My Honest Take on Motherhood vs Career (A Brutal Mid-year Reflection) | Office Drama

The underlying problem here is that I used to borrow from my body to fund my ambition. But once you hit your 30s, your body does slow down. It kind of breaks. And for me, being pregnant, I no longer have the option to push on the body because now it affects another life. Mothers face about a 4% wage penalty per child. And on the flip side, men, they receive a 6% wage premium per child. I feel like I fight tooth and nail and spend every waking hour trying to push forward. But every day, I feel like I fall back to square one because career Chloe wants to sprint. Pregnant Chloe needs to rest. Founder Chloe needs to build systems. Creator Chloe wants to create and publish every single day. Yeah, but you know what I don't have yet? A third nipple. But I might have one right here. Are you actually going to show the camera? Office drama. Welcome back, drama llamas. I woke up today and I decided to choose violence to be your bully today because half. 2026 is officially over. That's correct. Have you looked at your vision board yet? Have you hit your goals yet? Have you stayed accountable? Because I know I have not. So today we are doing a mid-year performance review. I want you to pull up your vision board. I want to see it. I'm going to pull mine up. I've been doing vision boards and goal setting for my entire adulthood. And I don't think I've ever felt this behind in my career before, mostly because I got pregnant. But like, excuses, excuses, right? Anyways, Kevin's on the side again. Say hi, Kevin. Hi, this is Kevin. Emotional support. Bok choy, boy. Emotional support, husband. Correct. So I wanted to share today how I'm currently struggling with accepting this new body of mine and pushing back who I wanted to be. So we'll cover our life updates to catch you up on what's been happening in Khloe's world. We're going to do a mid-year performance review. And I'm going to share six commitments I'm making in age two to become dangerously unrecognizable. You love that phrase. I know. Initially, that was going to be the title of the episode. But I just like. I don't know. I didn't feel it made too much sense because there was so much I wanted to pack in. I don't know. Maybe we'll do an episode on that like later on. But oh my God, I had spit come out. I'm so sorry. We'll choose to leave that in or out. I don't mind. I don't mind. I actually struggled with how to frame this episode because I don't want it to feel like I'm just talking about myself for an hour. But I hope that as I'm talking through my thoughts and I'm working through my life in real time, you can match the parts of your life that you're working through and maybe my perspective and my frameworks can spark something in you. Anyways, that's what Kevin says. I believe in you. Thank you. I feel like maybe my role on this channel is to share my life as a case study for all of you to pick and choose what's the best and most helpful for you into yours. I think people really like the way you approach your own life and your frameworks and your perspective. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. I'm going to be so for real. Last week was really hard. I think I crashed out like. Two to three times. The general feeling is that every single day, I feel like I fight tooth and nail and spend every waking hour trying to push forward in my ambitions and my goals and my work. But every day, I feel like I fall back to square one. It freaking sucks. I know there's something I really need to let go of for sure yet, but I can't quite put a finger on what that is. I've always aspired to be like this kick-ass girl boss career woman and be able to be a mom at the very same time. Just like all of the other headliners and big career women do it, but I feel like that hasn't been my reality and my pregnancy has been really difficult. It slowed a lot of my goals down in my year and I just couldn't output as much as I used to. And I also can't pull a late night just to get things done. I recently had a commenter ask me whether all my videos are going to be pregnancy-related from now on and they didn't mean it in an offensive way. They just meant it genuinely, but it sparked some dialogue in the comments section and people were defending me and being like, dude, that was kind of backhanded. She already does a lot of educational content and she puts that stuff on LinkedIn and YouTube. It's her first pregnancy. Just give it to her. And then the original commenter was like, oh, I just want to know so I can decide whether I want to leave or not. And that was a crazy thing to read. I just, I don't know. I felt a type of way about it. I felt it. And I know it comes from a genuine place of curiosity. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and what they want to see on their feed. But I think seeing that exchange of comments hit me. In a different way. I am very grateful for the people who defended me. Thank you so much. I know this was not like a personal question or it was just kind of a decision-making informative question, but I didn't realize I was being perceived as like a pregnancy channel. I actually put out a lot more tech and career videos on my YouTube and my LinkedIn. And if you look at, you know, the aggregate of work that I'm putting out, I actually do way more there than pregnancy videos. But the question did stun me. The woman was too stunned to speak. Remember how I mentioned that there was this career creator who told me, that when she posted about her pregnancy, she lost 10,000 followers overnight? Yeah. A lot of the comments were like, I followed you for career advice, not for pregnancy content. And honestly, that's scary to see as a creator because like this is your lifeline, right? And honestly, I wish I could be doing more right now. But the reality is, I just barely have enough energy to share videos on my pregnancy journey because that's all I could afford to film. That and office drama and like whatever I'm doing on LinkedIn, I don't want to over glorify working. But you know, I've always been a sweaty, gritty girl. I work every hour that I am alive. Otherwise, I'm knocked out or I'm in pain. And I don't know if you've followed other creators in similar circles, but a lot of them actually just like disappear for a year. Like they'll only post one YouTube video in that year or maybe five shorts in that year. I saw this. I was like, damn, it's just rough out here. I don't know what to say. And again, it's not really about the commenter, but it was just one of those moments where I felt like being pregnant directly impacted my career. Or the perception of the quality of the work that I would be able to provide. And I've talked about the motherhood penalty before. I see Kevin on the side, just like nodding like, you're doing great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go, go, go. I've talked about the motherhood penalty in career on this channel before and on Instagram, where mothers in the workplace actually receive less pay. They receive less opportunities. In fact, they get demoted. Like one of my mentors, Deb Lou, who was the VP of product of Facebook that launched marketplaces when she was, going through her motherhood journey, she got demoted like twice. She stagnated in her career for seven years. And as mothers in the workplace, you constantly get asked, so are you deprioritizing your career now? Are you like taking a step back? Are you like not committed anymore? And you're just going to like be a stay at home mom? And the classic wage stat is that mothers face about a 4% wage penalty per child. And on the flip side, men, men-o-men, get a fatherhood bonus. They receive a 6% wage premium per child. In a study by the Gender Action Portal, part of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, mothers were rated 10% lower in competence and 12.1 percentage points less committed than identical non-mothers, while fathers