Permission to Kick Ass

Getting what you really want out of your business with Amber Fuhriman

July 24, 2024 • Angie Colee • Episode 179

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Today's guest is Amber Fuhriman, a recovering attorney turned success architect. Host of Break Your Bullshit Box, you know this one is gonna get good and ranty (not to mention sweary). We're breaking down what it means to be your true self in a world hell-bent on forcing you to conform. If you've ever felt like you're wearing a bunch of different masks to balance your personal and professional lives, this episode is your wake-up call. 

Can't-miss moments:

  • Do you have a dozen different versions of "you" floating around out there? Amber shares how and why she chose to be herself (plus a bonus story on why I flipped out when someone Photoshopped me)...

  • If you find yourself about to flip a freakin' table, pause and ask yourself this powerful question (this one is a splash of cold water to the face, in the best possible way)...

  • What does success even mean? Amber shares the surprisingly simple reason you may be struggling to get to your end goal...

  • Mic-drop moment: "You have to be selfish before you can be selfless." Amber has an eye-opening take on goals and success (hint: wanting what you want is not only OK, it's critical to actually doing the damn thing)... 

  • Are you running FROM something or TOWARD something? Here's how to tell (and why it's super important)...

Amber's bio:

Amber Fuhriman is an attorney, author, speaker, and podcaster. She is the Owner and Attorney at Fuhriman Law in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Amber practices Criminal Defense and Immigration Law. She graduated from Law School in Michigan and immediately moved to Vegas to being her career.

Throughout her educational and professional career, Amber always thought there would be an “I’ll be happy when moment.” When that moment never came, Amber started to realize her entire identity had been tied up in being an attorney and chasing accomplishments to fill a void that accomplishments could never fill. 

Since 2016,  Amber has pushed the boundaries of her self-imposed physical and mental limitations, living outside her comfort zone as much as possible and learning about how the mind works and how our limiting beliefs affect our success. Now, in addition to practicing law, Amber is a Success Architect! 

Her book, "Break Your Bullsh*t Box" released August 23, 2023.  In it, Amber discusses the excuses we have relied on to justify holding ourselves back and how we can break the bullshit box that those excuses live in.  

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Angie Colee:

Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine-figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, angie Coley, and let's get to it. And welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass. With me today is my friend and the host of another awesomely named podcast, break your Bullshit Box, which I have been on. Amber Furman Say hi, hey.

Amber Fuhriman:

Angie, thank you so much for having me. Recording on my podcast was a blast, so I was super excited to do this a second time.

Angie Colee:

Yes, we get to riff. Well, and it's just like two outspoken conversational, really awesome ladies, really smart business people that happen to have great names. Like that, permission to kick ass, break your bullshit box. Yeah, sorry, I'm gonna do the little self congratulations there because I love it so much.

Amber Fuhriman:

Yeah, I love the name of your podcast too and, on that note, it was interesting because I was trying so hard to be what I thought everybody else wanted me to be and it was when the ability to resist was so worn down. I was exhausted. Somebody asked me a question. I couldn't come up with that crafted, perfect attorney in a bow, politically correct answer and break your bullshit box came out and I was like, oh, this is what happens when I allow myself to be me and I stopped trying to fit myself into everybody else's perspective of what I should be. It's actually pretty fucking awesome.

Angie Colee:

Yes, it is. Oh, I love everything about what you just said, cause I feel like that's been kind of in the zeitgeist lately, at least in my circles, about permission to be yourself, fully yourself, even if other people don't get it, even if you watch people like visibly recoil. I had a couple of instances of being censored by other people recently that really kind of bothered me. One I was a guest on somebody's podcast we talked about leadership and I have a specialized expertise in leading creative teams who were talking about that. They edited my image that I submitted to include me in a tweed jacket and a tasteful necklace and I was like I mean, I could understand you not wanting the tattoos to show, but could you ask me for another picture before you put me in a suit?

Amber Fuhriman:

That just makes my skin crawl, right?

Angie Colee:

That makes my skin crawl for so many reasons, like oh, yeah, and I debated with myself for so long to like, should I even reach out? Am I making a big deal of it? But at the end of the day I reached out and was like, uh, could we put an actual picture of me? And I had a Photoshopped one up, and then it turned into a big deal and that podcast was pulled down, for which I'm grateful.

Amber Fuhriman:

Yeah, I mean, this is the conversation we get to have about being authentically us, right and and this is, you know, not to this extreme, but also to this extreme at the same time.

