Amanda Goetz: Business Ideation, Authentic Online Engagement, and Mindset Mastery

Krati Mehra: Thank you so much for being here. You have achieved amazing things. You are very inspirational and also the way you share your story, I think it’s perfect because we always feel like there are elements that we have to take out of the perfect vision, the ultimate vision, and we can only get so much and not everything is for us, but there is such a thing as getting the essence, you know, sucking the marrow out of life, so to say, and you seem to be doing that.

So tell me about how does one draft that kind of vision? You know, there are so many elements to what makes a happy life. So when you think about your future, when you want to put a vision together, how do you go about that? How do you come up with like the identity, the ideal identity you want?

Amanda Goetz: Yeah. So I do a few things. First of all, every year I do take time and I step back from my life and zoom out and really start to think about what areas do I feel have been put on the back burner and where do I want to focus my time and energy? And you have to do that at a macro level because there are times in your life that career gets put on the forefront and you’re pushing.

And maybe your social life dips a little bit or your relationships with your partner dips a little bit and being very aware that that’s the sacrifice you’re willing to make in that time, but also being aware that that needs to have a finite date. So if you look at my career, you see that I have bounced from corporate life.

So I started at Ernst and Young then I went to a startup, then I started my own startup, then it was time I had my first baby and I went back into the corporate world and I learned a ton and managed a huge team, but there was like a stability and safety net and I felt like I could boundary my time better.

So I could invest in, you know, being a mom then, you know, five years later, I decided now’s the time. I feel like I’ve really poured into my, my children. I’m excited to spread my wings again as a founder and launched another company, did that for a few years and then sold that company.

And then for the last 10 months, I’ve been back in the corporate world and so life is about these kinds of waves and you cannot stay on a wave too long and you need to go back and reevaluate. So I do that at a macro level. Probably twice a year. I truly like to say, okay, I’m going to go somewhere. I take my journal.

Sometimes I even like make a vision board. It’s just looking because I think it’s somewhere around here. But, um, but I will like truly say what’s important to me in this next season of life. And then in the micro, like, I don’t let a day go by. I have my non negotiables. So my main non negotiables are I have creative, deep work time in the morning from five to seven that is making sure that I’m like doing something that lights me up and I’m passionate about. I’m moving something forward that is mine. And so even when I had the like corporate nine to five, that was my time where I like wrote and decided I was going to start a newsletter and write about things that I was passionate about. So that’s non negotiable. Number one, non negotiable. Number two is I have to work out every day or at least get a long walk in. That is, that gives me energy. It makes me feel good. It destresses me as number two. Number three is I do this transition from my work day when I’m super like, you know, assertive and oppressive and you’re on and you’re going out and getting things.

I have this transition ritual that I do every day that allows me to re soften so I can be more maternal for my children and I call it a commute bath, but I go and I take a bath and I play music and I just like decompress and I honour that transition time. So that’s a non negotiable because I’ve just found when I skip that I’m transferring one identity into another role and it doesn’t work because work Amanda doesn’t work for mom Amanda. So that’s the other one. And then at night I go to bed early. I honour my bedtime routine and making sure that I really create that safe space. So that’s like my day to day non negotiables and those never fade.

I prioritize those every single day and that has seemed to like, allow me to find that micro balance, even in the midst of a macro sprint of my life that feels like I’m pushing a little bit more.

Krati Mehra: That makes so much sense. We should have this advice on like a card and put it in every gift box everywhere. I think this makes so much sense. Yeah, absolutely because what you’re saying, I think that would really like provide a solid structure to your day as well. When you have like these non negotiables put in that simply do not get moved around, then you can structure the rest of your day around it.

And it just gives a nice little foundation to your day. So that, that makes a lot of sense. I want to ask you about, like, the bigger vision. The macro vision. How attached do you think people should be to that vision? Considering you’ve had quite a few ups and downs in your life. Just how much emotional investment should you pour into it?

I mean, there has to be a degree of emotional investment for it to actually drive you but, how fluid should you keep that?

Amanda Goetz: Well, the way I would frame it is you have to know your why you’re doing something. Why you want to start a company. Why? Because if you don’t do that introspection work, you’re going to just like chase shiny objects and that’s never a good place to be and so, I have a couple of things that I do every year, so I’ve read this somewhere and I will find, figure out who said it, but I, so I’m, I’m stealing this from someone.

I did not make it up. I think it was Sarah Blakely’s husband. Don’t quote me on this but this idea of when you look back at a year on your life, can you recall  that was the year I did this? And so, for example, I can go through my life and be like, okay. 2013. I had a baby. 2014 was the year I ran my first marathon.

2015, I started at the knot and I had my second baby and then, your banner years, like, what’s something big that you did? And you can remember that, like, it might be like, I, I look back and it’s like, 2021 was the first year I took a solo vacation, and that was a big deal for me. But I think it’s really important to like, have these kind of banner things.

And I have a list in my notes app of things I still want to accomplish. Like I want to write a book. I want to, like, I had all of these things on the list that like, I mean, I’m getting closer to 40 now, so I have a lot of them accomplished. It was like, I want to be on a TV show. Okay. I did that. It was hilarious and funny.

I want to be in a magazine, like things that address ego for sure. But they’re just things I want to do. And knowing why I want to do them was really important and starting a company for me was mission driven. Like I want to do something that helps people. And I felt like House of Wise was like a pathway to do that.

