Pivotal People
Join us in conversations with inspiring people doing amazing things. Their insights and experiences help motivate all of us to find our purpose that fits with our abilities, gifts and life situation. Get a "behind the scenes" look at successful people making a difference in the world and benefit from their advice for the rest of us. Our guests include authors, artists, leaders, coaches, pastors, business people and speakers.
Pivotal People
Quit Playing Small: How to Overcome Fear and Find Your True Purpose
Mary Marantz joins us to share insights from her new book "Underestimated: The Surprisingly Simple Shift to Quit Playing Small, Name the Fear, and Move Forward," revealing how we can overcome the invisible barriers that keep us from reaching our full potential.
Mary is a Yale Law School graduate and the first in her immediate family to go to college. She is the bestselling author of the book “Dirt” about growing up in West Virginia and the highly-anticipated follow up "Slow Growth Equals Strong Roots." She is also the host of the wildly popular podcast The Mary Marantz Show.
Join our conversation to discuss:
• Fear is a "boring liar" that uses the same broken scripts on everyone
• The "missing handbook for life" concept explains why we constantly second-guess ourselves
• "Slow growth equals strong roots" - why consistency matters more than overnight success
• Excellence combined with consistency creates an unstoppable formula
• People-pleasing and "making ourselves small" keeps us from our purpose
• Criticism hurts but isn't fatal - most people can't see your vision until it's complete
• You don't need anyone's permission to pursue your unique calling
Visit marymarantz.com to learn more, take the Achiever Quiz at AchieverQuiz.com to discover your achiever type, and pre-order the book at NameTheFear.com where you can also access the first chapter for free.
Order Stephanie's new book Imagine More: Do What You Love, Discover Your Potential
Learn more at StephanieNelson.com
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I would like to welcome Mary Marantz to the Pivotal People podcast. She is an author of a new book that's coming out April 29th. You heard it here first. It's called Underestimated, the Surprisingly Simple Shift to Quit Playing Small Name the Fear and Move Forward. Anyway, and before we started recording this, I told Mary that I'd read the book and I'd highlighted it all over the place and it really hit me personally. I mean, do you ever read a book where you're like, hey, they wrote this just for me? And I came away with I have three bullet points on an index card, mary, that I am committed to as a result of reading your book. So thank you very much. Well, let me tell you about her quickly and then we're going to turn it over to her because she's amazing.
Speaker 1:Mary is a best selling author of books. Her first book was called Dirt and this book is underestimated. She's also the host of a popular podcast called the Mary Morant Show. She grew up in a trailer, a single wide trailer in West Virginia. She was the first person in her family to go to college and then she went on to go to law school at Yale yeah, you heard that right. She's been featured on CNN, msn and all kinds of national media outlets. She and her husband live in New Haven, connecticut, and you have two golden retrievers. As a lab owner, I have an appreciation for those sweet dogs. But thank you so much for joining us, and could you tell us first of all describe your three books and then let's launch into this book Underestimated, and why I really think this is going to help people.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, stephanie, thank you so much for having me and for that wonderful intro. I feel like I just want you to come do that every morning when I get out of bed. That would really change things. Okay, yeah. So three books, three books. The first book is Dirt Growing Strong Roots and what Makes the Broken Beautiful.
Speaker 2:And for those of you listening, if you just type in thebookdirtcom, I'm not sending you there to buy it, although by all means. But when you're there you'll actually see that, the cover of the book. There's a picture of a trailer on it and that is the actual trailer that I grew up in and my husband, justin took that. He's a photographer. He took that photo the first time I brought him home to meet my family. And so I grew up in the 1980s, was born in 1980, in a true single wide trailer in very rural West Virginia on top of a mountain called Fenwick Mountain. My dad's a logger, his dad is a logger, dad's dad's dad's all the way eight generations deep in our family are loggers and coal miners, and Dirt is very much the story of in the most 15 second elevator pitch version. It's a movie we've seen before. It's a story we've heard before, of growing up in very humble beginnings in rural Appalachia and going on to the Ivy League.
