and generally just, I would just suggest being, not necessarily skeptical, but just a little more thoughtful about any kind of advice you receive or read or hear, because I think it’s always about, about context and whether, if it’s not even about right or wrong, it’s about, does it apply to my current situation? And I think we often ignore that and we just think that if you know, there is a device and it needs to be true, and if it worked for someone else, it needs to work for me too. Most of the time, that’s not the case.

[00:03:21] Amardeep: Yeah. And it comes down to the absolutes, right? So whenever somebody says, you always need to do this, or you never need to do that, then there’s always exceptions. I just see what I just did there, but it’s true. Very rare for the same piece of device to be universally applicable to everybody, unless it’s very obvious. For example, like don’t jump off tall buildings. That’s an advice you should never do. Right? You should never jump off a tall building, but it’s other things have nuisance. I just said, well, what from one person might work for you or it might not, and you need to apply it to your own life and think about your own unique circumstances to make the most of any advice you get given. On this podcast, that’s why I purposely made sure I get people of different opinions, you need that variety and you need to have different opinions because that’s how you can inform your own opinion. And it’s really important to do that and not blindly follow anybody, including me.

[00:04:20] Sinem: Yeah. I think you never have a hundred percent match where someone’s life is exactly the same, like yours, where you could just replicate everything. It’s about having that context. It’s about questioning. Does it apply to me? Does it apply to my past? Does it apply to the future? I want to create, I also don’t think that you should ever be following one person blindly. That you should always have different opinions and perspectives and educate yourself to different resources, especially from different people, because, one person can never give you that variety that you might need no matter if it’s about personal life or business, because I think the thing is life itself, you have so many aspects. I don’t think someone could teach you how to have great relationships and a healthy body and a healthy mind. And anything else that you can improve in your life? And you might agree with one part of that person’s expertise, but not agree with the other part. And that’s totally fine. It’s just about finding the resources that are a fit for you personally.

Yeah. And what comes to mind and it’s what you do as well, where if somebody is working with you directly and they’re understanding your story, then their advice is gonna be way more useful to you than advice that’s given to everybody that’s generically on the internet. And if you’ve got a personal trainer, for example, if you’ve got a personal trainer, you should probably listen to them rather than what’s on internet, because that personal trainer can see. They can measure your statistics. They can see how much your strain is, whereas a guy on the internet, he has no idea. So that personal touch and advice, and it’s why coaching is particularly good and what you do with helping people become better writers and it’s great on online businesses, your advice is much more focused and because of that, it makes a, huge difference, and you can give your advice. And I’m trying to think of the word now. It’s targeted. It’s that targeted advice is generally more useful. I don’t know if you’ve found the same in your life as well, when you’ve got advice from people who know you well.

Yeah. And I think when you’re consuming content on the internet, that’s just more difficult because it’s up to you to pick because most of the time we don’t have the opportunity or the resources to work with someone one-on-one and we just read articles and watch videos. And that’s totally fine. It’s just, you can still question things and ask yourself whether it does apply to your personal specific situation right now. It’s not always easy, but I think it’s something you’ve just learned over time. And it’s, it’s also about just being a little more critical. And I, when I create content, I have a very specific person in mind and I try to speak to that person, but somebody else who doesn’t meet those criteria might find the message equally strong and relevant and might follow the same advice. Even though it’s not the person I spoke to in my mind. There are certain things you can control on the creator end, but I think in the consumer end, you always have to be thoughtful and a little critical too, because you can’t, you cannot look at media, look at YouTube, wherever it is, you can never apply all the lessons that people talk about because there are lots of contradictions. Someone might say A, the other person might say B and it’s not even about A being true and B being wrong. It’s just different situations, different backgrounds, and both can be true. It’s just, where are you? Where do you want to go? Lots of questions in between that also. That’s something that the creator cannot really do for you that you have to do for yourself. But I see that, it’s the same when I read a book, there are lots of best-selling books that I started to read and I just hated them and didn’t finish them because I just didn’t like the way they’ve been written or it just didn’t resonate. I think that’s also important. You might find advice from someone who is not like being followed by a hundred thousand people yet, but it just, it’s exactly what you need. Well, then it’s the right person to follow for you.

