Latest / To Your Success! Podcast / Episode 51: You can't afford to leave. But you can't afford to stay

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Episode 51: You can't afford to leave. But you can't afford to stay · To Your Success! Podcast

• To Your Success by Christer Johnsen: said I want to leave the corporate world. That was two weeks before we got married. I was afraid of what others would say. I was afraid of losing everything I had. I was afraid, am I good enough? And for long time I asked myself, even after I changed, I asked myself, am I good enough? And then my mentor told me that you have to stop bullshitting yourself. It's just a question. Every day you stay in a structure and a life you don't want, you lose that day. And if there is one thing we never get back, it's that day. That day. We know how many days we have lived. We have no idea how many days we have left. And the only thing we can affect is in this moment. Welcome to your success. You've built a life others admire. You've achieved, delivered, and become someone people rely on. But somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like yours. Mentor Krister Johnson and Ellen Solheim know that feeling. After following successful paths of their own, they chose something different. More clarity, more freedom, more presence. Today, they help high achievers design lives that feel true. not just impressive. This podcast is for those ready for their next chapter. Not more pressure, not more performance, but a life that feels like yours with clarity and direction. Welcome to your success. Warm welcome everyone to a new episode of the To Your Success podcast. I'm mentor Krista Johnson and with me today is... Elin Soder, your wife and business partner. Yes, and we are recording this from Arizona. Still in Arizona. Still in Arizona. Last episode as well. Maybe we should move here. No, we should not move here. We can come visiting. Yes. It's too warm for me. It is. It's really warm. Even for you. Even for me. I have to have interval. Training in some bathing, is that what you call it? don't know. 15 minutes on each side. It's like a barbecue. But we have an interesting topic for this episode because most people are not stuck because they lack ambition. And we still talk about high achiever here. So they are stuck because they are trapped between fears. The fear of leaving what pays them and the fear of staying in something that is slowly costing them everything else. That's the trap there. So today we are going to name that trap and talk about the way through it. And when you talk to high achievers who feel stuck, what is the real thing going on beneath their surface, so to say? I don't know how. It always comes down to that and I tell stop thinking about the how and then they say but Well, the trap is called the hamster wheel It is we are we have talked about the hamster wheels a few times a lot of times and I in all my classes and all my programs I show a picture I took off a hamster wheel back in 2006 in London, we were doing an acquisition and It was a hamster wheel made of gold with diamonds on. That's like 20 years ago and I felt exactly like that. Two years into my CEO, my group CEO career, I felt like that. resonated with me. You know, it's not laziness, it's not a lack of ambition. Not at all. All high achievers like us and you listening, you are used to being ambitious. A lot of people wonder why do you always want to do all these things and I say because it's fun. ⁓ To be in the hamster world is very specific kind of paralysis. You are paralyzed. I was so afraid of losing everything I had. We have a mortgage on our house. I have a mortgage on my boat. We have to create income. That was more a fear. Now it is a passion. We think it's fun and it's a game. People don't understand that you are paid by your value, not what you do, but your value. You have built something that feels, or sometimes maybe it felt like some years ago, it felt like success. That is what we have trained ourselves to be. That is what we taught in school. Get a good, well-paid job. from when were kids. ⁓ When I studied at the management school, is, no one talked about entrepreneurs. Well, I remember in the last year, the fourth year of university, I took a course in entrepreneurship. That was kind of an old course. Other people studied finance or marketing. I studied a lot of marketing as well. ⁓ But then entrepreneurship, and I really like it, but it took me like 30 years to be an entrepreneur myself. So you have built this life that looks successful, pays you well, and the life has become a cage. And the salary is actually the lock on the door. Because you are used to it. I had a Q &A with all my clients today, I said, I had not all this, but because in my last job I made a lot of more money before in other jobs. ⁓ But ⁓ in the last job I had, I had this amount coming in every month, every month, every month, every month, right? And you said you should be really grateful and happy with your job because a lot of people envy you having that job. I said, of course they do. I understand that. It just didn't make me happy. But the money was a trap. That was the lock on the door. And that was what I was really afraid of. So one of my mentors, two weeks, and we told that story many times, two weeks before we got married in Kuala Lumpur, my mentor told me that, you know, said that, Christy, you don't have a goal. I said I do. No, he said. And he was very firm with me. ⁓ And he said, you have a wish or a hope, because if you had a goal, you would actually act on it. And then I said, I'm gonna leave. You use that kind of sentence to your client as well a lot. ⁓ this is not your goal. This is just your dream or your wish or hope. And it's quite effective. It is, because I mean my, and you coach people as well, is not to tell what they want to hear, it is to tell what they