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Hello! I am recording this episode from Cornwall, England. We are moved into our amazing new three bedroom house right by the water, and I am choosing to stay put here for the next few months.
It has been a hectic few months of travel from Southeast Asia to the Middle East to England, so it feels really good to have our own space. We have a beautiful backyard, two office spaces.
We have room to entertain and host all of our friends visiting, and I am just loving staying put for just a few months until life becomes quite hectic again for Thanksgiving and holiday season!
Who are your role models?
Today’s episode was actually inspired by a recent conversation I had with one of my friends. We were talking about the concept of role models and upon reflection I realized that having role models all throughout my life helped me achieve success in all areas of my life, and especially my business so much faster than if I didn’t have role models.
In this episode, we’re going to be talking about Who Are Your Role Models, how to choose your role models for this chapter of your life.
I’m also going to be sharing my role models that I’ve had throughout my life and who they are now.
My first question for you is who are your role models? In life, in business, in your career. If you do not have role models, this might completely change the next few months, the next few years for you.
Having a role model is almost like having a North star or having someone who proves that the life you want for yourself or the business you want for yourself is possible.
What is a role model?
Oxford Dictionary says a person looked to by others as an example to be imitated.
Cambridge Dictionary says a person who someone admires and whose behavior they try to copy.
In essence, having a role model puts you in a position where you first identify with that person, whatever about them. Maybe you are the same age, the same ethnicity, you have the same lifestyle, the same kind of motivations, whatever it might be, you identify with them and a part of you feels like there is a possibility that you can imitate them.
If you go back to my episode about the levels of confidence in entrepreneurship, finding someone to imitate who is ahead of where you are right now, that is already exhibiting a high level of confidence because you believe that if someone else does it, you can too.
Expand Your Frame of Reference
The really important thing to note here is that you must expand your frame of reference of who your role models can be. Your role models do not have to be from where you grew up. They don’t have to be people you personally know. It doesn’t have to be your parents or your friends. You can think outside the box and you can choose anyone else.
This is where my friend and I in our discussion, when I first realized that my role models have never been people who I knew personally, although I’ve developed maybe close relationships with some of them because I’ve reached out.
But in our conversation, my friend mentioned something along the lines of, you know how we looked up to our parents and we wanted to be like them growing up.
That’s when I had to stop her and reflect because I realized I very, very rarely wanted to become my parents or end up on their path.
As many of you may know, both of my parents worked corporate jobs and they also came from a very different background.
They were immigrants from China and their values in life were just so different because it was almost like sink or swim. They saw corporate stability as something that would save them from all of these, you know, life events that they couldn’t control.
After I shared this and tapped in a little farther, I was sharing how I remember growing up because there was a huge language barrier. This was before the internet and we had a dictionary that would help me with all of my spelling tests and vocabulary homework, and they weren’t able to help me with anything English related.
From a very early age, I was self-dependent and self-motivated because I learned that my parents are still learning as well and I couldn’t rely on them. It’s not like they knew significantly more than me when it came to things like English.
With that being said, the self dependency and the independence almost forced me to seek outside of my frame of reference and recognize that if I just do things differently, if I get a great education in America, if I learn English, I can end up on a different path.
The people who inspired me and motivated me weren’t necessarily the people who I knew because I knew that I could take different actions and in an insane way, I knew that I couldn’t take the same actions as my parents because they came up from a completely different background.
I realized that I did not have to set any limits for myself. I could take different actions and get different results.
This is where I want you to internalize that you must choose the right role models. Maybe your parents have some kind of path that they’ve paved, you do not need to follow that.
Maybe your friends or your colleagues are all going down this one path. Recognize that it’s just one path out of so many millions.
I really want to challenge you to expand your frame of reference of what is possible, especially if you are not content with where you’re going.
If you’re not going to be happy in 10 years on your current path, it is up to you to reevaluate where you wanna go and reassess.
Is there anyone else that I can look up to or be mentored by or get inspiration from to get a different outcome?
This is why it is so important to have role models.
Like I said before, you must identify with them. If they come from a completely different background and you really just can’t connect or resonate with any part of their story, probably not right for you.
There must be something that connects the both of you and something about their success or behavior entices you.
It’s not like, oh my gosh, there’s no way I can ever do that. A little part of you is saying, well, if they can do it, maybe I can too.
This was always a feeling I had when I found new role models in my life. When I wanted something more from my life and I finally found the people who were doing it, I was like, yes, I’ve found the proof. And if they prove that they can do it, then I just have to kind of copy and imitate what they are doing.
The last point I wanna make about the importance of role models is that if you don’t know where you wanna go, what is your destination?
If you don’t know what your destination is, then you’re kind of just operating mindlessly day to day, doing the standard actions that you’ve been kind of programmed to to get you to your current location.
If that’s not where you wanna be, you need to be challenging yourself. Where do you want to go? What is your destination?
It doesn’t have to be a life destination, it doesn’t have to be when I retire. It can be next year. It can be when you quit your job. It can be when you start a business. It can be when you start a family, have different role models for each chapter of your life.
How To Choose A Role Model
Now I’m going to be sharing how to select the right role models, and I’ve kind of predetermined a few criteria that have always helped me find the appropriate role models for what I’m going through and maybe this will help you.
The first is a role model should always make you think differently because if you already have the exact same train of thought and you’re not learning anything new, then I really don’t think there’s that much to learn from them.
