Paul on success, storytelling, learning & experiments (UX Gorilla Interview)

[01:18] Paul: Hey everybody, welcome to UX Gorillas Master Series. Our goal with this show is to help you gain new perspectives tools, strategies, and mindset for a successful career as a user experience designer. We are inviting some of the smartest experts from different industries around the world and learn about the path they took, the challenges they faced, and learnings they had to help you accelerate your own journey. Our next guest today is Paul Millerd, a storyteller and a consultant who helps freelancers perfect their story. He also successfully runs a podcast, Boundless, where he features conversations philosophers, freelancers, self-employed entrepreneurs, thinkers, and stories of the people who are courageously carving their own paths in the world.

Through his consultation, training, and podcast, Paul has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs to form their own definition of success and has given them courage to look beyond the default path. His work, as he defines it, is helping people navigate the future of work. His story is extremely inspiring. He earned two master's degrees, including an MBA from MIT. Post his master's, he worked with some of the best consulting firms in the world. During this time, by his own admission, though his resume made it look like he was crushing it, deep down he knew he was not doing what matters the most to him.

While he was still struggling with his dilemmas, he was diagnosed with Lyme disease and had to take a sabbatical from work to focus on his health. It was during this time of his recovery that he reflected deeply on what matters the most and how the default path of success was not his ultimate goal. He came to realize that he cannot fail as long as he has health, relationships, and freedom to do the things that matter. Armed with the new perspective on his relationship with work, he started to help people who felt frustrated or were stuck in companies that treated them poorly. Doing this as a side hustle for some time, Paul finally took the leap to self-employment in 2017. Currently living in Taipei, Paul is living the life that he wanted—minimalistic, meaningful, and full of learning—and he is helping others to do the same.

His podcast and his writings are extremely insightful and will force you to look closely about your own relationship with your work. He is here with us today. Thank you so much, Paul, for joining us. How are you doing? I'm doing great.

[03:41] Guest 2: Thank you for the over-the-top lovely introduction. I am super appreciative of that.

[03:49] Guest 3: Awesome. So, Paul, let's start from, you know, what we discussed in the intro as well. You start— you did an MBA, right? You had two master's degrees and you were, as the word would say, crushing it. And then you went and now you're living in Taipei. Right now you're traveling in Thailand and you're living a very minimalistic life, right?

[04:12] Guest 2: How did that happen to you? Yeah, I think that's definitely a long story, but I think there's something in your question that probably stands out I think people look at the MBA I have and say, Paul can do the path he's on now because of the MBA, right? And I think that's a mistake. I think we get hung up so much on credentials and prestige and thinking we need all these credentials to take different paths, right? And this makes sense, right? Early in your career, you often want to work for some of these good companies to develop skills and get access to good training.

Such that you can do other things. But really a lot of it came from unlearning what I learned in business school, which is that you should kind of always pursue your career, always be making moves to progress your career, work on your story, work on your narrative. And although you gave me an illustrious introduction, I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm making it up as I go. And I think a lot of that is around experimentation, trying new things and seeing Okay, what, what can I learn from this such that I might be able to figure out what to do next or what I'm learning from it?

[05:23] Guest 3: I would like to confess something. Uh, it's not easy to not get swayed away by the, um, you know, the credentials that you have. So I think even I did that mistake while I was writing your intro. I remember writing something on the lines of, you know, prestigious college, and you mentioned and you corrected me, and I'm really thankful. You said that I don't want to use the word prestigious because then, you know, it sets wrong expectations. I was also going through one of your articles where you mentioned that at the time when you were consulting and moving up the corporate ladder, you felt as if you were winning a prestige bingo, right?

So what is that problem with the word prestige and why do you think it's the wrong word?

[06:01] Guest 2: Well, I think, I think it just fits into a default narrative of success, right? And it works for some people. Some people like those paths. I don't want everyone to follow my path. And I think what my mistake was early on in my career, I wanted to break into strategy consulting and I went to the type of schools where people said, you can't actually do that because you went to the wrong schools. You didn't go to the prestigious enough schools.

