Fatima Bey: 0:04

This is MindShift Power Podcast, the number one critically acclaimed podcast where we have raw, unfiltered conversations that shape tomorrow. I'm your host, fatima Bey, the MindShifter, and welcome everyone. Today we have with us George Appling. He is out of Texas in the United States. He is an author and a passionpreneur. We're going to talk about that today. How are you doing today, george?

George Appling: 0:36

I'm great Satima. How are you?

Fatima Bey: 0:39

I'm good. I'm looking forward to this conversation because you have a lot of stuff to talk about today, so tell us about your background, and why should we even listen to you?

George Appling: 0:49

It's a great question. Why should you listen to me? I think because I play, dress up and swing swords at my friends for a living.

Fatima Bey: 0:56

Okay, that sounds worthwhile.

George Appling: 1:00

It's actually true. I really do play dress-up and swing swords at my friends for a living. That's what I do. I'm going to be playing dress-up and swinging swords at my friends all day for the next 40 days.

Fatima Bey: 1:12

Okay, you have to explain that, because it just sounds weird by itself.

George Appling: 1:15

It is weird. It's also beautiful. So a lot of Americans have heard of a Renaissance Festival and it's a theme park where you're pretending to be in the past. I own and operate a show called Sherwood Forest Fair and it's a medieval theme park. So we're pretending we're in the 1190s and we'll have thousands and thousands of people here and we're all dressed up and waiting for Robin Hood to save the day While people are watching jousting and eating turkey legs and watching falconry and jugglers and all this good stuff. And that's in the spring. And now in the summer we have a summer camp for kids and it's kind of the same idea. We have about 130 kids a week for four weeks and they're learning blacksmithing and leatherworking and sword fighting and horse riding and archery, and we're waiting for Robin Hood to save the day. So that's what I'm doing for the next four weeks.

Fatima Bey: 2:03

Now, what does that have to do with being a passionpreneur?

George Appling: 2:07

Yeah. So a passionpreneur is someone who builds businesses that they are genuinely passionate about, and so my summer camp and my medieval fair are businesses that I'm genuinely passionate about.

Fatima Bey: 2:27

So that's where the passion comes from.

George Appling: 2:31

So that's why we should listen to you because you're living exactly what you're talking about today. Yeah, I'm definitely living my dream. I made a decision a long time ago that I wanted my business skills and my genuine passions to be married, basically, and so, yeah, I am definitely living the dream of living a life that I designed for myself very intentionally.

Fatima Bey: 2:51

And I absolutely love that and believe in it very strongly, which is we both have that same passion. It's something that I teach as well, so I said that you're an author, so tell us about Don't Settle.

George Appling: 3:04

Right, so Don't Settle is my book. It hit Amazon number one when it launched back in October of 2024. So it's going well. The book is a framework through which the reader can choose the relationship between their work and their passion. Now, that's not to say that your work and your passion have to be the same thing. Now, that's not to say that your work and your passion have to be the same thing. It might be, but it doesn't have to be. The framework leads the reader to choose one of five paths, and each of the five paths is a different way for your work and your passion to relate to one another.

Fatima Bey: 3:39

I can walk through the five real fast if you'd like, oh absolutely.

George Appling: 3:41

What's the first one? The first one is passion, and that's where your passion and your work are the same thing. So of course that's a choice, it's just not the only one. Then there's the independent path, which is kind of the opposite. It's where your passion and your work don't have anything to do with one another. The third is the experiment path, which means you're trying things and exposing yourself to the world and maybe hopping around to look for that spark and try to find what it is that you're passionate about. The fourth is the money path.

George Appling: 4:12

We all know people who are driven to be rich and so they are chasing the almighty dollar and there's a certain set of criteria at which that's the right thing for you to do. And then there's the balance path, which is what I did. The balance path is you want your passion and your work to be the same thing, but it capital, capabilities, reputation, brand build what you need so that when you are following your passion later, your probability of success is higher. Those are the five paths passion, independent, experiment, money and balanced.

Fatima Bey: 4:56

Okay, so your book Don't Settle is about those five pathways. Yes, and it's the framework through which each reader chooses the one that's right for them, so let's walk through them. So let's walk through a little bit more in detail of the first one. What does that look like?

