Fighting Fire with Fire – Dave Albin

Dave Albin

Hey guys, I am  excited for this interview, but I did wanna let you know there are some tough things that are discussed at one point, some drug use,  an attempted suicide,  some gun violence. I just wanted you to know so that you have the opportunity to skip the episode if you want to

it’s a great episode, so I hope you join us, but definitely not at the expense of your mental health.

Miriam: [00:00:00] Okay guys, I am so excited to introduce you to Dave Albin. He’s someone I have actually been really looking forward to having a conversation with partly because of what your current business is right now, fire Walk adventures, but also partly because you spent 20 years with Tony Robbins and anybody who knows anything about self-development and growth and business growth and mindset knows Tony Robbins

welcome. I can’t wait to see where we go today.

Dave: Yeah, my pleasure. It’s, I’m excited to be here. This is, Good deal. Okay.

[00:00:35] Dave’s Fire in His Life

Miriam: So I know you have like this incredible story and the story, you

know, goes from maybe high to the lowest of the lows and then coming back up, do you mind just giving us some of your history and then we’ll get into where you’ve been and what you’re doing now?

Dave: Sure. So when I was born, I, I was born to a single mom mom was hardworking. She was [00:01:00] Rosie the Riveter in World War ii.

She helped build airplanes. She worked for McDonald Douglass, and she also worked at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, which is right down, you know, on Hollywood Boulevard. And so when I was born, she also had two other sons. Both different fathers, and so it was just too much. It was just, I, I, I was way more than, you know, she could handle, so she put me up for adoption.

And who would’ve been my aunt and uncle? My, my biological mother’s sister adopted me at the age of five. And so then I moved in with them. I moved from Hollywood. They lived in Long Beach, California. And when I was around 11. They told me that I was adopted. . And shortly after that, things changed because my dad had sworn off drinking when they adopted me at five, and now I’m 11.

Childhood

And right after they told me they both started drinking. And so that sh that changed and altered everything. [00:02:00] You go from. Now being told these aren’t your parents and now they’re drinking and they’re acting out. So things got really bumpy, if you will, at around 11 years old. And I became fascinated with what happened.

You know, I had this beautiful childhood, you know, we used to go camping. We went, I was in Southern California. , we’d go to Big Bear, we’d go to Yosemite, we’d go to Lake Arrowhead. We went to all these really cool places and all of a sudden, boom, it just kind of came to a screeching hall. So I took a fascination on with alcohol because I was watching these two really cool people who were supposed to be my mom and dad turn into, you know, not such nice people.

Alcohol Fire

And so I tried alcohol at a very young age. Well, I had no. I mean, literally the first time I drank at a very young age, I, I, I was an alcoholic. I, it just took over. I mean, I, it was exhilarating. It was just, you know, it was like pouring rocket fuel into your blood

it just took over with all that, well, the alcohol, you [00:03:00] know, Got me into, into drugs. It was a gateway, no doubt about it. And I got into hard drugs pretty, pretty quickly. Well, to fast forward all that I didn’t get sober until June of 1988, June 8th, 1988. I woke up that morning and I couldn’t. I was done.

I just, I, I couldn’t, I couldn’t imagine living another day as painful as I had been living over the last couple of years. The emotional pain, the physical pain, the spiritual pain, I was done. And I, and the only thing I thought was to end this is put a, put a bullet in your head and it’ll stop. I knew that, I knew this pain would stop.

And so, and can

[00:03:41] Substance Abuse Fire

Miriam: I interrupt and ask really quickly, how, how many years had you been abusing substances at that point?

Dave: So I was, what? I was in my early thirties and I had been, I had been drinking and doing drugs since I was 12. So close to 20. Close to 20 years. Right. And, and, [00:04:00] and, you know, and when you’re doing drugs like that, You’re in that environment, you know, like Tony Robbins likes to say, you know, we are who we spend time with, and you better be really careful who you decide to spend time with because you will become who you spend time with.

Well, when you’re around drug dealers and pimps and prostitution and guns and violent, that was my peer group, right? Yeah. So that, that morning, June 8th, 88, guns in the mouth ready to pull the trigger, and I was married to a woman who had three kids. They were my stepchildren. And I thought, you know what?

This isn’t fair to them. Cuz when you pull that trigger, yeah, your pain goes away. But what about them? You’re in their basement, their house as well, and they’re gonna see, yeah. Now their pain starts. Their pain starts. They’re gonna have P T S D. Now, I didn’t know that at the time, but I know now that’s what would’ve developed.

Sure. And so now I’m kind of wrestling with it and I said, well go outside and do it. Go walk out into the woods. But they still would’ve had to deal with it. Right? It would’ve permeated through school. Oh my gosh. You know, these [00:05:00] kids father killed themselves. You know, and, and so really what it became was a moment of compassion for them.

Alcoholics Anonymous

And I thought, all right, so well now what are you gonna do? You know, I’m almost upset at them because I can’t kill myself. And I called a little organization, some of, I’m sure your listeners have, have probably heard of called Alcoholics Anonymous, and that was it. I, I, I called, they sent somebody to come pick me up.

I went, I went to four meetings on day. . Literally I went to a 1230, a four 30, a six 30, and an eight 30 meeting. So one meeting turned into a week, turned into a month, and they gave you a chip. They gave you a medallion for that, right?

And then a month turned into two, then three months, and then six months, and then a year. And, and then, you know, I picked up one, I don’t know if you can see it but that one there says 34 years. Wow. And I’ll pick up one. This year and June for 35 years. Wow. So what happened there was [00:06:00] that opened me up, you know, not only are you working the 12 steps, which put your life back together, I had also kind of opened me up to the personal development industry.

Tony Robbins and Fire

Well, I had a lot of insomnia. In the beginning cuz it was rough. Cuz when you’re coming off cocaine and heroin and alcohol all at the same time, I’m gonna tell you right now, it’s not easy. And I was up late one night. Like I, like I was a lot. I had in som. And there he was the man himself Tony Robbins Young, Tony Robbins. Really, you know, RA he’s talking about this.

And we’ll do more to a Was was this on tv? Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, no. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Late night tv. Okay. It was, it was an infomercial was what it was. And you know, he was really enthusiastic. And actually I was like even mad at him.

[00:06:42] Pain and Pleasure

Dave: Like, what a jerk, how, how can you be this positive about life? Right? Because I was so miserable and he talked about pain and pleasure, right? That we’ll do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure. And I went, well, I’m in a lot of pain. And then he said, you know, the two, the two motivating factors in everybody’s life is that we’re [00:07:00] either motivated out of inspiration or desperation.

And I went, wow, I’m pretty. Yeah, and I bought, and I bought his program and, and it came on little white things called cassette tapes, and and I, and I got ’em. I unwrapped it, I plugged it in and I did, I went through the entire program and I did everything that man asked me to do. Then I read his book and then I loaned the tape program to a friend of mine and who was also an aa.

He had about a year and a half on me. He was about a year and a half ahead of me and. He called me seven years later and said, Hey, Alvi Tony Robbins is coming to town. W we can go see him live. He goes, dude, you got me into this. Let’s go see this guy. Calls me back an hour. And he said, done. We pick up the tickets that we’ll call. Here’s what they told us to do. Number one, bring snacks. You’re gonna spend a lot of time in the room. Number two, hydrate. Drink a lot of water.

Bring a Good Attitude

Number three, bring a [00:08:00] good attitude. And number four, be ready to play full out. I said, Dan, how much was the ticket? He said, 700 bucks, . I said, I’ll play full out, don’t you worry. Yeah. And this is, I’m ready to hang up the phone. He goes, oh, oh, oh, oh, wait, wait, wait. By the way, guess what? We’re gonna be doing a fire walk.

I mean, literally when he started to say that, it was almost like everything just slowed down. Yeah. And I remember. We’re gonna do what? And my brain’s going, no, Uhuh ain’t gonna happen.

Miriam: Yeah, so let me, let me interrupt you for a second because I wanna hear about this piece, but I wanna give a little bit of background. I know what you’re talking about, but not all our listeners do.

So before we get to the fire walk, what were named three things that were in Tony’s tapes or the books or whatever, that helps you get your life on track because self-develop. Is like a river and you can step in it any place [00:09:00] along, you know, wherever you are in your life, it’s gonna pull you forward in a couple different ways.

What were a couple things that took you, from what I’m gonna assume, your life was in total chaos with all this drugs and everything. Yep. You’re starting to get off the drugs, you still don’t know the right people yet, blah, blah. Tell, gimme a couple tips. Self-development things that took you from chaos to less chaos.

We are the Architects Fire

Dave: Wow. That’s really a great, great stopping point to ask those questions. No one’s ever done that. I think the first one would be, I learned early on that what doesn’t challenge you, doesn’t change you. Okay. Which, which was number one. Number two was we are who we spend time with. Yeah, for sure. And then number three was, why don’t we get what we want?

And the answer to that is there’s a story that we, that we, that we make up along the way, right? Because everything that happens to any human being on this planet, we create a story [00:10:00] in and around whatever that was, whether it’s good or bad. Yeah. Right. So some people, bad things happen. They create a bad story.

And so the bottom line is that, you know, we’re the architects of that story.

Yeah.

Miriam: So what was the, in a sentence, what was the story you were telling yourself at the time.

Dave: You know that I was, you know, I got kicked outta high school. I was stupid. I had never amount to anything. It doesn’t matter. I’ll never get out of this.

Miriam: And you were living U up or down to that, down to that story?

Dave: Yeah. Oh yeah. I, it, it had

e everything that I was living is what I told myself. Yeah, it totally, and a lot of it makes sense and a lot of it wasn’t true. Of

Miriam: course. No, of course not. But it’s what you believed and so then it’s what you lived out.

Right.

[00:10:43] The Firewalk Conference Fire

Miriam: Okay, so hang on then. So your buddy gets you these tickets and $700 back then. I don’t remember. I think it was probably a lot of money. I’m pretty sure Tony charges something like five or $7,000 for these conferences now, which was probably comparable. That was a lot of [00:11:00] money. So now you’re going in, going, yeah, I’m gonna play full out.

Okay. You’re gonna play full out. Take us back to the conference and the fire walk.

Dave: All right. So we get there. It’s the day of the event. Yeah. And we, and we we get, we take our seats at around two o’clock in the a. So Tony takes the stage at around two. Well, the next thing I know, it’s after midnight and, and, and, and as he’s getting ready to take us out into this giant parking lot.

I’m with 3000 people. Yeah. So there’s a lot of people there, right? Well, as he’s getting ready to take us out into this giant parking lot, he says, take your shoes off. And I’m like, uhoh. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. I’m not doing this fire.

So, and as he gets you ready to go out there, he gets you to start chanting.

Right. So everybody’s going, yes, yes. Yeah. And so when you’ve got 3000, 3,500 people chanting, it’s intense. And they’re all doing it walking out there, right? There’s a giant [00:12:00] fire over here in the corner.

Fight or Flight

It’s just massive. It’s been burning all day. And so what they did was, is they would take wheelbarrows over to the fire and, and the coals burned all day and they render, they burn down, then they load them into, into a wheelbarrow. Then they would take a wheelbarrow and they would pull it in between two lanes of sod of grass.

Right about oh three feet wide, maybe 15 feet long, and then they would take a flathead shovel and they would just shovel the coals out onto that grass. Sure. And that’s what you, that’s what you would walk on? Yeah. Well, in addition to the chanting, he’s got African drummers, right. So it’s like, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun dun, dun dun.

And you’re like, you know, your brain is, you’re fried. Yeah. You’ve got no references for this. Your brain is just full. You know, fight or flight and it’s, it’s intense is all I can say. Well, remember, I’m not gonna walk, so what’s my strategy? I’ll just go hide out in the [00:13:00] back. Now I, now I’m dealing with the other times in my life where I ran from fear. I let fear take things away from me, or fear control me, right? So what’s it gonna be? Forget everything and run, which is what I’m doing. Or is it gonna be face everything and rise?

