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0:01:42 Yap gang!
0:01:46 In today’s “Yap Classic” episode, we’re diving deep with a powerhouse
0:01:50 who’s about to turn your “I can’t” into “I absolutely can.”
0:01:52 The one and only Marie Forleo.
0:01:56 Imagine transforming your deepest fears into your greatest fuel.
0:01:59 Well, that’s exactly what Marie has done throughout her remarkable journey,
0:02:03 from bartending to building a multi-million dollar media company.
0:02:06 Named by Oprah as a thought-later for the next generation,
0:02:09 Marie isn’t just another motivational speaker or podcaster.
0:02:13 She’s a living, breathing testament to the power of believing,
0:02:16 and as she puts it, that everything is “figure-outable.”
0:02:21 Marie and I spoke back in 2023 about being a multi-passionate entrepreneur,
0:02:22 embracing your good fears,
0:02:26 how to hone and trust your intuition, and so much more.
0:02:29 So get ready to learn how you can turn obstacles into opportunities
0:02:32 and why Marie’s philosophy isn’t just a catchy phrase.
0:02:35 It’s a powerful, actionable approach to life.
0:02:36 So what are you waiting for?
0:02:40 Let’s go figure some ish out with Marie Forleo.
0:02:45 So, Marie, I’d love to take it back to your childhood.
0:02:47 I like to do that on my podcast.
0:02:50 And from my research, I found out that you have essentially
0:02:54 always been a Jill of all trades since you were a little girl.
0:02:56 So can you tell us more about that little girl
0:03:00 who later became what you call a multi-passionate entrepreneur?
0:03:03 Yeah, I grew up in New Jersey like you did.
0:03:07 I remember distinctly as a kid, you know, when adults would say,
0:03:09 “Hey, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
0:03:10 I never had one answer.
0:03:12 I always had like 17.
0:03:14 I want to be a teacher.
0:03:15 I want to be a dancer.
0:03:16 I want to be a writer.
0:03:17 I want to be a businesswoman.
0:03:18 I want to be a model.
0:03:19 I want to be an artist.
0:03:21 It was just like on and on and on.
0:03:25 And as the years went on, some of those answers would change,
0:03:28 but there was never just one answer.
0:03:31 And I didn’t realize that that was even odd or different
0:03:34 until really my college years,
0:03:37 I remember a lot of people seemed to have a very distinct,
0:03:40 definitive vision for what they wanted to do.
0:03:41 You know, I want to be a doctor.
0:03:42 I want to be a lawyer.
0:03:44 I want to be whatever it was.
0:03:46 And I still had like 15 things
0:03:48 that sounded really intriguing to me.
0:03:52 And when I started my career after graduating,
0:03:54 I went to Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey.
0:03:56 My first job was actually on Wall Street
0:03:58 on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
0:04:00 And I was pumped.
0:04:02 I was so excited because it’s like
0:04:05 the financial mecca of the universe back in those days.
0:04:07 This is like the late ’90s.
0:04:08 There were actually no chairs on the floor
0:04:10 and I’m a person who has a lot of energy.
0:04:12 So I was like, oh, this is so cool.
0:04:13 I’m gonna be running around all day.
0:04:15 This is amazing.
0:04:17 And after about six months into that job,
0:04:19 I was super grateful for the work
0:04:21 because I’m the first in my family to go to college.
0:04:24 And my parents, they just busted their buns
0:04:26 to be able to even give me an education.
0:04:29 And I took that very, very seriously.
0:04:30 But after about six months,
0:04:32 I started hearing this voice inside that said,
0:04:34 you know, this isn’t who you are.
0:04:35 This isn’t what you’re meant to do.
0:04:36 This isn’t what you’re supposed to be.
0:04:38 And I was like, that’s strange, you know?
0:04:40 Like, ugh, and I tried to kind of push that voice away,
0:04:43 but it kept getting louder and louder and louder
0:04:46 until one day I remember being at work
0:04:49 and starting to feel sick, like physically ill,
0:04:52 started to feel dizzy, like I couldn’t really breathe.
0:04:54 And I said to my boss, I said,
0:04:56 hey, can I just run out and get a coffee real fast?
0:04:58 It was at a kind of slower time during the days.
0:04:59 Like, yeah, no problem.
0:05:02 So I left and I didn’t go to get coffee.
0:05:04 I made a beeline to the nearest church
0:05:07 and I sat on the steps and I cried.
0:05:10 I cried my eyes out because I felt like such a loser
0:05:12 because I knew logically and intellectually
0:05:16 that I was so, I was so grateful to have work,
0:05:18 which included a steady paycheck.
0:05:19 It included health benefits.
0:05:22 I felt like I was doing good by my family,
0:05:24 but at the same time, the truth was I was miserable
0:05:26 and I felt like I was dying a slow death.
0:05:30 And I didn’t know how to reconcile those two things.
0:05:32 The first signal I got from above was actually,
0:05:34 it said, call your dad.
0:05:36 And back in those days, Halle,
0:05:37 I still had, it was like flip phone days.
0:05:41 So I took the flip phone out of my like dark green jacket.
0:05:43 That’s what all the traders had.
0:05:45 And I call my dad and I was crying.
0:05:46 I was like crying the ugly cry
0:05:48 where like there’s knots coming out of your nose
0:05:50 and you just can’t breathe.
0:05:53 And I was like, dad, I’m so sorry, I’m a man.
0:05:56 And when I finally shut up and took a breath,
0:05:58 he’s like, Rie, stop.
0:06:00 He’s like, you’ve been working since you were nine years old.
0:06:02 I’m not worried about you figuring out
0:06:03 how to keep a roof over your head.
0:06:05 But he’s like, here’s the secret to life.
0:06:08 You’re gonna be working for at least the next 40 or 50 years.
0:06:10 You have got to find something you love.
0:06:12 And if going to work every day at this place
0:06:14 makes you this sick that you ran out
0:06:16 and you’re crying in the middle of the day at the church,
0:06:19 like you can quit, you’ll do what you did,
0:06:20 you’ll bartend, you’ll figure it out,
0:06:22 but you need to find something you love.
0:06:25 And Halle, that was like such a huge permission slip for me
0:06:27 because I realized in that moment
0:06:31 while my dad didn’t tell me how to find something I loved,
0:06:33 he gave me permission to do so
0:06:37 and really reinforced the fact that livelihood needs to,
0:06:41 not fully, but finding something that genuinely aligns
0:06:45 with your strengths and your skills is vital for all of us.
0:06:47 And so the only clues I had really was that
0:06:49 I was always a super creative child
0:06:51 to one of those 17 things that I always wanted to be
0:06:52 was an artist.
0:06:54 So I had this, I used to paint, I used to draw,
0:06:56 I thought maybe I wanted to be an animator for Disney,
0:06:58 but I also had a real passion around small business.
0:07:00 My dad was a small business owner.
0:07:01 And so I was fascinated with business and money
0:07:04 and that kind of aspect of life too.
0:07:06 And so I said to myself, okay, I have these two sides,
0:07:07 what do I do with them?
0:07:08 And the first idea that came to mind
0:07:11 was actually the world of magazine publishing.
0:07:15 There’s the ad side, which is around money and sales,
0:07:17 and then there’s the editorial side, which is very creative.
0:07:19 And so I went to a temp agency in New York City
0:07:21 and I said, I want to work in magazines,
0:07:23 I don’t care which magazine, I don’t care where it is,
0:07:25 just get me any position.
0:07:28 I’ll be like the lowly assistant, I don’t care.
0:07:32 And so they placed me as an ad assistant at Gourmet Magazine.
0:07:35 It’s a part of Condonass Publications back in the day.
0:07:36 And I remember I was like, oh, this is awesome.
0:07:39 My old environment, 99.9% men.
0:07:41 This new environment, it was a lot more mixed and balanced.
0:07:43 I was like, this is really cool.
0:07:45 My boss was a woman and then also my big boss,
0:07:47 the publisher, was also this like incredible woman.
0:07:49 I was like, oh, this is great, I’ve never seen this before.
0:07:52 And after about six months in that job,
0:07:54 the same voice came back.
0:07:56 It started small, like Marie, this isn’t who you are,
0:07:57 this isn’t what you’re supposed to do,
0:07:58 this isn’t what you’re supposed to be.
0:08:00 And I was like, what is going on?
0:08:02 Like, what’s wrong with me?
0:08:03 Where’s this voice coming from?
0:08:05 Like, I really want to work.
0:08:06 I really want to earn money.
0:08:08 I really want to contribute.
0:08:11 But I couldn’t stand going to an office every day.
0:08:13 And so logically, I was like, okay,
0:08:14 let me just step back here
0:08:16 and try and look at my situation objectively.
0:08:18 Wall Street, money, money, money.
0:08:21 Ad sales, more money, like numbers.
0:08:24 Maybe I’ve like leaned too heavy into the business side.
0:08:26 Maybe I’ve really been starving my creative self.
0:08:29 So I said, okay, went to HR and said, look,
0:08:31 if you have any position at any magazine
0:08:34 on the editorial side, I’ll take it.
0:08:35 I don’t care if I’ll take a pay cut.
0:08:36 It’s a lateral move.
0:08:39 It’s a down move, just any opportunity, I’ll take it.
0:08:42 So they found me a position at Madam Mazzelle,
0:08:44 which was a women’s fashion magazine,
0:08:45 editorial side fashion department.
0:08:47 I was like, oh my God, this has got to be it.
0:08:49 I’m going to be working with designers.
0:08:50 I’m going to be seeing new products
0:08:52 and be helping with layouts, photo shoots.
0:08:54 This is amazing.
0:08:56 And for the first couple of months, it was really cool.
0:08:57 It was novel.
0:08:58 I learned all kinds of new things,
0:09:00 different environment, amazing.
0:09:03 Of course, within, I don’t know, four or five months,
0:09:05 the voices came back again.
0:09:06 Hala, this time I was like,
0:09:09 there is something wrong with me.
0:09:10 Like I feel broken.
0:09:13 Do I have some kind of cognitive like dysfunction
0:09:15 where I can’t commit to anything?
0:09:18 All of my friends are getting raises, getting married,
0:09:20 starting to like build their whole lives.
0:09:22 And here I am years after graduation,
0:09:24 just wanting to quit my next job.
0:09:26 Like nothing was making sense.
0:09:28 And I felt so terrified.
0:09:30 I felt like such a loser.
0:09:31 It was awful.
0:09:34 And there was one day at work when I was on the internet
0:09:37 and I discovered this article.
0:09:39 And it was about a new profession at the time.
0:09:40 It’s about 1999.
0:09:42 The new profession was called coaching.
0:09:44 You have to get that in the late 90s,
0:09:46 nobody had heard of coaching.
0:09:48 Like this was like ground baking, right?
0:09:50 And I remember reading that article
0:09:53 and it was as though a Christmas tree
0:09:54 lit up inside of me.
0:09:56 It was as though the clouds parted
0:09:57 and little angels came out.
0:10:00 And I was like, oh, like this is what you’re supposed to do.
0:10:04 But at the same time, you know, I was 23 years old
0:10:06 and the mean voice in my head said, what are you?
0:10:07 Are you kidding me?
0:10:08 You’re 23.
0:10:10 Who the heck’s gonna hire a 23 year old life coach?
0:10:12 You haven’t even lived life yet.
0:10:14 You’re in piles and piles of debt.
0:10:15 You can’t seem to hold down a job.
0:10:17 This is gonna be one more thing you fail at.
0:10:19 So I had that going on.
0:10:22 But I couldn’t deny that in my body
0:10:25 and my intuition told me that there was something there
0:10:27 that I was meant to follow.
0:10:28 And I signed up on the spot
0:10:31 for a three year coach training program.
0:10:33 I was doing that at night on the weekends,
0:10:34 kept my magazine job during the day.
0:10:37 And then I got a call from the HR department
0:10:39 and they had a promotion for me
0:10:43 to go move up bigger paycheck, better position
0:10:45 to be a part of Vogue magazine,
0:10:47 arguably one of the top fashion magazines in the world.
0:10:48 And that was my fork in the road.
0:10:51 Do I stay on the safe path with the paycheck
0:10:53 and the health benefits and like a career
0:10:55 that people actually understand what the hell it is
0:10:58 or do I quit and do this weird ass life coaching thing
0:11:00 that no one has ever heard of?
0:11:02 I have no idea how to even turn it into a business
0:11:05 and it sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud.
0:11:06 So I chose that path.
0:11:09 I gave up my job and I went back to bartending
0:11:12 and waiting tables, which I did all throughout college.
0:11:14 And I figured out how to build a coaching practice
0:11:15 during the day.
0:11:16 So that’s kind of the through line
0:11:20 of being a multi-passionate kid, not knowing what that was
0:11:22 to kind of getting me to the place where, you know
0:11:24 and I’ll pause because I’m sure you have other questions
0:11:26 that we can kind of take it all the way through.
0:11:28 – Yeah, I’m going to dig deep on all of that.
0:11:30 This was such a great overview of your story
0:11:31 and it’s super inspirational.
0:11:34 So a question that I have for you,
0:11:36 let’s stick with you being 23 years old,
0:11:38 deciding that you want to be a life coach
0:11:40 with basically no life experience, right?
0:11:41 And how did you get the confidence
0:11:43 and when did you actually start getting clients?
0:11:46 Did you wait until you were done with the program?
0:11:48 And how did you know you were good at it
0:11:51 and like starting to build your confidence with it?
0:11:53 – Okay, signing up for that program
0:11:54 felt really significant to me
0:11:56 because I just basically, you know
0:11:58 graduated from school just a few years earlier.
0:12:02 So I was still in that mode of being like, I am a student
0:12:05 like when you want a new skill, you go put yourself
0:12:07 in an environment to gain those skills and capabilities
0:12:11 and everything that they taught and all of the topics
0:12:14 and what we would talk about in terms of communication
0:12:17 in terms of supporting other people, creating frameworks,
0:12:19 understanding how to listen and to ask questions,
0:12:23 those things felt like second nature to me.
0:12:27 They felt like areas where I was so excited to learn
0:12:30 as opposed to things that I went through in college
0:12:31 where it was like, oh, you know
0:12:33 I’m rolling my eyes to get through every topic.
0:12:35 Like there was no resonance there.
0:12:37 So that was my first clue that I was on to something
0:12:39 as I really, really enjoyed learning.
0:12:42 Second part of my coach training was actually
0:12:45 that you should not wait to get what we called
0:12:46 at that time, practice clients.
0:12:49 It was like, hey, just work with people for free.
0:12:52 Like that was kind of a part of how they told you
0:12:54 that you’re gonna build a business and build your confidence
0:12:57 was not to go out there and like pretend
0:12:59 that you’re further along than you are.
0:13:01 But for me, it looked like reaching out
0:13:04 to every single girlfriend that I had.
0:13:06 And because I was bartending and waiting tables
0:13:09 people would always ask me like, hey, what else do you do?
0:13:09 Are you an actress?
0:13:11 I’m like, no dude, I’m a coach.
0:13:13 Like I could actually help you reach a goal
0:13:14 or set a strategy or do this.
0:13:17 And so I was just absolutely shameless
0:13:20 about asking people if I could work with them for free.
0:13:23 Like I just did everything I possibly could.
0:13:26 And in that process, was it uncomfortable?
0:13:29 Yeah, but I had failed at so many other things.
0:13:31 And that was so much more painful
0:13:33 than actually trying to do something
0:13:34 that I really believed in,
0:13:37 that it gave me the motivation to just put myself out there.
0:13:39 And then the worst thing that people could say was, no.
0:13:41 And I was like, that’s not that big of a deal.
0:13:42 – Yeah.
0:13:43 – It was through that experience
0:13:46 of just continuing to work through my fear
0:13:47 and my embarrassment.
0:13:50 And then when I started getting people results
0:13:51 and how they’re like, wow,
0:13:53 I feel so much better after our conversations.
0:13:55 So that started to kind of fill the well of like,
0:13:56 oh, I could do this.
0:13:58 Like this is awesome.
0:14:00 And it didn’t happen overnight.
0:14:01 It took me a very long time,
0:14:03 but that’s kind of how the process started.
0:14:04 – Yeah.
0:14:05 The other question that I have
0:14:07 is in terms of this dream job, like you said,
0:14:09 Vogue is like the pinnacle of the fashion world, right?
0:14:11 Everybody wants to work in Vogue, especially back then.
0:14:13 It was like such a huge deal.
0:14:15 And so you were at this fork in the road.
0:14:19 You had to make a decision to go after this risky thing
0:14:21 that you had no idea how it was gonna pan out,
0:14:24 ended up being a great decision.
0:14:25 What was your thought process around that?
0:14:27 I know that you have a 10-year test
0:14:29 that you talk about in terms of making decisions.
0:14:31 I’d love to hear how you came about making that decision.
0:14:35 – So I didn’t realize the 10-year test until a few years later
0:14:36 and we’ll unpack what that concept is
0:14:37 and how people can use it.
0:14:38 ‘Cause I think it’s actually,
0:14:41 it’s so helpful for any of us no matter what your age is,
0:14:43 no matter what stage of life you’re in.
0:14:46 That decision in terms of not saying yes to Vogue
0:14:50 was a very body-led, intuition-led decision.
0:14:51 Here’s what I mean by that.
0:14:54 Because I had had that experience on Wall Street
0:14:56 where going to the same place every single day
0:14:59 started making me feel like I was dying a slow death
0:15:01 and then I quit that job and got out of it.
0:15:03 And then I went through a similar thing
0:15:04 when I was at Gourmet Magazine
0:15:06 where it was like I respected all the people
0:15:08 that I worked for, I appreciated them,
0:15:10 I was grateful to have a job,
0:15:12 but I couldn’t deny that every single day it was like,
0:15:14 I can’t do this for the rest of my life.
0:15:16 I don’t wanna climb this corporate ladder,
0:15:17 like what’s going on?
0:15:19 So it was a very visceral feeling.
0:15:22 And then to have that a third time
0:15:23 when I was at Mademoiselle
0:15:26 and then to have this incredible opportunity
0:15:28 for a promotion come to me
0:15:31 and everything, every single cell in my body
0:15:33 was screaming no.
0:15:36 I don’t even feel like it was a decision,
0:15:39 it was something I had to do.
0:15:41 – Yeah, and I’ll ask another question
0:15:42 and I think we’ll help everybody understand.
0:15:44 So there’s good fear and bad fear, right?
0:15:46 There’s the fear and you know you should,
0:15:48 like when I feel fear, I’m like, I gotta do it.
0:15:50 I gotta just do it, that means I’m gonna grow,
0:15:52 I’m gonna learn and that’s how I accomplish
0:15:53 a lot of the things that I’m scared of.
0:15:56 I know if I feel fear, I need to just do it,
0:15:58 it means that I’m gonna grow and it’s good for me.
0:16:02 But then sometimes you feel fear and it’s like this like,
0:16:03 oh, this is bad for me
0:16:05 and it’s more of like an intuition gut,
0:16:07 like this must be bad for me
0:16:08 and you shouldn’t do that thing
0:16:10 even though you’re afraid of it.
0:16:12 So how can we tell if we should do something
0:16:13 that we’re afraid of
0:16:16 or if we should actually run away from it?
0:16:19 – Yeah, fear versus intuition, it’s a big thing.
0:16:22 My best strategy that I’ve taught
0:16:25 to probably hundreds of thousands of people at this point
0:16:28 is a really simple thing that anyone can do
0:16:32 whenever you’re faced with an possibility, an opportunity,
0:16:34 something that you’re facing where if you said yes,
0:16:36 you’re like, wow, this decision could change my life
0:16:39 or this opportunity could mean the world to me.
0:16:41 And I think it’s really important for all of us,
0:16:44 especially when we’re starting in a new journey
0:16:47 or when we’re on the early part of our career path
0:16:50 to recognize that our intellect and our ego
0:16:53 often wants to override our intuition.
0:16:54 And so let’s say that you got invited
0:16:56 to go speak at a certain event
0:16:59 or someone wants to make you their business partner
0:17:01 or they’re presenting you with this opportunity
0:17:04 that on paper, maybe there’s a lot of money involved
0:17:05 or there’s a lot of prestige
0:17:08 or everyone else would be like, what are you nuts?
0:17:10 Like, how are you saying no to this?
0:17:14 But yet something inside of you feels like, oh, I don’t know.
0:17:15 So here’s what I do.
0:17:16 I always instruct people
0:17:18 whenever you’re faced with something like that
0:17:20 and you don’t know if it’s like good fear,
0:17:23 meaning the type of fear that you described.
0:17:25 It’s not like the fear of walking in front of a bus
0:17:26 where you’re gonna get killed.
0:17:27 We’re not talking about that.
0:17:28 We’re talking about creative fear
0:17:29 that could keep you small.
0:17:31 And how do you know if it’s like something
0:17:33 you should move through and say yes,
0:17:35 because it’s gonna be a tremendous opportunity
0:17:37 for you to develop skills and move up in the world.
0:17:40 Or if it’s your intuition waving a big neon red flag
0:17:42 going like, don’t do this, you’re gonna eff it up.
0:17:44 It’s gonna just cost you a million things
0:17:46 and it’s gonna take you on the wrong path.
0:17:47 You’re gonna regret it.
0:17:48 So when you think about whatever the opportunity is
0:17:50 or whatever decision is you close your eyes,
0:17:52 you get very, very still
0:17:55 and you wanna get out of your head and tap into your body.
0:17:58 So if it’s helpful, make sure you have no technology around.
0:17:59 If you need to like shake it out
0:18:01 and either go for a walk, go for a run, go for a workout,
0:18:04 something so you can disengage
0:18:06 from the nonstop chatter of the monkey mind
0:18:08 and really start to feel in your body.
0:18:11 So you get really quiet and then you ask yourself,
0:18:16 does the idea of saying yes to this opportunity,
0:18:18 this deal, this possibility,
0:18:22 make me feel expansive or contracted?
0:18:23 Now here’s the deal.
0:18:27 In the nanosecond, when you ask yourself that question
0:18:31 right after, your body has a visceral reaction.
0:18:32 This is super subtle.
0:18:35 So people I think that are involved in athletics,
0:18:36 if you do any type of working out,
0:18:38 you’re probably gonna be able to detect this
0:18:41 a little easier at first, but everybody can do it.
0:18:44 And what you’re feeling for is either a feeling of expansion
0:18:46 and what that can be experienced as
0:18:50 is like maybe your body moving forward in space.
0:18:52 It’s almost like you’re leaning into the sun.
0:18:54 You feel your chest lifted.
0:18:56 There’s maybe tingly sensations inside,
0:18:58 even though maybe it’s scary,
0:19:00 you’re like, whoa, there’s a ton of excitement
0:19:01 or maybe little sparks of joy
0:19:03 or something that just feels
0:19:06 like a visceral experience of expansion.
0:19:07 On the other hand, if you ask yourself like,
0:19:09 does the idea of saying yes to this opportunity
0:19:11 make me feel expansive or contracted?
0:19:14 You might feel something that we could identify as dread.
0:19:16 Maybe there’s a pit in your stomach.
0:19:19 Maybe your physical body starts to pull back in space
0:19:20 or your shoulders hunch over
0:19:24 or your head starts to very subtly say no.
0:19:27 So if you actually ask yourself that question,
0:19:30 take a breath and feel into the answer,
0:19:32 not from your head, but from your body,
0:19:34 that is one of the surest ways
0:19:37 that any single person can get aligned with
0:19:39 their intuition, not their intellect.
0:19:42 Your intellect will often lead you astray
0:19:44 because it’s tied to your ego,
0:19:46 which is tied to status, prestige,
0:19:47 wanting to get ahead, climbing,
0:19:50 and it’s all rooted in fear at the end of the day.
0:19:54 Your intuition is your connection to higher source,
0:19:57 guidance, wisdom, natural knowing,
0:20:00 like innate powers that all of us have
0:20:03 that were just not taught how to access in school.
0:20:05 And I have to say that as you get more successful,
0:20:08 these opportunities are gonna become sexier and sexier
0:20:10 and it’s gonna get harder to say no and harder to say no
0:20:14 and you need to get really good at making these decisions.
0:20:15 Let’s hold that thought
0:20:17 and take a quick break with our sponsors.
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0:21:51 Young and Profiters, I know so many of you
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0:23:27 Yeah, BAM, it’s 2025 and a new year means new opportunities.
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0:25:16 – I’d love to understand the 10 year, yeah, 10 year test.
0:25:18 – The 10 year test, so this was interesting.
0:25:21 So after I had said no to the magazine world,
0:25:23 had gone on this journey to like, okay, let me figure out
0:25:25 how the hell to build a coaching business,
0:25:27 bartending, waiting tables about seven days a week
0:25:29 and was doing my coaching business during the day.