George Appling: 5:16

The Passion Path. First of all, I'll start with who it's for. My book is largely targeted at young people. That being said, people of all ages have read it and told me they get value out of it, but the primary audience is young people. So the passion path meaning the passion now path tends to be for people who they know how to monetize a passion, meaning they have a passion and they know they can make money from it and their need for financial security is relatively low. So if your need for financial security is relatively low and you know you can make money with a passion, yeah, go do that. And that can be anything.

George Appling: 5:58

I mean, I've got a friend who I hold up as a great example of the passion path. Her name is Roxanne and she's a musician, a band leader, and she's got this beautiful band called Wine and Alchemy and they've been performing at Renaissance festivals for 18 years. And she realized as a young person that she wasn't going to be fulfilled unless she was making music. Like there's really just nothing else that lit her up except for making music. And she also realized the probability of financial success is low. The percentage of musicians who do very well financially is a very low number. So what she did being an intentional person is she structured her life so that she could live very frugally Great example life. So that she could live very frugally A great example.

George Appling: 6:49

She'll go to Spain and put her hat in the plaza and play music for a day and get 200 euro put into her hat. And then day two she's a tourist. And day three she puts her hat down, plays music, gets 200 euro. Day four, she's a tourist. And so she chose 18 years ago that she was going to structure her life to be low cost, because she was going to follow her heart and she knew the probability of huge financial success is low. And knowing that, understanding that and making that intentional choice, I think, is what has led her to be really fulfilled, because she's not disappointed. She knew this was going to be the way.

Fatima Bey: 7:28

So that sounds like the first one is someone who follows is more fulfilled by passion than money.

George Appling: 7:37

Yes, that's true. Yeah, that's true. If your need for financial security is high, following the passion path as a young person is, I think, a recipe for disappointment.

Fatima Bey: 7:49

Yeah, it can be, and that disappointment can turn into disaster because of what it does to that person emotionally and mentally. Absolutely 100% and then you feel like they feel like a failure, and that always causes us to be incompetent in every other area. When we feel like that, what is? Let's take a deeper dive into pathway number two.

George Appling: 8:13

Yeah. So pathway number two is the independent path, and that's where your passion and your work don't have anything to do with each other. Don't have anything to do with each other and that tends to be for people who can't see their way to making money at what they're passionate about. So if your only passion is smoking pot and playing video games, you know, maybe you're not going to do a good job of making that your career, where you can make money.

George Appling: 8:40

Only when I say that I've got a professor friend of mine at Texas A&M where I give my talk, my book talk a lot, and he says you can monetize pot and you can monetize video games. I'm like, yeah, but you know what You're probably not going to. So the independent path is your passion, or work or not related. I'll give an example. I've got a drinking buddy in Houston named Mark and he's been at the same company for 26 years. It's called Infrastructure Services and they build the highways. You ever wonder like who the fuck builds the highways? You've got to have some really smart people who are really good at math building the highways. Well, that's Mark.

George Appling: 9:18

And Mark's passion is volleyball. He would play volleyball eight hours a day, six days a week if he could. The problem is at a very early age, you know, 25 years ago Mark realized he's 5'9". He's not going to make a bunch of money playing volleyball. So he realized, look, that's the only thing I want to do is play volleyball At 5'9". I'm not going to make a living doing that. That's the only thing I want to do is play volleyball at 5'9". I'm not going to make a living doing that. I'm going to go make a living somewhere else, so that I can pay the mortgage and pay for school for my daughter, and then I can play volleyball on the side. And so that's the independent path. He likes his job, he's good at it, he makes good money, but it is funding his volleyball habit on the weekends.

Fatima Bey: 10:01

I get that. I'm going to use another example. I'm a dancer, I'm a salsa dancer, I'm a huge salsa dancer and in the dance world I know people who are extremely passionate about dancing. You know like I am, and some of them run around from country to country performing and they make money at it. They teach workshops, they make a living from it and they make a decent living from it. It can be a fun but hectic life, but they're passionate about it and they love what they do. And then I have people I know people that are very passionate about dancing but they are that independent. They will not perform, they will not teach, because once you add discipline and structure to that fun thing, it can become unfun for some people.

Fatima Bey: 10:51

I think that sometimes I like to see things married together, but I can understand why. That's a pathway, because you know, for, like me, as a salsa dancer, I have performed. However, I don't really want to. I don't, I don't want to perform, I don't want to be the best dancer before. I don't care. I like the dancing for the dancing, I'm passionate about it. It's totally separate. I'm not planning on making money on it because I think that would ruin it for me.