I’m going to the back cuz that’s what I’m used to. That’s my pattern that I’m running and it’s not a good strategy. . And the reason this is not a good strategy is Tony’s people know where all the cowards are . And so here they come.

You’re Not Alone Fire

They come looking for us because I wasn’t alone. I can tell you that. Yeah, yeah, I’m sure. And here comes this guy out of nowhere and he gets probably 20 feet from me and he makes eye contact with me and he gets a little closer and he looks in, he kind of leans in a little bit very calmly, and he goes, are you okay

And when we’re not, okay, what do we say? Oh yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m good. Oh yeah. All good here, buddy. You betcha. Never been. Right. I’m outta my [00:14:00] mind right now at this point. And so he asked me a question. He said, well, are you gonna walk tonight ? And I was like, absolutely not.

He goes, Hey, that’s cool. That’s not a problem. We don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to. And I went, wow, okay. I like this guy. He’s my ticket outta here. And then he asked me a question that changed my life forever.

And the question was, well, wouldn’t you at least like to watch? And I said, well, I’m thinking, yeah, I’d like to watch these idiots burn their feet off. This should be pretty enter. And I said, sure. He goes, well, you’re not gonna be able to see anything from way back here. And he is right. I, there was a hundred yards between me and where they were, the lanes were, and where they were actually walking.

Getting in Line Fire

And I had nothing but a sea of 3000 people in front of me. I couldn’t see anything. So he said, well, you’re not gonna be able to see anything from back here. You’re gonna have to, you’re gonna have to get in line. All right. . [00:15:00] Now in his defense, he was telling the truth. Yeah. Because I couldn’t see anything and I wouldn’t be able to see anything.

So I got in line thinking, I’ll just get in line. No big deal. And I saw them and they were walking on fire and my brain is like, what?

In? What, how is this possible? What’s going on? What, what’s wrong with these people? I mean, my brain’s going nuts. And the next thing I know, this guy comes up and he whispers in my ear and he said, he knows when you’re ready. When he says, go, you go. And I remember thinking you didn’t get the memo, pal. Let me tell you where you can go.

[00:15:39] Keep Your Eyes Up

Dave: I’m not doing this. Yeah. And so I just, and all of a sudden I’m watching and I’m watching, and. I look down and there I am. Yeah, I’m at the front of the line. My heart’s beating outta my chest. I’m looking down. You can see the coals on the grass. They’re bright red, glowing. [00:16:00] There’s a wheelbarrow there. You can feel the heat coming off, and there’s a trainer standing at every lane for guys like me, and I’m staring into the abyss under these calls, and all of a sudden the trainer goes Eyes.

And I went, oh geez. Yeah. Okay. Eyes up. Well, yeah, I’m in a room with Tony Robbins for 10 hours and guess what he teaches you? Keep your eyes up. Don’t stare at what you fear. You wanna look to the celebration in, so the outcome that you’re looking for to break through, breaking through that fear. And my eyes are up and he goes, squeeze your fish and say, yes.

And I went, yes. And he went stronger. And I went, yes. You know, I’m kind of like, what, who is this guy? And then he got in my face and he screamed at me and he said, screamer. And, and now I’m ticked off, right? And I threw my hands in the air and I screamed at the top of my voice, yes. And he goes, go.

And I took off. [00:17:00] And so they positioned two guys at the end of the. And they stop you. They’re like, stop, wipe your feet and celebrate. If those guys weren’t there, I would’ve walked all the way to Albuquerque at that point, right?  Cause you’re in such a mm-hmm. in such an incredible state. And, and here’s what’s interesting.

Success

And so next thing I know, I thought I burnt my feet. It felt like I burnt them and I looked at my feet and they were dirty, but they weren’t burnt. Hmm. So I just walked on Cole’s for that are a thousand degrees. I was successful at it and I had no clue how I did. None. Zero. And I could get into all kinds of science and technology and physics and all this kind of stuff.

And to this day, having done this now for, what, almost three decades, I, I don’t know. I just don’t know, and I don’t even, right,

Miriam: so, so pause for a second because our audience doesn’t know that. Then after this, at some point you started to work for Tony and you were his fire guide. Like this became your job at a certain point in time.

[00:17:59] The FireWalk

Dave: [00:18:00] And of course I don’t know any of that at in the moment, right? No, I just know I’m standing with 3000 people and I literally started interviewing people. I. They gotta, people have gotta be burnt.

And so I started asking people, Hey did you, did you walk? Yeah. Did you get burnt? They’re like, no, no, no. Everybody said no, but here’s where it got really interesting for me was the next day when I came to that event with 3000 other people that all fire walked the night before, it was the most unbelievable.

Connection humanistically with a group of people that I’d ever experienced in my entire life. Yeah. And that includes, that includes playing sports, the camaraderie of all that. I’d never seen anything like it in my life. People

Miriam: would, well, you guys faced your hugest fear and you did it and it bonded you.

It bonded us, yeah. Because here’s, here’s what was happening. People were laughing, they were crying, they were telling their stories, and it was all in and around that. That fight or flight [00:19:00] moment when they decided to walk and, and they did it right? So that’s what intrigued me. What’s going. That if that brought people together like that, unlike anything I’d ever saw or experienced, I wanted to know more.

Yeah. And so what I found out, Tony uses a lot of volunteers and I found out later, after the event I could get an application, fill it out, send it in, and they might approve you to come crew, cuz Tony will use 300 people.

Family First

So I did that, and then the next thing I know, that was in 95, and by the time 96 rolled around, I got hired as a subcontractor because I had a security background and I had a military background. So they brought me into help with his celebrities. Next thing I know, I’m, I’m on the fire team. And then in 2003 Tony brought me in and said, Al we’d like you to take over all of my fire walks [00:20:00] globally.

But I homeschool my kids. No, my kids, my family are more important. Period. That’s, that’s non-negotiable. And he, he spoke right up. He said, oh wow, I missed that.

He said, well, what if we pay to have them travel with us? Would that help? And I’m like, well, yeah, of course it would.

Where’s our first event? And I said, Sydney Australia. And so that’s how we started literally, you know, their first event. And then, you know, they went everywhere. They went to Hawaii with me. They went to London went to Europe. They, we went all over to United States. And I just want to go on record saying that Tony and his wife Sage who he married later in the process during all this, treated my family like gold, They loved my kids.

And then we just went along and I, and it was just, you know, event after event, after event, after event and celebrities and just all over the world and, you know, it was spectacular. It’s a dream. I mean, you know,

Miriam: [00:21:00] What kept it from getting boring to you? Because sometimes when people do the same thing over and over and over, it gets boring.

What kept your heart  in it?

[00:21:09] Fulfillment vs Failure

Dave: Because it’s, And this is what a lot of entrepreneurs miss, right? They achieve at a high level, but it’s not matched with fulfillment. And if you don’t match your achievement with fulfillment, it’s failure. And I learned that early on. Right, you can make all the money in the world.

And I got news for you. That doesn’t mean you’re successful. It doesn’t mean anything. It just means you got a, on a bunch of money. But how do you feel inside?

Getting to Google

And so, I mean, and I, and I continue to do that to this day. It’s, it’s one of the coolest experiences anyone can. To see people raise their self-worth, raise their self-confidence, raise the belief about themselves, cuz I don’t know of anything else on the planet that changes a human being in the powerful state that fire walking does.[00:22:00]

And that’s why, you know, and, and here’s where this starts to get interesting, right? In 2014, I’m driving down the road and my phone rings right. And it’s Google and Google wants to hire me. If you’re not under any contractual obligation or non-compete, we’d like to talk to you about hiring you to do a gig for us in Mountain View for 148 of our executives.

And you know, what’s your budget for this? And they. This. And I went, okay, I can work with you guys. there were enough zeros on that one that allowed you to do it. . Right? .

So, and can I ask, at this point, were you still working full-time for Tony or had you guys parted ways at that

Dave: point?

Had I had tapered off a little bit, but I was still with Robin’s research. Mm-hmm. Yes. Mm-hmm. . Okay. And then, you know, so the next thing I know I’m on an airplane headed to, to, you know, San Mateo. You’re a high school dropout. You’re, you, you thought you were dumb and stupid and you do weren’t gonna amount to anything. And all this [00:23:00] limiting beliefs and that story that we talked about earlier that I had created. And the next thing I know, I’m standing on stage in front of Google.

Fixing Company Culture

Yeah. And the next thing I know I’m at NASA. And, and I’m in front of, you know, astronauts and then I’m at Notre Dame, and then I’m at Virginia Tech, and then I’m at Remax and Heineken and the eo, the EO organization and this on and on and on and on and on. And so it, it, it just, it, it built mo, it built momentum.

I was really the only guy that could bring that level of intensity of a paradigm shift experience you know, to a company, cuz you know what CEOs get it. Most of them, most, most top entrepreneurs know that what doesn’t challenge you doesn’t change you. You wanna bring a bunch of people together and play Jeopardy.

Great. You wanna bring a bunch of people together and play golf, you know, for, for, you know, for these corporate meetings. Great. But that’s not gonna change anybody. No. And right now, as you, I’m sure you’d agree, [00:24:00]

we just went through the biggest, you know, we got ripped. For all kinds of different reasons.

Right, right. Mask wearing, not wearing masks, vaccines not getting vaccine political. I love Donald Trump. I hate Donald Trump. And it just tore people apart within companies. Yeah. And so I’ve had conversations with CEOs and I’m like, so, you know, you got a lot of dissension going on. Yeah. How are you gonna fix it?

They’re like, we don’t know. Yeah. And I’m, and I’m, I’m here to tell you, if you don’t fix it, guess what? It’s gonna cost you production. Because if you can take two people that hate each other and they’re not working together, harmonistically, their production’s gonna go down.

[00:24:39] Transition to Dave’s Company

Miriam: It’s not gonna work at all. Lemme ask this transitional question about good. I mean, really, Tony, obviously, he doesn’t have a corner on the market on fire walks, but he’s the one who made it a thing. Why was it okay for you to go and do this with other companies or how, I mean, I don’t know. I know since Covid, [00:25:00] he’s moved a lot of his stuff to entirely virtual and stuff like that, and so maybe it’s not that he’s not doing it in person, but.

It seemed from your bio that you went with this blessing. So, and you know, you developed your own company doing this and obviously it’s doing really well. A lot of times I think there is Enmity between people within companies because someone feels like someone stole something from them or you know, took their ip.

There’s non-competes all of this stuff where it’s like, Hey, this is mine and now you’re taking it, but I’m not under the impression. That’s what it was like. So how, how did that transition happen? I think that’s just important as my listeners are, you know, working with people, trying to work with people, trying to work with ideas and these sort of things can destroy friendships.

Dave: First of all, great question and you’re absolutely spot on. Tony certainly doesn’t have, you know, an edge on the market [00:26:00] when it comes to fire walking cuz fire walking in and of itself has been around for hundred.

Where Firewalking Came From

They’re, it may even be over a thousand years. The Tahitians. Yeah. Go look at the Tians fire wire. They do fire walking, fire handling, all kinds of stuff. The people of India, oh my gosh, you wouldn’t believe them. They do fire walking at a level that’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen here in the west.

So, you know, and the Indu Europeans, before they went into battle, they went, they had fire walking.

The Polynesians, the Hawaiians, the Native American Indians. I live here in the

Appalachian Mountains in the northwestern part of the state of North Carolina. So I’m very close to the Tennessee and the Virginia border. And, and a lot of this area up here was inhabited by the Cherokees. They fire walked up here.