0:25:31 And so we all know this.
0:25:33 Like one of the things that any one of us needs to do
0:25:35 or we learn that we have to do
0:25:37 is kind of have an elevator pitch.
0:25:39 Or when someone asks you about your business
0:25:40 or what you do for your career,
0:25:42 you’re supposed to have like a really good answer.
0:25:44 And I remember at the bar when people would ask me,
0:25:46 so like what else do you do?
0:25:49 Oftentimes when I talked about being a life coach,
0:25:53 it would feel really narrow and limiting
0:25:55 and like I wasn’t telling the full story.
0:25:58 Even though I really loved what I did,
0:26:02 the truth was I had all of these different other passions
0:26:04 as well that I was starting to explore.
0:26:07 So for example, I loved spirituality, I loved writing,
0:26:08 I loved what at that time,
0:26:12 the early 2000s was the new world of digital business.
0:26:15 Again, YouTube didn’t exist, podcast didn’t exist yet.
0:26:17 It was blogs and email and e-books
0:26:19 and like different things that were brand new
0:26:20 and mind blowing.
0:26:25 And I also loved hip hop and dance and music.
0:26:26 And even though I don’t have any formal training,
0:26:29 it was like something that was such a passion for me.
0:26:32 And I would go to classes here in New York City
0:26:34 and I would go to a place called Crunch
0:26:36 because they had, first of all, I had a gym membership.
0:26:40 They had amazing dance teachers and amazing dance classes
0:26:41 and I loved it.
0:26:44 And I remember just going to classes so often going like,
0:26:47 wow, I actually think this should be a part of my path
0:26:50 or part of my career, but it doesn’t make sense
0:26:53 because I’m supposed to be focused on life coaching.
0:26:55 I’m already bartending and waiting tables seven nights a week.
0:26:57 Like, how am I going to do all these things?
0:27:00 And so I remember like having these fantasies
0:27:04 about being a dancer and about having a career in this world.
0:27:07 But I would always never give myself permission to do it
0:27:08 because I was like, oh, I’m supposed to focus.
0:27:11 All the success books say you have to niche down
0:27:12 and pick one thing and be the best in the world
0:27:14 so they can’t ignore you.
0:27:16 But the truth was I couldn’t do that.
0:27:17 It wasn’t advice that worked for me.
0:27:21 And so this opportunity came up to actually audition
0:27:25 to teach at Crunch and to kind of take my passion
0:27:26 for this thing to the next level.
0:27:28 And I remember sitting down and thinking to myself,
0:27:29 should I do this?
0:27:32 Is this like the stupidest thing ever?
0:27:32 You know what I mean?
0:27:34 Am I going to just get distracted,
0:27:36 slow down my coaching career,
0:27:38 spend even more time bartending and waiting tables
0:27:39 because I’m not making that much money?
0:27:40 That’s when I came up with the 10 year test.
0:27:43 I was about 25 or 26 at the time.
0:27:47 In the dance world, to start out at 25 or 26,
0:27:49 you are over the hill.
0:27:52 You’re practically a great grandparent
0:27:55 because most people as professional dancers,
0:27:57 they start taking class when they’re like three or four
0:28:00 and they’re in these recitals and everything
0:28:02 and they’re professional dancers going on tour
0:28:05 and music videos by the time they’re like 15, 16, 17.
0:28:06 You know what, like that’s their peak.
0:28:07 And then in their mid 20s,
0:28:09 they’re kind of moving into a different zone
0:28:10 or something like that.
0:28:13 Anyway, that was my understanding of that world.
0:28:16 So to start dancing with no formal training
0:28:18 at 26 or 27 sounded crazy.
0:28:20 So I sat myself down and I said, okay, look,
0:28:21 you love this thing so much.
0:28:23 You love music, you love hip hop, you love dance.
0:28:26 If you imagine yourself, you’re 25 right now,
0:28:29 if you imagine yourself 10 years in the future,
0:28:32 looking back and realizing you didn’t go for this,
0:28:34 you didn’t actually audition to teach at crunch.
0:28:37 You didn’t give this any sort of space or attention.
0:28:39 Are you going to regret it?
0:28:42 And when I closed my eyes and imagined myself at 35,
0:28:44 10 years into the future, I was like, oh my God,
0:28:48 it would be one of the biggest regrets of my life.
0:28:51 And that leaning into my future
0:28:53 and trying on a perspective of future me
0:28:56 is the 10 year test and anyone can do it.
0:28:57 Now, if I would have gotten the answer like,
0:28:59 no, I really wouldn’t give a shit,
0:29:01 then I probably wouldn’t have went on an audition,
0:29:06 but I did audition and I wound up having this extraordinary
0:29:09 career simultaneously to building my coaching practice
0:29:11 where I was one of the world’s first elite
0:29:13 Nike dance athletes and I got to teach hip hop
0:29:18 and salsa and house and all these different dance flavors
0:29:20 all around the world.
0:29:22 And these incredible experiences
0:29:23 that would have never happened
0:29:25 if I didn’t do that 10 year test
0:29:27 and get out of a space of fear thinking
0:29:29 that it was like too late at 25.
0:29:31 And again, I know how ridiculous that sounds,
0:29:34 but in that world contextually, it made sense.
0:29:35 – I love that.
0:29:37 So as I was researching about your story,
0:29:39 there were some things that I realized.
0:29:41 So in high school, you try out for the cheerleading team
0:29:43 for many years, when you finally made the team,
0:29:45 you became captain, right?
0:29:46 – Yeah.
0:29:47 – Then you’re the first to go to college,
0:29:49 you graduated valedictorian.
0:29:51 Then as an adult, you just told the story,
0:29:53 you’re a dancer, no professional training,
0:29:55 started way later than everybody else,
0:29:57 then you become one of the first like elite dancers
0:29:58 for Nike, right?
0:30:03 So how do you dominate every single random thing
0:30:05 that you decide to do?
0:30:06 – It’s a really a personality type.
0:30:08 I’m very similar, always president of everything,
0:30:10 always captain of everything, doubling in this,
0:30:12 this and that, figuring it out.
0:30:14 We’ll talk about that in a little bit.
0:30:17 But I just want to understand like your personality,
0:30:18 the personality that it takes for somebody
0:30:21 to always want to compete and win and be number one,
0:30:23 which sounds like it’s very much your personality
0:30:25 based on what I learned about you.
0:30:27 What would you say are the pros and cons
0:30:29 of this type of personality?
0:30:32 – One of them is that I’m willing to dive in
0:30:34 and not be good at stuff.
0:30:37 Like everything I’ve ever tried when I start out,
0:30:40 I’m not good at all, like terrible.
0:30:42 I remember all those times trying out
0:30:45 for the cheerleading team and just being like so crestfallen
0:30:47 because I was so rejected.
0:30:48 It was like, these arms aren’t straight
0:30:49 and you don’t have this, no, no, no.
0:30:51 I was just like, all right, I’m gonna try better next time.
0:30:53 And I just put myself on video camera to learn to go,
0:30:55 okay, oh wow, I see how my arms are.
0:30:57 Oh, oh wow, Jesus, I’m a mess.
0:30:58 Okay, great.
0:31:00 And I think the same thing with coaching,
0:31:01 I think the same thing with business.
0:31:04 Like I’m not super fast.
0:31:06 So a lot of people, I think in the world,
0:31:09 sometimes people have these incredible opportunities
0:31:10 where they’re like, they have,
0:31:11 I don’t know if it’s overnight success,
0:31:13 but they’re like fast learners.
0:31:14 And I don’t think I’m like that.
0:31:17 I think also one of the pros to this type of personality
0:31:20 is like, if I really love something,
0:31:22 I’m going to just go for it and dive in
0:31:24 and trust that it’ll all work out.
0:31:27 I think one of the cons of having personalities like we do
0:31:29 is you can sometimes be your own worst enemy
0:31:30 and you can overwork.
0:31:34 I think perfectionism is something to really watch out for.
0:31:36 Like there’s beautiful perfectionism,
0:31:38 which means you have high standards and that’s awesome
0:31:40 because that’s where excellence comes from
0:31:41 and that is outstanding.
0:31:43 And then it can bleed over
0:31:45 into some maladaptive forms of it
0:31:47 where nothing is ever good enough.
0:31:48 You’re never good enough.
0:31:50 You can push yourself into burnout
0:31:52 and you can be really hard on other people too.
0:31:54 So I think those are some of the aspects
0:31:58 where you have to really keep awareness of yourself
0:32:00 and the self punishment and the self torture
0:32:01 that can come with this personality type
0:32:04 is really something to keep an eye out for.
0:32:06 – So I want to ask one last question about your career.
0:32:10 Have you ever heard of the tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell?
0:32:10 – Yes.
0:32:12 – So like basically it’s like the boiling point,
0:32:14 like you reach critical mass
0:32:16 and like everybody knows who you are.
0:32:18 So you are one of my role models in this space.
0:32:20 When I think of like who I want to be
0:32:22 and all these things, I always think of like
0:32:25 you are definitely a name that pops up in my mind.
0:32:28 And it was great to have you as a role model
0:32:30 before I was able to be a big podcaster
0:32:31 and things like that.
0:32:32 So thank you.
0:32:36 And I’m curious to know what point in your career,
0:32:39 like now everybody in this space knows your name.
0:32:40 You’re really recognizable.
0:32:42 One of the top females in this business influencer space.
0:32:44 What do you think was the tipping point
0:32:45 when you’re like everything started
0:32:48 to really just escalate for you?
0:32:50 What was the tipping point?
0:32:52 – It’s a great question.
0:32:53 Two things about this.
0:32:55 One, I don’t know if there was one.
0:32:57 That’s my honest assessment.
0:33:01 And I may not be the best person to decide that
0:33:02 because I’m so in it.
0:33:04 And if you talk to anyone who knows me,
0:33:05 any of my friends and colleagues,
0:33:06 they’ll let you know, even my team.
0:33:09 I am the most heads down person ever.
0:33:13 Like my thing is I just show up, I get it done.
0:33:15 And then I’m either off,
0:33:17 meaning I’m completely unplugged
0:33:20 and kind of into another space in my life.
0:33:22 And then when I come back, I go heads down again.
0:33:24 So because I’ve been doing this now
0:33:26 and it’s been 22 years, right?
0:33:28 So it’s a really long time.
0:33:30 And I think going back to the traits,
0:33:34 one of my best traits is my consistency trait.
0:33:37 So when I first started creating content
0:33:38 on a weekly basis,
0:33:39 it was through a newsletter
0:33:41 with the easiest title ever called “Magical Moments.”
0:33:42 It was awesome.
0:33:43 That was the best I could do at that time.
0:33:47 And I would send down a newsletter every week nonstop.
0:33:49 And then actually once I got a puppy,
0:33:51 it was the first dog I ever had in my life, Kuma.
0:33:52 He’s 13 now.
0:33:54 When I got him, I couldn’t blog anymore
0:33:56 because raising a puppy and training a puppy
0:33:57 takes a lot of time.
0:33:59 If anyone listening has ever done it,
0:34:00 you know it’s a lot of work.
0:34:02 And I was like, oh, I need to just turn on my computer
0:34:04 because I remembered from my teaching fitness days,
0:34:06 I was like, oh, I can easily look at a camera.
0:34:08 And so then it became MarieTV.
0:34:11 And I’m saying all this because the consistency
0:34:14 and the momentum that has built over time,
0:34:15 there wasn’t one moment.
0:34:17 I think it’s the long game
0:34:20 that has allowed me to create
0:34:23 what for me has been a really beautiful experience
0:34:25 of business and a beautiful experience
0:34:27 of being able to connect with people.
0:34:29 There were certainly beautiful moments.
0:34:30 And I hope that there’s many more,
0:34:33 but I don’t think that there was one that really did it.
0:34:37 It was the relentlessness of commitment
0:34:41 and consistency that I think has helped me create
0:34:42 what we have today.
0:34:43 – It’s totally amazing.
0:34:46 And it’s amazing how you sort of had it as a side hustle,
0:34:48 but it was something you were still doing consistently.
0:34:50 You had other things that were making you money
0:34:52 because that thing wasn’t making you money yet,
0:34:54 but you kept going at it, getting better at it,
0:34:55 learning at it.
0:34:57 And it’s really all this stuff is a long game.
0:34:58 Same thing with me in this podcast.
0:35:00 I’ve been working at it for five years.
0:35:02 People see me now, but it’s like,
0:35:04 I’ve been doing more than five years.
0:35:05 I had a blog before this.
0:35:08 It’s been like a 12 year journey to get here, you know?
0:35:09 Of all these different experiences
0:35:11 in the same sort of path,
0:35:13 even though I was doing other things
0:35:15 to sustain myself all the while,
0:35:18 but it’s like sticking on one thing longterm
0:35:19 is super important.
0:35:21 So let’s talk about everything is figureoutable.
0:35:23 So you have a book that was released in 2019.
0:35:24 This is one of my favorite quotes.
0:35:26 I actually have it in our, yeah, I have a company.
0:35:28 I have it in our core values.
0:35:31 One of our phrases is everything is figureoutable.
0:35:34 So what was the genesis of this phrase?
0:35:38 – So this phrase is really, it’s the mantra I live my life by.
0:35:41 I feel like if my DNA could be words, that would be it.
0:35:43 This actually is something beautiful.
0:35:47 It was such a gift that was given to me by my mom.
0:35:50 So my mom is this really interesting character.
0:35:51 She is, she’s 75 now.
0:35:52 She’s still with us.
0:35:53 She’s awesome.
0:35:55 She’s super spicy and funny.
0:35:57 She is about five, four.
0:35:59 She looks like June Cleaver,
0:36:01 which is this character from the fifties.
0:36:03 This like leave it to beaver show.
0:36:06 Very, very kind of pure and all-American looking,
0:36:08 but she has the tenacity of a bulldog
0:36:10 and she curses like a truck driver.
0:36:12 She is so spicy.
0:36:14 And she actually grew up the daughter
0:36:16 of two alcoholic parents in Newark, New Jersey.
0:36:18 So she really learned by necessity
0:36:20 how to stretch a dollar bill around the block
0:36:22 like five times, super frugal.
0:36:24 And she had made a promise to herself
0:36:25 that when she grew up,
0:36:27 that somehow she was gonna find a way to better life.
0:36:29 And I remember sitting around our house in New Jersey
0:36:33 on Sundays and we would clip out coupons together
0:36:34 ’cause my mom was like,
0:36:35 I’m gonna teach you all the different ways
0:36:37 that we save money.
0:36:39 And the other thing that gave her so much joy
0:36:42 was the fact that brands back in the day,
0:36:44 I don’t even know if they still do this,
0:36:47 back in the day, when you kind of were loyal to a brand,
0:36:50 you could cut out what was known as a proof of purchase.
0:36:53 So those were on the back of like cereal boxes
0:36:55 or milk cartons or orange juice cartons.
0:36:58 And if you saved up enough of them, you can mail them in
0:37:01 and they would send you something like a free recipe book
0:37:04 or a whole set of utensils or something like that.
0:37:07 And one of my mom’s favorite possessions in the whole world
0:37:10 was this little AM/FM transistor radio
0:37:13 that she got from Tropicana Orange Juice for free.
0:37:15 So this little radio looked like an orange.
0:37:18 It had this cute red and white straw sticking out of the side.
0:37:19 That’s the antenna.
0:37:21 And my mom loves music too.
0:37:23 And so I remember as a kid,
0:37:25 anytime that I needed to find my mom,
0:37:28 like somewhere around our yard or somewhere around the house,
0:37:31 all I had to do was listen for the sound
0:37:32 of this tinny little radio
0:37:35 of her like music blaring out of it.
0:37:38 And one day I remember walking home from school
0:37:40 and I’m approaching the house and I hear her tunes.
0:37:42 It was like a Donna summer or something.
0:37:45 I get closer and the music is like coming
0:37:46 from a strange orientation.
0:37:49 It was actually coming from way up high.
0:37:50 I was caught off guard and I look up
0:37:54 and I see my mom perched precariously
0:37:56 on the roof of our two story house.
0:37:57 I don’t see a ladder.
0:38:00 I don’t see, I just see her like perched up there
0:38:02 with this little orange sitting next to her butt.
0:38:04 And I’m like, mom, are you okay?
0:38:05 What are you doing?
0:38:06 Why do you do it on the roof up there?
0:38:08 And she’s like, Ray, I’m fine.
0:38:09 Don’t worry about it.
0:38:10 She’s like, the roof had a leak.
0:38:12 I called the roofer.
0:38:14 He said it was gonna be at least 500 bucks.
0:38:15 I said, screw that.
0:38:16 There’s some extra asphalt in the garage.
0:38:18 I’m doing it myself.
0:38:19 Super frugal.
0:38:20 I was like, okay, cool.
0:38:22 So another day I come home.
0:38:25 I remember walking through the door and like I hear like,
0:38:28 I’m every woman like in the back
0:38:29 and my mom’s in the bathroom.
0:38:32 I push open the door and there’s like dust particles
0:38:34 all over and there’s pipes sticking out.
0:38:36 Like it looked like a bomb went off.
0:38:36 It was crazy.
0:38:37 And I was like, mom, are you okay?
0:38:38 What’s going on?
0:38:41 She’s like, oh, you know, the caulking was off
0:38:42 and the tiles were cracked.
0:38:44 I didn’t want the bathroom to get moldy.
0:38:47 So I’m retiling everything.
0:38:48 Now you have to get that my mom
0:38:50 is just high school educated, right?
0:38:53 And this is the 1980s.
0:38:54 So we don’t have Google.
0:38:55 We don’t have YouTube.
0:38:56 We don’t have TikTok.
0:38:57 Like we don’t have any of the things
0:38:59 that you could look up how to do stuff.
0:39:01 And so one day it was the fall.
0:39:04 It was getting dark early and I came home from school
0:39:06 and it was already like kind of creepy.
0:39:09 And as I approached my house, something was different.
0:39:12 No lights on and it was totally silent.
0:39:13 And for an Italian American home,
0:39:17 if it’s quiet and dark, this is not a good sign.
0:39:19 So I walk in and I had this pit in my stomach
0:39:20 ’cause I knew something was off
0:39:22 and I’m like, where the hell is my mom?
0:39:23 Where’s the radio?
0:39:25 Like it’s too silent here.
0:39:27 Then all of a sudden I hear these clicks and clacks
0:39:30 like coming out of the kitchen.
0:39:33 I follow the sound and I see my mom hunched over
0:39:35 the kitchen table, looked like an operating room.
0:39:38 There were screwdrivers and like electrical tape
0:39:40 and then in about a dozen pieces,
0:39:43 a completely dismantled Tropicana Orange radio.
0:39:45 I was like, mom, what happened?
0:39:46 Is it broke?
0:39:48 That’s like your favorite thing in the world.
0:39:50 She says to me, she’s like, oh no, everything’s fine.
0:39:51 She’s like the antenna was off
0:39:53 and the dial wasn’t working right.
0:39:55 So I’m just putting it back together.
0:39:57 And I finally thought to ask the question
0:39:58 I should have always asked, which was this.
0:40:02 I said, hey mom, how do you know how to do so many things
0:40:05 that you have never done before?
0:40:07 And there’s nobody showing you how to do it.
0:40:08 And she put down her screwdriver
0:40:09 and she cocked her head to the side.
0:40:11 She said, Ray, what are you talking about?
0:40:14 She’s like, nothing in life is that complicated.
0:40:17 If you roll up your sleeves, you get in there and you do it.
0:40:20 Everything is figureoutable.
0:40:21 And ha, I kid you not.
0:40:24 I was just like, whoa, everything is figureoutable.
0:40:25 What?
0:40:26 Everything is figureoutable.
0:40:28 It’s like that phrase washed over me
0:40:31 and it lodged into my heart so deep
0:40:33 that it became the operating system
0:40:36 through which I lived honestly the rest of my life.
0:40:39 It got me through high school and abusive relationships
0:40:41 and all the BS that most of us go through
0:40:44 getting college and education and rejection.
0:40:45 You know, like all the things.
0:40:48 And there’s not a day that goes by
0:40:50 that I still do not use that phrase
0:40:52 or that we don’t use it in our team and our company
0:40:55 or in some aspect that it doesn’t help me
0:40:56 when the shiitake hits the fan in life.
0:40:58 Cause it does for all of us.
0:41:02 Get myself back into a space of going like less problem solved.
0:41:03 Let’s get creative.
0:41:03 Who can I call?
0:41:05 I may not have all the answers.
0:41:07 I’m not saying that I know how to necessarily figure
0:41:10 everything out, but that it is figureoutable.
0:41:14 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
0:41:16 Hey, Young and Profiters.
0:41:19 These days I find myself with no time.
0:41:22 I’m juggling work, dating, everything else
0:41:23 that life throws in my way.
0:41:27 And honestly, healthy eating has fallen to the wayside.
0:41:29 There’s just never enough time to plan, shop, cook,
0:41:31 clean up after cooking.
0:41:34 And what happens is that I end up ordering all these groceries
0:41:36 being optimistic because I want to eat healthy
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0:41:41 So I knew that I had to make a change
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0:42:52 If you want all the links quick and easy,
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0:42:59 Hello, young and profitors.
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0:44:31 Hey, yeah, fam.
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0:44:43 I’ll be speaking next to Tony Robbins, yeah, fam.
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0:46:05 – I love that.
0:46:08 And I know that your mom,
0:46:11 she gave you this everything for your audible mantra,
0:46:13 which seemed to be work really positive for you.
0:46:14 She also had a lot to do
0:46:16 with your money beliefs in general.
0:46:18 Like you said, she was frugal.
0:46:20 And I know that one time you,
0:46:22 I heard you tell a story when you were eight years old.
0:46:25 You saw your mother sobbing on the phone
0:46:27 and basically she told you something
0:46:29 that was advice that you took he to,
0:46:31 which was a real big benefit in your life,
0:46:35 but also led to some overdoing it in some ways.
0:46:36 So tell us about that.
0:46:39 – Yeah, so it was, I was around eight
0:46:42 when my parents got divorced.
0:46:47 And so essentially it was never about like drugs
0:46:50 or infidelity or anything like that.
0:46:54 It was always, my parents fighting was always about money
0:46:55 and they’re not being enough of it.
0:46:58 And so when the divorce finally came final one day,
0:46:59 when like the papers were done,
0:47:02 I remember watching my mom in the kitchen
0:47:04 and my mom’s a little woman
0:47:07 and she had probably lost, I don’t know, 15 to 20 pounds
0:47:09 to be perfectly honest with you, she was like a skeleton.
0:47:11 And she, this was back when there was landlines.
0:47:14 So she had the phone like wrapped around her hand
0:47:17 and blood was drained out of it.
0:47:18 And she’s on the phone crying to her mother,
0:47:20 my grandmother, who was in Florida.
0:47:21 And she’s like, I have nothing.
0:47:22 I have nothing.
0:47:23 Do you understand that?
0:47:24 I have nothing.
0:47:26 And then she hung up the phone
0:47:29 and she leaned down, bent down, ’cause I was small.
0:47:31 And she put her hands on my shoulders
0:47:34 and her forehead was next to mine and she shook me.
0:47:38 She said, Marie, don’t be stupid like I was.
0:47:39 Do you see what I’m going through right now?
0:47:42 Don’t ever let a man control your money.
0:47:45 Don’t ever let anyone control your destiny.
0:47:46 Don’t be stupid like me.
0:47:47 I need you to grow up.
0:47:48 I need you to be independent.
0:47:50 I need you to take care of yourself.
0:47:52 Don’t be stupid like I was.
0:47:53 And I’m not kidding you, Holly.
0:47:56 Like at eight, first of all, I was terrified
0:47:59 because I had never seen my mom that distraught.
0:48:01 Second of all, my dad’s an amazing person.
0:48:04 So I was heartbroken because every kid, most of us, right?
0:48:06 We just want our families to be together.
0:48:09 And so I formed this little understanding,
0:48:11 this little equation, which was this,
0:48:14 was that not having enough money
0:48:16 means that you’re gonna lose love.
0:48:19 Not having enough money means that families
0:48:20 are gonna get broken up.
0:48:23 And not having enough money is a thing that I never want.
0:48:25 And I promised myself that I was gonna grow up
0:48:29 and somehow figure out how to make so much money
0:48:31 that it would never take away love again.
0:48:32 And I remember even as a kid,
0:48:35 hearing other stories from other kids I knew
0:48:37 because their families were getting divorced too.
0:48:40 And so I had these fantasies of like,
0:48:41 oh, well, I’m gonna earn so much
0:48:45 that I can help other people with enough money as well.