Like I could connect with people deeper. I could help people drink less alcohol. Um, and I felt really passionate about that. So, it’s a long, very long winded way to answer your question, but this very succinct way is to say truly know your why spend more time up front. I think that many of us, we live in a very short attention span, instant gratification society.

Like we literally think we want a donut and we can make a donut appear in 20 minutes. Like I would challenge everyone to spend a little bit more time up front. Really getting to know their motivators and where their subconscious might be speaking a little bit more and just bring that to your, to your conscience and, and pursue things with that in the driver’s seat.

Krati Mehra: Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. Uh, in fact, you know, the House of Vies, the story behind it, what led up to it, it’s, it’s, it’s a delightful story. It is so mission driven. Like, you had a very clear vise, so it makes sense what you are saying here. I also get like that clarity would help you also turn that into reality, you know, you would are a good example of that.

So, uh, I also want to ask you for someone planning to start a new business. What are some questions they should consider before they take the leap?

Amanda Goetz: First is knowing your why, like a hundred percent. Why do you want to do this? What is your mission? Second, hold it with an open hand. It’s going to change. Like you will pivot 20 times. And that’s okay. It’s not going to look exactly like you think it’s going to look. And so with that, that leads me to point number three, which is don’t spend so much time trying to be perfect before you launch it, just ship it and get going because you’re going to ship it to maybe a hundred people.

Let’s be honest. I have a platform of 125, 000 people. I like in the early house of wise days, we were still only like talking to. A thousand that wanted the products, wanted to try the products like it starts small. You think you’re going to have this massive launch and everyone’s going to like be talking about it and has to be perfect.

Like it doesn’t just ship it, start learning, start talking to people and then you’re going to iterate. And then the last thing I’ll say is the shiny object thing when you’re a founder is real. Because when you launch a company and you start getting out there, so many people want a piece of it, want to talk to you.

And that’s part of the game like being a founder is all just playing a game. Like you’re just trying to like get as many people as is excited about it and on the bandwagon and create this momentum. But everyone, the more you talk to people, the more people will want a piece of it and want to say like, Oh, you should really collaborate with this person.

You should do a partnership with this person. You have to know how you’re going to do it and why and stick to that because otherwise you will spend more time playing the founder game than actually building the company. People will be like, you got to go to this event. You got to go to this event. You got to speak at this event.

And pretty soon you’re not actually building a company. You’re just building a public persona as a founder. And those are two very different things.

Krati Mehra: Okay, if it’s for someone who has no ideas as yet, like this would really help someone who has got an idea who’s on the cusp of, you know, like, making the leap. This will really clarify things for them. But for someone who has no idea, but knows that they want to be their own boss, they want to be an entrepreneur, how do they go about strategising?

Do you have a, because we know how House of Vies came around, there was a very, very clear mission there but for someone who doesn’t quite have a why yet, is that where we start? Like, you’ve shared some ideas around that, but I would love to know.

Amanda Goetz: There’s two types of founders in the world that I found. The first is they see a problem and they go out and solve it. The second are, I want to be a founder. So I’m going to go figure out how to be one. If you’re the first, you have, you see a problem, you start learning about it and all of a sudden you’re, the solution starts to come into frame.

That’s what happened with me. I wasn’t trying to be a founder again. In fact, being a founder is a really tough life and I did it the first time and it was so hard. Super hard. I’m like, I don’t really want to do that again. But then I saw this problem and I, it got to the point where I couldn’t stop thinking about it and thinking about the solution and why I was uniquely positioned to solve it. Now, if you’re in the other category where you’re like, I want to be a founder, I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what I want to build. What I would say is The first step is start building a personal brand because figuring out what your skill sets are and what you would talk about so like creating your content pillars.

I am really good at, let’s say you have built physical products and you understand supply chain. Okay. You’ve been a part of that. Okay, great. My content pillars are now going to be. How do you go from zero to one and build a physical product? And I’m going to start creating a ton of content. Here’s where the roadblocks are.

Here are five mistakes I’ve seen people make. You start just like building content. Then as you start to get into that cycle of becoming, building your personal brand, but what happens, you’ll connect with different people and you start having those conversations and they’ll be like, well, Hey, with, with supply chain stuff, I keep seeing these problems and then all of a sudden you might say, wow, there is a opportunity here. So I would say start with your building your personal brands around areas of experience that you have and in the industries that you have, then you’ll start to open up opportunity

Krati Mehra: yeah, that’s gold. I think that would help a lot of people because I do know that, you know, you have, again, the vision for your life and there is an identity already existing in your head, but you don’t quite know how to get there. So this sounds super helpful, especially in this day and age where the online persona, being a brand in yourself is so much a part of the whole landscape.

So that makes so much sense but I would love to ask you, this is something I’ve struggled with, I know other people who have built a company have struggled with this, at least in my social circle. Your identity, like how fluid does your identity need to be as you go into a business? Because there is a very, like a clear idea you have of who you want to be, how you want to represent yourself when you put yourself on Instagram, when you put yourself in a podcast interview, when you like choose the colors, all of that, but there is such a thing as what the business needs you to be.

Then how do you like walk that line?

Amanda Goetz: At the end of the day, this can be applied to dating to personal brands. A person can only pretend to be something for so long and then that slowly fades away. So the best advice is just doing the work to really understand who you are as a person and know that it’s okay to evolve what I would post on social media two years ago versus what I post now has evolved and what, like, there are all of these, like, we’re made up of all these different aspects and roles and identities and, and those can all coexist.

