My First Project Was a Total Disaster (It Launched My Career)

Angela Druckman: Um, I'm sure this is true globally, but it's certainly true in the US When a young person, let's say 13 or 14 is homeless, very often it's because they've left a very bad situation at home and then they get out on the streets and get into a worse situation. Because when you're that young, you can't even get a job at McDonald's. Like that's out of the question. So you're gonna get sucked into either the sex trade or the drug trade. Uh, and they get preyed upon terribly. So we feel really strongly that if we can help even one kid not get sucked into that sort of thing, um, then that's a, that's a real good thing.

Sean Weisbrot: Alright, so this is an interview with Angela Juman. We're gonna be talking about, uh, some of the psychology that you employ in running your business. And I have a list of questions here. So before we begin, why don't we just have you tell everyone exactly what your business is, and if you don't mind saying how much you guys earn per year? Sure.

Angela Druckman: So, um, our business, the Mond Company, um, we teach and consult, um, teaching a type of project management that's used predominantly in software called Scrum. Uh, very briefly, the principle behind Scrum is you work in short iterations. To produce working product to get it in front of the stakeholders quicker so you can get feedback and uh, hopefully build what they actually want. And in the course of teaching and working with my clients, uh, we work with everyone from huge tech companies to small startups to government, um, to kind of everything in between. Um, and that is what we do. We've worked on five different continents and 23 countries.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. And, uh, what, how much do you guys do on average per year?

Angela Druckman: Um, somewhere between a million and a million. 3 million. 'cause we're small.

Sean Weisbrot: Fair enough. That's okay. A lot of people that'll be watching this are a lot smaller than that and, you know, they're excited to, to learn from you. So. What makes you excited about doing this business?

Angela Druckman: Oh my gosh, that's an easy one to answer. Um, so I have a degree in computer science and my very first job out of university, I got really, really lucky. My first big project was my worst project ever. It was just a total disaster project. Typical, anybody listening in technology will understand when I say it. Disaster project, where by the time we were able to deliver something, it was delivered so late. It was so over a budget. Pretty much everybody hated everybody by the end of it all. And that really got me thinking, there's gotta be a better way to do this like this. This was awful. You know, it was awful for everybody. It was awful for our customers. It was awful for my team. So I started looking for, is there a better way to manage technology projects that can deal with all of these unknowns? Um, and that is when I found Scrum. I started off like everybody else, just using it on my own projects and immediately saw the difference. Um, and we were able to get things into people's hands quicker, which made them happier, but most importantly, we could get feedback from them. So we didn't go off in a direction for months and months just to discover. Uh, that's not really what we were looking for. Um, and so once I started using it, um, I just got more and more into it and actually went to present at a conference. Uh, about a project we were doing that was very successful. And when I was done with my presentation, a lady approached me and said, um, have you ever thought about teaching this? You'd be really good at it. Um, and I said, yeah, you know, I thought about it, but I don't know. And she said, well, I work for a training company. And, um, as you know, at the time, um, it was very important to partner with another company to get started. Um, she, she said, we'd help you do that if you would come and work for us after you were, uh, certified. So that's what I did, and that was in 2008. And I've done this ever since. Um, in the beginning, worked for them. Uh, as I said, I would. I promised I would, and so I did. But then eventually, um, after I wrote my book, I decided to go ahead and just start my own company. And then it just kind of went from there.

Sean Weisbrot: Did you have any fears about starting this company?

Angela Druckman: Oh my gosh, yes, of course. Um, I left a, a very lucrative position. I mean, I made really good money. Um, I had benefits, I had all of that. Um, and I was prepared to give that up. So I think a person would be crazy if they didn't have fear. But I also, um, I didn't like the way my clients were treated. That was actually probably my number one motivation. Um, it wasn't so much, ooh, I wanna go off on my own and make a ton of money. Money. It was because I felt like I made pretty good money. Um, it was more my clients were being treated poorly. Um, and I didn't like that. And I knew my clients would follow me. I was almost, almost certain all my big clients would come with me, and they did. So

Sean Weisbrot: have you ever regretted starting this business?

Angela Druckman: Oh, no. No, not at all. Um, it's been great. It's been a lot of work. A lot of work, and some of that is by choice. I definitely could have chosen to work less if I wanted to, but we, we were really successful and, um, the business kept rolling in. So, um, so yeah, I chose to work quite a bit, but no, I've never regretted it. It's, it's the best thing I ever did.

Sean Weisbrot: Have you ever thought about stopping this business?

Angela Druckman: Um, not necess, I wouldn't say stopping it completely. One thing that was very different for me, I'm sure it was for many people who, who teach Scrum with the advent of the pandemic, I. The majority of my training moved to an online venue, and that is, that was a big adjustment, a big, big adjustment when you're used to being up in front of people. Um, it, it's very different just to stare at a little white light on a computer, you know, looking at your camera. Um, so that part I think has, has kind of given me pause. I would say I've had to adjust. Um, now I'm getting back into more of a mix of teaching where much of it is still online, but some of it's in person. And that is, uh, a welcome, a welcome change. So I wouldn't say I've thought about stopping, um. It's just, I have kind of had to pivot. I've definitely had to pivot.