0:48:47 And so that was kind of a weird but strange
0:48:51 and amazing thing that got planted in me
0:48:56 that grew into a desire, a hunger,
0:48:59 a commitment to be financially free.
0:49:01 It definitely was not a straight line
0:49:04 because like I was sharing earlier in this conversation,
0:49:07 I got myself in piles and piles of debt after school.
0:49:09 So I was certainly not good at it.
0:49:10 I think for most of us,
0:49:14 there’s a lot of mixed messages that we absorb around money,
0:49:16 whether that is from our family, from society,
0:49:20 our friends, the media, a lot of mixed signals
0:49:21 about whether we should want it.
0:49:22 Is it okay to want it?
0:49:23 You shouldn’t have it.
0:49:24 Are you spiritual?
0:49:25 Are you a good person?
0:49:29 It’s like so much stuff that most of us need to work through.
0:49:31 And but that was the genesis for me
0:49:33 of having that seed planted of going like, nope,
0:49:35 I don’t know how, but I’m gonna figure out
0:49:38 how to earn so much is not gonna be a problem.
0:49:39 – And eventually you figured that out.
0:49:43 You started becoming really successful, making money.
0:49:46 And I heard you on Dear Gabby and other podcasts
0:49:48 where you were talking to her about the fact
0:49:51 that at one point you were just sort of overdoing it.
0:49:54 You were a stress ball all the time,
0:49:56 running around like a chicken with your head cut off.
0:49:58 Nothing was ever enough.
0:49:59 You would always say like,
0:50:01 oh, rest in two weeks, I’ll rest in two weeks.
0:50:04 I have to say, I feel like I’m in that now,
0:50:05 running a team of 60 people.
0:50:07 And I feel like I’m just three times a week
0:50:09 working until midnight still and all these things.
0:50:11 I know it’s not good for me,
0:50:14 but I want to understand what point was the turning point
0:50:17 for you when you’re like, I need to make a change.
0:50:18 Yeah, well, a couple of things.
0:50:20 One, should you be interested?
0:50:22 And again, this is only an invitation,
0:50:23 but if you’re ever like, you know what,
0:50:24 I’m kind of done with this.
0:50:27 Like I still want to be wildly successful,
0:50:29 but I don’t want to drive myself into the ground.
0:50:32 You need to consider coming to do time genius.
0:50:33 It’s amazing.
0:50:36 It’ll keep all of your best qualities and kind of let go,
0:50:38 at least for me, of some of the ones
0:50:40 that have grown to be destructive.
0:50:43 So for me, probably one of the biggest wake-up calls
0:50:47 was actually in 2020,
0:50:50 because I had been really going at it hard for a while.
0:50:51 And it was like a fish in water.
0:50:52 It’s like, I don’t know any different.
0:50:53 This is just me.
0:50:54 This is what I do.
0:50:56 This is how I do it.
0:50:58 And there was never a problem with it.
0:51:00 It certainly wasn’t a burden because I love my work.
0:51:03 And it showed up a few times in my relationship
0:51:06 where with Josh, my partner, we’ve been together 20 years,
0:51:08 where, you know, he’s like, hey, working a lot.
0:51:10 And I’m like, yeah, this is what it takes, dude.
0:51:11 Like this is what it’s about.
0:51:14 And so we’ve definitely had sparring issues over time.
0:51:16 And I think I dialed it down a little bit
0:51:19 because the truth is my relationship needed more space
0:51:21 and needed more attention if it was gonna thrive.
0:51:25 But in 2020, I started having all of these weird
0:51:29 and unusual pains in my body, which I had never had before.
0:51:32 And I, you know, had always taken really good care
0:51:34 of my health and as conscious as I can be
0:51:37 as a dancer and as a fitness person, you know,
0:51:39 movement is part of my life.
0:51:42 But things just started to fall apart.
0:51:44 And I remember getting all of my blood work done
0:51:48 and a doctor said to me after she reviewed my blood work,
0:51:49 she’s like, Marie, it is a miracle
0:51:51 you’re able to get up every day.
0:51:53 Like your adrenals are shot.
0:51:57 Then we discovered all of these tumors inside of me,
0:52:00 including one, the size of a grapefruit growing outside
0:52:03 of my uterus, pushing all of the other organs out of place.
0:52:07 And it turns out I had to have an urgent hysterectomy
0:52:09 to make the pain stop.
0:52:14 And so after that surgery, the recovery is like you’re,
0:52:17 you can’t really do much for like six to eight weeks.
0:52:19 It’s just like your body needs to heal.
0:52:20 It’s a major surgery.
0:52:21 You cannot work out.
0:52:23 You can walk and you walk gently,
0:52:25 but you just have to really chill.
0:52:26 And I’m not kidding you.
0:52:29 I have never taken six weeks off in my life.
0:52:32 I started babysitting when I was nine.
0:52:34 I was like, even just the prospect.
0:52:35 I remember even when I heard like, no, no, no,
0:52:37 you’re not gonna be able to do anything for six weeks.
0:52:40 I was like, like, it was like such a record scratch moment.
0:52:44 But what was so cool about that was in the stillness
0:52:48 and in the requirement to just be,
0:52:53 I was able to see how much my patterning of drivenness
0:52:58 had exceeded what was necessary.
0:53:02 And it was though this drive was driving me
0:53:04 rather than me being in control.
0:53:06 And there was just layers of it
0:53:09 that I was like, this is not even productive.
0:53:12 And I am like really about efficiency and productivity.
0:53:14 And I’m like overdoing it in certain areas.
0:53:16 And it’s causing my body to break down,
0:53:18 which is like my sacred vessel in this lifetime.
0:53:20 Like this is nuts, Marie.
0:53:21 You know, and you can’t see things
0:53:24 or learn the lessons until they’re ready for you.
0:53:26 But there was something in that stillness
0:53:29 that gave me a perspective that quite frankly,
0:53:32 I just didn’t have before because I was so,
0:53:36 it was such a habit to go so fast and so hard
0:53:38 that I didn’t know there was even another option.
0:53:40 – Yeah, and you love your job so much.
0:53:41 When you love what you’re doing,
0:53:43 it’s so easy to just keep going, keep going, keep going
0:53:45 and not even pay attention
0:53:47 to how your body is reacting or feeling.
0:53:49 So like you said, you’ve got this new course,
0:53:51 new wish course called Time Genius.
0:53:52 I definitely wanna take it.
0:53:54 – You gotta come take it, you’ll love it.
0:53:58 – Yeah, and you talk about rejecting the time stress trap.
0:54:00 Can you explain what that is?
0:54:03 – In my six weeks and so like I had,
0:54:04 I’ve always been obsessed with productivity
0:54:06 because again, I love what I do.
0:54:06 And I’m always like, well,
0:54:08 how do we maximize our time on earth?
0:54:11 Like how do you get the most out of being here,
0:54:12 the things that you wanna create,
0:54:13 the impact you wanna make,
0:54:14 the different adventures that you wanna have.
0:54:16 So it’s always been a place of interest for me,
0:54:17 a place of study.
0:54:18 And I love studying neuroscience
0:54:21 and I love studying efficiency and effectiveness
0:54:22 and all those beautiful things.
0:54:25 And when I really started to understand
0:54:28 that I was so addicted to like overwhelm
0:54:30 and had put myself in a place of burnout,
0:54:33 I started to recognize that I was like, wait a minute,
0:54:35 this is like two different worlds,
0:54:38 two different paradigms where we’re so inculturated
0:54:41 to believe that if we’re not on our phones 24/7,
0:54:44 if we’re not constantly engaging and creating content
0:54:46 and trying to reach for more and more and more
0:54:47 and bigger and bigger and bigger,
0:54:50 that somehow we’re not hungry enough
0:54:51 or we’re not driven enough.
0:54:54 So I started understanding, I was like,
0:54:55 it basically came to me this concept
0:54:57 of like there’s the world of time stress,
0:54:59 which most of the world is caught in.
0:55:00 Here’s a stat that might blow your mind.
0:55:03 Did you know that on average, right now these days,
0:55:05 the average American will now spend the equivalent
0:55:08 of 44 years of their life staring at screens?
0:55:10 – No, I didn’t know that.
0:55:13 – 44 years of our life, I don’t know about you.
0:55:14 – Mine is like 60 years for sure.
0:55:18 – Yes, but I don’t think the purpose of a human life
0:55:22 is to spend 44 years or 66 years staring at screens.
0:55:25 And just when I started to really do some research
0:55:28 into the stats and I started, I actually asked our audience,
0:55:31 I sent out this survey and I just said,
0:55:33 hey, I’m investigating this topic.
0:55:35 I’m curious if you have any struggles around productivity
0:55:37 or burnout or getting things down or feeling like,
0:55:39 no matter how hard you go, it’s never enough.
0:55:41 And when you’re working, you’re like, oh God,
0:55:42 I really need to rest, but you feel so guilty
0:55:44 for taking rest that you don’t take a rest.
0:55:45 And then when you take a rest, you’re like,
0:55:47 oh, I should be working because I have all these other ideas
0:55:48 and I need to get ahead.
0:55:51 And oh my God, Hala, you don’t even, the responses,
0:55:56 there was like 7,000 in-depth responses in like two days.
0:55:57 It was insane.
0:55:59 And then when I started to look at those responses,
0:56:02 it became so apparent to me that most of the world
0:56:06 was caught trapped in this awful paradigm
0:56:07 that I called time stress,
0:56:09 where you feel like no matter how hard you go,
0:56:11 it’s not hard enough that you can’t take a break,
0:56:14 that you’re lazy if you even wanna sit down and rest
0:56:16 for like five minutes, that no matter what you do,
0:56:20 it’s not enough that you’re starting to feel some anxiety,
0:56:22 some depression, some burnout,
0:56:23 and you feel ashamed about that.
0:56:26 And you feel like that if you take a break or slow down
0:56:27 that everything you’ve worked so hard for
0:56:29 is probably gonna fall apart.
0:56:31 And that’s the world a lot of people are living in
0:56:33 and they’re plastering on smiles and saying,
0:56:35 but I got it, I got it together, I got it together.
0:56:37 Or they feel like they have to hold it together.
0:56:38 They don’t realize that there’s this whole,
0:56:40 their possibility of the paradigm I call being a time genius,
0:56:43 which is where you can actually get all the things
0:56:44 that you wanna get done and then some
0:56:48 and not feel that dread and not run yourself
0:56:51 into the ground and not do things that are ineffective
0:56:55 and not chase these goals or this cultural mandate
0:56:57 for more that honestly is sometimes,
0:56:59 you don’t want everything to grow indefinitely.
0:57:01 Think about cancer cells.
0:57:03 That’s something you don’t want more of.
0:57:06 And so sometimes actually the secret to getting more
0:57:08 out of life of what we really want,
0:57:11 which includes abundance and adventure and success
0:57:14 actually requires us doing less.
0:57:15 That’s not a message we get very often.
0:57:18 But anyway, we could keep talking and I wanna be quiet
0:57:19 ’cause I’m sure you have more questions.
0:57:21 – Yeah, and I think this is especially,
0:57:24 a lot of my audience are small business owners,
0:57:26 entrepreneurs, it’s especially important for us
0:57:28 ’cause as I keep growing my company bigger and bigger,
0:57:31 I have more responsibility in terms of payroll
0:57:32 and clients and this and that.
0:57:33 And sometimes I’m like, what did I do?
0:57:35 Like I could just be rich off my podcast.
0:57:37 (laughing)
0:57:39 All right, so in these last couple of minutes,
0:57:41 I’m gonna ask you a couple of questions at the end
0:57:42 in terms of your secret to profiting life,
0:57:45 but first some actionable tips in terms of time management
0:57:47 and productivity, what are your favorite actionable tips
0:57:49 that you can share with our listeners?
0:57:52 – I would say one is, I know this sounds really basic,
0:57:55 but a lot of people don’t do it is really shift
0:57:58 every notification on every electrical device you have
0:58:00 to the off position, default it to off.
0:58:04 Do not let yourself be interrupted by other people’s ideas,
0:58:05 agendas or notifications.
0:58:08 That includes text messages, that includes Slack,
0:58:11 that includes email, that includes every social platform.
0:58:14 One of the biggest things that crushes our ability
0:58:17 to do deep focused work is interruptions and distractions.
0:58:20 And when you start setting those notifications to off,
0:58:21 like you’re gonna feel a little uncomfortable at first.
0:58:22 You’re like, oh, am I not important?
0:58:24 No one’s reaching out to me, is it too quiet?
0:58:28 But I will tell you, you’ll get your core work done so fast
0:58:31 and then you’ll have so much more space and bandwidth to play
0:58:32 and have fun and interact with people
0:58:35 and have real conversations and not be toast
0:58:36 at the end of your day.
0:58:37 So that’s one thing.
0:58:39 The other thing is I always advise people
0:58:42 to make a success plan, not a to-do list.
0:58:44 So a success plan, it’s not just semantics,
0:58:46 it’s actually the framing that’s really important,
0:58:49 is you take four minutes at the end of your day.
0:58:51 So before you wrap up for the day
0:58:54 and not to wait until five, six, seven, eight o’clock
0:58:55 when your brain’s freaking toast
0:58:56 and you’re running on fumes,
0:58:59 do it like after lunch at like one or two
0:59:00 or something like that.
0:59:02 Take four minutes and map out your success plan
0:59:03 for the following day.
0:59:06 Are there any core meetings that you have to get to?
0:59:08 Is there any place you need to show up and be on time?
0:59:12 And what are the one to three, not 15, not 27,
0:59:16 what are the one to three really high value projects,
0:59:19 tasks, to-dos that you really do need to get done
0:59:21 and have those on that list only?
0:59:24 And a success plan rather than a to-do list,
0:59:28 first of all, it frames you up to have a successful day.
0:59:30 B, you’re able to wake up and hit the ground running
0:59:35 because you know exactly how your ideal day should unfold.
0:59:39 And when you don’t stuff it with 17, 15, 30 things,
0:59:43 you have enough margin to be able to be responsive
0:59:45 to the oshitake moments of life.
0:59:48 The internet fails, technology doesn’t work.
0:59:50 Something happens with a member of your family.
0:59:51 If there’s enough white space in there,
0:59:53 there’s enough margin for you to be able
0:59:54 to not only get your most important tasks done
0:59:57 because you’ve identified what those are in advance,
0:59:58 but there’s enough wiggle room
1:00:00 to be able to not let your life get out of control
1:00:03 or for you to feel out of control dealing with it.
1:00:05 – Yeah, guys, this is such simple advice,
1:00:06 but it will literally change your life.
1:00:09 This is how you make consistent progress day over day
1:00:11 and get shit done when you prioritize your stuff.
1:00:12 You know what you’re supposed to do
1:00:13 that’s gonna actually move the needle
1:00:15 and you don’t get distracted
1:00:17 with the things that other people have on their agendas
1:00:19 in terms of what you should be doing during your day.
1:00:21 So I love that advice.
1:00:24 Marie, the last two things I ask everybody in my podcast
1:00:26 is what is one actionable thing
1:00:28 our young and profitors can do today
1:00:31 to become more profiting tomorrow?
1:00:32 – One thing they can do today
1:00:34 to become more profiting tomorrow.
1:00:37 Well, if you’re a business owner,
1:00:39 you might wanna take a look at expanding
1:00:41 either your prices or your offerings
1:00:44 to offer something that is either a little more premium
1:00:46 or that is catered to an audience
1:00:50 who is happy, willing, and able to spend more
1:00:52 on something that’s a little more white glove
1:00:54 or a little bit more exclusive.
1:00:55 – I love that.
1:00:57 And what is your secret to profiting in life?
1:00:59 And this could be beyond financial.
1:01:00 – You know what?
1:01:05 The biggest lesson that I continue to bring myself back to,
1:01:07 and I feel like it’s like one of my life lessons
1:01:09 in this incarnation on earth,
1:01:14 is to be in joy as much as humanly possible,
1:01:16 even when things are hard,
1:01:17 even when things feel uncertain,
1:01:19 is to show up and to be in joy
1:01:22 because the journey’s not gonna last that long.
1:01:25 And it goes faster and faster and faster.
1:01:27 And the more that you show up in joy,
1:01:31 that vibration, it helps you profit in more ways than one.
1:01:33 You have access to greater creativity.
1:01:36 You have better connections with the people around you.
1:01:38 And the journey actually becomes a lot more fun.
1:01:39 – What a nice way to end the show.
1:01:41 And where can our listeners learn more about you
1:01:42 and everything that you do?
1:01:47 – So MarieForleo.com, it’s M-A-R-I-E-F-O-R-L-E-O.com
1:01:48 is kind of the main website.
1:01:50 We’ve got hundreds of episodes of Marie Forleo,
1:01:52 of the Marie Forleo podcast on MarieTV.
1:01:55 On all the socials, it’s @MarieForleo.
1:01:56 And I think on the website,
1:01:58 there’s a great free kind of coaching download.
1:02:00 It’s called How to Get Anything You Want.
1:02:02 So it’s like a little private coaching session,
1:02:04 that you can download it and take it with you anywhere
1:02:05 and it’s 100% free.
1:02:06 – Amazing.
1:02:07 I will put all those links in the show notes.
1:02:09 Marie, thank you so much for your time.
1:02:11 It was such a pleasure.
1:02:12 – Thank you for having me on.
1:02:15 (upbeat music)
1:02:17 (upbeat music)
1:02:20 (upbeat music)
1:02:22 (upbeat music)
1:02:25 (upbeat music)
1:02:35 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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0:01:39 We experienced a very unexpected contested adoption and we ended up losing the kids.
0:01:46 The lack of purpose that I felt in my life is something that made it really hard for me to get out of bed in the morning.
0:01:52 Until I got to the point where I was like, I have to figure out what my intention for my life is now.
0:01:55 And so I started with one simple question every single morning.
0:02:01 And that question was, so that’s when the concept of clarity mapping really started.
0:02:06 How did you get over the shame of starting a company and shutting it down?
0:02:12 We get scared of this idea of starting over, but you’re not starting over, you can’t.
0:02:18 You have so much knowledge now, and so you get to now apply all of that into the next thing.
0:02:24 Do you feel like entrepreneurs deal with grief and stress differently than other people?
0:02:28 Something that is very common among entrepreneurs is…
0:02:52 Yeah, fam, if you’ve ever struggled with grief, loss, trauma, feeling stuck, or just the occasional bout of seasonal depression,
0:02:55 then today’s episode is just what the doctor ordered.
0:03:00 My guest today is Ashley Lemieux, she’s the founder and CEO of The Shine Project,
0:03:05 the author of books like Born to Shine and I Am Here, and the host of the Healing Her podcast.
0:03:13 Ashley is an expert on grief and trauma recovery and has devoted her life to helping others reignite the light within themselves.
0:03:18 Today, she’s going to teach us how we can all learn to shine even through some of life’s darkest moments.
0:03:21 Ashley, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
0:03:25 Hey, thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
0:03:30 Thanks for joining me today, so I’m going to just jump right into it.
0:03:35 For a lot of us entrepreneurs, our businesses grow out of something that we’ve struggled with in our own lives,
0:03:38 and I feel like this has been especially the case for you.
0:03:45 You’ve had a bunch of dark moments in your life, so why don’t we start off with the first one that I learned about when I was researching your story.
0:03:50 It was in your 20s, you unexpectedly became the mother of two children,
0:03:55 and then you had some traumatic experiences around that. Can you tell us what happened?
0:04:00 Yeah, so in our mid-20s, I was actually building my first company also.
0:04:07 We were newly married, and we didn’t have kids at all in our radar at that time.
0:04:12 And overnight, we became permanent guardians of two kids.
0:04:18 And for the next four years, we were a family in every sense of the word,
0:04:23 and everything that we did revolved around raising the kids,
0:04:27 giving them the opportunities that, as a parent, you want them to have.
0:04:34 And all of us were under the impression that we would be together forever, for always.
0:04:41 And during the final steps of the adoption process, we experienced a very unexpected contested adoption.
0:04:46 And during that time, we ended up being in court for two years.
0:04:50 I just remember the life inside of me.
0:04:55 It felt like someone had taken a vacuum and just sucked it all out.
0:04:59 We were in court all the time, depositions, high stress.
0:05:05 No one knew what was going to happen. And we ended up losing the kids.
0:05:08 I was actually on the other side of the country for work.
0:05:12 And it happened fast. I didn’t even get to come home and say goodbye to them.
0:05:16 And that was almost eight years ago now.
0:05:25 And it rocked our world in a way that I did not know how to come back from,
0:05:30 or if I even wanted to figure out how to come back from it, to be honest.
0:05:35 Can you help us understand how you ended up with these kids in your 20s?
0:05:41 And then are they now back in your family, or the court took them away and you just never saw them again?
0:05:46 Yeah. So there’s parts of our story that we just don’t share all the full details of.
0:05:51 But they were placed with us through someone we knew.
0:05:57 And we have not had contact with them since we lost them almost eight years ago.
0:06:04 I’m so sorry to hear that. And I know that you guys decided to move after this happened.
0:06:09 What did that teach you about grief when you decided to move?
0:06:10 Were you able to run away from your grief?
0:06:17 I wanted to. We were like, okay, what can we do that will help us not feel this
0:06:24 hell, this weight that feels like it has buried every aspect of our life.
0:06:28 And it was really hard to be in the home that we had raised the kids in.
0:06:33 All of our friends were friends because our kids were friends from school.
0:06:37 We were doing things in the community altogether or sports teams and whatever.
0:06:43 And my husband and I were like, if there’s any shot of us making it after this,
0:06:44 we got to get away for a little while.
0:06:48 So we ended up moving to Nashville, Tennessee.
0:06:50 I actually had had some employees there.
0:06:56 And everything about Nashville is very different than it is in Phoenix.
0:06:59 And so we just said, peace out, let’s go.
0:07:04 But then once we got to Nashville and settled in the adrenaline of a new city,
0:07:10 of new opportunities, of the excitement of, okay, what are we going to explore?
0:07:11 What is waiting for us here?
0:07:15 Once that started to kind of wear off and the grief was still there,
0:07:19 we were then like, okay, how much farther can we run?
0:07:23 So we actually ended up packing carry-on suitcases.
0:07:29 And we went to Europe with pretty much no plans for almost two months,
0:07:34 hoping maybe that that would help ease the pain in that acute stage of grief
0:07:40 when everything is just new and raw and you don’t know how to take your next breath.
0:07:44 And again, after a while, that wore off.
0:07:49 And so we found ourselves really having to dig deep of answering the questions,
0:07:53 what is it that we want from our lives now?
0:07:58 And how do we rebuild so that we can participate in our life
0:08:01 and not regret not living it because we were too sad?
0:08:04 We’re going to touch on this much deeper later,
0:08:08 but you talk about this concept in your book called clarity mapping.
0:08:11 So was this one of the first instances of you starting to get clarity
0:08:13 around your life and what you wanted?
0:08:16 Yeah. So what was really hard for me?
0:08:21 And I think a lot of people can relate to this in whatever role you are in.
0:08:27 Let’s say you identify with your role of motherhood or as a wife or a partner
0:08:32 or your role at work or whatever that thing is that really shapes your identity.
0:08:39 If that is taken away from you and is no longer a part of your daily world,
0:08:41 you don’t have to base your decisions around it anymore.
0:08:45 Your actions aren’t based off of doing that thing because it is gone.
0:08:52 The lack of purpose that I felt in my life no longer being a physical mother
0:08:57 is something that made it really hard for me to get out of bed in the morning.
0:09:03 I didn’t know how to focus my time and my energy anymore.
0:09:07 It didn’t matter at that point because my business was running.
0:09:10 It was okay for me to step away for a little bit.
0:09:14 It did not matter if I got out of bed or not.
0:09:17 There was no one I needed to feed breakfast to or to get to school
0:09:20 or to pay that night or to tuck in.
0:09:26 And I stayed in bed for a long time until I got to the point where I was like,
0:09:30 I have to figure out what my intention for my life is now.
0:09:33 And so I started with one simple question every single morning.
0:09:37 And that question was, what is my intention today?
0:09:42 Because today, right now in this moment, was all I could focus on.
0:09:46 So that’s when the concept of clarity mapping really started.
0:09:53 I became a series of five questions that I answered every single day
0:09:57 to help give me purpose and direction and clarity on who I was
0:10:01 and what it is that I wanted to be rebuilding
0:10:06 so that I could create tangible steps forward to start building that thing.
0:10:11 And one of those tangible steps was that you decided to have your own children.
0:10:15 And so you and your husband started to try for a baby.
0:10:18 And that led to another traumatic experience.
0:10:20 Are you comfortable to share that with us?
0:10:25 Yeah, we waited, I think it was about four years
0:10:27 after the loss of the older two kiddos
0:10:34 to feel like we were at a place where we were ready to continue to try to grow our family.