Speaker 2:But I really wanted this book to be something so much more, which is, how do we go back and look at our story through the lens of grace and the lens of empathy for those who came before, even if they didn't always get it right, and sort of making peace with your past, making peace with the fact that your story does not disqualify you. In fact, it may be that the very thing that that vulnerability that connects you to people and so dirt came first, and then slow growth equals strong roots is this idea of can we give up achieving for our worth? As you can imagine, growing up in a trailer and going on to Yale Law School, it gives you a bit of an underdog complex, and it gave me this feeling that, no matter what I did, it would never be enough, and you know this wrestling of like there's no amount of more that can make you stop feeling less than. And so there's this part in in slow growth and in dirt, where I talk about getting to Yale, you know, for the first time, and sort of feeling like I had a hole in my heart that was like a root canal the size of a chest wound and every time the air hit, just right, it sent these exposed roots screaming back into full life. And I would try to backfill that hole with gold stars and achievements and brand name labels and degrees, to feel like if I could just get it full enough, if I could just stuff my life full enough with things and achievements and awards and accolades, then I would finally not feel empty.
Speaker 2:And then that brings us to underestimate it. So if it's making peace with your past and dirt, giving up achieving for your worth and slow growth, this is okay. Once you've done both of those things, how about we get on with the good work you were put here to do and we quit playing small on that thing? You can't go a day without thinking about, and so that's sort of me in a nutshell. And then the evolution of three books in three parts brings us to today, sitting down with you, oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:And I have to add, because I've read your book I always do and I'm just always so thankful that I get to read these books of people I haven't met yet, and then I get to meet the author and the listeners, get to hear from the author and because, honestly, because I've read the book, I think we just are going to have a much better conversation because I have three points on an index card.
Speaker 1:This, like, is really practical stuff. The other piece is Mary is a really good writer, thank you. She's funny and I mean, obviously you have a lot of pop culture references and I think I'm a little older than you, so it's fun to read. I think it's important that, yeah, this is a really helpful book, but it's also fun to read. You know you want to have a fun read. I love that. You talked about a couple of things that I thought I have to tell you. When I read books, I'm always sharing with my family members this insight. What struck me I was telling my son about your handbook for life concept. Yeah, the missing handbook for life. Could you elaborate on that? I never thought about that until you wrote about it.
Speaker 2:So for everybody listening, the whole book is premised on the idea that fear is a really boring liar. And then the same broken scripts it uses on me, it actually uses on you, and same on you, stephanie. It uses on me, it actually uses on you and same on you, stephanie. It uses on me. It's all been done, it's all been done better, it's all been done by somebody the world actually wants to pay attention to. I can't start until it's perfect. I can't start until I have the whole start to finish. Blueprint on and on and on down the line. What if my voice doesn't matter? What if I don't matter? What if it's already too late? And so, chapter by chapter, I actually tackle, tackle and go toe-to-toe with all these different faces that this shapeshifter fear likes to put on, like perfectionism, people-pleasing, procrastination, imposter syndrome, overthinking, even a fear of success. And chapter four is second-guessing, is a missing handbook. And I say in the book there's not a hard story person that I know in real life who doesn't feel like at some point or another they missed out on getting this handbook for life. Everyone else was given. You know, that chapter kind of kicks off with like there is a missing space on my bookshelf, it's gathering dust. There's two parts of, you know, my once thinly layered epidermis, now turned to shedding of old skins that never quite seemed to fit, mixed with two parts golden retriever fur and endless piles of lint laundry lint and I draw my name in cursive. You know, in the missing gaps, these twisting turning lines abruptly cutting back on each of you know themselves in sharp places, before reluctantly turning to begin again.
Speaker 2:And for a lot of us, that's what life feels like. It feels like we keep starting over. It feels like it's so much harder than it should be. It feels like we're pushing a boulder up the mountain, only to blink at the last minute and it rolls all the way back down the hill. We lose our grip and we lose our way, and the boulder rolls all the way back down the mountain. We find ourselves starting over.
