097: How Solopreneurs Succeed

1. Deception is a language we all speak.

There’s no difference between a con man and a magician in terms of the concepts they use. The difference is in their motives – one uses deception to make people happy. The other uses deception to benefit himself at the expense of others.

2. Wonder allows us to develop a new understanding of how old stories are affecting us.

The stories we believe, true or not, affect our behaviors. When the old story is gone, we can start painting a new story that fills us with courage instead of fear.

3. Running a business is 80% mindset and 20% skill set.

It’s not that skills aren’t important, but sometimes we miss the power of our mindset and how it affects the business. To build your skill set, learn through a combination of content, community and coaching.

Harris III Official Site, Twitter, Instagram

Tricia Sciortino on Instagram and LinkedIn

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The Wonder Switch

(02:59) Harris III talks about how he made $1 million dollars before he turned 21. 

(04:38) He continues talking about how he got from there to where he is today. 

(08:21) Harris III explains how he works with people and companies to understand the power of story and narrative and how those things drive our thinking.

(13:16) How has the idea of narrative and story applied to small business owners and leaders?

(17:03) What exactly is a “solopreneur,” and the difference between entrepreneurs and freelancers. 

(20:33) What is the journey a solopreneur needs to go on to get to a healthy spot in their business?

(26:50) Imagination never fades away. We use it every day, many times in a negative way (worry, fear, anxiety). 

(27:55) Harris III walks through what he calls the “transformation map” tool.

(31:05) Curiosity is wonder in action. We all enter the world with it. 

(34:01) What steps could a small business owner or entrepreneur take to help them understand where they are on the transformation map?

(38:08) What are some disciplines someone can do to increase ways they encounter wonder in life?

(44:25) What is Harris III’s hope and dream for the people who follow his plan?

(46:56) How can you get in touch with Harris?

(49:08) This week’s download: Harris is offering our listeners access to his Virtual Workshop “The Solopreneur Success Path.”

Harris III:

We think that imagination is something that we use as kids, and then as we get older, it starts to fade away. And it’s just not the case. We use our imaginations every day as adults to worry, to fear, especially in the context of change.

Harris III:

And so I think that worry is a misuse of imagination. And part of the reason why that narrative work is so important is because it allows you to take agency over that storytelling process, to recognize how you’re misusing your imagination.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Welcome to One Next Step, the most practical business podcast in the world. You’re now one simple tip, practical tool and small step away from growing your business. One Next Step is brought to you by BELAY. The incredible 100% remote organization, revolutionizing productivity with virtual assistants, bookkeepers and social media managers. Accomplish more, juggle less, modern staffing from BELAY. And now to your hosts.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Welcome to One Next Step. The practical business podcast that helps you run your business so it stops running you. I’m LZ. And with me as always is my fabulous co-host Ryan. Hey Ryan.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

LZ, it’s so good to be with you today. And I’ve got to say, I am really excited about today’s episode, because I had the opportunity to talk to Harris III. He’s a storyteller speaker and author, and he helps leaders embrace the power of storytelling in the way that they lead themselves and their organizations.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

He has a crazy kind of story of how he got to be where he is and now. He started as a professional magician or an illusionist, but now he’s an entrepreneur who has performed or spoken to more than 2 million people in more than 30 countries in five continents. His performances have been televised to millions more on the Travel Channel and ABC Family all over television.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Wow. What an amazing resume that’s so cool. Harris is the author of the best selling book, The Wonder Switch and his mission is to help entrepreneurs transform from the story they feel stuck in to the life they want to live. Amen. But before we dive into Ryan and Harris’s conversation, I want to take a quick moment to tell you about BELAY. With modern staffing from BELAY, businesses and leaders can focus on growth without the unnecessary overhead or learning curves associated with hiring and onboarding full-time employees.

Lisa Zeeveld:

BELAY is the incredible 100%, yep, I said it 100% remote organization, revolutionizing productivity with our virtual assistance, bookkeepers and social media managers. Accomplish more, juggle less, and get back to what only you can do growing your business with modern staffing from BELAY.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Harris, thank you so much for joining us today on One Next Step. How you doing today?

Harris III:

Man, I’m having an awesome day. How about you?

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I am doing really, really well. I’m really excited to get to hang out with you. Not only are we both on this podcast, but we’re actually friends outside of this, which is kind of cool as well.

Harris III:

Indeed, always fun to hang with a friend on a podcast.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah, for sure. Well, hey, I’d love for you to start. You have a really fascinating story to me, but the critical peak of that, or I don’t know what it might be is part of your story is you made a million dollars before you were 21 years old. How did you do that? And then what happened next?

Harris III:

Why does that sound so critical? I don’t understand. That’s normal, right?

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s a great part of a story. I mean, it’s a great part of your story.

Harris III:

Oh man. Well, it started when I was a kid. I started performing magic really young and probably when I was about 14, 15 years old, I remember my parents sitting me down and explaining, “Harris, you just made six figures this year. That’s more money than we’d ever made combined.” And I was making that performing magic shows. Literally was traveling around the world doing magic.

Harris III:

So I had a chance to perform magic in probably a dozen countries for over a million people by the time I was 21 years old and with that came making a million dollars.

Harris III:

And so by the time I was 21 had made a million bucks and it was like, “I might get out of my little small town. I want to move to the big city of Nashville,” which was not that big at the time. It’s getting bigger obviously. And dude, got sucked into a whole bunch of stories that weren’t true. And now my expertise helps me understand that narrative drives behavior.

Harris III:

But the narrative that I had bought into and adopted is true, basically led me to doing everything in my power to control the perceptions of other people. We tend to call that Keeping Up with the Joneses. So even though I’d made a million dollars, I wasted it. And then some, and by 22 I was practically bankrupt. So went from the top to the bottom pretty quickly.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s wild. And just knowing you and hearing your story that really informs so much of what happens next in your career. In a couple minutes, walk me through how you got from there to where you’re at now, where you’ve got quite a few endeavors and you’re really kind of leading the way in some conversations in different ways.