need to hear. And when you first have said to us that you have a goal, then we are fully committed. We are locked on that target. We are locked on that target to make you reach it. Not in a bad way, but in an effortless, really good way. Yeah, because we believe that this is what you want, and then... Yeah, and then you can change. That's okay. So a lot of people, are committed to the suffering. And committed to the suffering is to feel the pain that no, I don't know how, I don't know how, I don't know how. You remember Bob Proctor said that, the worst thing that can happen to a person with a goal is to have an excuse. Even worse? A good excuse. Have a really good excuse. I don't think it was so easy. Well, we are gonna meet people, we were close with people that were close with Bob and they say that it was not so easy to have Bob as a mentor. No, I believe them. Yeah. Yeah. But he was... good at what he was doing. He was a really good mentor, yes. It's a big legacy. He has, yes. So it's not a money problem, right? It is an identity problem. Wearing a money costume. Yeah, wearing a money costume. So you wrap yourself in the money and then you use that as an excuse. a good picture. We should have that for a slide. to wrap yourself in the excuse of money? Yeah, well the challenge is that it's easier to make more money if you run your own business than when you are employed. People just think that it's safe to be employed. I think people need to open their eyes now because first of all, when you are employed, you have no control if you have a job or not. Well of course, and I say that to all employees, all people in a job, you should... You should look at your employer as your client. Treat your employer as your client. And then you get paid based on the value you bring to the company. Not your competence, not how good you look, not how happy you are. The value, that is what pays you. But then, then AI now, if people haven't got their eyes open about how AI will change, then you see how much it has changed for us. Working with AI, we have done 12 months with AI, more or less. And we have taken away a lot of complexity from our company. if people don't pay attention to this, they will lose. 2027 will be the year. OK. Or 2026. No, 2027. 2026 is when AI is picking up speed. OK. At the runway. And understand. And 2027 will be the liftoff. My expectation, no accountants. No bookkeepers. Right? In the real business as well, a lot. Junior consultants, gone. Marketing agencies, why? What do you think about musicians? Well, with AI, we can go into the philosophy of AI and how we use it, okay? So AI brings you an industry standard, brings you easily up from your level here up to an industry standard. And then we know that if we post or if we do something like this one, the subject here is based on, for this podcast, is based on AI because I have put a lot of things into AI and then I get a lot of proposals and then I pick some. This resonates. I reject most of it, but this one resonated. And then we have... talking points, but we never follow them. Because we go into the spirit of it. It's kind of like that plan we make and we never follow it anyway. Because we learn. And that is the point where, as Elin said, we make a plan and then never follow it because we made the plan yesterday. And we are not the same. That was the old us. We are not those today. So don't be afraid of learning and see it as a challenge and a possibility. It's a huge possibility to create freedom now. But you just have to get out of your fears. Every time I'm afraid of something, I have to do it immediately. It's like push. But that's not, it's one thing is to challenge myself, but I want to grow. You want to grow. We want to become better versions of ourselves. And it's not so easy for others to follow us. No, it's not. I will not follow listening to this. That's easy. Just follow. That's easy. But then to imagine who are we now. Because we also travel. And when we travel we stay away from Norway a long time. And when we come back and talk to friends and everything, we have changed a lot. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, it's really fun. We meet a lot of new people around the world and they get us. We attract new people. Yeah. Okay. I think we just lost the... No, no, no. I can help you. I can help you? I think I can find that. Good. Yeah. Okay. People often frame leaving as the risk. Yeah. But you say that staying has a cost too. Staying is actually the biggest cost. And there are several costs. One thing is the salary, right? It's like the safe and lazy and comfortable way is to meet up to work and then you get paid for the value you bring. But you should be aware of that it is the value you bring that pays you. It is not that you have signed a contract. Because with the speed that is today, it's reorganizations all the time. So one thing is staying the same is that, well, you have the safety, but the safety is a trap. Because the only thing you, and that is a lot of Western societies, like we have to get these, we have to get the fixed job and then you can climb the ladder and then the more they pay you, what people don't understand is that the higher up you get in the hierarchy, the bigger slave you are. You're a slave of the bonus, so you don't dare to leave because very often the agreements and the contracts are that you have to stay a full year. So you cannot leave because you want the bonus. And that could be... I stayed on for that and got that bonus because it was a substantial sum of... a thing. No, it's not a bad thing. It just doesn't give you lot of freedom. No, just be aware of that. But every day you stay in a structure and a life you don't want, you lose that day. And if there is one thing, we never get back. It's that day. That day. We know how many days we have lived. We have no idea how many days we have left. And the only