Sean Weisbrot: So what drives you to continue doing it?

Angela Druckman: Several things. I think. Um, I just, I really believe in it. I, I just honestly believe this is the best way to manage projects that are high risk with limited resources and that are gonna have emerging requirements. And, and when I have people tell me, and this has happened so many times, I can't even keep count. Your class changed my life. I mean, that's a big deal, right? That you can, you feel like you really made a pivot in someone's career. Um, that is, that's motivation. The other thing that keeps me going is my clients' businesses are so interesting. You know, I get to work with people who make really, really interesting things or provide interesting services, and that's fun. It's really fun.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay, so. Do you have a team now? Are you still running things by yourself or

Angela Druckman: No, we have a small team at the, at our largest, we were six right now 'cause we've come down a little bit in the pandemic. We're at three. I'll probably will be adding another trainer again pretty soon though, because it's getting to be too much for me to handle. That's what happened last time. I had to get another trainer to help. Um, and the great thing about it is the principal, other person that I work with really closely, which is our operations manager, is my daughter. Um, and that's really fun for us because we really enjoy working together. She's been with me right from the beginning, from 2012, so she's been, um, right with me growing all of this and we're very well matched for each other. Um, this is something that if I were to be giving advice to people, when you think about, um, kind of your right hand man, if you will, um, don't pick someone exactly like you pick someone complimentary. Um, I am the big picture person. I am a good communicator. I'm very comfortable being in front of people. Um, my daughter is the person who can sit down and read. I'm thinking of a specific example, a 27 page master services agreement, and realize that on page 21, in the third paragraph, there's something we shouldn't agree to. Uh, so that's not my forte at all to really comb through contracts and whatnot. So it's been really nice to have, um, that complimentary personality. I think between the two of us, um, we, we steer the ship pretty well.

Sean Weisbrot: I worked with my dad about a decade ago, and it was a mess. I, oh, no, it was a mess because he, he's a dentist, but he wasn't trained as a businessman. And at the time, I was learning how to become a businessman, and I understood the dentistry side because I had worked with him. I'd seen it my whole life, but. Yeah. No, he needed somebody, he needed a full-time like business partner. That wasn't me, but he, yeah. And it's,

Angela Druckman: it's not always a good fit. I know. Believe me. I understand. We're kind of lucky that way.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. The, the biggest problem to his business was him. If he would just like be a dentist and leave all the rest to somebody else, then he would've made a lot more money. But I was too young to understand how to really, really grow the business. If I went in, if I, if he had the business now and I did that now, I think it would be a totally different thing. But, uh, thankfully I came to my senses and left. Dentistry is not something, it's not easy to do for sure.

Angela Druckman: No, I can imagine.

Sean Weisbrot: So what has been the hardest decision you've had to make so far?

Angela Druckman: Oh, wow. Um, the hardest decision I've had to make. Um, I think I. I, I wouldn't say I agonized over this. It, I'm gonna call this a hard decision because it took me a while to realize the decision had to be made is that I didn't want to fight for every single market out there. So when we teach classes in person, and they are what I would refer to as a public class, something anyone can sign up for, you just, you know, enroll and it's, it's in person. There are major cities, uh, throughout the world, but especially here in the US that are lucrative. Um, uh, two that come to mind are New York City and San Francisco, uh, especially San Francisco. Ton of tech there. Obviously you're right next to Silicon Valley. Um, so those are markets. We taught classes in. Those are also markets that are heavily competed for. And lots of the big training companies, um, wanted those markets in some cases in San Francisco. Um, I've got great big competitors that are located there. So, so not only do they want that market, but they're right there. And it took us a while, but we decided some of those, and in particular New York and San Francisco, we just didn't wanna fight for because when you're small. And you're competing against companies that have hundreds of employees. Uh, it's not wise to try to compete on might 'cause you're not gonna win. You are just not. They can throw orders of magnitude, more dollars at advertising and things like that. So we decided in markets like that. Um, really most of the East coast too, just to not fight for it. Um, but it, I would call that a hard decision because, um, es especially San Francisco was a hard decision, uh, because we do have some good clients there and we have gotten quite a bit of business. But the, the cost benefit just wasn't there. It just wasn't, it was too on again, off again, whereas there were other markets, um. An example would be my home market. You can probably tell where I live from the picture behind me that is Seattle. Um, that market was, we decided we're gonna dominate Seattle, and we did.

Sean Weisbrot: So how long did you try to fight for those markets before you made this discovery that like it just wasn't worth it?

Angela Druckman: Um, New York we gave up on earlier than we did San Francisco. Uh, New York, we, the thing is, what will happen is you'll get a big class, a good size class, profitable. So for us, I would call that 25 people, and then the next one would have 11. Um, and so after that happened a couple of times, um, a few times I would say, we just said, okay, you know, we're just not gonna fight for that anymore. The whole kind of New York, New Jersey, right in that area, San Francisco, it went on quite a bit longer. Because again, we would, um, we would get some pretty good business there. Um, I have to this day, I have some clients there that send people pretty regularly to public classes. You know, they send like one or two at a time. Uh, the Berkeley, uh, the university sends people to my class pretty regularly. Um, so I let that one go on quite a bit longer. But after a while, it's, I would say that one was probably over the course of about three years, kind of slowly realizing, wow, we're pouring a lot of money into expenses there a lot of money into advertising. It's yielding something, but it's not yielding something. Comm measure it with some of our other markets. So we decided to give it up.