So, you know, again, Tony learned from an individual who taught him how to do fire walking many, many years ago. And so it wasn’t like he’s the guy that [00:27:00] l figured it out. He learned it from somebody else who learned it from somebody else who learned it from somebody else, right? So there’s nothing new in the world as they say.

It’s just recycled for. And that’s really what, what happened here, and that’s what I did with it. I took it to another. I, I brought in, well, tell me about the Cherokees. How did they do it? Tell me about the Ians, how did they do it? Tony Robbins only did it one way. Sure. High, high energy, you know, peak state and, and go across.

Right. If you wanna see what it looks like, go Google Oprah’s Fire Walk and you’ll see exactly how it’s taught at a, at a Robin’s event. But I don’t do it that way.

No.

[00:27:43] Being Different

Miriam: And let me pause you for a second because I think the point that I’m interested in is what was the conversation like between you and he where you’re like, I want to do this on my own.

I wanna create something different. I’m grateful to you, blah, blah. You know what I’m saying? [00:28:00] You manage to preserve your relationship and yet create your own company. And that’s something that’s very different.

Dave: Well, and because I did it in a way that was congruent with

what he teaches from the stage, right? Because I had a group of people that worked with me who were like my assistant captains, who could take over my position just like that, no problem.

And, and that’s part of what I convey to him. Tony, you’re in good shape. I’m not leaving you an lurch. You don’t need me anymore. Yeah. You see that guy and you see that girl and you see this, you see these people, any one of them can take over this fire walk. Yeah. And, and they, and they’ve learned everything from me.

Which I learned from, you know? Right. It all got passed down. Right, right. So you’re in, you’re in good shape. I’m not leaving you. And you know, we had a really long conversation. We talked for hours in the green room about all kinds of things because, you know, we were together at nine 11. We did a big fire walk there.

Going His Own Direction

And, and so, you know, all the people’s lives and I mean, we [00:29:00] had a really good. Yeah, I mean, it was fun. My family got to go with me, right? So I was a very, very, very blessed guy, and I got. Be in a position to be able to facilitate something that is literally probably one of the most life-changing experiences any human can experience on this planet.

Yeah, right, right. You can jump out of a plane, but it’s not like fire walking. It’s just not No, you can go.

Miriam: Yeah. So let me interrupt and ask what made you want to go. Your own direction, like as you were doing it. Good things. I love it. My family, Tony’s awesome, blah, blah. What made you want to do it on your own?

Dave: Because it was time for me to, to, to create my own legacy. Yeah. The Dave Alban Fire Walk Legacy. Yeah. Not the time. It’s time for you to fly.

You know, it’s like, it’s like knowing, it’s like being a professional athlete, if you will, and knowing when to leave. Yeah. Knowing when to go. It was my time. Yeah.

Miriam: Yeah, there was a deep knowing. That’s what I hear you saying, you’re your soul kind of knew and [00:30:00] it was time.

Miriam: I’m sure there were tons of connections because of Tony and whatever, but it, what, how long would you say from inception of your business to present day did it take to get it really to take off? And I mean, when Google’s calling you, that’s a thing that helps.

Glass Walk

That helps. It does. I did two gigs for Google. I went back the following year and two and, and after. And by the way, we did a glass walk.

And so they were graduating and so we did the, we did the glass walk because I won’t do a fire walk during the day. Gotta be done at night. I have to see the color of those coals.

It’s a safety issue. So we did the glass walk.

Well at the second one we did for Google, two of the executives set me down. Well, they were sitting, I was sitting at the table with them at lunch, and they basically said, Hey listen Dave, we’re not here to try to tell you what to do, but you may want to consider [00:31:00] doing this and taking this out to corporate america.

Because I can tell you right now, there’s no one else out here doing it at this level. Yeah, yeah. And we know we’re Google . Yeah. So, you know. That’s awesome.

The dominoes have fallen perfectly and so I knew Yeah. And I, and it was all those things, right. Everything in my life. That it ever happened to me, brought me to that moment when they said, if I were in your shoes, this is what I do.

Yeah. And so that makes sense.

[00:31:28] Why Does Firewalking Work?

Miriam: Yeah. So I don’t know if this is you know, like magicians can’t share their secrets. But I’m wondering if you’re able to share at least a little bit of why it works, that people don’t get cut walking on the glass or they don’t get burned walking on the coals. Or, I’d even saw some of the things on your website where, you know, the, I don’t know what it’s called, but the arrow test, the arrow to the throat and stuff like that.

Yes, that one. Can you explain to me a little bit about It’s, it has to do with [00:32:00] mindset and then a whole bunch of other factors.

Dave: It goes back to what I learned, that first question you asked me, what doesn’t challenge you, doesn’t change you. If you don’t, if you don’t face fear and deal with it, it’s gonna deal with you the rest of your life. It will continue to lie to you.

It will continue to take things from you. It will tell you that you’re not worthy, what? You’re not smart enough, you’re gonna get burnt. I mean, all those things don’t get married. You know, it’s overrated. Have kids. Oh my gosh. I mean, it’s just on and on and on. And so again, the, the fears we don’t overcome become our limits.

Mm. Period. Yeah. And that’s just how that works. So the fire itself you’ve gotta believe, and here’s the thing, when you go out there to that fire, you better give it it’s full attention.

If you think you’re gonna go out there and you’re gonna take this ego and you’re not gonna pay much attention to it, and you’re gonna talk at it and scream at it.

Give 100%

But I wouldn’t recommend you do. Because I can tell you I’ve seen guys do that [00:33:00] and they take about that second step and they are high step in it, or they jump off the lane. So you gotta believe, right? I think Henry Ford said it best, right? If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.

You’re right. Either way, you gotta go out. You gotta be in a peak state. You have to focus. Hundred percent right now. Don’t think about what happened yesterday or tomorrow in that right now. Stay in the moment, just like Eckhart Toll teaches in the power of now. You wanna stay right there in that moment.

I’ll show you the Tony Robbs. You know, it’s high intensity. It’s kind of like, it’s like an MMA fighter coming into the ring, right? They’re just not kind of walking in going, okay, I’m gonna go kick his butt now. No, it’s not like that, right?

they’re like intense, right? And so all those chemicals are firing off in their brain, so that’s one way to do it. High intensity physiology will get you across, but the Cherokees don’t do it that way. The Ians don’t do it. That. [00:34:00] They basically, they’re looking at this as an element. They’re respecting it, they’re loving it.

Respecting the Fire

They know without fire, life doesn’t exist. So they give it, they honor it with that. And so they just put their hands up, they put their, they put their eyes up and they completely submit and they just walk across it and it’s beautiful. They just mo, you know, some people like the high intensity, they walk really fast, right?

Thinking that’s the I That’s the idea to do it right? Nah, no, you can. You can just take your time and walk right across it. And if you’re loving the fire and respecting the fire and honoring the fire, you just walk right across it. Yeah.

Miriam: Yeah.

[00:34:42] Honor and Respect

Miriam: So what does that mean in terms of your life? What does it mean to honor and respect and keep your eyes up and your shoulders back in your life?

Dave: Physiology is. You, you know, how you, how you posture, how you hold yourself, how you talk, how you move, how [00:35:00] you communicate. You’re, you’re sending messages to yourself and those around you. So it’s very, very important in terms of the physiology and how you move and what you say to yourself. I teach this all the time in my seminars.

I’m like, you know what? You better be really, really careful what you tell yourself, because if you tell yourself that you suck and you’re not smart, man, it’s one of the worst things you can. Because you start to believe that. You have to believe. One of the things you have to believe is for you to be, for any listener right now to be on your podcast listening to this, do you know what it took for all of us to be here right now?

And here’s what I mean by that. What were the, what were the odds mathematically, what had to happen for you to be alive right now listening to this podcast? What were the chances? What were the odd. Well, right, cuz you got a mom that’s over there and a dad that’s over there. They’re the only two people outta 6 billion people that could create you.

Write a Better Story

Right? How many eggs did mom drop in her lifetime? [00:36:00] Well, there’s only one that can create you and dad’s like, whoa. I hoped. Okay, dad, you did, you know, you contributed a group of swimmers, let’s say a nice way of saying it. And, and how many swimmers were in that group? Well, if you, if you talk to an O G B Y N, you’ll get a number somewhere around 60 to a hundred million.

Yeah. So you were in a group of 60 to a hundred million and you got there and you broke through. You were one in 600 or 60 million. So again, mathematically, what does that look?

Well, and I’m not even bringing in your grandparents, your great-grandparents, and your great-great-grandparents. The miracle of life is a miracle. Y you’re about one in 400 trillion. So the decisions you make now rise you up in, in the future generation, just the way it works.

So, you know, [00:37:00] with that said, you know, again, you wanna change your life, change your story. Write a better story.

Eric Wyer

I’ve got a guy that I love. His name is Eric Wyer, and Eric’s a cool dude. Put him in a kayak. You had a see him. He’s a nutcase man. He can go down any river you throw him into, put him on a mountain bike and he can mountain bike, just about anything.

In addition to that, he’s climbed the seven highest mountains on seven continents skies. This dude’s, he’s, he’s a dude, he’s a bad dude, and he’s got something physically wrong. He’s blind. He’s blind. He climbed the seven highest mountains on this planet. By the way, I tell this to all my audiences and, and once I tell him that, I’m like, I don’t wanna hear your excuse because it’s not true.

You made it up. How can a, how can a blind guy ride a [00:38:00] mountain bike? Like you’ve never. How can he navigate a kayak down the Colorado River, you know, in the Grand Canyon? How can he climb the seven highest mountains on earth? And he did it blind. What kind of a mindset do you think he has?

[00:38:18] Story You Tell Yourself

Miriam: Yeah, I was gonna ask, what’s the story he’s telling himself?

Dave: He, he had a great father who told him, dude, the only limits you have are yours. Whatever you tell yourself. So you can do whatever you want.

Same thing here. Elon Musk, like the guy, hate the guy. He said, you know what, I believe I could shoot a rocket into space, bring it back down through the atmosphere and land it on a barge in the middle of the ocean.

Really? Really? Elon? I mean, so you know what I. Never underestimate what a human being can do. Never underestimate what a small group of people can do to change [00:39:00] the world. Indeed. It’s pretty much the only thing that ever has, and that’s kind of where we are right now in our society. We need people to step up.

We need people to go, I’m not listening to the mainstream media. I’m done. I’m over that. I’m not doing it. Yeah.

Miriam: This has gone so many interesting places. Of course, the show notes are gonna have, how to get ahold of you, how to, you know, find your company if they wanna hire you for a fire walk for a corporate event, all of that’s gonna be in there. What would you like to leave people with?

Dave: Well, I’ll I 2023 is probably gonna be my last year. I announced that back in December. So, you know, if you wanna hire me you better get a hold of me fast because

I’m sure. So that’s, that’s just that part.

You know, the, the, I guess the. You know, I think the thing that I like to leave with people is like, look, stop looking for [00:40:00] heroes and be one.

Create Magical Moments

Miriam: Ah, now I love that. Woo. That’s a quote right there. Stop looking for heroes and be one and be one. You know, we can each be the hero of our story, not only to ourselves, but to the people our lives touch.

Dave: I’ll add one more little piece, and that is look for ways to create magical moments. Yeah, and I’ll, and I’ll give you a really quick example. So every year the Girl Scouts come out and they sell their cookies.

So basically what I do is I walk up and I go, Hey girls, well look at all the cookies you got. You’ve been selling some cookies today.

In fact, I wanna buy $200 worth of cookies. But there’s a catch. And she says, okay, what’s the catch? And I said, the catch is I don’t want the cookies. Here’s what I’m, here’s what I’m proposing.