Right. And so that just kind of like fired me up and I wanted to break into strategy consulting first of all, because I thought it'd be an interesting career, but second of all, just to prove them wrong. And what I found was that I actually did like strategy consulting a lot. What I didn't like is a lot of the things that come from working in big organizations, the hierarchy, the positioning, the politics. I actually loved the core work. And I think I stayed in that path mostly because I had, I now had all these options, right?

You go to an MBA, you go to a place like McKinsey and Company, suddenly a bunch of people will keep hiring you. And it's crazy to say this, and people are like, oh, you can say this now looking back, but I really wish I had like worked at McKinsey for 2 years and then gone out and tried to carve my own path then and started some of the experiments then. But I think the availability options tricked me into, okay, I can try the next thing. I can keep tweaking. But every single time there was this gut feeling of like something is off. And it wasn't until I met other people that were carving different paths that I kind of started, uh, imagining something else than just this path of success.

And the, the other thing to note is you basically never get any criticism if you're working in one of these companies that are perceived as good. And in America, I don't know if this is in other countries, if you make good money, it doesn't matter. What you do, people will praise you. Paul is successful. Paul is a good person. And we tie self-worth to income and status.

And we need some of these metrics to figure out who's important in our communities locally. But it doesn't make sense when we're applying it to a national scale.

[08:23] Guest 3: Right. So Paul, it's very interesting. You mentioned that you're not sure if this is something that happens in the other countries, but in India, actually, it's worse. So what happens in India is that comparison is like, you know, there might be a neighbor who is named Sharma ji. So it would be like, you know, Sharma ji's son is doing this. Why aren't you doing that?

So it's actually the default path. So from my own story, I was, you know, what, like conventionally I was an academically bright student. I had to take STEM. I had to take science. While looking back, I know that was not, you know, my interest area. I could have done better at arts, but I had to take it.

Then I had to do engineering. I had to— I mean, it had to in the sense that not my parents like pushed me to do that, but I did not even have enough courage to look past the default path. And that's why it's very important to have, you know, these sort of conversations. Which brings me to my next question. You know, you did your—

[09:18] Guest 2: can I ask you one question first? Like, I guarantee like I'm just guessing, you're, you're sustaining your life right now, right, on the adventures you're doing. But I, I bet people still question you, right?

[09:33] Guest 3: They do, definitely. It happens all the time. You could have just taken up a job. Why aren't you— yeah, like, you know, why are you doing this? So they don't question it in a negative way always, but it's hard for me to, uh, explain it to people. Also, being a girl, sometimes it doesn't make it any easy.

They're like, you know, you're You're passing your marriageable age. You should be doing this, doing that. You should be. So I actually have a very, you know, I have a problem with the word should. So yeah, that should actually has destroyed multiple dreams, broken many dreams. Actually, it's true.

[10:08] Guest 2: Yeah, that, that goes back to the default path point, right? I opted into this prestigious path, right? But the fact is, It's no one's definition of success. We say this is successful, but there's literally no one person that's writing down, this is the definition of success. It's an emergent feeling that people have, but nobody actually holds you accountable for this. It's some unknown person's version of success that we're all just accepting.

And we can change this narrative like any day we want.

[10:40] Guest 3: So yeah, changing. And yeah, the most important thing is that why you're doing what you're doing. And is it meaningful to you? Absolutely, makes sense. So, um, you had done two masters, so it was definitely not easy, but you still did it, uh, because A, you wanted to do it, B, you wanted to prove something to the people who said that you can't do it. So let's say if somebody is contemplating right now to do a master's and they also have an internship opportunity in the similar field of interest that they want to pursue a master's in, What do you think should be their thought process to make that sort of decision?

Should they take up the studies or should they have the inter— should they take up the internship opportunities?

