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Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer podcast. On today’s show, we are talking with Jocelyn Mozak. We’re talking about investing in yourself. Jocelyn is such a great storyteller, great speaker and really inspiring. I recommend get out your notepads or your note-taking devices, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. Before we kick off the show, here is a word from our sponsor.
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Lee:
Use the code trailblazer when you sign up for 20% off. Welcome to the show. And today we have Jocelyn Mozak from Mozak Design. Jocelyn, I know how you are, but for the listeners, how are you doing?
Jocelyn mozak:
I am doing fabulous.
Lee:
We’ve already had a wonderful conversation, haven’t we? Before we even hit record. We actually did a podcast episode before we hit record.
Jocelyn mozak:
I know. It’s so hard. We start chatting and off we go. Exactly right.
Lee:
Folks, if you don’t know Jocelyn, she is a agency owner. You’re a public speaker, contributing author. You’re many things. But instead of me an introduction and it sounding red because I’m reading it, it would be wonderful.
Jocelyn mozak:
I worked so hard to write that. Jeez.
Lee:
It would be wonderful if you could share who you are, what you’re all about, and just to teach us a little bit about you before I hit you with a few questions.
Jocelyn mozak:
Oh, God. Well, that’ll take 10 minutes right there. Oh, that’s fine.
Lee:
I’ll sit back. I’ve got a coffee.
Jocelyn mozak:
You’ve got your coffee. Well, yeah. So it’s like 4:00 in the morning for you, 5:00 in the morning at 9:00 PM for me. And that is the great part of all of us being so connected, we really can just connect with people at any time of day and just have this. So, yeah. So, Jocelyn Mozak, I have been working with WordPress for 10 years now. I literally, so how I started with WordPress and this whole adventure I’ve been on was I used to work at Intel. I did everything by the books. I got the right grades. I got the right education. I got the right schooling. I got the right job. And I found myself at 25 making a lot of money and being miserable. And Then I had my first child and decided, Okay, I’m going to do the stay at home mum thing. Let me tell you, for anyone who’s tried that, too much bonding with your children is not a good thing. I found myself the geek that I am. The way I learned WordPress was I went to iThemes at the time. I literally printed one of their themes and read the code.
Jocelyn mozak:
This is how what engineers do. We read code for fun when our kids are playing at the park.
Lee:
I feel that elevates to more nerd level as opposed to geek level.
Jocelyn mozak:
Yeah, but I love that because I’m one of those people where I just read the code and it just makes sense. Really, it naturally started. I had no intention of running a business. My goal when I started was to not go back to Intel and to cover the nanny and to not go nuts as a stay at home mum because I didn’t want to have… I was in a position where I would have made more money working and hiring a nanny, but something in my head said, No, this isn’t what I want. But at the same time, going from being this academic person to suddenly home with a child, it wasn’t the easiest transition. This gave me an opportunity to accomplish something, to achieve something. Right off the bat, I made what I would say one of the best decisions I ever made, which was to set the pattern of investing in myself. Meaning I was at a mom’s coffee shop and I ran to someone and she said, If you’re thinking about making this an actual business, you got to talk to my business coach. I gave her a call, no intention of moving forward.
Jocelyn mozak:
In that 15 minutes, I knew it was the difference between me trying this and probably failing, because we all know how to do our skill. I knew how to be technical. Did I have a clue how to run a business? No. And I knew in that moment that this was the difference between me trying it and probably failing versus me trying it and who knows? And yeah, that was really, I would say, a huge, looking back, an impressive thing I did for myself and something I’m grateful for. I call her my business’s mommy. We are still friends to this day. That’s cute. Yeah, exactly. She acts like my mum. She’s probably about the same age as my mother, and both of them lay claims to me in different ways.
Lee:
I think every business needs a mommy.
Jocelyn mozak:
Yeah, exactly. Really, Helping me step into this because we do know how to be business owners, but we get in our own way. You are joking that I say that in all my Facebook lives, but it’s true. We know what we need to do in business. We get in our own way because it’s all of our, want to go through a personal development exercise? Start your own business. Every single insecurity challenge, it’s all going to come to the surface. I ran my business and then naturally started getting really busy. And brought on one person, then another person, and all of a sudden I’m like, Oh, my goodness, I think I have a company here. I’m an accidental entrepreneur. Never expected this, but really have loved it. I personally I felt as a freelancer that there was a ceiling as to what I could deliver to my clients because we all know in websites, there’s so much that goes into it. There’s the graphics design, the implementation, the SEO, the support. There’s this whole breadth, and none of us can be experts in everything. I really saw growing a team as my being able to play and really deliver in the next level up of collecting a team of experts.