I want you to take the cookies, I want you to take the girls, I want you to call an old folks home, and I want you to call the director. And say, Hey, here’s who I am. I’m with the Girl Scouts. We got [00:41:00] cookies, I got the girls. If you have some people there that have been forgotten and they don’t get any visitors anymore, the girls are gonna have some questions and some cookies, and would like to send them over to your facility and help brighten their day and create an absolute magical experience for not only the girls, you know, the Girl Scouts, but for the, for some of your residents.

Connecting with People

Ahh. And it’s, now, think about what you just did. You know, we all know you throw the rock in the water, it’s in ripples. Think about that. But see, once you start doing things like that, , guess what helps you? Do you start looking for other ways to create magical moments? Yes. I like to connect with people at Walmart.

I like to connect with people that are in service industry, whether they’re a server in a restaurant, or they work in a grocery store or, or whatever. I look for ways to create magical moments. So you ask yourself, and, and this is one other thing that I’ll leave you [00:42:00] with Tony. Ask a quality question.

You’ll get a quality answer. You know, how can I go to Walmart today? Create a magical moment and enjoy the process. Your brain goes, oh, okay. Let’s look for that answer. You know, sometimes I’ll go up to the check. And, and, and I’ll say, gosh, I don’t know what candy bar to buy. And, and I’ll look at the cashier and I’ll say, what’s your favorite candy bar?

Two Reciepts

She’ll say, oh, I love Reese’s Peanut butter cups. Great. I go in, I grab two Reese’s Peanut butter cups. I pay for my order, close that out. Then I say, Hey, I wanna buy these and I pay for that separately. And I say, give me two receipts. And she gives me two receipts. And then I take the bag of the receipts and I hand it to her and I walk away.

I love it. I love it. Dave, why do you get two receipts?

Why don’t you just throw the peanut butter cups in the other so that, so one receipt, one receipt goes in the bag and the other one went with. So that way they have their own, their own receipt. So they can’t say that [00:43:00] they didn’t buy it. Yes. Okay. That makes sense.

Yep. Ah, very good. Dave, thank you so much for an amazing interview. This was so much fun. I love what you’re doing. I love that. Just your life was turned around by some key moments, and I love that your life intersected with mine, so it’s really good. Yeah.

Dave: Thank you. Thank you. Me too. Fire, fire, fire , fire, fire

 

End Credits

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Music by Tom Sherlock.

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The Crawley Composters: Why We Need Worms – Cathy Nesbitt

Kathy Nesbitt

Miriam: [00:00:00] All right folks, today I am happy for this interview. It’s gonna be super fun. It is with Cathy of Cathy’s Crawley Composters.

Now, in case you’re wondering what this is, I was just charmed by her application to be on the podcast.

We’re talking about worms, folks. Composting worms, , and I love that Cathy has made a a viable business out of this.

You’ve been in this for over two decades, so I’m excited. I wanna just say welcome and let’s see where this conversation takes us.

Thanks, Miriam. I’m excited to be here.

So why don’t you give us a tiny background as to how you got into the business of worms.

[00:00:42] Behind the Worms

Kathy: I’m located, nor just north of Toronto, largest city in Canada. And in 2002, our landfill closed and Canada’s pretty large country, second largest I think, in the world. And we couldn’t find a place to site a new landfill. Can you imagine? So we started to export our garbage to the US.

Sorry.[00:01:00] A thousand trucks a week. Wow. And it, it’s just, it’s heartbreaking when I think about it. What a waste of like, shame on us as Canadians for shlepping our garbage out of the country, and double shame on the Americans for accepting our garbage for cash and not the people.

The decision makers like, right, who decided? Right. Come on. Right.

Miriam: Where is it going? Do you know?

Kathy: Well, now it’s, it’s finished now, but for it, it went on for, Hmm. I would say at least 10 years.

I just think we don’t, we don’t really think about stuff.

We’re like, oh, there’s room. Oh no, we, today’s load fit. We don’t have to think about it. And then it filled up. It’s like, the landfill filled. How did that happen? I didn’t see that coming.

Yeah. 6 million people. Right. Oh my gosh. Anyway, so what I’m proposing is indoor composting with worms. So 6 million people half live in condos and townhouses without space to do outdoor composting.

Miriam: So tell us a little bit about the the mechanics of it.

I mean, I love being [00:02:00] outdoors and I think worms are incredibly valuable. I know it’s pretty easy to have dead soil. I have tried some composting in some spaces and found out the hard way that. This isn’t working.

Composting

Kathy: Yeah. So composting is nature’s way to look after our organic matter, our food scraps paper, our, you know, weeds from the garden and it’s usually done outside. No special equipment is required. Maybe a pile or. A composter proper, a plastic thing or wood.

Okay. So it’s creating the right carbon, nitrogen, ratio. So the carbon is your browns, your, you know, brown leaves against straw, cardboard paper, and your, your greens is your nitrogen. So that’s the fuel. Your green leaves, your green, your food scraps from the kitchen. Your manures are all nitrogen rich, and it’s the microbes that actually do the work.

Okay, . So what I’m proposing is indoor composting the worms. And so what happens with the worm? [00:03:00] Same idea. They need a carbon, nitrogen, red mix. It’s in like a rubber made tote or something. Or if you have a compost, like a fancy system The carbon or the bedding is your shredded paper or your confidential docs.

Managing the Compost

Imagine. Make sure you’ve done your homework kids before you feed it to the worms. , , the worms ate my homework. , . And then a little bit of soil. Again, you’re adding the soil for the little microorganisms some eggshells water. Mix it all up, add your worms on top, and then when you’re feeding your food scraps, you bury the food in the beddings.

Make sure it’s covered so you don’t get fruit flies.

So more management is required in the house. So it’s aerobic process, meaning with oxygen, so it will, it, it shouldn’t smell like rotting food.

Miriam: Interesting. Well, I love this idea of all these people who are living in these condos and spaces.

This is actually a really brilliant idea.

Talk about the little ups and downs as you started to make a business out of this .

[00:03:59] The Ups and Downs

Kathy: Well, . [00:04:00] First of all, I chose a business without repeat customers.

Oh, no. What? How did that happen? Who was my business coach? Oh, there wasn’t one . That’s right. I remember now. That’s right.

Let’s hear it for the business coaches, . Right. Nobody would’ve said to do this business.

Thank goodness I did. You know, here I am. And I really think I needed to create the market. I didn’t know at the time,

And I also didn’t know that people don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want. ?

Yes.

So many, I guess learning curves there,

you know, the worms ate better than I did at the beginning. That’s, that’s always bad. When your employees eat better than you when they’re worms , right?

 I thought I launched right into this thinking I have a solution for this big problem.

I’m gonna stop all those trucks from being exported to the US. Yeah. So we can use our tax dollars for something other than just shipping our garbage around. Like, what a great idea.

. I have a psychology [00:05:00] degree and now I’m a worm farmer.

Yeah. That’s really brilliant too. Actually it is cuz I’m curious about people. I love people and I’m fascinated. Mm-hmm. and . I’m meeting people as a, at a, as adults who were traumatized as children by a sibling or someone at the schoolyard after a reign by a worm being chased around with a worm. Interesting.

Understanding Worms

So if you’re afraid of something, you’re not even looking to that as a solution. Like, nope, you’re not looking, you, you’re not reading that article, . So, as much as I was pounding the pavement trying to get the message out, rah rah, you need worms. It’s like, no, no, no, no, I don’t like worms.

Miriam: How did you go about helping them understand, no, actually you really need this. I mean, 20 years is a long time to have been in business and most businesses don’t make it past, you know, the first year or two. So you’ve been doing something.

Kathy: A few things happened in the early part. I started networking and I met this [00:06:00] dynamic, oh my gosh, amazing woman. And I say that she launched me three years ahead of where I would’ve been. At the beginning, she was a connector. She suggested if you’re gonna do exhibiting, get t-shirts that have your name on and then on the back it’s got your website, so they see you coming and going.

And I was like, oh. And as a non-fashion person, what a gift. I was doing a hundred to 200 events. I still wear the same shirts today. Like I saved a wack-o- dough and, and I’m branded.

there. You, you go and connected. You know? So yeah, getting connected early on to people that could help me. It’s not, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, then you gotta prove yourself.

 She connected me to these people in the food and beverage industry.

Converting to Worms

I have composting, right? Rotting food is a problem. You pay a lot of money if you’re a business. Restaurants, grocery stores, universities, hospitals, they pay a lot of money to truck away all this stuff because it was the, it was yesterday’s dinner, but today it’s the devil . That’s right. [00:07:00] Yeah.

Miriam: Can you tell a couple stories of maybe some people who you were able to convert to your worm system

Kathy: I’ve converted many, many people and I would love to talk about how it’s not gendered.

If you love the garden, you love nature. You could be male or female growing your food, you know the value of the compost, and you probably love worms and I have probably 50 50 split of men and women.

Okay, so people will arrive. I live in a small house. I work from home, and when people pick up worms, . . If it’s a couple, they’ll both come in. And I have composters in my kitchen. And the one that is interested, they’re all excited. It’s like they’re picking up a puppy,  they’re like, yay, my worms, I can’t wait.

And the other one’s got their hand, on the door to leave . Mm-hmm.

and I, they say, you know, I’m just here supporting my, you know, boyfriend, girlfriend’s, spouse, whatever, whoever. And. And I say to them, then I speak to them cuz they’re like, yeah, I don’t really wanna do this, but whatever. I love them[00:08:00]

So then I say, oh, can you smell anything in the kitchen?

I’ll take them over to my composter and. You open it. It’s like, Wow. It’s counterintuitive. It doesn’t smell, it just looks like earth. And then I say, come and have a look.

Fearing the Unknown

And then I kind of get them to go s. Close and with their nose so that they can see that it, or, you know, smell that it doesn’t smell. And it’s so beautiful watching them kind of transform.

Yeah. And, and teachers. So I’ve had teachers say to me, oh, I’m afraid of worms. This is a cool idea. I would l Oh, the kids would love this, but I’m afraid of forms. What do I do? So I say, here’s what you. You get a worm bin in your class, , you have me come in, I’ll do a workshop, , and you get the kids to manage it, and then you let them know how ridiculous your fear of worms is.

Because it is, because fear is just the unknown. It’s a great teaching moment where you can say, I’m, I had an experience when I was a child, or whatever happened. That Why you don’t like worms. And then, but [00:09:00] they’re so beautiful, these worms, so I’m gonna let you kids manage the worms. And then eventually they overcome it.

And when I do my workshops, if the per, if the teacher has expressed interest in kind of overcoming that fear, Then I’ll say, I’ll ask them like, do you wanna overcome your fear? Because I can help you right now. And then I’ll get them to put their hand out. And they’re so afraid. Like they, you can see they’re, they’re tense.

Being a Worm Person

They’re really, they stopped breathing like five minutes ago. And then I put it in, and it’s just like they, they become spaghetti. They soften. They just are like, oh, and you can feel it moving. And they have five hearts. What’s not to love about that? Oh, and then you have life in your hand.

You feel it moving. It’s just, and they’re they, and then they’re over their fear. Then boom, that’s it. They’re. They’re taller. That’s it.

Miriam: You’ve converted them and they’re now a worm person. So I assume at some point you were like, oh my gosh, this is the best. Everybody needs worms. And you [00:10:00] probably were giving worms to everybody initially, and then at some point you thought, Hey, wait a minute, this could be a business. Where did you go beyond workshops with kids?

[00:10:09] Going Beyond

Kathy: I was working at a group home with challenged adults. They had 10 homes on a farm, and I thought I had come home.

so when I, when they It was 24 7 facilities. So they had a lot of food waste and they didn’t compost. And, and as an avid gardener and compostor that’s one of my superpowers is I see food waste everywhere.

 I approached them about that and they said, ah, we don’t need fertilizer because we have cows. , but you have a vocational program on a farm where these challenged people come to do work.

I don’t know why people can’t see what I see.