Amber Fuhriman:

This is what we do to ourselves on a regular basis, like we wake up in the morning and we're like, okay, what Photoshopped version of myself in real life do people want to see today? And I know I went through this for a long time when I was dealing with my identity crises and trying to figure out where I fit in the world, where people who knew me from different walks of life knew different versions of me. And it's only recently that I feel like people from my attorney world could meet people from my coaching world, who could meet people from my podcasting world, who could meet people from my family, and they would all know the same version of me. And that is incredibly freeing and it was terrifying to get to. So I just think that that Photoshopped image is such a great metaphor for what we do to ourselves every single day that we wake up in the morning and we decide who we're supposed to be.

Angie Colee:

Oh gosh, I'm making a note of that. We're going to come back and we're going to rant about this fully, but before we get too far down the road, I want to make sure, tell us a little bit about what you do. You hinted at it a little bit with what you were telling us, but I want to know more is a real thing, right.

Amber Fuhriman:

So I'm a recovering attorney, success architect. I practiced law for about 12 years and I still practice. So people often ask me they say how can you call yourself a recovering attorney if you still are in the courtroom? And the reality is that being in recovery as an attorney doesn't mean that I don't practice law anymore. It means that I don't need the hit of being validated by a courtroom to know that I'm valuable practice law anymore. It means that I don't need the hit of being validated by a courtroom to know that I'm valuable, because I realized that so much of my identity and my self-worth and my value only existed when I walked into a courtroom and I was defending somebody else. So when I go to networking events now, I jokingly tell people that for 12 years I kept people out of physical prisons and now I break them out of mental ones.

Angie Colee:

That I'm just going to let land with a thud, because that was fantastic.

Amber Fuhriman:

Thank you, which is where break your bullshit box came from. So you know I struggled so much when being the picture perfect version of a successful attorney didn't bring happiness and fulfillment and calmness and peace and all of the things that, in my screwed up model of the world, was supposed to happen when you were professionally successful. And so I went down this really big rabbit hole that was driven by panic attacks and anxiety attacks that forced me to challenge what I thought success was and allow myself to get very clear on the purpose for me going to law school in the first place which it turns out was a big trauma response and then deal with that trauma that I was trying to cover up with professional success. So for me now, my first place I start with every one of my clients in the coaching world is what does success actually mean to you? Because if we can't answer that question, you are going to be chasing pots of gold at the end of the rainbow, no matter how great your life looks like from the outside.

Angie Colee:

Mm-hmm. Oh gosh, I was actually. I was talking to fantastic. She helps people figure out their signature talks. Shout out to Laurie and Mirabito, who has been a guest on the show before. We're talking about a speech that I was going to come up with and I was telling her. You know, one of my biggest frustrations is the lack of specificity that people have when I'm their coach. I want to make more money and I was like I can foresee an instance where I'm asking somebody so okay, a dollar is more, is that enough?

Amber Fuhriman:

Okay, I mean, and and you know that is such a perfect example. I feel like it's become just a little bit cliche, although it is true, because it's used so much now and it's so 100% true. So let's take that into another place that we go often, because this is what we hear all the time. What does success mean to you? Oh, freedom, awesome. So you just defined success with another non-definable word. So what does freedom mean to you? Well, flexibility, sweet. What does flexibility mean to you?

Amber Fuhriman:

Like, at some point in in time, we've got to be willing to define success with something that we can logically, emotionally, tangibly understand, and it, you know, we're raised in this society where, I mean, I think that if we polled all your listeners and asked them who grew up hearing if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, don't brag about your accomplishments.

Amber Fuhriman:

Nobody wants to hear about what you have to say. There's nothing special about you, like, these are all things that we grew up hearing. And so when somebody says what's success to you oh, just when I can help other people, bullshit. Give the real answer yes, we want to make an impact on other people. And also, you have a selfish version and definition of success and that is okay to acknowledge. I did a podcast solo episode about a year ago that said you have to be selfish before you can be selfless. You have to be willing to say what it is you want out of the relationship. You have to be willing to say what it is you want out of success before you can ever impact anybody else's life.

Angie Colee:

Oh, yes, I love that reframe to that like you have to be selfish in order to be selfless. I think it's another version of saying you can't pour from an empty cup, right, you've got to be fulfilled, you've got to be getting something from this. And I mean, I see, I think that there's a conflation that's happening here, right, with people that see selfish and automatically assume that it means like you're trampling over someone, stabbing people in the back. Not necessarily Trying to get what you want out of this thing doesn't mean that you are being horrible to other people, and I don't think you should need to be horrible to other people to get what you want.

