191. A Broader Perspective on the Beginner's Mindset with Parker Stevenson
Approaching the World as a Beginner
Sometimes it feels like you have to know everything. Or at least pretend that you do.
It takes self-awareness and vulnerability to admit that we don’t know what we don’t know. But adopting a beginner’s mindset, and reminding ourselves that there is always something out there to learn, keeps us open to opportunities and connections along our journeys.
Even when you’ve achieved a measure of expertise, there is so much potential for beauty in staying open, in life and in business.
Parker Stevenson joins Erica for an honest conversation about approaching the world, your business, and your clients with a beginner’s mindset.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:Defining individualism and interdependence
Defining a beginner’s mindset
How ego and fear get in the way of leading with a beginner’s mindset
How balancing confidence and a beginner’s mindset can help you navigate challenges
The positive impact of approaching client relationships with a beginner’s mindset
Helping Online Entrepreneurs
Parker Stevenson (he/him) is the Chief Business Officer at Evolved Finance, a bookkeeping firm that specializes in helping online entrepreneurs to build more profitable and financially stable online businesses. For over 7 years, Parker has been advising some of the top coaches, course creators, influencers, and thought leaders on how to make more sound business decisions using their financial data. Before joining Evolved Finance, Parker spent five years at Adidas America where he became the US product manager for golf footwear.
Embracing a Beginner’s Mindset
On the Pause on the Play® podcast, Parker Stevenson he/him says that while his younger self would never have imagined being in finance and working with small businesses on their accounting, he loves the path he’s on. He also mentions that he’s a new dad, which he describes as “just trying to figure out life with a very rambunctious roommate who doesn’t let us sleep. But it is a whole lot of fun.”
Erica says that figuring things out with a beginner’s mindset is exactly what she wants to talk to Parker about and that it’s a mindset that is so important to the Pause on the Play® Community.
Parker says that for him, having a beginner’s mindset is a reminder to reconnect with the fact that you don’t know everything and to not let your ego about your expertise actually limit your opportunities or connections with others.
As someone, “who really enjoys knowing about something, really enjoys getting into the details, the nitty gritty of something I know a lot about…I think what’s made our company successful is remembering what it’s like to be a beginner, remembering what it’s like to have that vulnerability, and that sometimes helplessness that comes from [that].”
He says that approaching his work with a beginner’s mindset helps him connect with clients and also helps to maintain openness to continued learning and growth.
“A lot of people can fall into that trap thinking, oh, I know enough. I’m good. I got it. And then just kind of sit on their laurels.”
Erica pauses to mention that Parker’s embrace of a beginner’s mindset isn’t the archetype that we think of for a white man in America. “A white man in America is like, ‘oh, I know I am the expert.”
Parker agrees and says that he still falls prey to feeling like he knows everything. “I’ve lived forty years, like I know some shit, right?” But he credits studying Buddhism after graduating from college with introducing him to the concept of a beginner’s mindset and discovering that the idea resonated with him.
He recognized that the ego of feeling like you know everything can prevent connection with others.
“When you say, I don’t know, and you allow other people to come in and fill in your knowledge gaps and bring different perspectives…I think that’s when magical things start to happen.”
Leadership Doesn’t Mean Knowing It All
Erica says that mindset invites interdependence, allowing us to be here for each other and acknowledging that none of us do it on our own.
Parker says that connection with others is a key value for him, and because a beginner’s mindset requires us to rely on others, it satisfies the parts of him that loves collaboration and connection.
“Most entrepreneurs are on some sort of personal growth journey running a business…I think my personal growth and development has [been] amplified because of all aspects of how I’ve used that beginner’s mindset throughout my life.”
Erica agrees that entrepreneurs are almost inevitably on a growth journey, and that there has to be awareness and unpacking and examining mindsets and how you communicate and collaborate with others, even if those processes aren’t something that get regularly acknowledged.
“If you’re gonna own your own business, just so you know, you’re gonna do some self-help stuff here.”
Parker says that connects with how we tend to view leadership in America, especially, in his experience, among white men. “I think leadership to a lot of people means having all the answers and knowing all the things.”
He says leadership and earning respect often get conflated with control. He credits his work with India and Erica, as well as leadership coach David Berry, with coming to understand that leadership “doesn’t mean knowing all the things…It also means being vulnerable. It also means leaning on other people and asking for support.”
Erica says it’s vital to approach any work on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion with a beginner’s mindset because “any of the learning or unlearning or deprogramming or decolonizing that has to happen, it doesn’t happen if you are shut off or assume that you already know.”