0:10:39 I didn’t want to go back into motherhood feeling as broken as I felt
0:10:42 because I knew that that would impact the next child
0:10:45 that we were to bring into our family.
0:10:49 And I had so much healing that I needed to do in order to be ready for that.
0:10:55 So we were so intentional about what the next steps of growing our family look like.
0:11:00 And we decided the end of 2019 that it was time to grow our family.
0:11:03 So that is when we moved from Nashville back to Phoenix.
0:11:07 We were like, OK, we’re ready to go back home.
0:11:08 We want to be by my family.
0:11:14 We want solid roots there so that when we have more kids, we’re close to family
0:11:18 and they get that experience of growing up around cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles.
0:11:24 So we moved home and right when we moved home, we found out that we were pregnant.
0:11:31 And obviously we were so excited and it just felt like for the first time in several years
0:11:39 that there was this new breath of life being breathed into our lives again
0:11:43 and that there was forward movement and the grief was still there.
0:11:50 But also now there was joy and hope and an opportunity to keep living our lives.
0:11:53 And I know no one likes to talk about this time.
0:11:59 But I feel like 2020 was a great equalizer for all of us because we can say 2020.
0:12:03 And everyone’s like, yeah, that year freaking sucked for me, right?
0:12:05 And it sucked for all of us for various reasons.
0:12:11 And for us, we moved into our home in March of 2020 the same week
0:12:14 that the pandemic had shut everything down.
0:12:19 And so that also meant that doctors appointments when you were pregnant,
0:12:20 everything kind of changed.
0:12:26 And so it kind of felt scary for a moment to leave the house being pregnant.
0:12:34 I got really sick one day and we couldn’t figure out what was wrong because I had felt fine.
0:12:37 But then by the end of the night, I was screaming in pain.
0:12:38 I couldn’t get out of bed.
0:12:40 I spiked a fever.
0:12:41 I had never felt anything like that.
0:12:44 So my husband called the ambulance.
0:12:49 They took me to the hospital and immediately they checked the baby.
0:12:50 Baby was OK.
0:12:52 And I’m like, OK, I can get through anything if my baby is OK.
0:12:56 And we found out that I had gone septic.
0:12:58 I didn’t really know what that meant.
0:13:01 But I now know the sepsis is a blood infection.
0:13:05 So whatever infection you have enters your bloodstream.
0:13:09 And it started causing kidney failure for me.
0:13:14 So that had to be treated immediately because it’s very life threatening.
0:13:19 And in that moment, they told us you’re going to be admitted to the hospital
0:13:21 for an indefinite amount of time.
0:13:25 But today is also the first day that we are shutting down outside visitors.
0:13:27 So your husband cannot come with you.
0:13:30 You’re going to have to come by yourself.
0:13:35 And I just remember feeling that was the loneliest I think I have ever felt.
0:13:39 And I remember being wheeled back, just sobbing, saying goodbye to my husband,
0:13:41 neither of us knowing what was going to happen.
0:13:47 Later the next day, there was a moment where they called a rapid response,
0:13:50 which means a whole team of doctors was surrounding me
0:13:51 because I was really struggling breathing.
0:13:56 And everything felt like all the pain had just spiked.
0:14:01 And I remember looking at a tech who was giving a scan on my heart, an EKG.
0:14:04 And I remember asking him, am I going to die right now?
0:14:07 Because I felt like I was going to.
0:14:11 And I knew that whatever was happening in my body,
0:14:15 there was no way it was going to keep me and my baby alive.
0:14:20 I just felt it in my gut that something was drastically changing right then.
0:14:23 So after I was stable a couple of hours later,
0:14:26 I had them give me another ultrasound.
0:14:30 And that’s when they found out that we had lost our baby boy.
0:14:35 And I ended up delivering him alone the next morning.
0:14:40 And it sent me again into this part of life where you’re like,
0:14:45 well, I thought that we had gone through the hard thing, right?
0:14:49 Like I thought that this was our first step back of trusting life again.
0:14:54 And now what am I supposed to do?
0:15:01 And so that entered the next journey of really finding clarity again
0:15:04 in my life for what does this look like now to move forward?
0:15:06 Well, thank you for sharing that with us.
0:15:09 I know that’s probably very difficult to relive.
0:15:15 For other people who are in the moment feeling really stuck,
0:15:18 that they’ve gone through a lot of pain,
0:15:21 they had a lot of traumatic experience, maybe a loss.
0:15:26 What advice do you have for them in terms of the steps to take next?
0:15:32 I think this is such a good question because when we are in those moments,
0:15:36 it really feels like we are the only one in those moments.
0:15:38 Grief and trauma can feel so isolating.
0:15:42 And so the very first thing that I would say is that I’m so sorry.
0:15:50 And I want you to be able to know that what you’ve been through, it can’t be fixed.
0:15:52 It’s not supposed to be fixed.
0:15:54 There’s not a band-aid that can be put on it.
0:15:57 I think that there’s platitudes that people like to say.
0:16:01 Everything happens for a reason or time heals all wounds.
0:16:04 And I’m going to be the first one to say that none of those things are true.
0:16:08 And so it’s okay to feel exactly how you feel.
0:16:11 The one thing that we know about grief and trauma
0:16:18 is that most people spend their entire lives avoiding the reality of the pain.
0:16:22 And the one thing that if all of us did in this area of our life
0:16:26 where we feel grief, that would change the trajectory
0:16:29 of what we’re able to do next is acknowledgement.
0:16:33 We have to acknowledge what we’ve been through
0:16:35 and also what it feels like inside of us.
0:16:37 And it might sound so simple to say that,
0:16:41 but having it be simple doesn’t mean it’s easy,
0:16:44 which is why the majority of people never get to this place
0:16:46 where they’re able to acknowledge it.
0:16:52 So if we can start there, then that allows us to have more freedom
0:16:55 in acknowledging what has happened and has caused us
0:17:00 so that we can stop avoiding it and then create a plan
0:17:07 that feels safe for us to heal and to be able to experience the world again
0:17:12 in a way that feels safe so that we can create forward steps.
0:17:19 And I know that for you, you’ve shared your story on podcasts like this,
0:17:21 on your own podcast, you wrote a memoir.
0:17:26 How did actually sharing, like you were just eluding to it now,
0:17:28 how did actually sharing your story help you heal?
0:17:33 I think that for so many of us, we carry these stories.
0:17:36 Sometimes there’s shame attached to it.
0:17:38 Sometimes there’s so much pain attached to it.
0:17:44 But what we know is that when our pain can leave our bodies,
0:17:47 whether it’s writing our story down and no one else even reads it,
0:17:51 we know that that helps facilitate healing.
0:17:58 So many of us suffer in darkness and our stories just need to be brought to light,
0:18:01 to be acknowledged, to be received, to be validated.
0:18:09 And as I’ve been able to share my story, what has been so beautiful,
0:18:13 and I think is the greatest privilege of the work that I do,
0:18:18 is that it helps give other people permission to share and acknowledge their stories.
0:18:23 So I get so many stories sent to me by other women who have gone through really hard things,
0:18:29 who are like, “I’ve seen your story and it’s given me courage now
0:18:32 to be able to share mine and walk through what that means for me.”
0:18:37 And what we know is that healing happens fastest in community.
0:18:41 And so when we can create communities that understand each other
0:18:48 and have shared respect and validation for the pain that other people go through,
0:18:50 we’re able to heal faster.
0:18:54 Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.
0:19:02 Young Improfiters, I know so many of you are in your grind season.
0:19:05 You’re working your nine to five, and then you’re five to midnight
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0:20:32 Hey, Young and Profiters.
0:20:35 These days, I find myself with no time.
0:20:39 I’m juggling work, dating, everything else that life throws in my way,
0:20:43 and honestly, healthy eating has fallen to the wayside.
0:20:47 There’s just never enough time to plan, shop, cook, clean up after cooking.
0:20:50 And what happens is that I end up ordering all these groceries,
0:20:52 being optimistic because I want to eat healthy,
0:20:55 but all the food goes bad before I get a chance to cook it.
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0:22:18 Yeah, BAM. It’s 2025, and a new year means new opportunities.
0:22:19 For a lot of you out there,
0:22:22 I know you’ve been thinking about one thing over the holidays,
0:22:25 and that’s starting your own business or side hustle.
0:22:27 But of course, you’ve got so many questions.
0:22:28 How do I get started?
0:22:30 How do I come up with a brand?
0:22:33 How am I actually going to sell things to people?
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0:24:03 You have created a whole business
0:24:07 around helping people with their grief.
0:24:08 And as entrepreneurs,
0:24:10 one of the best ways that we can start businesses
0:24:14 is by actually solving the pains that we once had
0:24:16 and providing those solutions to people
0:24:18 who are in the place that we once were.
0:24:22 So what steps did you take to become more qualified
0:24:25 and become more prepared to take on the role
0:24:27 to help other people with their trauma and grief?
0:24:31 I love this question because part of my journey
0:24:34 has started even before I stepped
0:24:36 into helping people more in their grief.
0:24:40 I’ve had a personal brand online for, oh my gosh,
0:24:43 it’s probably been 14 years now
0:24:46 before Instagram even existed.
0:24:48 And I had a blogspot.com.
0:24:50 I’ve always wanted to be a writer.
0:24:53 I’ve always wanted to help move people through their emotions.
0:24:57 So I was doing that even before these life experiences.
0:25:01 But after these life experiences,
0:25:05 I wrote my first book and I was in the middle of my edits
0:25:07 for my most recent book.
0:25:10 I am here when we lost our son, Jace.
0:25:15 And after that, I really felt like my next steps
0:25:17 in finding clarity for my life.
0:25:19 And I didn’t know exactly what it was going to look like,
0:25:21 but I knew that I needed to go back to school
0:25:24 to get my master’s degree specifically
0:25:25 in mental health and wellness
0:25:28 with an emphasis in grief and bereavement.
0:25:31 And that’s probably the least sexy thing
0:25:34 that you could tell someone that you are an expert in.
0:25:36 It’s like, what do you study, Ashley?
0:25:37 What do you teach on?
0:25:39 Well, I teach on grief and bereavement.
0:25:45 Everyone’s like, oh, there’s nothing sexy
0:25:46 about talking about that.
0:25:51 But it is the one thing that every single person
0:25:53 in this world is going to experience
0:25:55 at some point in their life.
0:25:57 And my life experiences,
0:26:00 I felt very much qualified me to help others.
0:26:06 And I then wanted the paper, the education behind it
0:26:09 so that I could take everything I had already learned
0:26:11 and really just propel myself forward.
0:26:15 So at the age of what was I, 34,
0:26:18 I went back to school to get my master’s degree.
0:26:23 And what’s funny about it is that about four weeks later
0:26:25 after starting this intensive program,
0:26:26 we got pregnant again.
0:26:33 So I ended up graduating and finishing with a four-month-old.
0:26:35 I was pumping out my graduation.
0:26:39 It was the first time I had left my baby for any amount of time.
0:26:42 And it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
0:26:45 But I knew that I needed that for myself
0:26:47 and then to be able to help other people.
0:26:49 I love that for you.
0:26:51 I love the fact that you were able to do that
0:26:54 even with a young child.
0:26:57 And you’ve been able to grow your career so successfully.
0:26:59 Your podcast is very popular now.
0:27:02 You’ve got two books, so it’s awesome.
0:27:04 And you actually started as an entrepreneur
0:27:09 even before you started teaching other people about grief
0:27:10 and being an author.
0:27:13 You had a successful jewelry business,
0:27:15 but then you pivoted and you decided
0:27:17 you wanted to become an expert on grief.
0:27:20 So how did you decide to make that change?
0:27:22 What was the thought process behind that?
0:27:25 I’ve got a lot of entrepreneurs tuning in.
0:27:27 You are probably product-based entrepreneurs.
0:27:29 And what kind of differences did you see
0:27:31 between having a product-based business
0:27:34 to now having more of a personal brand business
0:27:35 and an audience-based business?
0:27:40 I had an audience during the time of my jewelry company.
0:27:45 And I still was writing to them through blog posts,
0:27:46 through Instagram.
0:27:48 We would do meetups in person.
0:27:50 I was speaking a lot.
0:27:54 And something that all product entrepreneurs know
0:27:56 is that it is a freaking grind.
0:28:00 You are grinding so hard to meet your bottom line.
0:28:02 We were doing shows all the time,
0:28:04 wholesale trade shows, holiday trade shows.
0:28:07 And when we moved to Nashville,
0:28:10 I reached this point where I was like,
0:28:13 this isn’t how I want to be spending the rest of my life.
0:28:15 I want to be writing.
0:28:17 And it’s really hard to be founder-CEO
0:28:21 of a product-based company that was on the trajectory
0:28:22 that we were on.
0:28:26 And then also be able to do the other work
0:28:28 that I really wanted to do.
0:28:31 And so I had to make some really difficult decisions.
0:28:33 But at the end of the day,
0:28:35 what I’ve always wanted is to help people.
0:28:38 So whether that was through jewelry
0:28:43 or now through writing and podcasting and my personal brand,
0:28:46 I knew that I had to make a pivot.
0:28:49 So I started writing more.
0:28:51 And my first step was getting a book agent,
0:28:53 which– and I’m such a believer.
0:28:56 And when you are in alignment with that next step,
0:29:00 sometimes things happen to help facilitate that step.
0:29:02 So once I made that decision,
0:29:05 I literally opened my inbox the next day.
0:29:09 And I had an email from one of the top literary agents
0:29:12 in the country asking me if I’d ever thought
0:29:14 about writing a book before.
0:29:20 And I was like, OK, if this isn’t my sign for the next step,
0:29:22 I don’t know what it’s going to be.
0:29:28 But there also was this grief of closing the chapter
0:29:30 on my jewelry business.
0:29:34 We were sold in large department stores like Hallmark.
0:29:39 And we had a large headquarters in downtown Phoenix.
0:29:42 And so that also meant I felt like I had to let other people
0:29:46 down because my course was changing.
0:29:51 But looking back, I can’t imagine not making that decision.
0:29:53 That was going to be my next question,
0:29:56 because there’s a lot of entrepreneurs out there tuning
0:29:59 in that might not have a business that either fits
0:30:02 their life goals, where they’re feeling burnt out.
0:30:04 They don’t even like working on their business anymore.
0:30:06 Or their business is just not successful.
0:30:08 It’s just not taking off.
0:30:09 99% of startups fail.
0:30:13 But a lot of entrepreneurs, we’ve got an ego where we feel
0:30:15 like, well, we already put it out to the world.
0:30:16 Everybody knows me for this.
0:30:19 What are people going to think if I shut it down?
0:30:23 I had a blog in my 20s that became really popular.
0:30:25 And I shut it down because I wanted to change paths.
0:30:27 I wanted to go into marketing and all this other stuff.
0:30:30 I wanted to go into corporate for a period of time.
0:30:31 And I’m an entrepreneur again.
0:30:32 I have a media company.
0:30:34 But I shut down my company.
0:30:38 And everybody who worked for me, at the time I had volunteers,
0:30:42 it was kind of a blog that I basically trained bloggers.
0:30:45 And we were all just young, just doing it for fun.
0:30:47 And so they were all mad at me.
0:30:48 And I lost all my friends.
0:30:50 And I felt a little ashamed.
0:30:53 But I could imagine being older and having a real company
0:30:57 with customers and products, that would be really hard.
0:31:02 So I guess, how did you get over the shame of starting a company
0:31:03 and shutting it down?
0:31:07 You know what’s interesting is that when you hit rock bottom
0:31:11 in your life, which for me was losing the kids,
0:31:15 there’s nowhere else to go but up.
0:31:18 And so I think that I was in a place in my life
0:31:23 where I was at such rock bottom that I just freaking didn’t care anymore.
0:31:28 And I had to do things to get the life back inside of me.
0:31:29 I had to.
0:31:33 I describe it as feeling like I was dead, but I was alive.
0:31:36 I was just a zombie through my life.
0:31:41 And so at that point, honestly, I don’t know if it’s a good thing,
0:31:43 but for that moment it was because I don’t know
0:31:46 what else would have forced me to do this.
0:31:49 But it was the only way for me.
0:31:50 And I had nothing to lose.
0:31:53 And I think a lot of times we get afraid of hitting rock bottom
0:31:57 or what if it doesn’t work out or what will I do?
0:32:01 And honestly, sometimes it’s the best thing
0:32:07 because you finally make decisions off of what you actually want
0:32:11 because you can’t lose anything more than you already have.
0:32:15 So that’s what that looked like for me.
0:32:19 And like I said, there was grief, there was sadness to it.
0:32:24 And I also started to feel excited about something again
0:32:26 for the first time in a long time.
0:32:29 And so I just kept following that feeling.
0:32:32 And I feel like for other people tuning in,
0:32:36 what I want them to understand is that nobody really cares that much.
0:32:40 We put all this pressure about what is everybody else going to think?
0:32:41 What are my friends going to think?
0:32:42 What is my family going to think?
0:32:45 Even people who are lawyers and doctors
0:32:47 and who don’t want to be lawyers and doctors anymore
0:32:49 who are so afraid of making a change.
0:32:51 It’s like, yes, it’s going to be hard in the moment.
0:32:54 But as soon as you figure out the next thing
0:32:57 and you’ve got the next thing to talk about and feel proud of,
0:32:59 no one’s even going to remember or care
0:33:02 if anything people are going to be inspired from you.
0:33:04 And it’s just getting over that initial hump.
0:33:06 Absolutely.
0:33:10 And I think we get scared of this idea of starting over.
0:33:11 I’ve put in so much time.
0:33:13 I’ve put in so much money, so much resources.
0:33:14 I don’t want to start over.
0:33:19 But that destroys our next step when we look at things like that.
0:33:20 You’re not starting over.
0:33:21 You can’t.
0:33:25 You have so much knowledge now that has gotten you to this place.
0:33:28 And so you get to now apply all of that into the next thing.
0:33:32 And I think the place where we fail the most as entrepreneurs
0:33:35 is we stay in the wrong place for too long
0:33:37 because our ego gets in the way of it.
0:33:41 And we miss out on really what could take off for us
0:33:46 and feel in just such alignment that would not only help us,
0:33:49 but other people to be able to serve others more
0:33:53 because we are on a path that actually is working.
0:33:58 And so that’s something now I actually help women
0:34:01 in their own clarity maps, in high-level entrepreneurs.
0:34:03 Because this is one of the things I love so much
0:34:06 is how do we help you pivot when you are in this season
0:34:08 of having no idea what to do next?
0:34:12 How do you find that clarity and the confidence
0:34:17 and the strategy to support it so that you can move forward?
0:34:19 This is a great segue to talk about your latest book.
0:34:22 So your first book was a memoir, it’s called Born to Shine.
0:34:24 And your next book is called I Am Here,
0:34:26 and that’s more designed to help others navigate
0:34:29 their own experiences of grief and trauma.
0:34:31 Clarity mapping is a big part of that.
0:34:33 Hopefully going to dive deep into that later on in the conversation.
0:34:37 But first, you say the biggest life lesson
0:34:41 that has come to your life has been the phrase of three simple words,
0:34:44 I Am Here, which is the title of your book.
0:34:46 Why are those words so meaningful to you?
0:34:50 They’re meaningful to me because for so long I didn’t want to be here.
0:34:56 And I did everything to try to avoid the feeling of being here,
0:34:59 whether that was numbing out with social media or food
0:35:02 or traveling or spending money or working too much
0:35:05 or being in bad relationships.
0:35:09 Whatever that thing was to distract me from the other pain
0:35:12 is what I latched onto.
0:35:15 And once I got to this point,
0:35:19 we were actually in Europe on one of our runaway escapades
0:35:21 of trying to escape it.
0:35:23 And I remember being in Milan
0:35:27 and next to me sat a mom and a daughter
0:35:28 and she had just lost her tooth.
0:35:33 And she was about the age of the daughter who we had lost
0:35:34 in the contested adoption.
0:35:38 And I remember watching the joy between the mother
0:35:40 and the daughter over this lost tooth.
0:35:43 And I just started sobbing.
0:35:46 Any composure I had left, it was gone.
0:35:50 I wanted those own moments with this human that I loved so much
0:35:52 that I knew I was never going to have again.
0:35:54 And so I remember I got up from my spot
0:35:59 and I started running towards this little apartment
0:36:00 that we were staying at.
0:36:04 And it was as if someone put a brick wall in front of me
0:36:10 and was like, “Stop. You can’t keep running like this.
0:36:12 You can’t. You have to face these feelings.”
0:36:16 And I probably look like a crazy American tourist,
0:36:17 which I totally was.
0:36:20 But in the middle of this square there,
0:36:24 I threw up my arms and I yelled, “I am here.
0:36:26 I am here.”
0:36:27 And I just started crying.
0:36:30 And I just, that became this mantra for me
0:36:34 that I still hold onto of, “I don’t want to run away anymore.
0:36:36 I want to be here. I am here.”
0:36:39 And so now what does that look like?
0:36:42 And how can I support myself to be able to get through these things
0:36:47 so that I don’t keep running away from this life that I’ve been given?
0:36:50 That’s a really powerful story.
0:36:53 I can just imagine you in the street just having that moment.
0:36:57 And then now, years later, you’ve written a book with that title
0:36:58 to try to help other people.
0:37:03 Do you feel like entrepreneurs deal with grief
0:37:06 and stress differently than other people?
0:37:10 Or do they have certain personality types
0:37:13 that enable them to get over things more quickly, potentially?
0:37:17 Something that is very common among entrepreneurs
0:37:22 is that they’re very high-achieving people they want to achieve.
0:37:26 And one of the ways that we can cope with grief
0:37:28 is called a maladaptive coping mechanism.
0:37:31 So there’s two types of mechanisms that we can use to cope.
0:37:34 Adaptive, which adaptive is something that is positive,
0:37:37 that actually helps your grief.
0:37:38 And the other is maladaptive,
0:37:40 meaning it’s not good for you,
0:37:42 but we do it anyway because we don’t know what else to do.
0:37:45 One of the maladaptive coping mechanisms
0:37:48 that a lot of us have and a lot of entrepreneurs have
0:37:51 is work and working too much.
0:37:55 And so I see a lot of entrepreneurs who throw themselves
0:37:59 even deeper into work to avoid their feelings.
0:38:01 And they can become really successful from doing that.
0:38:04 And it’s something that the world praises
0:38:07 and we look at as a huge success.
0:38:10 While meanwhile, there can be these layers of emotions
0:38:17 that are hurting them, that’s driving this really unsustainable work.
0:38:24 But that can make it really, really hard to get to this healing place.
0:38:27 Something else that’s really interesting that we know
0:38:29 is the difference between men and women,
0:38:31 the way that we move through grief.
0:38:34 So a lot of men, and obviously when I say this,
0:38:37 I’m not saying every man and every woman,
0:38:39 this is just an average across the board.
0:38:42 There’s going to be people who don’t fit into these buckets, of course.
0:38:48 But what we know about men is that men often throw themselves into work.
0:38:52 They talk less about how they are feeling
0:38:57 and they want to spend more time in the action of staying busy.
0:39:01 Whereas women, we want to talk about it.
0:39:04 We want you to sit and listen and we want to talk about it
0:39:07 because that’s our way of processing,
0:39:09 of retelling the story,
0:39:12 trying to help ourselves understand what has happened.
0:39:15 And so then if you are in a relationship
0:39:18 where both of you are grieving so differently from the other,
0:39:24 we can see a lot of marital or partnership conflict because of that.
0:39:29 So I don’t know if entrepreneurs,
0:39:33 if there’s a specific grief style for entrepreneurs,
0:39:34 but men and women for sure.
0:39:37 But then for the group of entrepreneurs
0:39:42 who we know just love the work and the achievement,
0:39:48 I would base my best guess on what I know about grief on,
0:39:52 they are probably a lot of them throwing themselves even deeper into work,
0:39:57 meaning that they are not facing what is actually going on in their life.
0:39:59 It’s a dangerous combination.
0:40:03 Yeah, and I can relate to that even for myself.
0:40:07 When I started my business, I started it in 2020.
0:40:11 And I started it while my dad was in the hospital battling COVID
0:40:13 and I wasn’t allowed to visit him.
0:40:15 And he passed away after a month in the hospital.
0:40:17 It was the most devastating thing.
0:40:20 I literally watched him die on Zoom
0:40:24 and wasn’t able to even see him until he passed away.
0:40:26 And it was very traumatic.
0:40:30 He was buried with his clothes on and his shoes on and his cell phone.
0:40:31 It was like just the most traumatic thing.
0:40:36 And for years, I just worked and worked and worked.
0:40:42 So I’m better now because I actually hired my business partner, Jason.