were rated 5 percentage points more committed than non-fathers. That's crazy. How do you feel about that, Kevin? You're putting me on the spot here. Skill issue. What? How dare you? I'm kidding. I'm kidding. And I know I don't work in a traditional corporate environment anymore, but that perception is still very real, especially because my domain area is very business and career driven. So it's just tough. But to address the commenter, I totally get your question. Super valid. I probably would be upset too if someone I followed for one thing changed for another. But no, I'm not going to be just about pregnancy content. I actually post a lot more than that. I do a lot of educational and career content on YouTube and my other platforms and Office Drama. But I will be posting a lot of pregnancy content in general throughout the journey because my platform, my platform has always been since day one about career, creativity, and living life and like the lessons I learned. So even when I talk about career, it's also going to be about pregnancy because those two are very intertwined in my current stage of life. I'm also super fascinated by the struggle between motherhood and pursuing a girl boss career. I thought I can easily do both. The intersection is probably a question that most women want to figure out themselves today. But yeah, no, I don't think I would become a pregnancy family channel. Like, yeah, right, Kevin? I think that'd be It's just part of life, but it's not our whole thing. Yeah, it's part of life. It really is. Yeah. And you know, right now is just one of those unprecedented times, just like my wedding, right? Like I'm not a wedding channel, but that was my one time. So I hope people understand that lives ebb and flow. I feel like I try to document my transformation, progress, evolution, growth as much as I can. And to you, I wish I can create even more valuable and educational content at a higher velocity right now, but I might not hit your expectations like kind of dying out here. I think it's your own expectations. My own expectations? I don't think the audience necessarily puts expectations on you. Well, I mean, I mean, I mean that. I think it's you. Like would put expectations on me, you understand? Okay, sure. I think, I think I've just been doing my best, you know? Yeah. It just made me feel like, oh, my best is not enough. You're doing your best and like audiences need to give grace. Thank you. We need to give grace to pregnant women. Oh, thank you. Yes, pregnant woman, rise. I need to pee. Stand up, pregnant woman. I need to pee right now. Hold on. Pivoting topics now. Can Lions just happen? And I don't know if you guys know what that is. Kevin, do you know what that is? You know what? I still don't know what it is. Okay. Well, I actually didn't know about it until last year too because that was the first time I went. If you don't know what it is, it is basically the Olympics of advertising and marketing. Every year, the biggest brands, agencies, creators and tech companies all fly to the south of France to talk about the future of creativity, business and the internet and AI, I guess. And people say that the top of the top attention, And Ken Lyons, all the top C-suites, like the CEOs, CMOs, now CPOs are going from like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Yahoo. There's like a sports beach. There's like all the journalists. There's just Forbes is there. And they all attend to talk, give awards, network. My friend Adrian Purr went and he says that if you go, you can 150X your business. Like that literally came out on the press publish or the published press. That's a big number. That's a big number. That's a crazy big number. Crazy bigger number. Yeah. And I'm like, yo, did I just missed out on 150Xing? It is strangely enough, in the same week as VidCon, they're owned by the same events company called Informa. It's just like kind of a very, very big deal to go. It's sort of a sign to say like you made it in the mainstream. And at the same time, it's a lot of smoke and mirrors as entertainment advertising always is. There's a lot of schmoozing, a lot of networking, a lot of pay to play. And I was fortunate enough to go last year for the very first time with Adobe and Kajabi as their creator partners. It was really hard for me because you go in like the middle of the summer and there is no AC in France, in the south of France. And everything is like it's hard to find food, hard to find drinks, hard to find restrooms. I'm carrying a big ass backpack like me, my big ass backpack with my tripod and my DSLR looking like a freaking loser, like a STEM student, the STEM student that I am. Because I'm always holding my backpack, sweating through my pits, talking to executives and like women are on prop talk. She's that hot. Yeah. So it was like really hard for me. Yeah. So if I went this year as a pregnant woman, that would have been even harder. That's like a tough flight to make. It's like a long flight, like a 16 plus hour, 20 plus hour. And there's like never a direct flight. So you have to do layovers and you're very likely to get a blood clot if you're sitting on an airplane for too long. While pregnant. While pregnant. You're higher risk. Correct. And so I was like, I knew I didn't really want to go. And I told my team, like, let's not push it forward. Because last year I had an adjustment. I was like, I'm going to push my way in. I'm going to manifest it. I'm going to go network. I'm going to drop all the hints and ask for it and like make this happen. And, you know, I think I'm someone who's like not a lucky person. And I think Kevin thinks that's really toxic of me to say, but I don't believe I am a lucky person. You make your own luck. So what I do is I create opportunities for myself. Never have I ever had an opportunity to just like fall onto my lap. Just be like, oh, yeah, that's awesome. I've always like had to go out there, create it, write it in my doc and be like, how is this going to happen? I need to go do this meeting. I need to create this deliverable. I need to create this deck. And once I have that doc, I need to give it over. And then maybe something happens. Nothing falls in your lap? Yeah. What about me? Okay. Moving on. So anyways, this year I didn't play the game. And I think like anyone who worked in corporate knows that there's always a game to play in every field or industry or company. But after seeing all the posts and newsletters about CAN, I could not help but feel like I lost the sauce. It's just a very strange feeling to see all the keynote speeches. The brand partnerships, the career milestones, while I'm sitting here on my couch, in my bed, just trying not to throw up and having to pee every 20 minutes. It probably sounds really stupid to people who aren't in the creator's face. Like this just seems so trivial and dumb from the outside. And I recognize that, okay? I see what it looks like from the outside. But I also want to admit these feelings openly and be vulnerable. I'm not trying to blame myself for not being there because I'm pregnant. I know. I made a conscious choice. To prioritize my body, my health, and my baby, and I still feel kind of sad about like losing the opportunity and both can be true, but I'm going to use this feeling of FOMO and let it fuel how I want to move forward. And I am actually someone of the belief that you can take a negative feeling like envy to help you clarify what you really want in your own life. When you feel powerful emotions, whether negative or positive, it's great to take a step back and be like, oh, I wonder, I wonder why I feel this way. Like, why does this matter to me? Why do I care? Why is it like putting me in such a state and get to the bottom of that feeling? Because to be honest, before CanLions happened, I didn't even know if I really wanted to go because, you know, I hate travel. I hate not having AC. I hate not having restrooms. Like, I hate carrying my backpack. And now that