Speaker 2:And so if you're listening to this and you're like, yup, yes, yes, you just described my whole life, why is it so easy for other people? They implement, they execute, they achieve what it's hard and we feel like we're just pushing against ourselves. We feel like we're pushing against this heavy weight we were never asked to carry. For a lot of us. It can feel like one of the reasons is because everybody else just had this wealth of wisdom dropped into their laps when they were eight years old. Chad, pass the mashed potatoes and oh, by the way, make sure you understand compound interest.
Speaker 2:And the rest of us feel like we're walking around in the world without all the missing, you know, the pertinent parts. We're missing these pertinent parts and I kind of make a joke, a very long form joke in the book about, like Edward Scissorhands dropped down in the middle of some color-coded pastel suburban hell. We find that when we break the rules because we did not know the rules, we are somehow the ones who die death by a thousand cuts. So if you feel like you constantly can't trust yourself, you constantly second guess every decision you make because you believe that, a there is a right and wrong answer and b no matter what you choose, you will always choose wrong because it's you, then chapter four, second guessing, is a missing handbook is for you and for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really made me realize that we think everyone else has the answers. They don't Right. Some people have less of a fear of failure, and so much of this goes back to we have to wind back to. What are the voices we heard when we were younger?
Speaker 1:Yes, you know what do we need to look at as an adult in the face and say, no, that's not true, I'm just not going to identify with that anymore. And the whole idea of, okay, say someone listening to this has a goal. You know, I really would like to have a successful XYZ, whether it's a project or a business, or a podcast or a book. And guess what, what? If someone said, no one else has the answers? Okay, you're moving ahead one step at a time. You learn as you go and, by the way, the environment changes all the time, so you have to learn as you go anyway.
Speaker 1:When I started, I started a website, 20 some years ago. 25 years ago, there was no social media yet, so we didn't have Facebook and Instagram and that's how different the world was. So don't think you have to have all the answers, because the world is going to change as you go anyway. You have to be open to learning. But you talk about and I love this, it spoke to me the whole idea of growth. You said overnight is overrated and I think we'd measure ourselves way too quickly and we say we're a failure and we quit. But you can say that much better than I can. What do you mean when you talk about the five reasons? Slow growth is the real growth, is the real goal, not overnight success.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, like I mentioned, slow growth is my second book, so it's kind of building on that in Underestimated. And that phrase slow growth equals strong roots is actually something my husband, justin, said to me when we were about a year into our photography business. So I graduated Yale Law School, had offers at law firms in London and New York and turned them down to become a wedding photographer with my husband Justin, which is a really expensive way to become a wedding photographer. I don't recommend that route, but I also would never trade having that experience either. And so we were about a year into our business. There were people who had started around the same time as us, or people who had even started a little bit after us, and it seemed like their businesses were just taken off, blowing up in the absolute best ways possible, and we felt like we were pushing that boulder up the mountain. It was this sprint through molasses. That was not a sprint at all. And we were sitting outside on a patio at a Mexican restaurant and I was crying. I had sunglasses on, but it was not because it was bright outside. I was crying into our chips and guacamole and it was just basically saying like, why is this happening for everybody but us.
Speaker 2:And he said a couple of things to me. One of them is that's not our race to run, which all I heard was you're not as fast as them, you're not going to be able to keep up with them. But he meant we were running marathons and they were over there running sprints, and we were running cross-country marathons. By the way, we were going to end up somewhere very different than where we started and they were just, you know, running in circles, basically. And then he said you know, slow growth equals strong roots, and I hated it at the time. I did not want to hear it. At the time, stephanie, I was like, nope, let's not do that one, let's do overnight, it's super easy. And everything I touch turns to gold. Do not pick a mantra for your life. That's like slow growth equals strong roots, and not expect for it to take a while.