I worked 14 hour shifts. It’s not even legal anymore. But it was so great for the client because they would wake up and there we would be. Yeah. And when they went to bed there, we would be just that one staff change.

I was bringing home the food scraps from that house. So there was nine people living in the house I worked at and so I was bringing home 30 or 40 pounds a shift. [00:11:00] Food waste and just tossing it in my comp. I know. Well, right? Yeah. Yeah. So just tossing it in my composter.

 When the greenhouse manager said, what about worms? I got that feeling, Ugh. , but then I thought, let me do research.

So I started to research and I was like, oh my gosh. Second introduction, right? Sometimes the first time we’re like, Ooh, no. And then the second time was like, oh wait, maybe. Mm-hmm. .

The Red Wigglers Worm

So when I started to research the Red Wigglers, they eat half their weight per day in food scraps.

They turn garbage into black gold. They nourish the soil. They have five hearts each. A group of them is called a squirm. I mean, I just was like, and my fear went from oo to oh.

And so I set up my bin, it was August and there was two companies in Toronto and I was, they didn’t have worms. They’re like, no, we don’t have worms. And I was like, oh, can’t get red wigglers in Canada. Year. Curious and it was time for my outdoor composter to be emptied and I’d be adding [00:12:00] all that food in there.

And so I take my last bucket of stuff, dump it in, and then I open up the trap door at the bottom. I’m taking the stuff out. Holy moly. There is a mass of red wigglers right in my backyard. Compost.

Wow. What? Right. Like I couldn’t buy them. They were waiting. Right. So many signs I was put on earth for this

Changing for Joy

Thank you for letting me share that story cuz it, it’s, it really takes me back to, oh my gosh, 20 years ago.

That’s, that’s what happened. . That’s what happened. That’s how, that’s how, so I grabbed them, I put them in my bucket,

that was the seed stock of my business. Wow. And then I got, then I got injured at work,

 When I started my work life, I said like, I, never staying in a job that didn’t serve me. We spend so much time at work, I better love it.

And so I, I changed jobs a lot and, and I never stayed in a job that didn’t serve me. I feel so, so happy about that part of my life that I honored that I said that, and I did it. I never [00:13:00] stayed.

Wow. Even if like, even if it was hard, even if it was like, I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but I can’t stay here.

[00:13:06] Bringing You Joy

Miriam: I appreciate what you’re saying. I don’t remember the exact statistic, but it’s like some ridiculous amount of our adult life, like 77% of our adult life is spent at work. And if it’s not serving you and you don’t love it, what a shame.

I think something that’s interesting is not everybody would want your life, but you want your life. You know what I’m saying?

Not everybody would want this particular business, but it’s clear, it’s bringing you so much joy, which I think is amazing.

Not everybody would want my business.

And you look at. Various businesses along the way and people and lifestyles. It’s so important that you find something that brings you joy because we only have one life folks. We only have one life, so let’s act accordingly and make good decisions.

I have to back up.

You said a group of these little red sliders [00:14:00] are called a squirm, which I believe is your Twitter handle, right @ squirm. I love that.

Kathy: I, wasn’t a child thinking I, I’m gonna be a worm farmer. A worm farmer, you know,

I grew up in a hospital- clean house. Yeah, like with lots of chemicals and like it was clean

let me ask a couple clarifying questions. What do you do with all the wonderful black gold dirt that your worms make? Do you sell that?

We Need Worms

I do. Nice. I do. And I, I do wish that, that if, you know, if anyone’s listening, thinking they would like to have a worm business, we need more worm growers and we need all aspects of this business.

We need people to grow the worms, which I was doing, selling by the pound. We need people to create the soil so you’re not selling worms, , because if you sell the worms, they’re the workers. They’re, they’re the ones making right. So I would suggest going into a business selling the compost because we are.

Maybe not going out of our conventional farming, you know, our [00:15:00] chemical agriculture, but I, there are more people returning to organic methods and compost is really one of the key components to permaculture.

Miriam: I think at least where I’m living, I’m seeing a resurgence of an interest in organic everything.

And if you go to the store in the spring and you buy organic soil, it’s about $15 for a 20 pound bag. It’s a lot of money for a 20 pound bag, and it’s in plastic, which always makes me ask the question, okay, so you’re putting my organic soil in this plastic bag, how I’m, I don’t know what’s happening, but I can’t imagine as it sits out in the sun and bakes that this is a good thing.

So anyway, yes. On onward with this. So you sell the worms, you sell the soil, do you sell kits? Like to make the whole thing? .

Kathy: Yes. I did have this kind of, it was like just a Rubbermaid tote, but it had my company name [00:16:00] on it. They were manufactured, and then I went up to a  layered system that looks like a stool.

Personal Story

And we were the Canadian distributor. I mean, a beautiful story about how I met this engineer the first year of my business. He’s about maybe two and a half hours drive from me, and he ordered 50 pounds of worms my first, like, month or two of business. And I was like, I did my little happy dance. I have a business.

I’m in business. 50 pounds. Are you kidding? Wow. So instead of sending them, I drove them all the way to London. So I drove five hours to deliver this, this about my profit.

I didn’t know. I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to meet this guy that wanted 50 pounds of worms .

That’s awesome.

And I didn’t know that he was the manufacturer of a. Tower composter. It was called a worm Chalet at the time. And then he, so he asked me if I wanted to [00:17:00] carry this composter and I did.

And then 20 12, 1 more person said, Ooh, worms in the house. and I heard it. It hit my heart and I was like, oh. I started to question everything, like, why do I care? Why doesn’t anyone else ? What you know? Why don’t I just get a job? It’s gotta be easier. Like this is ridiculous. Living my life, always chasing the next customer because I don’t have repeats.

Yeah. Once you get worms, you got worms, , right?

The Power of Laughter

Oh, so then, and then the very next day, the universe is a fascinating place if you pay attention. The very next day I was, I was introduced to laughter yoga at the place where I wrote my business plan. I didn’t have a, a coach, but I did write a business plan and where I wrote my business plan, they had meetings I would go back and talk about media and you know, how I was doing in my business.

And so they had this laughter- yoga woman do a five minute introduction. I was like, laughter yoga? Wow. I don’t even do yoga. That same week I was at a [00:18:00] networking event hundreds of people. The very first woman I met was a laughter yoga teacher. And I was like, oh. I said to her, laughter yoga’s mainstream .

And she said, no it isn’t. And so we t trooped around together and I said to everyone, have you heard of laughter yoga? Have you, have you? Have you nobody had? And I was like, holy cow universe.

And here’s another thing, she, this was Toronto. She had a monthly laughter club that was five minutes wa five minute walk from where my mother-in-law lived.

[00:18:29] Laughter Yoga

Miriam: Just, can you explain laughter yoga? Just Yes. A little bit. Yes. So that we have, have an idea. Mm-hmm. . Absolutely.

Kathy: So, started in 1995 by a medical doctor. It’s, it’s just laughing for the health of it.

It’s not doing yoga and laughing, it’s laughing. There’s no jokes or comedy there is like, Little games that you play and there’s clapping and chanting, and the clapping is you clap palm to pump. So you’re activating the [00:19:00] meridians and the rhythm is 1, 2, 1, 2, 3. And the words are very easy, ho ho, ha ha ha,

And that’s, you know, for the natural laughers, you don’t need priming. You just love to laugh. So going to a laughter club, it’s like, okay, how fun is this gonna be?

But for those that are very serious, And especially during this cuckoo time, there’s more and more serious people around that are living in fear. You know?

They’re so tense. Yeah. Yeah.

The la the, the clapping gets them in. So you start by, you know, you start the thing by saying, ho ho ha ha ha. And everybody’s doing it, you imagine in person. Mm-hmm. . And it’s so magic. It might start off simulated where you’re like, I don’t know what’s happening here.

But then you, then it becomes real and, and as we’re laughing, we’re secreting all the love drugs.

dopamine. Mm-hmm. , oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins.

You get your daily dose when you laugh. Yeah. Versus cortisol and adrenaline when we’re stressed. Yes.

Miriam: Something I don’t know that people really realize [00:20:00] is how contagious some of these states are.

Social Contagion

Anxiety is extremely contagious and so is laughter and it’s, I can imagine what you’re talking about that initially it is semi- forced or mechanical, and then it becomes organic and natural and you end up with a bunch of happy people leaving that space. That’s pretty cool. Non-drug induced.

Kathy: We’re in charge of our own pharma, in fact. Yeah. We get to choose what we’re secreting, right? We’re either secreting like either we’re sympathetic or parasympathetic.

Sympathetic means cortisol and adrenaline. Parasympathetic. They love drugs, you know, and it’s kind of, I, I didn’t understand, of course, I have a psych degree. I love biology and all that stuff, but I never really understood sympathetic and parasympathetic. Why is laughter the best medicine?

Why does everyone say that?

Mm-hmm. . And, [00:21:00] and so as a laughter teacher, I incorporate tapping E F T and emotional freedom technique. I know speaking letters brain gym and other healing modalities to just to help people get out of stress and into joy. I really want people to live like I am. . Yeah.

And I, you know, like you don’t have to wait. I live everything by prevention. I’m living my life. I wanna be healthy. I wanna live to 110 or 115 or, but I wanna live to that age and not just to just get there.

I wanna be vibrant and still living in my house and cooking and doing my own laundry still and driving, I st. I want all those things. Yeah.

In order to get those things then means I need to take care now. Yes. Yes.

[00:21:45] Caring for Yourself

Miriam: Which is a perfect transition into self-care. I think that that’s something that’s important to you.

Talk about what it means to be preventative and to take care of you now in a way that then you have what you [00:22:00] want.

Kathy: In 2002, my very first exhibiting event, I met a man that was selling a super simple sprouter.

And I didn’t know anything about sprouts or sprouting and they were flying off the shelf. He was a professional ballroom dancer .

He was 72 at the time and I was amazed that, you know, he was 72 and still working. Cuz I didn’t know really about being an entrepreneur. I was just launching into that. But I was young and.

 He was just so, so vibrant and so vital and, and 72. And so he told me about Sprouts and so I said, wow. I’m in, I’m, I’m gonna do it too.

And. So he said, if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna do this, start your day with two tablespoons of the sprouted mung beans every day for the enzymes, up to a hundred times more digestive enzymes in raw sprouts than raw vegetables. Wow.

I mean, in plus fiber, protein, minerals, everything our body needs, they’re hydrating, alkalizing, [00:23:00] regenerative Biogenic, and the enzymes.

And you can grow them for pennies a day. You know, like you just buy the seeds, have this little, the grower helps. I mean, you can sprout in jars or paper towel,

 I was like, oh, maybe worms and sprouts are gonna solve world hunger. And so I’ve been sprouting. For 21 years as, as long as I’ve had my worm business and, and every day.

Being the Hero

So starting my day. So again, 2012, I seem to go in 10 year cycles. 2012. Tony, Tony I saw him at an event and he was like, Hey. Oh, so he was 82.

Wow. So he was still working at 82.

He said to me, why don’t you sell this SP sprayer and beans with your business? And I was like, oh my gosh. That’s a great idea. So then I started selling the sprout. The sprouter and the beans.

And then people would ask, what else can you sprout?

Their question would be, don’t you get sick of mung beans? And, and then it hit me, oh, people think of this as food. I considered it my health plan. [00:24:00] I considered it my multivitamin. Yes, this is something I do for me.

I wouldn’t go without them any a day. So then I said, oh, huh, that’s a great question.

Here’s one back. Would you, would you get tired of something that that made you feel great and gave you tons of energy?

And you know, that question is interesting cuz people do love their story. Oh, I’m so tired. Oh, I worked so hard.

And they love that they were the hero. They, they did the job. They drove the kids everywhere. And they did all the jobs even though they were Oh, so tired. Because we, that’s our society. We’re like, look at them. Go rah, rah. No, we’re, we’re not. We don’t need to be rocky. Like we just need to take time for ourself.