[11:25] Guest 2: Yeah, so I mean, my first advice to people is always never listen to my advice because they kind of, they kind of know what they want to do and trust their guts. But I think one question I do ask people when they're considering a grad degree is like, what do you want to do after? Right? What is it for? Is it for your confidence to feel better about yourself? Is it for skill building?

Is it for access to jobs? And how could you get access to all those things without that grad degree now? Right? It may just be a confidence thing of saying, feeling I'm not good enough because I don't have an MBA. And I, to be honest, like I didn't even put that much thought into it. I was young and really just trying to like grab as many credentials as I could.

I had no idea where my path would lead. Now the fact is you go into these paths and you are able to earn job, to go after jobs that you can make a lot of money. I make far less. I'm going to make far less this year than I did prior to the MBA. Now I, now I can sustain my life, but that was a choice and it's saying, okay, I want to live a simpler life and have more flexibility to pursue some of the things I want, writing and things like that. So if I was making a few hundred thousand dollars, I would argue, okay, maybe the MBA made a difference, but I've actually opted in the other direction.

So that's a tangent. I think the takeaway for people is like, what, what is it for? That's Seth Godin's question, right? What is it for? And practically, how can you get that cheaper? Um, so you, I interviewed a couple of people for my podcast that traveled the world, world for one person for $24,000 US, one person for $10,000 US, and another person for $14,000 US.

For a year, all for a year, and imagine the learning and growth opportunities and discomfort they experience. So, and the MBA tuition right now is like $75,000 a year. Like, could you just travel the world and experiment with starting businesses? So for me, it's really, let's broaden the set of options, like pump up the imagination. And if the MBA still jumps out, like go do it. If your grad degree still jumps out, go do it.

Right. I think universities are incredible environments and they give you a perfect story to take a step away from a career track where you can get some breathing room and perhaps figure out what to do next.

[14:09] Guest 3: Some people really do good when they have certain metrics to measure. So how do you measure if what you're doing is working or not? Like, how do you measure it? What's your metric for success?

[14:22] Guest 2: It's hard. I need, I need to get better at it. Uh, I mostly communicating with people who reach out, right? So I've gotten good feedback on my writing and people keep reaching out and connecting with my writing. And so one, I have loved writing and the process of getting, trying to get better at it. I think it's like a lifetime thing cause I don't know if I'll ever be that good.

Um, but I'm getting the feedback too that it's resonating with people. So for me, it's okay, let's purposely carve out more time to work on something like this. So I've been reaching out to people to write, um, more publicly for different publications and seeing, okay, can I do this? Then once I do that, perhaps I can do more. Um, so really it's like one-on-one conversations with people. Is it resonating deeply?

And especially like if somebody buys something from me or offers me a gift, there must be something there. And I'm going to engage deeply with that person and say, what, what more can I do for you? What can I offer you? I don't have a metric. The metrics are more like, am I proud of how I'm spending my time? Or am I embarrassed of the work I'm doing?

[15:39] Guest 3: Right. So, you know, you talk about storytelling, you write, and you're improving at that constantly. So for those of us in the audience who do not know what storytelling is, could you elaborate on what storytelling is and why it's a very essential skill?

[15:58] Guest 2: So storytelling is pretty much what you did at the beginning of this interview. You told a story about where I've come from and where I'm headed and why, right? And I mean, That, that was a gift in itself. Like you putting in the time to like understand and communicate me as a person and like what I'm all about. Right. Um, now they're important because when you tell a story, it connects with other people.

I think, um, Jerome Bruner was a psychologist that did research that showed that stories are 20 times more, 22 times more memorable than facts. And a lot of this is because they light up our emotions, right? Anything that becomes emotional is more memorable. The most memorable stories ignite two hormones in our body, cortisol and oxytocin. And it's all about like with the cortisol, it's like, that's kind of like the stress hormone. It grabs your attention, right?