Harris III:

Yeah. Well, I mean, man, I think about it, if you make a million dollars by 21 that leads to a whole bunch of feelings and thoughts, right. And I still remember, it’s like a home video in my head laying in bed at night. I remember we had this lay tray ceiling in that bedroom, laying in our bed and I would just stare at the ceiling thinking what’s next? Is this it? Is this what I’m supposed to do for the rest of my life? Just get on another plane or another tour bus to go to another magic show to make more money, to buy more stuff, so I can trick more people into liking me because I’m so insecure, just desperate to feel love and accepted, right? And so kept Keeping Up with the Joneses.

Harris III:

And then when you go from those feelings of like, “Okay, I feel like I kind of have it all, and I can’t believe I’m only 21 and I’ve got the American dream, but this isn’t satisfying,” to then, well now it’s really not satisfying because somehow I screwed it all up and I’m bankrupt. You start asking yourself some really serious questions about what life is all about.

Harris III:

And one of the most interesting questions that came to me during that time was how did I get tricked into believing this stuff? All these different lies. And that’s an interesting question to ask yourself when you quite literally trick people for a living.

Harris III:

And so as an illusionist, you become this expert in deception. You study these different principles that make a deception happen and there are good forms of deception and bad forms of deception. That sounds really weird, right? But we do things to ourselves and we put camouflage on people that are running into battle.

Harris III:

We all play with these different perception that create illusions. We show highlight reels on the internet of our lives, right? We’re all partaking this. And a magician is obviously a decent form of deception because it’s making people smile and happy. No one’s trying to use to take advantage of them. But they’re obviously parts of some different principles of deception that are pretty universal, whether you use them for good or bad doesn’t change the principle but it does prove that it’s easy to be deceived.

Harris III:

And so I dug into those and was like, “Oh, that’s what happened.” The same way that I got tricked into believing these lines are the same principles that I use on stage. So that kick started next chapter of feeling like I’ve got a pretty cool tool to go share my story and also help other people understand how they get tricked into believing some of the stuff that they believe.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

It’s really interesting. We’re in this kind of pivotal part in culture, moment in culture where people are both actively deceiving other people and then spending hours at home, watching multiple TV shows about people deceiving other people. I feel like this interesting moment. There’s multiple hit shows right now all about the Tinder Swindler or whatever it might be that are about deception. So people are interested in deception and being deceived and not wanting to be deceived.

Harris III:

Are you saying we’ve had the multiverse all along? It was at our fingertips. We were creating our own multiverses. Yeah.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

We had no idea, but no, I was funny as you were talking, I was thinking, “Well, the only appropriate version of deception is magic, right? All of the other versions you have to spend time in counseling to solve.

Harris III:

Well, I mean, we put timers on our lights, in our houses to ward off burglars. We wear makeup as human beings. We paint everything from parts of our body, to our walls and our houses to cover what we view as blemishes.

Harris III:

I mean, we are partaking in this on a regular basis, right? It’s just the difference between a magician and a conman is not the principles that they’re using. They’re using the same principles. It’s the motive of how they’re using those principles to either serve or take advantage of. So deception is a language and we all speak it.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Oh, that is really interesting. So you’ve kind of developed these principles. You understand that idea. And now you’re working with lots of different groups of people. Tell me a little about some of your kind of endeavors on business and who you’re working with, talking about the idea of deception and story and motive.

Harris III:

Yeah. Well, in order to talk about that, I’d love to tell you a short story. It’s the greatest way to understand origin of what it was all born out of. I went from that season of just struggling for a few years to figure out what to do with my life. The only thing I knew how to do since I was a little kid was magic.

Harris III:

And so just kind of kept traveling around, doing magic shows. My wife and I went on this trip to Central America, came home after interacting with poverty, sold everything we had, started digging out of a few hundred thousand dollars worth of debt that we had racked up. And long story short I’m in this school, in the State of Michigan. I walk in the principal’s like, “Hey, you’re a magician. You know how to trick people. Go out there and tell those students how they’re getting tricked into making the choices they’re making.” And I was like, “I’ve been thinking about this stuff. However, I don’t think I’m what you want me to be. I’m not a motivational speaker, man. I’m just here to do some magic tricks.” And he’s like, “Ah, go out there, tell your story.”

Harris III:

And he gives me a pat on the back and just introduces me. I go out, I’m in a gymnasium. You have a thousand high school kids up on a bleacher in front of me. I do a bunch of magic. I don’t remember everything I did, but I remember I finished getting out of a straight jacket at the end. And I remember holding up this straight jacket and thinking, “What do I say that’s inspirational.” And I’m like, “Hey, I don’t know what your straight jacket is, but if it looked like it was hard to get out of this thing, it was. It was really hard. And I’ve had multiple straight jackets in my lifetime.”

Harris III:

And for the first time in my entire career, I got vulnerable and real in front of an audience. I was like, “I got bullied as a kid in school, experienced some abuse in my childhood, addiction as a teenager, made a million dollars by 21 and got addicted to approval and went bankrupt by 22, straight jacket after straight jacket.”

Harris III:

So I was like, “I don’t know what your straight jacket is. I just know that you have one. And I want you to know I don’t have all the answers, but I’m still standing. There’s always hope. Please keep going.” Everyone leaves. I’m beating my myself up. I’m like, “I should have just stuck to the script. That was awful.” I don’t know if you’ve ever given a bad talk, Ryan.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Most of them actually.

Harris III:

The inner critic is raging war like, “You’re an idiot. Why did you just do that?” And then this girl, everyone leaves, except for this young lady, she starts walking up to me down the steps, cross the gym floor. She is bawling, tears running down her cheeks she’s like, “Hey, I’ve got something for you.” I’m like, “What is it.” She says, “It’s my straight jacket.” I hold up my hands. She reaches into her pocket. She pulls out a razor blade, drops a razor blade into my hands, she said, “That’s my straight jacket. And I don’t want it anymore. You’re the first person to ever make me feel like my life matters.”

