Special guest Drasko Raicevic runs UpLevelMind.com, a coaching program and a podcast of the same name. His specialty is healing the human behind the entrepreneur so they can become better business owners. His UpLevel Mind method quickly and permanently eliminates the head trash and emotional blocks that stop entrepreneurs from becoming the leaders who can scale. As a result, his clients experience more of what matters to them: more profit, more freedom, and more fulfillment.
In this episode, we explore the internal struggles that hold us back from reaching our true potential. Learn how to overcome self-sabotage and align yourself with your highest, most authentic self, all while distinguishing between business problems and personal blocks. Discover what head trash is and how to shift your mindset from focusing on losses to gains. Uncover the difference between competency doubt and self-doubt and gain insights into unconventional ways to host a live event as an introvert. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain a better understanding of misunderstood concepts like boundaries and to gain the tools you need to overcome your inner critic and move forward with live shopping events.
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Get Out Of Your Way And Go Live With Drasko Raicevic
In this episode, our special guest is Drasko Raicevic, who runs UpLevelMind.com, a coaching program and podcast of the same name. His specialty is healing the human behind entrepreneurs so they can become better business owners. His UpLevel Mind method quickly and permanently eliminates the head trash and emotional blocks that stop entrepreneurs from becoming leaders that can scale.
As a result, his clients experience more of what matters to them, more profit, freedom and fulfillment, which sounds amazing. When I heard about Drasko’s work, I was curious about this. Nicolas and I often refer to the most downloaded episode, which is about overcoming the fear of going live and running a live shopping event. Our aim is to dive into these emotional blocks to overcome some fear so you can get more profit, freedom and fulfillment in your life while you are doing live shopping events. Before we get into that, here is a quick word from Nicolas.
First of all, Drasko, I’m excited to have you. It is a very different episode for us. It is a piece of the puzzle we haven’t explored. The human mind, mindfulness and being mindful about what you are doing and why you are doing it are so important in many aspects. I’m excited to dive into that. To the readers, speaking of mindfulness and being present, we would love a review from you if you like this show. It means a lot to us. Please, like and comment.
Tell us what we do well and what we do wrong. That is important because we want to be better in the future. Let’s continue to grow together. Let’s talk about live shopping. It is a space that is fascinating, growing, changing and evolving. We are trying to touch on all the different facets of the video eCommerce space. Let’s dive into this topic. On to you, Whitney.
A great place to begin is a question you asked me, Nicolas, when I was telling you about Drasko. You asked, “What is head trash?” I want to get that definition from Drasko to make sure it is clear for all of us, including the reader.
Thank you very much for having me on. I’m always excited when I can dive into this work in areas or industries where it is not usually talked about. With regards to your question, what is head trash? The way that I like to define head trash is it is anything and everything that gets in the way of you doing the thing you ought to be doing or anything that stops you from the potential that you know you have.
You talked about live streaming. We all logically know that there is nothing is going to happen to you if you go, you are live and you talk about something that you love and you know. As soon as we begin to think about it like, “Am I dressed right? What am I going to say? Is this the right time? Should I do it this way? Maybe I should do it that way,” all of that, even though it sounds relatively innocent, it is stopping you from doing this thing that, logically, you know it got zero consequences whatsoever.
Anything and everything that falls in line with that, even the emotions I feel, keeps me stuck or the actual narrative, like if somebody has hardcore inner critics, like, “No, you are stupid. You can’t do that,” that would all be head trash. I use that term because it is relatively easy for people to think what that is but it is an umbrella term that encapsulates everything from the behaviors that are self-sabotaging, the thoughts that keep us from doing and being our highest self and the emotions that keep us from acting in alignment with the results that we want.
Head trash is an umbrella term that encapsulates everything from the behaviors that are self-sabotaging, the thoughts that keep us from doing and being our highest selves and the emotions that keep us from acting in alignment with the results that we… Click To TweetThe follow-up question would be, you have identified a number of factors that prevent you from moving to the next step. How do you remove them? You ask those questions, “Am I wearing the right thing?” How do you overcome that idea that maybe is not relevant? How do you differentiate relevancy into this whole thing? If I’m a brand owner, I have expectations from my brand. I want a brand feel and look. How do you balance those two dynamics that are important, especially if it is the cofounder or the founder itself? I love to hear your feedback there.
I work with visibility with quite a lot of my clients. A lot of people consider personal development but if you want to do personal development, in my opinion, there are three main things you need to do. You need to get into a serious relationship. You need to have kids or start a business because each of these things is going to push you to the edges of where you are not free to be your highest, most authentic expressed self.