I feel these feelings, it's nice to know how important it actually was to me. It's been an eye-opening time of life and year in general. But let us do our mid-year review and go into what we wanted to set out to do at the top of the year. Let's go back to the vision board, everyone. So we always do a mid-year performance review with myself, I guess. But I posted a video on Instagram last year about my mid-year performance review. So remember, the scale is does not meet expectations, meets most expectations, meets expectations, exceeds expectations, and redefines expectations, which I obviously did not get, but whatever. So let's start with career. I have built my secret project and launched my secret project. And I didn't share what those were. Those were actually built. Juicebox Studios, which is my creative studio that you see right here, and my team. So voila, we did it. We launched, we built, we hired. My secret project was actually office drama. Yay! So we launched it. Woohoo! I also have launched my short-form IP series, which I did not really do anything yet. I kind of did some career videos that were a string of career videos. And then I have a pregnancy series. But that wasn't super intentional. That just happened. We just happened to be pregnant. Yeah, and happened to have consistent videos. And then my last one was launch drama season two, which I did, but I also deprecated after three months. I would say that in my career bucket, I would be a meets most like, I think I objectively did a lot on the list. You didn't get to everything, but making juicebox studios and launching office drama has been a big deal. It's been in the plan for a long time. My next items are artistry, hobbies, learning. I'm just going to talk about all of those at once for artistry. It's voice acting and original music video. I did start taking voice acting classes in Q1. But I stopped after I got pregnant. But I did get two auditions or people reached out for auditions for video games. And one person was like, can you try being a goblin? And I was like, I don't know what a goblin sounds like, but I'm happy to try. You got a goblin in you. I do. I call you La Goblina. Yeah, Kevin calls me that. And then I cry every time. La Goblina. La Goblina. They haven't followed up yet, and I haven't followed up. And I'm kind of scared, too, because I've been feeling really low energy because of the pregnancy. So maybe I got to just like rip off that bandaid and do it. I was going to produce an original music video. I don't think I can do it anymore because of the big bump. So I don't know. I feel like it's not good. I would say does not meet. For being a K-pop C-pop trainee, I wanted to be singing and dancing constantly. Not happening. Not happening. Not happening. Does not meet expectations. I'm very sad about it, but it's been really hard to just like be alive. Yeah. For learning, sharpened in my acts, I wanted to learn Korean, Japanese. Vibe coding to make apps. Well. Yeah, I didn't do any of that. Well, I did vibe code like a little bit. Vibe coded a little bit. A little bit. A smidgen, but I would say still below expectations. Then there's healthy wife, healthy life. This is my health pillar. I wanted to get a personal trainer, take regular workout classes with the girls, like do Pilates or hot yoga, do at-home workouts, take regular walks, have better sleep hygiene, and start cooking. And all I did was take regular walks with Kevin. Which is still. Still a big win. It is. But I couldn't do anything else. Like I actually, I can't do the hot yoga as a pregnant person. You can't be like, you can't go into saunas. You can't go. You don't want to raise your body temperature too high. Yeah, you can't do that. It's not good for the baby. Yeah. But I think that we're doing a little bit of at-home workouts. We built the at-home gym. It's like more like Kevin's doing it at-home workouts. And then I'm just like watching him and stretching a little bit. Working out through osmosis. Yes. The next is achieve real mental freedom. This was me feeling like I'm able to. Travel on a whim without being afraid of work slipping. Like I can just go to Japan or Taiwan whenever I want it. Watch anime, read manhwa whenever I want. And sleep nine hours without guilt. Because last year I was guilty. I was very guilty. And this year I would say that I am less guilty. But not because I feel free. But because I just have to rest. So I would say like I achieved it. Like I still take the breaks now. So it's in meets. But like the intention is different. And the next is start the family of always. Wanted but never had. So yes, we're doing it. Exceeds. I would say exceeds because the baby's really healthy. The baby's really healthy. And it happened like pretty quickly. Yeah, we got really lucky. And I know like a lot of my friends who are on the older side who are doing IVF. And they are going through their own fertility journeys. And it's very difficult. There's a lot of things that don't go according to plan. It's very expensive. It's a struggle. It's not always within your control. It's not. You cannot control stuff like this. Very difficult. Now on to the moonshot projects. I wanted to build an app that would be actually helpful. That didn't happen. And I don't know. I don't think it's going to happen. And I wanted to build my courses and continue to elevate educational content. Yeah, so I didn't do that yet. I would say like I do all these things. I did release a course on AI for the modern product manager for my Taiwan product management course on SAT knowledge. And that just got released. As an additional chapter. Yeah, it's like a bonus chapter. I recorded it in December. And it just got published last week. Which like I'm pretty upset about. But I cannot control the timelines. And I like learned a lot through the process. And I feel like a lot of that information. Might be outdated based on Silicon Valley standards. But AI moves fast. Yeah, AI has been moving so, so fast. So I'm just like, oof, I've been writing all of this work. And it just becomes stale so fast. So I have to move fast. Lastly, I wanted to get a doggo. But that's not happening. Because being pregnant is a very tiring thing. But Kevin and I did foster a dog named Duffel. And Duffel was a little puppy. A little like three-month-old puppy. She was so cute. She was a really small, cute eight-pound. Like a mix of. She looked like a. A Shih Tzu, Chihuahua, Terrier mix. yeah yeah she was really cute but she was a puppy and she peed everywhere and she made my life a little bit miserable i could not adopt i could not foster fail i was like man i mean she didn't really have a personality she was like part of a rescue from a hoarding situation so i think she just didn't really understand how to interact with humans yeah she was like a cat yeah just always hiding under things very skittish yeah like didn't really play and like cuddles and i'm like man but knowing my schedule now and my body now i'm just like i don't think i could have handled there's no way you're walking the dog yeah so i feel like overall in the moonshots did not meet expectations and overall i think i've had a lot of does not meet expectations and i don't think i've ever had that kind of l before in the mid-year review i think a majority of the categories are does not meet and i also don't feel positive towards the rest of the year at this point because i feel like i haven't built the foundations to build momentum towards those kinds of results that i'm looking for step function growth yeah for step function growth and i just feel like we're still building foundations slowly and i know good things take time at the very same time i feel like a lot of the vision board and items are actually changing because the new conditions new variables and i think we need to rewrite what we want to do moving forward priorities are different yeah and a lot of the goals are not relevant anymore before we get into how we're going