Erica agrees with Parker that ego is a major obstacle to having a beginner’s mindset because it encompasses multiple challenges, from fear of being wrong and feelings of being a fraud, to questioning the paradigms we’ve lived with and fear of the unknown.
“We’re clearly trying to put in different programming, but there isn’t necessarily a clear understanding of what it is other than, I’m oversimplifying, but don’t be fucking racist…The minute that you’re basically having somebody take parts of themselves out, they’re not quite sure what that means for the entire picture.”
Parker says that he thinks fear of the unknown is a driving factor behind so much of any culture and society, and it impacts how we make decisions and carry ourselves through life. “When we feel like we know things, then the unknown feels a little less scary.”
Reshaping Your Worldview
In his own life, that tension played out particularly in relationship to religion as studying history and philosophy in college began to expand his worldview.
“I questioned my faith, and questioned the Catholic church as a whole, and I went through a lot of stress and anxiety…going, oh, maybe what my religion taught me the world is, isn’t really it. Maybe what I thought the systems that we have in place as a society, maybe those aren’t what I thought they were…There was that tremendous fear of, oh shit, do I not know anything?”
From the other side of that journey, Parker says he’s deeply grateful he went through it, but “looking back at that, I think sometimes I underestimate how truly scary it is to say, I don’t know shit. And I have to be open and willing to taking new input in to reshape that.”
Erica says that the process of reshaping what you thought you knew also tends to get harder with age. We tend to be more risk-tolerant when we’re in the college age range, but “when you get older, it’s like, eh, that doesn’t sound like a good choice.”
Parker agrees that starting that process from where he is now, with a family and a mortgage, seems terrifying. He says he’s grateful that he went through those experiences when he did, because “I think I could have been a very different person leaning into these security blankets that I think we sometimes create for ourselves in our lives, and that would’ve closed me off to a lot of the growth that I think I’ve experienced in the last twenty years or so.”
On the flip side, Erica acknowledges that some of the wisdom that comes with getting older can make certain aspects of letting go of what no longer serves us easier. “The more you’ve lived some life and seen some things and done some things, it does open you up, and if you are able to embrace that beginner’s mindset of I don’t know what I don’t know…there is a beauty of just being like oh, shit, what I got to lose?”
You Will Have Feelings About Your Business
For business owners, Parker says he’s never met a business owner who felt they had it all figured out when they started. “Everyone goes into it going, I at least know I have something to offer people, and everything else I just gotta figure out as I go along.”
He says there are few other endeavors that will “humble you and force you to have that beginner’s mindset,” like starting a business.
Erica says the only other two things that come to mind for her are partnering with someone, whether in marriage or a long-term relationship, and raising children.
“You think you know, but you have no idea…Whatever you think you learned from somebody else or reading a book or watching the show or whatever, good luck if you think that’s gonna necessarily be the textbook of how your experience goes.”
Parker says that the emotional components of partnerships and raising children are things we expect, even if we can’t know exactly how we’ll respond to situations until we’re in them, but the emotional aspects of running a business tend not to be thought of at all.
“We think we’re gonna just do the things and then the business will happen, and I will have zero emotional response to it because it’s just transactions and it’s just business…[But] we have to acknowledge that we’re humans, acknowledge that we are gonna have emotional responses and acknowledge that we’re not exactly gonna know how we’re going to respond emotionally when we’re experiencing so many things for the first time.”
Erica notes that something as basic and essential to a business as money will bring up a lot of feelings for people. “We all have money stories…and all of our stories are different and they will decide to pop up and ask you to whack-a-mole the hell out of them at the most inopportune of times…When you work for yourself you have to be willing to revisit a beginner’s mindset, particularly when it comes to earning and your money, in order to not lose your sanity.”
Confidence and a Beginner’s Mindset
Erica says that for her, dealing with the financial side of her business was a major hindrance and growth edge for her as a business owner, and now she would recommend to anyone to make an early investment in a bookkeeper.
But at the beginning, “there was a lot of fear around allowing somebody else to control it. There was fear of knowing what the truth was around it. So I allowed certain things to not be clear, and so if it wasn’t great, I didn’t know. But if it was great, I also didn’t know and plan accordingly or acknowledge [it].”
She now recognizes the tangible aspects of financial success in her business, from team members to marketing, but knows that “if I don’t have the capacity to hold this money and to think that I’m worthy of it, I’m not going to receive it.”