0:40:46 And now I’m able to just have a life and everything like that.
0:40:49 But for years, I really did just throw myself into work.
0:40:52 I’m so sorry to hear that.
0:40:54 I didn’t know about your father.
0:40:58 And you opening up about that is so beautiful and so hard.
0:41:04 And I think that where we are at now, going into 2025,
0:41:09 a lot of people aren’t realizing what happens around the fifth year of grief.
0:41:14 So if we go back to 2020, we all had these moments where we’re in a pandemic,
0:41:18 but then we’re all also experiencing these personal losses, the loss of your father,
0:41:24 the loss of my baby, the loss of what other people have gone through, right?
0:41:28 So then the past couple of years, we’re like, I don’t know how to cope
0:41:31 and no one is teaching me how to cope.
0:41:34 So I’m going to do what I think is going to help me best.
0:41:38 And because of my personality, because of what I want to build,
0:41:40 I’m going to throw myself into work.
0:41:43 And then you’re like, oh my gosh, this company I just started is doing well.
0:41:44 It’s growing.
0:41:45 It’s great.
0:41:49 And you can kind of run on that adrenaline high for a moment
0:41:56 until you start reaching these achievements that once the novelty of it starts wearing off,
0:42:02 you can find yourself in this place of, I accomplished what I wanted to.
0:42:06 I thought that this was going to feel differently than it does.
0:42:11 And that is a very common feeling that a lot of entrepreneurs find themselves in
0:42:14 is I won the award.
0:42:16 I hit the financial goal.
0:42:17 I have the growth of the company.
0:42:22 I thought that I was going to feel differently than this.
0:42:24 What is wrong?
0:42:31 And what is wrong is, is that we have this grief that can’t be pacified
0:42:36 by these external validations in our lives that we think are going to pacify them.
0:42:43 And so now as we head into 2025, which is five years after this major traumatic event
0:42:49 for most people in the world, year five is the year where you take a pause
0:42:55 and you start really looking around and being like, where do I fit into life right now?
0:42:58 And how do I want it to go moving forward?
0:43:02 It’s one of the first years that you really begin to take a breath
0:43:06 because there’s a little more time and space between now and then.
0:43:11 But as a result of that, a lot of emotions can start coming up
0:43:16 as you realize that your life has continued to move on.
0:43:21 But emotionally, parts of you still feel like they are stuck in the past.
0:43:24 And so so many people right now are burnt out.
0:43:26 They’re burnt out on work.
0:43:27 They don’t know what to do next.
0:43:32 And it’s because we never gave ourselves the opportunity to slow down
0:43:36 and sit with our grief for as long as we needed to.
0:43:38 It’s so true.
0:43:42 And it’s like so bittersweet because I’m so happy that I did all this.
0:43:45 My company is going to hit eight figures next year.
0:43:47 You know, like I built this crazy company.
0:43:49 Yeah, it’s amazing.
0:43:50 Thank you.
0:43:54 Like I built this awesome company and I have an awesome team and I love my life.
0:43:57 But to your point, there was a period of time where I was like,
0:44:01 I can’t just keep running on fumes and I need help.
0:44:02 I need a business partner.
0:44:05 I need to kind of delegate and have some balance
0:44:07 because you just can’t do that forever.
0:44:11 And I do think sacrifice is important, but you can’t do it forever.
0:44:13 Yeah, it’s not sustainable.
0:44:16 So then how do we create a sustainable way
0:44:20 where we can build what we want and love it
0:44:25 while also acknowledging what it is that we’ve been through
0:44:27 and what does that dance look like for my life
0:44:28 and what is it that I’m needing?
0:44:33 And part of that part of your gift of grief that probably came
0:44:37 was your ability to grow this company to what it is now.
0:44:43 But now part of what might come next is, okay, I’ve built this.
0:44:48 And so does that mean that there’s a little bit more of a buffer for me
0:44:51 to have some space and some resources
0:44:55 to really make sure that I’m filled up inside
0:45:00 so that my insides match all of my external accomplishments?
0:45:02 And that’s something that was really hard for me
0:45:04 over the past couple of years.
0:45:06 I remember I would tell my therapist,
0:45:08 I’m a huge advocate for therapy.
0:45:09 I’m like, everyone should have a therapist.
0:45:12 So I love talking about it to just help people
0:45:14 know it is so normal to go to therapy.
0:45:19 But something that I would often tell my therapist is my insides
0:45:21 don’t match my outsides.
0:45:22 Like what is happening around me?
0:45:25 What I have in my life is so beautiful.
0:45:31 But inside I feel like there’s this just chaotic exhaustion
0:45:36 that never goes away and it feels so out of alignment
0:45:39 with everything that I see externally in my life.
0:45:42 And I need those to start matching up with each other.
0:45:45 And so my hope is that going into 2025,
0:45:49 a lot of entrepreneurs are going to kind of hit this pause button
0:45:53 where we can all get a little bit more in alignment
0:45:55 so that our insides match our outsides.
0:45:58 But when that happens, moving forward,
0:46:02 we are able to serve and grow even exponentially
0:46:05 from what we’ve gotten to to this point
0:46:07 because we’re going to have the sustainability,
0:46:09 the internal resources to be able to do so.
0:46:13 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
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0:50:55 So one of the things that you talk about in your book
0:50:57 is that we need to reframe our thoughts.
0:51:00 First, I want to get clarity on what thoughts actually are.
0:51:03 Do you mean our current beliefs and current thoughts
0:51:05 or are you talking about memories
0:51:07 or those two different things?
0:51:09 Talking about our current thoughts.
0:51:10 So what we know about our thoughts
0:51:13 is we have somewhere around 90,000 thoughts a day.
0:51:16 And out of those thoughts,
0:51:21 somewhere around 80, 85% are negative.
0:51:25 And the majority of those negative thoughts are reoccurring.
0:51:29 So then these negative reoccurring thoughts
0:51:31 that we have every single day
0:51:34 are creating this belief system, this internal world
0:51:36 where if we say, “I’m not good enough,”
0:51:41 or “I’m never going to get out of this situation,”
0:51:44 or “Man, I make stupid decisions,”
0:51:46 or “I don’t like how I look in the mirror.”
0:51:48 Whatever those stories are,
0:51:51 become truly what we believe about ourselves
0:51:53 and the world around us.
0:51:57 Now, of course, it is impossible
0:51:58 to live in an internal world
0:52:00 where we don’t have negative thoughts.
0:52:01 We’re human.
0:52:03 That’s part of how our brain works
0:52:04 is we assess danger
0:52:07 and we try to figure out where we fit into things
0:52:08 and how we feel about things
0:52:10 to try to keep ourselves safe.
0:52:14 But what we can do is start acknowledging those thoughts
0:52:16 and then start reframing them
0:52:19 so that we can create different habits
0:52:20 and thought patterns
0:52:24 that allow us to have a different internal world.
0:52:27 So for me, that’s one of the reasons
0:52:29 I started using “I am here”
0:52:31 because I was just conditioned to be like,
0:52:33 “I want to leave. How do I get out of here?
0:52:35 I want to escape. I want to escape.”
0:52:38 So then my belief had to come,
0:52:40 “I’m here. I’m here right now.
0:52:42 I’m safe to be here.”
0:52:46 That was then. This is now.
0:52:50 And really becoming your biggest advocate
0:52:53 for helping yourself reframe your thoughts.
0:52:57 So walk us through how we can keep tabs
0:52:58 on what are the negative thoughts
0:53:00 that we actually have
0:53:03 and then how do we uncover their positive roots.
0:53:05 I love this.
0:53:07 One thing that I always suggest
0:53:09 to my clients that I work with
0:53:12 is just for even if it’s an hour out of your day,
0:53:13 a whole day would be amazing.
0:53:15 But even if you only had an hour,
0:53:17 take out the notes up on your phone
0:53:19 or have just a little journal with you
0:53:21 and any time you notice
0:53:24 that you have a negative thought come into your head,
0:53:25 I just want you to write it down.
0:53:28 And I don’t want you to have any judgment on it.
0:53:30 I don’t want you to judge your thoughts, right?
0:53:32 Because then we can get into the cycle of,
0:53:34 “Oh my gosh. I’m so dumb for thinking that.”
0:53:35 Or, “What’s wrong with me?”
0:53:39 Or, “No, we’re just going to be observers
0:53:41 of the thoughts that are going through our head.”
0:53:43 And once we have all of those down,
0:53:46 what I like to then do
0:53:49 is try to get to the root of where those thoughts came from.
0:53:52 A lot of times thoughts that we have right now
0:53:56 came from things that we heard when we were little,
0:53:59 things we began to believe about ourselves
0:54:01 from when we were really small.
0:54:04 Sometimes the origin of the thought
0:54:05 doesn’t even come from us.
0:54:08 So if you’re able to sit with it
0:54:11 and really be able to go back to the first time
0:54:13 that you can remember hearing it
0:54:15 or feeling it or thinking it,
0:54:19 a lot of times you can bridge that gap
0:54:23 and realize that that did not even come from you.
0:54:25 So once we do that,
0:54:28 being able to sit with,
0:54:30 “Okay, this is what I believe,
0:54:34 but this is what I would like to believe instead.
0:54:36 This is my current thought,
0:54:40 but this is what I would like to believe instead.”
0:54:42 And I keep it as simple as that
0:54:46 and as gentle as that as we are working through these
0:54:48 and being able to write down
0:54:51 what we would like to believe instead.
0:54:53 Then being able to be mindful,
0:54:56 whether it’s then the next hour after that,
0:54:58 after you have the thought come in,
0:55:00 whether it’s, “I’m not good enough.”
0:55:02 Being able to call it out,
0:55:05 “Okay, I understand that right now,
0:55:07 I’m believing I’m not good enough.”
0:55:08 And I acknowledge that.
0:55:11 But what I would really like to believe instead
0:55:14 is X, Y, and Z.
0:55:17 And that helps us create a pattern
0:55:20 where we can help ourselves get out of this routine
0:55:22 of having these thoughts
0:55:24 that we don’t even realize are happening.
0:55:27 And we can stop them and call them out.
0:55:28 And then we just gently tell ourselves
0:55:30 what we would like to believe instead
0:55:33 so that that becomes something that we begin
0:55:34 to start thinking about.
0:55:35 Does it take time?
0:55:36 Of course it does.
0:55:40 But after those two hours,
0:55:42 I promise you you are going to experience
0:55:43 a shift in feelings
0:55:47 that you might not have felt for a really long time
0:55:50 and uncover thoughts
0:55:53 that you might not even know that you have.
0:55:55 Like you can reach the end of the day.
0:55:56 Sometimes a lot of my clients
0:55:59 be like, “I don’t know why I feel this bad.
0:56:00 I just do.
0:56:01 I don’t know where it comes from.
0:56:05 I don’t know why I feel so lost
0:56:07 in the roles in my life.”
0:56:08 And we do this exercise.
0:56:11 And after an hour of them writing down
0:56:13 everything they’ve been thinking,
0:56:15 they’re like, “I didn’t realize
0:56:17 that I’m so hard on myself.
0:56:19 I didn’t realize that these are the things
0:56:21 I’m consistently telling myself.”
0:56:23 So that’s a really good place to start.
0:56:29 And are there common thoughts that people have
0:56:31 and what would be the positive reframing
0:56:33 just so people have examples?
0:56:36 One that is really common
0:56:40 that I would argue the majority of people struggle with
0:56:44 is I’m not enough or I’m not good enough.
0:56:47 So for that one,
0:56:50 it’s really important for us to do some work
0:56:51 on where did this come from?
0:56:54 When did I start feeling this way?
0:56:56 Why did I start feeling this way?
0:56:58 Did it come from me?
0:57:01 Is this something I picked up on from someone else?
0:57:03 And then being able to answer the question,
0:57:06 well, what would it even mean to be good enough?
0:57:10 And what areas of my life do I feel like
0:57:13 I’m not good enough that I can begin to focus on?
0:57:17 So one of the ways that I like to reframe
0:57:19 I’m not good enough is I am enough
0:57:24 for all of the needs that my life has of me in this moment.
0:57:27 I am enough to take care of all of the needs
0:57:30 that my life has for me in this moment.
0:57:33 And again, being able to find evidence,
0:57:36 something about our brains that I think is really cool
0:57:38 is that our brains look for evidence
0:57:40 that what we are doing is working.
0:57:42 That’s why journaling can be so powerful
0:57:45 because we need to see something is written down.
0:57:47 So when we write down our thoughts
0:57:49 and then what we would like to believe instead
0:57:53 but then kind of keep a log to see our progress of,
0:57:57 oh my gosh, today I only thought about this 10 times
0:58:01 instead of 20 or whatever that is, it signals to our brain,
0:58:02 hey, this thing is working.
0:58:05 This is a good path for us to continue to go down,
0:58:09 which is another reason why I recommend writing things down.
0:58:11 Another one that’s really common is anger.
0:58:14 And anger can show up in a lot of ways in our lives,
0:58:15 especially when you’re grieving
0:58:19 because anger is easier to feel than sadness.
0:58:25 A lot of times anger is a mask for sadness
0:58:27 because we’re too afraid to feel sad
0:58:30 or we haven’t been taught or culturally,
0:58:34 as some people aren’t allowed to show their emotions
0:58:36 or men versus women with gender
0:58:39 and what’s expected of us in the society.
0:58:44 Anger can be something that masks a lot of other feelings.
0:58:47 So something that I always think about with anger
0:58:52 is what do I love so much that I’m trying to protect
0:58:56 that is making me so angry right now
0:58:59 because I feel like I’ve lost control of it?
0:59:04 So for that one, I think that a lot of times
0:59:07 the root for anger is actually love.
0:59:12 I’m angry that I lost my kids because I love them so much.
0:59:16 I’m angry that this person hurt you
0:59:20 because I have deep respect for you as a human being.
0:59:23 Whatever that is, a lot of times it goes back to love.
0:59:26 So if I can start reframing my anger,
0:59:28 allow myself to feel it,
0:59:31 but then understand it’s coming from a place of love.
0:59:34 How then can I fuel that love?
0:59:36 Anger is needing action.
0:59:39 It’s signaling to us that there are alarm bells going off.
0:59:41 We want to be in control of something
0:59:42 that we don’t have control of.
0:59:46 So then how can we take control to bring action to it?
0:59:50 Who do you love? What do you love that’s causing the anger?
0:59:52 And then how can you show up for them?
0:59:54 Or how can you be a part of that cause?
0:59:57 Or how can you use your voice to help them?
1:00:01 So helping do that can help shift our anger
1:00:04 to actually have action behind it.
1:00:05 That’s so good.
1:00:07 So basically whenever you’re angry,
1:00:09 there’s actually something that you love
1:00:12 and you’re really passionate about behind that.
1:00:15 If you can figure that out and lean into the love part
1:00:18 instead of the anger part, that’s really great.
1:00:20 Yeah. And sometimes though,
1:00:22 healing requires you to get pissed, right?
1:00:25 There are people who probably have wronged you
1:00:28 and you have every reason to be upset at it.
1:00:31 You have every reason to just be so pissed off.
1:00:34 And so I say, let yourself be pissed off.
1:00:38 But at some point that has to move through you,
1:00:43 otherwise the one who becomes the most affected by it is you.
1:00:46 And sometimes it’s a love for yourself, right?
1:00:49 So it might be just pouring into yourself
1:00:50 because you love yourself.
1:00:51 How about trauma?
1:00:55 How do you reframe thoughts and memories related to trauma?
1:01:00 I want to first explain the difference between grief and trauma
1:01:01 just so that everyone’s on the same page.
1:01:07 So you can experience grief without experiencing trauma.
1:01:09 So you can have grief, but there’s no trauma attached to it.
1:01:13 But all trauma has grief attached to it.
1:01:14 Does that make sense?
1:01:17 Kind of. How do you experience grief with no trauma?
1:01:18 Like, what’s an example?
1:01:22 So me and you could go through the exact same situation.
1:01:25 Let’s say we were at the exact same event
1:01:27 and something really bad happened.
1:01:30 Based off of my life experiences,
1:01:34 how I’m wired psychologically, my previous trauma,
1:01:38 my previous grief, that event could be something
1:01:40 that completely traumatized me.
1:01:44 Whereas perhaps that event didn’t traumatize you at all,
1:01:46 but just gave you grief.
1:01:51 So a person can go through the same exact thing,
1:01:55 but not have trauma while the other person does have trauma.
1:01:58 And so there’s no definition of,
1:01:59 well, this is what trauma is.
1:02:01 This is what it isn’t.
1:02:02 It’s your reaction.
1:02:05 Trauma is your reaction to an event.
1:02:08 So as you’re trying to process through trauma,
1:02:10 we all need different things.
1:02:14 And this is where I say you need the help of a professional.
1:02:18 Because so often our brains are like,
1:02:21 if you broke your arm right now, where would you go?
1:02:22 The hospital.
1:02:24 You go to the hospital, like no question.
1:02:26 I’m gonna go to the hospital.
1:02:31 Well, if your brain is feeling this brokenness
1:02:34 because of trauma, so often we feel shame
1:02:36 and we don’t get help.
1:02:39 But we should also be going to a professional
1:02:43 that knows how to help us be able to heal our brains.
1:02:45 So there’s things like EMDR,
1:02:48 which literally helps you heal your brain.
1:02:52 There’s psychiatrists, there’s support groups,
1:02:58 there’s places where you can feel safe to go get that help.
1:03:01 Because it is really difficult to get through trauma
1:03:06 on your own and a lot of times it’s so hard to
1:03:09 that it carries with you throughout your whole life.
1:03:12 I think right now a lot of people at least online
1:03:15 have been starting to talk more about generational trauma
1:03:18 and why things are passed down
1:03:20 from one generation to the next.
1:03:24 And it’s because trauma literally physically changes your DNA.
1:03:28 And when no one is taking a breath to be like,
1:03:31 I want this to end with me or how do I heal?
1:03:35 Continues to be passed down through habits,
1:03:36 through our reactions,
1:03:40 through what we then teach our children,
1:03:42 how we treat them.
1:03:46 And so I always recommend professional help for trauma.
1:03:47 Makes sense.
1:03:50 And I agree, I think it’s really important for everyone
1:03:52 to try to heal themselves,
1:03:54 especially in this fifth year, like you were saying,
1:03:57 we all went through stuff in 2020.
1:03:58 And by the time this airs,
1:04:00 it’s going to be right at the start of the year.
1:04:04 So it’s a perfect time to start thinking about this.
1:04:08 So something else that you talk about in your book is fear.
1:04:11 Fear is something that I think a lot of entrepreneurs
1:04:16 go through, especially we work in very uncertain areas.
1:04:19 Most of the time we don’t really know what’s going to happen next.
1:04:20 So how do we reframe fear?
1:04:22 What do we need to know about that?
1:04:26 I don’t know about you, but for me in entrepreneurship,
1:04:30 fear can show up in so many different ways.
1:04:35 But I realize I’m not actually afraid of that thing happening.
1:04:38 I’m afraid of something totally unrelated,
1:04:43 but I have attached fear as the label to the current problem
1:04:48 because it’s masking something else that I just haven’t dealt with.
1:04:53 One of the ways, though, that can help us reframe fear
1:04:56 is by doing the thing that we’re afraid of.
1:05:01 Our anxiety doesn’t go away when we avoid the things that we’re anxious about.
1:05:07 Our fear doesn’t go away when we avoid doing the things that we are fearful of.
1:05:09 In fact, it just continues to feed it.
1:05:14 So a lot of times we need proof,
1:05:17 our brains need proof that it’s not something we need to be afraid of,
1:05:21 and we need confidence that it’s something that we can handle
1:05:25 or walk through or that if things really do go south,
1:05:30 I have confidence in myself that I’m still going to be able to figure it out
1:05:31 because that’s what life is, right?
1:05:35 No one’s life goes exactly according to plan.
1:05:36 That’s not what life is.
1:05:38 It’s what we want it to be.
1:05:45 But then when we find ourselves shying away from doing what we really want to be doing
1:05:51 or really leaning into the areas of our lives that we know would light us up,
1:05:58 but we are afraid of it not working out or us doing it wrong or losing everything,
1:06:00 that fear just keeps getting bigger.
1:06:03 So the only way that we can start reframing that
1:06:07 is by taking action on the things that we’re afraid of.
1:06:12 And when it comes to action, a lot of people are afraid of failure,
1:06:15 but as we all know, failure and growth kind of go hand in hand.
1:06:17 You have this awesome quote.
1:06:21 “You talk about dirt as a fine place to start growing.”
1:06:22 I love that.
1:06:24 So can you elaborate on what you mean by that?
1:06:28 I think that so many of us were afraid of getting knocked down.
1:06:31 We’re afraid of falling flat on our faces.
1:06:36 But it is in that dirt when your nose hits the ground,
1:06:40 the only way back is up.
1:06:49 And a lot of times that is the best place for us to be able to really start our growing journey.
1:06:55 I cannot think of one entrepreneur who has not experienced a significant setback
1:07:02 or failure that then also helped them lead to the next steps of their career.
1:07:11 How could you expect to know exactly what to do if you never learned what not to do
1:07:13 or if you never learned what didn’t work?
1:07:16 Of course, we have to fail.
1:07:18 And no one wants to feel it.
1:07:24 But it’s also in those moments where we can really get a jump start on,
1:07:27 “Okay, I figured this out the hard way.
1:07:33 And now I’m going to do X, Y, and Z and have a clearer path forward this way.”
1:07:39 Honestly, I feel like people who are willing to fail, they’re just so much smarter.
1:07:44 I meet so many people and the most successful people that I know just go for things.
1:07:47 And they do it and it fails and it works and it doesn’t work.
1:07:48 And they just keep trying and trying and trying.
1:07:53 And then they just get so much experience and they’re such a well-rounded, skilled person.
1:07:58 And then you’ve got other people who are just afraid of making any sort of change.
1:08:03 They stay in the same sort of mundane job where they don’t learn anything new and then they’re stuck.
1:08:06 And they don’t really move in life.
1:08:14 And they stay stuck and then the next year, because I hear from a lot of women who are like,
1:08:17 “I feel stuck here, but I don’t know what to do, so I’m just going to stay here.”
1:08:22 And then a year goes by and you still feel that feeling.
1:08:28 And to me, that’s way more uncomfortable than trying something that doesn’t work out
1:08:33 so that then I can find something that does rather than feeling like I’m on this hamster wheel
1:08:37 that’s not getting me anywhere and I know what’s not getting me anywhere.
1:08:44 I would much rather be the person that fails a million times to figure out where I actually
1:08:51 really want to be than the one who just feels like I’m stuck on Groundhog’s Day
1:08:52 every day that I wake up.
1:08:53 Totally.
1:08:56 And so I think a great way to close out this interview,
1:09:00 which also ties to what we’re just saying, which is figuring out what you want to do with your life,
1:09:03 is learning how to do a clarity map, which you talk about in your book.
1:09:07 So first off, tell us about the five daily questions.
1:09:11 You mentioned that you have five daily questions that you came up with years ago.
1:09:17 What are these questions and how do they help us identify what matters before we move on to the next step?
1:09:22 So the five questions you can do in as little amount of time or as much time as you want
1:09:23 every single morning.
1:09:27 So the very first one is, what is my intention today?
1:09:30 The second one is, why am I worthy?
1:09:34 There are so many of us who, when things are going good in our lives,
1:09:39 we can start sabotaging ourselves because we feel like we’re not deserving of it.
1:09:42 We are afraid of life feeling good again.
1:09:43 We’re not good enough to receive it.
1:09:49 And so being able to sit with, why am I worthy for this is actually really helpful to allow yourself
1:09:53 to keep moving forward in a positive way in your life.
1:09:55 The third question is, who can I serve today?
1:09:58 Sometimes it’s going to be yourself.
1:10:03 This is a really good place to check in of, are there needs that I’m not meeting for myself?
1:10:05 Or how are my employees today?
1:10:09 How is that stranger behind me in the grocery store doing?
1:10:10 What about my partner?
1:10:12 When’s the last time that we had to check in?
1:10:15 That’s a really beautiful place to figure that out.
1:10:20 The next one is, what can I set down today or what can I let go of?
1:10:26 You guys, we carry so much heaviness throughout our day, whether that’s the fear,
1:10:31 whether that’s a responsibility for something that is completely off out of our hands,
1:10:36 whether that’s sadness for something that we can’t control.
1:10:41 But what can you just set down for that day so that you have energy to do these other things?
1:10:48 And then the very last question is, how does the truest version of me show up today?
1:10:53 I used to ask myself, how does the best version of me show up today?
1:10:56 But then I realized I would change my answer based off of, well,
1:10:59 what is the best version of a mom?