So that's around like saying something different. Instead of responding, I'm an accountant, you could say, I speak the language of business and help my company figure out where it's headed. Right. And then two, the oxytocin is about making us empathetic. So like that often is about communicating vulnerability. So you read about my story with like overcoming Lyme, like that was really terrifying for me to publish.

I had written something, I had shared stuff privately with family and friends, Um, but I wrote something that I didn't put out there for a year and a half because I was terrified. And when I put it out there, I suddenly had all these people reach out who were like dealing with chronic illness and overcoming things. And I connected with them as friends and it was like incredible, um, because it made them empathetic and saw me as a human instead of just another guy that's just trying to like carve my own path or scream loud about, um, what their entrepreneurial ventures are about.

[18:05] Guest 3: So let's say somebody— there's a freelancer who's a designer and they are right now working on creating a profile. So, um, how can they use storytelling? Like, what should be the steps if there is a process? Like, what should be the questions that they should ask to come up with a story for themselves? Yeah.

[18:23] Guest 2: So I think practically just take the step of getting it out of your brain. I think we all just take what's in our brain and then communicate it verbally. Right. And we're actually missing a step there. We're missing the step of like coming up with like our processing our thinking. Like what do we actually think?

And I mean, writing is probably the best way we can do that. You can also record yourself in a video and kind of review it and look back at it. But get it in a different mode of thinking, write it out. So what I have people do is like write out like, what are the 10 stories you're most proud of in your life? Like these can be like 2 or 3 sentences and then go through those 10 and say, what are the themes? What are the key things that stand out?

They're often very different than what you're actually talking about, right? People will say, I want to work in finance because I'm fascinated with the markets. So what, right? Like, what is special about you, right? Like, I worked with a client and I do some digging and he suddenly tells me that because he learned finance in high school, he was able to save his family's business. It's like, oh crap, that, right?

Like that, that is interesting. More interesting than I want to go into finance because I want to like I'm interested in the markets. So coming up with like the real story. So one is writing. And then I, I've been using a framework with people around this book, Impossible to Ignore by Carmen Simon. She's a PhD cognitive neuroscientist, and she has this framework around memorable content.

And you basically want to be perceptive, like ignite the perceptions and senses. Cognitive, you want it to be intellectually sound. And you want to third, have meaning. So tell people what that means, right? So there's different examples she offers in the book, but let's just apply it to like an AIDS researcher, right? This person could introduce himself and say like, Hey, I'm a researcher at a lab, right?

Okay. No, like nobody wants to learn more. Um, two, they could, they could add the intellectual element. Like I help, I work in a team of researchers that helps understand the AIDS virus and wants to cure it. Right. Um, or three, you can add another element, which is like the meaning, right?

Every day we're not making progress on this disease, 10 people die. Wow. Right? Somebody introduces their story around that, you're like, oh crap, this person is motivated, driven, and is really doing something that matters. Now I'm not curing AIDS doing what I'm doing, but I'm constantly playing around with like, what am I— what message am I trying to put out there? So you really want to test this.

You don't have to like, finish it, right? Put it out there and see if people respond to it. Test it in person. Um, when I was experimenting with some of this stuff a few years ago, I was much more doing like organizational change work. And I would say, I want to help make the working world suck less, right? It's powerful, direct, and like gives a clear message of like what I believe in a very synthesized, um, hook.

And like, I had somebody say, you need to talk to our CEO. We need to hire you. Like that one line, like landed a job interview. It didn't end up pursuing it, but like telling a story is going to open up opportunities because it tells people where you're headed, who you want to be in conversations with and what you want to contribute to. But I also experiment. I found that like people didn't like the negative framing of that.

So I, started saying like, I want to help make the working world a better place. And that seemed to appeal to people more, but it was more like testing it, seeing what works. Um, and just keep tweaking it, right? Look at people's eyes when you say these things and say, okay, is this lighting people up or are they kind of bored? Right. Um, and just figuring that out.

