709: What to Do When You Realize The Dream Really Wasn’t THE Dream

0:01Okay, I have been on this ruthless pursuit to purge any clothes that I'm not actually wearing. Like if I haven't reached for it in months, it's got to go. I am trying to be really intentional about what I bring into my closet right now, which means I am only buying pieces that I know I will actually wear and use. Revolve just gets it though. I'm literally wearing my brown Autry sneakers from there right now and my new suede purse. It fits my laptop in it. So it's basically a fancy shoulder bag that works for everything. I love finding pieces like that. Things that look good, but also work hard for my actual life.

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1:15So happy shopping. Be really, really specific about the vision for what it is that you want. And I think the more clear that you can be about what it is that you want, The universe wants it for you. Hey, my name is Jenna Kutcher and I am obsessed with all things business, marketing numbers, and helping you to navigate both the messy and the magical seasons of this thing called life. I'm a small town mama who took a$300 camera, grew a successful photo biz, and now I work from home and run a seven figure online business. I teach you the tried and true secrets to building a career you adore. Shy away from the real talk?

1:57No way. Money, hardship, growth, loss, and marketing are all topics we discuss here. Think of this as your one-stop shop for happy hour with a gal pal mixed with business school. Pull up a seat, make sure you're cozy, and get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn. This is the Gold Digger Podcast. Question for you. Have you ever thought about pivoting your career, but then you think better of it because you currently have everything you had always dreamed of? Well, Well, my guest today can relate all too well. During the pandemic, she did the unthinkable and walked away from her dream job only to find more success, more joy, more freedom on the other side.

2:35Few years ago, Rebecca Zung was an extremely successful divorce attorney. In 2020, she spent her quarantine using her experience in high conflict negotiation to share how to negotiate with narcissists on YouTube. Since then, she's gained about 40 million views in the last three years and her podcast, Negotiate Your Best Life, is now ranked in the top 0.5 % of podcasts globally, and it is growing steadily. You heard that right. In only three years, Rebecca went from being a top 1 % attorney in the country to a traumatic experience as an entrepreneur with a narcissistic business partner to becoming an almost eight-figure digital entrepreneur.

3:14If you're like how I was, how in the world did she do it? Then this episode is for you. Rebecca was forced to overcome her mindset, negotiate with bullies while staying in her own integrity, and she had to dissolve a business partnership, which all propelled her to teach what she's learned from this experience and then create a digital course that immediately skyrocketed and became a seven-figure annual business. This year, she worked with one of the top literary agents in the world to publish her brand new book called Slay the Bully, How to Negotiate with a Narcissist and Win, which is a playbook on dealing with narcissists, whether in your personal or your professional life.

3:54And this is all because she listened to that tiny little voice in her head that told her she can pivot her career. It is not too late and she can build a digital business based on her own personal experiences. In our conversation today, she's sharing exactly how she did it. And she empowers you to listen to that nagging voice whenever it speaks to you. I know you're going to love hearing from her and hearing her story. So without further ado, Rebecca, welcome to the show. What if you could find, track, and close deals all in one place? And what if your schedule and your goals, your to-do list and emails were organized in one tab instead of dozens?

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5:09That's HubSpot.com slash sales. This episode is sponsored by The League, a dating app designed for goal-oriented singles. Download The League app today and message hashtag GoalMate in your in-app concierge to skip the wait and graduate to the dating app with higher standards. Rebecca, welcome to the Goal Digger podcast. Thank you for having me. So excited to be here and so excited to be with you. Okay, so I know your work today. And I think what's so amazing is that most people that are listening, if they're familiar with you and your work, they know what you do now. But you have a super interesting background.

5:49In fact, that was one of the things that caught my attention when I started learning more about who you are, how you show up in the world, how you serve. You were recognized by US News as one of the best lawyers in America. Tell me about your career journey and how you went from there to where we are now today. Yeah, it was a little bit of a journey for me because I was actually just had this conversation with somebody yesterday. I thought that the journey for me was I wanted to be the best possible divorce lawyer on the planet. And I I had this, I set out to build this massive practice and, you know, that was the top rung for me, right?