[00:08:55] Amardeep: What you said about personas in particular, because it’s something that I’ve been doing myself as well, is who am I trying to help? And I think most good creators or influencers or anybody giving that advice, they have a persona in their minds who they’re talking to. So realistically, a lot of my advice won’t be the most helpful for somebody who’s growing up in absolute poverty. They wouldn’t have that access to resources, to be able to use the advice that I give. I need to be conscious of that. I can’t preface every single piece of advice I give, or saying this is assuming you have a place to live. This is assuming you have an education. I’m making assumptions about the audience. It’s difficult for the creator or the writer or the YouTube or whoever is to do that for the author. So you’ve got to look at it from your perspective and saying, is this person talking to me or are they talking to people who have traits that aren’t what aligned with me? And as you said, it doesn’t matter how successful they are. If they’re making assumptions about you that aren’t true, they might not be the best person for you to listen to. You could still take ideas from them. You might still find things that are useful.

[00:10:02] Sinem: And I also think that there are people who kind of lied to themselves to fit into that persona because they admire someone and they want to learn from them. I think that’s the part where it can get a little dangerous, especially if you invest money. It’s, it’s okay to have a dream, but you’ve got to ask yourself, is that really targeted for me? Am I the person they’re talking about? Or is it what I want to be? Because ultimately you don’t want to lose, you don’t want to lose money, but you also don’t want to lose your time by trying to apply strategies that just don’t fit your lifestyle or your demographics or whatever it is. And I think, you know, the, the most typical kind of examples here are when, you know, white privileged men talk about how to be more productive, and then you have woman with three kids and a full-time job who just get really annoyed by that productivity advice, because they are in a totally different situation and they need other structures that, A, again, white privileged man, who is, maybe he has kids, but he has a totally different rate of responsibility when it comes to his kids. And you cannot expect the same productivity course to work equally for both of these parties. It’s just a different game. And I think it’s the same for most topics, maybe not all, but, but a lot of personal development and business. And I think it starts by just being honest to yourself, where are you, what are your resources? What are your expectations? And where do you want to go? And just being honest about where you are right now, especially.

[00:11:57] Amardeep: And there’s something you face yourself, right? So you’ve been very successful in the online world for somebody who is only 24, but I know that you’ve had comments in the past and you felt people put pressure on you by saying, you’re only 24. How can you know all of this already? As we talked about where what’s happening is that you did the reps from a very young age. So you put in the hard work, you did lots of iterations. While now you’ve got the success to show for it, it was more difficult in the past. Can you talk a bit more about that time when, I guess before the success and the struggle you had and how you got through that and what helped you to manage that too?