Harris III:

Dude I became addicted to that feeling of, “Oh shoot. She didn’t ask to take a picture with me in that moment. She didn’t ask for my autograph. She didn’t comment on a single magic trick or ask me how it was done,” which is what magicians usually spend their time after presentations talking about, “How’d you do that trick how’d you make that table fly? How’d you make that thing disappear. Can I take your picture? Can I get your autograph?”

Harris III:

She was like, “Hey, you changed my life and made a difference,” basically. And I was like, “I need to understand what just happened. And I want more of that.” I became less interested in being an entertainer at that point and more interested in making a difference.

Harris III:

I was certainly not as interested in making money anymore from that point forward as much as I was in interested in making a difference. Long story short, that led to a season of research that led me back to understanding the power of story and narrative that essentially we are storytelling creatures as human beings. We make sense of the world by creating a story that we tell ourself, all those stories that we create, they form what I consider an overarching narrative.

Harris III:

That narrative drives our thinking, our choices and behavior consciously and subconsciously for the rest of our lives until we change it. Just like Jung said, “if we don’t make the unconscious conscious, it will direct our life and we will call it fate.” So somewhere along the way, someone told her a story that she wasn’t good enough or thin enough or cool enough or perfect enough, without the right gene, the right makeup or a car. Then I thought, “Dude, if storytellers are this powerful, someone ought to be gathering them together to have a conversation about that power.”

Harris III:

And that’s where story began. So we started doing this two day conference and then all these amazing leaders from companies like Apple, Google, Disney, Nat Geo, Cirque du Soleil, Nike, and some of the biggest faith-based organizations, nonprofits family foundations, everything from Bill Gates Foundation to the Koch Foundation.

Harris III:

They just started showing up to have this collective conversation about the power the stories have. Then those people started asking me to come speak to their teams. Then some of them who produce events started asking us to come help them produce and design their experiences. One thing led to another, I got asked to write a book on the subject and then my work and story, yeah, The Wonder Switch intersected with my work around wonder, my understanding as a magician and where wonder and story intersect. Dude, it’s unstoppable, magic starts happening. It’s where all change and transformation begins.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s unbelievable. And we’re going to dive into a little bit of that book here in a little bit, but the majority of our audience is small and medium size business owners, leaders in the business world that are kind of trying to lead their teams and grow their businesses.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

How has the idea of narrative and story applied to them and your experience? Who have you worked with as you’ve talked about that? Because I think it’s so easy to hear that and go, “Well, that’s just for quote unquote creatives or that’s just for her storytellers.” And I think you have really unique perspective on that. I’d love to hear you talk about that a little more.

Harris III:

Well, there’s something that all humans beings have in common and that is we don’t like change and yet we’re all facing it on a regular basis. There is not a single leader, business owner, entrepreneur, solopreneur, freelancer, mom, dad, kid, anyone on the planet who has not had to figure how to navigate change over the last couple of years.

Harris III:

And we can be resistant to it or we can see it as an opportunity. There’s a concept I learned about a few years ago. It was actually just before the pandemic called liminal space. We did an entire theme around it at Story One Year. I think our theme that year was just called between no longer and not yet. My friend John Booker told me about it late. I was driving up in Interstate in LA, it was 2:00 AM. And I call him venting about how hard my life is.

Harris III:

I don’t even remember what was going on in that moment. I just remember venting to him and he’s this jolly guy. He’s like “Oh, Harris, it’s all good. You’re just in liminal space, man. That’s all. I’m excited for you.” And I was like, “I’m in what?” He was like, “Liminal space.” I was like “What is that?” I wake up the next morning. He’d sent me a couple articles. And it’s everything from architects talking about literal liminal spaces to old spiritual mystics using it as a metaphor of the space between the no longer and the not yet.

Harris III:

So I started studying liminal spaces and realized cultural anthropologists, consider them the space between the old story and the news story. So think about right, if we’re storytelling creatures, if we walk around all day long telling ourselves stories to make sense of the world so often that even when we fall asleep at night, our brain stays up all night long telling ourselves more stories.

Harris III:

Then if we’re in an old story or we decide to leave the old story, we leave a relationship. We quit a job. We leave a role to start a new company or a pandemic comes along and kicks us out of the old story that we were perfectly content in. Hello, 2019. Right. And then March of 2020 hits, and I’m like, “Where’s the new story?” May, 2020 comes along I’m like, “Hey guys, where’s the new story?”

Ryan Fitzgerald:

The old story getting worse and worse, not better.

Harris III:

Yeah. I don’t even know how many months or years has it been now. And many of us are still like, “Hey, the old story’s gone, but I don’t know the if new story’s figured out yet.” And if you look at this at various scales, even nations and culture, I think the US right now, we’re still trying to figure out what is the new story of America? People can’t agree on what that is.

Harris III:

The old one is clearly gone. We’re out of that, but the new one is not here yet. I have a buddy who calls liminal space, hell in the hallway, because it feels the door has closed, but the next one hasn’t opened yet. And you just sort of caught in the in between. And so I think this is a relevant conversation because we’re all trying to navigate that change.

Harris III:

And when change happens, there’s a movement from an old story to a new story. But when we get caught in the liminal space of the in between, we’ve got to figure out what to do with that. And what wonder allows us to do is develop a new understanding of what those stories and our minds are doing to our thinking and choice making and behavior. But they also help us understand that when liminal space is a blank slate, instead of being scared by it, because the old story’s gone, we can actually get really excited about the opportunities we have to pick up a paint brush and start painting a new story. And if we can get to the point where we learn how to use our imaginations properly, I think we can do that with courage instead of fear.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

And that’s an idea that applies to everybody, whether you’re leading a small team in your business, or you’re leading your own business, trying to figure out what’s next. I know for you that liminal space, that kind of was the beginning of the pandemic led you to start working, kind of more specifically with what you called solopreneurs. What does that look for you? What exactly is a solopreneur?