to change up h2 i think we just all gotta take a moment and celebrate the wins because i know i don't do that enough celebrate the dubs the dubs if i appreciate what you've accomplished yeah i think we all need to do that if you're someone who's really hard on yourself i'm talking about you eldest daughters uh type a's i don't know there's only two groups club presidents so if i had to be my very own best friend i would say the biggest wins this year have been launching juicebox studios that's a big deal claps claps claps building out this studio space which actually took forever but the lighting is gorgeous so i love that clap clap clap we had a lot of things yet launching office drama and hitting number nine on spotify business charts hell yeah single digits single digit that's crazy we are top 10 and we beat mpr we are the number two female business podcast behind cody sanchez isn't that insane let's go woman let's go woman um i think it's a huge win that i am taking daily walks with kevin best part of the day yes this has been part of our daily ritual and has healed me in like fundamental ways it's therapy and i think the cutest thing is that we even get to see like the ice cream truck and then we sometimes we buy ice cream there three dollars it's kind of expensive for an ice cream it's like for one like little the price of convenience honestly it's not bad though it's not bad it's pretty good but i want to talk about the science behind walking because i think it's one of like the most basic but the most like goaded wellness advice hacks in life it's like taking walks is like the highest leverage thing you can do for your long-term health there's a study by lancet public health where if you compare taking 7 000 steps a day versus 2 000 steps a day you have 47 percent of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third of your body weight in the second place so that's about a third of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third of your body weight in the first place so that's about a third never measured how many steps i took but i bet i took a lot of steps i bet i remember some days where we didn't go on daily walks your step count was like three digits okay yeah yeah i'm getting cardiovascular disease okay we should work on that anyways back to wins getting pregnant and having a healthy journey is is a very big win yay even though i have morning sickness i have hormonal cramps i feel like i'm in hell every day the fatigue kills me i barely can walk some times i feel like i was out for several months overall could have been much worse could have been much worse as far as things go you haven't thrown up yeah every time i talk to the ob and i'm like this is all happening she's like it's fine you're fine you're good you're good it's normal she's so unconcerned she's not bothered whatsoever and i look it up on on chemini and chachi bt it's like you're good you're good it's normal we all do this i go on r slash like pregnant woman or whatever r slash pregnancy everyone's like you're good it's normal i'm like how is this normal and no one tells you these things in advance yeah but you know what i don't have yet a third nipple but i might have one right here are you actually going to show the camera i'm not really sure but you can see it's like a little bit brownish that started growing so apparently this is crazy but apparently as a pregnant person or when you're like like every woman has some like or not every but many women have nipple cells around their body correct and then when you are pregnant there's like hormones that and then you can go a third nip yeah it activates your randomly in your armpit it could be on your knee it'd be on your arm it can be on your stomach i mean it's usually around the chest it's around the same line oftentimes yo i did not know that could happen so when i saw that i feel like i saw it on my instagram and i was like no way and i looked it up yeah and yeah you you might have one i'm so scared it's not it's scared of what it does go away that's what they say that's what they say isn't that anyways i'm just everything i learned about pregnancies it shocks me every single time my last big dub of the year so far is i've actually had an extraordinarily great time building close female friendships ah i love this i've actually never had this for most of my adult life growing up and i think like that's been awesome it's been awesome it's just a good girl group is awesome yeah i feel like before you had like very few close friends like individuals too or like oftentimes they were also just not living where we are we have a lot of friends like new york a lot of yeah i have a lot of long distance friends but now you have like a la group yeah that you see often yeah great that's good yeah i think it's been really healthy because oftentimes without them you just dump everything on me oh yeah but you now have another girl group that you see often yeah i think it's a group of people to dump on i'm sorry kevin who's also not men yeah men you know as you grow older like the woman problems are just you just want to explain yourself sometimes you know what i mean you just just women women we just have different lives it's good it's healthy for you i also started reading brandon sanderson books again brando sando is the go i started reading yumi and the nightmare painter so that's cool and he started watching his lectures on fantasy writing on youtube building world building fantasy writing being an indie author the art of writing i just think it's been such a huge source of inspiration for me and i think it's been such a huge source of creative inspiration for me i have this newfound love and appreciation for the art of writing in general and i also started reading on writing by stephen king and he suggested reading the elements of style by william strong jr and evie white which was published in the 1920s it's an old book so we're going back that's 100 years old that's that's 100 years old yeah so now we gotta talk about how will the rest of 2026 be different i don't know about you guys but i got to make h1 repeat itself it was it was hard in weird ways but we're gonna make things happen we're we're here to make dreams come true right despite giving birth in h2 correct is that too delusional of me i think you can do it i believe in you i feel like it's so hard i feel like everyone's answers to me are so different i talked about how that one of my creator friends told me that i have to take at least three months off during around the time i'm giving birth and a lot of people validated that it's gonna be tough no one says it's gonna be easy yeah but i think you can do it i'm like scared the fundamental question of this episode is would you rather be pregnant or successful and this question is obviously unfair it is what we call a false dichotomy because the premise implies that you can only be one or the other and in my ideal world i don't think women should ever have to choose between being pregnant and being successful the truth is i want both i i'm i'm selfish i want i want it all you're so greedy i'm greedy i want the baby i want my career i want my family i want to have impact and this year has forced me to confront the cost of launching all of that at once false dichotomy is a crazy term where'd you learn that i don't know i don't know maybe it was like my husband who was telling me about that last night when we were talking about this how interesting suspicious even very suspicious so my answer is i don't want to choose but i'm learning that having it all might require redefining what all looks like in the moment and it also might mean that sequencing might look a little different and every time i bring this internal conflict up to my friends my friends all get really mad at me and i'm like oh my god i'm so scared i'm so scared i'm so scared i'm so mad at me and i'm like dude i feel like i can't be successful because i'm pregnant and they're like shut