1:11:01 Or what’s the best version of an employer?
1:11:03 Or what’s the best version of a partner?
1:11:08 And I realized my answers were based off of what I thought other people needed and wanted from me.
1:11:16 So I changed it and I now ask, who is the truest version of me today so that I can show up
1:11:23 as her and lead from that place of authenticity and give the world who I am
1:11:26 instead of letting the world dictate who I am.
1:11:29 So those are the five questions I start with.
1:11:31 Love that.
1:11:35 So as we close out this interview, what should we be doing when it comes to making
1:11:40 lasting change and working through grief, depression, trauma, loneliness?
1:11:41 I love this.
1:11:43 This is one of my very favorite things.
1:11:48 I set intentions and I base my year and how I’m going to move forward
1:11:51 based off of how I want to feel inside.
1:11:55 And a lot of us haven’t checked in internally for a long time.
1:11:57 Like, how do I actually want to feel?
1:11:59 Do I want more peace in my life?
1:12:00 Do I want more clarity?
1:12:04 Do I want to feel like love is driving my decisions?
1:12:05 What is that feeling?
1:12:11 And I write that on a piece of paper and then around that I draw four boxes for the different
1:12:20 areas of my life for emotional development, spiritual development, finances or business,
1:12:22 and then my relationships.
1:12:28 And in those four boxes, I then set intentions for each of those four categories
1:12:34 that match my overall life intention so that I can have a strategy in those four life
1:12:40 areas to move forward in a way that’s going to support how I am feeling right now in my life.
1:12:44 And if that’s something you want more of, we do a challenge about it.
1:12:48 I talk more about it in my book and in my podcast, but check in with your feelings
1:12:55 and then map out a life that supports your feelings instead of starting with your goals.
1:12:59 And that will help you feel more fulfilled once you bring everything to life.
1:13:01 That’s great advice.
1:13:03 I think that’s fantastic.
1:13:06 So really just focusing on your intentions, not your goals.
1:13:10 So Ashley, I had such a great conversation with you today.
1:13:13 I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests.
1:13:16 The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and
1:13:19 profitors can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?
1:13:22 Ooh, this is such a good one.
1:13:24 I would say invest in your mental health.
1:13:32 There’s that return of being able to really understand who you are and why you are,
1:13:37 how you are, is going to profit you more than anything else in the long run and
1:13:39 help you build a sustainable business.
1:13:43 And this one can go beyond business and finance.
1:13:46 What is your secret to profiting in life?
1:13:50 Wow, this is a good one.
1:13:53 Okay, I’m like, what is my secret to profiting in life?
1:13:58 My secret is to create peace as my priority.
1:14:01 We didn’t get to talk about this.
1:14:02 This is so important.
1:14:08 Yeah, being able to live with peace as my decision maker and as the feeling that
1:14:14 surrounds me, that has allowed me to profit in every area of my life more than
1:14:17 anything else that I have ever tried to do.
1:14:23 And so I base every decision off of, is this going to invite peace in my life?
1:14:28 Or is it going to be something that prevents me from feeling peace?
1:14:35 And that’s the thing, is pursuing peace to have a profitable life in all of the
1:14:37 areas that you want to feel it in.
1:14:41 And when you say peace, because I didn’t get a chance to ask you about this,
1:14:45 and I actually really love this, when you say peace, what is peace to you?
1:14:49 Peace to me is the feeling that can’t be bought.
1:14:52 It can’t be mimicked by anything else.
1:14:55 It can’t be something that someone else gives you.
1:15:04 Peace is this internal feeling that comes when you are in alignment with your life,
1:15:09 with who you believe your higher power to be.
1:15:16 And when you are able to make decisions that invite in more peace,
1:15:22 whether that is setting types of boundaries or whether that is letting things go that
1:15:27 make you kind of feel chained, peace to me feels a lot like freedom.
1:15:32 And there’s a lot of things that can chain us that make us lose it,
1:15:38 whether that’s we feel chained to our job or to social media or to comparison
1:15:46 or to toxic relationships or to these habits we just can’t get out of the cycle of doing because
1:15:50 they’ve just become a part of who we are because that’s what helped us cope for a long time,
1:15:52 but now it’s not serving us anymore.
1:15:57 There’s so many chains in our life that we can have that prevent us from experiencing more peace.
1:16:07 And so to me, peace is something that you cannot receive from any other outside source or thing.
1:16:12 So good. I feel like that’s my favorite advice from the whole episode.
1:16:17 That whole conversation was amazing, but that really spoke to me in terms of
1:16:21 making decisions based on what brings you peace and not.
1:16:24 Is this going to bring me peace or is this going to make me feel unaligned?
1:16:26 And it’s so simple.
1:16:33 It’s so simple. And honestly, you can make faster decisions and decisions that support you more
1:16:40 based off of that answer of doing the gut check of, is this going to bring me peace or not?
1:16:44 And that’s how I base every decision now, and it’s changed my life and my business
1:16:46 and my family’s life.
1:16:47 Yeah, I love that.
1:16:49 Ashley, this has been amazing.
1:16:51 Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?
1:16:54 Gosh, thank you so much, first of all, for having me.
1:16:57 And I would love to meet all of your young and proffereders.
1:17:00 You can come find me on Instagram @ashleykailamu.
1:17:03 We love hanging out over there every day.
1:17:05 You can also come and listen to my podcast.
1:17:06 It’s called Healing Her.
1:17:10 And if you are wanting more support on your journey,
1:17:14 you can go to my website to see what that looks like at AshleyLamu.com.
1:17:16 Amazing.
1:17:19 Ashley, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.
1:17:21 Thanks for having me.
1:17:26 Yeah, bam.
1:17:31 Well, that was such a deep and therapeutic episode with Ashley.
1:17:34 And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, including yours truly,
1:17:39 handle grief and stress by sinking our energies deeper into our work.
1:17:40 And it might work for a while.
1:17:45 You may even grow your company, hit your targets, achieve some great things.
1:17:48 But still, such a strategy is not sustainable.
1:17:49 We all know that.
1:17:53 And we are really only delaying coming to terms with our pain and fear.
1:17:58 As Ashley put it, grief can only be pacified by work or achievement.
1:18:01 And at some point, you’re going to have to confront that grief
1:18:04 and give yourself the space to sit with it.
1:18:09 You can’t run a business on fumes or by running away from your own problems.
1:18:13 But one of the good things about success is that it can be a wonderful buffer.
1:18:17 Having resources should give you the time and space you need to ensure
1:18:20 that your internal development matches your external achievements.
1:18:23 You just need to eventually take that time.
1:18:25 And once you do take that time,
1:18:28 you can start observing your own thoughts and reframing the negative ones
1:18:30 to be less impactful.
1:18:33 You can be open about your own anger and frustrations
1:18:35 and even find a silver lining there.
1:18:39 Remember that a lot of our anger comes from a place of passion and love.
1:18:41 And you just have to figure out how to lean
1:18:44 into the more constructive power of that passion.
1:18:48 And sometimes this also means coming to terms with our failures,
1:18:52 realizing that we’ve hit rock bottom and need to start over.
1:18:55 I really believe that the best entrepreneurs have to fall flat on our faces
1:18:58 from time to time in order to really succeed.
1:19:01 But when you do, just remember that, like Ashley said,
1:19:04 the dirt is a fine place to start growing.
1:19:08 Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast.
1:19:11 If you listen learned and profited from this conversation
1:19:13 with the insightful Ashley Lemieux,
1:19:17 then please help us grow it by sharing with somebody that you know.
1:19:19 And if you enjoyed the show and you learned something,
1:19:22 then drop us a five star review on Apple, Spotify, Cast Box,
1:19:24 wherever you listen to the show.
1:19:25 I want to hear from you.
1:19:27 I love to read your reviews.
1:19:30 I read them every single day, and it makes me so happy to see them.
1:19:33 So drop us a review if you listen to the show.
1:19:37 If you’re new to the show, maybe you found me from Funnel Hacking Live,
1:19:38 and now you’re following the show.
1:19:39 Welcome to the YAP BAM.
1:19:43 I’m so happy to have you guys as new subscribers.
1:19:45 And if you prefer to watch your podcasts
1:19:47 and you like watching your podcasts on YouTube,
1:19:48 all of our videos are on YouTube.
1:19:50 I do everything on video.
1:19:52 I’ve got a lot more in-person content.
1:19:55 I just interviewed Mel Robbins in person, Gary Vee in person.
1:19:57 So all that is on there.
1:20:00 You can also find me on Instagram @yapwithhalla or LinkedIn.
1:20:02 Just search my name, Hala Taha.
1:20:06 I of course want to give a big shout out to my YAP production team.
1:20:08 I have an agency, YAP Media,
1:20:10 and I’ve got the best team in the world.
1:20:12 Thank you guys for all your hard work.
1:20:14 This is your host, Hala Taha,
1:20:16 aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.
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0:00:06 Today’s episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Rakuten, Factor, Robinhood, Airbnb, Shopify,
0:00:08 Rocket Money, and Indeed.
0:00:13 Get the Rakuten app now and join the 17 million members who are already saving.
0:00:14 Cashback rates change daily.
0:00:17 See Rakuten.com for more details.
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0:01:01 Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at www.shopify.com/profiting.
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0:01:19 Get a $75 sponsored job credit at www.indeed.com/profiting.
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0:01:29 As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals.
0:01:34 If you’re in the driver’s seat and refuse to coast through life, this is Young and Profiting
0:01:40 Podcast where you get actionable advice to level up your life and business.
0:01:45 I’m the podcast princess Halataha, the host of Young and Profiting Podcast, and I invite
0:01:50 you to join the YAP BAM to uncover the secrets of some of the most brilliant entrepreneurs
0:01:53 on the planet, from digital pioneers like Gary Vee.
0:01:58 The reason people burn out is because they choose money, not entrepreneurship.
0:02:01 To creative visionaries like Jenna Kutcher.
0:02:07 I built a million-dollar business because I now have time to be creative again.
0:02:10 Sales experts like Ryan Sirhant don’t sell.
0:02:14 Bad salespeople are people who watch a pot boil water.
0:02:19 And even movie stars like Matthew McConaughey keep confident with who you are.
0:02:24 In Young and Profiting, we focus on the things that will help you win in business and life,
0:02:28 like marketing and sales strategies, rather than trying to cut the price, just increase
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0:02:34 People like those who are like them.
0:02:38 And of course, hot topics and cutting-edge technology like AI.
0:02:44 If you’re not informed of AI today, it is a bit like a hurricane approaching your city
0:02:49 or village and you’re sitting at a cafe saying, “I’m not interested.”
0:02:53 Whether you’re side hustling, starting out, or scaling up, Young and Profiting will help
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0:00:06 Today’s episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Rakuten, Factor, Robinhood, Airbnb, Shopify,
0:00:08 RocketMoney, and Indeed.
0:00:13 Get the Rakuten app now and join the 17 million members who are already saving.
0:00:14 Cashback rates change daily.
0:00:17 See Rakuten.com for more details.
0:00:20 Eat smart and fuel your wellness goals with Factor.
0:00:26 Get started at FactorMeals.com/FactorPodcast and use code FactorPodcast to get 50% off
0:00:29 your first box plus free shipping.
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0:00:43 To receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at Robinhood.com/Gold.
0:00:48 Hosting on Airbnb has never been easier with Airbnb’s new co-host network.
0:00:52 Find yourself a co-host at Airbnb.com/host.
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0:01:01 Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/profit.
0:01:06 RocketMoney helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending,
0:01:08 and helps lower your bills.
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0:01:15 Attract interview and hire all in one place with Indeed.
0:01:19 Get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com/profit.
0:01:21 Terms and conditions apply.
0:01:39 As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals.
0:01:41 Hello Young and Profiters!
0:01:46 Imagine learning how to turn stage fright into a magnetic stage presence to craft speeches
0:01:50 that captivate your audience and build a brand that doesn’t just speak to people but
0:01:52 speaks for them.
0:01:57 Well, in this YAP Classic episode, we’re talking about brand building, public speaking,
0:02:01 and so much more with one of the world’s leading communication and branding experts,
0:02:03 Rory Vaden.
0:02:07 Rory is the best-selling author of Take the Stairs and Procrastinate on Purpose and the
0:02:10 co-founder of Brand to Builders Group.
0:02:14 I spoke with Rory last year in episode 274 about how to build a personal brand that doesn’t
0:02:19 just attract attention but commands trust and respect.
0:02:22 Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a corporate leader, or just somebody looking to amplify
0:02:27 your voice, this conversation will be a roadmap to mastering the psychology of influence.
0:02:31 So let’s get started with Rory.
0:02:35 Rory, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
0:02:36 Yes!
0:02:38 I’m so excited.
0:02:39 I’m so excited.
0:02:43 I think you’re like my newest, coolest friend.
0:02:44 Thank you for having me.
0:02:45 I think the same.
0:02:47 I’m really excited for this conversation.
0:02:51 Great to bring some great energy to the conversation already.
0:02:55 So, Rory, you are super well-known for actually building brands.
0:02:59 But before you started building other people’s brands, you were, of course, building your
0:03:00 own brand.
0:03:02 And in the past, you said success is never owned.
0:03:05 It’s rented, and the rent is due every day.
0:03:08 So my first question to you is a softball.
0:03:11 Do you still feel like success is never owned?
0:03:15 Do you still feel that way today, like you’re renting your success, or do you feel like you’ve
0:03:17 owned some of your success now?
0:03:18 Not a good question.
0:03:20 Also, you guys went into the backlogs.
0:03:21 You did.
0:03:22 Oh, we went to the backlogs.
0:03:23 Rory paid in like the back catalog.
0:03:27 So that was from Take the Stairs, which has been out over 10 years.
0:03:28 So success is never owned.
0:03:30 It’s rented, and the rent is due every day.
0:03:32 I do still feel that way.
0:03:36 I feel that way, and I feel like the people we work with exhibit that.
0:03:37 You’re still hustling.
0:03:38 I’m still hustling.
0:03:44 Ed Milette, Lewis Howes, our clients, Amy Porterfield, these people are still hustling.
0:03:47 Some people might look at them and go, “Oh, they’re at the top.
0:03:48 Why are they hustling?”
0:03:51 But they don’t look at it that way.
0:03:58 They look at Jay Shetty and go, “Oh, they’re always pursuing somebody or the next level.”
0:04:04 And the other thing about that, Hala, is if you take out that word success and you put
0:04:10 in for it whatever really matters, financial security is never really owned.
0:04:12 It’s rented, and the rent is due every day.
0:04:17 If you start making stupid financial decisions, you can blow a lot of money quickly.
0:04:20 Living in great physical health, certainly never owned.
0:04:22 That’s rented, and the rent is due every day.
0:04:26 A great marriage or a happy relationship, that doesn’t matter if you’ve been married
0:04:27 20 years.
0:04:34 If you don’t treat your spouse or significant other in the way that they deserve, 20 years
0:04:40 can disappear in one moment or a few minutes of bad decisions.
0:04:46 So I do agree with that, and I think I look at people like you constantly leveling up.
0:04:50 You blew my mind when you came on my podcast, and I was just like, “Gosh, there’s such
0:04:57 a next level for me in podcasting, and I got to do the work if I want the results.”
0:05:02 So what a great question, and yes, I would emphatically say there are some things I’ve
0:05:04 changed my mind on, but that’s not one of them.
0:05:05 Success is never owned.
0:05:07 It’s rented, and the rent is due every day.
0:05:08 I loved that.
0:05:11 I resonate with so much of what you’re saying, and I align with so much of what you’re saying.
0:05:15 So when you actually wrote those words, like you said, that was decade ago now, you were
0:05:19 in grad school, living in a crappy apartment.
0:05:23 Can you tell us about that period of your life and how you ended up starting to speak?
0:05:26 I really started even before that.
0:05:31 So I was raised by a single mom, and my mom sold Mary Kay Cosmetics.
0:05:37 So my mom had my brother when she was 17 years old, and then she was divorced from his father
0:05:40 a few years later, and then she had me when she was 22.
0:05:44 And then my biological father, they were divorced six months after I was born, and I never really
0:05:46 saw him again.
0:05:50 So she was a single mom, and she got into direct sales.
0:05:56 So I learned about direct sales, and then when I was in college, I got involved in a company.
0:06:02 I actually went door to door, 14 hours a day, six days a week on straight commission, just
0:06:05 so I could pay my way through school.
0:06:12 And there was a speaker who came and spoke at that company, and I thought, man, that’s
0:06:15 my dream is I want to speak.
0:06:20 And so I went up to him, his name was Eric Chester, and I said, Eric, one day I’m going
0:06:23 to do what you do.
0:06:26 But he had mentioned that he had a son in college, and I said, right now I need your
0:06:32 son’s phone number because I’m going to recruit him to come with me and do this next summer.
0:06:33 And we made like a pact.
0:06:40 He said, if you mentor my son in this program, then when you graduate, I’ll mentor you.
0:06:45 And so he did, I did, and his son, Zach, worked with me for two years.
0:06:46 We became really good friends.
0:06:52 And then when I finished my undergrad and was in graduate school, Eric was the one who,
0:06:56 he was a Hall of Fame speaker, and I asked him, I was like, okay, I’m ready.
0:06:57 What do I need to go do?
0:06:58 And I’ll never forget Hall.
0:07:05 The very first time we sat down, he said, Rory, the difference between a good speaker and
0:07:11 a great speaker is 1,000 speeches.
0:07:19 So the first thing I want you to do is go out and give 1,000 speeches.
0:07:25 And just a couple of years ago, I became the youngest person in US history to be inducted
0:07:27 myself into the professional speaking Hall of Fame.
0:07:28 Oh, wow.
0:07:32 You know, I’ve got a viral TED talk that has like 5 million views.
0:07:36 And I have to tell you, Hala, I’m still excited to go back and see Eric Chester and find out
0:07:42 what step two is because there’s been so much speaking.
0:07:45 So that was how I got my start early on.
0:07:46 Amazing.
0:07:51 And I learned that you spoke over 300 times for free in your first 18 months.
0:07:55 So a lot of people aren’t willing to roll up their sleeves, do free work like that.
0:07:56 What was the logic?
0:08:00 I know you were building your reps, but how did you decide, okay, now I’m going to get
0:08:04 paid and I’ve got enough experience, so tell us about that.
0:08:09 What actually happened was Eric said the fastest way to get stage time is to join a group called
0:08:10 Toastmasters.
0:08:16 And so it’s this worldwide organization that’s been around for decades.
0:08:20 And they had a contest called the World Championship of Public Speaking.
0:08:24 And so I thought, gosh, maybe, you know, at the time I was 22 years old.
0:08:26 And so I had no credibility.
0:08:30 This is long before social media, you know, it was like ever really out.
0:08:36 And I thought, maybe if I could win the World Championship of Public Speaking, maybe that
0:08:39 would give me the credibility to like launch a speaking career.
0:08:41 You know, it was all adults who were in this competition.
0:08:44 And I thought, if I just got more reps and I practiced harder.
0:08:48 And so I did, I went out and I spoke 304 times for free.
0:08:52 The first year I made it to, there’s 25,000 contestants.
0:08:55 I made it to the top 10 in the world and I lost.
0:08:57 And in the next year, I got more coaching.
0:09:02 I spent more time, thousands of hours studying film, made it all the way back to the World
0:09:03 Championship.
0:09:07 And then I lost again, actually, but I came in second.
0:09:12 So I lost better than the first time I was the World Champion, first runner up.
0:09:18 And that was just my strategy, that had been my strategy for life in school and in knocking
0:09:25 door to door was like, I’m just going to do a higher quantity than everybody else.
0:09:32 And I had this belief that if I did more quantity, eventually that would lead to quality.
0:09:34 And that’s what happened.
0:09:36 And then that’s what led us to start our first company.
0:09:37 That’s amazing.
0:09:41 And what do you feel speaking did for your personal brand?
0:09:46 So one of the things that we say at Brand Builders Group, we tell our clients, the shortest
0:09:55 path between turning someone from a complete stranger into a lifelong fan of yours is a
0:09:59 world-class one-hour presentation.
0:10:01 Somebody can go from, I’ve never heard of you.
0:10:03 Now they can do that in a book too, but it takes longer.
0:10:05 It takes four, it’s more like four hours.
0:10:10 But if they see you on stage, if you’ve ever seen Ed Milette on stage, you could go, I’ve
0:10:12 never heard of this guy.
0:10:16 And you walk in, another one of my good friends is Jamie Kern Lima.
0:10:19 She right now I think is one of the best speakers in the world.
0:10:24 If you’ve never heard of Jamie Kern Lima and you step into a room, after a one-hour experience
0:10:27 with her, you become a lifelong fan.
0:10:34 And so that’s the power of the spoken word is it is just a trust accelerator.
0:10:39 And they don’t really teach it in schools and they don’t only teach it in business.
0:10:44 If you don’t study it or get coaching on it, a lot of people think they’re good speakers.
0:10:48 In reality, they’re good talkers and there’s just a big difference.
0:10:54 But we define personal branding, which is most of what we do now, as simply the digitization
0:10:56 of your reputation.
0:10:59 And reputation has been around since the dawn of time.
0:11:04 And the spoken word is like before there was going live and before there was webinar and
0:11:07 before there was podcast and before there was YouTube, there was just the spoken word
0:11:09 in front of live audiences.
0:11:15 I think the reason why social media and the reason why YouTube and podcasting is so valuable
0:11:20 is because if you have the ability to speak, if you have the ability to communicate with
0:11:23 authority, if you have the ability to make an audience laugh, if you have the ability
0:11:29 to articulate points eloquently, then you can create the same level of trust, except
0:11:32 now you can do it at scale.
0:11:39 You can automate trust at scale when you combine some of my superpowers with some of your superpowers
0:11:42 and really growing your platform.
0:11:46 I agree with everything you’re saying because I’ve been doing so much more speaking in the
0:11:48 last two to three years.
0:11:52 And the types of fans that I get after these types of speaking engagements, they’re waiting
0:11:57 in line to talk to me, then they’re reaching out to me on DM, on LinkedIn, and Instagram.
0:12:00 Then they show up to my course and they say, “Oh,” and then they write me a review.
0:12:05 And it’s just a way more passionate type of fan because they feel like they really know
0:12:10 you because there’s just so much transparency and authenticity when it’s you and the flesh,
0:12:12 just being yourself and being on stage.
0:12:15 I totally agree that it creates superfans.
0:12:22 Well, and ironically, I think as AI takes over more and more, people are going to gravitate
0:12:26 towards that human experience, and I think people are going to gravitate back towards
0:12:31 live events because it’s not that far away.
0:12:35 In many ways, it’s already here where you can replicate a video of someone, a voice
0:12:36 of someone.
0:12:42 You can use mid-journey and create an entire person that’s fake and turn them into an influencer.
0:12:50 But what you can’t really do is have someone stand on stage in front of a roomful of humans
0:12:54 and move them emotionally.
0:12:57 Create that human bond.
0:13:02 And I think as AI takes over content more and more digitally, I think there’s going
0:13:07 to be a return of this skill coming back for humans.
0:13:08 Totally.
0:13:12 It’s like humans are going to be the rare thing that everybody wants.
0:13:13 Yeah.
0:13:14 Okay.
0:13:15 So there’s so much to cover.
0:13:19 I want to get into all of your personal branding strategies, but first, we thought that it’d
0:13:23 be really fun to uncover some of your greatest hits from all the different books that you
0:13:29 wrote of time management, focus, procrastination, and just talking about all these topics that
0:13:31 I know my listeners are really curious about.
0:13:35 So I’m going to rattle off quotes, and then you can just elaborate and have follow-up
0:13:36 questions.
0:13:37 You’re going to rattle off my quote.
0:13:38 I’m going to rattle off your quotes from your book.
0:13:39 That’s so interesting.
0:13:40 You’re going to quote me to me.
0:13:42 That’s kind of awkward for me.
0:13:43 But I love it.
0:13:44 I love it.
0:13:46 I did it with James Clear when it was on and it was fun.
0:13:47 Yeah.
0:13:48 So we’ll do it.
0:13:49 We’ll see.
0:13:50 Okay.
0:13:51 Success is not about taking the escalator.
0:13:53 It’s about taking the stairs.
0:13:54 What did you mean by that?
0:13:55 Yeah.
0:14:00 So that actually really should be given appropriate citation to Zig Ziglar.
0:14:01 Okay.
0:14:02 Good.
0:14:03 So Zig said that differently.
0:14:06 Zig said, “There is no escalator to success.
0:14:08 You have to take the stairs.”
0:14:13 And after my world championship of public speaking, I was at an event of the National
0:14:19 Speakers Association event, and we’re sitting in this huge convention and it’s lunch, and
0:14:22 I’m sitting in this cafeteria and I knew nobody, right?