Jocelyn mozak:
So my graphics designer can do web design if she had to. I can build anything. I can draw a picture if I have to. And so we understand enough about each other’s world that we can actually make decisions that impact each other well. And the end game is our client wins. And what I really love about having a team is that I feel like my clients get even better because there are times where she’ll deliver something and I’ll be like, Yeah, not good enough. And we’ll internally go back and forth before it even gets to the client. It’s like the calibre of what we’re delivering is higher because we have that back and forth. And that’s just my culture in my company. I decided very early on that if my team can heckle the boss, I’m doing a good job. That’s good. Yeah. It’s like we all show up with a common goal of delivering for the client. Yes, at the end of the day, it is my business. Yes, at the end of the day, occasionally, I have the final say. But in general, I want them to be able to just as easily come to me and say either you need a time out, you are stressed, and my team has done this to me.
Jocelyn mozak:
At Christmas, I try to… That’s the beautiful thing about having a team. You can actually go on vacation.
Lee:
Oh, yes.
Jocelyn mozak:
They actually get mad because a boss pokes their nose in just enough to get excited. They’re like, We will call you if there’s a problem. Go away.
Lee:
Yes.
Jocelyn mozak:
And it’s beautiful. And one of the things I’ve come to realise is we owe it to our clients, too, to have this infrastructure because the vacation I planned for, Christmas I planned for. I got breast cancer seven years ago. I didn’t plan for that. Things happen. And so growing sometimes forces you to put systems and processes into place that maybe we should have right off the bat.
Lee:
I think I would echo that. So just recently, my wife’s mother, she’s been struggling with cancer for 25 years. And over the last few months, her health really, really, really deteriorated. And I am really thankful that I had a team in place when we had systems and processes in place so that I could actually take nearly two months out of the business to actually support her whilst, sadly, she passed away just a few weeks ago. But if it was not for the team, if it had not been for that, and also doing things like batching content for the podcast, all of that stuff had already all been done, which just allowed me to literally step away from the business for two months, which was an absolute blessing because I was able to support my wife through something really, really difficult and obviously be there for my mother-in-law and my children, et cetera. I just wanted to echo the absolute importance.
Jocelyn mozak:
Yeah. I used to dig my heels in if I don’t want to document. I’m an engineer. I don’t do this whole word thing. I don’t write. Css, I love. Words, no. But what I didn’t realise was when I started to write these things down, how much when you get things out of your head. You may have read the Getting Things Done book by David Allen, GTD. Great philosophy. It’s all about basically stop filling up all your head space with all these things where you’re like, I got to remember this and this and this and this. Just get it down on paper and then your brain can let it go. And we owe it to ourselves. We owe it to our clients to have that consistent product. And when we do it just ourselves, we’re like, Oh, I always remember the things I check. But do you really? And it’s sometimes freeing to actually get it out of your head and just have it down on paper. I’m speaking in, I think about a month. I’m speaking at a WordCamp, Portland and Seattle on the same topic. I submitted three hours from each other. I submitted two different talks, but they both picked the same one.
Jocelyn mozak:
I’m like, All right, people, I’ll do the same talk. But it’s cloning yourself through automation. It just speaks about ways where I’ve actually was trying to write out my systems for a VA to pick up, and all of a sudden I went, Oh, light bulb went off. I can use Zapier.
Lee:
Oh, yeah. Sorry. I am really glad you say Zapier because everyone tells me off and says it’s Zapier, but I think it’s Zapier. Sorry, carry on.
Jocelyn mozak:
Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, I could totally be hacking the name. Does not matter? I just feel validated. Okay, well, I’m glad to do that for you. All I know is I was setting this up for my team to do, and I realised also I’m like, I can automate this. Just the ability for those repetitive tasks where it’s like when someone comes into your business, what do you do? You set them up in your to-do software, you set them up in your invoicing software, you might make a Dropbox folder, you might make a Slack channel. You can actually create a little… I have a little tutorial, but I literally made a Gravity form on my site that hooks into Zepier. When I enter the one form, it goes out running to Dropbox, it runs over to Slack, it runs over to teamwork, it runs over to harvest. It sets all this up for me, and I know it’s done correctly and immediately.
