EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Blockbuster or Netflix: Why You Can't Stay the Same at 50
How It's Really Going at 50 with Shana Recker
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Hey guys. Welcome back to How it's really going at 50 with Shana. So today's an episode that I have had on my mind for a while, and I'm calling this, well, I don't know what I'm gonna call it, but the basis of what I'm gonna talk about today is, are you gonna be the blockbuster or are you gonna be the Netflix?
And I've been using that phrase a lot because in my world things have been changing. Lots of things have been changing and are continuously changing in front of my eyes. And I know at this stage of the game that I'm in, which is I just turned 50, midlife, all of those things, the hormones, you name it.
I have been struggling with making change. And it's like change is something if you know me at all. If you've been around me, I mean, the simple fact that this podcast has changed names probably four or five times and that I've changed careers with every time this podcast has changed, it means that I've changed direction in my career.
I have been somebody who has been very comfortable with change over my life, and I'm also the kid who changed my room around probably once a month. I like things being shaken up. I like things being different. I'm somebody who loves to move. I like new spaces. I like change, but for some reason, at this stage of my life, change has felt way more difficult than ever before.
I think it's because there's two things. There's a lot going on, like every day. How do I feel today? How are my hormones? Am I happy? Am I ragy? Do I like my husband? Do I hate my husband? What do I have to do for work? Am I overwhelmed with client work? Is there not enough client work? Is there money in the bank? Isn't there money? There's all these little layers of things going on.
And at the same time, I have more time than I've ever had to be in my own body, in my own mind, because my kids are grown up. I don't have little kids that are keeping me distracted. We're not driving to soccer and dance and doing all the things. Every day is my day and I get to do what I wanna do and be me.
And that in itself is another level of being. Kind of add it to the list of things that I'm overwhelmed with is trying to figure out who I am and what I want and where I want to go. And so when it comes to change, it's like there's parts of me that really want to change and evolve because I'm a different person now and I have a different perspective and I think differently. But it's also very difficult to make the change because I'm tired. I just am like, ugh.
And so I have some examples of this in my life that I wanna share with you because I feel like we are at this space where we don't want chaos anymore. We don't want the grind. We don't want to be hustling. At least I'm speaking for myself. I don't necessarily want the crazy hustle and all the things that I used to be doing. I do want a life that feels purposeful and that is me doing the things that I love to do.
And yet, in order to get there, I do feel like there is some change that has to happen. And that's the part that I struggle with because I just am tired and I don't know that I wanna make any changes.
And so I'm in this place where in some areas of my life, I'm forced to make changes like in my business life. AI is here. It's definitely changing the landscape as far as online business is concerned. But in my world, I work with software that functions in a certain way and it's functioned that way since 2016. But AI just came on and changed the game completely.
And now I'm faced with this software that I'm an expert in may no longer be here in a year because it's not something that can evolve necessarily with the AI advances. It's stuck in its own place. It's like a blockbuster that can't become a Netflix. I mean, I hope they're working on something. I really do. But I'm at this point in my career where I can stay in my career as a Kajabi expert and continue to just hope that they evolve in such a way that I don't have to learn anything new. Or there's new ways to build websites with AI.
At first, when I'm in this business group and there's this one person who jumped on the AI bandwagon at the very beginning and was playing with it and trying it and coming onto the calls, talking about how cool it is and how we should be looking into it. And we don't even know if Kajabi's gonna be here in a year. So we should definitely be exploring other options as far as what we do in our careers and growing our skill sets.
And every ounce of my body was just screaming, no, no, I don't want to learn that. I don't wanna do that. I just got to this place where I'm really good at what I do and things have been good. I've had some great years as a Kajabi designer and now I have to change again? I'm tired. I don't wanna do that.
That's what was screaming out of my body. And I resisted it. I played a little bit and I signed up for it. It's called Lovable. I signed up for it and I dabbled with it and poked around to see what it could do. And over a month or so, I was like, okay, this isn't bad. But I still don't wanna do it. I'm just pissy about it because I feel like I got things good right now and I don't wanna have to change.
What happened for me was a client of mine who we had done a bunch of Kajabi work together, decided that they wanted an AI site for their business. They ditched the site that we built together and they went and built an AI site.
And for me, that was the slap across the face, the wake up call. That said to me, Shana, if you don't learn this, if you don't open up yourself to something new, you're gonna be the blockbuster. You're gonna be sitting there wondering where all your clients are because you didn't evolve.
So you need to go out and try this new stuff and see. Just play with it and see. So that's what I did. I started playing with it and I built a website. My husband has a creative design business. He's a brand designer, but he's also an artist and he had two websites and he wanted to merge them into one. He was on Squarespace with his sites and we talked about potentially using this new AI software, Lovable, to build his site.