Sean Weisbrot: What has been your most expensive mistake to date?

Angela Druckman: Oh my goodness. Let's think about that. Um, see, the nice thing about us being a service business, uh, we don't invest in a ton of equipment or anything like that. Um, let's see. Expensive, I would say. When we decided to experiment with other kinds of advertising besides just, you know, Google ads and, and the various online ads search engine, um, we, we thought, let's try a bunch of stuff. We'll see what works. And we tried some advertising with athletic events where we would be on t-shirts and things like that. Um, and I don't really think that yielded much of anything. Um, I think that is better suited for, if you think about like what you see if you run a 5K, what you see on the back of the 5K shirt, that's like, that's gonna be like your credit unions in town. And, um, like medical things, uh, it's not really suited for something like us. So I, I think we invested. Several thousand dollars in that. And it, I don't think it really did anything.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. And that wasn't as expensive of a mistake as I thought it would've been. Uh, one of the other guys I, I, uh, interviewed his business mistake cost him a million dollars.

Angela Druckman: Oh no. See that, that we haven't done. No, no, no.

Sean Weisbrot: Well that's good. I'm glad because a million is not fun to lose. So how do you anticipate problems and that's within your own team, within your clients, within the market at large, just in general.

Angela Druckman: Well, um, some problems, uh, certainly we don't anticipate the pandemic. Definitely. Wow. Uh, five years ago, if you would've told me there's gonna be this thing that's gonna make it so you don't travel all the time like you usually do. I couldn't have fathomed what that would've been. But I think the main thing is we try to keep, um, we try to keep abreast of what people are talking about and thinking about in our industry. So. Within, uh, the organization that gives me the ability to provide these certifications. The organization is called the Scrum Alliance. Um, they set the rules for what we teach and how people become certified. So we kind of, so it would be like any industry sort of standard setting, so American Medical Association like that. So we keep kind of abreast of what they're thinking and how things are changing. Um, but the other thing is we just try to keep, um, keep a handle on what people are asking about and thinking about that pertains to Scrum something I started a few years ago, I wanna say I started in 2018, um, is answering questions on a website called Quora. It amazes me. A lot of people still don't know what Quora is. So for the listeners, if you don't know what Quora is, go check it out. It's an interesting place. Quora is a website where you can ask a question and someone who knows something about that topic or has an opinion will answer. And in 2018, I'd never heard of it. Never heard of that website. And my staff, one of my staff members said, you need to get out on Quora and start answering questions out there. I'm like, what's Quora? Uh, but I went out and looked and, um. I realized that a lot of people who were answering questions about the topic I'm an expert in, which is Scrum and Agile project management, didn't know what they were talking about. Like they just, they were blatantly wrong in their answers. So I started answering questions on Quora and pretty much on any given day, if you go out to Quora and look at who the most viewed writers are to do with Scrum it, it's gonna be me at the top. But the reason I mention this is Quora is a good place, or any forum where people are asking questions. It's a good place to see kind of how trends are starting, what people are thinking about, what they're wondering about. Um, and so that's been a really good place to just kind of get that information, see what's going on in people's minds and what they wanna know about.

Sean Weisbrot: Reddit is another one of those places that people go to.

Angela Druckman: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Reddit as well.

Sean Weisbrot: Do you, do you write on Reddit at all or no?

Angela Druckman: Reddit, I believe it or not, Reddit, I use mostly for personal use, um, for other topics that I'm interested in. I will totally confess I am crazy about the Biohacker subreddit. Um, I find it very interesting, so I don't do as much professional work there. Cora just ends up being a really nice venue for the type of questions that I would answer.

Sean Weisbrot: Um, and we, I think we found each other through helper reporter, which is also fantastic. There's no rankings or anything like, like Cora, but helper reporter is how I find all my guests.

Angela Druckman: Yeah, I, I answer a lot of those. Usually it's either commentary about, uh, the job market, because that's something that comes up in my classes a lot, will be I'm, you know, I'm in your class 'cause I'm trying to make a change in my career. So, lots of advice about things like interview questions and interview strategies and just job market in general. Um, and then obviously a lot of questions about technology 'cause that's kind of my core business. Um, and then questions like I answered for you, which is, Hey, you're a business person, you're reasonably successful. Uh, how did that happen? So yeah, I answer a lot of those.

Sean Weisbrot: Cool. So how do you discover bottlenecks in your business?