[22:47] Guest 3: I'll tell a personal story. I was actually like, you know, my first venture, I failed at it. Like, you know, it could not do well. And for a very long time on my— and when I started my second venture, though I started doing well, but for a very long time I did not update my LinkedIn because I felt so stuck with that one story that I have written out on LinkedIn. Like, it was, you know, I took— it took me so much courage to actually change the profile because suddenly I felt so like, you know, I felt that people would start questioning me. They would ask that, you know, why am I starting a new business now?

Automatically they would come to know that I have closed the first business. Probably people will ask. So I grew attached to that one story so much. And you know, the moment I put the word out, like I updated my story, there were so many people who genuinely reached out and asked me that, okay, Jagriti, what are you doing now? And I actually ended up, you know, a few gigs from that. But I wish I could have done it earlier.

It's just the fact that you grow so attached to your story. So something that you said is very powerful. You don't have to, you know, keep it as a final thing written on the stone sort of a thing. It can keep evolving.

[23:56] Guest 2: Definitely it should evolve, right? And that goes back to my first point, right? I was in the corporate world for 10 years with one story of the— I am a driven, high-performing, uh, person in the strategy consulting industry. right? And I didn't know how to kill off that story. But I think like our world basically forces us to like evolve our identities almost constantly.

It's super stressful, right? Like it'd be much easier if we could just have one identity and keep it for a long time. But if you want to do creative work, if you want to do the things that bring you alive, you're going to need to reinvent yourself.

[24:36] Guest 3: Absolutely amazing and absolutely beautifully presented. Before doing these interviews, I also reached out to the community and I asked them what are some of the questions that they would want to get answers to. So one of the questions that got asked a lot was as freelancers, how do you manage your time well? Like how do you make sure that you are learning and you are at the same time also doing work and you are managing your, you know, you're being more productive. Now I know that could be a very different definition for many people, but you know, you work with a lot of freelancers. So I just wanted to know from you that How do you, how do you make sure that, you know, they feel fulfilled even when they are doing freelancing work?

[25:22] Guest 2: Yeah. So I think freelancing is hard, right? Because it's unpredictable. You don't know when things are going to be super busy. You don't know when a project's going to appear. You don't know when you're going to be not doing work.

And I think the key is in that last part, the not doing work part. When you have a period of unplanned break, do you have the skills or practice or comfort with being reflective and taking space, taking time? Some people like meditating. I like, um, writing. I like just kind of wandering, taking walks, um, traveling a bit. Reading extensively.

What are the things that are going to recharge you that help you to figure out what's next? Right. I think the biggest mistake is like to try and be busy as much as possible because you're just— there's no cap, right? Like the more you work, the more you can make. And I think if you're just trying to maximize earnings, you're going to get in trouble. So I often have people say, how can you like carve out time such that you are truly resting, right?

And like this, this should be more than a week. A week vacation is for full-time employees. Um, their, their jobs to be available 24/7. Um, as a freelancer, that's not your job. Your job is to do incredible work, which often requires breaks, rest, um, types of leisure that are contemplative, whether it's meditation, reading, spending time with family, things like that that are going to recharge you to do work that's incredible. If you're not doing incredible work as a freelancer that both you're driven by and that resonates with your clients, you're not going to be able to sustain the life.

You're also just not going to be having that much fun, right?

[27:23] Guest 3: So many freelancers that I meet— I've also done freelancing— so for many freelancers, the, uh, motivation to do freelance is actually that they'll have an autonomy over their life. They would plan schedules, they'll have time for learning. And this is just something that does not happen because, you know, again, we want to max out what, like, our earnings, and we forget to take rest. We burn out. We forget to invest time in our learning. So I have met so many freelancers who used to be avid readers, and now they haven't read anything in past 1 or 2 months because they are too busy doing the client work.

So absolutely you have to be better at that.