George Appling: 11:19

A hundred percent and that's you know, when I talk to young people about this or give my talk, there's a couple of great examples of monetizing a passion that tends to fail. For example, painting. When you're passionate about painting and you are putting your soul into the canvas to show it to the world, you're living your dream and you are, you're expressing your, your, your spirit. But when you're getting paid to do it and it's someone else's idea of what you're going to paint and it's on a deadline and there's a price tag on it, it's very common for people who were passionate about painting, Once they start getting paid for it, the passion goes away.

Fatima Bey: 12:01

Yeah, I get that. I really I get that, yeah. So what is the third one?

George Appling: 12:08

The third one is the experiment path. So the experiment path is mostly for people who don't know what their passion is. And especially when you're when you're talking about you know, say, 18 to 20 year olds, you know a good third of them will say I don't know what my passion is. So the experiment path is about trying things, and it could be trying different organizations, like different business sectors, like telecom or e-commerce or energy. It could be trying different non-government organizations. It could be trying different government jobs. It can be trying different things in different countries.

George Appling: 12:46

It's about trying a lot of different things and just looking for that spark, actively seeking something that you're passionate about, something that animates you and lights you up. And then in the book, of course, there are certain guidelines around hopping around A person like me. Back when I used to be in the real world, I would screen hundreds of resumes a year and if I saw someone who changed jobs every year or two, I would say to myself and my team well, they don't have the loyalty gene, so put the resume in the trash can, and so when you're hopping around and experimenting, you have to just be careful that you're not painting a picture of yourself as not having a loyalty gene.

George Appling: 13:29

So you can hop around different functions within a company, for example. So let's say you're working at some big company like HP. You can try sales and marketing and procurement and supply chain finance and you can try a whole product development. You can try a bunch of different things, but you're not leaving the organization. Even in nonprofits you can try different roles, and so I caution people to not change organizations every year or two for 10 years, because it's going to look like you're not worth investing in as an employer.

Fatima Bey: 14:03

That is a good point. I want to piggyback off of that a little bit and just, I think we're very often our youth are taught there's only one way to do things you have to go to college or have to go to trade school. You can never change, and I think that's not true. I think you don't know what you want to do until you try. You know, you might decide I really think that I want to work with cars. So you work with cars a little bit and then you decide, no, I don't like cars. So then you move on to the medical field or you move on to working at a restaurant and you're like oh my God, I love working with food. This is it. But you don't know until you try. You really really there's nothing wrong with you if you try.

George Appling: 14:44

Yeah, a%. I mean that's the way you learn, right? One of the great examples of that there's a kind of a biography by Matthew McConaughey. It's called Green Lights and he went to Australia when he was young and just did like eight different jobs over a year and completely different things. It was almost like an experiment internship program where he just did a couple of months of this and a couple of months of that and he just got exposed to things. And I think that's the best way to find that spark is to give things a try. And so, especially if you don't know what you're passionate about, but do anything, Go try something, and if you don't like it you'll have learned something. You'll have learned and you don't like it, so then go try something else. And so that's kind of the heart of the experiment path is just keep trying things and be open to the spark.

Fatima Bey: 15:32

And don't let anyone tell you that there's something wrong with you because you haven't figured it out yet.

George Appling: 15:38

Absolutely.

Fatima Bey: 15:39

There are people who are stuck in dead-end jobs that they absolutely hate, who are 50 years old because they never tried. They just work to pay bills and they're miserable. So you don't want to be through those with each other.

George Appling: 16:04

I think people fall into that by default. I think that's what the world will do to you if you don't make this decision on your own, and I think if you choose the independent path, you are going to be much more fulfilled than if the world chooses the independent path for you.

Fatima Bey: 16:17

Very true, good point, and what is that? Fourth one again. And what is that?

George Appling: 16:20

fourth one again Money, money, money, money. So my exemplar for this is an author named Scott Galloway, really cool guy. He's a professor at New York State University in the Stern Business School, super, super neat guy and he was on the money path and he kind of went into investment banking and made just unholy fuck tons of money and but it's very understandable how he got there. So when he was a kid he grew up in a very low income household and what? And it was up north like wisconsin or something where it gets cold.