[00:12:36] Sinem: What they see is a number, but they don’t see what’s behind the number. And for me, that’s always, that’s been my age because it’s been one of those weaknesses where people could project, their assumptions. So when I’ve been an entrepreneur for half a decade now, but when I started, I started at the age of 19, 20, like hosting workshops about personal development and it was literally me learning something. And on the weekend I would do the workshops for free just to share what I learned with students. I was not alone. I had at least two to three other people doing the workshops with me, but we targeted students, but sometimes we had older people or we’ve been to a lot of events where we pitched this idea and we had that idea tools of do online courses and they hold platform, et cetera. And it was always, you know, okay, why do you know what you know? And why do you think you have the credibility to do all these things? Or when we talked to sponsors or something, it was just not that much fun because they had a really strong argument by saying, well, why do you have the credibility to talk about this stuff? That, that was just something, and I didn’t really have an argument for that because it was literally me watching YouTube videos and reading books and then, you know, sharing it with others and learning how to do all of that. I did do a coaching and training certification later, but I did that maybe after hosting lunch time to workshops first. So I did it in practice then I did the certification where I learned a lot, but most of my knowledge was based on just doing it. And then when I went online, the reason I moved so quickly is because I really spent a lot of time working and it’s not that I recommend that this is the way to go, but for me, it was like I had my studies, I had a full-time internship. I knew I really didn’t want to have that corporate career because I hated that internship and it was boring. I didn’t want to do it. I had some savings, but it was not that I, that I could live a few months off of those, but I knew that eventually something, had to work and I worked every weekend. I worked on every vacation. I was traveling quite a lot, but I was working during every, every vacation, you know, all the way on the airport, on the plane. It was always work related, whatever I did. And that’s why I put a lot of reps in, in that very short amount of time, because from the age, from 20 to 23, at least I just worked almost every weekend. And it looked as if I was traveling a lot and going to a lot of events, et cetera, pre COVID at least. Every spare minute I had, I was working and like, I even reduced the time I spent with friends and family, because I had that vision where I knew I had to make it work because I really didn’t want to go into a corporate career. And we talked about that. Right. But I think it’s, for me, maybe it was a little easier to work harder because I didn’t want to go there than it is for someone who is used to a corporate job to just leave it. Because when, once you’re used to it, I think it’s, it is I think a little harder to use or to just say, you’re going to give it up when you’re used to having a regular paycheck and you just get used to it. You have your colleagues, maybe you get along well with them, et cetera. But for me, it was just really clear what I didn’t want. So I tried to figure out how to make it work. And I did create a lot of courses and because I had to. I didn’t really have another chance. And it sounds dramatic now. It was not really dramatic because I could always just get a job, but I didn’t want to.

[00:16:32] Amardeep: Yeah. And you were making that choice for your own needs and your own understanding of yourself. It comes back to this idea that you should be doing what makes you happy. No other people think will make you happy.

[00:16:44] Sinem: Yeah, sure. Other people definitely didn’t, you know, look up to what I was working on. Like my family definitely didn’t understand what I was doing and I had lots of conversations with, you know, friends from university are also the people from my internship who just absolutely didn’t have any aspirations in terms of building their own thing. They were all striving for that corporate career, and they were sure that if I would build my own business, I had to work more and that it’s just harder than what they are doing. I mean, it, I definitely worked a lot more than anyone else at my age, who pursued a normal career in my early twenties, but I do the exact same thing again. And I know that sounds a little, I don’t know arrogant now, but it was my choice to do that. But when I look at those people now and I talked to them and they are unhappy in their jobs, they are doing a work that they don’t really enjoy, of course not all of them, but it’s huge majority and while I can really choose what to do and how to do it. And I know that my path is not the ultimate drive or that it would be the fit, the right fit for anyone, but it’s just, sometimes you have to go all in on something or just take certain risks without knowing if it’s going to work or not. And that was the case for me. I didn’t know if it’s, if it would work or not, then I certainly didn’t expect it to work as well as it did in the end, but I just really knew what I didn’t want to have.

[00:18:28] Amardeep: Hi everyone. I hope you’re enjoying the episode so far. I want to take a quick break to ask you to check in with yourself. There’s many people struggling with balance and it’s nothing to be ashamed about. It’s tips that my guests might share can hopefully help you along the way, but if you already feel overwhelmed or burnt out, it’s probably best that you ask somebody for help too. For some, this might be a friend or family member, while others might feel like they have nobody they can talk to. If you’re one of these people, check out the link in the show notes, it’s for United for Global Mental Health. They’ve got health plans all across the world, with people willing to listen on the other side. It’s important to let somebody know how you’re feeling. Now, back to the show.

Obviously now I think especially this year, you’ve made quite a lot of changes in terms of your lifestyle. And I think part of it’s because the world opened up again after the pandemic where now you don’t work the same crazy hours that you used to. And you seem to have much better balance than you once did. Can you talk a bit about your current balance and your current working lifestyle and whether or not you think you’ve got the right balance now, whether there’s still things you’re working on?

