Issue #47: [BTS Magical Audios] Insecure founders, growth mindset, and what's new with Magical Audios
How mindset and perspective can fuel insecurities and why I stopped readinfg founder stories
👋 Hola friends! Welcome to my newsletter where I write about enjoying a career in Product Management, becoming your favorite version of a Product Leader, building a Startup, and all the human mess in between.
In this issue I’m sharing:
How mindset and perspective can fuel insecurities and why I stopped reading startup founder stories 😎
What’s new with Magical Audios ✨
How I can help you 🤝
Read on 👇
Mindset and Perspective as a Fuel for Insecurities
Since we launched Magical Audios in May, we’ve been uncovering mistakes after mistakes after mistakes. From focusing on the wrong thing to implementing something wrong.
As the supposed Product expert, my endless wave of mistakes tried my confidence. I started questioning my knowledge, experience, and ability to build products that can provide value and that our customers will love.
While in some cases, this is normal. After all, one should maintain a healthy sense of skepticism of one’s abilities. This constant questioning made my fears and self-limiting beliefs come out of the woodwork.
So I started over-consuming articles that shared lists of 20 things to do by startup founders, alongside daily rants on Reddit and chest-puffing pieces on Linkedin. I wanted to get inspired and fill my backlog with ideas to try so I can do things better.
But everything I read fed my fears and shame, instead of igniting any inspiration.
I was constantly reminded that building a startup is hard
I got served 500 tools and frameworks a minute, all of them promising that they were the gamechanger we were missing and I was not using any of them
I constantly got told that the things I wasn’t doing were the reasons we were not successful
💡The thing with learning
At first, I tried to follow the recommendations. But there was just no flow. And my inability to follow them just made my insecurity worse.
So before I end up on burnout leave again, I just stopped reading.
Or at least I stopped reading the content that made my blood pressure shoot up. Not because they sucked but because my head was not in the right place for learning.
I was not learning because I was comparing. And I was not comparing apples to apples for that matter. I was comparing our startup to others who had entirely different contexts from ours (e.g. were on different stages, had funding, and/or founded SaaS B2B).
I was not learning because I was not 100% in the mindset to learn. Sure, I learned from constantly talking to users and when we were running tests. Years of training made this automatic for me. That I was ready for. But only that. Because I was in a completely different environment from what I was used to (wherein I always had a team of experts of anything within arm’s reach to consult with), I didn’t know how to do many of the things I needed to get done. At least not by default.
Whenever I would wrestle with a problem that was not user-related, instead of thinking “Oh cool! I get to learn a new skill”, I would fixate on how much I suck at being a co-founder.
You know what was worse?
Because I kept reading content that emphasized how hard it was to have a startup, everything from then on felt 10x hard.
Even setting up DNS records took me so long to fix even though I had 15 tabs of tutorials to follow. Either mercury was in retrograde or I was experiencing the worst confirmation bias in the world.
💡 The thing with confirmation bias
As Product people, we’re taught that confirmation bias is the worst thing when you’re building a product. True.
But from a personal confidence point of view, I think confirmation bias can be the best thing when used right.
I wanted to believe that I have what it takes to make our vision come true, along with my co-founders. I wanted to believe that every single task, challenge, and questions I was facing were all opportunities:
To learn.
To get stronger.
To build something that would make our vision a reality.
And I needed evidence to strengthen this belief.
Evidence 1:
I was telling a friend of mine (who also happened to be my tech lead/engineering manager in my previous job) about the technical struggles I experienced setting up Magical Audios. Mostly, I was lamenting about not knowing by default how to resolve my tech issues.
His response?
“That’s so cool! Now you know how to do all these things!”
👉 A reminder that the things I found hard to do, I managed to do them anyway.
Evidence 2:
I was complaining to a mentor, who sold his successful D2C startup only a few years back, about the many things I kept doing wrong.
We talked about what I’ve been doing in terms of discovery and my tooling and platform choices.
After having concluded that there was nothing wrong with the choices I’ve been making, he then asked me what our unfair advantage(s) was.
Without missing a beat, I concluded:
“We’re highly motivated by our problem to solve having experienced these issues ourselves. Aside from that, we enjoy the topic and truly believe in the importance of our mission. In a way, we’re building this for ourselves”
👉 A reminder that the reason I was on this team, was not just because of my skills and knowledge, but also because of the values and personal mission I share with my co-founders.
Evidence 3:
A few weeks ago, Kat (one of my co-founders) and I were in a mixer for female entrepreneurs. When we would tell our story to other founders, we would get the same feedback over and over:
How it’s impressive that we managed to launch our product in such a short time (3 months)
How we’re on top of getting feedback from our users and the speed with which we keep iterating (pretty much every week)
How finding product market fit is a process that needs time alongside the iterations we’re doing (mostly an advice)
👉 A reminder of the importance of acknowledging the wins we have on our way to our ultimate goal. Because those wins are as real as achieving our target number of sales — and in a way, without these wins, we probably won’t reach our target at all.