When it comes to business, why is that the case? The business, especially in the sense where you are the main business, you are a solopreneur or you have a few employees, it is you. It is bigger and smaller versions of you. I have to go out into the world and be me. I have to put a dollar value to that and get into this whole game of transactions. All of my money stories come up through that. All of my worthiness of like, “How big can I be,” come up with that. All of my stories from growing up around what it means to act big, be magnificent, talk about things I’m excited about and not play small, all of those things start to get pushed out and end up showing up in the business.
Oftentimes, we get this thing of I have business problems or have me problems that are seeping into the business. When people come and see me, I’m usually not the first person people come and see. It is usually once they have already invested in the business developments, whether that is coaching or they’ve been through some program like learning all the business stuff. They are doing everything. Yet, it is not working. Why is it not working? There is some part of me that is distorting all of my decisions and actions. It is showing up as a business problem.
How do I discern if something is a business problem or it’s a me problem? The number one thing is generally going to be repetitions and patterns. If I’m constantly in a feast and famine cycle as far as my revenue, chances are that it has a clear strategic element to it. It has something to do with consistency. The more important bit is what you are bringing to the table to allow for inconsistency to happen.
With clients I have had, I’m taking this example of the feast and famine, they will have grown up in areas or environments where chaos and instability were the norms. Their nervous system is more familiar. Despite the fact that it is an undesirable state, they are more familiar with being in chaos and instability. The stability they would get from a consistent business feels unfamiliar and unsafe. Put this in a different context. We all know that one person who keeps perpetually dating the same person. At some point, it is not them. It is you. That is number one. You are looking at the patterns generally as they are going to be showing up in the business as how I start working with my clients.
You specifically asked, “With brands and showing up, I have to have a nice brand image because that is what I want to do. How do I discern to what degree is that about me? What degree is that about the brand?” Yes, there is a balancing act there. It gets more personal because it is like, “What is this about?” If I need the brand to be a certain way, I can be okay. You are always going to bring some level of distortion to it. Things might look great on the outside but if they need to look great on the outside so you can feel okay, it is not about the brand. You are making the brand look good to feel safe and okay.
To a certain degree, that is okay. You might never need to face that but it doesn’t mean you are still not operating in distortion. You are never going to be fulfilled because the brand in the business can’t fill the hole in your soul. That is what I was joking about with regards to, “Thank you for asking me simple questions,” because it is a personalized answer depending on the pattern of the individual. If you want to dive deeper into that, I can. If you want to give me more specifics, I’m happy to dive into those but that would be my general not so short answer to your question.
I am what some people would call a personal development junkie. I love understanding the psychology of what gets in our way. Some of the things that you specialize in that I have noticed among people who are reading this and are trying to do live shopping is there is so much doubt. There is overwhelm. People have this yearning to be authentic. They want to follow the advice that often comes up on the show, which is to be consistent and be yourself. It is hard for them to get there because of some of the things you mention. There might be a disconnect. That doubt might be strong and they don’t even know where it is coming from. Maybe they feel overwhelmed and that is their excuse but there is something deeper underneath it.
I would love to build upon Nicolas’s question to understand some of the steps someone could take, specifically for creating content, which is ultimately what this is about. eCommerce is a huge part of this but when you are live streaming, you are creating content. As we often say, the best content in a livestreaming event is an authentic content. It is the content that is in alignment with you as a person with your brand and an alignment with the viewers. They feel compelled to buy. What are some steps somebody could take to overcome doubt and overwhelm?
I will approach this from multiple different directions. Number one is let’s first define what doubt is. It seems like a silly question like, “How do I define doubt and confidence?” There are these two terms that get thrown around quite a bit that gets lost in the repetition of them as popular terms generally do. When it comes to doubt, the first thing you want to distinguish between is competency doubt and self-doubt. I want to show up confidently.
People will say all the time, “I know what to do. I’m just not doing it.” I always challenge that because what you know and can show, you know but the things that you can’t show, you understand. This is important. Think of this as something simple like driving. It is very easy to understand how to drive. I have a wheel and two pedals. One says go and one says stop. I don’t know how to drive. I need to merge into traffic. I need to drive in different weather conditions. I need to know how to park. I know how to do all of these things. Knowing and confidence in knowing, in the sense of how to drive, is being able to produce evidence of the competency of that thing.
How does this relate to business? Business as a whole is a combination of skills and competencies that you have the potential to learn because other people have learned them. If we are talking about visibility and getting good at articulating your story, talking about your thing or selling it, there is a big skill component to that, which can’t be ignored. You can do all of the mindset work you want but at the end of the day, you need to know the business skills, which is why I generally work with more established entrepreneurs. We can heal all of your stuff but if you don’t have the skills, you can’t put that all together.
