From Single Mom to Queen of the Castle: Ann Kaplan Mulholland

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2:19Ryan Hanley:Last week, I was being interviewed on a podcast and the host asked me if you could have any superpower, what would it be? And while being able to fly or run fast or walk through walls or, you know, be invisible or any of that stuff would be super cool. None of it is incredibly practical for the life that I want to live. Since fighting crime as a caped crusader just isn't super high on my priority list right now. But the thing, so the answer that I gave this host was, I would love if I could do anything to be able to read like 100x faster than any human being, like just incredibly read incredibly fast, and also retain that information.

3:06Ryan Hanley:Like if I could actually retain the information that I read, and I could read it at a high speed, that would be the superpower I would want. And the reason is, as I've gotten as I've kind of matured into my life and my career and really dove into some greater works, kind of taken on some books and kind of listened to some podcasts that engage in conversations and topics that are meaty, like real meaty stuff. Things like Self-Reliance, which is an essay from Ralph Walder Emerson that I want to talk to you a little bit about today. Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life even Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck like these are just like three of the last books that I've read but I've probably read 20 or 30 books over the last year or two maybe three years probably about 10 books a year that have really focused on how do we become more confident more secure in our thoughts and our work?

4:16Ryan Hanley:How do we, how do we better understand the trials that are ahead of us? If we're, if we're willing to push forward and do things that are meaningful and how do we find meaning in our work and, and how do we capture some form of happiness as a derivative of that meaning? And, and, and really just be in, in general, a more at peace person while still focused on growth. Because if there's anything that I've learned about myself, over the last decade, it's that I become unhappy if I'm not focused, if growth, growing something, building something, creating something is not part of my life. It just is.

4:59Ryan Hanley:A stagnant Ryan is an unhappy Ryan. So I can grow personally. I can take many different forms, physically getting more fit. Although this desire, this little thing, whatever it is inside me tends to be more mental. So it's, am I learning something? Am I creating something? Am I figuring something out? Am I growing a business? Like I need a new challenge or just challenges to overcome. And if I have that thing, if I feel mentally stimulated by a challenge, then I'm very happy at peace person even if there is the general background stress that comes with growing something I'm okay with it I'm accepting of it and when I slow down or I give in or I feel like growth isn't happening or I feel like there's been an obstacle or a wall put up in front of growth, then I become very agitated, irritated, and unhappy.

6:06Ryan Hanley:So in an effort to better understand how to maneuver this stuff, I read a ton as much as I possibly can. I also listen to a ton of podcasts. And that's why I wanted to take this time, this third episode of the show, and really just kind of pump the brakes on interviews. We've had two great interviews, one with Marcus Sheridan, and one with Justin Forsett. Those are the first two. I think it was a really great way to kick it off. For this third day in a row, we're launching a new episode. That's this episode. And instead of interviewing someone, I just wanted it to be me and you. And I wanted us to spend a little bit of time together.

6:42Ryan Hanley:And I wanted to talk about some of the things that are driving me to create this podcast. What I hope is coming down the road for you if you continue to listen. I hope that you'll find a tremendous amount of value that you'll start to feel comfortable engaging with me, whether that's sending me an email. You can always email me, ryan at ryanhanley.com. You can engage with me on social media. Instagram and Twitter seem to be the best places. Ryan underscore Hanley on Instagram. You can just DM me or whatever. Or hit me up on Twitter. I'm ryanhanley underscore com on Twitter. Just search Ryan Hanley and you'll find me.

7:21Ryan Hanley:I hope that you'll be very comfortable engaging with me, asking questions about the show or just sharing thoughts, things you enjoyed, things that you disagreed with or didn't like, or areas of the show where you think that could be improved. You know, as you, if you choose to be part of this audience, then you are as much, this podcast is as much yours as it is mine. And I want you to know that I respect my responsibility to you to provide value on a consistent basis. And while, you know, the, the human ego side of me wants to grow this podcast to be as big as it can possibly be. I would love to touch as many people as possible.

7:58Ryan Hanley:I know that's going to take time. And I'm never, I, my promise to you, my commitment to you as someone who's willing to listen to this show is that I will never, I, I will never, um, Be disrespectful in assuming that you will accept shallow content in the form of activity versus silence in exchange for value, if that makes sense. I'm never just going to pump something down the alley because I need activity on the show versus something I think that it's going to add real value to your life. And sometimes, you know, you throw up a stinker. I mean, that's always going to happen. Sometimes you think a conversation is going to go one way and it doesn't go that way.

8:49Ryan Hanley:I mean, this, I did almost 300 interviews for Content Warfare, my first podcast, and I did close to 150 episodes. Not all of them were interviews for Agency Nation Radio, my second podcast. And now I'm on my third iteration of my third show in the podcasting world, starting from scratch again, which is like my thing, I guess.