[00:19:29] Sinem: When the pandemic started and we had all these lockdowns, we, so I’m running my entire business with my partner, Phillip, right? So we are two people working on everything. So that’s definitely something that is a huge advantage in terms of modulation, accountability, but also practically because we just, he is kind of our, he’s the tech brain of the entire business while I’m managing a lot of other things. But what we did when we first heard of all these lockdowns, et cetera, as we just decided that we would use the time to go all in and work as much as we could, because we could literally don’t do anything else anyway. So we decided to work pretty much all the time that we had to be at home anyway. And we first thought it’s just going to be a few weeks, but we really worked that much for a long period. I mean, it was several months, right? Last year, it was tough at certain points, but looking back, I would do the same because I couldn’t have done anything that would be fun or productive, apart from work anyway. So just use the time to work really, really hard, and a lot. We had the results, we just had way more space and also mental space to slow down. Oh, that’s what we did this year. So from the beginning of the year, we had a few successful launches and projects, right at the beginning of the year. And we hit some big goals in April this year in terms of business successes and revenue, et cetera. And then from April, we just took it really slowly. And my, like, if I have a strong and busy work day, I work like five hours. For me personally, I cannot really work productively a lot more per day. Most of the time it’s even less. I just cut down on all the things that don’t really produce results. And I know I’m, a lot of people just wouldn’t do it because it’s about perfectionism and about how you want to be perceived. I just learned how not to care about these things anymore, because I realized it’s stressing me out. It’s not making me feel good. And now I’m just taking more time for all the other things that I didn’t take time for in the beginning. Like when, when I, you know, when I can be there for my family, I am there. When I want to go for a walk after lunch, I just do it. When I want to go for a workout, I do it. I don’t prioritize work anymore. I just spend more time doing all of the other stuff and it’s, it’s no crazy stuff. It’s really working out, reading. I have, take a lot of time in the mornings for my morning routine, but it’s just a lot slower, I would say overall, which I think is different for everyone. But for me, this turned out to be the right thing right now, and I don’t know if it’s going to be the same in six months or six years. It’s just what I figured out for myself right now.

[00:22:35] Amardeep: One thing I think you mentioned before, as well as about how before you were looking at this idea of being a digital nomad, but then you realize that it’s not the best thing for you in the end and now you’ve bought your flat and you’ve got roots set down. Right. And I know you’ve mentioned to me before, about how before you used to work every day of the week, where weekends and weekdays would basically be the same thing. So you might take a random day off, but you wouldn’t care if it was a Sunday or a Monday. But now, because everything else is open again, then you’re changing your schedule to match more of a normal person’s schedule where they work Monday to Friday, because that means that the weekend you can do more things with your friends and your family. And how have you found that transition? Has that made a big difference to your life as well?

[00:23:19] Sinem: Yes. Originally, because for me it was just so normal to work whenever I could work. And I never, like when I, it was also because my living room was my office and I didn’t have that separation and it was just all the same room. And when I was sitting on the couch, I was seeing my laptop and my workplace. Now I have different rooms, which just makes it easier to just close it down, close the door and be done with work. And in the beginning it was really, it was so weird not to work for an entire weekend because I was not used to it. That’s something I always thought it would, it’s cool to, to work all the time on the weekends, just because I love what I do, but I realized that it, it feels really good to also have those two days completely off. If I want another day off during the week, I just take it because I tried to have as little urgent things as possible in my life, with my business, because I feel like that’s what really stresses me out. When I, whenever, when nothing is urgent, I can operate at my best. And the worst thing is just knowing that something needs to be done on Monday and I’m working the entire weekend. And then Monday I still have work to do. It was just something I had to get used to just to close the laptop on Friday and not, so I don’t have that reason where I would say, yeah, I could probably earn a lot more if I would still work seven days per week, but it’s, it’s not really tempting anymore, because the other things are just worth more and they’re more precious now. It’s, it’s, you know, the people I surround myself with the experiences I make, taking care of my health, all that stuff. It’s, it’s just a priority shift after a certain stage. And in the beginning for me, it was how do I pay the bills and how do I get to a different lifestyle that I wanted to, to have. But now it’s the other things that have gained priority. I think it’s just a constant iteration and constantly asking yourself, okay, what, what happened in the past month? What was it that I was aiming for? And if I achieved it, what’s the next step for me? Because it cannot always be having more of what you already have, but just sometimes needs little shifts. And that’s what happened for me. Because in the beginning, it was more important to make the business work because otherwise, if I don’t make any money, I cannot do any of the things. But once that was kind of fixed, I had more time to think about the other stuff.