The competency doubt is like, “I don’t know how to do this thing.” That is okay. That is a learnable thing that you can get good at learning. You can put in the reps. You can create the evidence that eventually is going to produce that genuine confidence like, “I know how to sell when I go live.” We oftentimes confuse that with self-doubt. We don’t know a skill but what our brain hijacks that to mean are like, “I suck. I’m not good. I can’t do this.” The reality is self-doubt is we are doubting our ability to show up and be able to learn, adapt and stand in the space of public mistakes.
That is a whole different skillset of improving your capacity to handle certain emotions, improving your relationship and attitude towards failure and improving your self-image, self-worth and sense of self-efficacy. It was like, “How good can I be to myself knowing that I trust myself enough to figure it out?” It is important to make that distinction because people keep trying to solve the skill bit. They were like, “I need to get better.” I was like, “To what degree can you get better that is going to make up for the fact that you think you are unworthy and not good enough?” That is a self-doubt bit.
When you heal the self-belief aspect, you can make enough room to genuinely learn the competency aspect and together, that leads you into genuine confidence to be able to do things. I believe in myself I can learn. I’m executing that to learn and create evidence of this competency that leads to real confidence. That is when people are like, “How do you do it? You make it look easy.” It is generally the combination of both of those. Your ability to navigate it is discerning which one I need to work on and at what time.
I appreciate the way you are articulating that. Nicolas, I would love to know, does this spark any examples of things people say, like the emotional blocks or barriers? You are so passionate about live shopping, Nicolas. You are knowledgeable. You have created an incredible tool here at eStreamly. One thing I have heard you say a lot is, “People have these yeah buts like, ‘Yeah, I understand the value.’”
Nicolas can show you all the data on how much money you can make and how good this could be for your business. It sounds like people go, “Yeah, but this isn’t a priority. I don’t know how.” I would love to hear some of those from you, Nicolas. Drasko, maybe some specific things you could help work through those objectives. What comes to mind for you, Nicolas?
The common concern is mindset related because they could always be a yeah but. It is mostly because they don’t see enough value in the product. When we are over the idea of the value, they validate the value and understand that there is something to create a channel. The number one concern is, “The problem is I don’t have the time and the resources. I don’t know who is going to do it. I don’t feel comfortable going on camera myself.” Those are the things coming up.
I’m going to find a host. When you get to finding that host, come all the things that you start thinking about. “Why is that person going to say that I want them to control? How am I going to make sure that they are good on camera? Are they going to speak well about the product I’m passionate about? That person doesn’t know my product as well as they do.”
It becomes like, “Let’s hire someone and work with a creator.” All of a sudden, you are going into a live environment where things can happen because it is live. There is this emotion of all those million things that could happen. That becomes your way on your way. That is when you get to where the mindset is so important and I have seen that to be a blocker in many cases.
It is frustrating on your end because you are somebody who was like, “I know where this could go.” If you got out of your way, you could blow this thing up like, “I get it.” This is what I was saying. I’m generally not the first person that people see. I’m the person that people see once they smash their heads into the same wall repeatedly. What I would add to that is if you know that an opportunity exists in front of you. Let’s say it’s this bit with like, “I can use this service and show up in this way. I want to express myself in this way.”
When they consider new services working with me or new things they are going to do, they are going to default to like, “What can I stand to lose?” We make decisions based on, “If I invest in this thing, could I lose this much?” They are not thinking of it that way but they are thinking of it as, “I got to give up this money.” The attitude there is, “This money is never going to come back.” We are never thinking, “What can I stand to gain?” If you think about it, what could I stand to gain? Even if, in the short-term, I “lose” by doing something like this where I’m showing up, it goes back t to that self-belief thing.
I believe that I can get better with enough repetitions knowing that when it does pay off, it will pay off a magnitude bigger than any potential, even short-term losses. This applies to more than these types of services that are designed to trigger these insecurities that we do have. They also apply to invest in yourself in general. It is flipping that thing around. If everything happened in the best case scenario because we will default to the what if of the worst case scenario, have the wherewithal that part is trying to keep you safe, what makes me a smart human is having the final say, “What if everything goes right? What could I stand to gain from this?”
That is when people started to reach out to somebody like myself when it was like, “I’m holding myself back. I can’t use services like this one. I failed and it didn’t give me the results but part of me is willing to accept that I brought something to it.” That is where you can begin to make the change. Even if you think about it beyond investing in yourself, it’s the insurance to get the most out of all of the business knowledge you are acquiring, the services you are providing or the vendors you have working for you.