thing we can affect is in this moment. I choose to be happy is every day's most important choice. Choose the thought that makes you feel best in the moment, Dr. Anthony. And it is that. And if you... I don't say that we live on this pink cloud happy all the time. But we have to deal with challenges and problems. One of the challenges is that we spend 24-7 together. Yeah. Yeah. That is one of the biggest challenges. How do you do that? We just have to make it work. Yeah. Yeah. And we do. And we do. Yeah. But I think... One of cost of staying and changing is that you stop dreaming, stop imaginationing or you just block that because you cannot think about it, it makes you more sad. So you actually lose the ability to dream. And then to create, right? When I look at today's society, I think it's sad that one of the first things that we pick away from our kids is the ability to dream. Don't they dream? You have to look at facts. know, facts are history. It's like watching the news. It's the old. ⁓ I'm a big ⁓ Lewis Hamilton fan. He won in Barcelona. That's history. How long do you think he tasted that victory? I think he tasted it for like 30 minutes. Then over to the next chapter. And now he knows that to actually do it again, he has to become that. He has to get that identity. The serial winner in Ferrari. So his dream as a kid, as a boy, was to win with Ferrari, for Ferrari. That's all Formula One drivers dream. And Formula One is very much about beating Ferrari. But then now he has to upgrade, right? Do it again, do it again, do it again, do it again. So the challenge is that when you live the life that you have outgrown is that you lose the ability to dream. You lose the ability to reflect. I... It's a huge cost. It is. People don't think. And I don't say that they are brain dead. No, no, but they don't grab this ability we have to let me think about that. Let me create something, you know. And it all starts with the imagination. And Lewis Hamilton, he imagined himself winning for Ferrari. And it's so important, even if you are 60 years old, 70 years old, 80 years old, I don't care how old you are, if you're 20, 30, 40, 50, start to visualize, start to write down what you truly want and make that movie in your mind. And then you say, ⁓ that's nice. Or maybe I can do that. Because when we say that you become what you think about, and in all our workshops, all our webinars, you become what you think about, and people think that's strange. No, it's not. Because when you think about, and when you are stuck in the trap, you cannot leave, but you want to leave, but you think that you cannot, then you get more ideas about that. So I just wanted to say that, Right, I'm gonna leave. And then you get ideas about how you can live. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't say... And it goes that fast. It goes that fast. Yeah, we had that in our Q &A today. One of our... He's the CEO of a large Swedish company. And he wants to do something else. And I said, don't be angry about where you are today. Be grateful for that. And then you say that before end of this year, I'm gonna leave. And then you start to build the new structure, right? But be grateful for what you have. because that has taken you to where you are now. So start using your, because the dangerous version of you is the one who says, well, ⁓ that was Jack Nicholson. What if this is as good as it gets from the mad house? It's a movie, yeah? Yeah, a movie. What if this is as good as it gets? Trust me, it's not. It can be so much better. So much better all the time. You just have to do it. So one of the costs also by staying is that your children are watching you. And children see what you do. Not what you think. And when you're not happy, and you just keep on staying where you are, they copy you. They learn that this is the price you have to pay. I remember that. We had Andreas here this weekend and you see how he has changed? my son Andreas, he lives in Fort Lauderdale, works for a global business, has a good career, he's eager, ambitious and always wants more. And that's fine, he's my son, so why not? And I told him that is how we are, that is who we are. And then he said that, I said that was like half a year ago, maybe a year ago, I said I think you work too much. And then he said, well, dad, you did that too, it's an investment. And I said to him, but I was wrong, Andreas. I was wrong, it was not worth it. And then I told him, do you remember when I almost died when I ended up in hospital? And he said, no. I said, I was just a few centimeters away from dying. I got a bleeding high up in my nose, up here. And the blood was pouring out and I had shitty high blood pressure. What if that had happened up here in my forehead? Then I would have been a vegetable. I mean it's like it's not worth it. It is not worth it. And now he rests more, he eats more, he works less. But he doesn't bring less value. He has just understood that value in ours, they are not interconnected. You just have to be better. You have to learn new things. So to find this path, to do this, because... I think as a high achiever you can see only two options. That's why they think about the how all the time. They see two options. They can stay miserable and stay where they are or they have to blow everything up. And what is the actual path there? So as a high achiever you think that all the knowledge you have has no value unless you stay where you are. ⁓ So that in the minute you resign your brain is emptied. I remember Men in Black, movie, had this thing that emptied your mind. You forgot everything. I think it was called the Neuralizer. It's not like that. You have. I mean, I have worked a lot with marketing and brand building. I haven't forgot about that just because I'm not in the corporate world anymore. You bring the value. I don't say you have to leave to be happy. But if you want freedom. If