Amber Fuhriman:

There's a way to do both, right? Well, and it comes down to boundaries, right. So you know, I have this fantastic metaphor that presented itself yesterday I love dogs and I love kids. Well, let me rephrase that I love dogs and I love kids. Well, I let me rephrase that I love dogs and other people's kids. So I don't have children of my own. So when I say I love kids, my family's, like you, love kids, and I'm, like I love other people's kids from afar. Um, because they give the best metaphors, right, cause they're so innocent. And yesterday I was. I take my dog to work with me every day. She's here with me now, and yesterday I pulled her out of the back of my 4Runner and we turned to walk into my office and she saw her reflection in the glass and she lost her shit.

Amber Fuhriman:

And she started barking, and the look on her face when she realized she was barking at herself was priceless. What happened, though, is I was too busy laughing at her to realize I was walking to a curb, and so I didn't step up, and I fell and skinned the crap out of my knee. And as I'm sitting in my office, I'm thinking how often do we start screaming and yelling and bitching about something, just to realize that the thing that we're screaming and yelling and bitching about is us? And then what is, or who is, the innocent bystander that gets hurt in the process of us bitching about ourselves in the mirror Right? And this all comes from the self in the mirror right.

Amber Fuhriman:

And this all comes from this self, this selfish like right, like we've got to be selfish enough to set boundaries for ourselves, so that, when we yell at our sister or our friend for taking too much of our time up, and then we're running late for something else, we're not yelling at them, we're yelling at ourselves, because we didn't protect our time and our energy. And that's what I mean by be selfish like set your boundaries, protect yourself, protect your energy, protect your calendar, so that, when somebody calls for your help, you can say I have this much time to give you and it will 100% be yours.

Angie Colee:

I love that. That's such a great way to look at boundaries. I feel like a lot of people struggle with that too, because they see it as like laying down the law and telling people there will be consequences if you cross it. We're going to have an issue. You can still choose to cross that boundary, but here's what happens. That means that I walk away. That means that this phone call ends. That means that we no longer work together. Whatever that winds up being, it's not a threat, it's not a punishment. It's just a statement of facts. This is what's going to happen. I have 15 minutes that I'm able to give you. As soon as that timer goes off, I'm going to hang up. I'm going to say, hey, I'm so sorry, I got to go. Goodbye. That's not me trying to be rude whatsoever, it's just I got to go.

Amber Fuhriman:

Yeah, absolutely. And on your point, I think it's really important for people to hear and understand what you just said that it's not a punishment, it's not a. This is what's going to happen to you, and the consequence, which I'm going to put in air quotes that you mentioned for over, for stepping over the boundaries, had nothing to do with them. Right? So often I hear people say if you do this, then I'm going to make you do, I'm going to make you feel. I'm going to like whatever. It is for me, boundaries is if you cross the boundary. This is what I'm going to do. The it is for me, boundaries is if you cross the boundary, this is what I'm going to do. The access to me is no longer here. How you feel about it, that's on you, my. So all we can do is worry about ourselves and our actions, and everything else will work itself out, as long as we're congruent with the way that we're showing up.

Angie Colee:

Exactly. I see it as like putting an electric fence there. You know what's going to happen if you touch it.

Amber Fuhriman:

Yeah, yeah, but you've always got that one or two people that, um, is it on? Is it on? Is it on? Is it on? Is it on? Like, did she shut it off yet? Um, how? How like much of an electric shock am I going to get? Like, is it just going to sting for a minute and then I'll be able to walk through it, or is it going to knock me on my ass and I'm going to have to, like, go to the hospital for being electrocuted? Like, how much is it?

Amber Fuhriman:

And that's another thing is that when we shut off access to ourselves, oftentimes that guilt that we feel because of the way that we were raised causes us to lessen that boundary a little bit, and then all it does is teach that person that you're not somebody who can follow through on setting a boundary. And it's not easy. I'm not here to tell you that it's easy. I struggled a lot with this, from who has access to me and who doesn't, and and what, how do I? I mean, held, I had nine bridesmaids at my wedding, because if you invite this person, you got to invite this person. So that's the way that I was raised, and this is why it's so important to have people in your life that that also subscribe to this boundaries conversation, that can say what are you actually getting out of the relationship with this person? Is it what you need? Is it a good source of your energy? It's not about punishment. It's about protecting yourself.

Angie Colee:

It's not about punishment, it's about protecting yourself Well, and I love that you use the word teach specifically, as in like teaching other people how to interact and how to engage with us right, and the whole boundary.

Angie Colee:

This is fascinating, so thank you for indulging me on following this little thread I feel like a lot of people resist it because either they don't feel comfortable what are they going to think of me if I say this? They feel like they're being controlling. But the fact is that you're setting a boundary. Whether you are deliberately saying something or not, you are teaching people how to interact with you, whether you're saying something or not. And I'll use an example from early in my copywriting career.