up chloe they're like we know lots of successful women who gave birth like they became really successful after they gave birth like you're gonna you're gonna exponentially grow like don't worry i'm just like but i'm worrying just be one of them are you the type of person if you're like if they can do it i can do it too yeah i think so i live like that a lot i see that when i see it see representation that it helps me so i still want to keep being ambitious i think that's but i know that we need to make some adjustments and those will be the guardrails for our h2 plan i know that not everyone is pregnant right now or has kids but i think everyone can relate to the feeling that life gets in the way sometimes and you didn't make as much progress as you wanted to and something has to change especially in the mid-year mark as we want to build momentum and progress towards the goals and intentions that we set at the top of the year we have to come together again and reset and reinforce what we must do going from here so where do we go from here the problem right now is that i have a lot of identities fighting for the steering wheel because career chloe wants to sprint pregnant chloe needs to rest founder chloe needs to build systems creator chloe wants to create and publish every single day and future mom chloe is trying to build a life that doesn't collapse the second i am unavailable maybe a question you should ask yourself is what are your competing identities and i think that i have a really bad habit of writing like literally every single thing i want to do creating a huge listicle of goals instead of doing that perhaps we just need to rewire the way we think about ourselves to shift gears and take on the next six months this is truly what needs to change if we don't want december you to have the same excuses as current you so these are six months commitments I'm making to transform myself in age two. Number one, let go of who you once were and be excited about who you will become. This is essentially an identity overhaul. We always become the stories we tell ourselves. So what part of you do you need to let go of to become the next version of yourself? Actually, my friend Jamie, I gumdrop, just did my very first tarot card reading and a huge part of it was telling me that I had to let go of something. I don't know what it is, but she said that once I let go of that something, all the opportunities, all the money, all the success will come to me. And I am apparently under a lot of stress and I'm holding on to something. And she says it might be this idea that I'm supposed to be this extremely output driven person. And I just like, got to let that go. What do you think that is, Kevin? Don't you think you just need to let go of being like this perfect career woman? Have I not let that go yet? Have you? I don't know. Seems like you carry a lot of that still. If I'm a content creator, like I don't even know. I don't know what that means. Or like, I mean, your content career, your content career is still your career. You have other parts of life that you also have to take care of. You can't just laser focus. I don't know what letting go means. Okay. Then being excited to who you'll become, who are you excited to become? I am excited to become someone who has it all. I don't think that's the right way to transform and reinvent your identity. I am excited to become. A mother? A mother who has her career. Well, I'm not sure if that's quite letting go. Yo. I'm like, I'm actually quite stuck on this one. I'm not sure. Maybe you have an interesting sense of how I portray myself online and you have a sense of what I need to let go of. So feel free to share your opinions and like observations. I'm gladly open to ideas. Number two, make the routine boring and easy enough to repeat. And I just think that any young person in their 20s does this. It's just so easy to pull an all-nighter. It's so easy to eat unhealthy. It's so easy to skip that gym session just to get that extra hour of work in. It kind of breaks. And I know I sound really dramatic, but that's kind of the reality, right? You used to pull a lot of late nights, like editing, 5 a.m. I would pull from the well of, I think, part of my life span is shaved off because I did this. Yeah, it kind of worries me. Yeah, yeah. It's not good. But. Yeah. It's not good. It's not good. It's not good. Building boring routines is actually so goaded. It's always better to aim for 100 average days, not one perfect day. Because it's like what Bruce Lee said. Do you know what he said? I fear not the man who has practiced. 10,000. 10,000 kicks once, but the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. Correct. I'm a martial artist. You are. So what does making a boring routine look like for me? It means eating very nutritious foods. I've been really into superfoods lately, like bell peppers. I love bell peppers. I just eat it raw. We just cut it and then like put hummus on it. Yeah, that's not. Yeah. Kiwis. Kiwis. Avocados. Acai. Acai. We just bought acai. We door dashed an acai smoothie and it was $15. And I was like, what a scam. $2 was to add protein. When we went to the grocery store, we bought acai. What is it? What is it called? It's like frozen puree. Yeah. Packets. Yeah. We found out acai berries, once you pluck them, they go bad in 24 hours. Yeah. It's crazy. That is insane. Continue taking walks every single day. Exercise if I can. And just sleep really, really well. I think sleep is still really hard. It's still really hard for me, mainly because Kevin snores. Hey. And I just have a lot of insomnia and I pee a lot at night. I think you just have a lot of anxiety when you sleep. Yeah, I do. It makes it hard to fall asleep. Yeah. So I go to sleep really late, but I do sleep a lot. Good night hours. Yeah, but it's tough. It makes my day really hard. Remember, they say tired minds make expensive decisions and every decision you make tired costs you twice. So it's simply not worth it. As a young person, I feel like being tired was like a medal of honor. I was like, oh, I'm so tired. I only got three hours of sleep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did that in like high school. That's so dumb. That's so high school. It's so cool. I used to, I did it in college and I did it in adulthood. Nah. Yeah. I'm a loser. I love my sleep. Yeah. It's not worth it. You know, it's not worth it. Someone's like, oh, bro, I got only six hours of sleep. I'd be like, that sucks. I know. What a, that's an L. That's an L. Number three, build things that work when you don't. This might not be relevant to everyone's stages of life. I come from the crippling habit that all I got to do is work more, put more hours in, and then I'll get the thing that I want. Yeah. But at a certain level, working more is not the answer. It's not it. I keep saying you have to work less, but smarter. It's very, it's like a tough shift for me because I feel like it's such a grind set type of thing to do. Very immigrant mindset. Like, just work more, just work harder, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Like, you'll get it done eventually, but there's always more work. Yeah. Work the work, doesn't it? In a different context. It's kind of like what Naval Ravikant says about wealth. He says, seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how you transform. It's for time and wealth. And status is your place in the social hierarchy. So wealth is what we want here in this analogy. And this is part of my whole pursuit to scale and do things beyond the linear growth that I'm able to contribute as a single individual person. I feel like I have maxed out on everything I can do as one person with all the energy and the hours that I have. And relying on that lifeline is simply not sustainable. Which is why we're hiring. Yeah, exactly. My mistakes are that I build systems based on perfect conditions. Like, if everyone was like, active and on board and I was perfectly