Speaker 2:But slowly but surely, 15 years of being in that industry, through consistency and excellence and integrity and our reputation preceding us into rooms, we climbed from the bottom of our industry to the very tippy top. All of our wildest dreams as photographers came true. And when we got there, no one questioned our place in the room because we had put in the time, we had put in the reps, we had put in our 10,000 hours and not that it was really about anybody else co-signing us being in the room, but there was such an air of respect on our name when we got to where we were going because we didn't try to cut corners, we didn't try to rush it and so in Underestimated. I come back to talk about that with this idea of like I have now finally reached an age where wisdom comes with age, that I would say. I would not trade our timeline for overnight success if it meant I lost all of the grit, all of the muscle memory, all of the empathy, all of the resilience, all of the problem solving, all of the critical thinking that being an entrepreneur over the long haul gives you. You know, we could get into a whole side conversation which I'm going to rein myself in and not do it about like what we are losing in the modern age we're in in terms of critical thinking, creativity and problem solving, because we want the answers at our fingertips. So I say in that section I don't know about you, but I do not want the most interesting thing somebody could ever say about me to be, how little time I've been at this work, how little effort I put in before it all took off.
Speaker 2:And in slow growth I kind of compare it to weeds, flowers and trees. It's so tempting to want to grow like a weed, with dizzying heights six feet, overnight they pop up or a field of multiplying dandelions Everything it touches multiplies right, until you realize how little the world actually values that when it really comes to push, and how quickly you can pull that six foot weed out with just you know half an inch of roots that it's standing on. So they grew only for themselves. They stood for nothing, so they topple with the first easy push. Flowers are beautiful for the sake of being beautiful, and the world needs more beauty. But I want for all of us to be something more, and that brings us to trees, which are a thing of beauty in and of themselves. They grow to dizzying heights, but they are not content unless they can also provide shade and shelter for others and bear this fruit that can be given away.
Speaker 2:I think it's actually a weakness if you gain that success overnight because you did not put in the effort to grow the harvest, so you will be the first one to leave it scorched earth rotting on the vine. You thought it always would come easy, so you're defeated at the first minor failure that comes along the way. Right, you think it's all about you and how good you are when it happens overnight. But meanwhile slow growth allows the work to work on you and it humbles you and it actually creates that kind of endurance and hope and I will run my race. Well, that only comes from having that sort of. I love it enough to stay with it beyond my impatience. I love it enough to stay with it beyond my not seeing overnight results. I will do it for the love of the thing. And when you add in the variable of time, the results will follow.
Speaker 1:Okay, so do you see what I'm talking about? I mean, this is how reading Mary's book is.
Speaker 1:I am sitting here absolutely enchanted by hearing you speak and what's going through my mind is oh my gosh, what a great metaphor. I never thought of this before the tree that provides shade for others and fruit for others. And that is kind of how your book wraps up. Which I so loved was your quote about you know the gap between significance and success I realized it was never about you in the first place and for the people who get to the pinnacle of success, go back to the beginning and be a guide and an encourager for other people. That is so beautiful, because that is really when it gets fun.
Speaker 1:But two things you just said there, which I told you at the beginning, that I have an index card with three bullet points that Mary's inspired me to do. I am very disciplined when I decide it matters. So these three bullet points really matter to me, and you hit on two of them. One is the whole idea of consistency Consistency it sounds boring but it is true and you talk about just a little bit each day. The second concept you talked about, which I so loved, rather than our goal being perfectionism our goal being perfectionism, our goal being excellence.
Speaker 1:Yes, and you know, my excellence might look different than your excellence, but for me it's my excellence, that's right. And then I don't have to look at you because, as your husband said, that's not the race we're running, that's right. We're running a different one. Oh, would you talk about consistency and excellence? Yeah, just to tee and excellence, yeah.
Speaker 2:Just to tee that up. Yeah, so I'm going to just start by saying that I am not a naturally consistent person. It is not my natural strength or my natural gifting, and I talk about that in the chapter which is. It's called chapter 13,. Distraction is a ticking clock and it's talking about the second you decide to go really get serious about the dream, expect everything to go wrong, expect everything else to start vying for your attention with all of these distractions, or expect the world to get really noisy.