If you’re tired, sit down.

Choose a Better Story

Miriam: That’s interesting. What you’re saying when people love their story, there’s something noble, I’m gonna put that in air quotes, noble about being overworked [00:25:00] and you know, just running, running, running the martyr. I think there’s a story about the martyr and how somehow in the end they’re the winner because they gave everything and I, what I hear you saying is, no, let’s get rid of that story. That’s a bad story.

Let’s choose a better story to live in. How about we take care of ourselves in such a way that we feel joy, and feel energy and have some good connectivity with some good people and occupation that feels meaningful or worthwhile or like we’re doing good.

That’s what I’m hearing you say in these various stories.

Kathy: Exactly. That’s it. I mean, what I’m doing for my businesses is my life. Yeah. I know for some people there’s separation and that’s fine, but for me, there really is not. Yeah. It’s, my husband and I, we’re in this together.

We’re, we’re thriving here. We’re, we’re doing really great.

[00:25:58] What’s Next?

Miriam: Kathy, [00:26:00] I’m getting sad because we’re gonna have to be done pretty quick here, but this has been so much fun. What do you think is. Like if you had to anticipate or what is your “what next”?

Kathy: My big what next is teaching.

 Teaching folks with Down syndrome to be laughter yoga leaders so they can lead laughter for their demographic. That’s where my heart is. I have a really soft spot.

And you know, that, that vision came to me in the summer of 2021. And since then, I. So many things have happened I called a woman who I network with and I knew she had a, a daughter who had Down syndrome, but I had never met the daughter, but the daughter was the one that appeared in in my vision.

So I said to her, this is gonna be a weird call, but , here we go. And I told her, she said, I’m always open for things for Tori.

In Canada we have a ridiculous program that when young folks with special needs are [00:27:00] 21, they’re out of the school system. And then they get placed on O D S P, which is a disability pension, which is a ridiculous amount of money that they could never live on independently.

And if they. It’s clawed back from the meager money that they give. It’s like, well, they don’t care about money. They wanna be part of community. Really? Mm-hmm. , that’s what everybody wants. Mm-hmm. . So I think it was from there.

Fan Full Access Network

And so this young man started this organization, organization called Fan Full Access Network. And he’s taking folks that are high functioning because he wants to introduce them into the community and do things in the community and let people see them and, and, you know, hire them and let them be a part.

So he loved my vision.

It was May 2021 till December, 2022, every Friday I went and did Laughter Yoga with those folks. Wow. And it was so beautiful. I, you know, there was one, [00:28:00] one Young, there was several of the folks had Down Syndrome, but there was a, a whole variety of Diagnosises, I guess sees, I would say

And one guy was just like, he was the cool guy and I thought if I could get him to co-lead with me, I was like spying him to be the one that I was going to to teach. But he, whenever he stood beside me and wanted to lead, The others followed. The others participated more fully because they saw Eric there and I was like, it’s powerful.

And I said to him, you’re powerful. Just know that you have this incredible power that people look up to you.

Being an Amazing Force

Miriam: That feels like a really important place to sort of underscore somehow or other, you manage to find the magic of reaching people who need to be reached, and you understand that somehow you are the conduit to find the person and teach the person, train the person who [00:29:00] can be the leader.

You’re not actually interested in being the leader. You’re interested in being the teacher and the facilitator.

And I love your vision. I love what you’re bringing to people, and I did not expect that little twist and turn from our original conversation about the worms.

People are so much more than they think, and I, I love that you would be willing to share your life with us in this, you know, 40 minutes that we’ve had together to see what an amazing force for good in the world. You are.

Thank you for the work you’re doing on multiple levels, and I hope that we have the opportunity to remain in contact. You’re a fun person, .

Kathy: Oh, Miriam, I appreciate it. Thank you.

 

End Credits

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Full audio episode found here.

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Music by Tom Sherlock.

If you are curious to know more, please contact me!

As someone who has been a therapist for over a decade and has been coaching people for over three decades, I am uniquely qualified to address your concerns.

Becoming an Entrepreneur – Greg Hickman

Greg Hickman- AltAgency

Miriam: [00:00:00] Hey friends, today I am super happy to have Greg Hickman with us today. He is someone, I’m gonna be as bold to call a friend. I took a class from him in the fall with his company, alt agency. Their mission is to help every agency owner or service provider basically create a situation where they can provide abundantly for their family. They help you productize your service so that you can just do a better job getting it out to the people you serve. 

So anyway, I loved the course. It was super fun, Greg, and I’m so appreciative that you’d be willing to spend some time today with us. 

Greg: My pleasure. 

[00:00:44] Greg’s Success

Miriam: Excellent. So I think where I wanna start with this is you are in a space where you’re, you’re someone I would call pretty doggone successful.

You have gone from a place, I mean, you’re in a multi-million dollar business at this point, and it wasn’t always that way. So I would [00:01:00] like to hear a little bit of your journey from how you thinking about what it is that you help people with 

Greg: yeah. So I kind of fell into what we’re doing now. I was kind of an ex agency client- side brat, if you will, who left the agency space after the better part of a decade or two decades. And. I started using a tool called Infusionsoft, which is like a marketing automation tool, I had been researching, you know, growing a business and stuff like that, listening to podcasts. And came across like, you know, online entrepreneurship and a handful of people that were actually using this Infusionsoft tool.

I was like, wait, these people inspire me. I could help them. And so I kind of became like my, my own agency was really like behind the scenes of these like [00:02:00] influencers, if you will, authors, speakers, coaches building out their like marketing automation, their webinar funnels and all that.

what happened was we, like, we were like most agencies that at least we talked to now, like full capacity, don’t really have the bandwidth yet. We’re not making as much money as we’d like working nights and weekends. I was on a sales call and like really could help the person, but like just didn’t have the bandwidth, like no more hours left in the week and I said, look, like.

Doing it Yourself

I have a wait list but I can show you how to do it yourself. And I charge him 50% of what we normally charge to do it for them. he was like, I’m in. And I got off the call and I was like, what the heck just happened? ? Yeah. Yeah. I’m like, I don’t even know what, I just sold this person. Like I just sold him that I’m gonna show him how I do what I do.

So I met with him a couple times. I gave him, Stuff that I had built over the years and examples, and he just went and did it and he like loved it. I was like, wait, there’s something to this. 

And [00:03:00] then did that enough times and people like yourself, other agency owners, other service providers just started like, Hearing about it from me, talking about my own journey on a podcast that I had and and YouTube.

So we kind of like hung the agency hat up, if you will, and kind of went all in on, on training others how to productize their service. And we’ve been doing that since 2017.

[00:03:25] Becoming an Entrepreneur

Miriam: Let me see if I’ve got this right. Yes. So, at one point you worked for someone else, like you traded your hours for money for someone who was your employer and you were like, This kind of sucks. I’m done with this.

Yeah. And you went out on your own still doing the same skillset. You were doing it for the entrepreneur. They would come to you and say, I need funnels, I need this, I need that, I need marketing. And you said, I’m your guy and you did it. 

Greg: Before I went outta my own, I, my last employer was Cabela’s. I [00:04:00] was the head of their mobile marketing department in their digital marketing team. And so that was like my last like employer. So we had been working with, Outdoor retail. And so when I went out on my own, my first like attempt at working for myself was, well, I’m just gonna help the smaller Cabelas do what I did for Cabelas.

That was really difficult because independent retail is like 10 years behind. Everything. And so like, it was really difficult to get really any traction. I was kinda like stuck at like 5K a month and like hitting my head against the wall when the, the automation thing for the online entrepreneurs thing happened.

Learning Curve

So, The first go was not pretty, and the second go was a slow start, so, right. It wasn’t just automatic. 

Miriam: Okay. I just think that people need to hear that because there is some something in our, I think potentially the fact that there is Google and YouTube and you can look anything [00:05:00] up makes people think, eh, it’s not that hard.

No, it actually is really hard, you know? Yeah. In some places, and there’s a learning curve and I, what I hear you saying is you knew you hated working for someone else, and you’re like, why can’t I not do the same thing that I do for them? Why can’t I not do it for me? Then you found out there’s a bit of a learning curve there, 

how did you coach yourself through that space of, first of all, it’s super scary to leave a business where you are being paid and your insurance is being taken care of. Oh yeah. And then you’re like, I’m gonna start on my own. I mean, I assume at that point you were married and had had little people.

I know you have little people now. No. So 

Greg: no little people. I actually Proposed to my now wife, sold my house and quit. Quit that job at Cabela’s all within a matter of three weeks. Wow. And that was 2013. So I finished out the year with Cabela’s in [00:06:00] full-time on my own 2014. Okay. And have been, and have been since.

Build the Other Side

So like, I was living in Denver, my wife my now wife she was just finishing med school and was gonna be matched, if anyone’s familiar with that process. Like, so she was likely going to be anywhere in the country, but Denver. And so the market was really good and I sold my, my hou, my, my.

That my nice six figure salary from before was giving me As, and I used that as like a safety net for going out on my own. I had some side business. It wasn’t like a, a full leap, like some stories, I was generating some money on the side enough to like cover my rent and most of my expenses. But I also had the, the savings and safety net from selling selling my home.

Which was a bold move. I wish I did not in hindsight, while I, I don’t say I regret it, but like it would be worth way more now cuz it was in like a , [00:07:00] it, it was in an up and coming area in Denver. Sure. And it blew up and it’s like, man, I could have gotten a lot more if I held on . But nonetheless I was anticipating having to move somewhere across the country.

Then my wife matched, matched here, so Course, but it still was that, it was definitely nice. Mm-hmm. , knowing that I had that, like a runway that I knew would last me a couple years. Yeah. 

Miriam: Which I think actually is super important. I always tell people, build the other side of your bridge that you’re gonna walk from A to B.

Yeah. Don’t just leap without a parachute because that is called gambling. That is not called entrepreneurship. 

[00:07:35] Gambling vs Being an Entrepreneur

Greg: Yeah. . There, there is a, there is a point where like you need to kind of draw the line especially if it’s like I. Drags out too, too long. Yeah. Because if the side thing does pick up enough traction, it will create a lot of friction.

And there is still that little bit of a leap of like, well, this thing isn’t gonna grow anymore than it is unless I have more bandwidth to put towards it, and that bandwidth [00:08:00] gonna come from me leaving the thing that is currently safe. Yes. Which is why for me, having sold my house, it was like, all right, like I have.

Nest to. Used if needed, which was definitely used . 

Miriam: Yeah, yeah. No, I appreciate you saying that. The, I think that we don’t talk enough in the entrepreneurial space about the fear. Fear that can really pr keep you from making the move you need to make. Sometimes the fear is wisdom and it keeps you from making the move that will destroy you. 

But there is a space where if you’re really gonna do it, you have to say, okay, what do they say? I’m gonna burn my ships. I’m burning the ships. Yeah. Burn the, yeah, burn the ships. 

Greg: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think you just have, if as an entrepreneur, I think like you just have to learn how to operate with a certain level of, certain [00:09:00] level of fear.

Operating with Fear

Because like, it’s not gonna go away. Like there’s still moments where I’m, I, I operate out of fear sometimes. And I know people well ahead of me that would agree. So it’s like, it’s not like, oh, when I’ve reached x I won’t be afraid. Like that’s that’s a fantasy like you’ll be afraid of something at some point.

And yeah, so it’s like, okay, cool. Like I just have to learn how to operate with a little bit of that in my life, however, yeah. 

Miriam: That feels like wisdom. 

Greg: Yeah. One thing that I actually just shared this earlier in, especially around like the, the leaping part or like finally you know, the, the example of like, Tarzan, like you ca, you, you gotta let go of the, the last vine to reach the, the new one.