9:16Ryan Hanley:And I've learned during that time that sometimes you have a plan for what a conversation is going to be with someone or what an episode is going to be when you start out. And it just doesn't end up getting to where you want it to be. So hopefully you'll give me the occasional flop in exchange for my commitment to you that every time I hit record on this podcast, it's going to, you know, my goal is going to be to add value to you in some way, shape or form. And I think a lot of the interviews that I've already recorded, there's I'm trying to get out ahead of it a little bit because I do also run metabolic.

9:53Ryan Hanley:I think that the conversations that I've had so far all have some really good pieces to them I'm not gonna say that everyone will blow your mind but I think they all have some really tremendous takeaways some are very very very good I think actually tomorrow's episode with Brian Fanzo is one I would absolutely positively listen to if you're listening to this in the future if you're on like episode 10 or 100 or sometime in the future and you just kind of caught this one Listen to episode four. This is episode three. Tomorrow's episode with Brian Fanzo is tremendous, especially the second half of it really dives into a topic that's incredibly important to me, which is acceptance of the fact that there are entities in our societies, specifically American society, that profit off of us.

10:50Ryan Hanley:disliking each other and how we can engage both online and offline in a way that allows us to be different but still accepting of each other. I think that these are the types of conversations we need to be having more, especially with the 2020 election coming up, regardless of where you stand on Trump or Democrats versus Republicans or whatever it has to do with politics. There are a lot of media entities who are going to profit heavily off of you versus them kind of mentality. They're wrong. You're right. You're wrong. They're right. You know, just positioning people on the edges against each other and creating these battle lines.

11:38Ryan Hanley:I think very few of us actually want that. but yet we are put into these boxes because it's easier to sell ads to us if we are and as long as we have that in our head I think we can, as long as we're aware of that I think we can then maneuver through it and maybe create less hate in the world I wrote an article on my website that you can check out it's called Before You Hate That Stranger Online you can go check that out and listen to the episode tomorrow, Brian Fanzo so my point to you guys is like I just, I guess I just felt obligated to come on and just say like, thank you for being here. This is a conversation.

12:17Ryan Hanley:It's if you choose to be part of this audience, this podcast is as much yours as it is mine. This is, this is meant to be something where we interact. I'm going to do everything I can to bring on interesting and dynamic people who want to share and, and have conversations that make us think a little deeper about our everyday life. And, um, that's my commitment to you. And I hope you want to be part of it. and I hope that you subscribe in whatever medium makes the most sense to you so you can get these episodes wherever you listen to them. But if you just catch them randomly when you see them come through Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, whatever, that's cool too.

12:50Ryan Hanley:It's all good in the hood. So I wanted to throw a little meat at you. So that's kind of the fluffy intro to the podcast. If you're listening, want to give a shout out, again, hit me up on Twitter, hit me up on Instagram. So I started reading, this essay from Ralph Waldo Emerson. I read it about a year ago. It's self-reliance. Some of you have probably heard of it. It's a really interesting essay. To be honest with you, I had never read a lot of the transcendentalists, which is, I guess, one of the ways that you could classify Emerson. What's really interesting is that, so this is the third time that I'm reading this thing, it's all marked up.

13:34Ryan Hanley:I'm not doing any video right now, but if I showed you, it's like underlined and starred and I have comments all over this, like printed out eight by 11s that, and I've had this for like a year. And like I said, this is the third time I'm reading it. And then I interviewed John Janch. He's coming up in like a week or two, his episode. And he just wrote a book called The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur. So it was cool to kind of talk through at a high level, some of the ideas of self-reliance and transcendentalism, having spent so much time with this particular essay. But I wanted to share this with you on its own, because there are some concepts in here that I think are so incredibly important to our own person, to finding meaning in our lives.

14:29Ryan Hanley:So He's a clinical psychologist. I am an enormous fan of his and believer in his thought process and methodology for a couple of reasons. I'll talk briefly about Jordan Peterson. I did a live stream on his book, 12 Rules for Life, which is by far the most meaningful piece of work I've ever read in my entire life. I read it about a year and a half ago. So I then gave my marked up copy to someone that I worked with. And then I fired that person and they didn't give me the book back. So I am an a-hole. But because I brutalize my books. I underline. I just terrorize them. They're textbooks to me. That's what they are.

15:14Ryan Hanley:Like the books that I really love become textbooks for my life that I like to go back and reference. And I had this wonderful copy of just beaten up and marked up copy of Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life. And now it's gone. But I'll get another copy. I'll probably mark it all up again and learn a whole ton more. Because he's got another book coming in. I want to make sure I read 12 Rules for Life again before his new book comes out. But either way, I did this live stream on YouTube where I talked all about his book. You can go to my YouTube channel. I think it's youtube.com slash Ryan M, M as in Michael Hanley.