And the one you want to lead with at any given time may change. Like sometimes I’ve really leaned into like my assertiveness and in like, you know, building a business. And then sometimes I lean into my softer side and I talk about my dating life or being a mom and not everyone wants to interchange those different things in your personal brand.

And that’s okay. But I think just being aware of all of your parts and all of your identities and then discovering it’s never, never approaching it as, who does the business want me to be? Because that’s just not going to work. You won’t keep that up. You need to truly be able to be in alignment and the business needs to fit into who you are because you’re just not like.

I’ve watched people try to be like aggressive founders because they feel like that’s who they need to be. And they feel icky because that’s not who they are. And they want to be empathetic leaders and they care about people and it just doesn’t work. And so just leaning into who you are and knowing your superpowers is truly, truly like where the click in happens.

Krati Mehra: yeah, I love that. I’ll just add my like my two cents to it because this has been a point of struggle for me as a business owner. I have said no to a lot of, , opportunities, , and at a time when I had no income coming in. But it was because I was at such a level of comfort with my identity, with who I know myself to be, my value system and all of those things.

So for me, it was easy but I saw people around me freak out. Like, that’s a lot of money. You’re too new to this world to say no to things. You should say yes to everything. But I never felt scared. I never freaked out because there was that level of acceptance. This is really not who I am. This is not gonna work for me.

I can’t be someone, this one person today and then expect my audience or whoever it is that I’m asking to trust me to accept me in this other role the very next day and then go back to being that other person. It just simply wouldn’t work. People are far too discerning to pull that kind of stunt. And it’s also, that’s like, it’s kind of deceitful.

If you think about it. So, but I love how seamlessly you integrate those two, like, your different personas of yourself because we do have different personas and it’s the point of integration that becomes a struggle, a little bit for us at least. I continue to struggle with it, but I find it very inspiring when I see your Instagram and how wonderfully it all comes together.

So it can be done and I am guessing a lot of work goes into it, but it doesn’t like, you don’t see the work. You see the end product and it looks beautiful. So I would like to know what that process looks like. Is there a lot of struggle or do you just like, as you said, lean into your truth and you share that?

Amanda Goetz: Yeah, I mean, I wish I could sit here and say I have a content strategy and I think about what I’m posting before I post it, but I don’t, I mean, I still to this day have never scheduled a tweet in my life. Um, everything is happening when I think of it and that’s just who I am. I know I’m hitting this place now where in order to scale, I need to, to, Put some systems in place.

But for me, growing, my audience has just been about sharing my life. And here’s the interesting thing. I, if we were to go to a dinner party 10 years ago, before I ever touched social media, you would know probably more about me than you’d want to know. And I would know more about you than maybe you’d want to share.

Um, I crave deep connections. And that is just part of my DNA. So I transferred who I am in real life onto social media. And I think that that’s why that works. Now you’ll, you can watch other people who they feel like they’re supposed to be sharing because that’s how you connect and it’s uncomfortable to them and that comes across. And so I, whenever I coach people on, you know, what they want to do with their personal brand. Like I was just having a coaching call the other day and the guy was like, he has so much amazing experience. He’s like, I just, I like, I want to talk about my experience. I don’t want to talk about my personal life.

I don’t want to let people in. Like, I want that to be private. And I’m like, okay, then don’t do it. There are many brands [00:21:00] out there that show your expertise in your professional arena. And then there is a hard, like a full wall between your personal life. And so my advice to everyone is I appreciate like I’m so glad that you feel connected to me and how I want to share and you see all aspects of my life and the takeaway from that is that is authentic to me and how I connect with individuals and everyone needs to assess how they show up online based on how they actually connect with people in person.

Krati Mehra: I’m gonna really use this advice for myself because I struggle with that so much. I’m someone who is very, very private. I do not want to share anything from my personal life. I don’t like to tell people today I’m out for dinner or now I’m skiing, now I’m this, now I’m that. I don’t want anyone to know but at the same time I have an online persona. Instagram has never been my friend because I would always end up, I would build an audience, I would start getting traction, I would exhaust myself because I would be doing things that do not make me happy, that feel very unnatural to me and I’ll stop posting.

I’ll stop posting for three months. I’m back on the platform, people are gone and now I’m having to start over. It’s the same thing like that cycle continued on for such a long time now finally decided that okay, you know what? This is just not for me. I’m not gonna be this person. This is who I am. This is what I’m comfortable sharing I’m gonna go with that.

So the advice that you’re giving I think this is a part of that, like, okay, the conclusion that you are, the idea that you are letting people have here without having to go through the struggle is where you’re going to arrive eventually. It would be helpful if you start from that point and not waste as much time.

Like, I have wasted a lot of resources, a lot of time, or maybe not wasted because, you know, it’s a learning process. But maybe I’m going to, like, request you to be my coach and, like, use that advice for myself because I continue to struggle with it. I do not believe in demonizing the platform and saying, Oh, Instagram sucks beause you know, clearly there are people like yourself who are having all of this success and that success is coming from a good place and going to a good place. So it clearly can be done. We just gotta figure out what works for us. So, okay, but here I would love to know, because especially for someone who’s on social media, there is so much competition and now it’s super visible.

It’s super visible and it forces you to be. visible, but if you are not having that kind of success, I don’t know what comes up in people’s minds. So I would love to ask you the mindset and the perspective you recommend people maintain as they launch themselves into this world where there is so much competition.

Amanda Goetz: When I go to Target and you go to the deodorant aisle, there are like 8, 000 deodorants and there’s really only one job, two jobs to be done. Make me sweat less and make me smell better.