George Appling: 16:53

I'm in texas it doesn't really get cold here and he lost his winter jacket once and he was afraid to tell his mother that he lost his winter jacket because he knew that $30 to buy a new one would really hurt.

George Appling: 17:06

And so then, you know, the mom had to see him come home from school shivering and say where's your coat? And he had to tell her that he lost it. So that scarred him and then in his 20s his mother got cancer and they couldn't afford some of the treatments that could have been helpful to her until he got scarred again, and so he just was driven to be financially secure. So when I was talking about passion, if you want to follow your passion as a young person, your kind of need for financial security should be low. There are people whose need for financial security is high, and for those people the money path is an option. Now I would like to think that you know you pursue that path for a while and then hopefully, you'll stop and get off of it and go do something that's more good for the world, more aligned with what you love.

Fatima Bey: 17:55

But I think it's fair game to go follow the money path if that's what you need to do, to go follow the mind path if that's what you need to do, I would say yes, just make sure it doesn't become your God and cause you to do things that put you in jail or worse. Yeah, absolutely.

George Appling: 18:17

And that's one of these heuristics that I bump into a lot. I think when it comes to wealth, there are two different mindsets. There's more is better and enough is enough, and I think, in general, the enough is enough people are happy and the more is better people are not.

Fatima Bey: 18:31

I would agree. I think you're exactly right, because here's case in point If more was better, we wouldn't have any miserable rich people, we wouldn't have rehab centers that are set up just for the rich and famous, we wouldn't have Elon Musk on stage tweaking out the richest man in the world, prime example. If it was enough fulfillment, financial security, absolutely seek after that. There's nothing wrong with that, like you just said. But if you're looking for it to fill happiness, it won't Not by itself. Anyway It'll fill some stuff, but it won't fill happiness enough. And I say that because, unfortunately, our society does teach that sometimes and there are people who follow that and they make that mistake and that's why they end up on the news.

George Appling: 19:26

Yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. I think it's one of the most important things. That for successful people to get their head around is enough is enough is a much healthier mindset than more is better. More is better as a trap. It's an absolute trap. You can never get out of it. It's hard to get out of it.

Fatima Bey: 19:43

And it leaves you miserable. And why live that kind of life? I got all this stuff and I'm unhappy. Well, you are, because you're trying to put a square peg into a round hole and it doesn't fit.

George Appling: 19:54

That's it, that's it.

Fatima Bey: 19:57

So let's talk about my favorite one, the last one.

George Appling: 20:00

The balance path. So that's the path that I did. I'm a big fan of the balance path. In fact, I've got a little five-minute quiz on my website, georgeaplingcom, where you can spend the five minutes and answer a bunch of questions and it will tell you the path that's right for you. And balance path is number one. So the good news if each path had an equal audience, there would be 20 each, but my, my data set, which is in the thousands, now, balanced is number one at 26 and I think uh, the passion now path. No, it's the. Yeah, the passion now path is the lowest at 14. Oh, but that's good. Like, if everything's between 14 and 26, each of the five paths has has its audience. Okay, now if, if one of the paths had 72 percent of the people choose it and another path had four percent, that means my definitions aren't very good, but anyway. So balance path is number one at 26 and what it is is.

George Appling: 21:00

You do have a goal of monetizing a passion, or making your passion and your work the same thing, but you're going to do it later and you're going to spend a certain number of years might be five, might be 20, getting what it takes to maximize the probability of success when you do marry your work and your passion, and that may mean accumulating some wealth, because what you want to do when you're passionate to work for the same needs capital. It may mean developing capabilities. It may mean developing brand or network. So it's being very intentional about what do I need over the next 5, 10, 15 years to make sure that when I switch over to following a passion, it's going to be okay and then going after that, like it may mean you need digital marketing skills. It may mean you need public speaking skills. It may mean whatever the key success factors are for you know, monetizing your passion later go get that.

Fatima Bey: 22:06

Yes, it may, and let's talk about some of the other ways it may look like, because I think sometimes people don't get this and it makes them either get looked at as a loser or less than or they feel that way themselves. It may look like working at McDonald's today while you're in school so that you can become that stockbroker tomorrow. You know you may be working at Home Depot today while you're in school, or working a side gig so that you can build that empire. That side gig is not reliable enough right now to pay the bills. Home Depot is, but you're building and building and building it so you can leave Home Depot and it could be your full source income. And I think that sometimes we need to just keep reminding our youth that that is okay to do. In fact, it's smart.