Like, there’s that moment where it’s like you can’t be just holding onto both, you know? Yeah. And if you think of like two, like a Venn diagram, like two circles overlapping and one is fear [00:10:00] and one is excitement. Like that the overlap, that sweet spot I think is actually like, The perfect place because if you are if you’re all fear and zero excitement, I would say that you’re not ready.

And then mm-hmm. , if you’re all excitement and no fear, I would say that you’re probably not taking whatever the thing is serious enough, So you kind of need a little bit of both. 

Miriam: I would agree with you in not only just business, but also life, that that plays out in a lot of other things like relationships or big purchases or, oh, for sure.

[00:10:36] Self-Sabotage

Miriam: Let’s talk about maybe some self sabotaging mindsets, thoughts or behaviors you saw in yourself earlier in life.

How did they hold you back? How did you address them? How were you released from them? 

Greg: If I’m honest, I am not fully released from them. They still find their way in and out of my life. That’s a good question. I [00:11:00] mean, I think one of my mentors, Dan Martel he, he calls him entrepreneurial hand grenades.

It’s like you have something going well and then like you kind of just throw the grenade and blow it up and start from scratch because you. You feel comfortable in the phase from starting to where you were at, where you decided to self sabotage. It’s like, because going to the next level is uncomfortable, there’s uncertainty you don’t know.

And so I feel like that’s usually where I’ve found myself wanting to potentially self- sabotage. 

So once I kind of learned and realized and became self-aware of that the biggest thing I did was just surround myself with other like-minded people, which came by the way, of investing in coaching programs and masterminds and being around other people that would understand what I was going through and would be a like a filter for, Hey, this is what I’m feeling and thinking.

This is what I’m [00:12:00] thinking about doing is in any way does this sound like I’m self sabotaging? 

Outside Perspective

You know, like, and I had that conversation two days ago, like me calling someone saying, this is what’s happening. This is what I’m thinking about doing. Is this a dumb idea? Like, is this, does this sound like I’m retreating or does this sound like, I’m like thinking about this with a, like with a, with like, you know, a smart mind.

And you have to like, run it through because, you know, you can’t see the, what is it? You can’t see the label from inside the bottle. So you gotta, you gotta be able to get external help from someone that gets it, I think. So I’m definitely guilty of it to this day for, 

I don’t think this should not be talked about, but like I started seeing a therapist and she introduced.

The concept, which was very new to me, cognitive distortions. She sent me this list of like the top, I don’t know, 11 cognitive distortions. And I was [00:13:00] like, within seconds of reading each one I had like an example and or a re like very recent story of me doing the thing that I just read. I was like, I operate, Like this almost is like an operating manual for me.

What is going on? This sounds horrible, but like it all started to make sense. Like I didn’t know what these things were. So now understanding that those are there, and again, having someone to talk to about it has been like extremely helpful. 

[00:13:25] Getting a Therapist

Miriam: Yeah. I appreciate you saying all of those things.

It takes a certain amount of humility to be able to say, I’m gonna get someone else’s eyes on this and hear from them, not get defensive, not push back, not tell them why they’re wrong, not make excuses, just hear from them. Yeah. And see if they have a different perspective. You know? That’s what I hear you’re doing with your mastermind groups, with your Yeah, yeah.

Mentors. And I also, I mean, I am a therapist also as well as a coach, so I, I can appreciate what you’re saying and I understand cognitive distortions we all [00:14:00] have. Yeah. Yeah. 

Being Humble

Greg: And I, I would argue, actually tweeted it this morning cuz I was talking with a friend about my therapist and I was, Now having, and I’m, I’ve, we worked, me and my wife, we worked with a marriage counselor once for a little bit.

It’s like, that was like up until now my most recent, I’d say, dealing with a, some sort of therapy. I’m only like a month and a month or so in, so still very new, but like three calls, it’s like the exercises, like you had really has you seen things differently. It just kind of dawned on me like this morning in this conversation and I.

Man, like so many entrepreneurs are like out here looking for a coach when like, they should probably go get a therapist. Like, yeah. And like it’s, and I still haven’t, not quite nailed the difference. But like, I think there’s a need for both. And so, yeah, I mean, to have the skills of both in one is, is pretty, is pretty sweet.

But yeah, I mean super, super insightful. I mean, [00:15:00] introspective yeah, it’s. I think much needed for most entrepreneurs should probably have a therapist, in my opinion. 

Miriam: Can you share, I mean, you said there’s like this whole list of cognitive distortions.

Can you share a couple that stick out to you where you’re like, ah, I do this all the time, or whatever. Yeah.

[00:15:17] Cognitive Distortions

Greg: Totally. Lemme just pull up that list cuz there were a lot of them and I, I’ve looked up a couple different times and some of them, some places label the same thing with a different label, so.

Sure. Overgeneralization so overgeneralization when you overgeneralize something, you can take an isolated negative event and turn it into a never ending pattern of loss and defeat. 

Miriam: Yeah. I mean, it’s always this way. 

Greg: Perfect example. One client says something bad, all of my clients hate us. , Uhhuh, , Uhhuh.

Like that’s a, like all the time. Yeah. 

Jumping to conclusions. And like the people listening, if you’ve never even heard of cognitive distortions, like, which I didn’t, but like I’ve heard of jumping to conclusions. Sure. Like when [00:16:00] you look at that as, people operate this way, like, and how like toxic it could be personalization.

Things in Your Control

So lead you to believe that you’re responsible for events that in reality are completely or partially out of your control daily.

One of them was, and this list that I’m looking at has a different name for it, at least I’ve not found it was like, like all or nothing or something like that. Like, or black.

Black and white. Mm-hmm. where it’s. Looking at everything as like either or, and it can’t be like situational or so yeah, I definitely, oh yeah. All or nothing. Polarization or all or nothing. All or nothing. Thinking totally. Like when you engage in thoughts of black or white with no shades of gray, this type of cognitive distortion is leading you.

Yeah, I’ve definitely felt that. Leads to extremely unrealistic standards for yourself and others that could affect your relationships and motivation? 100%. I mean, I can’t think of an entrepreneur that probably hasn’t thought about that. 

[00:17:00] Like if I don’t make x million. My business is a failure. It’s like, okay, well what about like a half a million, less than that?

Are you still a failure? Like why that number? Like it’s like, it’s like it has to be that thing and there’s like no real, it makes no sense. Yeah. But I do that . I’ve definitely been guilty of it. 

Miriam: Well, I’ve seen this in businesses where if your revenue doesn’t go up every single year, you’re a failure somehow, even though you’re making more this year than.

Year and when is it enough? And most people don’t have any answers for that. Yeah.

[00:17:35] When is it Enough?

Miriam: You know, yeah. I was doing some consulting in a company and they had one of those little charts that shows your revenue. It was like 5 million, five, 6 million, 7 million, 15 million, 17 million down. And the last one. Went off the chart, the other direction. Mm-hmm. so it wasn’t the 5 million. And they were all like, oh my gosh, we’re all gonna lose our jobs. We’re failing, we’re [00:18:00] whatever. And I’m going, what?

What was your projected growth for that year? And it was something like 12 million. What did you guys make? 77 million. I don’t think you are failures. yeah. Yeah, because you know this weird, that is a cognitive distortion, right? There is. If you’re not always going up into the right, oh, I guess we suck.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, 100%. 

Magical Thinking

So do they have one on there called Magical Thinking? That’s what I always see entrepreneurs doing. 

Greg: Not on this list, but it might be called some, it might be called something else. 

Like, yeah, my wife, my wife likely won’t listen to this, but she does one also. It’s called Always Being Right

That, that’s on here. So, yep. What you, what you just thought? Your wife being your wife is actually a cognitive distortion. So you guys should all sleep well tonight knowing that , that your spouse might have cognitive distortion as well. 

Miriam: Yeah, I was gonna say, I, I think that [00:19:00] that can go both ways, Greg. Yes.

Well yeah, I think this is a fascinating topic and I’m so glad you brought it up because it isn’t one that I’ve talked about on my podcast before and it is one that plagues entrepreneurs everywhere and honestly just human beings. Yeah, for sure. It’s, it’s why it’s the thing. So let’s, let’s switch this, the topic just a little bit.

Hmm. If you were to turn back time, what would you say to younger Greg and at what age would you say this based on what you know now? 

Greg: Man, that’s a good question. I would say what I would probably say is make sure you define what success looks like and feels like for you. Mm-hmm. and like have it written down, . So I would definitely say that. And what was the second part of the question and why? 

Miriam: Well, first, why, why would you say that? The, the second part of the question is h at what age would you tell, would you [00:20:00] go back in time to tell that version of you?

[00:20:02] Turning Back Time

Miriam: You know, some of these things we gotta know really early and some, maybe a little later in life. 

Greg: Yeah, I mean, I would probably, I wouldn’t go back as far as I like, part of me wants to say like 20. . Okay. For the record, for anyone? Listen, I’m 40 , so like, I don’t know, like when I’m like in the wor early, early stage workforce, like trying to figure out what I want to do.

Yeah. I met my wife. True adulthood. 

Yeah, yeah. You know, like you were a, when you’re actually starting to think about what you want and what you care about. Yeah. So I think. Somewhere in my early twenties. Early to mid twenties. 

Miriam: So you would say, Hey, let’s, let’s define younger. Younger me. Let’s define what success is so we know what we’re chasing.

Yeah. Tell me how your ideas of success have shifted and changed from 24 to 44. 

Greg: Oh, easy. They’re mine and not somebody else’s . [00:21:00] Yeah. 

Miriam: So what did it look like when they were somebody else’s? Well, It was a lot about what people had and like what I thought their lifestyle looked like, or how big their business was, like random, arbitrary numbers things like that.

Or certain maybe accolades or recognition, blah, blah, blah. And what it is now it’s more about Peace. And I’ll even read some of them to you because I have a little document that I read in the morning that reminds me of what it is. 

So success to me the business is big enough and profitable enough for me to hit my money goals and my team to hit theirs.

What is Success?

I can wake up every day and ask, what did, what would I like to do today? My passive, and I put passive in quotes, revenue income exceeds my lifestyle. I’m working on projects that excite me and allow me to do my best work. I can disappear for several months with no effect on my income. There are no whiny people in my life.

I have no [00:22:00] time. There are no time obligations or deadlines. And I work with great people making great things being a good example to my children, Sarah, my family team and peers as a good husband, leader, mentor, and life- liver. Having a marriage and life that inspires our children and even family and friends around us to be better.

Having a team that is winning at life, not just in business. And then happy clients that share how we’ve helped without asking, and even sometimes when we do. 

Nice. 

Being in Competition

So that’s like reminders of what, like, and for anyone that just listen to that, please recognize that there’s not a single number or dollar sign in any of that.

And or item or item, you know, material thing. Yeah. So yeah, I think that’s like the huge swing. And you know, to your point earlier, like YouTube, all this stuff, I have been, so, and this is very recent for me too, like, and I’m still working on this all the time. Cause I think it’s, with the way that our world [00:23:00] works and our, like, the amount of information at our fingertips, I think it’s very easy because it happened to me for us to blindly adopt someone else’s goals and or definition of success and operate as if they were our own.

Which is weird because you end up feeling at least like I did that you’re like in this race and you’re losing. Then you didn’t even realize you entered the race. Like you’re like, you just feel like you’re losing and like competing and you’re like, I never knew that I was in a competition. . You know? And it’s a pretty crappy feeling.

[00:23:42] Your Own Playing Field

Miriam: And what’s actually interesting. If I can I don’t know if you know of or heard of Todd Herman. Mm-hmm. He wrote the, the Alter Ego Effect okay. Or the ALT and New York Times Bestseller. He’s a high performance coach, worked with a lot of like professional Olympic athletes and entrepreneurs, and he’s one of the [00:24:00] first entrepreneurs to, or first people to teach entrepreneurs the way that he teaches people in sports.

