Liz Forkin Bohannon Shares Why You're Never Going to Find Your Passion

Liz Forkin Bohannon Shares Why You’re Never Going to “Find Your Passion”

Liz Forkin Bohannon, founder of Sseko Designs, says you’re never going to find your passion because your passion is something you build actively day by day.

Listen to Liz Forkin Bohannon’s segment on The Small Business Radio Show here

00:04: Get ready for all the craziness of small business. It’s exactly that craziness that makes it exciting and totally unbelievable. Small Business Radio is now on the air with your host, Barry Moltz.

00:16 Barry Moltz: Well, thanks for joining this week’s radio show. Remember, this is the final word in small business. For those keeping track, this is now show number 572. This episode is provided by Nextiva, the all-in-one communications platform for your small business. It’s also sponsored by LinkedIn, the place to generate leads, drive traffic, and build your brand awareness. For a free $100 credit to launch your campaign, go to www.linkedin.com/SBR. It’s also supported by vCita, all you need to run your business in one software. Try for free at www.vcita.com. That’s V-C-I-T-A dot com, and use Barry10 for an exclusive discount. It’s also sponsored by Blue Summit Supplies. Get your W2s, 1099 tax forms that your business is required to file. Go to www.bluesummitsupplies.com/SBR. Use SBR code 10, SBR10, at checkout to save 10% off your order.

01:21 BM: Well, there’s no lack of people out there telling you to go out there and find your passion and dream really big. But why does it seem like when we try, we often end up lost and overwhelmed more than we were before? My next guest, wants you to rethink everything you’ve ever been told about finding your passion and following your dreams, and she says you’re never gonna find your passion just the usual way. Liz Forkin Bohannon is the founder of Sseko Designs, and the author of a great book called Beginner’s Pluck: Build Your Life of Purpose, Passion and Impact Now. Liz and the Sseko store have been featured in dozens of publications, including Vogue, Red Book, O and Fortune. Sseko has appeared in national broadcasts, including ABC’s Shark Tank and Good Morning America. Liz, welcome to the show.

02:07 Liz Bohannon: Thanks so much for having me on. I’m so excited to connect.

02:11 BM: So your message isn’t a soul-crushing one like forget about your passion, just go to work.

02:16 LB: It isn’t. And I feel like, over the last 10 years of building this international fashion brand that is creating community and opportunity for women across the globe, sending some of the brightest female scholars in East Africa to university, I, to some degree, feel like I’ve earned the right to speak into this journey of what it means to build a life of purpose and passion and impact. And I will be the first to tell you that your work matters. That to build a life that you deeply feel connected to, your values and your purpose and your passion and the impact that you’re making in the world can be a difficult journey, but it is so incredibly valuable and it’s so worth it. I just have a few thoughts on how we actually instruct and encourage people to go about doing just that.

03:04 BM: But does everyone out there really have the luxury to follow their passion and their dreams, or do some people just have to work and do whatever they can to earn money and they gotta give up the idea of really working with passion?

03:20 LB: I think that the idea that your passion is this singular thing that exists out there, that kind of dichotomy that you just set up between people who can pursue their passion and people who can’t is actually part of the problem. I absolutely believe that no matter where you are, no matter what your financial constraints are, or what your education levels are, that by really harnessing and changing your mindset, that you can start right now building a life of purpose, passion, and impact that might actually eventually lead you to kind of a seismic shift in how you think about your finances, how you think about your career, maybe making a leap into something that you didn’t see coming, but it also might mean a renewed sense of digging in and kind of blooming right where you’re planted.

04:04 BM: So what you’re saying is that what you do for work or to earn an living may not be the same thing you do to follow your passion and your purpose?

04:12 LB: I think that for every person it’s going to look differently. I think for some people, we can figure out how to fuse those two things, and a thing that you are most passionate about can actually become your livelihood. I think for others, that work is really fared, and it plays an important part of the story. You can infuse your work where you are with a sense of purpose and passion, and that might actually free you up and enable you to build a life of passion in other ways as well.

04:37 BM: One of the things you talk about in the book, Beginner’s Pluck, is that passion is not a pre-existing condition. I love that.