15:50Ryan Hanley:You can find it there. Just Google my name. Or just read the book. It's tremendous. So I was reading that book and there's this idea. Well, first, the thing I like about Jordan Peterson and his methodology is that he is willing to change his mind. And if you think about that for a second, like how many of us are actually willing to change our mind? If you take a position and you're having an intellectual conversation of some sort about any topic, even if it's sports, you take a position on a thing and you make your case for that thing. How willing are you then to change your mind if more accurate information or information is brought to you from a different angle that helps you better understand a problem?

16:42Ryan Hanley:How willing are you to actually change your mind? And how much time do you spend speaking through or thinking through or working through or writing through a problem in which you actually give your mind a chance to counter adjust, to course correct off of whatever your initial impression is? So I am firmly aware that I was not blessed with tremendous instincts. I just don't have tremendous instincts. It's just part of who I am. Actually, my wife gives me a hard time about it. but she, and in a joking way, but she's just like, you know, you should take whatever your instinct is and know that that's wrong and just assume the answer is in some other, some other direction.

17:23Ryan Hanley:And it actually is kind of funny because my first instinct just tends to be wrong. I've just learned that about myself. So I've had to develop a process of talking through things. That's how I talking or writing through things. I, you know, if you, if you read any of like the short essays that I do on Instagram or on my website, like those are really me talking through things that I don't necessarily have clear in my head. And I've had people come up to me and they're like, man, you know, you're, you're these, those little micro articles that you write, they're kind of all over the place. And, and there's a reason for that.

17:53Ryan Hanley:It's because I'm, you, most of the time I'm working through something and I just don't have it clear in my head. So I'll write something on the topic or around the idea and I'll publish it and I'll, I'll let that marinate in the publishing part, kind of like stamps it in my brain. And then the next day I'll show up and I'll be still thinking about that topic and I'll work through it in a different angle. And sometimes that like from one day to the next, to the next, it'll, it'll, you know, I might course correct a couple of times, but through that effort, I start to really wrap my head around what I actually believe is the right direction on a particular topic.

18:28Ryan Hanley:So what I like about Jordan Peterson and what really enamored me to him and his work isn't just that I, I believe the things that he says, it fits some of my core belief structures is as to who I am, not not everything he says, but but a lot of it, or at least his thought process. What really enamored to me to what really enamored me to him as a person was his willingness to change his mind. So if you listen to his podcast or interviews that he's done, obviously, there's certain things that he's already spent enough time on, and it is kind of what he believes. But then there are other things that you can tell he's still working through.

19:02Ryan Hanley:And if you listen from one episode to the next, you'll hear him, you'll listen to him working it out as he talks. So if you were to take, say, a soundbite from even if he talks for an hour and a half, if you take a soundbite from the first half hour on a topic and a soundbite from the last half hour, they might sound slightly different. And you're like, wait a minute, he said this an hour ago, and now he's saying this other thing. And the idea is that he is working through the process and that he, he, he got the idea out of his face and verbalized it. It doesn't mean that that's absolutely positively what he believes.

19:40Ryan Hanley:And I just thought that was a tremendous way to, to operate as a human. Like just, that's a great way to operate in my opinion. Like I'm willing to change my mind. Maybe not on everything, but I certainly do not have so much hubris as to believe that I just know what the right answer is. And I've already said that I don't trust my first instinct on most things and have a process for working through. And I know that if I work through the process, I end up getting to a place where I'm secure or at least fairly secure in what I believe. But I think we always need to be open to new ideas. And I think I think one of the key, key parts of that is this idea of self-reliance and what that means.

20:25And that, you know, if we, I have been able to develop this process in which I eventually get

20:36Ryan Hanley:to a place where I am secure and confident in my belief structure because I'm, I've, because my process, I'm confident in that process. I'm not confident in my first instinct. I'm not even really confident in my second or third, but I know as an iterative process, I get to that place. And when I get to that place, I'm okay with people disagreeing with me. And because I'm okay with people disagreeing with me, I'm willing to listen to their viewpoint. And because I'm willing to listen to their viewpoint, if their viewpoint has merit and it's worth course correcting again, I will. And that's something that I don't think is unique to me, but it's something that I'm very, if I'm being honest with you, I'm very proud of that I've gotten to that place because it isn't the way that I always was.

21:28Ryan Hanley:And I think that it's something I'm very proud of in my own maturation as both a leader, now a CEO of a company, a growing startup company with very, very big goals and a very big and important mission. I feel like this is a strong suit that I have in that role. And that even five years ago, I didn't have this characteristic and I wouldn't be able to add as much value to metabolic as an executive as I can today because of this. So this idea of self-reliance and being secure in my belief, But, and in part, and in being secure, part of being secure is that I'm okay with people disagreeing with me and understanding that this path to having a clear vision for what you want and where you want to be and what you believe, that that's hard.