And there are 10, 000 of them. Like, I don’t know, but there are a ton of deodorants out there. So, there is space. This is not a zero sum game.

There is space. Your experiences are unique. Your voice is unique. How you’re going to show up online is unique. Focus less on other people, focus more on getting to know yourself, like we’ve been saying, and show up authentically, and you will attract the people that we’re looking for that style.

And all you need, truly, to start, find a hundred authentic connections online. That will grow, but start small. You’re not, you don’t need to go get a hundred thousand followers. You need to find people you connect with in your message is resonating and really understanding what message you want to put out there. I truly believe in this like antidote to hustle culture. And that’s what I’m known for, right? Like I am all about anti burnout. So people know me for that. And so people who are looking for how can I be ambitious and drive success without killing myself? This is my person. So once you hone what the thing is, you’re going to talk about.

You’re going to layer on all of your unique facets and then you will attract people that that resonates with. So that’s number one. Number two is as you grow on with a personal brand, we always like congratulate people when they start getting hate online because that’s when you know you’ve like hit this inflection point.

I was not ready. I am a recovering people pleaser. I have a high need to be liked and that is something that I through social media has actually helped me shed a lot of that or really get introspective about where that comes from. And you have to be ready to know that like you’re not going to be for everyone and that’s okay and when you get to that point, you have to have enough tools in your toolbox and enough awareness of, for validation or performance for love, like whatever your thing is, know what it is because it’s going to get pinged by a random person sitting in front of their computer in the middle of nowhere

Krati Mehra: You know, I’ve always believed that people don’t burn out because they’re working really freaking hard because otherwise, you know, half the world would be burnt out. So I don’t think working 12 hours a day burns you out, but I think doing things that make you actively unhappy, like I shared with the social media bit, like that was my only point of friction in my entire business.

I love everything I do except for that because I’d made it into this heavy burden that I was forcing myself to constantly carry. I mean, there are people who don’t. I’m not on social media and have success. That’s also a way to go about it. So I, I love your advice because I, I really do. I mean, I get sometimes like Oprah says, says, you know, you do what you have to do so that you can do what you want to do.

So I get that that’s a reality of being running a business, but at the same time, I mean, dude, there is a limit to how much of that weight you can carry and burnout happens when you are forcing yourself to live this. Life that is just simply does not feel natural to you. So again, thank you so much for that amazing advice and So I think self awareness comes across as like a dominant theme in all of what you’ve shared like really knowing yourself Being very very clear around the message you want to project and how you want to show up.

So yeah Okay, when that doesn’t work out especially when you pour your heart and soul into something and you feel like you figured out the right strategy and You, I mean, failure, rejections, they’re all part of it. So when that happens, how do you control your emotional reactivity during those moments?

How do you not let it get in the way of how you’re showing up the next day?

Amanda Goetz: This is definitely something I found as a second time founder was easier because as a first time founder, you ride the highs really high and the low really low, and those tend to happen sometimes in the same week, sometimes in the same day, sometimes in the same hour and that emotional volatility gets exhausting. So I learned that I’m just going to stay neutral.

Sure, every Kardashian just posted our product. Yeah, that’s cool. Sure. We might run out of money and I need to figure that out. Okay, cool. Like That’s the extremes that I had on a weekly basis, and it’s, you just kind of stay right in the middle. And the second thing is, To surround yourself with people that remind you like what’s important because again, building companies, all this stuff, like this is why I named my newsletter, Life’s a game because you’re, it’s all just playing a game. And whenever things get really crazy, I do this 10, 10, 10 reframing. I say, will it matter in 10 days? Yeah. Maybe this thing will matter in 10 days. Will it matter in months? You might. Will it matter in 10 years? Probably not. And that’s what I say.

Like, okay, I’m going to get through it in 10 years. 47 year old Amanda is going to be like, what was that thing? You did what? Like you have to truly put things in perspective for yourself to say this person sent a snarky email back to my request or this person said no. In 10 years, you won’t remember that, so don’t let it spiral.

Krati Mehra: Is that the kind of perspective you maintained as you were, I know your like house of vice came into being at a very difficult time in your life, like you were going through a lot as you were also putting this amazing thing together. How do you, were you able to limit like the emotional damage from one area of life on to, you know, from spilling onto other areas of your life?

‘Cause you also have kids like that. I think really changes the whole game.

Amanda Goetz: Yes, survival mode is a funny mode. My friend’s actually writing a book about how some of the most greatest companies and greatest achievements came out of, like, the ashes of someone’s life, like coming out of the depths of stuff. And look, yes, I built House of Wise during the pandemic while I had my three kids at home and I was homeschooling them while going through a divorce. And it was one of those moments where I realized now looking back, I was in pure survival like fight or flight mode. And it definitely took time for me to shed some of that because when you’re constantly operating in survival mode. It’s a very, very intense place, but it’s a, you can get a lot of shit done because you’re just like, okay, you’re not allowing yourself to feel anything.

You’re just like, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. So I would just remind people that you can’t kind of going back to the first thing we said, you cannot stay in that season for too long because it becomes unhealthy. And I’m just thankful. Like I have amazing therapists who constantly is like keeping me aware of when I’m pushing and why I’m pushing.

What are my motivators, but amazing things can come out of really dark places. So I tweeted the other day, like your survival skills from one season of life will eventually become your chains in the neck. And so you have to understand all of these things that made me successful. I also had to unlearn a lot of them so that I could be successful in other areas of my life.