Lee:
You know it’s done. And there’s the engineer and you getting very excited.
Jocelyn mozak:
I can hear it. I know. I’m sorry. I geek out over these things, but it makes me happy. The other thing I found that works really well as far as growing a team has been I’m a very a terrible person. Hopping on making a Loom video is a no-brainer for me. So that’s what I do. I have my team, and I just will literally be like, Okay, here’s how you do blah, blah, blah. I let them have the joyous task of repeating it themselves and taking screenshots and notes and putting it in a Google Doc that becomes part of our systems and processes internally. I minimise my time by saying, Okay, I want to just record a a video. Their cost is a lot less than mine, so it’s fine if it takes them 4 hours to turn said video into screenshots and documentation. We then have documentation, and they’ve learned it by going through the process. I found that to be something that has worked fairly well for me because I don’t myself want to write the documentation. I’ve found a roundabout route.
Lee:
I like what you’re doing because you’re playing to the strengths as well of your team. We’re very similar. I can record a video very, very quickly about something. And then Larissa is phenomenal at creating documentation. In fact, she actually creates documentation as she goes. She’s very organised, et cetera, but that’s her strength, and I let her do that. What a godsend. I know she’s amazing. Because I don’t even know where to start. And then I waffle with the text and too many screenshots and all that stuff. So nowadays I do a quick video and it’s just over to Larissa or she’s already doing it because she’s worked it out for herself. And I just float home thinking, thank God for my amazing team.
Jocelyn mozak:
Yeah. I absolutely love my team. My team is international. I have team members who are both US-based because that’s my home country. I’m in Oregon, so I have a graphics designer is in Washington. I’ve got a team in Arizona, but I also have overseas team. I have a team in India and the Philippines. I really love… Someone asked me at the last word camp I spoke at in Minneapolis, they asked me, What do I do about turnover? I gave them blank stare. I said, I don’t have that. They said, What do you mean? I said, I don’t know what to say. The very person who’s worked with me five years ago is still on my team. I don’t know what to say. I think some of it is culture, but I think some of it I try to do. I’ll just drop these nuggets because I think they’re important. For my US team, what I like to do is use an Amazon wishlist. Raises or bonuses are a short-lived thing, but I have bought my team things from Monet pictures. Knock offs, of course, but you know what I mean? The Monet pictures, the food dehydrators, coffee, the randomest things.
Jocelyn mozak:
But what I love to do is instead of giving them money, I have them create a wishlist. When I feel that moment, I just go on there and randomly something appears at their doorstep. I feel like, especially since they picked it out, that’s very impactful. Then with my team overseas, what I’m able to do since the dollar goes a lot further is, Joshua, in the Philippines, they’ve been having horrible monsoons. He went and told me, it’s like my neighbor’s roof collapsed. I have a team in the Philippines and India. I was able to be like, You know what? You go take care of your neighbour. You are paid this week. Don’t worry about it. That is not your concern. I can shuffle work around. You go take care of your community. And of course, to him, it’s like, when do you get a boss like that? And for me, I’ve got an incredible employee who will go to bed for me always. My team in India blows me away for my birthday this year. So sweet. He’s been with me over five years now. His wife baked a chocolate cake. They wrote my name on it.
Jocelyn mozak:
They sang me happy birthday, and his two girls wished me happy birthday. I mean, hello. I was sharing with you earlier my values of just connexion and impact. That’s what warms my heart. I sometimes will beat myself up over my bottom line, the dollars and cents, and I compare against the money I would make in at Intel. And no, I would make more money if I was at Intel. I know that I have the Ivy League degrees to make a lot more money at Intel. But I don’t know that you get to touch lives like you do when you’re a business owner. I’ll never forget the first time the person who’s in Arizona I paid him like a thousand bucks and he had gone out and bought a mattress. That was the first time I realised, holy shit, I’m impacting somebody’s life. And so my favourite day of the month is payday, not my payday, their payday. It’s pretty damn cool what we get to do as business as owners, once you grow a team, you really are… You get to be a blessing to so many people. It’s not something I take lightly, and it’s something I thoroughly enjoy having this opportunity to do.
Lee:
With regards to blessing other people as well, I did notice You do work with a lot of nonprofits as well. It seems to be your heart is for helping change lives. Would that be right? And how did you get into the nonprofit area as well?