0:14:27 I’m this 20-something-year-old kid and I’m sitting by myself and this guy walks up to
0:14:31 me and he says, “Hey, you’re Rory Vaden, right?”
0:14:34 And I said, “Well, yes, sir, I am.”
0:14:36 And he said, “I heard about you.
0:14:37 You’re the Toastmaster kid, right?
0:14:40 Like you made it to the Toastmaster thing.”
0:14:41 And I said, “Well, yes, sir.
0:14:42 That’s me.”
0:14:43 And I said, “I’m sorry.
0:14:45 I don’t know.
0:14:46 Have we ever met?”
0:14:50 And he reaches his hand out and he says, “My name is Zig Ziggler.”
0:14:56 And people today may not even know who Zig is, but Zig was an absolute legend for decades
0:14:57 in this space.
0:15:01 And he sat down next to me with his wife, who he used to call the redhead if you’ve ever
0:15:04 seen any of his old videos, and we became personal friends.
0:15:06 He was a personal mentor of mine for several years.
0:15:10 I used to travel with him to these big, huge arenas.
0:15:15 He passed away several years ago, but anyways, he was the one that said, “There is no elevator
0:15:16 to success.
0:15:18 You have to take the stairs.”
0:15:24 And so even the whole “take the stairs” concept was a bit of an homage to my mentor’s
0:15:25 Zig Ziggler.
0:15:27 I love that.
0:15:28 So next one.
0:15:31 A key to self-discipline is, of course, commitment.
0:15:35 And you said, “The more we have invested in something, the less likely we are to let
0:15:36 it fail.”
0:15:38 What did you mean by that?
0:15:43 Anything that matters to you is going to be hard to let go of.
0:15:48 The things that matter to you are the things that you’ve put the most time and love and
0:15:51 energy and money and prayer into.
0:15:55 So you go, if you lose a loved one, why is it so hard?
0:15:57 It’s because we’ve spent so much time together.
0:15:59 We have so many shared experiences.
0:16:03 We have so many interests and stories.
0:16:07 The irony is that the more we have invested into something, the less likely we are to
0:16:08 let it fail.
0:16:12 Well, what most people do is they keep their commitments conditionally.
0:16:15 They keep their commitments as long as they’re convenient to do so.
0:16:19 But the moment it becomes inconvenient to keep that commitment, we typically question the
0:16:23 commitment or we challenge ourselves to go, “Oh, maybe I’m not cut out for this or maybe
0:16:25 it’s not worth it.”
0:16:28 And so they go in search of something easier.
0:16:32 In reality, they find that there’s not anything easier.
0:16:36 They keep showing up and the same issues replicate again and again in their life because they
0:16:38 struggle with commitment.
0:16:43 And the real thing to do is when you are kind of tested to go, “I’m not sure if this is
0:16:44 going to work out.
0:16:47 I’m not sure if this is the right thing,” is to increase your commitment.
0:16:50 You increase your level of investment.
0:16:55 If you’re struggling on social media and you just go, “Well, gosh, maybe I’m not cut out
0:16:56 for that.”
0:16:58 Well, of course, then it’s not going to be successful.
0:17:02 But the people who are successful at it are the ones that go, “No, I’m going to figure
0:17:03 this out.
0:17:05 I’m going to spend more time, more energy.
0:17:06 I’m going to hire coaches.
0:17:07 I’m going to hire an agency.
0:17:08 I’m going to learn.
0:17:10 I’m going to figure this out.”
0:17:16 So I think the difference here is going, you don’t have a plan B. You only have a plan
0:17:24 A. Now, you have to be flexible to adapt what plan A is, but leaving or quitting or escaping
0:17:26 is not one of the options.
0:17:29 And that is one of the secrets of ultra performers.
0:17:34 They lock in on a goal and they go, “I am going to achieve this.
0:17:41 How or when, I’m not entirely sure, but I’m target locked and I’m going to find a way.”
0:17:45 Other people go, “I’ll do it if it’s comfortable.
0:17:46 I’ll do it if it’s safe.
0:17:50 I’ll do it if it’s easy, but not ultra performers.”
0:17:51 Yeah.
0:17:55 This reminds me of something that Marie Forleo says, “Everything is figure out of all.”
0:17:56 So it’s like figuring out how.
0:18:01 What are the ways that you’re going to figure out how to do whatever goal that you set out?
0:18:06 And instead of contemplating what is the exact right thing I should do, how do I actually
0:18:08 do the thing that I want to do?
0:18:09 Yeah.
0:18:10 And there’s always a way.
0:18:13 So that’s another thing is that what most people ask when they reach this decisional
0:18:19 threshold of deciding, “Should I continue forward in this commitment or should I not?”
0:18:23 What most people ask is, “Should,” as they say, “Should I do this?
0:18:24 Should I do this?
0:18:25 Do that?
0:18:26 Is it possible?
0:18:27 Do I like this?”
0:18:30 And what the ultra performers do is only one degree different.
0:18:35 They don’t ask, “Is this possible or should I do this or can I pull this off?”
0:18:39 They simply ask, “How is this possible?
0:18:41 How could I make this work?
0:18:43 What would it take in order for it to come true?”
0:18:52 And the moment you ask this question, “How,” it’s like your mind transcends all limitations
0:18:58 and you break free of these preexisting belief barriers and these mental prisons of our own
0:19:04 construction of what we think is possible and what isn’t and your creativity engages.
0:19:09 And the human brain, this is where you get into the neuroscience, well, the neuroscience
0:19:13 of this is that the human brain cannot delineate between positive or negative.
0:19:16 It simply does whatever you tell it to do.
0:19:20 The human brain also cannot delineate between true and false.
0:19:23 It simply believes whatever it is told most often.
0:19:28 So if you tell yourself, “This is hard and I don’t know if this is right for me,” your
0:19:35 brain is going to process and find evidence and documentation and examples for why it’s
0:19:42 too hard and why it won’t work out for you and it will process until it finds a rationalization
0:19:47 that is comfortable for you to accept so that you can quit and you can stay safe.
0:19:52 But similarly, if you ask the question, “How is this possible?”
0:19:57 Your brain will process indefinitely on that and it will process and process and process
0:20:02 until one day you’ll wake up in the middle of the night and boom, the answer comes.
0:20:08 It’s not that most people don’t have the talent or the skill to succeed, it’s that they don’t
0:20:15 have the resolve or the commitment and so they’re not able to see the solutions because
0:20:19 their brain is not actually being programmed to look for solutions, their brain is being
0:20:22 programmed to look for excuses.
0:20:26 Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.
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0:25:28 That’s so powerful.
0:25:33 And I think all of us have these big dreams, big goals, but a lot of us have a problem
0:25:39 with time management, actually focusing on the things we need to focus on, prioritizing.
0:25:42 And you actually talk a lot about creative avoidance and procrastination.
0:25:46 So my first question to you on that is, why is that so personal to you?
0:25:48 Why have you wrote so much about procrastination?
0:25:52 Yeah, my first book, Take the Stairs, and my second book, Procrastination on Purpose,
0:25:54 Five Permissions to Multiply Your Time.
0:26:01 So really the way this fits in is I have always been fascinated with success.
0:26:07 And really, if you look at the arc of my whole career, Hala, I bucket it with something very
0:26:09 simple called the four levels of influence.
0:26:14 And so level one is influencing yourself to take action.
0:26:17 You’re influencing one person, yourself.
0:26:22 And all of my early work is about level one influence, which is basically the enemy of
0:26:25 influencing yourself is procrastination.
0:26:32 And so we talk about creative avoidance and priority dilution, these terms that I invented
0:26:36 for different types of procrastination that people aren’t aware of.
0:26:37 So we can talk about those if you want.
0:26:42 And level two influence is influencing one other human.
0:26:45 And so that is all of my work in sales.
0:26:48 And our first company was a sales coaching company.
0:26:50 We started that in 2006.
0:26:52 We grew that to eight figures.
0:26:54 We sold it in 2018.
0:26:57 We had 200 people and all we did was sales coaching.
0:26:59 That’s influencing another person.
0:27:04 Also relationships and one-on-one communication is level two influence.
0:27:11 How do I talk and listen and interact with an individual in a way that creates influence?
0:27:13 It moves them to action.
0:27:19 Level three influence is influencing a group of people or a team.
0:27:23 So this is all the area and the work and the study and the writing we’ve done on leadership.
0:27:30 It’s going, how do you act, talk, behave, operate and create systems in a way that activates
0:27:33 a small group of people to take action?
0:27:35 So that’s leadership.
0:27:39 And then level four influence is really what we’re doing now, which is personal branding.
0:27:43 And that is inspiring and moving a community of people.
0:27:45 It’s creating a movement.
0:27:51 It’s activating and influencing people who you may never actually meet face to face,
0:27:55 that you impact them through your writing, your videos, your podcasts, et cetera.
0:27:57 So that’s most of where we spend our world now.
0:28:05 But my early books and my early work really stem from learning how to influence myself
0:28:08 and to battle my own beast of overcoming procrastination.
0:28:14 And one of the things I think not enough people understand that you can’t build a great personal
0:28:18 brand until you build strong personal character.
0:28:19 Yeah.
0:28:25 So you need strong core values that you yourself align to before anybody wants to follow you.
0:28:30 Because if you’re not an impressive person or a well-rounded person with good character,
0:28:34 no one’s going to want to follow you or be a fan of yours because you’re only fans of
0:28:35 people that you look up to.
0:28:36 Totally.
0:28:38 And my pastor said this to me one time.
0:28:45 He said, “Your influence will never grow wider than your character runs deep.
0:28:48 Your influence will never grow wider than your character runs deep.
0:28:50 And if it does, that’s when the implosions happen, right?
0:28:54 That’s when the celebrities and stuff, they have these implosions because they have wide
0:28:59 influence in the public, but they have personal lives that are a mess.
0:29:01 And that’s what causes implosion.
0:29:07 So you have to build a strong personal brand on a foundation of strong personal character
0:29:11 because the reality today is it takes serious muscle.
0:29:15 I mean, you look at the people who are crushing it on YouTube, these are not people just pushing
0:29:17 record and throwing it up there.
0:29:19 They have teams of people.
0:29:20 They have editors.
0:29:22 They’re thinking of hooks.
0:29:25 They’re very intelligent and sophisticated.
0:29:28 You look at the people who do marketing and funnels.
0:29:33 I think a lot of times people go, yeah, just build an online business, throw up a website
0:29:34 and make millions.
0:29:36 It’s like, no, that’s not really how it works.
0:29:42 It takes extreme discipline, focus, commitment, intelligence, strategy.
0:29:43 And that’s true about anything.
0:29:46 And excellence is never an accident.
0:29:53 And so I think we hear a lot more about personal branding these days and we need to hear probably
0:29:56 a little bit more about personal character.
0:29:59 It’s such a strong point and it’s such a great tie-in to everything we’re about to talk about.
0:30:03 But since I brought it up, what is procrastinating on purpose?
0:30:08 Because that feels like you’re speaking directly to me because I am this type of person where
0:30:11 I love to work under pressure because I know I can do things fast, especially if I know
0:30:16 what I’m doing, if it’s boring, it’s more fun for me to procrastinate on purpose.
0:30:17 But what did you mean by that?
0:30:22 Give us any sort of guidance you have about time management and procrastination.
0:30:25 Real quick, there’s three types of procrastination.
0:30:28 There’s classic procrastination, which is consciously delaying what you know you should
0:30:29 do.
0:30:33 I know I should pay my taxes, I know I should work out, I know I should make this difficult
0:30:35 phone call, whatever.
0:30:40 But most of us, while most of us do struggle with classic procrastination, most of us are
0:30:42 aware of that.
0:30:47 Where we’re really losing is to the two types of unconscious procrastination, one of which
0:30:50 is creative avoidance.
0:30:55 Creative avoidance is a term that I coined that is unconsciously creating stuff for yourself
0:31:03 to do so that you can achieve trivial things which make you feel productive because dopamine
0:31:08 is released, that chemical is released from your brain into your body every time you delete
0:31:12 an email or you cross something off your to-do list, dopamine is released.
0:31:18 So it makes you feel good, you feel productive, but really what’s happened is you’re addicted
0:31:20 to accomplishing the trivial.
0:31:24 You’re addicted to completing the insignificant.
0:31:26 That’s what creative avoidance is.
0:31:31 Then there’s priority dilution, which is the chronic overachievers procrastination.
0:31:37 They’re not lazy, they’re not apathetic, they’re not disengaged, they’re not even distracted.
0:31:39 What they are is interrupted.
0:31:44 So you’re building a team now, you’ve got dozens of employees.
0:31:47 As you become more influential, more and more people are vying for your attention.
0:31:51 You get higher and higher profile clients, higher and higher profile opportunities.
0:31:58 And so everybody is coming at you with their agenda, I think of an inbox, an email inbox
0:32:06 as a great literal illustration of this because what is an inbox other than a mechanism for
0:32:10 prioritizing other people’s requests?
0:32:13 Your inbox is none of the things you want to do.
0:32:16 It’s everything everybody else wants you to do.
0:32:22 And most of us sort even our inbox from what has come in most recent and we just see what
0:32:23 is most recent.
0:32:27 Well, often the most recent request is not the most significant request.
0:32:33 And so priority dilution is living in a constant state of interruption, ending your day with
0:32:38 your most significant tasks incomplete, not because you’re lazy, but because you’ve allowed
0:32:43 yourself to fall victim to whatever is vying for your attention rather than the things
0:32:45 that you know you need to do.
0:32:49 So that was introduced and take the stairs.
0:32:53 Well, when we studied ultra performers and we started to look at how do they get past
0:32:54 this?
0:32:57 That was when we invented the system of multiplying time.
0:33:01 Well, we didn’t really invent the system, we just put a vernacular around it, which was
0:33:02 what my TED Talk was.
0:33:05 So my TED Talk that went viral is called how to multiply time.
0:33:13 And all we were doing is we were putting a vernacular and semantics around the unconscious
0:33:20 thought process that the world’s ultra performers use when it came to managing their time.
0:33:23 And people of course say time is the one thing you can never get more of.
0:33:26 Well, that’s not actually true.
0:33:28 It is true inside of one day, right?
0:33:30 There’s nothing you can do to get more time in a day.
0:33:35 We all have 24 hours, which is 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds.
0:33:37 But that’s exactly the problem.
0:33:42 Everyone believes they cannot get more time because that’s what they’ve been told most
0:33:43 often.
0:33:44 So your brain believes it.
0:33:48 In reality, you can create more time.
0:33:49 You say how?
0:33:50 Simple.
0:33:53 And this is the premise of the TED Talk and the whole second book.
0:33:59 The way that you multiply time is by spending time on things today that create more time
0:34:00 tomorrow.
0:34:05 While there’s nothing you can do today to create more time today, there’s all sorts
0:34:10 of things you can do today that if you do them today, they will create time and space
0:34:13 tomorrow that you would not have otherwise had.
0:34:17 We bucket those in something called the focus funnel, which again is sort of the flagship
0:34:19 framework of the TED Talk and the book.
0:34:24 Well, it’s eliminate, automate, delegate, concentrate are four of the five.
0:34:31 The fifth one is procrastinate, and procrastinating on purpose is about procrastinating on purpose
0:34:37 with the insignificant tasks, the trivial tasks, and ultimately, when you become an
0:34:41 ultra performer, you ultimately will have to say no to some things.
0:34:46 You will ultimately have to ignore some things because there are too many applicants for
0:34:50 your time, too many applicants for your podcast, too many emails that you can ever respond
0:34:51 to.
0:34:58 You become an ultra performer not by being a master of what you say yes to, but more
0:35:02 of being a master of what you say no to.
0:35:09 If you procrastinate on the trivial things, then that suddenly creates a margin or a pocket
0:35:14 of time that you can then reinvest and reallocate into the things that multiply your time, which
0:35:18 are things that you’ve spent time on today that create more time tomorrow.
0:35:21 That’s the whole book as fast as I can give it to you.
0:35:23 That was so good.
0:35:24 What is the name of the TED Talk?
0:35:25 I knew that went super viral.
0:35:27 It’s evergreen content.
0:35:29 What is it called so people can check it out?
0:35:33 The TED Talk is called How to Multiply Time.
0:35:39 By the way, this is my greatest, my most painful, most expensive marketing mistake I’ve ever
0:35:40 made.
0:35:47 When TED asked me for the talk, they didn’t ask me, “What do you want to call your talk?”
0:35:50 They asked me, “What is the talk about?”
0:35:53 I said, “Oh, the talk is about how to multiply time.”
0:35:58 They titled it for me, How to Multiply Time and it went viral.
0:36:01 When I wrote the book, I had a chance to select the title.
0:36:06 I thought procrastinating on purpose was so catchy and unique and clever and people had
0:36:08 never heard of it.
0:36:10 People have never heard of it.
0:36:17 Maybe it’s intriguing, but the problem is it’s confusing and it’s not enticing.
0:36:21 Everybody wants to procrastinate on purpose, but everyone wants to multiply time.
0:36:26 This is one of the other really big personal branding lessons that we teach people is that
0:36:30 clear is greater than clever.
0:36:32 Clear is greater than clever.
0:36:36 My TED Talk is clearly titled How to Multiply Time.
0:36:41 My book, which is on the same topic, has a crappy title of procrastinate on purpose.
0:36:44 The subtitle is Five Permissions to Multiply Your Time.
0:36:45 It’s the same content.
0:36:47 The TED Talk went viral.
0:36:52 That second book doesn’t sell that well and I’m convinced it’s because of this painful
0:36:55 mistake that I made of mistitling the book.
0:37:00 Well, hopefully you never make that mistake again and now we will never make that mistake
0:37:03 because we know that clear is better than clever.
0:37:05 That’s our first personal branding lesson from you.
0:37:07 I’m sure we’re going to learn many more.
0:37:10 Let’s talk about your business brand builders group.
0:37:13 What are the types of things that you do for your clients?
0:37:16 We are a personal brand strategy firm.
0:37:22 Think of if you were built in a house, you could go to Home Depot, grab some tools, grab
0:37:27 some supplies, roll up on some pile of dirt and start building a house.
0:37:33 You probably would do better if you started with an architect and you had an architect
0:37:39 that understood everything about zoning and permits, slope and grading and everything
0:37:45 about structural engineering and someone who could design something for you that could
0:37:49 hold a skyscraper and not just a shack that you threw up.
0:37:51 Well, that’s what we are.
0:37:53 We are the architects.
0:37:58 We work with several of the biggest personal brands in the world, some that I mentioned,
0:38:03 Ed Milette, Lewis Howes, Amy Porterfield, Tom and Lisa Bilyu, Eric Thomas, ET, the hip
0:38:04 pop preacher.
0:38:05 It goes on and on.
0:38:06 Amazing people.
0:38:07 So many you’ve had on your show.
0:38:09 So many I know that you are friends with.
0:38:14 So what do we do for them in a tactical way?
0:38:19 We tend to help people get really, really clear on their uniqueness and figuring out
0:38:24 what’s the thing that only they can do and talk about that nobody else in the world can
0:38:26 talk about.
0:38:31 So we do a lot around identifying their uniqueness and the identity of their brand, not the visual
0:38:36 identity but the actual personification of their message.
0:38:43 We do a lot around the art of speaking, the business of speaking, live events, monetizing
0:38:46 live events, putting on live events.
0:38:48 We do a lot around book launches.
0:38:52 That’s one of the things that we probably do as good, if not better than anyone else
0:38:53 in the world.
0:38:59 We have helped 29 people become New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or USA Today, national
0:39:01 bestselling authors.
0:39:02 We don’t game the list.
0:39:04 We don’t let authors buy their own books.
0:39:05 We’re not tricking the system.
0:39:11 We just have really proven ways to get real humans to buy books.
0:39:14 So we do that and then monetization strategy.
0:39:22 So if I had to say, it’d be messaging and positioning, speaking, books, and then monetization
0:39:26 strategy, we get into various components of that.
0:39:31 But the single best piece of personal branding advice I’ve ever received, and this is not
0:39:32 a Rory quote.
0:39:37 I wish it was, but it came from a guy named Larry Wingett, and I heard Larry say this
0:39:38 early in my career.
0:39:47 He said, “The goal is to find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others.
0:39:51 Find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others.”
0:39:54 The first time I heard Larry say that, I was like, “God, that is it.
0:39:55 That is brilliant.
0:39:56 That’s exactly what it is.”
0:40:01 Now, the thing was, he never had a business teaching people or helping people find their
0:40:06 uniqueness, so we developed a methodology, a process that we take people through.
0:40:07 It’s a two-day experience.
0:40:09 It’s this whole set of introspective questions.
0:40:14 We could touch on some of them now if you want to help people figure out what is the
0:40:18 thing that only you can do?
0:40:20 What is the divine calling on your life?
0:40:22 What is your uniqueness?
0:40:29 And once we help people find that, that’s a huge, huge part of everything else falling
0:40:30 in place.
0:40:35 Why is it so important for somebody to focus on one thing, one expertise?
0:40:37 Why is that so important?
0:40:38 Great question.
0:40:43 It’s because of a concept that we refer to as Sheehan’s Wall.
0:40:49 I named this concept after a colleague of mine named Peter Sheehan, who showed me a model
0:40:52 that we have since adapted to personal brands.
0:40:58 He works more in the corporate space, but I saw his model, and here’s how it works.
0:41:03 In any industry, in any vertical, in any market, on any platform, there’s two groups of people.
0:41:06 There are those who are unknown.
0:41:08 They’re living in obscurity.
0:41:13 They’re yet to be discovered or found or popularized.
0:41:16 And then there is a group of people who are well-known.
0:41:17 They don’t have obscurity.
0:41:18 They have notoriety.
0:41:20 They have trust.
0:41:21 They have recognition.
0:41:22 They have reputation.
0:41:28 Well, in between being unknown and well-known, between obscurity and notoriety is this huge
0:41:31 invisible wall that we call Sheehan’s Wall.
0:41:36 What most people do who are living in obscurity is they look at the people in notoriety.
0:41:41 They look at Tony Robbins or Gary Vaynerchuk or whoever, and they look at what they’re
0:41:46 doing, Oprah, The Rock, and they go, “I want to do the things that they do.”
0:41:50 And so they go, “Well, Tony Robbins has all these different topics, like he talks about
0:41:55 money and he talks about health and he talks about unleashing the power with wind and date
0:41:57 with destiny and relationships and spirituality.”
0:41:58 Well, I have all these topics.
0:42:01 So they talk about lots of different topics.
0:42:05 And then they are like, “Oh, I got to be on lots of different platforms, right?”
0:42:08 The whole thing is you got to be on LinkedIn and you got to be on TikTok and you got to
0:42:11 be on Instagram and YouTube and X, Twitter, whatever.
0:42:14 And then every time they go on Facebook or something, they see a new ad for a new business
0:42:15 model.
0:42:18 And it’s like, “Oh, the way to get rich is doing webinars.
0:42:19 No, it’s live events.
0:42:20 No, you should publish your own book.
0:42:21 No, you should become a speaker.
0:42:22 No, you should do masterminds.
0:42:23 No, you should do retreats.
0:42:27 No, you should do one-on-one coaching and all these different business models.”
0:42:29 And then they have all these audiences, right?
0:42:32 And it’s like, “Well, I’m really passionate about talking to stay-at-home moms, but I
0:42:37 want to help kids who are like high school and college age, but I kind of live in the
0:42:41 corporate world and also sort of entrepreneurial.”
0:42:46 So they have too many audiences, too many messages, too many platforms, too many business models.
0:42:51 And what happens is they bounce off the wall.
0:42:57 And the reason that they bounce off the wall is because if you have diluted focus, you
0:43:01 get diluted results, period.
0:43:05 If you have diluted focus, you get diluted results.
0:43:09 And so if you look at Lewis Howes as an example, so he was our very first client.
0:43:11 I had met him at our former company.
0:43:13 We had been friends.
0:43:15 I had casually helped him with his first book launch.
0:43:19 And then when we sold our first company, Lewis and I reconnected.
0:43:23 He actually called us and said, “Hey, I’d love your brain on my business.”
0:43:26 And he’s the whole reason we started Brand Builders Group because we weren’t planning
0:43:28 on doing this.
0:43:32 And we didn’t teach Lewis podcast tactics to grow his show.
0:43:35 We didn’t teach him any of that stuff.
0:43:40 What happened was we took him through this process and we found that he had 17 revenue
0:43:41 streams.
0:43:45 And he had always been told by his friends and community, like, “Multiple streams of
0:43:46 income.”
0:43:49 Well, multiple streams of income is crappy advice.
0:43:54 It is terrible advice when you’re just first starting out.