healthy, here's where we should be at. Yeah. And you think like all your editors are like the same as you? Yeah. I think I don't. I'm blind to what it's like outside of myself. You know, like I treat my work in a very serious manner. And I think I do things really thoroughly and I just get everything done to the fullest extent. And I have like radical ownership. Like, it's insane. But I do think that I need to shift from executor to architect. And my girlfriends actually tell me that I need to learn how to be more useless so that the systems and people around me know how to fill in better and don't rely on me as much because I like, I'm too reliable. Yeah. Otherwise everyone will think, oh, she's got it and not ever proactively help. And I will say, I give a lot to the people around me. I am a very reliable person. In fact, I take pride in that, maybe too much pride in that. And there's a cost to it. And I think that that's something I need to let go of. It's kind of like being the person who's too competent at work and you just get rewarded for more work. Yeah. And then other people are like, oh, this person's got it. You ever been there? I feel like. And these viewers, the viewers, I think the drama llamas really understand the sentiment. Like I bet, I bet most of you are like try-hards at work and get your work done and like love being competent and then you get penalized for it. I think competency is like your badge of honor you love to wear. I know. Yeah. I think I have a tough relationship with it. Like I love representing it, but. It comes at a cost depending on what else you're balancing in your life. It really does. It's not, it's not always a good thing. And I think I have to choose when to step back and choose to be bad. I think you choose. I think you choose some aspects to be competent in it and some parts you have to choose to let slip a little bit. Yeah. Just to make space for the rest of your life. Correct. Number four, commitment number four, cut off anything or anyone who brings you down. So this is truly environmental detoxing because you don't rise to your goals. You fall to your surroundings or your habits. And just like the law of averages, you become the average of your top five influences around you. So first, cut off anyone who seems to drag you down, like friends who compare against you and jab you. There's this thing called poppy seed syndrome in Australia where people who achieve high levels of success, wealth, or public recognition are criticized, resented, or cut down to size by their peers. And like, that's crazy to me. And I think that people shouldn't do that. Why is it called poppy seed? I'm not really sure. I feel like I've heard this as crab mentality. What's crab mentality? Like if you have a bunch of crabs in a bucket, right? All the crabs try to pull you down. And there's one crab about to like come out. Another crab will pull you down. I think you've heard of that too. I haven't heard of poppy seed mentality. Yeah, I think it's more of an Australian thing. I actually had to let go of certain friendships this year. I really felt like I got dragged down. And you know, sometimes you don't recognize it's happening. You don't recognize someone's dragging you down or being snarky or making a jab at you. But it wears you down over time and it like stays in your headspace. Micro cuts. Yeah, it's in micro cuts. Death by a thousand cuts. Micro cuts, cuts, yeah. I think especially now that I'm pregnant, I am a lot more sensitive to that. Like I find myself in situations or conversations and I'm just like, why am I here listening to this bullshit when I'm pregnant? What am I doing here? Like you're suddenly out of body and you're just like. Yeah, I get an out of body experience. I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm not dealing with this. I need to go rest. So it's just bad energy to have around. And if you are a people pleaser, which probably a lot of drama llamas are, I fell victim to it a lot. You want to be likable, right? You want people to feel comfortable and happy. You don't want to rock the boat. You want to like laugh at people's jokes or whatever and be agreeable. And that's why we're blind to when people are making jabs at us. I think that's why. Let go of romantic partners who make jabs at you and stonewall you. Oh, are you trying to tell me something? No, I'm very fortunate. Why'd you write this down? I don't have this problem. What a weird thing to bring up. No, I don't have this problem, but I have girlfriends who actively are in romantic situations where they constantly complain about their partners making jabs, saying resentful things, stonewalling them, which are literally the top most researched traits of couples who end up divorcing based on the seven principles. of making marriage work. These are very dangerous behaviors. I'm feeling an implication here. Let's move on. Let's move on. Let go of business partners who have repeated patterns of letting you down and eroding your trust. I think this one's really hard because I tend to believe in a lot of people and I'm still building my radar of how many strikes does a person get for me to say, hey, this is a pattern and we can't work together anymore. I think like that's really hard to say. I think in general, you give too much grace. I do? Yeah. I thought I was. mean? We've had so many like contractors in the past. past where they will like fail once but they always will say like i can do it like you you gotta believe in me and you really want to believe in them and then they're still slipping in the next time like but i got it like i now i know like i i know i mess up twice now but like the third time i got it because now i know how we work together and the third time comes and they still fail right and then you and then you feel conflicted and you're like oh kevin i don't know what to do but like like is it me like is it am i not seeing the signs or am i not setting them that's what i'm saying you give me you sometimes you give too much grace yeah that's the one up one down relationship where we're working with freelancers but there's a lot of business partners who are kind of not really still the same though like a different constantly slipping yeah it's very confusing and i think that people are good at evading i don't want to say making excuses but being like oh that was one time yeah like it's not going to happen again and then like it happens again and then i'm like hand waving it a bit yeah kind of like i promise i would never make this mistake again and then it happens two times and they're like i promise i will never make it third time and then it happens again and then it happens again and then it happens again and then it happens and then i'm like it's crazy how we even got here another thing to let go of or cut out might be a little controversial but neutral friends who gain way more from being around you than you do being around them i'm not saying like be transactional and every friendship needs to benefit you and you need to have roi in this but have you ever heard of energy vampires like they're just some friendships that are energetically expensive one-sided and exhausting and there's nothing truly toxic or negative about them it's not like that dramatic you're not fighting but i think it's actually like really subtle thing especially for extroverts and givers who are happy to help anyone in need we're happy to lend an ear we're happy to hang out and hear about your situation but these types of people will just take from you and you need to be very careful especially if you're someone with good energy you need to be very careful and you need to know that your presence your time your aura is a gift to these people you can't just be giving that out it's a it's a very it's a rare it's a rare gift the next is really difficult as well cut out toxic family i'm not saying like be estranged i'm saying create boundaries and this one's really personal but immigrant children