Jocelyn mozak:
I don’t know. Can I say accidental again? I think that’s probably true.
Lee:
You can say that as many times as you want.
Jocelyn mozak:
It’s really true. I think it’s probably so common for a lot of us. We find ourselves in spaces we don’t necessarily intentionally go after. But yeah, I have worked with a tonne of nonprofits. I don’t know that I focus per se on the niche as much as the relationship. For example, I don’t enjoy working with big companies that have all these divisions because it’s like, okay, so they’re a really big paycheck, but it doesn’t make me want to show up in the morning. A nonprofit, even a small business owner, even the local dance studio, when you have that ability to have someone just be so excited or you impact their lives, nonprofits certainly, where you can put in a simple system where suddenly you save them all this administrative work or you do a simple adjustment where suddenly they’re really nurturing their donors or they’re speaking. One thing nonprofits don’t realise, they’re a business, too. And so how they can make sure they balance both the income they need with service that they’re giving. I don’t know. I think it’s just for me what lights me up maybe has less to do with whether it’s for or nonprofit and more to do with the human being that I have the blessing to work with and knowing that I’m impacting their life.
Jocelyn mozak:
I will actually maybe temper one thing I just said because I originally thought even bigger clients got stuffier and less rewarding. I currently have a new client, it’s been a couple of months now, who’s in the pharmaceutical business business. You’d never think. But I feel as a provider, so valued and so respected and so just respected that I love working with them. I don’t know, maybe it’s less, as I said, about what the client is doing and more about the relationship and the fact that I’m showing up and really getting fulfilled by the people I’m connecting with. Because that was a challenge I had at Intel. I literally felt like I was a little hamster on a wheel going round and round. I made tonnes and tonnes of money, but I didn’t feel like it was to what end. How am I actually touching anybody’s life? I’m sure I was. I’m not saying that these things we do for big corporations don’t touch lives, don’t impact maybe on a bigger scale, but we don’t feel it. That’s hard. That’s tangible, isn’t it?
Lee:
It is. If you are contributing to the iPhone, well, great. But you can’t necessarily see or feel or get that feedback loop either from the people that you’re dealing with because there’s people all around the world using whatever the features you developed.
Jocelyn mozak:
That’s the blessing. That’s where even in corporate and where we are, it matters who we work with. The comment of not every dollar is created equal. In corporate, the team is what will make or break your experience. When you’re a small business owner, every dollar is not created equal. I have learned the hard way that the dollars that cause you pain, they’re very expensive dollars. They drag you down so much that it’s just not worth it. Trust your intuition honour yourself, and just because you could, should, blah, blah, blah, work with the people that light you up because that is what has you energised, and that’s what will have your business just flourishing.
Lee:
That’s where you’re going to give your best as well, isn’t it? I mean, we very often had a company approaches, and it’s a huge sounding project with tonnes and tonnes of potential money coming in, and you’re thinking, Whoa, this is very financially great, but what we’re doing is not very excited. I don’t think we’re going to do this. I don’t think this correlates with reason we are here or the people that we want to touch. And we’ll very often pass that off.
Jocelyn mozak:
But also what I spoke to you about before we even got on official recording is I’ve been blessed this past year. I’m 42, and I’ll tell you, 40s are a very interesting age. I feel like my 20s, I was doing what I was supposed to do. My 30s, I raised my kids. In my 40s, as my kids are hitting middle school and high school, I feel like a little gopher. I’m sticking my head up like, Oh, my God, there’s a whole world around here. And As I explore things like speaking and stuff, I was really blessed to be asked to be a contributing author to a book that we’ve put on Amazon called Women Rising. I joke that it’s chicken soup for the female entrepreneur’s soul, although I know many a male who has purchased the book. But I speak to the fact that really you need to create your business to serve you and be careful how much you judge yourself against others and how much you judge others against yourself. I mean, I, when I started my business with kids were two and five, I needed my business to make me a sane mum.
Jocelyn mozak:
That meant that I needed it to not necessarily support the household. I needed it to give me the outlet so I could show up as a mother who is happy, someone who is fulfilled. Now that my kids are older, my needs are shifting. If I was the breadwinter of the household, my goal might be very different. It might be that that client that for you is not a good fit does not seem worth it. For somebody else who says, You know what? I’m paying for my son or my daughter’s college tuition because of this client. Then that client makes sense. And so really, it’s hard to do, at least I think it’s very hard to do, but really trying to step into being grounded in what do I need for me right now. The blessed thing we have in having our own business is that it can change. My business of what I had, my My kids were younger. It’s very different than now. Now I’m speaking at five board camps this year. Next year, I want to speak at more. I’m getting companies to sponsor my speaking. I have these crazy dreams of being a Ted speaker in a 10K keynote.