Angie Colee:

Somebody would email me at three o'clock in the morning and they wanted changes by eight o'clock, and I responded to them at three o'clock in the morning and said hey, I'm not available until eight. What did I just say to this person? I'm available at three o'clock in the morning, but I'm not going to start until eight, because I responded to you at an inappropriate hour and showed you that I was online doing stuff. So the answer is like I learned this the hard way. I don't respond to people that email me at three o'clock in the morning. I respond on my own time. You are free to email me around the clock. The beauty of this is my phone is in the other room, the notifications are off and I will get to it when my computer turns on in the morning, and that is when you will hear from me, and so, without ever saying it, just by my actions, I'm showing people how to work with me. So, like boundaries is multifaceted, it's fun.

Amber Fuhriman:

Yeah. So I mean, and what's really cool about this now is that we have so much technology to help us enforce our boundaries, right Like I have an after hours auto responder sent that says you know, auto reply, we've received your email. These are the expectations of when you would get a response back. I also will put my phone on do not disturb when I'm working, and there's like my family can get through that, my staff can get through that and then I set time in my schedule for when I'm going to check my notifications and when I'm going to respond and what I'm going to do, because we've spent a lot of time talking about boundaries as it applies to other people, but it's important for us to acknowledge that this boundary also applies for us too.

Amber Fuhriman:

So when we set a boundary, we're not just teaching other people how to treat us, we're teaching ourselves how to treat us. So when we get to that boundary and we say, but what if this person like this happens I see this a lot in dating, where they're like I'm not going to text this person or call this person, and then they're like, but what if? And that fear of missing out kicks in, and then we overcome that boundary, we act a way that we are unhappy with, then we blame the other person for the way that we acted and at some point in time we get to acknowledge that like we're the common denominator in that. So just know boundaries. Like if you struggle with boundaries, don't make it about the other person, make it about yourself. You're not teaching the other person how to treat you, you're teaching yourself how to treat you, because that will bring it inward and allow you to give yourself something to focus on.

Angie Colee:

I love that and I think that ties to what you said earlier so perfectly. That, like, when we're really getting upset with other people, often it's us getting upset at ourselves, and I think that illustrated it just perfectly. Like I didn't set this boundary, I'm doing things that I don't want to be doing. I think it's this person's fault for tempting me to slip my own rules Right, and I'm mad at them. I'm really mad at myself for being tempted to slip the own rules and allowing that to slide, so I think that was fantastic 100%, and it always is Right.

Amber Fuhriman:

It always is us. So, your listeners, I'm so sorry this is about the time that my clients tell me to go pound sand lovingly. I encourage every single one of my clients, every single time they get an emotional response to something, to ask themselves the question what about this, is about me? And the moment that you ask yourself that question, you're going to hear an answer in your head, not saying you're going to like the answer. You're going to hear it, though, because almost always not almost always when we get that intense emotional response to somebody else's actions, it is because we can relate to it so deeply and we don't like it. So if you start asking yourself what about this is about me, you're going to get real answers about how your behavior shows up and how that other person is just showing you what you don't like about yourself.

Angie Colee:

It sucks when the mirror is flipped back on us, right I know. Oh, all the self-development I didn't know I was signing up for when I joined this wacky world of entrepreneurship.

Amber Fuhriman:

Isn't that the truth? And podcasting, too. Like I thought when I started podcasting that I was just going to get to ask people questions Like have you had that podcast yet where your guest says something and then you're like hold on just a second, I need to process this for a minute because it like whacked you upside the head. And so I feel like every single interview that I do, there's at least one moment where I'm like shit, that I mean I wanted to make that episode about them and really it was what I needed to hear.

Angie Colee:

Yes, Well, that's what I love about hosting the show, because, I mean, selfishly, it's the show that I wish I had when I first started out. But then I also like, additionally, selfishly get to learn from wonderful, brilliant, smart people like yourself, who show me all of these interesting perspectives and different ways to look at things. I leave every single episode going oh my gosh, that was the best episode ever.

Amber Fuhriman:

I feel like I say that all the time in my intros. I'm like I just had the best conversation and then I'm like I know I say that every single time and I still stand by it every single time.

Angie Colee:

Absolutely. I saw that last week. We're going to go on this tangent too. I checked out the show on Apple podcasts and I saw in the show notes. I was like I love this episode. I love this episode. This is the best episode yet. I stand by it. I stand by it Absolutely. Yes, the best episode yet. I stand by it. I stand by it. Yes, all day. All right, you hinted at this earlier. You talked about lawyer, you talked about coaching, so tell us a little bit about your background and how those two things connect.