Whenever she’s overthinking something or putting pressure on something in her business, Erica now knows that comes from an assumption that “I know how to figure this out. I just have to figure this out…[But] I have to give myself space to be like, I might not know. I might have to ask for some help. Or I might have to be willing to experiment and figure it out.”
Parker says that a balance of confidence and a beginner’s mindset is so important as a business owner. “I have to keep that beginner’s mindset so I can be aware of the new things I need to learn…but I have the confidence and trust to know I’m going to figure out whatever comes my way. If there is a new thing coming that I wasn’t expecting, I trust my ability to problem-solve. I trust my ability to build relationships and make connections with other people in order to get around whatever it is we need to get around.”
That confidence in our ability to problem-solve and continue learning and making connections comes with time and experience. “You just gotta get the reps out there to build that self-confidence. I think there’s not a whole lot of replacement for that.”
Erica agrees that a certain amount of faith and trust is important, though she acknowledges that self-trust and self-awareness aren’t accessible for everyone at every point in their lives. But what she has found is that when we’re able to exercise that trust and experience that growth edge, there’s a potential for release there, rather than grasping on tightly and trying to force an outcome.
“There’s a difference in being an active participant and taking a part of the journey, and forcing the journey to work in the specific way that you have determined it must work or else it is wrong in that moment.”
Parker adds that he thinks one of the best things about entrepreneurship is “you at least get to try and experiment and see what works and what doesn’t work. Even if you make the same mistake multiple times, you can still get through it. You can still learn from that and be a better business owner and maybe a better person…[And] it starts with, I don’t know everything as much as I think I do.”
Creating a Client Experience from a Beginner’s Mindset
Parker says that one thing India and Erica taught him for when he meets with clients is to acknowledge that this may be a new experience for them.
“Especially when you’re working within your zone of genius, it becomes so commonplace for you that you forget, oh, other people aren’t thinking about these types of things I’m thinking about on a daily basis.”
And he says it’s especially important for him and his team to remember that because money is such a vulnerable topic. He tries to frame his conversations with clients in terms of how he would want someone to explain financial concepts to him if he was new to it.
“The reason people are coming to us is because they’re acknowledging [that] this isn’t something I understand, or it’s not something I’m good at…Just remember, be gentle. Be kind…Be aware of where someone else might be coming from as a client when interacting with us so we can create an experience that leaves them open to developing that beginner’s mindset and feel seen and feel supported in a way that actually allows them to grow in this realm.”
Parker says that when his clients go from avoiding their finances to feeling comfortable and confident in their goals and profitability, he believes it’s because he and his team remind themselves of what it means to be a beginner.
“If you have a business where you’re interacting with your customers in any shape or form and you’re developing a relationship, you’re teaching them, you’re guiding them…I just don’t know how having a little bit of that reminder of that beginner’s mindset…I just don’t see how that could possibly hurt your customer experience or hurt your business as a whole.”
He experienced the client side of that type of interaction with India and Erica, where they acknowledged in one of their initial conversations that DEI was probably new to Parker and his business partner.
He says, “just saying those things and acknowledging that, I think allowed us to have some really great conversations that helped Corey and I learn and grow.”
Erica says that for her, approaching clients with a beginner’s mindset opens up conversations, rather than “we’re just coming to tell you stuff and you’re not gonna listen, or it’s only about what can you extract.” Creating space for those connections and conversations makes the work a more positive experience for everybody.
Parker jokes that, yes, he and his business partner were meeting with Erica and India to have them talk and tell them what to do and guide them, and that’s often why clients come to him as well, and the beginner’s mindset approach really does create more connection and more results for clients.
Stay Open
On the personal side, Parker encourages people to be open to questions and thinking differently about their values, beliefs, and world views.
“I think having conversations about that and seeing if you can remain open, even if you feel really strongly about something and you think you know it, being open to conversations with someone you would trust to maybe question those things and think about it from a place as if you were a beginner.”
In business, he recommends taking the time to reflect on your customer experience and how you can create an experience that allows them to be to “not have to hold up any pretenses or put up any walls and allow them to be that beginner with you so they can grow and learn as well.”
Ready to dive deeper?
When you’re considering brand visibility or your Imperfect Allyship® efforts, your mindset will show up. Having a beginner’s mindset and being open to what’s possible really does make a difference.
In The Pause on the Play® Community, a beginner’s mindset is a focal point of our community. We’re all beginners. We’re always learning. There’s always something valuable for each and every one of us has that we can learn from, and there’s so much beauty in doing it together in community.
Learn more at https://pauseontheplay.com/community