Jocelyn mozak:
I have these crazy dreams. I don’t know if they’ll come to pass. It doesn’t really matter. It’s just now that my boys are hitting middle school and high school, they can’t be my life anymore. They are going to go off, and it’s important that they’re not what filled me up anymore, that I have my own path. Now I can do all these things. I was in Canada last week because my kids were older. It’s all good.
Lee:
And so it could change. You are selling the 40s, by the way. I’m 36, and I was thinking, I’ll be 40 soon. But actually, you’re making it sound pretty cool.
Jocelyn mozak:
I can give you the complaints. I don’t know what this stomach is that I’ve never seen in my life. I’m one of those super- I’ve had that for ages. Okay, well, I’m one of those super thin women that’s just like, Excuse me, can we talk about this? But I’ll tell you, I am feeling more alive than I have in my life because I think it’s an interesting place to be. It’s like, okay, do you have kids?
Lee:
I do, yes.
Jocelyn mozak:
How old are your kiddos?
Lee:
Eighteen and eleven.
Jocelyn mozak:
All right. So my eldest is, I think, 12, seventh grade. You’re in sixth grade, sounds like.
Lee:
I don’t know what the grades are.
Jocelyn mozak:
Okay, it’s a different school system. Exactly. But basically, TMI is about six years till hopefully they leave the house and stay gone. I mean, they can visit.
Lee:
Hopefully. Yeah, exactly. Get out.
Jocelyn mozak:
I’m sorry. I love my kids, but I want my life back. I feel like I’m doing my 20s again, but I’m doing them right this time because, as I said, when you start off your life, you’re just following what At least I followed what I thought I was supposed to do. I never had this rebellious streak. I just did what I was supposed to do. It served me very well. Don’t get me wrong. I have the house. I have the savings. I have the stability because of my obedient past. But I am, for the first time in my life, doing stuff that makes no sense. Being an engineer made sense. Being a speaker who wants to talk on a Ted stage, hello, but why the hell not?
Lee:
But would it be fair to say that there is something deep down inside of you that is driving all of this, like a why, a reason for you to be doing all of this?
Jocelyn mozak:
In my case, it’s because of validating myself and validating others. I’m a verbal processor, so I really like to share that, as I told you, Our business is just like parenting. We’re making it up as we go. Being a mother, I was the first person to say, The years are short, but the days are long. I think we don’t serve anything by pretending it’s perfect and easy. As a matter of fact, my goal when I speak is to, for one thing, give permission to validate and to say, You think the person on stage has it together? Guess what? They’re finding their way, too. When I speak about growing a team, I talk about how you grow and learn and you shrink, and then you prepare and you grow and you learn. For example, I was making decisions in my own business based on what I thought I should do, which means I brought in a project manager, and she started handling my clients for me, which financially meant I was keeping more money. Emotionally, I was miserable. I love my clients. I don’t want to do sales and bookkeeping all day long. I had to take that back.
Jocelyn mozak:
I had to realise that, well, for some people that worked for me. I need to be the touch point to my clients because that’s what fills me up. And so forget the fact that it meant more money for me not to do it. That’s what I needed to do. So sometimes, I think realising that in business, there’s no failure. There’s just learning and pivoting and learning and pivoting.
Lee:
One of the things we often say is fall in love with your agency again. It is very much about making sure you’re doing what you love doing, that you are enjoying doing rather than what you think you need to be doing. Do I actually need to have a physical office with glass internal walls and a pool table and loads of staff? Because I’ve been there and it’s really freaking stressful and I hate it every second of it.
Jocelyn mozak:
Yeah. And I’ve learned for myself, I hate my home office. I’ve learned I need a co-working space. I don’t need an office. I need the noise. I need the hum of something going on. And so I deal with the guilt of feeling like I should be able to save a couple of hundred a month and work from home. However, the reality is, much happier camper when I have transition time, I drive somewhere and I have the hum of an office. So it’s really honouring what we need for us.