04:44 LB: I’m a millennial, on the older edge of it, but I have just seen it really, over the course of this last decade, how there really kind of is the sense that you are a passionate person or you’re not, that your passion is out there in your dreaming and you’re waiting to discover it, you’re waiting for that magic moment, that voice from God, that perfect conversation with that stranger in the elevator that kind of unlocks or opens up the door that will lead you to your passion. The reality is, is that people who are interesting, people are interested. They’re curious and they are doers. They do not sit and wait for their passion to be discovered and then jump into the arena, but they have a deep sense of belief. They’re like, “I’m not gonna discover my passion, it’s not magic, it’s not the lottery, but by adopting a certain set of mentalities and mindsets, I can go out into the world, and today, actively start building that passion. When I graduated from college, I kind of… I think I succumbed to that belief that it’s like I just hadn’t found my passion yet, I hadn’t discovered it.

05:48 LB: And frankly, if you would have told me that where my passion lies is in running a for-profit fashion company, I literally would have laughed at you. I wasn’t interested in business, I was an interested in fashion, I cared about humanitarian issues. The only way that I was able to go out and build this company and this purpose and this mission that I am incredibly passionate about is, frankly, because I was open to being surprised. I said, “I haven’t found it, I’m just gonna go and do the next, best, the next right thing.” And that thing led to one thing, which evolved into another thing. And 10 years later, here I am absolutely living out my purpose and passion.

06:23 BM: Certainly, one of the worst things we can ask our kids is the question, “So, what do you wanna be when you grow up?”

06:27 LB: Absolutely.

06:27 BM: Because for me, I didn’t figure out what I wanted to be till I was 40 years old.

06:32 LB: 100%. And what that does is it puts so much pressure on the next steps to be the step. And so it’s like we have less risk, we have less curiosity because we don’t have this sense that of course our purpose and our passion is this ever-evolving thing. So in design thinking, which is really a school thought of thinking about how we solve problems, one of the really fundamental mindset shifts is thinking about the next thing might be “the solution to your problem of what is your passion and purpose”, but most likely it’s just the next iteration. And if you engage that in a way that it’s present and that it’s curious that you become really a student and a learner, and you allow that to continue to evolve, I absolutely believe that you’re more well-suited to over the course of not just days or weeks, but really years maybe even decades to build an incredible life of purpose and impact.

07:23 BM: You say in the book, Beginner’s Pluck, that you have to go out there and embrace your inner beginner. And I love that because so many of us are afraid to, as I say, begin again, or perpetually be a beginner, because they feel after a certain point, they should know what they wanna do.

07:39 LB: Absolutely. So there’s four stages of learning. You’ve got basically unconscious incompetence, where you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s kinda happy-go-lucky. Then you’ve got this stage of learning, the second stage of learning is called conscious incompetence. So this is when you’re back in that stage of a beginner, when you’re like, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I bit off more than I can chew. I raise my hand and ask for more responsibility and I don’t know if I gonna execute on it.” And absolutely, that is the stages of learning where our egos are the most fragile and when our insecurities really seem to rage. And so a lot of us try to skip through or rust through that stage. And eventually, hopefully, we get to a place of mastery or expertise, but unfortunately, what ends up happening when you get to that place of unconscious competence, of mastery and expertise, we actually start to live in a lot of fear of losing our position on the top of that kind of mountain, that stair step.

08:29 LB: And what that ends up doing, over the long haul, is it keeps us from taking risks. It keeps us from being really courageous and innovative leaders, and it absolutely keeps us from inspiring and motivating and giving other people the freedom to kind of embrace their inner beginner, to go back to the beginning. And if you can, whether that is just within yourself, within your family, within your company, really create a culture of people who are willing to embrace their inner beginner, where there is a level of celebration that involves like, “Hey, you’re learning. You’re just figuring this out,” that you might fail and make a mistake, congratulations, because what that says to me is that you actually reached a little bit beyond. You got a little bit uncomfortable, you took a risk, and ultimately, that is where all evolution and innovation begins.