Harris III:

Oh dude, I’m so glad you asked because I have strong opinions about this. I’m so annoyed by the way the world defines a solopreneur. And if you really think about it, there’s nothing wrong with freelancing. And there’s nothing wrong with my entrepreneur friends who are trying to sell companies right now, right? It’s just, there is a gap between those two things. Freelancers can get easily frustrated because it’s difficult to scale as a freelancer. Freelancers tend to be based on time-based pricing instead of value-based pricing, the majority of them.

Harris III:

And so you can’t scale beyond the number of hours you have. And then once you tap out whatever niche market you’re in for your hourly rate, it’s hard to raise it much higher. And most freelancers myself included when I was one, we were pretty obsessed with a craft. And so it’s like, “I don’t care really too much more other than if I can do what I love every single day, which is magic tricks.”

Harris III:

Or if a graphic designer is like “Dude, as long as I get to spend my day, my hours doing graphic design, I love that.” I don’t care if it’s for Susie’s ice cream shop or Bob’s flooring company, right? I’m not obsessed with floors. I’m not obsessed with ice cream. I’m obsessed with graphic design. Right? And then if you flip to the other side of the equation, entrepreneurs typically are trying to bring on investors, raise capital, develop an exit strategy, build a massive building with lots of… Well, that day is probably gone, right? Build a virtual billing and metaverse with lots of workers in it, right?

Harris III:

And it started with solving some sort of problem in the world. I think that’s what entrepreneurs are great at as we solve problems. But think about that. If I’m like, “Ah, I don’t want to freelance anymore. I want to build something that’s bigger than me,” but my business is tied to myself and my own personal story.

Harris III:

So if I go to a conference for entrepreneurs or read entrepreneur magazine or join entrepreneur mastermind, all of a sudden I’m surrounded by people who are talking about developing an exit strategy, raising capital or selling. I’m like, “I don’t have an exit strategy. I started this thing because it was giving so much meaning and purpose to my life because I’m obsessed with shifting the narrative.” Commerce to me is simply the medium through which I’m trying to bring about change in the world.

Harris III:

And so I realized there was this gap between freelancers and entrepreneurs and no one was serving them well. And so we started this new community called Solo and then we started a conference called Solo Con because I felt like, “Gosh, I think there’s a whole bunch of other people out there like me.”

Harris III:

And during the pandemic, when you started mixing in some loneliness and isolation, feeling like I was trapped in a bubble, I think we also needed some community.

Harris III:

And so what I love about Solo Con, the idea if you look at the root language, the word solo means only, the word con or con means with. And so I think this community is really starting to give birth to this idea like, “Hey, solopreneurs do the work that only you can do rooted in the power of your personal story. You do the work that only you can do. We can help you grow your business, but you can scale a company, a solopreneur doesn’t mean that you don’t have a team, doesn’t mean you don’t have a staff. It just means that you are the business. Right? And so there’s some ways to redefine that word. So you got to do only what you can do, but in order to succeed, you must do that with other people. You can’t fly solo alone, you have to fly solo together. And so the idea of being only with is something I’ve grown pretty passionate about over the last year.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s amazing. I feel like a whole bunch of people in our audience maybe just realized, “Oh wow, I’m not only a small business owner. I’m a solopreneur.” And there are resources out there to help know how to navigate and go from there. I know one of the big things you’ve done is kind of worked with a lot of these solopreneurs.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

And I’d love to hear you talk about the journey that a solopreneur needs to go on to get to a healthy state in their business. Kind of where they’re starting there, maybe they feel alone or they don’t know what to do next. What does that process look like for them?

Harris III:

Yeah, man, that’s a great question. And I have spent two years, probably a lot longer trying to figure this out, but the last two years have been so intentional of researching, trying, experimenting, failing, trying again of how do we create a space in which solopreneurs can truly grow and succeed.

Harris III:

And here’s what I’m learning. I’m learning that most people are obsessed with growing their skillset. And there are so many ways to grow your skillsets for free. We’re on a podcast right now. There’s lots of podcasts in the world. This one’s pretty special. Not all of them are, but there’s also a zillion YouTube videos in the world, right? There’s no shortage of content and training that can help us increase our skillset.

Harris III:

However, I think business is probably 80 to 90% mindset and 10 to 20% skillset. And so it’s not that skillset aren’t important, it’s that we’re so focused on those, we miss the mindset work and I think that’s thing, number one.

Harris III:

I think the other part of that is something there’s a little triangle model that we have in our inner circle mastermind program. And it’s the three sides of the triangle are basically content coaching and community. Because as people are drawn to build their skill sets, they tend to be drawn towards content. Content is important. We’ve got to train. We have to learn. We have to level up. Right.

Harris III:

But I’m learning that the stats around completing an online course are even more depressing than the number of people who finish my book after they buy it in a bookstore. Right. And it’s not just my book. It’s just that it’s less than 10% of books that are purchased or actually end up getting read from cover to cover.

Harris III:

Well, I think it’s less than 5% for online courses, right? And so clearly content on its own it doesn’t feel is perfectly setting people up to succeed. So we started doing community. I was like, “Man, let’s not just give people content. Let’s gather them together.” I’m a live experience guy. I have an entertainment background. That’s why I started doing conferences. Right? Like, “Let’s gather these people together to have these collective conversations and allow them to do this stuff in connection and community with others.”

Harris III:

Then I was like, “Gosh, I put them in community and I give them access to the right content. Now they’re all kind of trying to figure out how to do it. They’re still doing a lot of DIY or they’re going to someone else in the community and they’re spending a lot of money to hire someone to do it for them. What does it look to do it with them?” And that’s where coaching came in.