And I said, well, let me experiment. Let me just play and see what we can do. So that's what I did. I started with him because that's an easy place to practice. And over the course of probably two weeks, it wasn't a ton of time. I built him a brand new, fully functional website with a shop, an admin backend, a messaging platform. A full website for both his creative design and art business in a matter of two weeks using AI.
And not only did I learn this new skill and realize how much fun it was to build this, I was also blowing my own mind every time. I was like, I wonder if it can do this. I wonder if we can build that. And then I would just prompt it to give me what I wanted. We might have had to go back and forth a couple times and then eventually it would be done and it would do it.
I had to figure things out. From a technical standpoint, I had to learn how to connect this and do that and make sure this talked to that and DNS records and all kinds of different things. But at the end of the day, we got it. And it's fully functional. It's working. You can go to it right now. It's jasonrecker.com and see his fully functional AI site that serves both of his businesses. You can shop on it. You can buy his prints and you will get a receipt and you will get an email confirmation.
And like it's all fully functional. And I did that. I did that with AI and I blew my own mind. I realized, holy shit, like this is amazing. This is actually really fun. I wonder what else it can do. I wonder what else I can do with this.
And it's literally put me on this path of like, okay, what's the next site I can build on here? And how can I start offering this service to my clients? I'm not saying I'm ditching my Kajabi work because I still love building in Kajabi. I'm an expert in that area. There's still a lot of people I can serve with that.
But by putting myself in a position where I had to learn something new or else, I feel like I wasn't gonna have a career in a year. I learned that it was actually a lot of fun, that I could actually do it better than I thought I could. And that this is now a new revenue stream that I can offer clients.
And I have been offering AI sites to a few clients as they come through when I feel like it's a fit and I look forward to building more of these sites. And so I realized like, hey, trying that new thing, like as much as it was painful for me to get through the thinking of it. And I think that's the hardest part. We overthink how hard the change is gonna be.
But if we just actually take the step and do the thing, it's not actually as hard as we make it out to be. And here's the thing, the worst case scenario is I would've failed miserably at that and been like, this is no good. I don't wanna do this. I hate it. And nothing changes, right? Nothing would've changed. So that's the worst case.
The best case scenario is I become really good at it and I can expand my business services, make more money, help more people, and become an even better version of a website designer than I am today.
That's the only risk, right? You either risk just staying the same or you risk learning something new and having a whole new skillset. And I think that's the point of why I wanted to record this episode. If you are faced with either having to learn something new or maybe you just want to learn something new but you're afraid to put yourself out there or you're afraid to try it. This is your sign.
Just take the step and try it. Because the worst thing that's gonna happen is you're not gonna be good at it, you hate it, and nothing changes. You things stay the same. That's not horrible. You're already there, right? So you just stay the same, or you evolve and you expand.
And we all know that when you learn new things, when you are learning something new, it actually changes your brain. It helps your mental faculties. It's good for cognitive function and it helps grow brain cells. So it's good for you to actually learn new things even though it feels painful in the beginning. You're literally building new neural pathways that help cognitive function.
And here we are at midlife. We need all of the cognitive function we can get. So learning new things is actually really good for you.
Like one of the things on my list, and I still need to do this, and I keep putting it off for all the reasons we've talked about, is I wanna learn how to play the drums. I freaking love the drums. Any of the music that I listen to, the drum piece is always the piece that I am attracted to. I love, love, love the drums.
And it's just a matter of I need to find the lessons and I need to go and I need to do it. I procrastinate on it because my brain's like, oh, we really wanna do that, but you know, you gotta learn something new. So that sucks. You gotta put yourself in a position where you're uncomfortable, you don't know what you're doing, you don't know the people. You gotta walk into this new place. You just have to get past all of that.
But if I could really learn how to play the drums, fuck yeah. I would totally love to do that. And I will do that someday. Mark my words. I will get drum lessons and I will report back when I do.
I think the hardest thing about change is the phase before we actually start the change. And that is the thinking about the change, which is ridiculous because your brain is wired to think about the worst case scenario because it's there to protect you, right?
So your brain is always constantly trying to protect you. So when you are thinking about doing something new, it's going to highlight in 3D, 4D definition, all of the things that could go wrong. And it's gonna continually push that narrative to you to try and protect you from being hurt.
And the good things that could go right are there. You just don't see them or hear them quite as loud because your brain is constantly serving you up the things that could go wrong. So it's up to you to quiet the noise and allow yourself to feel what could go right in order to help you make that step.
And so, where in your life have you been resisting change? Whether it's something that you wanna take on personally, just because, like playing the drums, or maybe it is a career change, or maybe you're forced to make a change. Being forced sucks. Whatever situation it is, it's gonna suck. But you have to know that once you start taking steps to get through whatever it is you're going through and make those changes, I promise you when you get to the other side of that change, you are going to be glad that you did.