0:43:59 Nobody who got super rich got super rich from multiple streams of income.
0:44:02 They got super rich by being amazing at one thing.
0:44:05 What you need is not multiple streams of income.
0:44:12 You need one freaking amazing stream of income, one brilliant stream of income, one thing
0:44:16 that you monetize the crap out of that does really, really well.
0:44:18 That’s how you break through the wall.
0:44:22 Once you’re sitting on a pile of money, then you diversify.
0:44:23 Sarah Blakely didn’t have multiple streams of income.
0:44:25 It’s not how she got rich.
0:44:29 Even Warren Buffett, even though he invested in a lot of things, investing is the only
0:44:31 thing he does.
0:44:36 You look at athletes, all of these people, they had one stream of income.
0:44:38 Well, Lewis had 17.
0:44:42 One of the exercises we take people through is called the revenue streams assessment.
0:44:45 We just look at how long have you been doing them?
0:44:46 What’s the total revenue?
0:44:48 How much stress is it causing you?
0:44:52 How much natural momentum does it have for growth in the future?
0:44:54 It’s like the scoring system.
0:44:58 He had this podcasting thing, which at the time was like a side hustle for him.
0:45:00 He was really a course company.
0:45:02 Most of his money was selling courses.
0:45:08 We said, “Well, this little exercise says that podcasting is the thing that is most
0:45:12 taking off with the least amount of energy, causing you the least amount of stress that
0:45:16 is the most fun and has the biggest opportunity for future growth.”
0:45:24 What would happen if we shut everything else down and just went all in on this one thing?
0:45:29 He’s been so generous about his praise of us, but really, that’s pretty much the only
0:45:31 thing we ever did.
0:45:34 He’s been through, I think, nine of our 14 curriculums, so we have worked a lot with
0:45:35 their team.
0:45:40 Like the main thing was just going, “If you’re a small business, just think about it.
0:45:44 If you’re a small business and you have limited resources, you don’t have hundreds of employees.
0:45:46 You don’t have millions of dollars.
0:45:52 If you just have those few resources spread across 20 things, what’s the likelihood that
0:45:56 any of them is going to take off versus going, “If you take those resources and you put them
0:46:00 all in on one thing, the success is inevitable.”
0:46:02 It almost doesn’t matter what the one thing is.
0:46:05 It just matters that there’s one thing.
0:46:09 This is where too many people try to make the right decision, and what ultra performers
0:46:12 do is they make a decision, and then they make it right.
0:46:17 This is so, so smart, and I feel like it’s reminding me a lot about social media strategy
0:46:18 too.
0:46:21 You don’t see somebody blow up on social media where they’re blowing up on every channel
0:46:23 at once.
0:46:27 Somebody blows up on LinkedIn or somebody blows up on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok.
0:46:28 Then they move on to other platforms.
0:46:33 It’s like you also have to build leverage on the social platforms as well, not just the
0:46:34 revenue stream.
0:46:39 So, I think going deep and not too wide is the key when you’re first starting out.
0:46:40 Yeah, you’re breaking through the wall.
0:46:43 Gary Vaynerchuk’s my favorite example.
0:46:48 Everyone says, “Rory, I think your whole finding uniqueness is stupid because Gary talks about
0:46:49 a million things.”
0:46:50 Yeah, Omni Channel.
0:46:51 Yeah, Omni Channel.
0:46:52 Yeah, Omni Channel.
0:46:56 He talks about rap music and sports and Web 3 and social and business and whatever advertising
0:46:59 and all this stuff.
0:47:01 He tells people, “Talk about all the things you’re passionate about.”
0:47:06 Yeah, except that’s not how he got there.
0:47:09 You can’t look at what those people are doing today.
0:47:12 Look at how he got there.
0:47:20 Gary Vaynerchuk in the beginning talked about one thing on one channel, Wine on YouTube.
0:47:22 So, I love Gary.
0:47:24 I don’t know him personally.
0:47:25 I have so much respect for him.
0:47:26 I’ve learned so much.
0:47:30 But I go, “He did not get there by doing what he’s doing now.
0:47:33 You can’t get to where he is by doing what he’s doing now.
0:47:37 You have to look at what he did and you break through the wall on that one thing, on one
0:47:41 channel, one topic and just go, “What’s the likelihood of success?”
0:47:45 Talking on YouTube and TikTok and Podcast and LinkedIn and Instagram about 25 different
0:47:51 things or going, “I’m going to dominate the topic of Wine on YouTube.”
0:47:55 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
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0:49:06 Let’s talk about why personal branding is not just for influencers.
0:49:11 Why is personal branding something that’s important for anybody who’s in business?
0:49:15 I’ll start with the common sense part first.
0:49:19 The reason that it applies to everybody is because when people hear the word personal
0:49:23 brand or personal branding, they think the wrong things.
0:49:29 They think social media, they think it means podcasting or social media or speaking or
0:49:34 writing books or creating a course, but that’s not how we think of it.
0:49:35 That’s not how we define it.
0:49:40 To us, personal branding is not a new concept.
0:49:43 It’s a new expression of an old concept.
0:49:48 Personal branding is simply the digitization of reputation.
0:49:56 The reputation’s been around since the dawn of time.
0:50:00 What do people know you for and what do they know about you in real life and do they trust
0:50:01 you?
0:50:06 All we’re doing with personal branding is digitizing that and automating trust at scale.
0:50:08 I’m not saying those things aren’t valuable.
0:50:09 They’re super valuable.
0:50:14 They’re super valuable, but many of the most influential people you meet and many of the
0:50:20 most influential relationships also will come offline, not online.
0:50:23 Even you and I, you’ve got this great following.
0:50:25 I’ve never had a huge social media following.
0:50:28 We’ve always been offline people and we’re a coaching company.
0:50:32 Even the service we provide in the world is very human.
0:50:37 It’s one-on-one human-to-human kind of thing, but I met you because Julie Solomon introduced
0:50:42 you to me and then I recognized Jenna and Amy and a lot of our other friends.
0:50:47 It was your offline reputation that really caught my attention and then supplemented
0:50:51 by your online reputation, which is clearly super impressive.
0:50:56 I think the reason it matters in business, I mean, the reason I know it matters in business
0:50:59 is because reputation matters in business.
0:51:05 Today, reputation is determined at least as much by what your online reputation is, is
0:51:06 your offline one.
0:51:10 If you don’t have one, it’s just like going, “Well, would you want to not have an offline
0:51:11 reputation?”
0:51:16 You would never say, “I don’t need a reputation and I don’t need people to say good things
0:51:18 about me or to know about me.”
0:51:19 That’s vain.
0:51:23 You would never say that about an offline reputation, but those are the things we sort
0:51:28 of erently say about personal branding online just because it’s newer and we don’t understand
0:51:33 it and because business people don’t want to point and dance and do trending songs and
0:51:36 spend their whole day trying to deconstruct an algorithm.
0:51:41 That’s not how they spend their time, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s super
0:51:44 important and becoming more and more and more critical.
0:51:46 That’s the common sense part.
0:51:51 If you look at the data, if you’re going to talk about business people, we’re very, very
0:51:53 data-driven as a company.
0:51:57 Part of why we do the various things we do is because it’s data.
0:52:04 One of the things that we led, a PhD-led academic research study weighted to the US Census,
0:52:08 it’s a statistically valid and it’s a national to the US.
0:52:12 We didn’t do it for the whole world, but we spent tens of thousands of dollars on this.
0:52:20 In fact, if you want to go download the study, if you go to freebrandstudy.com/profiting,
0:52:23 you can download a copy of the full study.
0:52:28 One of the things that we found is that 74% of Americans say they are more likely to
0:52:32 trust somebody who has an established personal brand.
0:52:37 That’s across all ages, income ranges.
0:52:40 We trust people who have an established personal brand.
0:52:45 When you look at the professions, one of the things that we asked, so one of the questions
0:52:50 is, “How important is it to you that each of the following people have an established
0:52:51 personal brand?”
0:52:58 We asked the general public, “Which careers, which professions, does it most matter to you
0:53:01 that your provider has a personal brand?”
0:53:08 The top ranked spot, 61% of people said they want their doctor to have a personal brand.
0:53:12 58% of people said they want their lawyer to have an established personal brand.
0:53:17 55% of people say they want their financial advisor, their banker, their business consultant
0:53:19 to have a personal brand.
0:53:22 53% said they want their insurance agent to have a personal brand.
0:53:26 52% said they want their real estate agent to have a personal brand.
0:53:28 This goes on and on and on.
0:53:30 Here’s what we found.
0:53:36 The higher the requirement for trust, the more the general population cares that you
0:53:39 have a personal brand.
0:53:42 The question is, “How much does trust matter in your business?”
0:53:48 If it matters a lot, you probably need to take this thing seriously because reputation
0:53:52 precedes revenue.
0:53:56 That’s why it matters to business people and some of them have caught onto it, right?
0:54:02 Ed Milette, Jamie Kern Lima, Elon Musk, like Richard Branson.
0:54:05 These people have caught onto it early, and it’s made a big impact.
0:54:09 Other people have not yet, and they’re falling behind.
0:54:13 As you’re talking, what I keep hearing is the opportunity for people in professions
0:54:18 like doctors, lawyers to really step in and dominate their niche.
0:54:21 There’s really not that many people in those types of professions.
0:54:26 You do see the people that do have a personal brand, they’re traditionally on billboards
0:54:27 or buses.
0:54:30 I feel like they probably make way more money than the average person who’s not doing those
0:54:31 sorts of things.
0:54:35 Imagine if they just built their personal brand on social media because I’m getting
0:54:39 more and more like doctors wanting to be on LinkedIn, so I am seeing this as a really
0:54:40 big trend.
0:54:43 You brought up trust.
0:54:49 Why is trust so important and what are the tangible ways that people can build trust online?
0:54:53 In order to answer that question, you’ll see this recurring theme in what we do.
0:54:57 To answer the question, how do you best build trust online, we would say, how do you best
0:55:00 build trust offline?
0:55:06 If you made a list of the top 10 people you trust in your life, like with trust with your
0:55:12 life or with your kids, like I’ve got two toddlers, so if you go, who would you trust?
0:55:16 There’s a good chance that the people on that list, like you would trust with your banking
0:55:22 information or that kind of stuff, there’s a good chance you know those people intimately.
0:55:25 You know where they eat.
0:55:27 You know where they live.
0:55:28 You know about their families.
0:55:30 You know where they went to college.
0:55:31 You know where they grew up.
0:55:33 You know about their siblings.
0:55:35 You know maybe some of their fears.
0:55:37 You know some of their mistakes.
0:55:40 You know those people intimately.
0:55:43 When I first got on social media, I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is so stupid.
0:55:46 Why is everyone posting pictures of what they ate?”
0:55:55 Then I realized, “Oh, because we trust people that we know intimate details about their
0:55:56 life.”
0:56:00 Now, that doesn’t mean you have to post pictures of your kids, right?
0:56:05 There’s a lot of reasons why not to and a lot of fears why not to.
0:56:07 AJ and I happen to do it a lot.
0:56:12 AJ is my wife and she’s also my co-founder and the CEO of Brand Builders Group, by the
0:56:13 way.
0:56:16 We were business partners in our former company that we sold and then we started Brand Builders
0:56:17 Group just the two of us.
0:56:20 She’s the CEO and I’m the CMO and we’re married, right?
0:56:22 We got two kids, so we post.
0:56:26 We happen to share those things occasionally.
0:56:29 We trust people that we know details about their life.
0:56:32 If I see someone walking down the alley, I’ve never seen them before.
0:56:34 I don’t know anything about the person.
0:56:39 If it’s dark and it’s an alley and I’ve never seen the person before, my spidey senses go
0:56:40 up.
0:56:43 I’m in an alley with a stranger.
0:56:44 That’s how it is, right?
0:56:45 Who’s going to buy from a stranger?
0:56:46 Nobody.
0:56:48 They got to know something about you.
0:56:50 Who else do we trust in real life?
0:56:53 Well, we tend to trust people who we learn from.
0:56:55 We trust pastors.
0:56:56 We trust lawyers.
0:56:57 We trust accountants.
0:56:58 We trust doctors.
0:57:00 We trust experts.
0:57:01 We trust teachers.
0:57:02 We trust mentors.
0:57:04 We trust counselors.
0:57:07 We trust people who teach us things.
0:57:09 Who else do we trust in real life?
0:57:12 We tend to trust people who entertain us.
0:57:14 They make us laugh.
0:57:16 They make us inspired.
0:57:19 They’re musical or they’re entertaining.
0:57:20 We see them on movies.
0:57:21 I mean, think about that.
0:57:26 We trust movie stars who we’ve never met, but we see them a lot.
0:57:28 Who else do we trust in real life?
0:57:32 We tend to trust people who encourage us in our darkest moments.
0:57:36 The people who were there when you had your heartbreak, when you didn’t get into that
0:57:42 school or you didn’t get that job or the relationship fell apart or you lost money on that deal.
0:57:45 The people who were there to encourage us in that moment.
0:57:48 Those are the people we trust because it’s like we’ve been through the fire.
0:57:49 I know you.
0:57:51 You got my back.
0:57:56 When you roll that forward to online, we have three simple strategies that we teach.
0:57:59 We call them the three E’s for content marketing.
0:58:03 First of all, educate, encourage, and entertain.
0:58:06 Educate, encourage, and entertain.
0:58:11 We typically say your feed should be more of what you do and it should educate, encourage,
0:58:14 or entertain because strangers don’t care about your cat.
0:58:20 The only people who care about your cat typically are going to be, once they’re intrigued by
0:58:24 you and they want to really vet you out, that’s where they go, “Who are you really?”
0:58:27 I’m a hardcore Bible thump and Jesus freak.
0:58:33 I post Bible verses every day in my stories because I read the Bible every day.
0:58:39 I started a whole podcast just looking at the academic and logical scrutiny for the
0:58:41 evidence of Jesus of Nazareth.
0:58:42 It’s called Eternal Life.
0:58:43 This was a huge side project.
0:58:44 I make no money for it.
0:58:46 It’s not associated with any churches.
0:58:49 There’s no sponsors or anything, but it was a huge personal project that I did.
0:58:52 I shared all of that in my stories.
0:58:54 Occasionally, you see it in my feed.
0:58:58 Occasionally, you see me talk about my kids in my feed.
0:59:03 Most of my feed is education and encouragement because I’m not that entertaining, but if
0:59:07 I was, I’d be entertaining on that feed too.
0:59:09 This is such great advice.
0:59:12 I align with everything that you say, and I think the biggest takeaway that I had from
0:59:17 what you just talked about was the fact that we trust people that we know personal details
0:59:18 about.
0:59:19 I get a lot of clients.
0:59:22 I do social media for folks, and a lot of people are really like, “I don’t want to talk
0:59:23 about my kids.
0:59:24 I don’t want to talk about private life.
0:59:25 I don’t want to talk about politics.
0:59:28 I don’t want to talk about this, that,” and I’m like, “Well, we’re going to need to talk
0:59:34 about something that’s personal to you so that people feel connected to you and can relate
0:59:36 to you and feel like they know you.”
0:59:40 I’m so aligned with everything that you’re saying.
0:59:42 One of my last questions for you on personal branding, and we’re going to start to close
0:59:47 out this interview, is what are the common mistakes that you see people make with their
0:59:48 personal brand?
0:59:52 The number one mistake we already talked about is diluted focus, diluted results.
0:59:57 Too many messages, too many audiences, too many platforms, too many monetization streams,
1:00:01 just too much stuff, you need to find one thing.
1:00:05 If you think about breaking through the wall, literally think about trying to knock down
1:00:07 a concrete wall.
1:00:11 Even if you took a sledgehammer, if you hit all different spots on that wall, you’re not
1:00:13 doing anything to it.
1:00:19 The only way is to hit the same spot over and over and over and over, and eventually it
1:00:20 would be frustrating at first, right?
1:00:23 It would feel like nothing’s happening, but it would chip a little bit, and then it would
1:00:27 chip a little more, and you hit it over and over and over, and it’s like, “This is how
1:00:28 it is.
1:00:33 You’re doing it a consistent, consistent, consistent, same message, really dominating
1:00:38 your niche,” and then eventually you would crack through the wall, and once that first
1:00:42 hole opened up, then the whole wall would collapse.
1:00:44 The mistake is they’re doing too many things.
1:00:46 They don’t have focus.
1:00:52 Our entire methodology, our entire curriculum, is actually 14 different two-day experiences.
1:00:56 That’s like our full, like if you did the full everything we do, there are 14 different
1:00:57 two-day experiences.
1:01:04 Well, the very first question in the first experience is a super simple question which
1:01:11 almost nobody can answer, and it is, “What problem do you solve in one word?
1:01:15 What problem do you solve for the world in one word?”
1:01:18 Most people cannot answer that question.
1:01:21 If you cannot answer that question in one word, there’s no way your audience is ever
1:01:24 going to be able to answer that question, so how are they going to refer you?
1:01:26 We buy solutions to problems, right?
1:01:31 I get a flat tire, I have a flood in the house, and I call a plumber, right?
1:01:33 We buy solutions to problems.
1:01:35 You have to be able to articulate the problem you solve.
1:01:38 If you can’t articulate the problem you solve in one word, this game is over before you
1:01:40 even started.
1:01:41 That’s the thing.
1:01:42 It’s just too much.
1:01:47 Honestly, that’s the only mistake, Hala, that really matters.
1:01:49 Probably that and consistency, right?
1:01:55 Once you get it, everything else is a tactic that can be tweaked or figured out or somebody
1:02:00 brilliant like you has got the answer for how to do it, you just got to find it.
1:02:02 You are like a wealth of information.
1:02:05 First of all, I want to invite you to my mastermind to talk about branding.
1:02:09 I talk a lot about branding, but I feel like you know so much, so I’d love to invite you
1:02:10 to my mastermind.
1:02:13 I know that you actually do free coaching calls at your company.
1:02:15 Can you tell us about that?
1:02:16 Yeah, totally.
1:02:23 We, as I mentioned, we’re very human experience, so we do the first call with everybody for
1:02:24 free.
1:02:28 Free brand call dot com forward slash profiting.
1:02:31 Free brand call dot com forward slash profiting.
1:02:34 I mentioned freebrandstudy.com forward slash profiting.
1:02:38 If you just want to download the study, you can go just get the data, but freebrandcall.com
1:02:43 slash profiting, you can fill out a form and we will do the first call for free with
1:02:45 everybody.
1:02:46 We just want to hear your story.
1:02:50 We want to hear who you are and what you’re about.
1:02:52 Most of the clients we work with are not the celebrities.
1:02:57 A lot of my private clients like you are people that are pretty well known, but our company,
1:03:02 we work with people just starting out to intermediate, to like advance, but all the above.
1:03:07 But if there’s a shortcut to finding your uniqueness, here’s the pattern that we noticed.
1:03:09 We didn’t know this when we started the company.
1:03:12 We figured this out after about like 1500 clients.
1:03:19 You are always most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.
1:03:26 Your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.
1:03:30 On our first call, that’s what we usually ask about is who are you?
1:03:31 Who have you been?
1:03:32 What challenge have you conquered?
1:03:34 What setback have you survived?
1:03:36 What obstacle have you overcome?
1:03:38 What tragedy have you triumphed over?
1:03:39 We want to hear your story.
1:03:44 We want to know about you because we know that if we can really understand your story,
1:03:49 put a little strategy behind it, then we can set you on a path and reconnect you with
1:03:54 people like Hala that can give you more and more of the tactics, and you’re going to
1:03:57 blow up, but we got to find your uniqueness.
1:04:00 We got to know what is the divine design of your life?
1:04:02 What is the calling?
1:04:03 Why are you here?
1:04:08 And for most of us, at least for our audience of mission-driven messengers, it’s not to
1:04:09 be famous.
1:04:14 It’s about serving and serving the person that you once were, your most powerfully positioned
1:04:16 to serve the person you once were.
1:04:19 For Young Improfiters, I think you should definitely take Rory up on his offer.
1:04:21 We’re going to stick all those links in the show notes.
1:04:23 You should book a free coaching call.
1:04:27 Rory, I, and my show with two questions that I ask all my guests.
1:04:32 The first one is, what is one actionable thing our Young Improfiters can do today to become
1:04:34 more profitable tomorrow?
1:04:39 Other than requesting a call with us, which is an actionable thing you can do, I would
1:04:46 ask you specifically when it comes to making money, I would say, look at your business and
1:04:50 your life, and go, where do you have the most natural momentum?
1:04:55 Where are you winning the most while trying the least?
1:05:01 The more that you can lean into that, the faster you will make money.
1:05:05 Oftentimes, it’s doing the thing you’re already doing, but doing it better and letting go
1:05:07 of the other stuff.
1:05:12 It often is serving your current customer in a deeper way.
1:05:18 And so consumed with millions of followers and more people and more reach, they’re overlooking
1:05:20 the people that are right in front of them.
1:05:26 Most of us do not need millions of customers to double our income.
1:05:33 Most of us would double our best year ever with a couple dozen of our perfect clients.
1:05:37 So you don’t have to chase the quantity of everything.
1:05:39 Serve the people who are in front of you.
1:05:42 Look at where you have the most natural momentum.
1:05:49 Double down on that and say no, at least temporarily, procrastinate on purpose to everything else.
1:05:50 So good.
1:05:52 Such great advice, Rory.
1:05:54 Very impressed with your interview today.
1:05:58 My last question for you is, what is your secret to profiting in life, and this can
1:05:59 go beyond business?
1:06:00 It’s interesting.
1:06:04 So I mentioned my wife, AJ, who’s now been my business partner since 2006.
1:06:10 So she took a spiritual assessment, like your spiritual gifts one time, and she found out
1:06:13 that her spiritual gift is making money.
1:06:16 And I’m like, yes, that’s what I’m talking about.
1:06:21 I want to be a kept man, you know, high role and wifey.
1:06:31 But in all seriousness, I think that a huge key in someone’s ability to attract money is
1:06:38 for them to develop a healthy relationship that includes a comfortable separation from
1:06:39 money.
1:06:45 People who think of money as a shield or a defense or something that they have to hold
1:06:49 tightly onto, they never get much more than they have.
1:06:50 It’s sort of like a closed fist, right?
1:06:53 You get to keep what’s in your hand, but you’re never going to get more than what’s in there
1:06:56 because nothing can get out, but nothing can get in.
1:07:01 The people who have the most money think of money not as like a shield, but as a tool,
1:07:07 a tool to invest and to use and predominantly to give.
1:07:11 The reason why as a Christian, I want to make loads and loads of money.
1:07:15 I don’t need private jets and private islands and all that sort of stuff.
1:07:21 For me, there is some amount of money that I needed first to get debt free, then to have
1:07:25 the lifestyle that I wanted to have, which mostly included hiring the staff to do all
1:07:30 the things that I wanted to do so that I didn’t have to do them.
1:07:35 After that, you find that that much more money is not really going to satisfy you.
1:07:44 The truth is, peace is the new profit and giving money and using your money to help
1:07:50 other people or investing money into your platform in a way that serves people.
1:07:55 That’s what’s really going to give you peace, not some number in a bank account.
1:07:56 It just won’t.
1:08:00 I mean, we had four billionaire clients with a B last year.
1:08:05 We work with a lot of really wealthy people and I’m telling you, it’s not the amount
1:08:06 of money.
1:08:09 They’re all chasing peace and more money won’t give you peace.
1:08:11 More fame won’t give you peace.
1:08:16 For me, the greatest source of happiness and peace is service.
1:08:18 As a Christian, it’s love God and love others.
1:08:19 That’s the whole message.
1:08:20 It’s service.
1:08:23 That’s where you’ll find peace and peace is the new profit.
1:08:24 So beautiful.
1:08:25 Peace is new profit.
1:08:26 I love it.
1:08:27 Okay.
1:08:29 So where can everybody learn more about you?
1:08:32 I know that you’ve got a podcast.
1:08:33 Remind us about the call.
1:08:34 Let us know.
1:08:38 Honestly, if you’re interested in learning about us, I would just say go to one of the
1:08:46 two places I mentioned, freebrandstudy.com/profiting or freebrandcall.com/profiting.
1:08:49 Whether you, if you want the study or the call or you know, you could do both, but I
1:08:50 would just say go there.
1:08:51 You can learn all about us.
1:08:52 You can learn about our clients.
1:08:56 That’ll point you back to me and other places.
1:08:59 So I would just say go there and let’s be friends.
1:09:00 Awesome.
1:09:03 Rory, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.
1:09:05 Hala, thank you so much for having me.
1:09:10 I’m so impressed by you and thus very, very honored to be a part of this.
1:09:11 So appreciate it.
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