Angela Druckman: Hmm. Um. Let's see. I'm trying to think of examples of bottlenecks. Again, because we don't produce a good, it's more like, um, we're a service company. We don't have maybe the traditional bottlenecks that people would think of. But I think, you know, we start to look at things like, I guess, I don't know if you'd call this a bottleneck, but. Like kind of understanding, let's say when we're having an event, what is kind of the right, um, rhythm for the promotion of it where we're pinging people saying, Hey, just to remind you we're having this event. And that, that did take a little, um, a little working out to do that took a little bit of figuring out to figure out, uh, kind of what that right rhythm is. I guess I would say also, um, this is not my core business, but it is a business that I do participate in, which is my real estate business. I own a number of properties. Um, we have rental real estate. That had some bottlenecks in it. Definitely. And the way I identified those was through hard experience because you get stuck in the middle of one of them. Um, definitely like planning out repairs and when you're going to be able to have a house ready to actually show to potential renters. Uh, that one AI just had to learn those the hard way. Uh, I bought a house, I guess it's been about three years ago now. This house was the closest of all my properties to what you would see on those real estate shows on tv where it's just like a disaster, you know? Um, and it was pretty bad. It was pretty bad, I have to admit. And just getting that turned around and ready to rent and realizing kind of the order of operations of things that had to happen. Um, that was something, I don't know, unless you had like an experienced mentor who could say, you know, the first thing you're gonna wanna do is see if you have a mold problem. Because if you have a mold problem, you gotta get that taken care of first, which is true, by the way. Um, unless you had a mentor to do that. I think the only way to learn these things is the school of hard knocks. You know, you just experience it and then it's better the next time. And indeed, you know, it got better every time. And now, um, I can turn those things around and get them ready to rent pretty quickly.

Sean Weisbrot: Cool. So how do you celebrate wins?

Angela Druckman: Oh, that is funny. Um, so lots of different ways. Um, definitely by giving my team bonuses I prescribe or subscribe rather to the belief. I, I'd rather keep salaries a little lower, but give generous bonuses 'cause I never wanna have to cut someone's salary. But bonuses we can flex on. But the other thing I do, I started this right in the beginning too. Is every year at the end of the year, if I have, if we've met our revenue target, I buy myself what I call a revenue present. And it's been different every year. These earrings that I'm wearing right now, were my very first revenue present and they are so special to me. I have lots of earrings, but I wear these probably 95% of the time because of what they represent to me. They represent. When I knew that we were gonna make it, it was like, okay, this is gonna work. I'm not gonna have to go back to my job with the training company. We can actually make this work. And I think having little things like that, um, it's. It's just fun in our main office, uh, we keep our office in our home because it's not this room, this is my teaching room. Uh, but because we're so small, um, we have a whiteboard and every year I write the revenue target up there and I just write it up on the whiteboard in the beginning of the year. And we, that way we look at it every single day. And then when we meet that revenue target, yeah, it's, it's time for a revenue present. And the last couple of years I've, uh, decided my revenue present was a donation to a charity. That's important to me. So I, maybe I'm done buying, buying myself revenue presence, but uh, yeah, it's kind of a fun little thing to do.

Sean Weisbrot: So what was your first revenue target, and how many years did it take you to actually hit it? And then how much are those earrings? I.

Angela Druckman: Um, my first, I wanna say my first revenue target was 500,000. That would've been in two. I'm trying, uh, it's been a while. I should, you should have told me this beforehand. I could look up all these dates. I, I wanna say it would've been 2015. Is that right? Or 14. 14 or 15. Anyways, one or the other. Um, and we hit it. So I got my earrings. Um, yeah. Um, there they were a little over five grand. Uh, here's an important tip for your US based people. Don't go to Tiffany's to buy your diamonds. Go to my, one of my favorite clients, Costco, super high quality diamonds that, I got this from Costco too. Um, yeah, uh, they have great prices on diamonds, but yeah, they were pricey, so they would've been much more elsewhere. Uh, I shouldn't throw shade on Tiffany, sorry. But what you pay for with Tiffany is the name. It is the name man.

Sean Weisbrot: Right. So then, uh, what you said most recently you've decided to donate to charities as like the gift. So what kind of charities do you like to donate to and what was your last donation?

Angela Druckman: So we, in our family, I think donations, uh, charitable giving is very personal and I think everybody should donate how they want to donate for us. Um, and when I say us, I mean my family. Um, we feel pretty strongly that we wanna give to a small number of charities, but give as much as we can. So the two that we give the most to are, um, a charity called Cocoon House and a charity called Noah Cocoon House is a youth homeless shelter. I feel really, really strongly about, um, donating to them. By far, the majority of the money that we give is to Cocoon House. The reason for that is, um, I'm sure this is true globally, but it's certainly true in the US when a young person, let's say 13 or 14, I. Is homeless very often it's because they've left a very bad situation at home, and then they get out on the streets and get into a worse, uh, uh, situation. Because when you're that young, you can't even get a job at McDonald's. Like that's out of the question. So you're gonna get sucked into either the sex trade or the drug trade. Uh, and they get preyed upon terribly. So we feel really strongly that if we can help even one kid not get sucked into that sort of thing, um, then that's a, that's a real good thing. Um, Noah is a no kill animal shelter here in the Seattle region. They take animals and dogs and cats. If they can't find homes for them, that animal gets to live there forever. It's never euthanized. Um, so, uh, the saying in our family is, we say that we think every kid and every dog should have a safe and loving home. So, uh, with Cocoon House, they have an event every year where they, um, they have an auction. It's very common, right? They auction off things. Um, so we've been able to donate things to the auction, but we've also bid on things and then we just give cash donations too. Um, so I wanna say my last cash donation was. I wanna say it was like $5,000, but the bidding can be very fun. One of the things that I bid on, I've actually bid on this and won it twice, but then the pandemic came. I didn't get a chance to get it. The second time is I bid on a ride along with our local police chief. Uh, so, um, it's very fun. It's, uh, the local city that he's a police chief of is about, it's small. It's like 120,000 people. Um, but, uh, I told him his name is John. I told John I wanted to go at night because I wanted it to be exciting. It was exciting. Yeah. I got to see lots of things I've never seen before. Um, but things like that, you know, where obviously it cost nothing to give them that thing to auction off. And, um, I, I don't remember what I paid for it. It was like $2,200 or something like that. Uh, yeah. So, uh, that kind of thing is, is just fun for us and we really love supporting them.