And, and so it’s, again, I know this is the through line, but being very aware of what’s driving you. And, and like in that season of life, my drivers were like fierce independence. I just come out of my marriage. I wanted to be fiercely independent. I wanted to create my own name and I cared so deeply about helping women that those two things just like lit my fire every day. And then eventually, you know, you have to make recharging your batteries. But yeah, I think that’s some really cool things happen when you take. The energy and, and I see, I’m sure we’ve all had friends who are going through something hard and they can’t snap out of what’s of the thing that’s making it hard and they’re just constantly stewing on and putting all of their energy into venting about the thing that’s hard. And I always say like, let’s shift. All of this energy you’re putting into hating that person or that position or your manager or whatever. Let’s put all of this energy that you’re just wasting because they don’t care. If you’ve ever gone through a breakup and you hate the other person, they don’t care.

They truly don’t. You being so angry at someone does nothing to them. It does so much to you. And so taking all of this energy that you’re putting into someone else, Or something else, harness that and push it towards something and that reframe and redirection of energy, I believe is like my superpower when I’m pissed about something, it just turns into what I’m going to go do something

Krati Mehra: I love that. I love that you, you know, took all of this raw pain and just channeled it so wonderfully in such a wonderful way. I usually, whenever the pain gets really deafening, my go to method is ‘calm down’. Don’t take yourself so seriously. It’s really not that big a deal. But people don’t really like that because, you know, we live in a world where we need constant validation and we think that’s the healthy way to go.

Like, no, my pain matters. Everybody’s pain matters. You can’t say things like that. And I get the perspective around it and it’s a good perspective, but at the same time, it’s like, but sometimes you just gotta put your head down and get through the day

Amanda Goetz: Yeah. So let me, I just want to like maybe offer a reframe to that. So I think that. Feelings are information that are, and so I, when you feel angry, you feel like hurt, you feel abandoned. That’s information that you either you’re like inner child is telling you, whatever acknowledging it and then letting it pass will help someone so much more than let’s just. Suck it up because what happens is if you keep getting something pinged, like abandonment or something, and you’re like, you’re fine, you’re fine. Get over it. What you’re basically telling the version of yourself that’s inside, that’s feeling that way that they don’t matter. And what happens is whenever, in my experience, whenever I tell little Amanda, shut up. She gets louder and it bubbles into other areas of my life. And so pausing, acknowledging that feeling that you have and then saying, I see why I’m feeling that way. I acknowledge it’s there and now I’m going to let it. Move through me and keep going about my day. Like it’s this, it’s a similar sentiment to everything you just said, but with a little bit more self compassion.

Krati Mehra: No, I agree with everything you’re saying. Trust me. I get a lot of pushback when I share this advice, but what I mean by that, and this is a lived through experience for me. Um, what I mean by that, maybe I can find the right words to put this across is, you know, when you’ve had something happen. The emotions are so freaking loud in that moment, you, the pain is unbelievable.

You wanna cry, if you wanna cry, cry it out. You wanna shout, you shout it out. Get that energy out of your body, but don’t, my only point is, don’t try to figure things out in that moment because, yeah. So that’s what I’m saying, like, and life doesn’t stop. Life doesn’t say, okay, you know what, figure it out, and then I’ll restart for your benefit.

Life’s like, okay, there is shit to be done. So. Get it done. Do it. Allow yourself to get sucked into the pace of life. And then, when you’re feeling calmer, when you’re feeling more, sort of, for yourself, and not so much for what has happened, in that moment, take it all out. Take it apart. Figure it out. But, even as you’re doing it, understand that, you know, it’s part of life.

Bad things happen. This is something I learned as a volunteer. So that was what pulled me out of depression was when I started volunteering and I saw the kind of pain that is so unimaginable that while my, my feelings are still very valid for me, I never ignore my feelings, but at the same time, I never allow myself to spiral anymore.

Like, oh, a client didn’t book when I thought it was all done and they were going to book with me, they didn’t book. It’s a big deal, but it’s not actually a very big deal. So kind of maintaining that,

Amanda Goetz: There’s a, there’s a saying that if you threw your problems into a pile with everyone else’s in the world, you’d be begging to get yours back.

Krati Mehra: I love it. True.

Amanda Goetz: we all have problems and maintaining perspective and perspective is sometimes like a really hard thing, especially now we work from home.

Our social media feeds are literally mirroring the aspirational life we want to have. It’s really, really important to make sure that you are exposing yourself to all different types of people, all different types of problems and challenges and allowing yourself to kind of t shirt size. How much, um, Struggle like mortality is something that I weirdly think a lot about and I have this exercise that I do whenever I cannot snap into a moment with my Children.

I have in this might sound a little cray cray, but I have this thing that I’ll do. Let’s say I’m reading a book to my son It’s the same book I’ve read, the Nike and Nike construction site. I can read it right now without even the book in my hand. And what happens is I’ll start thinking about business or a newsletter topic that I want to write about.

And all of a sudden I’m just flipping pages and my brain is somewhere else and I’ll catch myself and I will picture 90 year old Amanda in the corner of the room watching us wishing she could be back. In that moment, snuggling her son and reading a book to him and remembering like, this is what matters right now.

I am here. And like that woman who’s on her deathbed is gonna be would kill to come back to this moment right now. So enjoy it. So like, there’s a lot of these like reframing exercises when you get stuck in those things.