Speaker 2:The scroll feels a lot easier than doing the hard work, and I tell this story about being in college and I had to take a required economics class as part of my degree requirement to graduate. But this particular class had one very important loophole to all this main requirement energy which is that the attendance was optional. The only thing you had to do was show up on the four days where the four in-class exams were given. That made up the entire grade. And so for that class, because I had a very, very busy course load I was traveling for the debate team, I had a job, a part-time job to help pay for going to school, and so I would literally only show up for the exam days and at the night before I would take out the textbook, teach myself that section of the course material and then go take the test. And it was a Scantron test, so we got the results really quickly.
Speaker 1:Now, Mary, take a pause there. You stayed up all night long.
Speaker 2:All night long.
Speaker 1:All night long. She went to class. After spending the whole night at where was it?
Speaker 2:An open-faced turkey sandwich and a bunch of yeah, that's right, totally committed.
Speaker 1:So she stays up all night. Go back to your story. Yep, yeah, I did. This is Yale, by the way. Is this Yale? This was my undergrad Undergrad, okay, but I did this in Yale as well.
Speaker 2:I for sure did this at Yale as well, and so, yes, I sort of taught myself the course material crammed, pulled an all-nighter, went and took the test. It was a Scantron, so we got the results really quickly. I think like an hour later we could go back and see what we got and I ended up getting 100 on all exams, all four exams. And I joke in the book like I've just been dying to work that into casual conversation. This is the first podcast I've actually gotten to talk about it. I love it and I say like, listen, this next flex is going to be an eye roll, but don't worry, we'll still be friends by the end. And so what I say there is like that class.
Speaker 2:You know, my college experience in general taught me that it was how good you are that matters. Showing up was optional and this feeling that I've always held that excellence alone should be enough. You shouldn't have to check a box or just be seen for the sake of being seen in order for your work to matter. But very unfortunately, that's not how the world works. There are people who are far less talented, far less original, far less filled with integrity, who are gaining much, many more eyes on their work, simply because, while there's a group of us over here really focused on the excellence and not necessarily marketing ourselves, we kind of go away and hide and do the work, and then we're like here's the work, it should be enough. And what's winning in the world today is, of course, showing up and being seen and having eyes on what you're doing, and I really struggled with that. If you want me to be honest, I don't like that. I would much rather just go hide on the second floor, write a beautiful book and let the words speak for themselves, let the work lead the way, and it's just not how it is. And so I then kind of go a little deeper and I talk about this idea of micro changes, equal macro results.
Speaker 2:And if you have two people starting on the the same starting line, these dots on a graph, the virtuous cycle person continues to make these sort of virtuous decisions in a choose your own adventure kind of way.
Speaker 2:That's slow at first but eventually turns into this exponential upward explosion as good input after good input compounds consistency, compounds over time and builds on itself. Meanwhile, me, a vicious cycle person, who is very it goes back to chapter one, where we talk about all or nothing, thinking I've been all in and then I drop back off, and then all in and I drop back off and it says, like you know, that chart looks kind of like a little heartbeat there at the bottom before it crashes back out at zero and sort of stays there, and it was kind of an epiphany moment of like the missing piece of why is this not growing as fast as I want? Why is this not getting out there the way that I want? Is because I was not doing it consistently. Your life will not change until you change something you do every day, and so the people who are willing to have both excellence and consistency, in my opinion, are unstoppable, and that's why those are willing to have both excellence and consistency, in my opinion, are unstoppable.
Speaker 1:And that's why those are two bullet points on my card. My excellence is being able to have people like you on this podcast, because I so love this podcast, but I'm like you, I'm not always consistent about marketing it. But for you to say it's a small amount of time every day and isn't that true for everything? Exercise, it's a small amount of time every day, and isn't that true for everything. Exercise it's a small amount of time. You can do, you know, arm weights for five minutes a day and it'll make a difference. There's so many things that are a small amount of time. So I love that and I loved the excellence piece because it is so, especially when you're talking about marketing your book or marketing your podcast, it is too easy to compare with other creators. You know today in the world, the metrics are, you know, out there for everyone to see how many followers you have on Instagram and, by the way, mary has a lot of followers on Instagram and there's a reason for that.
