A transformative experience
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This past week I spent 3 days deeply immersed in a book intensive with my team and an author who’s working with us. By trade, the author is a well-respected executive coach. The work on his book was exciting and powerful. But something else happened. The author had said to me in advance: “Ellen, just a heads up, when we're in Austin together, I'm gonna push you on your business. I think you could be a lot more successful." I had said, "I would love that, because I've been flying by the seat of my pants." So we had this unbelievable conversation. He was able to cover so much ground so quickly. You know how you can cut the surface of the skin, and it'll hurt more than if you get deeper? We just got straight to that deeper level. We got to the point where even if I wanted to cry, I wouldn't have been able to. I was in a state of emotional depth that was completely beyond crying. It was an intense emotional state. I realized, "Wow, this guy is showing me how I have been constraining my team and being the bottleneck of the business, and acting on unconscious & false beliefs that have been holding us all back." And I thought, “Holy shit.” But I didn't feel horribly guilty about it. I felt like I had been trying to break down a door, and somebody just walked up and handed me the key. 🔑 More on this later! btw, you can reply to me here if you want to be added to my list of people to ping when this book is ready. Thanks for reading. - Ellen |
Ellen Fishbein ~ ALTAMIRA.STUDIO
There are perks to having a philosopher on your team. My co-founder Bill Jaworski is a philosopher. It’s fun to work with him because he’ll say something super insightful, off the cuff, and then I won’t be able to stop thinking about it. Last week, he drew this spellbinding analogy between writing a great book and building the Parthenon: “The Parthenon is supposed to look perfectly symmetrical, the same in all dimensions. But as you approach the Parthenon, the two outer columns are not framed...
An Uber driver with a New York accent who called himself an “Iranian Jew” picked me up from an airport this week. I rarely feel strong emotions when talking to Uber drivers. But this conversation was different. I wrote down what I could remember. “I used to own a deli. I owned it for 17 years and I loved it. Making bagels. Making chicken salad. And it was a great business, because I had a captive audience. My deli was in an office building, so we were the best option for breakfast and lunch...
I've never made a Bucket List before. It seemed too daunting. But this weekend, it occurred to me that I already have a Bucket List in my mind. It doesn't reach every possible corner of existence—but it does cover my big-picture hopes for Altamira Studio. I wanted to share this with you. If you make one for yourself, I'd love to see it. Here's my Bucket List -- goals within the realm of writing & publishing. 1) Achieve a level of product-market fit that's as good as the one in the Simon &...