Lee:
Massive shout out to co-working spaces and to places like Starbucks. It’s just having people around you, isn’t it?
Jocelyn mozak:
See, I can’t do Starbucks because I need my set up. I need my huge monitors. Okay. I don’t do well on the little laptop.
Lee:
Fair enough. But we actually play sometimes in our office. So we have an office in the same village. We finally managed to secure a premises here so that we can… So me and Larissa live in the same village and we can both walk to the office now. We did have a stint where we had to work in my home office for two months whilst we were waiting. One lease had expired and we were waiting for the new place to be ready because they were building the new ladies’ toilets. Took two months to build ladies’ toilets.
Jocelyn mozak:
I see. They better be fancy.
Lee:
They’re the best toilets in the world, apparently.
Jocelyn mozak:
Okay, you’ll take that on second-hand information there.
Lee:
Anyway, we moved in, which is phenomenal But it’s a lovely room. We’re in the village. We’re really, really happy by it. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s perfect for us because we just get to enjoy it. We have fun and we’re a stone store away from home. But also we’ll often actually play coffee shop noises. You can actually go on to Spotify. Oh, jeez. I know. It’s just because it’s the noise of other people. It’s like the ambient noise.
Jocelyn mozak:
Yeah. Well, and I’m so sensitive. I mean, I put on music and that shifts my mood. I’m very sensitive to music, and I also am very sensitive being careful what lyrics I’m listening to because what we take in does impact us. I pay attention to the lyrics that I’m listening to. It’s knowing us and knowing everyone Everyone’s going to be sensitive to different things.
Lee:
I would love some recommendations for some soundtracks for the office then.
Jocelyn mozak:
I have the craziest… Mine’s so eclectic. I mean, literally, I listen to… So maybe it’s not rap, country, and Christian. Now, you’d think none of those have anything to do with each other, but really a lot of them because they’re very storytelling. A lot of them, I just love the songs that basically talk about life. And one of my favourite songs talks about effectively, Don’t Judge, you have no clue what’s going on in their life. So that sits well with me. And yeah, no, I mean, it’s been fun. I feel exceptionally blessed to have wandered down this path. And no, it’s not easy, but the things I’ve done. I’m grateful I invested in that coach so many years ago. I still to this day have a coach, and I’ve actually started coaching, which is really scary. I mean, speaking and coaching are certainly me putting myself out there going, I’m not sure I’m qualified, but everyone says I’m decent at it, so I’m going to borrow their faith in me until my own faith in me catches up. But I really do love it, and I think it’s important to have some form of mentorship or something like that to really help you clear through your own weeds.
Jocelyn mozak:
Because what I find when I’m coaching my clients is we all know what we need to do, and usually what we need to do is right in front of us. And so really, it’s figuring out why are we dancing around it? What’s so scary? And then having someone hold you accountable and hold your hand. I mean, I’ve literally with coaching clients been like, I will be under my desk, you be under yours, hit sent. And see, they didn’t bite. They actually said yes. And it’s that It’s the effort we all need. I think we all need it. We all need a therapist. We probably all could benefit from a coach. I don’t know. Have you had coaches through your career?
Lee:
I’ve had coaches, and I also do coaching. There you go. And with coaching, I’ve realised that I know way more than I ever give myself credit for. So you were saying that you borrow the faith of people until you have faith in yourself in that. And I think through coaching, through offering advice, through having conversations with other people, you’re like, holy, where the heck did all that come from? I need to apply this now. Yeah, seriously. I’m coaching people, but I’m actually thinking, Lee, sort it out. You now need to do this as well. You’ve got to lead by example. You can’t tell people they need to do X, Y, and Z and not be doing it yourself. But like you, I’m also an outward processor. If I sit in quiet and think, I get nowhere. If I talk out loud with someone for a little while, all these eureka moments drop place and everything just connects and it becomes a hell of a lot easier to understand things.
Jocelyn mozak:
Yeah, it’s like when you actually write the email to ask the question, you answer it. By the time you’re done, you never actually have to press send. And I know my own personal strengths is I’m someone who’s really good at… I can hear a lot of chaos and I can hear the threads, and I can identify the clear next step. And so as a coach, I don’t necessarily need to know the answer. They know their own answer. My job is to let them vomit everything that they’re doing, let them ping-pong. It’s like how I help clients. I work really well with creative clients because while I’m an engineer and I’m very organised, I can also do some creativity. I can let them ping-pong, but then my engineering kicks in to say, Okay, I’ve let you ping-pong enough that I understand where you are trying to go. You can’t get there on your own. Now I’ve heard you. Now I’m going to help get you there. I’m going to use my own skill set of structure, which you don’t have because you’re exceptionally creative. I’m just creative enough to be able to honour that and hear it and understand it.