Krati Mehra: Yeah. I love that. Okay, I have some more like practical questions to ask you. We’ve talked about emotions, perspective, mindset. Now I want to learn from you about building an online brand identity and online business. You know, a lot of the time when we are sharing very authentic messages on Instagram or social media really. You know, I’m no expert. I’ve already shared that with you. So correct me if I’m wrong about this, but a lot of time people are doing really good job.

They’re sharing wonderful messages, but they’re not getting traction when that happens. One of the questions I have is, and this is something I’ve gotten from Reddit, like people were discussing that now we need investment for an online business. Like there was a time when you could just go into it and there was very little entry cost.

You needed very little investment. But now you need like money, proper capital to invest into ads if you want to like your business to take off. Again, I, this is not my area of… Like my, I pour my heart and soul into my podcast. My podcast gets me most of my clients. And so I don’t know about social media.

I will, I’m asking you. The other thing is, um, when you are posting all of these authentic messages to yourself, messages that are two point, so far as your business is concerned and what you’re about, when you don’t get traction, how are you supposed to take that? Are you supposed to think that your message isn’t tracking or is it like it’s a technical side of things?

Amanda Goetz: So I’m going to say three different things. One, there’s an offensive strategy and a defensive strategy on social media. Um, engagement circles are a real thing. People make friends and say, Hey, we have similar sized audiences. Let’s, let’s , comment on each other’s stuff. Let’s like each other’s stuff.

Um, sometimes it’s very formal. Like, there are coalitions that you can join and then people, you know, say there’s even startups now happening where, uh, you can pay to have creators like and comment on your stuff. Like, this is a thing, right? But you can do it in a very informal way where you just say, Hey, I really like what you talk about.

If my stuff resonates with you, I’d love to, you know, help each other out and really comment and boost each other’s stuff. So that’s, that’s kind of the, there’s, there’s really this like, You’re putting content out there, but then how are you getting people to engage with it? And you have to do both work.

Like people just want the algorithm to magically make something go viral. It’s not what makes it go viral. I’ll give you a perfect example. Twitter is my platform. LinkedIn is not.

I’m starting to invest in LinkedIn because I see the opportunity. You know, Twitter’s algorithm gets changed all the time Like sometimes it’s like a great month, sometimes it’s a horrible month and I’m like, I need to diversify. I was just getting like 10 likes, 50 likes, like not, it’s, it was just like talking to the wind. Then one day, Justin Welch, who has a massive public persona, you know, 500, 000, the audience, uh, Followers on Twitter. More on LinkedIn. He responded to something I posted like one of my threads on LinkedIn. All of a sudden I was like, how do I have 50 comments on this thing? It’s because he commented on it and I texted him because he’s a friend and I was like, you’re like LinkedIn Santa. Like, how did this just happen? and then I was like, Oh, yeah, I you have to have other people. So you can’t just think that it’s going to magically, you have to make it happen. So that’s number one. And the number two, understanding how to write, having the hook. I can show you like, I’ll, I’ll play with content. I’ll post it one week and then like a month later, I’ll post it with a slightly different hook and it’ll do better. And so like truly it’s an, it’s art and science. Understanding the scientific approach to posting content has to be paired with the, uh, the first thing I talked about, because you, there’s a way to write these things that grab you in that first line.

Like you have to have a solid hook and then there’s different types. There’s different ways that you can thread it. There’s so many templates out there. Like at this point, you can go and Google and say. 10, give me 10 templates for LinkedIn chat. GPT might even be able to do that for you. Now, the third thing I was going to say is there are seasons of being a creator or building a personal brand.

The first one is winter. You truly, for a long time, I tweeted for eight months before to like less than a thousand people. And. Now I’m over a hundred thousand in three years like it. It has these hockey stick moments, but for a while you’re going to put a really amazing post out and you’re gonna be like, this is beautiful.

This is so smart and wise. It’s gonna go to five people and you’re gonna be like, what the heck? Just remember you’ll reuse that in three years. You’re in winter, you are plant, you are like getting ready to plant some seeds here. But you have to first, like stage one is put out great content, even if it’s to no one then share that great content with a few people in the DMs and say, Hey, I’m starting to focus on content around these three areas.

If that resonates with you, I’d really love if we, you know, engage in each other’s content. Then next step is you amplify it. You get better at the hooks. You really test it. Um, but yeah, those are my main tips.

Krati Mehra: Wow, that’s awesome. That, that is very helpful and that’s different from the usual advice you get. So I love that. Uh, you’re, you’re the advice Santa today. That’s, you know, worth anything. So I love that. Okay. Um, this one other thing that, uh, I think comes up a lot with people, like we know all of these trends come up on social media.

And generally running an online business where you’re like, your identity has. So public in those cases, I know we’ve talked a lot about authenticity and that has been a dominant thing theme and you’ve recommended as something that really should be prioritized, but how much room should you leave for what the market is asking you to do?

Amanda Goetz: If you’re doing a personal brand, there unless your personal brand is going to be memes and your audience is into memes, like if you’re going to build a personal brand in crypto, you’re going to speak in memes. That’s the, the culture. That’s the web free culture. Um, so I’m not going to speak in memes because it’s not authentic to me.

It’s not what my audience expects from me. So really knowing your audience and what you’re building for and what you’re trying to connect with is like. Truly the first thing and, and I think trends like Jack Appleby, he writes the feature social newsletter. He did a whole thing around like why brands should not jump on every trend and, and like, especially when it can backfire.