Speaker 1:It's because you have excellent work. People benefit from excellent work. There's no apology with letting the world know about excellent work. It helps other people. So if you can find something, as you said in your book, that helps other people and you're on your way that you love to do, as you said, not being able to let go of this thing because you love it so much, you're on your way to excellence and being the guide for other people.
Speaker 1:That's right Now. There is another concept, if you could talk about this, that I so related to, as a woman especially. You talked about thinking small. Not just thinking small, but trying to be small for the sake of other people. You know, not antagonizing other people who aren't trying the same thing not. Could you talk about that, because I think many people can relate to that, especially women.
Speaker 2:Yeah, something like an area. There's it's in the book a few different places, but something that's jumping up for me right now is the people pleasing chapter. People pleasing is a lonely intersection. It is the crosshair intersection of paid her dues and waited her turn. It is, you know, trying to keep people happy with us, because we think that somebody being upset with us is the same as being abandoned, which is the same as death in our minds basically, and from a very young age we're sort of taught that losing the approval of a parent would be like losing our survival. And so for those who kind of lock in as people pleasers, they spend their life feeling like if they're at odds with anyone. It's sort of a threat to their very identity, it's a threat to their very safety, and then the other side of that is waiting on a permission. That never comes. We feel like there's going to come this point.
Speaker 2:I had a recurring dream, an actual dream, not an artistic license dream, but an actual sit straight up in bed at 3 am dream where I was following this author I look up to through a very crowded room and every time I would almost get close enough to her, it would change and she would be farther away from me again. And in the dream I had my first book Dirt in my Hands and I thought, if I could just get her to open this book, see how good some of the sentences were, see how good some of the paragraphs were, then she would look me right in the eye and say you got it, kid, you're going to make it get tapped on the forehead, tapped on the shoulder, tapped to that post, and then I would have arrived. And we're all just waiting for that moment of arrival. And what can happen is when we put all of our validation and our trust and our approval and our belonging and our acceptance in external factors and external people, then we have no inner sense of that belonging. And so to keep ourselves safe, we can do something I call the contortionist is we shrink ourselves up to fit into these one inch by one inch boxes, shrink ourselves up a little tighter, anything we can do to take up even one inch less of space in the world, because to contort is easier than to be criticized. We will do backbends until our back breaks so long as nobody has something bad to say about us ever again.
Speaker 2:And if we're not doing that, then we'll be what I call the masquerader, where we're shoving other people into the spotlight, we're other people's biggest cheerleaders. But really it's because it's kind of like a tricky sleight of hand where we say look over here so that we can keep the eyes off of ourselves. And so we hide in plain sight in that way, because something in our story has told us it's not safe to trust anyone, including ourselves, and that if the world can't find us, then it can't ever hurt us again. And so we hide, we put it off another year, but the clock goes on ticking. Another year goes by and the world is worse for our absence. So it's really that idea of like do you want to be safe or do you want to go do the thing you were most created to do?
Speaker 1:And what I heard you say in the book was really, why are we so afraid of people's criticism? It is not fatal, right, why? And I'm saying this to myself because everything you just described, I have been, you know, I hear that, I have done that. You know, whatever you do, don't talk about your work project at this lunch with the ladies, because it's going to be antagonistic. Do not talk about it. You might think it's so interesting, but they're not doing that kind of thing. So, like you said in your book, why does she think she's such a big deal? Why does she we're so afraid of that kind of thing? Yeah, I used to have a boss, a man, and he had a phrase and he was young and it was don't let it hit your radar screen, and he was able to do that. He was able. Any criticism that came out of him.
Speaker 1:He was like just deflect it.
Speaker 2:Got it.
Speaker 1:Don't let it hit your radar screen, don't let that slow you down. And he was able to do that. I've always held on to that, but I'm not always able to do that. One question in your book where you said why are we so afraid? Is it really going to hurt us that much? Why is it going to hurt us that much? Of course it's not going to hurt us that much.