[28:03] Guest 2: And I think this hits to a core point. Sarah Kessler has done a ton of great writing on this. She wrote a book called Gigged and she highlights a key point and calls out a lot of this BS around people. Like it's all these platform companies like that say people want more flexibility and autonomy. It's not true. It's, it's basically like fake news because it doesn't add the other side of it.

When surveyed, most freelancers would give up the flexibility and autonomy for steady income. That's true. Um, now the second thing is, uh, so I created a tool to help people with this. It's very US-focused based on like US tax laws, but just start with your expenses. Few people do. People start with like, here's how much money I can make or will make.

And then I need to just spend less than that. I say, flip it, come up with what is the cost of your good life, right? So start bottoms up and say, do I need this nice apartment? Do I need to live alone? Do I need fancy meals? Um, are these things important to me?

Right? If they are important, then like, you're going to be stressed. The more money you make, the more you're going to be stressed, but perhaps there's a version of your life you can design. That's much less costly. Right. What's— I've, so I've lowered my cost of living by 75% in the last, in the last 2 years.

[29:37] Guest 3: So has it affected anything in how you live? Like, are you happy with how you live?

[29:42] Guest 2: My life's better now. Well, I will say it's very easy to dramatically lower your cost of living going from New York City to anywhere else. But I was spending $6,000 a month US in New York City. Uh, last month living in Taipei, I spent $1,500. Wow. Right.

So it's 75% cut. Um, but it also changes the dynamic of what I say yes and no to. Now, if I get a project that's just boring with a client that I know I'm going to just be struggling with, it's going to be a grind. I'm just going to say no. And kind of hold out. So I'm kind of playing a longer-term strategy.

Like maybe at some point I'd try to pursue projects where I can make more or be a little more busy. But in the meantime, I'm trying to create stuff and figure out like, what is the long-term sustainable path for this? So in freelancing, don't think you need to be thinking like 3 months and like 5 years at the same time, which is super challenging, right? But most freelancers are only thinking about that 3 months.

[30:52] Guest 3: That's true. That's right. So, uh, there are two sets of people. One set of people believe that there is something called a passion and you have to go find it. And there's other set of people who say that, you know, passion is bullshit. You have to do the grind, you have to, you know, do the work and like things will happen.

There's no such thing as passion, it's bullshit. So what do you— what are your views on, you know, um, do you think is there something called passion and If there is, how can you find it?

[31:22] Guest 2: Yeah. So I mean, passion, passion is almost a word without meaning. It means anything to everyone. And it typically is something people use to just— it's a word people are frustrated by, right? I think both camps are right. So the authors of Designing Your Life, they did research on like, what are people's do people have like a core interest or even many interests?

And they found 80% of people don't have one interest. Right. So I think passion gets too simplified is like, you need to have one thing, right? That's great for this idea of like, you need to scale and do one thing over and over again and maximize as much money as possible. Works for some people, works for some entrepreneurs. Like we need those people, but it doesn't work for most people.

Um, now the second thing is like you, a lot of people find, okay, I'm passionate about yoga, but as soon as you're starting to get paid for yoga, it's like, this sucks. I want to do this more as like a spiritual, like reflective thing that like helps restore me, helps me maintain healthy, but I don't want to get paid for this and have to learn deeper and have people rely on me. Ruins it. Right. So I think it's more about experimenting with like what brings you alive. And I think that's the more important thing.

Like what is the work you're drawn to do? Right. So I think the way I think about it is I can't even define what I'm passionate about. Like at the core, I really like helping people like define and carve new paths. Now I'm also passionate about writing. I'm also passionate about not working.

I'm also passionate about spending time with family. I'm also passionate about reading. Right. And it doesn't mean I need to like monetize a life around that. I think that's where things get icky is like we're trying to monetize our passion. It ruins it because like there's countless research showing that as soon as you're focused on extrinsic markers of success, you're going to be demotivated.