Amber Fuhriman:

Yeah, so this was interesting for me. So I practice criminal defense and immigration, so I've spent a lot of time with people who are good people for the most part. There are a few people over the 12 years of practicing that I can point to and say that's just, that's just a bad person, but the majority of my clients are good people who made bad choices, and I do what I can to help them navigate in a world where we're trying to get some sort of resources to them while also getting some sort of justice at the same time, which is with a lot of people who are here seeking a better life that are now facing deportation by either their fault or no fault of their own. So my, my entire career has been spent defending people that, to some extent, are incapable of defending themselves, and I got an incredible amount of fulfillment from that. At the same time, though, like law school was easy for me, becoming an attorney was easy for me. When I talk about the hard things I've done in my life going to law school, becoming an attorney, isn't even on the list, and I'm not saying it wasn't hard. What I'm saying is that in my mind, it wasn't optional. So when I think about the things I've done, like running a 24 hour obstacle course race or building a second business, or the things that were hard and optional. Those are the things that I'm most proud of.

Amber Fuhriman:

When I decided to go to law school, I was running from so much trauma and being an attorney was what I thought was going to make that trauma not hurt anymore. So it wasn't. There was never a moment where it was like, can I do this? Because the alternative was going back to the pain and trauma of losing person after person after person in my life, and I wasn't willing to do that. Fast forward to 2016, where I had been practicing law for four years at that point in time and I had hit a six-figure income. I was respected in my field. I had started an immigration practice for a criminal defense attorney. I was a resource that people came to. This is the time that I would have expected the hard work to pay off and the trauma to not be trauma anymore, and it didn't. I know that's going to shock everybody, but my trauma just disappeared because of professional success. Shocker, right, and I tell people that the most dangerous thing that you can do is tie your definition of success and happiness and fulfillment to an external result, because one of two things is going to happen Either you're never going to hit it and you're going to spend your entire life chasing and wishing that you were something different, or, in my case, you are going to hit it and everything that you think you know about the world you're going to start to question.

Amber Fuhriman:

And I didn't know which way was up and which way was down. I started having really bad panic attacks. I started having really bad anxiety attacks. For the first time. I couldn't compartmentalize. I was getting sent home from work. I couldn't control my emotions. It was a complete shit show. And it was also the best part of my life Because up until that point, I had been able to convince myself that I was okay.

Amber Fuhriman:

This was the first time that I was willing to say this is not an okay place to be and I don't know how to fix it. So I started going to therapy. Through therapy, I ended up through therapy and being invited to workouts in the park. I ended up being that I don't know jack shit about running a business. I know nothing and, if you think I'm exaggerating, I went to send a letter and I didn't have envelopes, stamps I didn't know how to buy stamps, I didn't have pens Like all of that stuff had magically appeared at every job I had ever had in the past. So for me, I had just gone to work, did my job and go home because somebody else provided the how. But now there was nobody else there to do it and I was like, oh, I have like really stepped in stuff at this point. So I started, I started looking for resources and magically, as if it was meant to be, someone invited me to success boot camp.

Amber Fuhriman:

Now, when I was in therapy, I remember having a conversation with my therapist and saying the only thing that I've ever wanted to be as successful. And I feel like such a failure. And she said to me Amber, you have a six figure income, you have a law degree, you're respected in your field, you live in a city that you don't know anybody and you take care of yourself. You are the first person in your family to go to college or the first person to go on to grad school. Like, how many more things do I have to list for you before you can tell me what success means to you? Like, what does it mean? And I said, I don't freaking know what success means. It was supposed to be what I have. So when I saw Success Bootcamp, you would have thought that I learned my lesson from this like law school disaster. But I apparently didn't.

Amber Fuhriman:

I saw Success Bootcamp and I was like, oh, I'm gonna go to this like four hour event and someone's gonna give me a nice neat checklist wrapped up in a pretty bow that's gonna tell me the five things that I need to know to be successful. And it wasn't four hours, it was eight hours. And it was eight hours of constantly being smacked in the face with the reality that the reason I didn't have everything that I wanted in my life was because I didn't allow myself to have it. I didn't define it, I didn't let myself have it. I didn't know what it was. I had trauma that I was running from that I wasn't willing to deal with that. I was the common denominator in everything that I loved about my life and everything that I was running from about my life and that intrigued me. So I started going deeper and deeper into the science and NLP and trauma work and all of the things, with the intention of being a better attorney.