So like the whole Trump mugshot thing, like there’s just like so many things that it’s like, just because something’s going viral doesn’t mean your brand should do it or you should do it because it can sometimes have a negative effect if it’s not in line with your tone, your voice, your mission. So just be very cognizant.

I would spend way more time focused on like your message, what you’re trying to get out there, how you’re trying to connect with your audience and versus like, what’s the hottest trend?

Krati Mehra: okay. That helps. There is something, I’m curious to know about you. You have, your general demeanour is a gentle one. You do not come across as an aggressive person. But you are a very successful founder. You’ve created a lot, like a success that’s inspiring people across the world. So I would love to know, are you a very decisive person?

Or are you very thoughtful and very carefully reach final decisions before you execute? Like there are people who move fast. So I would love to know that about you.

Amanda Goetz: Oh, I move so fast. This is actually a topic that. I just talked about with my coach of when to stop and assess versus when to ship and just go, I, I operate from the butt so much and anyone that’s worked with me, I think would say my superpower is just, I go and I produce so much and I get so much shit done and that comes at an expense of like.

Thoughtfulness, and I’m sure there’s typos in my newsletter sometimes. Like I, like, I don’t have an editor. I don’t, I mean, I do it all and I’m okay with that. Like I’m, I’m about progress over perfection every single day. And that’s just how I operate. And I trust myself immensely. And I also just know that like, if I get this wrong, I trust myself enough.

To figure out the next step from there, I’ll have more information and I’ll make a better decision at that time, but I don’t regret things. I, I’ll, I just move on and say, this is the decision I’m making with this amount of information and yeah, that’s kind of how I operate.

Krati Mehra: Okay. . So you are, you’re fairly decisive. I think it put together with the answers you gave in the initial part of the episode, that makes so much sense because you have such clarity around your, who you are around the message you want to give would play into you moving fast now.

Amanda Goetz: for sure. Knowing your personal values and what you want to accomplish. That’s your roadmap. You now have your GPS set. So now you can fly. Where so many people skip all of this upfront work. That’s why, like, whenever I teach courses, it’s half internal work, half external stuff. Um, because you can’t get into the car if you don’t know your destination.

So you’ve got to really spend that time understanding, like, what’s actually in a life. So I agree. I think that all the work I’ve done, like, I, Lots of years of therapy and coaching and even like the companies I’ve worked for have put us through intense, like, leadership training to understand your leadership style.

So, now I’m like, I feel like I have a really good kind of, like, I guess, like bumper pads where I, I know I’ll just like kind of stay in this middle lane. I might bounce a couple of times, but I know generally the path I’m staying on.

Krati Mehra: Yeah. Okay. Now I have to ask you about how you, Show up as this person, inspire people, get shit done, take care of your kids, do all of this wonderful, wonderful work. How do you cope? And we can’t have that conversation without talking about CBD because I know that’s, you know, that’s something that you are very invested in.

Amanda Goetz: There are a lot of things that I’ve done. Like, look, I don’t want to come across as like this bio hacking Silicon Valley, bro. And I think that the pendulum has swung into this like hyper optimization. I need to. Like, get the best sleep possible, and it’s at the expense of, like, this other thing, like, I saw this doctor talking, and he’s like, we are conditioned for homeostasis, so when you swing in this direction, every action has a reaction, and that resonated immensely.

I am not a binary person, like, at all. I, I’m not a big drinker, but once a quarter, I may go out and go dancing, and I may enjoy some cocktails. I am pretty good about going to bed at the same time every night, but if I want to stay up because I am binging a show and I’m feeling pretty good, I will do it.

Like for me, a lot of my equilibrium comes from the space I allow myself to operate. Um, and same with like eating my, my diet, like I’m pretty healthy 90 percent of the time, but if I want to eat half of a jar of cookie dough, like I also do that too.

And yeah, it’s just, and so CBD is a big part of it. Um, it, it does help me.

The good news is I have gotten to a place where I’ve managed my anxiety. The reason I started house of wise is because I was struggling with intense anxiety and I needed something that wasn’t alcohol because alcohol would spike my anxiety and I’m in a really good place right now in my life. Where I’ve gotten out of that kind of fight or flight mode.

I’ve done a lot of the work where I’m in a place where a lot of my anxiety has, has kind of recessed and I can really walking. I do ice bath. I know I sound like a tech bro, but it’s like, it does help me. I, yeah, it does really work for me. And so figuring out the things that work for you and then giving your space.

So like kind of ebb and flow from those, but knowing what works and getting back to that. Like, I know if I go out and I drink one weekend, I will have anxiety the next day. That means I will have CBD. I need to ice bath the next day or the week after, like, I know what my things are. And so you just need to know what your stuff is and where you can kind of like let your pendulum swing. Yeah. So those are my coping mechanisms for sure.

Krati Mehra: Is CBD different from psychedelics?

Amanda Goetz: Yes, for sure. For sure. Um, cannabinoids are different psychedelics. Um, there’s lots of psychedelic studies right now. Um, I, I actually was a fractional CMO of a ketamine company, which is different. Um, but I, I do believe that the future of like anxiety and depression medication, like I think, I think there will always be a space for people who truly.

Like they need the medicine and that’s all that will help them recalibrate their, their serotonin and all of that. I, the more I started to get into that space of psychedelics and ketamine and understanding how it’s being utilized by doctors, and I did, like, I am not a person that touches drugs because I am a very sensitive, um, soul, like NyQuil, get, not like makes me crazy.