22:29Ryan Hanley:And that kind of takes us full circle. That was an interesting contextual diatribe. But that takes us full circle to what I actually wanted to talk about, which is this 20-something page, 8x11 printout, stapled copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance that I have been carrying around in my bag for like a year and a half now. so there's so many quotes in here and I just wanted to share a few of them with you because I think it'll give you just a little bit of context for what I hope this show is and what I hope it brings to you and some of the ideas that some of the things I hope you get out of it and the first is probably if I were to ever get a tattoo which I don't have one I kind of want one like badly I kind of want a bunch I'm always trying to get my wife to get an arm sleeve tattoo I don't know why she'll hate me for having said that, but I just think I like it.

23:32Ryan Hanley:But the very first quote that I underlined and starred, the very first time I read this essay, comes in, I guess, in this format, the second paragraph, although the paragraphs are very big. He writes, this is Emerson now, he writes, God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. And for some reason, in my weird scribbled shorthand, that deserved an underline within a square and then two stars at both ends. And the reason is that I think it wraps up, really, it's the crux. It's the crux of what we deal with every single day in the work of personal, professional, psychological growth. As we move forward, if improvement in some capacity or in some framework is what we're seeking, then cowardice is the antithesis of what's necessary.

24:55Ryan Hanley:Right. Like God in whatever form you want that to be, whether you believe in that it's a white guy on a cross or an ethereal body or whatever that word means to you. I like to think of it from a creative standpoint as the muse, right? Because I struggle to believe that even if God exists, that he or she or it would spend a tremendous amount of time on creativity, just bigger problems to solve. So I'm assuming that there's some sort of senior vice president of creativity. and I like to call her the muse. Either way, God is unwilling, the muse is unwilling to let your work have impact if that work has not been earned.

25:57Ryan Hanley:If you haven't pushed through something that was more difficult than you would have expected, if it didn't take blood and sweat and tears and time and resources and if it didn't frustrate you and if you didn't find things that you didn't like or didn't work, if people didn't criticize you or if you didn't have moments of vulnerability, of insecurity, of self-doubt, if those things didn't happen, then why would, if you didn't work through that, then what good is the thing that came out the other side? It can't be good because you didn't struggle to understand which edges to sand and which to leave.

26:37Ryan Hanley:And I think that's an incredible important idea. I think that this podcast in my mind is a rough edge. And the beauty is not just by polishing the whole thing, but by understanding the nuances of which angles to keep and which to save, which to allow, which to give prominence to, which to highlight. And the only way to get there is to occasionally sand off the wrong ones and to work through that process and to ask questions and dive into topics that maybe you don't always understand where you're going. I think that's my favorite part about podcasting is that oftentimes I find someone who feels interesting in some capacity, and then I just start asking them questions.

27:28Ryan Hanley:And I rarely ever have a path in mind. I usually have a couple of questions that I'm interested in asking them that I'll write down and I keep a little notepad that I'll take notes on as I'm going along. Sometimes I'll hear someone say something and I know it's the hook. It's the title or whatever. It's the hook of the episode and I'll write that down. But I don't know. I rarely ever go into the interviews with a path. So as you're listening to these shows, if I'm 20 some odd minutes into this episode, if you haven't unsubscribed, I just want you to know that like I'm oftentimes kind of surfing the same wave that you are.

28:11Ryan Hanley:Like I just, I'm, I'm, I, we do the calls via zoom so I can see the person and watch their reaction, um, and, and try to have at least some feel for them in terms of their facial expression and, and how engaged they are. And I'm trying to get them to light up and, and give me something. That's what I'm trying to get them. I want them to give me something that they didn't, they didn't know that they would give before they came on the show. and I think I've done that a couple times just in these first few episodes that I've recorded um you know even yesterday's episode with Justin Forsett right like the first the first bit was you know pretty standard there were some things I wanted to talk to him about and hear his hear his story and share his origin story he's such an interesting guy so passionate so driven um I think people like that are are just interesting in general obviously he's had um uh a life worth noting there's no doubt um to work his way at 5 '8 to be a nfl pro ball running back incredibly um uh just a great feat just something worthy a worthy feat for sure but then to transition that into an entrepreneurial life it's interesting to me but when I saw him, he lit up and his face lights up and if you watch the episode on YouTube, you'll see it.

29:37Ryan Hanley:Towards the end, I said something about something being his superpower. I can't exactly remember but I said something about something being his superpower and I could tell that he had thought that before or something around it. Maybe he didn't think it's a superpower but he had thought I have a special quality that is this thing and just in some sort of self-reflection. I don't mean that like in an ego way, but like he had had that thought. And then, man, he had a limited time frame, so we couldn't go too much deeper. Like those last like seven, eight minutes, like he kind of like, you can really start to, you can see him, he leans forward, his face lights up, like he's moving around more, like he really started to go.