[00:26:00] Amardeep: I think the important thing there is knowing when’s the right time to stop because some people they have made enough. They’ve got enough money to do the things that they want to do, but they’re still using money as an excuse of why they can’t do these things. They need to still work harder for more money, even though they already have enough. It’s like you said, where neither of us are making a million dollars a year, right? At least I’m not, but people think you need huge amounts to live the lifestyle you want to live or to make time for the people in your life. And that’s not really true. Like, if you look at where the money goes, like if you can pay your rent and pay your bills, and have enough money to do social things with your friends.

[00:26:44] Sinem: It also just depends on what your expectations are and how you’re spending your money. Like, I don’t need a lot of stuff to be happy. I, I, and it’s not just about costs, but I feel happiest when I, that whole minimalism, not just in the lifestyle in terms of things, but also in terms of my to-do list, then anything I’m surrounded by. It just makes me happier. And I like to be surrounded by beautiful things and I like being able to afford that stuff, but I don’t need it to be happy. And I also, I think it depends for some people it’s that lifestyle costs. For others, it’s just a sense of security and I don’t know about you, but a thing it’s really hard to tell yourself to stop if you can theoretically work all the time, but it’s just, at some point you got to ask yourself, especially at a young age, what am I doing it for? Because if I am working all day, every day in my twenties and, well, I mean, if I do that and I retire by 30, maybe I’m happy, but maybe I’m not. I don’t know. And I, I try to rather, I don’t think that I would necessarily want to stop working at 30, so I don’t have the desire to, to create a huge backlog of financial security in the next five years. So I just, you know, I obviously want to be able to pay my bills, but I also want to do all the other things and also have room, time, and the mental capacity to care about other things. It’s, I bet it’s not easy and I think it’s just normal, especially when you start that you are it’s so, so easy to end up in your own hamster wheel. And it’s not really easy to get out of it, I think. Especially if you are not communicating a lot with other people, that’s why I think it’s so important to surround yourself with people who are doing something similar, to talk about how you’re doing, about what they are doing. And if there’s something you can learn from them. Especially if your friends and family are, are not entrepreneurs and they are not, that they don’t understand what you are doing, because if you’re doing it on your own and you’re just working on your own, you create certain systems for yourself where it becomes really hard to break out of them.

[00:29:24] Amardeep: When people want to work really hard and then be financially independent and retire, they don’t actually know what that means in many ways. So if you’ve never retired before, or we’ve never not done any work, how do you know that’s what you’re going to enjoy? So you’ll be working really hard to achieve a goal and a lifestyle that you don’t even know if it’s going to make you happy. And that’s why I suggest it’s better to have that security and stability, but you don’t necessarily need to give up work. You can still work in some capacity like you do, maybe doing less hours than you were before. But it’s more about, I think having that control over your hours and the amount of work you do rather than necessarily completely stopping work. Because I know of some other people too, who have achieved financial independence, and then they’ve gone traveling the world and they’ve done other stuff, and then they’ve come back again because they want something to keep them going. It’s looking at it as work being part of your life still, just not being one that is a source of stress for you. I think that’s the goal, really.