Amber Fuhriman:

And at some point in time about three years ago so 2020 ish. I started realizing when COVID hit and people were knocked out of their day-to-day life. So many of them opened their eyes to the fact that they didn't like themselves, they didn't like their job, they didn't like the life they had built for themselves and happiness, and open my bullshit box of I can't tell people about what I've been through because they'll judge me and be able to actually make an impact in other people's lives. So that's where the coaching business came from and eventually, over the last three years, I've spent more time in the coaching business. I've been more passionate about that. So in June of last year, we made the official decision to close down the law firm. We're still scaling out of it, but I'm not really taking active cases anymore and I'll take a few that get referred to me. I'm not doing any marketing, not growing the firm, and we're spending the majority of our time in the training and coaching and self development space.

Angie Colee:

I love that. That's so wonderful and I know like, okay, so this comes from our conversation before we actually hit record, but you talked about it. You actually mentioned it in passing to when you were telling your story. Just then you mentioned running away and I know we talked about running away and running toward and the kinds of like fits and starts that you had in learning when to trust yourself to leave the law firm. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that?

Amber Fuhriman:

Yeah, I can. So there were a lot of times where I would wake up and I would have a call with my coach and I'd be like I don't want to be an attorney anymore. And God bless my coach. And I'd be like I don't want to be an attorney anymore. And God bless my coach. She spent so much time and energy trying to prevent me from burning a $600,000 business into the ground. And I would tell her, like I remember the first time I was like I'm done with this, I'm not going to be an attorney. It was in 2020. So I'm not going to be an attorney anymore.

Amber Fuhriman:

And she's like, okay, well, if this is really how you feel, let's build an exit plan. And I said, no fucking exit plan, I'm just not going to work. And she's like, well, that's not the way that being your own boss works. And I'm like you told me that I don't have to do anything that I don't want to do, and I don't want to go to work. And she's like that's not actually an option, right? And so we would go back and forth. And then I would realize that in that moment, the reason that I wanted to close my law firm was because I was making more money than I'd ever made before and that scared me. So then she would reel me back in. We'd put my head down, we'd start working, I'd build my law firm even more, and then I would tell her I'm done, I don't want to do this anymore. Well, what was I running from at that point in time? And I would tell her I'm done, I don't want to do this anymore. Well, what was I running from at that point in time? So, in June of 2023, I had to remember what year we were in In June of 2023, when I called her and I said I'm done with the law firm. We had had this conversation three or four times. And I told her. I said listen, I know we've had this conversation before and I'm just here to tell you that this time it feels different and I'm done. And she says I finally believe for the first time that you're done for the right reasons. She said I finally believe that you are done because you're building something that you're more passionate about, not because you're afraid of what you're building and you're afraid of whether you can handle it. So let's build your exit plan. And what's really interesting is when I had that conversation with her in my head my law firm was going to close, it was going to be done. I was not going to practice anymore, I wasn't going to be involved at all.

Amber Fuhriman:

And as I've given myself permission to completely let go of the law firm, I've actually found parts of it that I'm excited to hold on to.

Amber Fuhriman:

And so there's this area where being an attorney and being a coach and a trainer and a speaker and an author, and all of those things that make me happy that they coexist Going back to boundaries that we talked about before, that first filter. So when I get a call that comes in to my law firm from a referral, the first question I ask myself is if I choose to take this case, can I do it without affecting what I'm building in my coaching business? And if the answer to that is no, I turned down a $10,000 retainer yesterday to that is no. I turned down a $10,000 retainer yesterday. There is not an amount of money that I will take in order to take a case that will impact what I'm building in this empire of my coaching business. That's a boundary I've set for myself and it's one that I honor. So that's just an example of what I mean when we talk about boundaries earlier.

Angie Colee:

Mm-hmm. Oh, that is so fantastic, and I love making that distinction for everybody that's listening about running away and running toward, because I feel like a lot of us are just kind of mindlessly going well, this doesn't feel right, so I just need to get away from it and the answers will come in the movement. Yes, and if you're running for the wrong reasons, you're probably for the wrong reasons. You're probably going to find yourself in a very similar situation before long. Or you're going to find yourself, like you said, in that situation where it's like I got what I thought I wanted and now my world is turned upside down because, like, what is even? This is what I was supposed to want, this is what was supposed to make me happy, and I'm still not there. It's hard not to beat yourself up at that point.

Amber Fuhriman:

And it's that word supposed to right Like every time we say this was supposed to be like. Who said? Who told you that?