Speaker 2:Well, I think oh, you know, it is that kind of idea of like, like the chapter 12 on criticism is an inside job, like for everybody listening to be clear, like I also say, you know when the criticism is hit, just right, it has knocked the wind out of me and left me curled up, you know, on the fetal, in the fetal position on the floor, like in the moment. It for sure hurts. But what I talk about is like you cannot bubble wrap purpose and there's no amount of shrink wrap that can ever keep you safe. And ultimately, like other people's lack of vision for where you're headed has nothing to do with where you're actually being called up to and you do not. There's no requirement for them to co-sign your dream or what you're building or where you're headed. And most people, 99.999% of people, do not have the ability to see a thing until it is already done. They will only be able to see you and see that it matters once it's completed. And I have a script that I tell myself in moments like these, which is, that's okay, you'll meet them later. They don't understand.
Speaker 2:I had somebody when I first said I was going to write a book. Be like what's this so-called book of yours going to be about. It was the most ridiculous thing they'd ever heard in the world. And I'm now releasing my third book in five years and I say, let your results be your reply. So it does hurt, I definitely won't.
Speaker 2:You don't want to say like, oh well, like sticks and stones, like words will never hurt me. Words hurt, of course they hurt. When Dirt came out, there was a hometown Facebook thread that I assure you hurt very much before it was ever out and people even knew what the book actually was and they changed their minds once they read it. But woof, it hurt that day, but it also. We cannot let that prevent us from doing the work we know is going to help so many people. That has to outweigh. When I was writing this book, it was 12 hours a day for 12 months and every time I felt like laying on the floor and giving up. I thought about the people that it would help and I realized that whatever the critics had to say, it wasn't going to even touch how many people it was going to help.
Speaker 1:That's right. So in a few months, I'm going to email you and I'm going to tell you how my three bullet points are going. Love it, because little things like that truly do change the trajectory. You know, you make a choice to say I'm going to be consistent with these tasks that I know make a difference. I'm going to do it every day. I'm going to do it every day. I'm going to email Mary. I'm going to look here's where I was before, here's where I was after.
Speaker 1:When you just said and we need to finish because she has lots of time. I mean, she has lots of things to do and I have kept her over time. As I said, I am enchanted by listening to your words and the book is so good you have to get it underestimated April 29th, but you just said something that I think we all need to hold on to I'd love to finish with this. When you said you don't need people's permission to co-sign your vision. Yeah, so many times we're the only ones who have the vision for the very specific thing that we want to achieve excellence in All right. So imagine this One of the best books I've ever read was the biography of Steve Jobs and the invention.
Speaker 1:Every product that Apple produced changed its segment. So, in other words, when they came out with the iPod, that changed the whole music industry. All of a sudden, we're streaming music instead of CDs, and you can do that for every single product they created. Steve Jobs didn't ask people would you like an iPhone? No, people would have said no, I don't need that. I have a BlackBerry and a pager. Why do I need an iPhone? I have an alarm clock, I have a travel alarm, I have a calculator, I have a compass, I have a GPS in my car. Look at all the devices the iPhone replaced and look or a smartphone and look at how it changed everything.
Speaker 1:He had a vision, his team had a vision. We didn't see it. He didn't wait for us to say go ahead and invent it and see if we like it. He didn't play small. So that inspires me, because if you have a dream, I would like to say God, put it in your head and it's our obligation to do 12 hours a day for a whole year. I am really impressed with you, that you. My three bullet points are so much easier than that, mary.
Speaker 2:It was a marathon, for sure, for sure. But I'm telling you when you can hold in your mind the faces of the people. I had four women that I know in real life in particular, who I knew were the most avatar target readers for this book, and I just held their faces floating above my laptop every single day and that's what got me back up off the literal and metaphorical floor. Every time I was like no, I can't keep going, I have nothing else in me. I remembered what this book could do in their family trees Because, in addition to helping people quit playing small and stop underestimating themselves, for me this book, the most target reader, are the hard story people who are already doing the work to change their family trees, to be these generation changers.
Speaker 2:But they've pushed and they've pushed and they've pushed and they have hard story fatigue and they don't know why it always feels so much harder for them than it seems to feel for everybody else.