Sean Weisbrot: So there's a, it's called a social enterprise. They don't like to call themselves a charity or a nonprofit, uh, called Pencils for Promise. I don't know if you've heard of it. Yeah, basically this guy was on Wall Street in his twenties and he burnt out, decided to travel, and he was in countries like Laos and Cambodia and other places like Africa. And he, uh, he noticed there were a lot of kids on the streets, like young kids. And so he started to just like, try to talk to them if he could and ask them, you know, if they could have anything in the world, what would it be? And he said the most common answer was they wanted to go to school and learn. So he decided to start building schools for them. And I think they've built over a thousand schools now, like 12 years later. But what they do that's unique is they partner with the local government and the local community that the school's gonna be in. So the government has to provide, I guess it's like 10% of the funds as well as the teacher. And they promise to keep the teacher like salaried, like they, they say, and then, uh, provide the, um, curriculum. And then, uh, his team will provide 90% of the funds. But the families have to build the school with their own hands and provide the materials to do so. And so everyone has a buy-in, right? So he says, you know, we'll have a local coordinator and we'll, you know, this is a partnership between all of us for the long term. We're not gonna build a school and walk away. And I, I think it's amazing. So I, I donate to them what I can, I think I, I donated 500 for my birthday last year. I, I wanna be able to do more.

Angela Druckman: Yeah. See, that's what I mean about it. It's personal, right? I think that. Everybody can think of a cause or two that really is meaningful to them, but it would be different if you had 10 people in a room. It'd probably be 10 different things. So if we all just do that, um, it, we'll get it all covered, we'll get everything covered.

Sean Weisbrot: What I love specifically is that a lot of places are not clear with how their funds are used. So they say, we have two ways that you can donate. If you donate on this specific way, I guarantee you a hundred percent of that money is going right to a school. But if you donate this other way, we're going to use some of it for admin costs and things like that first. So like, I only donated the way that I know a hundred percent is going to the, to the kids. Forget them, they can suffer. Um, I mean, not the, the, the admin can suffer. The kids are all that matters to me. So how do you handle losses?

Angela Druckman: You have to learn not to get too riled about it. Uh, in the beginning, this is, this is kind of a funny story. My very first public class I taught on my own. Um, so not a partner class. 'cause that's kind of how I bridged starting my own company, is I worked with partners where they would book the class and I would charge them a fee and teach the class for them. And eventually we let that go. But my very first one that was just mine. It was just bad luck. I taught it not only in a city, but in the exact building where another bigger, um, training company was having a big, big event about Scrum. So I only had, I wanna say I had, I. How many people signed up for that class? I wanna say I had five. And then I talked a friend into like, can you come and just sit in the class? Um, to, to kind of bulk it up. So we had six. So obviously I lost money on that. And I'm just thinking, oh no, this is, this is gonna fail. I'm not gonna be able to do my own classes. I'm gonna be stuck working with partners. But what you have to learn is you, you just, it's a little bit like poker, I think maybe, um, you just gotta take a breath and say, okay, that was bad luck. That was bad luck. Um, we just didn't know that event was going on at the same time. And you just kind of take from it what you can and uh, and go on. So I think it's mostly not letting, not blowing things out of proportion. Not using the reasoning of this one little thing went wrong, therefore everything is wrong. It's like, no, just take a breath, calm down. Um, and, you know, think what can we learn from it?

Sean Weisbrot: I've been learning, uh, so you, you may not know I, my degree is in psychology and one of the things that they didn't teach us in school was cognitive behavioral therapy. Don't know why they didn't teach us. They, they focused on Freudian and Yung theory. It was only a few months ago that I started to learn about cognitive behavioral therapy. And I, I love it. It's incredible. I've seen amazing results for my, you know, I doing it on myself and, and doing it on my family. And you mentioned something really interesting called a cognitive distortion, where some people, when something bad happens, they will assume that like everything is related to it and everything is bad because this one thing happened. And, uh, I don't remember exactly what the cognitive distortion is called 'cause I haven't memorized them all yet, but. I, I just found that that was really interesting because they're, it, they're connected in a way and, um, it's very important I think for people to just be like, yeah, no, this is one little thing. Like, that doesn't mean everything else is bad. Let me just chill out, relax, and, you know, not like go overboard with it.