The way to get the insurance that all these things are going to work out is if you show up in the best way possible. You take that variable out. It was like, “My work and distortion are at a minimum. I can accurately judge whether this thing is going to give me the result that I paid for.” It puts you in a more empowering state. That would believe the change. What can I stand to gain? How can I take myself out of the equation and ensure that this thing pays off?
From the host’s perspective that is going to go live and always thinking about going live, when you talk about mindfulness and you got those two concepts, being an introvert or extrovert, quite often, I’m being told, “I’m not so much of an extrovert.” That is the barrier to moving on to that next step. In your perspective, for the folks in this audience that have been considering but are introverts, because I’m sure there are some, what do you recommend? Do you always say, “Go out there, bridge that gap and learn yourself?” Do you say, You are who you are?” What are the other solution if you want to do this to make it happen differently?
I love to hear your perspective from that standpoint because, in mindfulness, not everyone is at the same level of awareness as it relates to all those topics. I will tend to consider myself not so much involved in that space. If you talk to me about introverts and extroverts, I get that. I can see it. If we were to bring it down to that level, how would you articulate that idea?
The first thing I would challenge people is, “Do you know the definition of introvert and extrovert?” More often than not, when you look at clinical definitions of it, it is how you get energy back. We all love to be people. We are generally on a spectrum of both but all introvert generally tends to mean you recharge by being by yourself, whereas other individuals recharge by being around people. That is a basic clinical definition and the difference. It is one of those terms that often get repeated so many times. It loses its thing where people will use this label of, “I’m an introvert. Therefore, I can’t do this thing.” That is a nice boat to say, “My comfort zone is to not show up. It is nicer to say I’m an introvert and not do this thing.”
The first part is looking in the mirror and being like, “What is this about? Is the language that I’m using to describe this situation entirely accurate? What is my contact with reality?” That is number one. Number two is there is nothing wrong with being either or. I don’t think one is necessarily better than the other for this because what this is about is, at the end of the day, it is like, “How am I going to show up that works with my disposition to get this result?”
If that means I’m somebody who recharges by myself and showing up in this way is exhausting and if that is your self-awareness and you are honest with that, you got two choices. Number one, be very selective with regards to how you do that or be well practiced in it. You are like, “Can I buy myself in front of the mirror and say my pitch 100 times so that it is not as draining when I have to go live?” This is why people have rehearsed and have dress rehearsals. If I haven’t done that, have I earned my complaints?” That is number one.
Number two, can I do that long enough to hire somebody to do this? It is a whole other set of things with control and letting go of all of those things. It is not about this doesn’t work. It’s, “How can I make this work?” It is the question I try and ask. It is not the usual, like, “Force yourself to do it.” It is knowing what you know about yourself, knowing where your comfort zone is, knowing where you need to step outside of your comfort zone and how can we make that the easiest transition so that you can still show up to get this particular result and not go against yourself and something that doesn’t align with you.
I’m so glad that you brought this up, Nicolas and Drasko. You are spot on with what you said because I have often considered myself an introvert but that surprises people because I have done so much work on camera for many years. When I disclose that about myself, people are confused because they associate it with being shy and uncomfortable.
I love being on stage and public speaking. I thrive in that space. Speaking is a skill of mine but I get extremely drained by it. Even now, I would have blocked out time after this recording we are doing to rejuvenate, get back my energy and regain my capacity. I laid out all of my days with the awareness of my energetic capacity so I’m able to thrive in an environment like podcasting and being on camera.
I would add to that from my experience that if you consider yourself an introvert, are you an introvert or do you think you are shy? Have you not built up confidence? That is another thing that comes up for people. They think I’m naturally gifted as a speaker but they don’t recognize that I have been practicing this for most of my life because of my interest in doing it. It took a lot of time to build up this place. It is not a gift I was born with, speaking and being comfortable.
The other side of it is if you are truly an introvert with the definition that Drasko explained about energy, be aware of that so you can build the space to thrive when you show up on camera and also decide if you need other people to support you. That comes back to one other thing and perhaps the last thing I will touch upon with you, Drasko, before we wrap up. It is about boundaries.
You mentioned this on your social media and it was with team members but boundaries can be your personal boundaries. Boundaries can be what you are willing to do, what type of work and what you are going to pass on to somebody else, whether that is a team member or someone you hire to do something that you are either not skilled in or not interested in. I love to hear what other boundaries or how we can build upon the boundary examples I gave Drasko to thrive in the live streaming setting.
