 What regrets do you have looking back at your career slash your approach to building it? Woo! How much time do you have? And this is a question I am so thrilled to be answering because I do not want you to make the mistakes that I made. I also want to shout out the sponsor of this video, Privacy. Privacy allows you to buy things online using virtual cards instead of having to use your real ones. Privacy.com has two clutch questions for you. Number one, why give out your real credit card number if you don't have to? And number two, why not have all of your online spending managed in one beautiful, succinct space? They are going to be giving away $5 towards your first purchase when you sign up for a free Privacy.com account. So go to Privacy.com slash Shambly to claim that $5. Hey there, lovers and friends. I'm going to do something that I rarely do and that's get straight to the point. This video I'm going to be answering your questions about my career because I honestly feel worthy of answering them. When people DM me or message me to say I want to be you when I grew up or I aspire to have a career like yours, not only is it one, the most beautiful compliment and something I'm so grateful and humbled by, two, I feel worthy of being looked up to in that way because I genuinely do have a really awesome career. That is massively thanks to all of you. Shannon Boodram's here. Sexologist, author and YouTube star, Shan Boodram. YouTube influencer and relationship expert, Shan Boodram is host. She's back again. We really enjoyed her. She's a sexologist and relationship expert. Please welcome back, Shan Boodram. Advice on how to get started. If you are not sure where to begin, the first thing that you should ask yourself is what can I do right now? Think about all of the various goals and things that you aspire to and then pick the one that there's no barriers or the least amount of barriers to beginning that thing. I think another really important thing to do when you're getting started is to identify two things. One, what is it that you are passionate about? And then two, ask yourself, what is the unique skill set that you have that is going to bring instant value to that thing? How do you build your team? You build your team by having two very clear answers. What do I want to accomplish and what do I have to offer? And these are equally important things. I find that a lot of people try and collaborate with others by leaning into one or the other. They just speak about the exchange and there's no inspiration behind it or they just speak about the inspiration and they don't tell someone else what's in it for them. If you know the answer to those two questions, it becomes very clear on who it is reasonable to ask to align yourself with and who is optimal to be aligned with you. How did you balance security versus risk taking in your field? So I saw the actor Morris Chestnut speak and he said the biggest mistake that he sees young actors make is that they come to the city, they move to LA and then they expect that that big move is supposed to earn them their big dreams. And he said, it's actually just an example of the kinds of moves you must continue to make. So ask yourself, what is the next move to LA risk that I should be investing or setting myself up for? And a part of setting yourself up to make big risks which are so, so important is avoiding stupid small risks. It is the dumb everyday things that we do that make it impossible for us to align ourselves with our potential because we're so bogged down by working on and fixing silly mistakes. As a loose example, when I moved to Los Angeles, I literally sold everything in Canada. I sold my camera equipment, I sold shoes, whatever it is that I had, I sold to invest in this move. And then when I got here, I made a lot of parking risks, running into stores and not paying the meter, hoping that I could just park in the red zone for a second and I ended up with a lot of parking tickets that I genuinely could not afford to pay at the time. And those stupid risks disallowed me from accumulating enough money to invest in myself in a much bigger way. And if you think about that in terms of some of the things that you're doing in your life, when we say I don't have enough, where are our resources going to? What stupid risks or small things are we overlooking that is robbing us of an opportunity to align ourselves with our potential? So that to be said, I really wanna just plug privacy one more time for that reason because this is an example of a way that you can avoid silly risks in your life to make sure that when the time is right and you need that money and you need to be organized financially, you've set yourself up for success. I got this email from this company that said, "'Dear Shannon, you have a balance of $20 "'due for shipping fees. "'I tried processing the payment using the card on file, "'but it was declined. "'If you would like to provide an alternative card, "'please complete the attached credit card authorization form.'" So I call this company up because again, I haven't worked with them in years and it turns out that it was in fact a mistake. And that had me really thinking, what would happen if I didn't happen to change credit card numbers? They would have charged me without clearing it with me first and it's possible that I wouldn't have even noticed at all. And when I thought about all the various places that have my credit card information on file, that thought is kinda scary and that is the exact reason that privacy.com was created. By generating virtual numbers, privacy masks your real bank information so you never have to worry about giving it out to people that you don't know online. You can generate a new card number for each purchase and you can control your reoccurring payments by setting a spending limit that a company can charge you. That way you are never accidentally billed twice or upgraded to a service without your consent. Last thing that I wanna note from my fellow business owners out there, I don't know what this hand's about, but what I do know is that using their shared cards feature, you can easily create and share privacy cards for shared expenses. For example, have a coworker do a purchase on your behalf without any risk of them going over your set spend limits. Also, you can track what their spending is in the dashboard. Speaking of spending and businesses, let's get back to the video. What regrets do you have looking back at your career slash your approach to building it? Woo! How much time do you have? And this is a question I am so thrilled to be answering because I do not want you to make the mistakes that I made. I give myself the grace because again, in 2004 when I started, I didn't necessarily have a clear idea of what this career would look like because no one else had it other than arguably Dr. Ruth and Sue Johansson, but neither of those, you know, I don't really strongly identify with. But the top three mistakes that I made was, number one, I allowed other people's comfort to dictate my direction and my velocity. I, if someone in my family or somebody around me was uncomfortable with the topic I was talking about, I would scale it back to meet their needs. And I ended up minimizing myself and slowing myself down by years. There's actually a few years in my 20s I referred to as the black hole years that was between my first book, Laid and my second book, The Game of Desire in which I gave up on this career altogether because one, I wasn't moving forward fast enough. And so that was difficult and heartbreaking because I cared so much. And number two, in addition to not moving forward, a lot of people who were close to me were really uncomfortable about what I did for a living. So it just felt easier for everyone to quit altogether. And it took me a few years to realize that it doesn't matter, you know, how I'm doing number one or how that