Angela Druckman: Exactly. That's, uh, you really have to just kind of have, um, nerves of, nerves of steel a little bit just to say this was one class in Austin, Texas. Um, it's not every class and we'll get it figured out. We'll learn, um, and go from there. And yeah, I found that's, uh, that's also, um, it's just funny that you, we are on this topic because another thing that I've been interviewed about is investing, you know, just investing in stock market and real estate and all of that. And it's very similar there too. Uh, I tell people, if you are going to be the kind of person who every time you know, there's a bear market, you're like, oh my gosh, I guess I better sell everything. It's all dropping. Uh, just buy index funds or let someone else do it for you. 'cause you don't have the temperament for it. Uh, you have to just kind of stay calm. And say, you know, this is gonna pass. Um, are the fundamentals of the business that I invested in, are they still what I thought they were? If they are, just sit tight.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I I have this conversation with people as well. They get very emotional. I mean, a lot of people my age are more into crypto than the stocks, and they're like, the, the, uh, ups and downs are way more volatile than the stock market. And so the, uh, the gains are, are very dramatic, but the losses are dramatic as well. And a lot of people can't handle it. And they make bad decisions and oftentimes they just lose a crap ton of money for absolutely no reason by cementing a loss that they didn't need the cement if they just sat on it. What's the first thing you do in the morning?

Angela Druckman: Um, I am gonna say. Uh, let my dogs outside to go to the bathroom. Yeah, that's kind of the routine. We get the dogs going first, and then I'm usually into email. Um, usually check the news very briefly just to see. I think the pandemic taught me that and everything that happened from 2020 onward, it's wise to check the news. You never know when something super dramatic happened overnight. Um, so yeah, I check the news, I check, um, some basic social media to see what's going on there, and then it's into email.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. What's the last thing you do at night before bed?

Angela Druckman: Um, I kind of have a routine. Um, I am a. I, I mentioned, I, uh, visit the subreddit, the biohackers. So I'm, I'm quite fond of a podcaster called Dr. Andrew Huberman. Um, and he is a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Um, so he knows a lot about light and how light affects people. So the last thing I do at night is, uh, something I've developed because of listening to him and his, uh, discussions about how to improve sleep is I. I have this, I call it a light ritual, where I start off with my, my bedroom lights fairly low and they go lower and lower and lower. And finally I have just this small salt lamp, which gives off a very warm, soft, but, but very low glow. Um, and I have that on probably for about. 15 minutes before I actually go to sleep. Um, because I've learned from Dr. Huberman that doing that, um, is very helpful for initiating sleep. And then while I'm doing that, I'm kind of going through, uh, visualization in my mind and ev whether it's, um, you know, something I'm wanting to achieve or, um, not so much a problem I'm trying to solve. I don't really like doing problem solving when I'm getting into that coming down mode. Um, but sort of envisioning things in the future. I find that the, the combination of that low light being kind of sleepy, so I'm kind of heading towards sleep anyways. It's a, it's a time. I don't think we give our brains enough credit for that time. I think that we often think, oh, to accomplish anything I have to be on, right. I have to be making my lists and accomplishing goals. But. There's that time where your brain is almost ready to go into something like sleep, where really cool ideas can come, but I think you have to create the right environment for it. So my little light ritual, I think, I think it helps me.

Sean Weisbrot: I've listened to a number of his episodes and, and I've listened to him on, uh, Lex Friedman and yeah. Uh, maybe Sam Harris or Tim Ferris, I can't remember. He's, he is at least been on Lex Friedman, but yeah, I think he's a very intelligent guy. Yeah. Um, at night, I, I do this thing that people think is nuts. I have black and white mode on my phone from like 7:00 PM 'cause they're like, they're like, why do you have no colors? I'm like, well, because people say blue light's bad for you. But in reality, all light is bad for you at night. So if I, if I'm gonna look at my phone, that's it. Might as well be black and white and it might as well be at the lowest light setting possible.

Angela Druckman: Absolutely. Yeah. Like you, people would laugh at me if they ever saw me. Um, like when I, when I wake up in the middle of the night, let's say 2 33 in the morning when it's still dark, because if I have to do anything that goes around a light, like, uh, go out to my refrigerator to get some bottled water, I'm like shading my eyes as I'm doing it because I've learned from Dr. Huberman that the minute you let that light hit your eyes, your melatonin levels drop they do right away. And you're gonna have a hard time getting back to sleep. Likewise, in the morning. Um, he's a huge proponent, you probably know this, of get outside and get natural light in your eyes. And it has to be in the morning. It will not work if it's too far away from Dawn because you get into something. I just love this. It's a real thing called the circadian dead zone. It sounds to me like a Star Trek thing, but it's basically the light gets too high in the sky. It doesn't have the same effect on, on your eyes and therefore on your circadian rhythms. Yeah,

Sean Weisbrot: yeah. I do that as well. I, I, uh, usually go for a walk like 7 30, 8 in the morning, but I'm up at like five. So when do you tackle the hardest thing you need to, need to do each day?