[00:30:24] Sinem: I think it’s at a certain stage, if you are really passionate about being a business owner and an entrepreneur, you have that internal motivation to just do something. It’s not necessarily for the money, but you just want to try if it, if it works, if you can create something of value for others and, I actually, I don’t, I don’t really have that goal of retiring at 30 or 35 or whatever, because I don’t know what I would do with all that free time. I, I don’t have that relation where I would say, oh my god, if I don’t have to work anymore, it would be so much better because I can travel now, if I want. You know, I could work a little more for a few weeks and then take a few more weeks off. I don’t know if, or I don’t know how my life would be better if I didn’t have to work at all, so I don’t have that aspiration. I think that, I think it’s also fun. I don’t think that’s life is about not working. I think it’s about creating an overall daily life and lifestyle that you can enjoy. And I certainly enjoy what I do. I don’t know if I will be doing the same things in five years or 10 years, but I don’t have that desire to stop working. If I had pictured, myself, I would, I really don’t know what I would do with all the bonus hours every day. If it’s not an entirely voluntary project or something that I’m working on.

[00:31:57] Amardeep: What’s one mindset shift do you think people listening today could make that would make a positive difference in their lives?

[00:32:02] Sinem: Think a little bigger and out of the box. Believe that you can have more, if you want more, whatever that more is for you, and that you are worthy of having. I think we, like everybody who has created something significant or made the change in their lives, in the beginning, everyone thinks I cannot do that. It’s it’s, you know, I’m not that special. Maybe he has done it or she has done it, but it’s not really for me. And I certainly didn’t grow up believing that I can have any sort of out of the box life or career. But I do believe that anyone can have it. And we already talked about, you know, having privileges and being privileged. And if someone in a poorer country with no resources consumes your content, can he, or she really still apply the lessons and the knowledge when we talk about business lessons, for example. Yes, it might be true that someone from a less privileged background might have it a little more difficult, but it’s also, you know, you can see so many people from different places of the world who thrive and who build online businesses and who do really well, even though it’s more difficult for them because of the language, because of certain barriers in technology. But if somebody can consume content online, well, that’s probably the biggest enabler for them because it means they can also create something if they want to. But overall, I think that mindset shift that could translate to, to a lot of changes in the world is just if more people would believe in themselves, because if more people would believe in themselves, they would create businesses or NGOs or projects or even side projects. No matter if it’s for money or not, that they would be passionate about. And they would probably do a really good job, if they did something they’re passionate about.

[00:34:06] Amardeep: I completely agree. And the thing that people often forget is that we both between us, got over a hundred thousand photos combined easily. We’re just normal people. We have the same struggles. I know that when I was at my beginning stage, I look at people who are like how we are now. I mean, like I could never do that. I am not capable of that, but then both of us approve that you can do it. And you look at movie stars, you look at TV stars, they hadn’t all had perfect careers. They might have struggled for a while. And when you can remember that that’s true about them, then you feel less bad about yourself because you’re human too. And whatever they’ve achieved, there’s no reason why, if you set your mind to something and you have the resources to do it, that you can’t do that too.

[00:34:53] Sinem: And I think it’s also important to mention, whenever you want to learn or build something new, the beginning is just confusing because you have no idea. You don’t even know how to learn or what to learn. That’s the most difficult stage, and it’s just normal that you feel a little lost and that you don’t know what you’re doing, but if you can make it through that stage, It just becomes easier.

[00:35:15] Amardeep: So it’s been a pleasure to talk to you for a second time Sinem. Where can the people listening today hear more about you?

[00:35:21] Sinem: You can join me on Medium. It’s Sinem Gunel. You can follow me on Instagram. You can join my Facebook group, which is Medium Writing Academy, if you are an online writer. You can also connect on LinkedIn.

[00:35:35] Amardeep: And the final thing is what’s one small thing that’s brought you joy recently?

[00:35:38] Sinem: That brought me joy. I don’t know if it’s small, but our gym reopened. So I’ve been moving a lot more and it just, again, taught me how much your body and mind are actually connected and how much better you can also think when you move a little more throughout the day, but also just throughout the week.

[00:36:04] Amardeep: If you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, I’d love it If you could leave me a five star review, it really helps get the message out further. Wherever you’re listening, it would be awesome If you could subscribe and share in your social media channels. If you want to see more of my work and advice, you can find all of the links in the show notes.

Thank you again for listening and I hope you have a lovely day.

Amar's Letter

Real talk on driving impact as an imperfect human.