Jocelyn mozak:
And so I think that’s personally for me, growing into coaching my own recognition is that I don’t need to know the answer. My skill set is more in helping them find their own way to their own answer Because we know our own internal answer. And then, as I said, beyond that, it’s called try pivot, try pivot. There’s no magic. We don’t know what the answer is. We only know what we’re ready to try and learn from.
Lee:
Absolutely. I think as well with coaching, it helps us be humble ourselves. Not only are you helping that person, but it’s forcing you to confront things in yourself, I think, as well. Every time I’ve ever had a coaching conversation, I’m not going there telling them, Oh, yes, I’ve done it all before and I’m an absolute expert, and this is exactly what you need to do. It actually makes me… It reminds me of where I have been and where I’m going. Like you said, you’re actually able to tease the answers out of the person because they do know. And a lot of the time, they just need company along the way. They need someone walking beside them on the journey. And now and again, just a little bit of permission to go ahead and do whatever it is that they really want to do. And they feel they just need somebody to say, Okay, I’m with you. Go for it. Let’s do this. And then that just unleashes really exciting. So if you can, folks, do coach as well, find somebody who needs some help. Even if it’s just having a coffee with someone once every few weeks to help somebody else, then you’re blessing someone’s life.
Lee:
And selfishly, you’ll get blessed, too.
Jocelyn mozak:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Trust me. I mean, as you said, there are times I had an amazing opportunity at the last word camp where someone asked me a question afterwards, and I was able to better stand up for her than I would be able to stand up for myself. It had to do with a retainer and hours rolling over. I completely understood the pushback she was getting and where she was struggling with it. I would have struggled in the same way. Yet for someone else, I was able find the words to give her a voice to say why she could push back to a client. It’s sometimes almost easier. It’s easier when you’re not in it.
Lee:
It is. It’s easier to see the path because I think you said earlier that a lot of the times our mind will be cluttered with all sorts of things, and it’s very hard to see a path through all of that. Whereas if you do have a coach, you’ve got someone who can just help guide you through all of the thoughts that are going on in your mind. Because I think the industry we’re in, we’re all very creative. We also have lots of new and exciting ideas all of the time. And the temptation is to go off down those rabbit holes as well. So again, having somebody with you, helping you along the way.
Jocelyn mozak:
That is what I feel like I do a lot. It’s like, focus, focus, focus. Over here, back over here, back over here.
Lee:
Now, the great news is this podcast is listened to by about 99% WordPress enthusiasts, which is awesome. So I just I wanted to give a shout out before we wrap up. Did you say you’re speaking at Portland and Seattle WordCamp?
Jocelyn mozak:
I am. They’re both the first and second weekend of November. I’m sure I’ll be hitting some other WordCamps next next year. So certainly, I love speaking at word camps. I would say, I guess I can give a quick story if we have the time for my first. Please do. Okay. So I spoke for the first word camp I ever spoke at, my blogger submitted me. Okay? So this is what I mean by just jump. And sometimes you need someone to shove you. I wanted to speak. There was no way in hell I was going to submit myself to speak at a word camp, but I wanted to, but I was too scared. And so somebody else literally filled out the application and submitted it for me. I got the acceptance letter, and I’m like, Oh, shit. You got me into this. You’re getting me out of it. She helped me write my very first talk two years ago, and I got up there, and I absolutely loved it. I’ve been speaking ever since. I share that just simply to say, go for it. The only thing that a lot of people feel like, Oh, the people who speak must be so much more knowledgeable, they just threw their hat in the ring.
Jocelyn mozak:
Throw your hat in the ring. You might get up there and love it like I did. I literally got up there with a microphone and was like, Oh my God, I love it up here. I mean, I’m one of the unique group. I was speaking up in Canada. I have no anxiety on stage. I don’t know why. You might get up there and be like me. You might get up there and hate it. Either way, throw your hat in the ring. I would highly encourage people to go to their word camps and to speak. You have just as much to contribute as anybody else. Really, we’re just there to connect, share stories, share experiences, and just show up authentically. And as I said, my goal when I speak is to just show up imperfectly. I think that’s the best gift we can give each other, is to just show up and share, not in the the energy of I know, but in the energy of I’m sharing. And if someone else has something else to contribute, wonderful. So I don’t know. I just have loved the word camp, and the more I speak, the more I thoroughly enjoy that opportunity.