Angela Druckman: Um, usually that's going to be the morning. Um, so if I'm not teaching, I, I'll have a routine. I'm, I'm home, so I am getting my dogs taken care of. Get some breakfast check, kind of check things. And then, um, then if I, like, if I have a writing project, I do quite a bit of writing for my work, um, that's gonna be done in the morning. I am, I learned this when I wrote my book, uh, that I'm not ever gonna be the kind of person who does my best writing at three 30 in the afternoon. That's, that's just not, uh, a productive time for me. That's a better time for me to do things that require some sort of physical activity. Like even just, if I have to go run errands, go to the store, um, it's better at that time. But the, my prime writing time, I would say, which is a big part of what I do, that's gonna be like eight o'clock to one. That's my best time for things like that.

Sean Weisbrot: And how do you handle distractions when you're trying to focus like that?

Angela Druckman: Oh, it's funny that you mentioned Tim Ferris. Um, I am not a fan of all of his books. I'm gonna say that straight up. However, it is because of him that I finished my book, uh, and reading the four hour work week. So one of the, there's a lot of like mumbo jumbo in his books in my opinion. But there, there are these gems. And one of the things I learned from him was if you really have to focus and get something done, remove every distraction. So when I finished my book, what I would do is I would shut down all browsers, all email, put my phone on silent. I didn't even play music in. I usually have music going in the background of my house. I shut that off and I would set myself a word count and uh, it would be like, let's say 800 words or a thousand words. And I'm like, we're gonna write till we get a thousand words and nothing would come back on. No email, no nothing until that happened. And it's funny because I later learned, uh, reading interviews of some very, very popular authors. Um, that's kind of how they work. You know, I think that's the difference between a amateur writer and a professional writer is amateurs sometimes have this idea that we're, we're gonna get inspiration, so I'm just gonna sit here and wait for inspiration. Like, it's gonna be a ray coming down from the heavens coming and that trust me, somebody like a James Patterson, that's not how it works. It's word count. It's like we're gonna get those word counts done. Um, and I find that to be really good. I know in the beginning I kind of felt like I was forcing words out. So what I told myself is I told myself, look, write it. If you go back and read it later and you, you say, wow, this isn't very good, you can change it. But I almost never did. This is what came out was good. It was

Sean Weisbrot: so besides the four hour work week. Since I, I don't wanna say that you quote unquote like Tim Ferris. Fair enough. I I don't like all of his things either. Um, besides him in that book, who else do you look up to for advice or what are your favorite resources for learning?

Angela Druckman: Oh, wow. Lots and lots of things. Um, yeah, there's just, I'm trying to think of some in particular because, uh, because there's just so many, I'm always interested in, um, in people who write books about, let's look at this issue a different way. Uh, whether it's marketing, um, whether it is business. I, I really like understanding the psychology of people who can look at something that the rest of us look at and say, this is the way it is. And they look at it and say. You, there's another way to look at that. Um, so any, like, I read a lot of biographies of people. I read a lot of Yeah. Books that are just, um, about, you know, looking at things a different way. I guess lately, I have to be honest, when I say lately, I mean the last year, um, because I've been so interested in Dr. Huber's podcast, I have, um, read some of the books he's recommended, uh, and. Like, for example, one of the books he recommended, just an outstanding book, I, it's gonna sound boring to your listeners, but you gotta trust me on this guys. It's called The Molecule of More and it's about dopamine. Uh, because the sort of the pop culture understanding of dopamine and what is really, how dopamine works is quite different. And that book explains it in a way that you would think is gonna be dry, but it's not. It's very interesting. And the thing is, it's really relevant because. You can now take sort of this chemical understanding and apply it to yourself as you're making decisions about everything in your life, from business to whatever. Um, and it's, it's very applicable. I'm a big believer in this idea of knowledge is power. Um, so things like that I think are fascinating. Um. Another thing that I read, because it comes to our house every year, is the, um, Berkshire Hathaway annual report again, sounds horrible, right? Uh, Warren Buffett is actually a very good writer and he's very funny. If you haven't read his stuff, uh, he's quite humorous. Um, but I've read, uh, a number of things that he's written and I read the annual report, at least the part he writes in the front. Um, I read it every year. So, uh, things like that. Yeah, it's just, uh, I like to look for inspiration in unusual places and from people who are unusual thinkers.

Sean Weisbrot: Fair enough. I like that. I mean, one of the reasons why I started the podcast is because I didn't, I saw a lot of people going, let's talk about entrepreneurship. I. And some people were maybe like, let's talk about psychology, although their stuff is a bit dry, nobody was really saying, Hey, let's look at entrepreneurship from the point of view of psychology. Like not only our own psychology, but how our psychology affects the way our business grows and the way we handle our teams, and how can we make better decisions so that we can have our companies grow faster and more wiser or more whatever, in a better way.