Because you don't wanna stay stuck in something that isn't working. And if you stay stuck in something that isn't working for long enough, then you become irrelevant. Like the blockbuster. Blockbuster held on way too long and they basically went outta business because they didn't evolve. They didn't try and make change. And Netflix came in and just swooped it all up.
And they evolved and tried new things and tested and tried and probably failed in a lot of instances where they tried things that didn't work. But that's how they learned and how they evolved, right? Like failure is just lessons.
You know how many times with Jason's site, I tried to do something and it didn't work and then I had to figure out what was next, right? Like now I have all of those lessons. Like when I go to build the next site, I know, oh, I need to do this. Oh, I have to connect that to that. For a long while there with Jason's site, I couldn't get his emails to work. I couldn't figure out why they weren't sending. So I had to keep playing. I had to keep trying. I had to keep changing until I figured it out.
And now it was like, oh, that's why this wasn't working. This here needed to go there. And so all of those steps that we take towards something new, not all of them are gonna be perfect. Not all of them are gonna work out, but they're all lessons that are gonna help us be better when we get to where we're going. We have to remember that it's not gonna be perfect. It's not gonna be this perfect transition from A to B, but we've gotta start somewhere. We've gotta move.
When you are faced with change, you have a choice, right? Your choice is, you can be tired like I was and still am, but continue to grow and try new things and evolve. And to be honest, I feel energized about this new way of doing the work that I do, and it's brought some energy to me. I'm excited for the next project and the next thing and the next thing.
Or you can be tired and stay the same and possibly even go backwards and find yourself in a position where you're looking at it and going, damn, I should have made changes three years ago. Like I missed out on an opportunity. And I feel like if I didn't take the steps to try something new, I could have very easily found myself there.
Because at one point I was in the camp of, I'm just gonna stick with what I know and I'm gonna be the best at it and I'm gonna hope that this software still is relevant in a year. And I'm gonna just put my stake in the ground here. And I'm grateful that I didn't. That I'm not doing that now and that I'm open to these opportunities.
Because I know in a year from now or two years from now, I would probably be irrelevant and I would be looking for work. And I would be forced even more so to try something new. So you don't wanna put yourself in that position. Both paths are hard. Change is hard, but staying the same is also hard. One is just gonna lead you to something that maybe something more amazing than you could have ever dreamed.
So most importantly, what I want you to hear from this message today is that when you try new things, it never will be as bad as you make it out to seem in your head. It's never as hard as your brain is going to make you feel.
And sometimes, almost all the time when you take the steps to try new things, eventually it starts to energize you because you're learning new things and you are making steps and you are actually getting results over time. And then you now have this new skill. And now you've evolved and you are now the Netflix. You've adapted and the world opens up to you.
So, where in your life can you experiment and try something new? I think to myself, I don't wanna be 75 years old and look back at my life and go, oh, I wish I had done more of this. I wish I had actually taken those drum lessons. Or I wish I hadn't let that go. I wish I had tried harder. I wish I had done something different.
I don't wanna do that. I wanna experience life. And I think part of really experiencing life is putting yourself in new and different situations and learning from those situations. We're not here to be stagnant. We're not here to be the same over and over and over again. We're here to learn and grow. And that's where really life is happening. It's in those phases where we are learning lessons and we are growing.
And sometimes the lessons hurt. Sometimes there's failure. Sometimes there's success. But it's in both of those things that makes life feel exciting. It makes life feel fun. It makes life feel like, okay, well when you learn that you can fail at something but keep going, that's part of the lessons of failure. Hey, listen, that happened, but you're still here. Keep moving. Keep learning. Keep growing.
And yeah, I just think that we have to evolve. We don't wanna stay the blockbuster. We wanna become the Netflix and then whatever's after that. And we wanna keep growing and evolving so that we can look back and go, wow, like I did that. Like I did all of that.
I feel like that when I look at my husband's website. I'm like, look at that. Like I did that. And he had his hand in it too. He learned how to do some of the stuff. He was making changes and going in there and doing stuff. He had to learn. Between the two of us, we were learning and growing.
But if you are somewhere in that space of thinking about trying something new, or maybe you're being forced to do something new, I'm telling you right now, take the steps. Do something new. Do something new regularly. It's gonna grow you. You're gonna feel energized by it. It will feel good when you get to the other side of it.
That is what I wanted to share. And a couple other things too. There is some new stuff coming for this podcast. We are working on something. We're trying to get the pieces together. It is a bit a challenge, but we are continuing to move through it. And I say we because there is maybe somebody else joining me on here. We are figuring out the details, but we are looking at some changes with this podcast because again, I can see what's happening in this space and I wanna evolve with it.
And so yeah, stay tuned for that. There's more coming. But for now, that's all I can say.
Alright guys, that's it for me. Thanks for coming along on my Twisted Attorney Ride of Rambles. I appreciate you guys being here. Okay, we'll talk to you later. Bye for now.
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