I love that because it comes up so often. I work primarily with entrepreneurs. All of these concepts come up all the time. Boundaries are one of those things that get misunderstood because it is important. People repeat it so many times. It is the same thing. It is good through the line here of misunderstood common terms. Boundaries at their core are all self-boundaries. Meaning it is not for other people to know where my boundaries are. It is for me to, first and foremost, know my boundaries.
Boundaries, at their core, are essentially all self-boundaries. It's not actually for other people to know where your boundaries are. It's for you to, first and foremost, know your own boundaries. Click To TweetWe will be aware of boundaries like, “I don’t like this. I don’t like that.” I only know it when somebody goes over my boundaries. It is one of those things you learn through. It is a contact sport. That is number one. I need to know what is in bounds and not in bounds. The part that is oftentimes missed is all boundaries are self-boundaries. It is on me to referee them. I have to be both the setter and the referee for boundaries to work.
If you think of it even as a sports setting, all the players know all the rules and boundaries but without the referee, everybody is going to break the rules. Everybody wants that advantage. Knowingly or unknowingly, maliciously or not, they are going to push those boundaries because they want to win. Without the referee, it is pointless to have boundaries. When it comes to ourselves, the first part is like, “I need to know what is okay for me.”
You mentioned that whole bit about introversion and my energy. “You already know my boundary is after I do an event like this, I need my recharge time. I know that about myself and I have put it on my calendar.” Great job on knowing and setting your boundaries. If afterward somebody comes into the room and they were like, “No, I need you right now,” and you say yes when you feel no, what you have to work on is the refereeing of those boundaries. You got people pleasing. The tendencies start to come up like, “Who am I to ask for my needs?” It uncovers this whole other thing.
When you put that in a business perspective, it was like, “How do I set that with my clients? Can I say no to my clients when I need to recharge and it is not okay for them to text me at 12:00 PM on a Friday? Am I breaking my boundaries there?” Many entrepreneurs I work with have team members. They will opt to give the solution.
It is like with children. I’m not downplaying anybody but it is that same classic example of, “You can watch your child struggle to tie their shoes or you could tie the shoes for them. What are my boundaries with regard to what degree am I okay to let go of control and am I okay with a good enough solution to move the project forward? What are my boundaries with regard to knowing my role and how I show up with all these things?”
These are all big questions. They are going all over the place but it is one of those things that shows up in every aspect of you as a business owner, which is why it is such an important question to ask because you could be thinking, “I have crappy team members. I can’t hire properly. Nobody there wants to work.” The whole time, you are breaking your boundaries of what you think needs to happen.
I’m always curious about this. You do such a great job in helping people think through these things that they might not even realize they are struggling with. Nicolas, before we wrap up the show, do you have any final questions? Are there any obstacles we haven’t covered that could help people overcome their self-doubts, emotional blocks and head trash to going live?
We have been talking about this mental space that you have to be in going live. In some way, reading this episode ties well with what kind of leader you are. Talking about those boundaries, how do you want to transpose yourself? How do you want to execute? How do you want to show the world who you are? It has been a fascinating episode in the sense of having this topic brought up. I will need to read it the second time to make sure I get everything right or at least I understand the whole thing.
It has been interesting. Thank you, Drasko, for coming up on the show and taking it from a different perspective. We have been on the show talking about the business of the eCommerce aspect, the creative economy and this different thing that is going on with the recession and different trends but we never looked at it from a 10,000 feet view. What is going on in your mindset? From a mindfulness perspective, either something that you should look inside or look looking outside.
If you like this episode, please let us know. We would love to hear your perspective and see if it is something that we should continue exploring because that is new for us looking at that from that perspective. As you all know, we do have a community, The Live eCommerce Community. A lot of our guests are in the community. They continue giving their perspective and support to the members. You may be a host, a brand, a creator or someone curious about this space and you want to continue the conversation to the different levels that we are approaching it. You are more than welcome to come to the community. Thank you, Drasko, for a fantastic episode. Thank you, Whitney.
Thanks, Nicolas. It is nice to hear you wrap up the episode. I wasn’t expecting that. You gave me a little gift there and demonstrated what it is like to work as a team. For those interested in Drasko’s work, he has a phenomenal podcast. If this left you wanting more, go check out his podcast. You can also go to eStreamly.com, where we have resources to help you. Once you get over the head trash, the next step sounds like, according to what Drasko shares, you can dive into this a lot more and get going with live shopping events. Thanks so much for reading and we will see you in the next episode.
Important Links
- UpLevelMind.com
- The Live eCommerce Community
- Podcast – UpLevel Mind Podcast
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