6:34And so I remember actually when I went in to be interviewed as a law student that the lawyers that I was interviewing with had this big book on their desk and it said, The Best Lawyers in America. and it was, you know, this U.S. news thing. And I was so impressed. And they had this big velvet bookmark. And I thought, oh my God, it would be so amazing to get my name in that book. And, you know, it was, that was my goal was to get that. And, you know, that's like the top 1 % of lawyers. And so for me to build my practice to get there and divorce lawyers that specialize in high net worth divorce litigation, it's a very specialized area of the law.

7:36You have to know trust law, business law, tax law. There's a very, you know, when you're divorcing a nurse and a teacher or something, it's not as complicated. But to know how to divorce wealthy people, you have to be able to understand a lot of very complicated areas of the law. And so I came up through the ranks that way. And so by the time 2017 rolled around, I was very much at the top of my game. And I had represented household names that you would know. And I was on television on a regular basis. I was being called upon by Extra to comment when celebrities were being, you know, were divorcing.

8:29You know, you can Google my name and you'll see, you know, when Brad and Angelina were getting divorced, I was on TV. And I, you know, when Liam and Miley were getting divorced, there I was. And so I really thought that was it. But really what happened was I became a prisoner of my success. And so I was, I would say I built it and it ate me. I had no life, literally no life. And my daughter was just finishing eighth grade and I was like seeing the end of the road. And I thought, I remember so vividly that she was in private school and I had marked myself out to leave at noon because the moms were getting together to go to take the kids to lunch and go to the blow dry bar and get makeup done because they had an eighth grade graduation that night.

9:22night. And I was like, not going to make it because all these emergencies were happening with my clients. And I wanted to go with the moms and the girls to go to the blow dry bar and go get makeup done. And my paralegal was like, you're not going to get, you're not going to make it. There's all these things are blowing up with these cases. And I'm like, I'm going to the blow dry bar. This is what's happening. And I just literally left and my clients were pissed and whatever. And I did not care because it was like, and so I just decided I had to get out of that. So I merged my practice with two other guys and we moved from Naples, Florida to LA at that time because I really wanted space and I wanted more entrepreneurial endeavors and I wanted more base to create.

10:16And I realized I was more of a creator at heart at that point. And I had already written one bestselling book at that point, which was Breaking Free, a step-by-step divorce guide. And so that's when I got into more entrepreneurial endeavors. And in one of those, that's when I ended up with a woman who turned out to be a narcissist.

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12:52Let's talk about this. So I love what you were saying about you built this incredible career, right? You hit the top of the top. Like you were doing things probably beyond your wildest dreams and visions. And yet I think like so many of us, especially women who are achievers, we reach those quote peaks and all of a sudden we're like, this isn't what I thought. Or like, this doesn't feel like I thought it would feel. and we're kind of faced with this like invitation of like we have to redefine what success looks like for us and figure out how do we either move away from what is not serving us or move towards what is so you walked away from this practice that most lawyers only dream of having and you start this new endeavor talk about this narcissist and how it kind of opened doors that maybe you hadn't really seen right in front of you.

13:49Yes. I had really reached, you know, this pinnacle of success and thought, I mean, to the point that other lawyers had called the guy that I was merging my practice with and thought and asked if I had cancer, like, like, why would she walk away from this size of a practice? Like I was literally, you know, at the top of my game. And yeah, so I I got into this business endeavor with this woman who was, you know, it's one thing to advocate on behalf of others. But when you are in, for me, in a partnership with someone who's supposed to be your equal, and it was a female. and this person turned out to be what I didn't have the language for at the time, a covert passive aggressive narcissist.

14:53Everybody thought she was so nice and she was very charming. And, you know, I didn't speak up when I saw things happening. I didn't, I didn't, I felt I was transported back to when I had been bullied as a kid. And I had lived this whole life already, very, I thought I had processed all of these emotions from when I had been bullied as a kid for being Asian. You know, here I'd had this whole big life back in Naples, Florida, where I was on top of my game. I had a lot of friends. I had, you know, I was married. I made my daughter, you know, like my life was good, you know? And I had, you know, mind you, I'd gotten married when I was 19.