Harris III:

And when we finally started pairing the right content with the right coaching in the context of community, solopreneurs started growing exponentially. It was exploding and it was that combination of a focus on those three things and a simultaneous focus on both skill set and mindset.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Oh, that’s amazing. I feel like I’ve heard you say that being solo doesn’t mean flying solo.

Harris III:

Yeah. We’re meant for more than the lonely hustle, right?

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah.

Harris III:

And I’m tired of solopreneurs feeling they’re hustling alone. Just stop. There’s a better way.

Catherine Bowman:

So one of my favorite things is getting on a Zoom call and a couple of times I’ve looked into the eyes of some exhausted and tired leadership. I implemented really a focus for my clients on delegation and had one leader in particular who just held it all in. I said, “Let’s start with delegating and doing that from a financial perspective.”

Catherine Bowman:

And so we built his budget and chart of accounts around what ministry head is going to own this. I challenged him to not look at the nitpicky line items to just look at the overall budget for a couple of months. And he quickly became relieved of that stress. And that was a huge win for that client.

Catherine Bowman:

I remember talking six months later and he was not the same person he was six months ago and it was a win-win for both of us because I could do my job and his people could do their job. And then he could do his.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Their story can be your story too. And all it takes is one next step to get started. You shouldn’t have to do everything. And with BELAY Bookkeeper, you don’t have to. Visit belaysolutions.com today to start accomplishing more and juggling less. Like you, my background is in live events specifically in kind of the nonprofit religious experience. And the thing that is so special about dedicated time is that it’s like forced discipline, right? How many YouTube videos have you had open or Ted talks, have you had open in a browser for three weeks? And then you finally were like, “I’m never going to watch this.”

Harris III:

I finally have to reboot my computer.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah. No, I’m pulling up my iPad. Was it still saved there or whatever it might be. And the thing that’s so special about either a coaching network or I know for me, therapy is this way, right, or my executive coaching, my leadership coaching going to a conference or signing up for a webinar, whatever it might be. It’s not that content isn’t always available somewhere else though when you get to experience with other people, it’s really special it’s that it creates a discipline for you to do it.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

And when you engage with that content, with those other two sides of the triangle, it’s really where the magic is. And so I mean, I’ve seen that in my life and it’s why when you put on a webinar, I always put it on my calendar and then I try to make it. Don’t always do, but I try so.

Harris III:

Well, I’m modern man. It’s because all that stuff you’re talking about, whether it’s coaching or being at a conference or therapy, even it is all working at the level of story, right? You’re digging into those narratives that you have adopted as true and figuring out, “Okay, what parts of them aren’t true. And which ones have hijacked my imagination.” Which kind of goes back to one of the things I was saying earlier. You always see this with solopreneurs, you see this with storytellers because all human beings are trying to navigate change and stay safe in the world and either pursue pleasure or eliminate pain.

Harris III:

And then the lack of pleasure, according to Man’s Search for Meaning an amazing book by Viktor Frankl in the absence of that pleasure, they’re really searching for meaning, right? I just want a meaningful life. And so we start making up all these stories that scare us and that’s the work of human imagination.

Harris III:

And one of my favorite things is to reframe that for people. We think that imagination is something that we use as kids. And then as we get older, it starts to fade away. And it’s just not the case. We use our imaginations every day as adults to worry, to fear, especially in the context to change, to ask like, “Oh, what if this happens? What if this happens? What if this happens?” And oftentimes it’s negative.

Harris III:

We end that story in our imagination with something negative. And so I think that worry is a misuse of imagination and part of the reason why that therapy and coaching and that narrative work is so important is because it allows you to take agency over that storytelling process to recognize how you’re misusing your imagination in worry and fear and anxiety and recognize I have the power to take back the pin and actually in this story in a positive way that serves my mission better.

Harris III:

You can not have vision. It cracks me up when people are just like “Oh, you have so much vision.” Everyone has vision. They just don’t all have a positive one. They don’t all have a hopeful one. And to do that, we’ve got to get back to a place of wonder. And we got to do that story work that you’re talking about, whether it’s coaching or therapy or something else.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

You talked about that liminal space earlier, that story conference that you were talking about for me was this, I kind of hit rock bottom two weeks before that and really a lot of burnout in my life coming out of a really hard season. And I feel like this idea of the kind of transformation map for me, the idea of that was introduced subtly through the potential of wonder and the own stories you tell yourself, but then also the way that you lead your team and what it might be.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

So you have this tool, the transformation map, which I feel like it kind of takes all of these things that we’re talking about and puts it in a really practical kind of diagram and understanding of how to navigate that.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Whether you’re changing your own narrative, your own story, you need to change the narrative or story of your team or your business, the way that you are going to market with the message of your business, or it’s your own family, whatever it might be, you’ve got this tool that really can apply in all these different places, because a story and narrative apply everywhere, not just at Disney, in our lives and everything we do. Would you walk us through the transformation map or kind of give us a high level understanding of what that is and how you’ve laid that out?

Harris III:

Goodness. Yeah, sure. It happened when I was writing the book, the editor who was partnering with me on The Wonder Switch was like, “Hey, you’ve got this pathway that you’re laying out for people. I feel like there’s some sort of visual model here that will make this easier to wrap your heads around.” She was brilliant to do that. And so I started kind of collaborating with other coaches, executive leaders, trainers, therapists, especially experiential therapists.

Harris III:

My friend Marc Pimsler contributed greatly to that just around how can I map out how all transformation happens? It was a tall order, right? And what I realized is that there’s this, again, it happens at the intersection of wonder, I use the metaphor of a switch, which is why the book is called The Wonder Switch. We all come into the world with the wonder switch turned on. Wonder is our natural state.

Harris III:

And by the way, little side note for those listening right now who are like, “Wonder, that feels a little woo woo, or a soft skill, or it’d be nice to have.” Wonder is essential. And a lot of people are experiencing the benefits of being in a positive awe state or a state of wonder without the knowledge of the science that’s happening and pushing things that are happening in their body.