you want freedom, then you have to change your structure. I still, when we talk about this, come back to my old lawyer friends who work like 16 hours a day and they don't have vacation, they have lawyer-cation. That's terrible. I say it's just bullshit. Excuse my French. But it's just bullshit. Excuse my French. Again? but it is so true and they're not happy, right? No, but I have this wonderful cabin by the sea and how many hours are you actually free there? ⁓ and then I have to take care of the boat shit, I forgot about that. And then we have to paint it. The whole cabin. Okay. But it's not like nobody asks you to choose between your motives and your freedom on the same Tuesday afternoon. No, and you can create. And you don't have to blow up everything, right? How did we do it? I to honor you because you are a strong woman and I really like that most of the time. Thank you. Yeah, most of the time. you. 99.9 % of the time. really like that. Okay. The rest you can live it. Yes. When I said I want to leave the corporate world, that was two weeks before we got married. And then you said, and I was really afraid. I was so afraid that you had to hold my hand when I resigned. I was afraid of what others would say, I was afraid of losing everything I had, was afraid of am I good enough? And for long time I asked myself, even after I changed, I asked myself, am I good enough? And then my mentor told me that you have to stop bullshitting yourself, it's just a crutch. And then I stopped doing that. And you said, what is the worst thing that can happen? I said, well I don't have income, well then you have to live on me for a while. That would be nice. That would be nice, you said. And I really appreciate that. I had some savings, so I knew that unless I completely messed up, I would be good. But still it was scary. My goal was actually to, within maybe after six months that I could, going all in on mentoring, I could pay yourself. It took three weeks. Three weeks. Yeah, because when you go all in, everything changes, right? The bridge is, and you as a high achiever, you know that. You can do two things at the same time. Even if you are a man, you can do two things at the same time. I agree. Three things? No. Not so sure. We can do two things. You can stay in your job and you create a new structure at the same time. I did that. I stayed in my job. Well paid job. And then I started learning this. But I started mentoring long time before. I started mentoring almost like it's 12 years ago now, think. I did that pro bono through an alumni. ⁓ And I was mentor for young managers. And I always want to give back because I love to help others. ⁓ And I was non-paid and then my start was that one of my clients, he asked if I could create a program so we could continue and did that. And I think I remember what he paid. was like half year, don't, well, whatever it is, whatever it was. I thought it was a lot of money compared to what we do today. It's not that, but it was a good start. And then I had my company. I had it as an investment company, so I just changed name and then changed the purpose of the company, et cetera, so I had a mentoring company instead. Other people just... You slowly transitioned. I slowly transitioned, right? But all the time I had a mentor. Most important thing? I was thinking I did it the other way around. Because I stayed, I left my job as a nurse, but I stayed in the nursing business. So I just changed my knowledge and everything that I had. I took that and I invested in that, in the same business. Do know why you did that? Because I'm smart. Yeah. Because I saw I was worth more. That is your ego saying that. No, we did it because your identity for a long, long time was that you are a nurse. Yeah. But that was what I was doing then. Yeah, but it was your identity. And we see that. We have a client. She works with people's eyes. ⁓ Optical is in Norwegian name. And we see, you remember when we were running dental clinics, right? Trying to have a dentist thinking a different way. It's their identity. Five years at school, you had three years at school, at nursing school, your identity was I'm a nurse, I'm a nurse, I'm a nurse. And then you practiced it with your thinking, your feelings and your actions because you were working with patients, right? But my point is that it actually was a good thing that instead of just leaving and leaving everything, I just took what I had and... turn it the other way around. I started my own business in the same industry. And then because you upgraded from being a nurse working in public hospitals and elder care and then you upgraded to run your own business, meaning that you upgraded to become an entrepreneur and then you become a management for hire. I remember when you showed me that contract, I was very, proud of you. That's an identity change, right? And then it continued. The biggest identity shift was when we started working together because then you had to become a coach and a seller. And that took some time. Yeah, but still we have been working 100 % together for three years now. two, three, two, three, I don't remember. We did it yesterday, we do it today, and we're gonna do it tomorrow. yeah. And that's an identity change. It's like my identity change, and one of the strangest things I did was to make new business cards. Not being a CEO, and I was always into that. It was so important for me. I want to have new cards. It's like, okay, but then I did it. And actually two weeks ago, I threw them all away. They were not important to me anymore, but then to like, ⁓ title myself as a mentor was really goose bumpy. that is a It became a word right now. It's beautiful. Out of my comfort zone. Feeling good. So, okay. If someone is sitting in this exact place that they are now and they feel trapped and they know that something has to change, but they cannot see how, that's the question