They must be at a place where you’re like, I wonder how they’re thinking to get to where they are.
I listen to Steven Bartlett’s podcast, I watch him on Dragon’s Den. He is such a successful young entrepreneur, and I always think, what do people like that think about? And how are they thinking differently than me?
They also must challenge you to think. Find a way to think how can you have it all?
How can you have both money and happiness, travel and freedom and a committed marriage and relationship, success and fame and whatever it is that you want and true fulfillment think.
There are so many people out there who prove that and is possible. There are so many people out there who believe that having it all is possible. And I encourage you to find those role models that challenge you to think about the and option.
Next, your role models must be a few steps ahead of you. In whatever you want to achieve.
In business, find someone who has excelled and has done the work in a certain area of business that is ahead of you.
As you can see, all of these criteria also really mandate you to see where you can improve. If you come from a mindset where you think you know everything, where you think you have it all, where you think there’s nothing you can improve about your life, then this isn’t gonna work from you.
You really need to be open and honest with yourself and almost vulnerable about where you can improve. Where are you lacking?
It can be in your business, it can be in any of the other Wheel of Life categories that we talked about in our other episode.
It can be in relationships, it can be in spirituality. Where can you improve?
There’s no lying to anyone except yourself, right? So look at your business objectively. Can you improve on lead generation? Can you improve on selling? Can you improve on revenue? Can you improve on client retention?
What is it that you can improve and find those people who do it better than you?
An important disclaimer that I want to add in at this point is that you need to pave your own path. Despite all of these influences, it is still up to you to take your own actions. There’s no one size fits all roadmap.
There’s obviously lots of different maps, but you need to customize them to be your own. So it’s very important to think for yourself.
Who Are My Role Models?
Next I’m gonna be sharing some of my amazing role models that have helped me through my journey. And I want you to kind of keep in mind that there are so many that have helped me at any given moment.
It’s not like at one point I only had one at a time. I have many. I have some for my relationships, some for life, some for future family.
You are able to have multiple, and you don’t have to identify 110% with one person. You can really like something that they’re doing in one aspect of their life and you know, have someone else for another aspect. So that’s just something to keep in mind.
Without any further ado, I am going to be sharing the first role model that kind of kickstarted my creative journey. This was when I was in finance and I didn’t know if I wanted to pursue something creative to start an online business.
I thought everyone was so ahead of me and this amazing creator. Her name is Aimee Song. She used to be called Song of Style, and this was a creator where she was so professional and she started so early. I think she was really ahead of her time.
Along the same timeline of when I was in corporate and finding people who I admired was Tara Milk Tea. She is also just such an insanely talented creator. And with both of them, I actually scrolled back to their first ever post to their first ever YouTube videos. And I saw that their first piece of content wasn’t great. Like it was something that I could create.
I remember Aimee Song’s YouTube video was like a photo booth recording of her and her outfits on a MacBook.
So that’s when I really internalized like if they can do, I can do, every expert started somewhere and they really pushed me to get started once I created the Wanderlover blog, once I started my online business, I then looked up to people who were traveling and living in other parts of the world.
That’s when I stumbled upon Bucketlist Bombshells. They were selling digital products and living in Bali and going to amazing coworking spaces.
That’s something to keep in mind: they were either Asian American, they were either or Asian Australian, they were around my age. They had kind of like the same background I had working a corporate job. So I really identified with their story and they proved to me, if you take different actions, you’ll get different results.
I looked up to them like if I stayed on my corporate path, I will never be where they are and I want to get to where they are.
After I started traveling full time, I still get his emails. Until this day, he was one of my day one inspirations. But I will say also the most prevalent in my life right now is MJ DeMarco, the author of Millionaire Fastlane (check out my ‘must-read’ book list for inspiring entrepreneurs here).
He’s a role model who always, always expands my frame of thinking of what’s possible. Obviously as I age, he does too. And he reaches new milestones in his life and business.
I still get emails from him where I’m like, whoa, I didn’t think about it like that. I didn’t think about how I can have even more than what I want and how it is so possible. So subscribing to those weekly newsletters of your role models, they also make such a big difference.
Definitely check out Millionaire Fastlane because it will teach you how you can choose the most scalable business option and how you can scale your business.
And then the last two role models that I wanna share with all of you, definitely go check them out. Maria Wendt and Evelyn Weiss, they are both digital product sellers.
Evelyn specializes mainly in memberships, but I watched her business completely catapult in the past few years. She used to be my ads manager and just completely transformed her business model. The support she offers in all of her programs are amazing.
I’m in all of her programs and she is one of my role models because of how she balances business ownership and motherhood so so well. And she also travels because she’s Austrian, but then her husband lives in Canada.
So I really resonate with her story because I can see how that would be my life in a few years time.
And then going back to Maria, I just love how she presents all of her content, how efficient she is with content, how thorough she is with all of her explanations and how she just connects with her audience.
In terms of content creation, I think I very much respect what she does, and I aspire to be her in a few years time as well. She is also a mother, so you know, this new chapter of finding new role models who have online businesses and who also are parents, I think that’s a different kind of skill that I have yet to learn.
But I know that it is coming and I know that I will be finding so many more role models coming up in the future as well. But I wanted to share with you guys my favorite ones so that you can go check them out and show them some love and maybe be inspired by them too.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, it would mean so much if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts. This helps us spread The Wanderlover mission to those who need a dose of inspiration today.
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