Amber Fuhriman:

Yeah, because that's not a thing, and I wish that I could tell somebody like the things to look for, to know whether you're running away or running towards, and it's so individual. So the only thing that I can tell you for me was that the way that I knew it was that it was so unemotional the times that I had had a conversation with her before there was so much emotion and urgency tied to getting out of the situation. It was almost like my fight or flight response had kicked in and flight was what it chose when I was congruent with and running towards something else instead of away. It was calm and peaceful and plan-based and logical-based. Now there was excitement, there was still emotion, but it wasn't that panic that I feel like existed before. So for me, it was like this grounded, calm, logical decision rather than an emotional-based one. Have you seen the movie Groundhog Day? Yes, okay, so I love Groundhog Day, and this is what's so important for people to hear. Is that when we make decisions based upon an emotional response? Is that when we make decisions based upon an emotional response if when I was suffering from panic attacks in 2016 and I wanted to stop being an attorney instead of opening my own firm and going into the personal development space and learning what I now know about myself.

Amber Fuhriman:

If I would have just hit the reset button, ran away and went back to bartending and said where did I go wrong? I would. It would have been groundhog day. I would have rebuilt the same life. I might not have been an attorney, I might not have been in the same space, the the wrapping paper would have looked different, but the inside would have been the same. I still would have been chasing success. I would have reached a point that wouldn't have brought me what I thought. I would have hit the reset button again. I would have started again.

Amber Fuhriman:

And so when we look at people in their entire life looks like Groundhog Day, just in different forms. It's because, like they do something, it doesn't produce a result. And instead of stepping back and saying what was the reason that I expected this behavior to produce this result, they asked well, maybe the way that I was supposed to get that result was wrong, so let me just go try something else to get it. So if you find yourself constantly spinning your wheels and it seems like every single decision that you make is putting you in this groundhog day of getting to the same frustrated, unfulfilled place with no answers. You're the problem and you're also the solution, so we get to dig into that.

Angie Colee:

I love that you talked about this because I I feel like, um, there's so much symmetry between that and how we conduct ourselves inside of a business. I've been talking with a lot of my personal clients lately about how they make their client feel safe right In a service business. There's a certain element to building a safe container where somebody feels comfortable enough handing their baby and their money over to you and saying help me, right, and that's not something that I take lightly. Well, of course. So if somebody, if you're doing creative work especially, it feels personal because it's coming out of my head and I'm bringing something out of nothing and creating something right, if somebody reacts bad to that, and then I take that personally and react to them.

Angie Colee:

It's that, that emotional state that you were talking about reactivity versus proactivity versus responding. The way I think about reactivity is like being controlled by your emotions. Your emotions say panic, run right. And if we can sit back and build that space and breathe a little bit, we can go panic, breathe, bring the heart rate back down. Okay, if I ran, I was about to run off a cliff. I'm glad I didn't do that. Here's another option. Here's another option. Let me think these through. Okay, decide instead of react.

Amber Fuhriman:

Yeah, there's two for your listeners that are movie watchers. There's actually two really good movies. One of them is also a book, so if you're a book reader, I was going to say a book watcher, that's not actually a thing.

Angie Colee:

I thought you were going to say book nerd.

Amber Fuhriman:

I was like, yes, Well, that too. Side note, I saw somebody on TikTok the other day that had taken books, spiraled them around, put a rod down into the middle of them, compressed them and made a nightstand. So the books that spiraled was the pole of the nightstand and it was so cool. It was so cool. The book nerd in me loved it.

Amber Fuhriman:

So there's two movies that I suggest every single one of my clients watch. The first one is called the Peaceful Warrior. It's an older movie. There's a series of books written by Dan Miller, the Way of the Peaceful Warrior series of books written by Dan Miller, um, the way of the peaceful warrior, Um, and there's like two other ones, um, and they're based on. So the premise of the peaceful warrior is a um gymnast runs into this old weird guy at a? Um convenience store and he becomes a guide for him, and that old weird guy is supposed to um, represent Socrates and teaching him how to just be present and how to, how to be just here and human and now, and so it's fantastic when we talk about our emotions.

Amber Fuhriman:

The second one is called Chasing Mavericks and it's about it's a true story about Jay Moriarty, who was a professional surfer. He was the first or the youngest person to surf the Mavericks in California, which had these huge, massive, like 40 foot waves, and he did it at the age of 16. And so it's his story of getting to the place where he could surf those waves. And there's a scene in that movie where they're diving, they're free diving, him and his coach, and this huge, 20-foot great white shark comes past them and his coach has to calm Jade down because he panics and if you know anything about being in the water with wildlife like that, panicking is the worst thing that you can do because that's what they attract to. So he calms him down, they get back up to their boat and he says what was that?