So I think you have to figure out like, what are you drawn to and what is it for rather than what excites you, right? Because those interests change. For me, I help people change careers a few years ago. Now I'm much more interested in like reinventing lives that are a lot more risky, right? It's a much different idea. Reimagining like, what is the relationship between work and life?

Much different than like just helping people switch jobs. So it's constantly evolving. But I think the core thing for me is like, there's almost like purpose. I'm helping people, right? Maybe I help some, maybe I don't help others, but it's a lot more fun. And I get thank you notes from people now and say, this really impacted me, or this really helped me.

And that's game-changing. Nobody I ever worked with in my full-time job ever sent me thank you notes and said, this really impacted me, right? They're just like, you're late, or there's spelling error, right?

[34:43] Guest 3: It's a different kind of work, right? So let's say, you know, uh, somebody who's listening to us right now is going through that, you know, um, dilemma of what they can be or what they should be or what they are doing right now. What are the books or resources that you would recommend them to help them gain some alignment with what they should be doing or how they should be approaching this problem?

[35:10] Guest 2: So I think there's like the Carve Your Own Path books, like Seth Godin's Linchpin, I think everyone should read. Another one is Derek Sivers. Anything You Want. It's a story about his entrepreneurial path, and it's much more around carving a path that was like true to himself, right? He did all these things where people said, you can't do that, and he would just do it anyways. And he just got— he discovered his own path through basically not following the rules.

So Linchpin for sure, Derek Sivers, and then I think it's important to read about like the fragility of life. Like one book that resonated with me early was Tuesdays with Morrie. It's about a man who's dying. And what makes it stand out is that all throughout this journey with this guy, Mitch Albom, who visits him once a week, there's these incredible people that are emerging from his life that are just coming to say thank you. Like they, they loved the man. So many people loved this man and you realize that he lived his whole life to like build communities and like have people, right?

It wasn't people from his profession. Um, it was people, his former students, it was people in the community he impacted. So what is it all for? Like at the end of the day, like what are the regrets that are going to pang you, um, that you want to avoid today?

[36:44] Guest 3: Amazing. So you are actually, while you are helping people reimagine their relationship with the work, you are also, and you know, while you are doing this, your experiments with the future of work, what do you think, Paul, are a few of these skills or few of the mindset that people should start cultivating to actually do well in their careers, if you have any? Suggestions on that?

[37:10] Guest 2: Yeah, I think, I think I would broaden it just to life, right? I think we focus too much on work as like we need to reinvent ourselves for work. A lot of the advice around the future of work is not that great. It does all these projections of here's what the future jobs are and here are the skills. Here's the facts. Like, The day-to-day jobs people are doing are not that different than 5 years ago.

And HR doesn't even know how to figure out how to hire for these skills. So don't get these skills because you think a job requires them, right? Figure out what you're actually good at and keep finding ways to do more of it, right? If you're drawn to write, figure out how to get better at writing, like send it to people, hold yourself accountable. I think more broadly, reinvention, like figure out how to make yourself uncomfortable. We spend too much time, I think, at least in the West of like trying to get more money such that we can get more comfortable, right?

Such that like anything with stress, this is the danger of like making a lot of money. If you're stressed, you can pretty much find anything to solve that problem. Right. If you're stressed about doing laundry, boom, pickup on your phone. If you're stressed about— so we remove all these discomforts. So I think a couple of things to do that are like, one, do experiments on your own on the side, make yourself uncomfortable, maybe a side hustle.

Two, you can go travel to a foreign country. Um, there was a giant spider in my room in Thailand last week, and I was terrified. We don't have giant spiders. The US. I like jumped on the bed and I was like, holy crap. But look at, you look it up and you're learning about this and it's not a deadly spider.

It's like super helpful for the environment. And like, if it does bite you, it's like a minor bite, but holy crap. Like, I'm not going to be that kind of this uncomfortable or like lost in a place. And that's what travel is. Can be great for. And travel, travel is often super cheap.