always. What is the one question they should ask themselves? What do I want? What do I truly want? It started with me wanting to sail around the world, you know that. I've always seen me as an explorer. And the explorer thing is, one thing is to, for me, is to do things. The other thing is to challenge myself to learn new things. I drove my parents crazy with all the questions. That's the way I am, I'm curious guy. So they shouldn't ask how do I live? No. The true question is what do you truly want? What is the actual version of me I want to be? And why do you want it? Because it feels good. Because my why is because I want to explore the world, love helping other people. That is why we have this podcast. It is because we love showing others that if we can do it, you can do it. Anything is possible. Anything is possible, yeah. Yeah, so what is the next version of life you want to live? That is the right question, right? And we start all our programs, even workshops, with what you truly want. Write it down. And don't think about what you're afraid of because you will outgrow that. So many people that actually don't know what they want until they start thinking about writing it down. When you start writing it, then you have to focus on that and then you find it. and the thing about writing it down and why that is important, and I recommend you to write by hand, is because then you take action. Only thinking about it has no commitment, but when you write it down, you commit to yourself. And you cannot live a life that you haven't imagined, that you haven't described. No. No, you have to, and it starts with writing it down. Right? Imagining, you know, to use your imagination, it's not soft, it is the most powerful tool you have. Write it down. Yeah. So if you are in this place, you know, you have success on paper, but something feels off, fundamentally misaligned, doesn't have to be fundamentally as well, because we're good at covering things up. Yes. and excuses. What if this is as good as it gets? ⁓ It's not a red flag, it's just a signal. It's just a signal from who you are, from who you truly want to be to who you are today. Listen to that signal. Yeah, maybe we should try something else. ⁓ And the work is getting clear. on what actually the next chapter looks like when you start thinking about it and taking action on it. Don't be afraid of that. We can help you. Yeah, we have a lot of clients coming to us and say that I have no idea what I want and they say I don't think so. And very often it takes like three, four minutes for them to realize. So what do you want? I want more freedom. Okay. What kind of freedom? Time and money. Okay. So how much time? And how much money? Very often we start with money, because that's measurable. Okay, I want to make half a million a month. crown or whatever. And how do you want to live? Do you want to live in one place or do you want to travel the world? Now I want to travel the world. I want to have freedom to travel the world, right? I want to take vacation when I can. Well, then you have a goal. I want to be free. This is freedom. That's freedom. And I want to do it before I die. That's a good goal. That's good goal. Yeah, that's time. And then I said, well, maybe we should do it a little bit faster. people could subscribe to go to the website and get the clarity call with us if they want to. Well, if it resonates with you and you want to create something new and. Maybe it's a little bit out of the comfort zone for you to actually book or see if you qualify for a call, then I will just challenge you to go out of that comfort zone. You will either talk to Elinor or to me, mostly to Elin, depends a little bit on my schedule. And the clarity call is only to give you clarity about what you truly want, how you can get it, and if it resonates with both of us, maybe we work together. It's not more difficult than that. No, it's just easy. Yeah, but if you postpone it and you say now maybe I shall have to think about making that call then we're not working together. Then we're not working together. Right. Because one of the key things of success is actually to take action. Take action. Without action, nothing happens. to be brave. I'm not brave. takes courage, then you have to be brave. You're brave for me is like external bravery. Okay. Yeah, but you have to you have to be brave. The new you has to be braver than the old you because the old you will never be happy will always hold you back. You know, that's the trick. How often is is how often is the old Christy in my mind trying to mess up? It's like at least 10 times a day. I just say no, not gonna get out. Okay. So should we wrap this up now? Let's wrap this up. And the wrap is really easy. Everything we do is to your success. But what is success? Success is that you... It's like, is wealth? Wealth is not about money. Wealth is about happiness. The success is about happiness. Success is that you live the life you truly want. And that you create it yourself. That is success. Because there are so many people being so successful... and they just changed the new position, the new deal, the new thing, the new that, the new that, the new that. And then they realized that they lose what is most important to them. Either they lose their health or they lose the closest one. And then what do people say? ⁓ I wish I did it earlier. I wish I did. I don't want to regret anything I wish I did. No. Life is too short, too valuable, too fun. So to your success, live the life you truly want. Okay, bye bye for now. If something in this episode spoke to you, it may be a sign that you are ready for a different kind of life. Krister and Ellen work with a small number of high achievers who feel it is time for their next chapter. If that feels like you, you can apply for a private clarity call through the link in the show notes. Until next time, to your success.