Harris III:

There’s a ton of research now out of UC Berkeley, especially about what they call positive awe states. And they can do everything from produce cytokines in our body, decrease chronic inflammation, can boost our immune system, decrease stress, increase our empathy and our ability to connect with other people on an emotional level.

Harris III:

But my favorite thing about wonder is when we’re in a positive awe state, our brain begins to loosen. It’s vice like grip on the narrative that we have already adopted is true and are clinging onto.

Harris III:

In a state of awe, we loosen our grip and we’re like, “I don’t know. Maybe I’m a little bit more open to the story that you’re telling me, whatever that story is.” And so the goal and the transformation map is to move from what we call an inciting incident towards turning the wonder switch on. But what the map outlines is also how a negative inciting incident led to the wonder switch getting turned off.

Harris III:

And so if we start, when you see it in the book, or you can go to harrisiii.com, I’ve got a free training on this. This is a video that walks you through it. Essentially what happens is we all come into the world, wonder switches on. We’re super curious, which is just wonder in action. That’s what curiosity is. We are hopeful. We have what I call a wonder mindset. Our narrative is healthy, right?

Harris III:

And then all of a sudden we have a negative inciting incident in our story that serves as trauma. Trauma is stored in the lower third limbic system part of our brains where a lot of active storytelling takes place. My friend Marc Pimsler that I mentioned earlier is the founder of amazing organization called ISEP. International Society for Experiential Professionals.

Harris III:

What he taught me is that the goal of experiential therapy is to move that trauma up into the left. Trauma is a full body experience. There is no major trauma and minor trauma. Trauma is anything less than healthy, right? And so we’ve all experienced trauma. And so if it stays in the limbic system, it’s always active. And so extreme example say I’m in a traumatic car crash, from that point forward, each time I get in a car, I’m always grabbing the dashboard.

Harris III:

I’m always gasping, anytime someone has to stop quickly, right? The trauma is still active. It’s telling me a story. And so the goal of healing from that traumatic experience is to move that trauma from my limbic system up into a part of my brain where it’s almost more a memory and I can honor the reality of the pain and how difficult that experience was while simultaneously saying, “It happened then, but it’s not happening now.”

Harris III:

I can reframe the story and extract some meaning. And as Viktor Frankl says when you find a redemptive perspective on your suffering, it also allows your suffering to cease to become suffering, which is amazing. And so it’s doing the work around that trauma, understanding how it gave birth to things like shame or addiction, which then gave birth to lies. I think there’s only three lies in the world.

Harris III:

I’m not enough. I don’t belong. And I can’t. I can’t fill in the blank with whatever, attain something that your heart deeply desires or accomplish something that you feel like you were put on this planet to do. I’m not enough. I don’t belong. And I can’t. Those three lies, a lie is just a story that we make up, make sense of that pain that comes from the shame and the trauma.

Harris III:

That’s what breaks the narrative and turns the wonder switch off. And so the rest of the transformation map is outlining what is the result of the wonder switch getting turned off? And then what are the steps that we can take to create, to initiate, to be the catalyst of a positive inciting incident that leads us back to a state of wonder where that switch gets flipped on and we’re back to the original state of our childhood. Where believing is seeing, instead of seeing us believing where wonder replaces our cynicism, where curiosity is greater than fear, and we become hopeful again.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I feel like the idea of how we’re processing trauma and that exists in all of us. This is something that I’m understanding more and more. John Delony, who is a Ramsey personality and spoke at EntreLeader Summit last year has a whole talk about, and he’s about to come out with a new book as well, that I think is really making this idea even more accessible to more people because the way we navigate those stories really empower us to move forward.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

For a small business owner or a solopreneur, who’s trying to identify where they might be on that map, what steps do you have or what kind of keys do you have for them to help them kind of understand where they are in the circle and how they can kind of figure out what to do next?

Harris III:

Well, this sounds like a sales pitch, but you got to start by either reading the book or jumping on harrisiii.com and just right there at the top section of the page, just click the button, it says start here, something like that and jump into that free training and just start to understand these different steps, because the power of putting this in the form of a transformation map, which is, again, what the diagram is called is that you can figure out how you’re healing or where you feel stuck.

Harris III:

So if you’re stuck in recognizing like, “Gosh, I’m just ruled by worry and anxiety.” Great. That’s an imagination problem, right? Your imagination is being hijacked and it’s leading the way on the storytelling. And then once you ID yourself and figure out where you are, then you just do the difficult work of tracing the steps back until you get to the birthplace of what led to that problem, right?

Harris III:

And you most likely find your way back to trauma, which means a lot of this work, whether it’s happening within a corporate space, whether it’s a leader leading a team through this or work that you’re doing on your own with an experiential therapist, it comes back to healing from that trauma.

Harris III:

Because until you fix the cracks on the foundation of the house, continuing to renovate the house and plastering over the cracks on the walls and the drywall, they’re going to keep cracking, right? We’ve got to work at the foundational level to rewrite some of those stories and take back the agency.

Harris III:

You have so much more agency over your story than you realize. I often encourage people to just get out a piece of paper and write a line down the center and make two columns. What can I control and what can’t I control. Usually people are one or two camps, a lot of people from religious background, they tend to fall into the camp of like “Oh, nothing. I can control nothing. It’s all outside of my control.”