15:50I had the first time. I had three kids by the time I was 22. I had, because I had dropped out of college. I went back to law school at night and had met my second husband, who I'm still married to now, when I was still in my 20s. I had gone back to University of Miami and gone to night school and went to law school 100 % on student loans. And so I had literally gotten out of the trenches, you know, and built this law practice, you know. So I had come up from the ranks. And so, you know, I really felt like I was on top of my game. and when this happened, I really was very stymied at this point, confused.

16:56I was thinking about it in the middle of the night, ruminating about it, obsessing about it, brushing my teeth in the morning, obsessing about it, talking to my husband, talking to my friends, walking around my house, You know, it just was so feeling this pit in my stomach constantly about this situation. And, but not sure what was going on in my life at that time. And it really threw me for a loop. Really threw me for a loop. So what did you do? Because there was a turn of events with this. Yeah. How did this situation lead you into what you're doing today and what you're now known for? Yeah.

17:49So I ended up going on vacation and it was only in July of 2019. So we're not talking about all that long ago. I remember going on vacation with my husband and my daughter and we were in Hawaii and we went up to the top of a mountain in Mount Haleakala, which I don't know if you've ever done that, but you get up in the morning, you go to sunrise and it's so beautiful. It's literally like heaven on earth. And my daughter, it's like 2.30 in the morning. You go from like 90 degrees to like 30 degrees, but it's beautiful. I mean, literally stunning. And my daughter, who was 17 at the time, she says, mom, oh my gosh, it's beautiful.

18:30It's heaven on earth. And I'm up there with the people I love. And my daughter says this and I said, yeah, it is. It's gorgeous. it's heaven on earth. And all I could think about was this narcissistic person. And I thought, no, no, no, no, no, no. You do not get to be here. You do not get to be here in heaven on earth. And that was that. The person who walked up that mountain was not the same person who walked down. I literally made a decision in that moment that I was done. And I realized in that moment I was being a victim. Every moment that I gave that person, I was allowing myself to be a victim.

19:18And I made a decision in that moment I was getting out of that partnership. And as soon as I got back from vacation, I told her I was done. And I told, you know, I was going to make it, you know, amicable, but of course she couldn't do that. But that's a whole other thing. But I decided I was going to finish my book, Negotiate Like You Matter, which I sent it out for endorsements. And I didn't even know Robert Shapiro, but he immediately emails me back and says, call me. And I was like, okay. So I called him and he says, he offers to write the foreword for the book. So like magic starts to happen.

20:02And during that time, I was teaching myself the YouTube algorithms and I started following Russell Brunson and I was learning about funnels and things like that. And so I started to do some YouTube videos. I thought I would do negotiation in general. and I started making videos on like clothing color psychology and how to get a job and things like that. I was getting like 30 views on YouTube, like nothing much. And at the same time, I'm, somebody told me about narcissism and this person had been a covert passive aggressive narcissist. And I thought, what is that? I never even heard that term before.

20:43And so I'm voraciously learning everything I can about narcissism, not for anything other than for myself. But then I was still practicing law part-time. So I was still flying back to Florida a week, a month from LA. So I started applying what I was learning about narcissism to my cases. And lo and behold, it's like I discovered penicillin. All of a sudden I start seeing movement in these people. and I thought, oh my God, I'm totally onto something. So in January of 2020, I do one video on how to negotiate with a narcissist. I had 300 subscribers on my YouTube channel at that point, and I got 700 views on that video.

21:37I thought, okay, I'm totally onto something here. So I decided to create a course called Slay Your Negotiation with a Narcissist. And I came up with this acronym, SLAY, Strategy, Leverage, Anticipate, and You. I decide, let me see if I can get the intellectual property on the word SLAY, which I was able to do. So I own that word. And I decide I'm going to go live with this course on March 11th, which I had no idea what's going to happen in the world at this point. And I do. I go live with it on March 11th. And I came up with this webinar, Three Must Have Secrets to Communicating with a Narcissist, which by the way, is still my evergreen webinar.