George Appling: 22:59

And so I think, yeah, 100%. The other kind of mental hack I would suggest is if you look for the social good in your work, you're going to be happier and more productive and get raises more and all this stuff. Great story called the parable of the bricklayer, and I like it because when I tell it I get to set it in the 1190s in england, which is where I spend as much of my time as possible. So imagine a psychologist goes to medieval england and she goes to a cathedral being built and she walks up to a bricklayer and says what are you doing like bricks? Why? Well, I got bills to pay, okay, for that brick layer. It's a job.

George Appling: 23:42

She goes to the next one and says what are you doing laying bricks? Why? Well, this project will last my entire lifetime. So if I do a good job, I can get promoted and I can keep doing this and I can make it go over this as a career. I can do this for 25 years. For that person it's a career, it's a profession. And she goes to the third bricklayer and says what are you doing laying bricks, why? And the third bricklayer says I'm helping to build the house of God and we will save millions of souls over thousands of years. Well, for that person, the job is a calling, and it turns out almost any job. There is about a third of the people think of it as a job, a third of people think about it as a profession and a third think of it as a company.

Fatima Bey: 24:25

So it takes you know, think Starbucks.

George Appling: 24:28

You know a third of the Starbucks baristas think I do this job because I got bills to pay. A third think this is a big company.

Fatima Bey: 25:03

I could make a go of this. I could become a store manager. I could become a regional manager.

George Appling: 25:05

I could become a district manager, I can make a go of this.

Fatima Bey: 25:08

That's a profession, and there's a third of the people that think you know I'm bringing the first smile of the day to 300 people. I think that's a good use of my time. Well, that's a calling, and if you can view your work as a calling, you will be statistically significantly happier. You're also going to get promoted faster and make more money, and I would love for everyone to find that place. Yeah, I believe that most people can, and I think that that's where a lot of innovations come from too, and a lot of entrepreneurships can start that way, and I love that.

George Appling: 25:26

Well, George, I would like for you to tell people where they can find you. My website is georgeapplingcom A-P-P-L-I-N-G, and that's where you can find me and my book. And you know, there's all sorts of goofy things that I do with swords and horses and stuff, and you can see some of that there as well.

Fatima Bey: 25:45

Yes, you guys. I will put a link to his page talking about these five pathways on his website. But if you explore the rest of his website, he's not joking. He really thinks that William Shakespeare is his brother and we'll call him.

George Appling: 25:57

Bill.

Fatima Bey: 26:00

Exactly All kinds of pictures of him and other people doing what are they called jousting.

George Appling: 26:07

Sure, there's plenty of jousting going on.

Fatima Bey: 26:09

Yes, there's all kinds of just really interesting things going on there. One of the reasons I had you on the show is I could see, even before I met you, the passion that you have for what you do, and that's what I love. I don't like to have guests on who just can give us information, so what Not impressive? What's impressive is that you live what you're talking about and that you actually you love what you're doing. We can hear it in your voice, I can see it in your face and if you go to his website you can actually see it in his pictures Like you're having fun, you're like a big kid in a candy store, and we all need to have that feeling with what we do. I think so.

Fatima Bey: 26:45

Not everybody will, and I know that, but for me, I need to feel that way with what I'm doing, which is why I do all that I do. I enjoy helping people grow and watching other people rise. Nothing excites me more than watching someone become who they're supposed to be. That's where I get my joy. I want to do all my backflips. So once again, george, thank you so much for coming on. You're a really cool guy and I'm glad we met. And thank you.

George Appling: 27:15

Thank you for having me, Fatima. That was a blast.

Fatima Bey: 27:19

And now for a mind-shifting moment. Out of everything that was said today, I want you to think about this which one are you? How are you living your life? Do you have a life full of passion that you're living out while working a job to pay the bills? Or are you just working a job to pay your bills, with no passion outlet in your life? Or are you living out your passion and also using it to pay your bills? I want you to think about where you are in your life right now. And if you don't like what you see, which one would you like to change it into? What would you like to do? And if you're young and you haven't decided yet, which one do you want? Which one do you think better fits you? Now is the time to examine where you are versus where you want to be. You've been listening to mind shift power podcast. For complete show notes on this episode and to join our global movement, find us at fatimabaycom until next time. Always remember there's power in shifting your thinking.