Harris III:

And that’s just not completely true. And then there’s the other side that are like, “Oh, I’m trying to control everything, which is just exhausting because you can’t.” And so I think to be really clear about what’s within your control and what can’t you realize, “Man, I’ve got a little more agency over a lot of what’s happening in my life than I realize.” And probably behind that is mindset, probably what’s driving that mindset or my belief systems. And probably those belief systems are anchored in some sort of narrative that I have formed is true. And I bet there’s some lies in that narrative that if we correct and rewrite, we can get you back to a healthier place of living and growth.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

And when we are healthy, we lead our teams better. We lead our businesses better. When we identify those lies in our business, because this applies to… Your business may go through its own trauma in a way. The pandemic for so many businesses was traumatic. I mean, I’ve watched you Harris navigate having to cancel and move and reimagine all these events. And so this kind of organization has experienced collective trauma in that way. Our nation has experienced that as well. And so there’s a lot to navigate. It’s interesting my wife just spent a week at Onsite in Nashville or outside of Nashville in one of the tools, which is kind of this week long experiential therapy thing for our audience. But one of the things she came back with was this language was that’s in my hula hoop or not in my hula hoop.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

And so it’s become this very funny visualization in our home, as we’re talking about the like, “Hey, I’m making this request for you, but I recognize it’s not in my hula hoop, it’s in your hula hoop,” or whatever it might be. It’s taken that Covey language or the kind of circle of influence or whatever it might be and really kind of giving it this very tangible visual picture, which has been really helpful.

Harris III:

Yeah. And we have to. I’m not a fan of the word normalize. I feel it’s being overused because now we’re trying to normalize everything. But if we don’t normalize these conversations connected to our mental health, our spiritual health, our emotional health, we’re not going to be able to be the leaders that we’re created to be.

Harris III:

We’re not going to be able to grow as successful companies as we’re capable of. We’re not going to be able to lead our teams the way that we really should. And so we’ve got to do this deep inner work without rolling our eyes and feeling like it’s too soft or woo woo it’s. It’s the stuff that really matters and makes the biggest difference.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I feel like for a lot of our audience, they’re very tactically in the business day in and day out. What are some disciplines or things that you’ve done to increase that awe state, the wonder in your life. What’s just something that you do regularly to try to encounter that more intentionally.

Harris III:

Yeah. In the book I talk about one of the studies that UC Berkeley did on positive awe states and they’ll referred to it as awe stimuli. But they call awe stimuli, I just called magic, right? And so a magic trick is awe stimuli, a sunset in the right scenario is awe stimuli. And sometimes it’s manufactured. Watching the fireworks and projection mapping show on the Magic Kingdom Castle at Disney World, Cinderella’s Castle that’s awe stimuli. Raising a kid is filled the awe stimuli, right?

Harris III:

And so we’ve got to figure out what is magic. One of my favorite quotes is from Roald Dahl. He said, “Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” And that sort of aligns with how magic tricks work because magic tricks work because most human beings think that seeing is believing.

Harris III:

And you’re like “Dude, I saw it with my own eyes. It was there. And then it was gone. Or, “My watch was on my wrist and then it’s totally disappeared.” Seeing is not believing. It doesn’t take much more than me making something look it’s levitating even though it’s not for you to recognize that human beings are not that great at determining what is real or true based on what our senses perceive.

Harris III:

But what the science supports when they partner with magicians to understand how our five senses interpret information in the world around us is that believing is actually seeing. That far more than our eyes interpreting what’s real and informing our brain is the reality that our belief systems are informing what we see. And so if seeing is not believing, but believing is seeing, and if Roald Dahl said that those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

Harris III:

That means there’s a lot of people walking around going, “Hey Harris, you keep talking about this awe stimuli, yeah, I don’t have any in my world.” And I’m like, “Well that’s because you don’t believe in it. The magic is right there. It’s in front of your face.” Yes, it’s in the mountaintop experiences because life is a rollercoaster ride, but it’s also the beauty in the mundane. It is all around us. We just often can’t see it because in order to see it, you have to believe in it first.

Harris III:

And so for the person who’s like, “I need to go find some magic.” Gosh, you got to figure out, okay, you probably don’t believe in a lot of the magic that’s all around you or you would be able to already see it. So because you’re missing it, let’s start with what you do believe in what is magical to you.

Harris III:

What is truly magical? And you have to go back as far in your story as you have to think back to what was some of the magic that you remember experiencing that just made you go, “Wow.” Before you started growing up and the wow started to fade away and you became obsessed with asking how, how’s this work? How’s that work? How’s that work? Before your how’s crushed your wow, what made you go, “Wow, that was amazing.”

Harris III:

Go get back in touch with that. If it’s taking a hike, if it’s watching a sunset, if it’s hanging with a friend, if it’s going for a walk with someone that you care about, if it’s a deep conversation with a friend, go find the magic because that is the stimuli for awe.

Harris III:

And when you get into that positive awe state, that’s when the physiology and your body starts shifting. It’s when your brain loosens its grip on the old narrative that’s not serving you anymore. It’s where you get on the path back towards the wonder switch being turned on so you can shift that narrative mood from the old story, through the liminal space, where there feels there’s no story and into realizing that new story and manifesting it and properly using your imagination to create and dream and innovate instead of getting stuck in worry and anxiety and fear.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s amazing. After I read this book, I started with my team every week or every couple weeks literal really giving them homework to come to the meeting. “Hey, we’re going to take the first five minutes of our meeting. Just share something that inspired you. Share something that was cool to you.” And it was so fascinating. Some people can access that really easily. Some people are like you or they’re just kind of looking for it all the time.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

You’re always sending people that you YouTube clip or sending that picture or the idea or whatever it might be. My friend said this and it blew my mind, other people just don’t think that way naturally, or they’ve lost that over time. And I remember sitting in my last role, I had very concrete thinkers and then very abstract thinkers kind of all executing a lot of different stuff together.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

And you sometimes have to really push people, but it’s like “Hey, it can just be a clip from a TV show. How did they shoot that? Oh, I’ve never thought about that before, whatever might be.” But when I took that, I saw the people on my team, especially those who don’t live in that state all the time or as much really start to be able to solve problems in new and different ways. I saw it apply. I saw it open up new almost neural pathways in their brain to be able to solve problems in ways they hadn’t before, just by forcing them to think different about what is inspiring them.