Angela Druckman: Absolutely. No, I know what you mean. I think that's, that's a really good thing to look at. You know, if it were, think about it this way. If it were just a matter of mechanics. Everybody would be successful, right? I mean, if it's just like, take this crank and turn it this way 20 times and then you'll have a thousand dollars. So do it 200 times, you'll have 10,000. If it were that easy or if that's all it was, then everybody would be successful. But we all know not everyone is successful. So I think a mindset is, yeah, it's a, it's a big factor

Sean Weisbrot: for sure. A lot of people that, uh, come to me like, like what do you wanna learn about? What do you want me to talk about? Like mindset. Like everybody wants to know about mindset and it's like, I don't know how often I can talk about mindset, but it's okay. I'll keep finding ways to talk about it. Um, so then let's talk about mindset real fast. How have you had to change yourself through the process of going from working for someone else, to starting your own business, to now where you are, where you've got several people on your team and you're looking to possibly expand and, and all that?

Angela Druckman: Um, I think trusting other people. There can be a tendency when, like when you do what I do for a living, I know, um, several of my, uh, colleagues that it's just them. It's like a one person organization and they make great livings. But if you're going to grow beyond that, you have to start trusting other people. And, um, that when you're kind of a, a go-getter who's used to, okay, I'm gonna do this on my own. I take a lot of pride in doing it on my own. That takes some getting used to. Um, so I think that's, uh. That had to change a little bit in me, but I, I have, I have, uh, gotten to, uh, the point where I, I really do trust the rest of my team and, um, yeah, it's, uh, but it took some, it took some getting used to.

Sean Weisbrot: What's something that, you know, you've needed to change and yet you've either been unable to, or, uh, like didn't want to? Oh,

Angela Druckman: um, I would say I. Uh, there is an advanced curriculum course, which I could have been teaching now for quite some time, and I, it's been, my students have been requesting it. Uh, it's the advanced certified Scrum Master course. I teach the regular one as well as some other courses. Um, and I've put it off because, first of all, developing a curriculum, a two day curriculum that's super high quality is not a trivial exercise. That isn't something you're gonna do in a week. It's gonna take quite some time. Um, so I've kind of put it off, but I've made the decision now that I am going to do it because I think that the thing that really made me make that decision, ironically, is not so much, well, people kept asking for it. They've been asking for it for a while. It's that I began to get an idea of. How I wanted the curriculum to flow and what I wanted to teach, because in this particular course, we have a fair amount of freedom in how we teach it. Uh, it's not like, you know, this is the outline and you have to teach it this way. Um, it's, it's quite a bit of flexibility. So I needed to get that in my head first, uh, before I was ready to start building out the curriculum. And I have that now. And that's something that I've learned from experience about myself and, and I can't say this would be true for everybody. So I, I don't know if this would apply to all your listeners, but I am not a procrastinator. I just am not, I have lots of other bad habits, but procrastination is not one. I have a bias towards act action. So when I find myself procrastinating or hesitating, what I've learned, and I just learned this through experience, is it's for a good reason. It's because I don't have all of the information yet to make the decision I'm trying to make. So when I feel that procrastination happening. I never force myself, I never say, well, you're just gonna get started on this curriculum. Um, I just, what I tell myself is, okay, you're something in, you is unresolved about this, so just pay attention and you'll know when it is, um, resolved. And that's something I used to, it was a, I don't know if you believe in mantras at all, but it was a mantra that I used a lot, um, when I first started my business, is I would say to myself, when the time comes, you'll know what to do. And eventually that once the business really got rolling, I changed it to the time has come and I didn't know what to do, and little things like that, I, they're almost like, um, psychologically soothing. You know, they just kind of, you're reminding yourself. You know what you're doing, trust yourself a little bit. Um, and so, yeah, I do, I do trust myself about that.

Sean Weisbrot: I normally have. The last question is, what's the most important thing you've learned? Would you say there's something different than what you've just said, or

Angela Druckman: the most important thing that I've learned? Um, I, wow, that's, you're, you're asking me to narrow it down to one thing, but, um, it's, I, I, I guess, um, for me it's to never, never lose sight of why you decided to do this business in the first place. So for me, it's really easy to get into the, I'm training classes every week, you know, sometimes I'm on site with a client, sometimes I'm online, but then the next week it's another group of people, but. It's important to, that's why I don't just teach, I coach too, because when you coach, you are onsite with a client. You're sorting through the thorny problems. And when I do that, it takes me right back. It takes me right back to when I was that person saying, why are all our projects such a mess? And why is everybody mad at each other? And, um, I think keeping it real like that, like it, it's very easy. It would be easy, um, with what I do to let it devolve into performance, if you will. You know, it's like I've, I've been doing this 14 years. I know my classes backwards and forwards. I, you could wake me up from a dead sleep and I could be teaching in five minutes, like I know my curriculum really well. But when I coach, um, that's when we get into uncharted waters. That's where we get into, um, the nuances of my various clients' businesses and the problems that they're having. And I think just keeping that, keeping keeping that element in it of why you decided to do this in the first place. What, whatever it sparked in you, then it's gotta a spark in you forever to be successful. At least. I think so.