09:13 BM: Now, you have a lot of ways for people to do this. You talk about in the book that you have to dream small. And I love that ’cause everyone keeps saying, “You’ve gotta dream big. You’ve gotta dream big,” but you’re telling people, “Listen, dream small.” What’s that about?

09:25 LB: I am and the reason that I’m doing that is because I just found that the message of dream big, it’s just actually not working, it’s not doing what I think we thought it was going to do, which is motivate and inspire people. I’m seeing a lot of what’s happening is it’s creating a lot of fears and anxiety and serious analysis paralysis. People are thinking about, “Is my dream even big enough?” and then they get paralyzed by thinking maybe I’m not dreaming big enough. Is this big enough if they have the big dream get really overwhelmed with thinking about, “Well, what is the actual first step?” And so instead of actually propelling them into motion, it’s kind of leading to the sense of analysis paralysis, that my dream isn’t big enough, I don’t even know how to start it. And so for those who are feeling a little stuck or a little discouraged, what I really actually try to do is encourage people to dream small.

10:10 LB: So like what is the big dream and then actually make it smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until you actually do not have an excuse not to take the first step. And that first step and that ability to say like, “Hey, this might not be the big bang thing, but it might just be the first step in the right direction,” actually is what creates a sense of competency, a sense of momentum. And eventually, if we keep doing that, if we keep having these small dreams actually acting on them that that helps us create the momentum that actually eventually leads to the very big dreams.

10:42 BM: I love that idea ’cause I find that people have such a hard time making any kind of change and starting anything. And if you break it down to the very small patient… Small steps, then at least you can get started. That’s probably the toughest part, is just to start.

10:58 LB: Absolutely, the inertia that is against us just to start, and the lies that we could tell ourselves that I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I don’t have enough connections, I don’t have enough money, I don’t have enough resources, I don’t have enough affirmation from other people who don’t even know what you’re thinking about, that’s a big one, the is so paralyzing. And so, absolutely, this idea that it’s like You don’t need to be great to start. In fact, if you wanna be great, if you wanna be competent, if you wanna create something, it just required that you start. In competency and expertise, those are all things that have built in process, in motion. It’s not something that you think you can get and then step into the next thing.

11:36 BM: And you discuss in the book that you have to choose curiosity over criticism. And I find, at least for myself, my own self-criticism is really what holds me back from really exploring and pursuing my passion.

11:48 LB: Absolutely. And I think one of the lies that people really believe in, myself included, we think it’s insecurity, of like I’m [11:57] ____ hard on myself, and I’m afraid everybody else was gonna look at me and look at my failure and be critical of me. And the reality is what we think is an insecurity is actually an overinflated sense of ego. [chuckle] And I know that that sounds kind of harsh, but the reality is no one is thinking about you as much as you think they’re thinking about you.

12:16 BM: Exactly.

12:19 LB: That that is actually an ego problem.

12:20 BM: My wife says, “It’s not necessarily all about you, Barry. That’s what my wife says.

12:22 LB: Right. And it’s like even this idea that it’s like, “I’m afraid to fail because what if I fail, what will people think of me?”

12:27 BM: No one cares.

12:28 LB: The subject of that is that people are thinking of you in the fist place. And the reality is like, we’re all just trying to get by. We are all thinking about how to pursue our passions, how to get from our board meeting to the soccer game in time, what were gonna have for dinner, how to take care of our aging parents. There’s just not that much leftover energy. No one is watching you step-by-step in your career and your metrics and your successes and your failures. And what I hope that that does is that inspired people to say, “No one cares about you as much as you do.” That you have a sense of freedom to just go have fun. Go try, go fail. Give it your all, because at the end of the day, that’s who you have to answer to. You are the one who will lay in bed at night and say, “Did I live in fear or did I take risks? Did I make mistakes? Did I do that because I was being courageous and brave and I had a sense of belief that I could be a part of something that was bigger than myself?”

12:40 BM: So what do you mean in the book when you talk about owning your average?