really know you cannot save your family unless you see yourself i literally just had a whole deep conversation slash pep talk with one of my girlfriends about this family's really tough and sometimes everyone's different for everyone yeah everyone's situation is different but in the conversations that i've had the pattern was i can't be successful because i have to take care of my family you used to say that a lot yeah i did i felt like because my family had all these issues i had to not go to the opportunity so that i can take care of my family but remember you really can't take care of your family if you can't take care of yourself first so these are like the people that drag you down the next is kind of the things that slow you down or become your excuses and for me that was social events yep i feel like this is such a silly thing to say out loud i i keep telling you you need to go to fewer if you live in big cities and you work in an industry like mine you do get invited to a lot of things a lot of people like want your presence and why you're ours vp and i did say yes way too much last year just because i didn't know what was worth my time i just like i don't know it was my first year first time to put feelers out there a little bit but still like yeah you were going to something like two three times a week and you weren't actually like sitting down making stuff and i was trying to network and i was like i don't really didn't know what networking meant in this space i didn't know what was real and what wasn't and it's very easy to pack your calendar with things that don't really help you focus and build so i would say i keep telling you you got to say no to more things and you're like i am saying no to a lot of things and i'm like you're still saying yes to too many things though so kevin says that it's not about how many times i say no it's about how many times i say yes yes yeah exactly the yeses are what matters correct and the no's are everything else yeah the fifth commitment stop waffling and create speed speed is the unfair advantage it comes from removing what slows you down not from rushing or working more speed is how quickly can we move from idea to results because i have wasted so much time asking is this a good idea should i do it when the best is yet to come and when the best is yet to come so the better question to ask is how fast can i find out so how do we do that how do we stop waffling and how do we create speed one make reversible decisions fast and make irreversible decisions slow so if it's reversible just do it it doesn't really matter you can change it later change your mind i keep telling like sometimes you're like conflicted on what the title of a video should be and i'm like you can just change it you can just do it and change it back you change it back it's not that deep yes to cut your deadlines in half so you can weaponize this thing called parkinson's law against yourself this is a phenomenon that work expands to fill the time available if you think it's going to take two weeks you're going to take two weeks so give yourself one time pressure doesn't always create stress if it's like something that you put on yourself it creates clarity speed comes from working sharper not longer so force yourself to 80 20 things i love being in a state where i'm like relaxing and peacefully working on things and i just let things expand to the time that i have you're never in that state no i i love like if i if i don't have a deadline on myself i just like love working on it forever like i love the farming and shadow do docs yeah when i really didn't need to take a whole week on that but these days like we do have a lot of deadlines yeah we do have a lot of deadlines so i think in some places in life i think we need to just figure out how to 80 20 things better the next thing you can do is to kill procrastination with a five minute rule if it takes five minutes to do and you have five minutes freaking do it now because every time you say i'm gonna do that later is compound interest on procrastination procrastination is theft from your future self don't steal from your future self you understand the last commitment commitment number six become cracked at one thing if everything matters equally nothing compounds master one thing really really well do not become a master of none be known for one really crazy thing i do have a tendency to do it all but every time i have this huge list i get really thrashed i get really distracted i don't focus well and what has worked best for me in my life in the past is whenever i laser focus on one superpower and build momentum in that direction because that's when exponential returns happen i feel like that's what happened with your vision board you just you had a lot i know different goals i mean i was like oh why not yeah i mean it doesn't hurt to put throw them on there it doesn't hurt yeah but i think looking back i'm like oh okay i could have been a little bit more realistic and sometimes i do get a little greedy and delusional but i think that there is a dream version of you and then there's the realistic version of you i think you should dream first dream first and then look at it and be like okay what do i realistically yeah yeah yeah because everyone knows their their tendencies and limitations and what you really want and when you're actually realizing that you're not the right person you're not the right person you're not the realistic you can prioritize a little bit better and when you don't prioritize you like get thrashed you're like oh yeah this is exciting this is exciting let's do it all and that's when waffling happens for this year i do have several projects i want to launch but my type of work style is best when i focus on one thing at a time but i'm a little bit scared i feel like i will have to kill my darlings you might be able to see which darlings i kill this year but don't you worry it'll work out for the best in the long run i feel like i've heard like three different projects in the last two weeks i feel like really really wanted to do i get really excited i get really excited i like inspiration strikes and like yo this is a gold mine i know this is a great idea let's go what do you think of these six commitments i do like them i mean it sounds like you're kind of in the middle of figuring out what that means yeah for you specifically i know i usually don't like sharing things and i'm going through it and this is like one of the first times it's a little more vulnerable because it's kind of like you're sharing it without having the answer yet i don't have the answer and i think you can hear the hesitation in my sentences but these are the frameworks we're moving forward with this is what i'm applying to myself these are like the honest conversations that i'm having with my friends and my family and my friends and my family and my i'm trying to have with myself i still have a lot of challenges with accepting that maybe i don't have that much progress in the short term but in the long term i might have a lot and maybe that simmering is okay you have to balance it right like you need to have your long-term plan but you also have to take each day day by day when you don't quite know how you're gonna feel when you wake up in the morning exactly so like today have a direction but be flexible in how you get to that end goal i hope these six commitments have an interesting food for thought for you to pick and choose which of them best equip you for a strong h2 i'm curious to hear would you rather be pregnant or successful if you had to choose gun to your head you know my honest answer is i still want both but i'm learning that wanting both doesn't mean doing both exactly the way i thought it would be i really think this period of life is challenging me to let go of wanting to be the person who can carry more but to become the person who knows what to carry what to put down and what to build next so i'm not carrying everything