22:27And by January of 2021, I had over 100 ,000 subscribers on my channel. I know that for sure. And I had made$1.1 million on that course. Oh my gosh. Do you like fast paced and packed with value stories of successful entrepreneurs from failures to aha moments to what's working for them today? If so, you will love Entrepreneurs on Fire hosted by my friend, John Lee Dumas. Entrepreneurs on Fire stokes inspiration and share strategies to fire up your entrepreneurial journey and create the life you've always dreamed of. There are recent episodes about starting an RV rental business, the future of real estate, and how to cultivate a mindset of resilience have all got my wheels turning on how to generate more revenue and fulfillment.

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24:32Okay. So let's talk about this. Cause one thing I love about your story, Rebecca, is like, you were learning all of these pieces of the puzzle, but we weren't quite sure exactly how they were all going to fit together, right? You're learning YouTube algorithms. You're learning funnels. You're learning about digital courses. You're learning about all these things. And isn't it interesting to think too, that you could have gone with an entirely different lens, hit a totally different market or no market at all and how you kind of uncovered like, wait, this is getting traction. This is proof people are interested.

25:05This is where I can go. Walk me through what it's been like since you publish at first video on YouTube, saw that traction. Did you go hard? Did you go deep? Like, how did you kind of let that, like let the people speak of what they're most curious about and help that guide your next steps? Yeah, it wasn't so easy for me because I wasn't when I saw that first one hit, I thought, okay, I definitely need to make more content around that. But then I thought, I don't know if I really want to be the narcissism queen, you know, like, it wasn't like, right, I really wanted to be negotiation, like that was sort of where I wanted to go.

25:50But then I thought, well, let me just make eight videos on that. And I had talked to my brother who my brother was one of the founding executives of a company called DoubleClick, which is a digital company, which was originally purchased by Google a long time ago. And so he was like, you know, just ride the wave, you know, I mean, he just thought ride the wave. And at the time he was in the middle of a messy divorce and, you know, and I thought, okay, well, maybe I'll just do this for a little while and just see how it goes, you know? So, and it was really, honestly, when I started, the other piece of it, frankly, was I wasn't really ready to talk about my experience with having been in that relationship because I thought, how did I end up there?

26:54It was kind of shameful for me. You know? Interesting. Yeah. Because I thought I'm supposed to be strong. I was supposed to be this badass attorney. How did I end up there? And then I thought, I need to get over this blame and shame. And I needed to really let people know that they don't attach themselves to you because you have so little value. They attach themselves to you because you have so much. And they're really good at what they do. You know, they're good at mirroring you. They're good at love bombing you. And they're, and it's not just a romantic relationship. It's business relationships.

27:40It's all kinds of relationships. So I wanted to let people know that it could be anybody, you know, and the more authentic and vulnerable I got, the more traction I got, you know, and I couldn't be anybody but myself because, you know, I am, I, at least I try to be the same, you know, here and here and here, you know, I want to believe that I'm the same if we're having coffee or if we're having this conversation, you know, on a podcast. Right. And so I wanted people to know that it can happen to anybody. And the more I did that, the more views I started to get and the more people I started to help.

28:29What did it feel like going from that like very powerful position as a lawyer to this more like vulnerable, authentic person? You're no longer necessarily representing other people in their stories. You're telling your story. And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, that is so hard. I know so many entrepreneurs who just want to hide behind their work, right? Where it's like, look, but don't look too close. But I do think that you touched on something that authenticity and that vulnerability is what connects human to human. And the fact that you are this strong, powerful woman, and this still happened to you is a sign that it again can happen to anyone and it likely is.

29:08And so what did it feel like kind of putting on that new identity of like, okay, I can be me and I can tell my story and it can be received. How was that experience? It was hard at first. It was really hard. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I, you know, but the more emails and messages that I got, the easier that I got because I truly get, But I mean, now it's thousands, but they come in every single day, literally every day. I have a full team now of VAs that answer my emails and texts and DMs. It's literally full time of people whose lives we touch. and my head of sales, actually, she made the point that the people whose lives that were changing, it's not just them, it's generational.