Amber Fuhriman:

And Jay says what do you mean? What was that? It was a 20 foot great white shark. And he's like no, what was your reaction? He says because panic and fear are two different emotions and panic is healthy, Fear is deadly and I thought that that's so powerful, Like it's human nature to panic. What we do with that panic and how we respond to that panic dictates whether we go into a responding solution base or whether we go into fear. And if you hit fear, there are no solutions in that, because you're a fighter flight kicks in and you don't know where to go from there. So that fear, that sometimes feels like panic, that is a really dangerous place to be in your life and business.

Angie Colee:

Yeah, it limits your options, it limits your perception of everything around you and it makes everything feel like a mortal consequence, when it may just be a hard choice, right? Not something that's actually going to be life or death. Oh, this is fantastic. I just looked down and realized we only have a couple minutes left, so, instead of ants asking questions, that's going to lead us to like three more hours of conversation, because this is really good.

Angie Colee:

I'm sorry, we only gave ourselves an hour. We're going to have to do a part two, but tell us more about Break your Bullshit Box, because, again, it's such a great name. I want to know everything.

Amber Fuhriman:

Oh, thank you so much. So Break your Bullshit Box. I have the book. So for those of you who are watching, here's the book Break your Bullshit Box, eliminate your Excuses, empower your Journey and Enjoy your Results. This came because I constantly got asked how did you go from being an attorney to being a coach and a success architect and doing these things? And, as we all do, I crafted the perfect answers for this and they were all well put together and I would say them and I would rehearse them and it was great. And then one day I got asked after a speaking engagement and I was exhausted and my filter was down and my true personality came out and my response was I had an emotional breakdown and my bullshit box broke and I had an emotional breakdown and, in the process of rebuilding myself, I learned how to help others rebuild themselves as well, and that's really what this is.

Amber Fuhriman:

So the premise of the book, the programs, the coaching, the podcast, all of it is that I believe that we have two boxes in our head. We have our compartmentalization box, where we put all of our trauma, all of the things that we think bring us shame or judgment or less than, and we put things in that box and we seal it up until the stuff in there becomes so relevant that it just bursts. The other boxes are bullshit box and we put all of our excuses, all of the things that we tell ourselves. These are the reasons that I'm not capable of, worthy, of able to achieve whatever it is that I want and that box never closes. And every time we get close to leaving our comfort zone, we just reach our hand in that box, we grab an excuse and then we surround ourselves with people who buy it and we stay safe and then we convince ourselves that we're trying when in all reality, we just decided what bullshit was going to give us the most comfort.

Amber Fuhriman:

So the premise of the box, the premise of the coaching, is that those two boxes need to shift. Your bullshit box needs to become enclosed and unopenable. You put your excuses in it and they are inaccessible again. Your compartmentalization box needs to open because the things that are in it that you think make you unconnectable and unworthy are exactly what everybody wants to hear from you in order to connect and be human.

Amber Fuhriman:

The moment I started talking about the death in my family suicide in my family at the age of seven, losing my dad at the age of 18, the failed relationships, the broken promises, the parts of me that are human, people started connecting with me. So all of those things that I thought were going to make people judge me because I was imperfect were the parts of me that they wanted to see, because they're who I am and they're part of my story, and you cannot get to know me without understanding those things. So everything that I've put together since that statement was made has been designed to help people embrace and own their individuality that comes through their life experiences and like lock up and completely eliminate access to all of the things that are going to hold them back.

Angie Colee:

Oh, I love that. All right, when can we learn more about this? Give us the website, give us the links. Want it all.

Amber Fuhriman:

Yeah, so the book is available on Amazon. You can go track that down there. My website is successdevelopmentsolutionscom. You can go there and get all of the access to information there. I do have a free gift for anybody who wants it. You can go to definesuccesssuccessdevelopmentsolutionscom and I do free trainings that will help you start to identify what success means to you. So you can go check out those trainings, find out which one fits for you and get some cool resources to help you get started on that journey.

Angie Colee:

That's so awesome. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show, for sharing all of this wonderfulness with us. We're going to have to do a part two.

Amber Fuhriman:

I feel like we're gonna have to do um, you know we should do. Have you ever heard of a smash cast? Okay, so I found this concept on a music podcast that I listened to and it was two hosts that had podcasts that came in and did one recording and they just went back and forth about who was hosting and who was asking questions and who wasn't. Then they took that same audio and they put it on their podcast the same unedited and it was like it was so cool so I've been wanting to do that with somebody. We might have to make that happen.

Angie Colee:

We might have to make that happen. Thank you again for being on the show and I will talk to you soon. Thank you for having me happen. Thank you again for being on the show and I will talk to you soon. Thank you for having me. That's all for now. If you want to keep that kick-ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high-octane dose of you can do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Permission to Kick-Ass podcast on Apple Podcasts, spotify and wherever you stream your podcasts. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.