💡 The thing with our brains
Wanting to keep on learning and growing is normal. That’s why we want to get promoted, switch jobs, take on new projects at some point. It’s a common theme between my coaching clients, and it’s a feeling I share as well.
But when we find ourselves standing in front of a giant space of opportunity to learn and grow? We can only see the giant mist of uncertainty that’s wrapped around it. So we freeze. We get scared. We get intimidated.
And suddenly, we can’t. We’re not ready.
A normal reaction. Our lizard brain’s just trying to protect us from the risks that might be hidden in between the folds of uncertainty.
But our actions don’t have to be dictated by our tendencies. And we can train our brain to respond better.
By being aware of the fears and self-limiting beliefs that are influencing our behavior and perception, we can identify what is real and what is our brain’s version of worst-case scenarios.
Confirmation bias can work for us or against us. When we’re constantly thinking we’re not enough, our brains will fixate on finding evidence that will validate that belief. But when we choose to empower ourselves, our brains will follow suit. Sometimes it’s confirmation bias. Sometimes it’s the universe matching our energies.
Mindset is a muscle that needs to be exercised. If we want to have a growth mindset, we need to constantly put it into practice by choosing actively to employ it. It may take some getting used to, but I promise it leaves a much better taste in the mouth than fear and scarcity mindset do.
Unfortunately, I’m not the only who has to deal with my fears and self-limiting beliefs in our team. We all have our insecurity story (but theirs is not my story to tell).
And from conversations with our target and audience, fears and self-limiting beliefs is a pretty popular problem to solve.
Especially since fears and self-limiting beliefs do not only result in insecurity or low confidence, but it can be the root of so many more issues. Stress and burnout included.
So as a response, we created the following programs:
🌀 Self-Hypnosis for Becoming Unstoppable
A program specifically designed to training our brain to develop the muscles, mindset, and habits that you need to achieve your most ambitious goals.
This program includes:
Expert Instruction: Learn from experienced practitioners who will teach you the fundamentals of self-hypnosis through our 5-module course.
Practical Exercises: Engage in hands-on exercises designed to help you practice different relaxation techniques, develop a personalized plan to incorporate everything you've learned to achieve your goals, and more.
Access to Awaken. Our library ofcurated self-hypnosis audios, affirmation and visualization tracks: Listen to our ever-expanding library of self-serve audios created by professionals designed to target specific areas of concern that could be blocking you from achieving your potential.
🌀 Self-Hypnosis for Removing Insecurities
A program specifically designed to change negative self-talk into empowering affirmations that boost your confidence.
This program includes:
Expert Instruction: Learn from experienced practitioners who will teach you how to use not just hypnosis but also other techniques that even Olympians use to overcome their limitations such as affirmations, visualizations, and more.
Practical Exercises: Engage in hands-on exercises designed to help you recognize what is real and what is negative self-talk, and rewrite your narrative with stronger messages that are meant to make lasting changes in how you perceive yourself
Access to Awaken. Our library ofcurated self-hypnosis audios, affirmation and visualization tracks: Listen to our ever-expanding library of self-serve audios created by professionals designed to target specific areas of concern and provide you continuous and consistent support straight from your pocket
🌀 1:1 Personalized Hypnotherapy and other transformative sessions with our co-founder, Andrea
Andrea co-founder of Magical Audios and professional hypnotherapist has worked hundreds of women find healing from their struggles, including but not limited to stress, anxiety, phobias, trauma, and more.
She’s also a licensed practitioner of NLP, Reiki, and other healing techniques. So if you prefer to have a more personalized session with Andrea, we created the following services for you:
One 60-minute online Hypnotheraphy Session
Three 60-minute NLP Sessions Package
Bundle of One Hypnotheraphy Session + Three NLP Sessions
And because we’re all friends here, if you use MAGIC15 upon checkout, you get 15% OFF on your purchase. Applicable to all programs and services.
👩🏻💻 Hi I’m Kax! And I offer support through 1:1 coaching. I typically work with experienced Product Managers and aspiring Product Leaders to help them address their challenges with influencing stakeholders, motivating their teams or direct reports, and managing the overwhelm of their day-to-day. My goal is to help them achieve their product and career goals while still enjoying their work and without compromising their well-being.
If you’re interested, you can learn more about working with me.
If you enjoyed this post, why not forward it to a friend who might enjoy it too? 🫶
And If you reached the end of this issue, I’d love to read your thoughts, feelings, and violent reactions in the comments. 🫶
💙
Kax
I resonate with the mindset issues you flagged. It's so hard to keep informed, stay 'in the community', learn, and yet not be completely discouraged by everything you read.
I started keeping a list of notes/prompts (like the ones you shared) on Notion. I read them every now and then when I can feel myself drifting.
Super hard to stay the course and focus on what I control, though.