Speaker 2:And what happens when those people who are already doing the work, who have that kind of the pain, has rounded off the hard edges like progressively finer grits of sandpaper. These are the good hearts that, when we free them from this icy grip of fear and they're set free to kind of run towards the work that's being laid out for them to do, that they're being called up to do. I feel like the ripple effects of that are just going to send shockwaves around the world. So that got me up off the floor and you need a deep driving sense of purpose if you're going to go create really big things that change things like you're talking about with Steve Jobs, the things that matter, that change people's lives, because there's a reason that passion means suffering. It's what are you willing to kind of birth out into the world? And the very end of the book there's a part where I say just like they talk about in delivery rooms, like fight for your baby.
Speaker 2:Fight for your baby to get it into the world.
Speaker 1:I love that, and what a great way to wrap this up. Thank you so much, mary, and Mary's website is marymarantzcom, and that's Mary M-A-R-A-N-T-Z. That's right, we'll have it in the show notes, but for those of you who don't go to the show notes, I want to make sure you are able to get a hold of her. She's on Instagram, mary Morantz as well, and she also has tell us about your podcast, the Mary Morantz Show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what do you do there? The Mary Morantz Show we started in 2019. So we're coming close to six years of having the show. Mostly, what it really kind of boils down to is every week I have much like, much like you have a different author on. We're talking about their books. There are a lot of conversations that revolve around entrepreneurship being a generation changer. You know, this season all year we're doing different themes that are in underestimated. So, like all the different chapters people pleasing perfectionism and so on and I've been really lucky to have a lot of the people I quote in the book actually come on to the show, which is really fun. So that's themarymoranshowcom.
Speaker 2:And then I actually have two more fun things that I'll tell your people about, if that's okay. I mentioned earlier the contortionist and the masquerader. They are two of five achiever types that I first talked about in slow growth, but they carry over into underestimated of why our different achiever types get stuck playing small and how to move forward from it. And so we have the performer who's always on their toes, wants to show themselves but definitely also other people how far they've come. I am the classic performer. The tightrope walker could care less who's clapping, but they need higher and higher death defying feats to feel the same amount of good. The masquerader hides in plain sight and shoves other people into the spotlight. The contortionist is the people pleaser. To contort is easier than to be criticized. And the illusionist in the distance believes that all the conditions to begin and they themselves must be perfect before they can even start. And so if you go to AchieverQuizcom, we've actually put together like a two-minute quiz 10 minutes if you really overthink it where the questions are super fun, and then, in true Mary form, we go deep in the results. It's going to tell you what your type is, how you get tripped up, playing small and how you move forward. And so that's AchieverQuizcom.
Speaker 2:And then at NameTheFearcom, we actually have the whole book website up there and for your listeners, stephanie, we have put up the whole first chapter free. They can just go grab it and start reading right away at namethefearcom. And then, while they're there, if we're still in pre-order I'm not sure when this will air, but if we're still in pre-order or launch week, we also have, if you pre-order the book, slash order the book the first week, the first three chapters, which you can grab while you're waiting for Amazon or whoever to deliver the book. But, most importantly, we have the audio book. So it's like getting two books for the price of one.
Speaker 2:I read the audiobook. So if you've enjoyed this episode, you'll love the audiobook and all of that's. At namethefearcom. Pre-orders are huge, huge, huge, huge for an author that you maybe have just discovered and now love and want to support Truly. Whether Amazon will even show the book depends on pre-orders. So, beyond actually searching it, they never recommend it unless you have a lot of pre-orders. So pre-ordering the book is huge. And I'm at Mary Morantz, like you were talking about on social media Pretty much all the social medias are at Mary Morantz and come tell me what your Achiever Type is, if you listened to the episode, what you thought of it, if you pre-ordered the book, all the things at Mary.
Speaker 1:Morantz, that is great. Well, I hope you got that. It'll all be in the show notes. I am so thankful for your time, mary. It has been so nice to talk to you. Same, I love your book and I really am looking forward to my consistency. Yes, and then I'm going to follow up with you. Yes, and then by then she'll probably have another book she can come back on. It's true, every couple years, that's right. Well, thank you so much. Good luck with the launch.
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