Harris III:

That’s exactly what’s happening. Yeah, those neurons get to carve out these new pathways in our brain and it becomes easier to replace the old story with the new one over time. And this is also why I love group coaching. It’s why we do everything in the context of community. Because when the right content, the right coaching happens in a group format instead of just one to one, and I’ve experienced this both as a participant in masterminds and through leading our own mastermind, what happens is that you are exposed to the wins and the breakthroughs of other people.

Harris III:

And when you’re doing that in the context of community, you find yourself constantly being reminded of what’s possible in your own life. And a lot of people, even when they win, they’re winning in isolation. And because the breakthroughs aren’t shared with others, we’re actually connected to it’s sometimes difficult to remember that’s possible for us.

Harris III:

And so then what do we do? We open up our phone and we scroll through Instagram and we watch the wins of celebrities that we have no connection to. We watch the wins of influencers that we’re not in community with. And we feel connected to them because we click a follow button, but we’re not truly connected.

Harris III:

And so this is why community is so important. It is difficult to maintain and live a life rooted in wondering curiosity and agency over the story and leaning into the power that you have as a leader, outside of the context of community. It’s nearly impossible.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Man. That is really challenging for me. I’m like, “Gosh, where am I looking for those opportunities to experience those things together?” So as we kind of wrap up here, I’d love to just hear for if you’ve got this audience with a small business owners, medium business owners, solopreneurs. What’s your hope and dream for them? What do you want to kind of charge them with or challenge them with, or encourage them with?

Harris III:

Oh man, something new I’ve been thinking about and working on. I’m writing my next book right now. I don’t know what the title will be exactly yet. Maybe it’s just simply Wonder Work, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what wonder work is. Because once we flip the wonder switch on, I think the next step is really to move from wonder being the state that we kind of enter in and out of to living and working in a state of wonder. I think that’s possible if you were driven by what I call a wonder mindset.

Harris III:

And so once you flip the switch and develop wonder mindset, I think what’s next for you is to step into performing your wonder work. Wonder work is at the center of your passion and your calling and your gifting. It’s the thing that you put on this planet to do that when you perform it gives you so much meaning and purpose and joy that it leaves you in awe.

Harris III:

So you get to live in this state of awe. You wake up every single morning going, “Wow, I can’t believe I get to do this every single day. This is mind blowing to me. It’s magical.” While simultaneously changing and impacting the world around you. I don’t think purpose is what we do. I think purpose is what happens in the world in the lives of others when we do what we do.

Harris III:

And I think that’s probably connected back to wonder work. And so to get clear about what your wonder work is means to get clear about what your purpose is. And to understand that you have the power through your work, through your business, through your leadership, to help lead others back to a place of constant wonder. So they look at the work that you’re doing and go, “Wow, you’re amazing,” which is awesome and necessary to your own success.

Harris III:

But it also allows them to look in the mirror and go, “Man, they’re amazing, but I didn’t realize how amazing I was too. I didn’t what I was capable of.” And so my charge to everyone listening in is get clear about what that is. I think there’s a big, deep conversation there around how you’re positioning yourself in the marketplace and that it has to come from a very purpose driven place.

Harris III:

And once you find your wonder work, perform it. Wake up every single morning, asking not how can I make more money but how can I make a bigger difference? And as Zig Ziglar famously said, “You help out enough other people get what they want in life, you can have anything you want.” Right? I just butchered it. He did it in reverse. “You can have anything you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they want.” And to me, starting from a place of performing your wonder work in the world is a pretty good place to begin.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Gosh, that’s incredible. Thank you so much, Harris. If people want to get connected with you or take a next step in one of the kind of things you’re working on, where would you point them to? Where can they get your book? What would a good next step be for them to connect with you?

Harris III:

Yeah, well, the book is called The Wonder Switch. It’s available everywhere books are sold. You can learn more at wonderswitch.com. My personal site is harrisiii.com that has in information on the transformation map. There’s a bunch of other free resources there. You can also follow @harrisiii on socials. That’s harrisiii. I have a weird name. It’s just like the Roman numeral three. So harrisiii on all socials, I’m most active on Instagram.

Harris III:

And then if you’re interested in the couple conferences we talked about, you can go check out story2022.com for this year’s conference coming up in September. It’s going to be amazing. We’ll back in person, hopefully in Nashville and then solocon.com, if you want to get plugged into the Solo community.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

That’s awesome. Gosh, Harris, thank you so much. We’re going to stick around here and he’s going to answer one more question for us about the tools and resources he uses an entrepreneur. You’re not going to want to miss it. And to hear that you need to click subscribe to our email list and we will send you a link to our bonus content, or you can visit onenextsteppodcast.com where you can find a link in our show notes. Harris, thank you so much for joining us today.

Harris III:

It’s been a pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Really it’s an honor.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Gosh, Ryan, that was a fantastic conversation with Harris III. I don’t know how you weren’t taking notes the entire time.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I was really grateful to know that it was being recorded. I’m going to be honest. It’s not fun to go back and listen to yourself, but to hear what Harris had to say, I was really looking forward to be able to kind of sit with that. I’ll tell you, I think my favorite takeaway was actually from the bonus conversation that if you subscribe to our emails, or if you go to our show notes page, you can get access to… He shares a tidbit of how he uses technology to manage his team. That was unbelievably helpful to me.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Oh, I love that. Yeah. I personally loved his approach to wonder you right, as well as the idea that solopreneurs need community too on their journey of being alone with.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Yeah. I love that. Solo Con has really filled a gap in that way over the last few years for folks who identify as solopreneurs and kind of engaging their business that way. Now as always, we have one next step for everyone to take. This week Harris is offering our listeners access to his free virtual workshop, the solopreneur success path.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

This is one you don’t want to miss. So head to our show notes to find the link. Well, thank you so much for tuning in for this week’s One Next Step. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe on Apple podcast or follow us on Spotify. And if you’re ready to start accomplishing more and juggling less go belaysolutions.com.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Join us next time for more practical business tips and tools to help you advance your business one step at a time. For more episodes, show notes and helpful resources visit onenextsteppodcast.com.