13:21 LB: This is one of my favorite concepts. Again, it’s not the good feeling fluff that you’re probably used to hearing in self-help books or on Instagram, but the reality is we have this message that has been perpetuated in our culture, probably just in the last several years, that each and every one of us are so incredibly special, that we’re probably more talented, more gifted, smarter than we think, and we just have to really believe that about ourselves and then our potential will be unlocked. Well, actually, what the science shows us is that people that do, that they’re successful in believing that they’re smarter and they think they are, are more talented than they believe, that actually does the opposite of what we want it to. It doesn’t unleash us to go out into the world and to create something new and innovative and meaningful, it actually keeps us in a place of fear. What we wanna do is we wanna encourage growth mentality. And growth mentality is what really perpetuate us forward in that momentum. And actually, a key and core tenant of growth mentality is that you actually don’t have to believe that you’re special. The reality is most of us are pretty average.

14:26 LB: That’s literally statistics. This is math, this is how average works. We’re all mostly kinda hanging out there in the 80% of the Bell Curve. And once we own that, once we’re okay with saying like, “I might not be particularly God gifted,” or, “I might not have a particularly high intellect,” that’s okay. That gives me the freedom to say like, “I’m gonna have to work really hard. I’m gonna have to learn, I’m gonna have to make mistakes, I’m gonna have to lean in, I’m gonna have to be really curious, I’m gonna have to pursue mentorship.” And that idea of owning your inner beginner, that is of like, “Yes, I’m student and I have nothing to be ashamed of,” is actually the thing that will allow us to embrace bigger challenges and take bigger risks because we’re not spending so much time and energy just to casting our egos and our image of being these special gifted people who are gonna go out in the world and immediately excel at whatever they try.

15:13 BM: My mom, growing up, always told me that was special, I was gonna excel, I was really gonna make a difference in the world. And I have to tell you, Liz, that was a lot of pressure. And when I realized that, “Hey, I was not special, I was average,” I could play a lot looser and have a lot more fun.

15:26 LB: Absolutely, I love that, and I love that that’s your experience, but it’s just like… And it’s really that [15:30] ____…

15:30 BM: It took 15 years of therapy to get over that, Liz.

15:36 LB: Well, I’m glad that you got there and I’m glad that you’re sharing that story with other people, because honestly, that’s what we see, specifically with kids. There’s really interesting social science around the difference between what happens when you look at a child and you say, “You’re really smart. You did really good.” What ends up happening, they did it do a study where kids took a test, and teachers praised them for being inherently gifted and smart, and then they let them decide what their next assignment was. And the kids that were praised for being smart versus kids that were praised for being hard-working, that the teacher looked at their test and said like, “You know what, I can tell that you didn’t give up when maybe other kids would have,” instead of being praised for their inherent giftedness or intellect or talent, those kids ended up in the next assignment saying, “Give me the more challenging assignment. That was kind of fun. I worked really hard. I got noticed for that.”

16:23 LB: Versus the kids that were praised for being really smart or talented chose the less challenging assignment because they want. Once you have that belief and planted into you of like, “I’m smart, I’m talented,” you don’t wanna do anything that could cause that to come into question. And then, moreover, even more excitingly, I think not only did the kids that were praised for their work ethic or problem solving or tenacity, choose the more challenging assignments than the kids that were praised for their intellect or talent, they actually performed better on the next assignment. That sense of freedom and like, “I wanna just try and I wanna fail and I wanna get greedy and keep trying maybe when other kids would give up,” are actually the thing that propel us towards success in the long run.

17:06 BM: Well, Liz, I love the book. I’m recommending all the listeners, pick up the book this weekend, cancel whatever you were gonna do, read this book instead, and you’ll have a lot more fun and really a renewed sense of what you wanna do with your life. It’s called Beginner’s Pluck: Build Your Life of Purpose, Passion And Impact Now. Liz, where can people get in touch with you or see what you’re doing?

17:25 LB: Yeah, you can check out my company, which is Sseko Designs, that’s S-S-E-K-O Designs dot com and on all the social medias, and you can find me on social media as well. It’s @LizBohanna. I’d love to connect. You can pick up the book whereever books are sold, Barns and Noble, Amazon, your independent bookseller, but really appreciate your time.

17:45 BM: Liz, thanks so much. This is AM820 WCPT in Chicago. We’ll be right back.