Jocelyn mozak:
So I encourage everybody to throw their hat in the ring if they’re even slightly considering it. And if you need to do what I did, go talk to a friend and they’ll submit it for you. Trust me, your friend will happily toss you over that ledge.
Lee:
Absolutely. I often think of my dad was a preacher, and I remember the stuff he would teach. He was totally not practising and struggling with himself. The point of public speaking is not to stand up there and say, Hey, I’ve got it all sorted out. It’s simply to share what you’re learning and what you’re going through and people can identify with that and go on the journey with you, et cetera, and learn from your mistakes or learn from the things you’ve learned along the path.
Jocelyn mozak:
Yeah, it’s starting the conversation. I’ve got those two coming up. I don’t know where next year holds. I’ve submitted a couple of talks. As you can tell, I really enjoy speaking. I love connecting with people. It’s a place I’m comfortable. And as I said, you borrow other people’s faith in you. So when someone tells you you’re impacting them, keep doing it. So whatever you do in your life where you get the positive feedback, if you don’t feel it yet, just borrow their faith and believe in yourself and just keep moving, leaning into it. Awesome.
Lee:
So folks, remember, that’s Portland, Oregon, and also in Seattle that Jocelyn is speaking. So if you’re able to get over there, be sure to go and say hi and tell how awesome she was on the podcast. Yeah, there you go. Because I’ve had fun, a lot of fun. And how can we connect with you, Jocelyn, and then we shall bid you adieu.
Jocelyn mozak:
All right. You guys can find me at mozakdesign. We were joking about that, how original we are sometimes in our business names. But you can certainly find me there. I’m more than happy anytime I do do official coaching, but I’m also more than happy. You guys, I live on Facebook way more than I should, so you can always just PM me there or drop me an email. Happy to chat, happy to connect, happy to talk about anything WordPress, especially if you start talking CSS. Yeah, I’ll be in there hook, line, and sinker, geeking out. Css and business development are the two things where I will happily talk to you indefinitely.
Lee:
Is the joy of CSS simply because you are able to create a set of instructions to make a load of elements that are currently doing nothing and look ugly, look amazing, and actually do stuff. Just getting to the bottom of that quickly before we sign off.
Jocelyn mozak:
I’m really good at it. I don’t understand why, but I intuitively understand it. It drives my team absolutely batty because they will stare at something for three hours and I will just do inspect element and answer the question. I do not understand why I have this intuitive understanding of it, but I do. You understand as a business owner, it’s nice to occasionally still feel like a technical rock star. Absolutely. They humour the boss and let the boss every once in a while have her a moment of feeling like she still has it, even though she can’t do sequel queries anymore. But that’s the thing. I mean, we all have our thing that just lights us up. For you, it might be a logo design or whatever where you just- It’s definitely not logo design. Okay, fine. But we all have our thing where it just innately resonates, and there’s no rhyme or reason, but whenever it comes up, we get to feel like a rock star, and those are beautiful moments.
Lee:
Well, Jocelyn, you are a rock star. Remember, folks, you can find Jocelyn over on mozakdesign.com. Also on Facebook, Jocelyn Mozak. We’ll make sure the links are in the show notes. Perfect. If you are in the Portland or in the Seattle areas or can get there, Wordcamps are an amazing place to be to build up your network, to grow community, to make friends, and you We’ll also get to see and hear Jocelyn there as well. Jocelyn, thanks so much for your time. Have a wonderful evening for you, and I’ll try and have a wonderful day.
Jocelyn mozak:
Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. I truly appreciate it.
Lee:
No worries. Cheerio. Folks, that wraps up today’s show. Don’t forget, if you are not part of the Facebook group, then it is a great place to be to hang out with like-minded individuals. Agency life, even if you have a team of 50, can be lonely, difficult, and stressful, and you need not We’ll do this alone. Join the Facebook group over on agencytrailblazer.com/group. Also, if you found this content beneficial, please do subscribe to the podcast. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel over on agencytrailblazer.com/youtube. Finally, have a wonderful day and we will see you in the next episode.