If you're traveling in Asia, you can live on like $10 a day. And a lot of places, Europe is very cheap to travel to. Couchsurfing, you can do that. I've done that across the country as well.

[39:43] Guest 3: Amazing. Great. So you are generously giving away one of our, one of your courses to our community. So can you Can you tell us more about the course that you're going to give us?

[39:54] Guest 2: Yeah, so it's actually a course I created a few years ago. It was, it was, it was part of my evolution of saying I didn't really want to help people with like the career reinvention and the story stuff anymore, mostly because I wanted to challenge myself to do different things. So I basically wrote up everything I had learned. So I created like a playbook that's like a 60-page playbook people can fill out to like craft their story. Come up with like where they're headed, do this self-reflection of like what they're all about, what are their strengths, and also created a course. It's framed around like coming up with your resume, but it's really about coming up with your story.

And it walks people through this exercise of coming up with the 10 stories from your life and then coming up with the themes and then figuring out how do you tell that story. And there's some examples in there and That seems to have really helped people. The cool thing is like I sent that course to somebody a couple months ago and then they sent me back their resume and it was like so much better and it was so cool to like see somebody just like intuitively grasp some of these topics I'm trying to convey. But yeah, like I offer that to most people for free. I also have a course around like strategy consulting skills. So how do you, communicate clearly?

How do you structure your thinking? How do you create persuasive arguments? How do you create PowerPoint presentations? How do you create memorable content? I offer that on a gift basis as well. I do a lot of my work in the gift economy, which is like pay what feels right.

You can offer different tiers of pricing or you can just shoot me an email and I'll offer the course to you as a gift for free if you don't have the means to pay. Um, so have that, um, have a bunch of stuff on my site as well. I have, uh, the freelance target income calculator that does some of that. What is the cost of a good life? And then figures out how many hours do you need to work to sustain this life and at what rate. Um, I have a fear setting exercise.

Um, these are all free. People can download fear setting exercise that helps people manage a shift. And helps people put down on paper, like, what are the costs of not changing and what are the benefits of even a partial success of a shift? It's built on some of the stuff Tim Ferriss has shared, but that's all there. Everyone can download that and I can give you the link in the notes as well.

[42:26] Guest 3: Wow. And let's say if somebody wants to reach out to you, where can they find you?

[42:32] Guest 2: I'm really easy to find. You can go to my site, think-boundless.com. You can also just find me, Paul Millerd, on LinkedIn. M-I-L-L-E-R-D. I'm the, I think I'm like one of two Paul Millerds in the world on LinkedIn. So as long as you spell it right, you'll find me.

Super responsive. Like if people want to have a conversation with me, I'm happy to connect. I have something on my site where you can just book a curiosity conversation with me. No purpose, no agenda. Let's just learn from each other and see what happens. I think this is kind of how we connected and, um, just reach out.

Like, I love being in conversations around like how people are reinventing, how can they can do better work. And this is the work that fires me up that I'm drawn to. You could say I'm passionate about it, but, um, really just want to help as many people as possible and, uh, trying to figure out my own path in the, in the meantime.

[43:27] Guest 3: Wow. Thank you so much, Paul. It's overwhelming, the kind of knowledge and the kind of experiences that you've shared. I think it takes a lot of courage to actually be vulnerable, share your story, and admit that, okay, I don't know what I'm doing yet, but I am, you know, making it as I go with it. So amazing. I'm sure that there is a lot that listeners are going to take out of it.

Thank you so much for doing this, Paul. Loved it. Yeah, no, thank you.

[43:55] Guest 2: I think like I'm really impressed with the journey you're taking and the way you're helping people in India. It's like, it takes so much courage. I've worked with people in India and I know how hard it is to step off the path there as well. And like what you're doing and reinventing yourself and building a community is so amazing. And we need more people like that. And I just appreciate it so much.

So thank you. And such a joy to talk with you today.

[44:24] Guest 3: Thank you, Paul. I really appreciate it. Have a great day.