alone so if you're listening to this and you feel like you're behind you haven't as much progress just know that the year is not over yet i know i was really dramatic about h1 but remember h1 was not the failure perhaps h1 was the input data and now we got to decide what changes next i think i mentioned i initially wanted to title this episode how to be dangerously unrecognizable in six months but i didn't think that was like completely accurate i wanted to become unrecognizable not because i want to be like superhuman or anything but because i want to finally become the next version of myself that i'm meant to be in this crazy journey and i always love doing a good old media review i mean i love doing a new year's review i love doing an end of year review i love reviewing i love i love a good review it just helps me a lot to reset helps me reflect on what's been working out what isn't and what i need to change and it is my accountability contract to myself and i hope that that helps you with yours with that let's come back and talk about it all over again in december thank you for watching drama llamas and i hope to see you in the next one bye hi drama llamas thank you so much for your support on the patreon i think there's like nine of you right now but we do have about one bonus episode or segment per public office drama episode last week it was about dealing with narcissists at work or in relationships or in friendships so how to detect them how they act how do you react check that out today's episode is the second chloe solo episode i remember how nervous i was last time and how nervous kevin was i hope we did a much better job this time? Question mark, question mark. I just want to thank you for your kind comments. my first solo episode on my two-year layoff update and q a they were really sweet like this one from hello studio m love this format from you and kevin literally so good please don't apologize for the time perspective and creativity you're putting out into the world and for what it's worth you absolutely have what it takes to do a solo pod it'd be fun if you invited a rotating cast of characters like kevin friends or family members to ask you questions off camera hello studio m that is a really really fun concept there's so much love for kevin so he's very happy about it but he also has no ambitions of being a content creator he loves what he loves and he knows himself very well he's very supportive of me but yeah i don't think we'll ever be like a content couple because that comes with a lot of other challenges as well but i love the idea i'm hoping that we can have guests be those people and have us do a little bit more banter a little bit more back and forth instead of like a one directional q a interview that this is like just something i've been learning across my interview style but don't you worry we will have more like fun friendly casual back and forth just like how we did in jomo yo mama son said i can easily say you're probably the only influencer quote-unquote i can support you're really transparent and relatable so it's surreal seeing your journey from getting laid off to now i was like damn that's high freaking praise especially right now in a time when everyone hates influencers like influencer aura is so low right now thank you so much i am very humbled i appreciate it and i'm very grateful for your comment this is also the first office drama episode that is the start of our bi-weekly cadence i know i know guys i know i'm disappointing you i know i can't come out every monday i'm gonna be here every other monday so why the big move honestly this was a very kill your darlings kind of moment because like running a guest interview podcast in person with as high of production quality and value as we have is literally laborious so four specific distinct reasons why i'm making this move to weekly to bi-weekly number one no compromise on quality of production for one of the next one or two guests i literally spent eight hours prepping her interview guide just because i wanted so badly to make a good interview and ask actually thoughtful questions that you wouldn't get elsewhere and make it really fun and girly and just a cute conversation and feel refreshing you know i don't want to compromise that i loved her chat i loved how we felt walking away from it and it's going to be a lifelong relationship and did y'all see the hank green ai controversy where he admitted to relying on using ai too much and decided to publish less content so that he can keep the human process in his workflow well i feel the same way there's so much to creating an educational interview or content piece that really thrives with the human touch and i do not want to lose that which means velocity and speed will be the things i give up first number two no transactional guest experiences i do not want to be a podcast bro or a transactional business girl who's just like i don't know shilling grifting trying to say here's why these people are ultra successful and they made like a hundred million dollars and here's why you're not i think that narrative is so exhausting and tiring and i want to treat my guests as long-term relationships because most of the time we're friends and like some of the times this is our first time meeting i usually take out my guests to dinner after we record or we hang out after and catch up on life because they did me a favor they did me a solid they came all the way to me from wherever they were from and it's my job to make sure that they're happy and that they're my job to make sure i host them properly number three i have several other secret big swing projects that i need heads down time on but in order to unlock bandwidth for my short form and my big secret projects something else must give and podcasting has always been part of my portfolio but never the thing i lead with because i love building a diverse plate of work experiences as you know from my resume from my past that is something i've accepted about myself and whenever i get excited about something i know it's going to be great and lastly number four i'm so pregnant girl i'm in a state where every time i sneeze i pee a little and it's so embarrassing and sometimes like it comes out of my it's the worst and i'm like looking at myself and i'm crying because i'm like wait how is this possible only kids do that like it's so embarrassing but it is what it is pregnancy is a little crazy so yeah a little tmi but you signed up for this you know like this is long form overall office drama has been a phenomenal experience i really love the nuance and the learnings we get from these episodes and i feel like between you and me our relationship is very different like the people who watch me on short form do not have the same relationship that you and i have we recently put out a survey on our story to get your feedback and i don't know if you're just like being too nice but the feedback you gave me was just too nice it was so heartwarming i'm okay if you roast me a little bit too you know i'm like looking for some tactical feedback but if you really think we're like doing it the right thing let us know i know people really don't comment and that's honestly my main source of knowing if i'm going to be able to do it or not i'm going to be able to do it but i'm going to the right direction so seeing these submissions in the google form is awesome it's super informative it's really sweet it's very validating thank you so much i did not think y'all liked office drama as much as you do thank you and if you haven't submitted your feedback yet we're going to be posting on our ig story should be linked in her bio on instagram or highlights by now so check that out please keep supporting us rate us five stars on spotify and apple pods follow there too post comments even if you don't usually post comments they go a very long way for creators to show the big corpse that yes we matter back to work and i'll see you in two weeks bye