makes other people feel. What matters is that when I talk about this subject, when I learn about it, when I read about it, when I'm engaged in it, I feel plugged into my highest self. I feel on the path to my potential and that's worth pursuing regardless of all the noise around. The second mistake that I made was building an audience and then figuring out the business element of it. I've always known that I wanted to talk about intimacy in public. I never had a desire to be in a brick and mortar clinical one-on-one setting. I always knew that the public was going to be my platform but instead of creating a business model where every new person who I engaged with publicly could possibly become a client of mine in some regard or could interact with my business in a meaningful way, I just sort of collected people and then thought, oh, how do I make money off of all these relationships that I've made with all of you? And if I could go back in time, I would have done it the other way around where I understood the business model first and then brought people to that secondly. And now on to my third regret when it comes to my career which happens to be my biggest regret and that is not making investments in my education sooner, actually from the onset. So I started out in print journalism at Centennial College which I graduated from that program. And when I did that, I put myself on a path to be an expert as a sex and relationship educator because my book Laid came out the exact same year that I graduated from college. And as soon as I put myself on that path to be an expert, the questions of well, what are your credentials obviously came second. I think especially being a young woman of color that question is not even just kind of whispered, it's yelled at you before you're even allowed to get a second sentence out. And I realized that was happening but instead of putting myself back into school, getting a degree in psychology and then pursuing a master's and pursuing a doctorate, I decided to go what I would call like a honest to goodness cheap route. I started getting certifications, I took a lot of workshops, I took a lot of classes. And while many of those things were extremely meaningful and gave me a lot of educational basis, they just didn't have the same cachet that I would have had if I just went the traditional educational route. And it took me all until now to put myself on that path. And I am not ashamed to say that. I only am now pursuing my bachelor's degree and I'll be starting my master's program in September. If I were much younger and much wiser, I would have just foregone a three year program and just put my ass in a four year during my early 20s because trust me, you might not think that you have the time early on in your life to go to school and to make the space for that because you have such big dreams but it only gets harder as you get older. And I'm really proud of myself for re-devoting myself to education, but Lord, I want to become a sex therapist. What school should I consider? This is a prime example of asking the question to the wrong person. You're asking the wrong person for two reasons and this is a lesson that I had to learn when I first got started. One, don't ask the busiest person in the field. Not that I'm the busiest person but I am one of the busier people who works in the intimacy space. And so you need these questions answered. If you really need to know where to go, where to invest your time and money, this is not something you should be passively throwing out there to individuals. So finding people who you know are going to respond back is clutch. I'm making a video right now so I'm responding to you but even my response is not gonna be what you want to hear. I don't work as a therapist. I don't work in a one-on-one setting and so my opinion on where you should go is probably not all that valuable. You should research a leading expert in your area that ask them specifically where they went to school and what they think that you should do. To get into the education system that I did, I went to the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality and the only reason that I chose that program to get certified as a sexologist is because I knew of somebody in Canada who worked in the media as an intimacy expert. I reached out to them several times. They finally responded back to me and then I asked them, you know, I've written a book, I come from a journalistic background, I have a certificate as a sex education counselor but I do want more behind my name without, because at this time I was poor and honestly lazy, without having to go back and get my bachelor's to become a doctor or therapist, what should I do? And that person put me on the education path that I went on. So I found somebody really specific to me. I made sure that was somebody who was one in my lane but too likely to answer and then I kept following up with that person and that's the advice that I want to give to you. Last question I wanna answer on this, how is your schooling now supporting your career, now and future? My education is massively important because I am a young woman of color in this space who is asking people to listen to me and to take my words seriously. I don't need a doctorate or a master's or a bachelor's or any sort of certification to be honest with you to be a public facing expert because I am not diagnosing or prescribing people and because I am not giving out advice that I am toting as a medical and I'm always very clear about that, I'm not crossing any ethical boundaries and there's numerous people, namely white men in this space who don't have a lick of school behind them and still are given a platform and still are given respect. I just have to know myself and not in a bitter way or resentfully but being clear about my profile, it's massively important that I do have education behind me or else I'm giving people an excuse not to listen to me and my existence already has enough excuses as to why people can opt out of listening to me. What part of your profession brings the most joy and inspiration? The part where I see people following in my footsteps. The part where I see people excelling beyond my own wildest dreams of what could be accomplished in this space. Seeing this lane grow, specifically grow for women and more specifically grow for women of color, just, I don't know, it really is the greatest part about what I do. Having people in my audience teach me. Seeing bits of what I've taught them show up in different spaces and I don't know, just I think that I'm so passionate about this topic that the success of the topic brings me joy. And the fact that we now are living in a world that's starting to place more importance on learning about sex and relationship and knowing that I have even a small part in that trend, like that's the most joyful part of my work. And one more thing that I wanna do on these videos is highlight an up and comer in this field who I think is doing incredible things and has next. And this is the first person I wanna highlight. Hi, my name is Mickey Woods. I'm the CEO and founder of Sex Talk, a patent-pending card game for lovers. Years of studying sexuality and exploring my own sexuality taught me that the key to a fulfilling sex life is always communication. Sex Talk is a fabulous tool for expressing your likes, dislikes, desires, preferences in a fun, sexy and approachable way. It's something I wish I had a long time ago. The 69 questions progress in terms of erotic intensity, building on the sexual tension amongst players. It's great for people who are having sex for the first time. It also works for people who have been having sex for a while. Or even people who've been married for decades. It kind of has questions that fit the needs of anyone who plays it. Unpack that self. Unpack that shit, Sam. Yeah, Lee. Read that motherfucker. I think I... I think I...