So I, but I did do one ketamine journey with a doctor to help me with my anxiety and it was incredible. Like I, for about six months felt like I saw color in a different vibrancy and, and I did even like a very low dose. So I think that it’s a scary thing because you’re like psychedelics. That’s like

Burning man or like Woodstock and people like, you know, going on a crazy trip and being on the moon.

It doesn’t have to be that. And I would just say if you struggle with anxiety or depression, you know, PTSD, getting curious and really diving into the research first and then researching, there are places that are now getting federal license. Like I was just in Canada, mushrooms are legal.

And, and so I was like, Oh, I forgot that there are places that are really opening up and actually understanding that this is, this can be used for good.

Krati Mehra: yeah, yeah, they’re working to legalize it in India also, which is really saying something, because we are very conservative about that stuff, but we’re still like, and considering it as tools of therapy. , you know, what comes across as I’m talking to you is you understanding your body. Really knowing what works for you, what doesn’t work for you, and then picking the tools accordingly. And then, was there like an adjustment period, like when you started trying CBD, was there an adjustment period?

Or did you take to it right away?

Amanda Goetz: Definitely. I mean, it’s one of those things that you need to take for a while for your body’s like receptors to recalibrate. Um, so. It’s not this like magical thing. Like that’s why it’s people struggle because alcohol has such an immediate effect, right? Like you drink alcohol and you feel the like, and that has a reaction as well.

So I think CBD for sure, uh, takes a little bit, but the long, the reason I started a company is because I also realized that there was like a lot of. snake oil and bad products on the market because it’s not regulated. So I wanted to make sure that I went to a grower that had a research lab and they understood the different strains of cannabinoids and all of that.

So I wanted to be really intentional about the product and put the best product on the market. And once we started, once I started to work with them, it was an Israeli based company. Um, it was like, Oh, this is what this product can do. It’s really pretty powerful.

Krati Mehra: Yeah, alcohol doesn’t work for me either. It makes like, I don’t drink at all. And, um, so I’ve considered psychedelics, but I am also someone who hallucinates whenever my anxiety gets super out of control. So I’m a little, um, scared of what psychedelics would do to my nervous system.

Amanda Goetz: I would look into ketamine then, because it’s a way slower, like more gentle trip experience, journey, if you will. Um, and like, I took such a low dosage cause I’m the same way. Like, I do not like feeling out of control. And so I took such a low dose, like ketamine for anybody that doesn’t know what it is.

It’s actually used in hospitals as an, um, anaesthetic. Like it puts people to sleep. So when you’re in your journey, your whole body, you feel like not paralysed cause I could move, but everything’s super heavy. And, um, and then your brain activates and it’s really cool because it just kind of felt like I was like watching a movie of my life and very gentle.

But the, the real secret sauce of doing anything like that is. It’s the pre work and the post work, which they call integration work. The pre work is really, really about set and setting, setting an intention and then making sure your environment is calm. The energy is so soothing. Like there’s so much work.

I remember the morning I did my, I did it in the morning cause I wanted to have like a morning experience. So I like got up, I journaled all morning, I set my intention, I took a bath, my sitter came. We talked about, like, my experience that I want to have, and then I, like, put everything on, had it, and then afterwards, I, like, journaled right away, got everything out, and then the next day, I met with my therapist, and I told her everything, we kind of, like, like, worked through what I saw and figured out, like, what’s maybe a thing for me.

So, there. It’s not just a magic thing you, you have just like anything you have to like go into it with intention and then you’ll, you’d be surprised what can happen.

Krati Mehra: Yeah. You have, you’ve got me intrigued because so far anytime we’ve talked about it, my friends are like, come down to America and we’ll do it together. I’m like, that does not sound like a good idea to me, honestly, doing it with friends. I’ve considered doing it in a clinical setting, but as I said, it’s not legal yet in India.

They’re working on it, and that’s gonna take a little bit of time, but what you are suggesting makes a lot of sense. I’ll still have to go somewhere else to do it, because as I said, not legal in India. So that makes a lot of sense. Okay, now for my funny question.

So, would you, if they perfected the technology for creating clones, would you ever consider cloning yourself?

Amanda Goetz: Oh God, no. The world does not need two of me. I’m one is enough. I’m a lot. Um, no.

I would never clone myself. Like that would be so confusing for my kids.

Krati Mehra: Okay, yeah, that was all what I was imagining. I would clone myself. I would clone myself and I said no to, like, all the parties. I never party. I never, like, that is so not my scene.

Amanda Goetz: You’d have like a version of you that would go out and be social. I mean, yeah, I guess that’s cool for sure, but then I’d be mad that the clone is getting to experience that. No, I want all my characters.

Krati Mehra: Okay, that’s awesome.

Amanda Goetz: That’s a good question.

Krati Mehra: Yeah, I try to come up with one such question because that gives you like such an insight into the person you are talking to and you are a very intriguing mix because, you know, usually you get guests who are Very spiritual very like working with the feminine energy and you are someone who’s got like the most Wonderful mix of the masculine energy the feminine energy or at least what you would consider those to be like you’ve got the hustle Down pat and then you’ve also got the self care down pat and it just I’m sure it’s messier than that that I Obviously it can’t possibly be that easy to come by.

I mean, you’ve put a lot of work into it, but it’s so inspiring to watch that. I mean, we don’t always need to see behind the scenes. I mean, even though you always allow us to do that on your Instagram, but sometimes it’s just nice to believe that, hey, look at this person. They’ve got it right. They’re a human being. We’re human beings. We can do it too. And I love that.