He tells this story of he was working with like a famous athlete, I forget what sport, and he made the comment that coaching entrepreneurs is like infinitely harder than coaching an athlete. And the athlete like who is I think played in Wimbledon, it might played in like, like you, we would all know the person’s name if he had said the name.

That’s how well-known they were. It was shocked that it was harder. Do mental fitness, mental performance for an entrepreneur than an athlete. And the reason was so insightful, tied to just this, was he goes, when you step on the, the tennis court, the net’s already up. The lines are already on the court and you, and you know the rules of the game.

Most entrepreneurs jump into business. They never drew the [00:25:00] lines for their own court, their own field of play, and they never made the rules. Like so they just went out there and were figuring it out. And yeah, it’s like, how do you, how do you win a game? Or how do you at least feel like you’re making progress if you don’t know the rules?

Drawing Your Own Lines

Like you don’t even know what strategies to use if you don’t know the rules. So you could be going down some tactical rabbit hole using the wrong strategies simply because you don’t know what the rules are, and or what’s inbounds what’s out of bounds. And so like that really hit home and it was.

As entrepreneurs, and I think honestly just in life, like we need to draw the lines of our own field of play and make our own rules because we live in a time where we can, which is great. And like then play by them because if we’re just like bli, like blindly operating and we see ourself losing, like that person might be playing a different completely different game and have a different strategy than [00:26:00] you.

You probably shouldn’t even follow it . And so like, but yet you compare yourself as if you were losing compared to them, but you never kind of defined your own field of play. Like that was like, man, like I was operating that way. You see someone saying, I have a whatever figure business, and you know, X employees and served blah, blah, blah, featured in blah, blah, blah.

And you’re like, that’s what I need to get to or else I’m not successful. And then like, when I really think about it, I was like, man, if I could take Fridays off, which I do and I can mountain bike two to three times a week when it’s not snowing, I. I get to drop my kids off and pick them up every single day from school, which I do.

Winning

I’m like, that’s winning to me. I’m like, wait a minute, I’m, I’m already successful. , like, yeah, like I’m there, like I’m doing it. And so I don’t know if that’s just like getting older and you just cuz of wisdom and then also having kids. But. Yeah, like my definition and my of that and my desire of what I [00:27:00] want is has changed.

And one other thing that he said, sorry, I’m on a rant, is that, you know, cuz this was happening in a mastermind that we’re all in and one of them posted like the leader this mastermind posted. The most difficult thing arguably in life is to know what you want. And Todd replied and said, actually, it’s not knowing what you want.

[00:27:23] Admitting What You Want

Miriam: It’s admitting what you want because you’re afraid of what other people will think of you —if it’s what, not what they want, or something that they might think is not that great. We’re actually thinking like that.  He goes, what we need to do is obviously not worry about what other people think, and this is something I was getting hung up on, maybe this all or nothing, cognitive distortion, the mm-hmm.

He’s like, we all go through seasons of life. I’m like, I was making decisions. well, if I gotta do this in five years from now, here’s what I gotta do now. Sort of, sort of behavior. And he was like, you know, it’s [00:28:00] okay to want what you want right now and not have to tie it to like, like permanence.

Like, like you can want what you want for this the next two, three years of life as a season. And guess what? Your kids go to school, you’re gonna want something different and you’ll be in a different season and you’ll have different motives to go pursue that. He’s like, stop making decisions as if the decision you make now and or the thing you want now is something that you’re gonna have to say you want forever.

Like disconnect from the forever thing because that’s not how it works. Like you can want something for the next three years and then want something different. And I was like, oh my God. Like took the shackles off. It was like so purine. Yeah. But yeah. I think that’s why I would say that to myself because for years I was just like, probably felt way worse about myself than I really needed to.

Comparison and Individualization

Yeah. Well it at the heart of all of that, that you’re talking about it, it has to do with [00:29:00] comparison and individuation. This ability to say, I’m gonna compare. the me of today to the me of yesterday instead of the me of today to the you of, you know, whatever. If I compare myself to you, we’re, we’re in completely different places.

You’ve been in your business twice as long as I’ve been in mine, and we are chasing different things, et cetera, et cetera. And so how do we become okay with comparing the me of today to the me of yesterday? Like there had to be, I’m sure it was gradual. Space in you of what you wanted not only became more clear, but also you became better at not comparing to the other person.

Do you have any kind of thoughts on how it is that you made that transition? Yeah, and I’ll still, again, honesty, still struggle with some of the comparison stuff. Yeah, we all do writing it down. Yeah, writing it down. I mean, like I literally, for those that aren’t watching a video [00:30:00] of this, I read off of a document that is called My Morning Ritual Document, and it has a bunch of bullets for daily reminders some bullets around my immediate goals, and then those bullets that I read to you that were my definition of success.

So it’s like, I feel like every morning, and I don’t do it every morning, but I do it most mornings, just whip open my phone and I read it on my phone. I’m having coffee. It’s like my, like daily recalibration of like, hey, like let me start from a place of like, I know what game I’m playing. Remind myself of the rules that I’m playing by.

Having Your Own Goals

So that when I know that I scroll on Instagram and I see the thing that I don’t wanna see or not that I don’t wanna see, that then could influence that. I’m like coming from a place of like, I started grounded. So that’s one. Write it. Which shockingly takes time. Like the, so making space, like disconnected, like on a pen and paper.

Ideally to go right, like on some of these things. I think as busy entrepreneurs, I mean, it’s so much easier just to like, [00:31:00] oh, I’ll take what she has and I’ll adopt that goal. And that sounds nice, like scrolling through Instagram. I like that heart, that bookmark, that that’s gonna become my belief.

It’s so easy to collect other people’s goals and beliefs and like not create and define your own because it takes time and it takes work and we’re busy, you know? So it’s like you gotta like pull yourself out and disconnect and like spend some genuine time trying to do that. And I think that’s kind of when I finally just said, okay, like I need to do this.

It really started. Coaches, mentors, therapists active conversation, because this is not like a set it and forget it thing, like it’s, you know, every day. Like, you’re, you’re, you’re on the battlefield, you know, you gotta deal with these things. So that’s helpful. I unfollow, like if I’m on social media which I try not to be on as much, but like Instagram, like I love Instagram, but I don’t follow anymore.

[00:31:54] Output and Input

Miriam: A lot of business people. That’s like where I follow, like all my mountain bike [00:32:00] outdoorsy type content that like lights me up and inspires me. Not like, but if I scroll by anything on Facebook, Instagram, that is someone else. And I catch whether they’re like, by the way, I do this with some of my friends, like peers, mentors were like, I, I catch myself feeling bad about myself or less than from their message, which obviously has nothing to do with and everything to do with me, I will unfollow them. Or like in, in Instagram, you can like mute people for 30 days. I use that feature all the time, like mute for 30 days.

 let me see if, when it comes, when it comes back up, if I’m still feeling that way, mute ’em again or unfollow or unfriend. And just like cleaning out the input, right?

Things to Look Forward To

Like our output’s only as good as our input and so I gotta, I like really try. and I go through waves just like anyone. Throttle that and like filter that and, you know, [00:33:00] constantly pruning what are my inputs. So that’s like the tactical things that, that I did that, that helped me. One other thing that I did which I may or may not have told you on one of our calls,

I, and I don’t know how this this necessarily ties to it, but it, it helps me. I try to have something on my calendar every 48 hours that like, I’m looking forward to, that’s like not business related. Mm-hmm. , whether that’s like a, a workout or like going for a ride or we’re having, you know, x, y, z friend over for, you know, dinner date night, you know, oh, this, we’re gonna watch this movie this night, this week.

Like I try to have something.

Still related as much as possible. Some of those things that I look forward to are entrepreneurial, but yeah, having that on my calendar is really helpful. What’s your best guess? I love this idea. You’re the first person who’s mentioned this kind of frequency. What’s the, what’s your best guess as to the 48 [00:34:00] hours?

Little Doses

Like I’ve heard some. Influencers say, you know, every 90 days, make sure you have something relatively big to look forward to. Why, why 48 hours? I mean, I don’t think it takes a, like, I don’t think it needs to be a big thing. So I don’t know. I’m a believer of like 1% better every day. And so like, like I know me like this morning.

Something that I’ve been experimenting with just in the last like 60 days is like, I’d rather work out six days a week for 20 minutes than work out three days a week for an hour. Or two hours. And so like, I went in and I picked three exercise, four exercises, and I did five sets of bunch of exercises.

I was done in like 18 minutes and I feel good. like I yesterday and I’ll do it again tomorrow. And I don’t feel like I’m, like, it fits with my schedule right now. So like the, the, the little, the little doses for me. Work really, really well. 90 days is long. I mean, it’s [00:35:00] not, but it is . And like I do have big things that I work on, but I don’t know, like the big things are made up of a lot of, a little, a lot of little things , so, yeah.

[00:35:10] Focus on the Little Things

Miriam: Yeah. Why not focus on those? I love it. I, I mean, I think that there’s something to that it reminds you that your life is more than your business and it, you’re getting, yeah. You’re stacking up small wins that you know will work for you. I unfortunately am paying attention to the time and realize we probably need to draw this to a close.

But one, one fun question, then I’ll let you, you know, share how people can find you. This is kind of a weird, is a Tim Ferris question. In the last six to 12 months, what have you purchased a hundred dollars or less that you’re just like, oh my gosh, I love this thing. Oh man. I feel like I have the king of $100 purchases in the last six to 12 months.

Yeah. I really, this is like [00:36:00] six days this. Is arguably the best water bottle that I’ve ever had in my entire life. A wallah, I bought two of them, a 24 ounce and a 32 ounce the like mouth lid for those listening, I’m like showing the water bottle right now. It’s like 24 bucks I think on Amazon. Some YouTuber that I follow did a review on it and, This is the only water bottle you ever need.

I need a new water bottle. Done. Amazing. I’m gonna give you one more just cuz it’s I also love it and it was tough to decide. There’s this company called Uug Monk and they have this thing called analog. I’m a huge analog fan meaning just actual the word analog, like not digital, but they have this tool called analog and it’s this little wooden tray and they have these to-do card.

Under $100 Purchases

It’s like you put the date on top and you write your to-do list and there’s a little stand and you can have it right in front of you. And then it’s a tray that has all of them inside and they have one. They have ones that are white that say to-do or today, and then they have ones that say next.

And they have ones that say [00:37:00] someday and it’s a little magnetic. I think it’s like, Just over a hundred bucks. But like I take my to-do list and I put it for the day on here and I close the digital to-do list because I like feel so much better crossing things off. And there’s a little note, like kinda like notes grid on the back.

I love this thing, like, and there’s a little travel pouch you can get for it. If I travel, like I bring a couple blank ones and I write my to-do list on there. I love it. It’s clear. You, I mean, your voice got excited. Your face lit. Yeah. It’s, and for people who are listening, it’s so, I like look at it.

Yeah, it’s, I mean, it looks like it’s black walnut. It looks really attractive, so yeah. That’s, that’s fun. They have a couple different. Okay, I’ll put it in the show notes just because I just think it’s fun to see. One of the problems with algorithms is you see more of the same, and unless you have someone you know like give you a different idea, you don’t, you just see more of the same.

So it’s kind of fun to hear what other people are buying and thanks for those [00:38:00] ideas. For sure. Under $100 purchases. I make a lot of them.

[00:38:09] Where to Find Greg

Miriam: Oh my goodness. Well, before we have you share how people can get ahold of you and look into your program and stuff, I just wanted to mention, you know, before we got on, I talked about how we like to do a donation in your name just as a thank you for your time and the charity you chose is best Friends.

Best friends.org. They are really committed to ending senseless euthanasia in animal shelters across the US by 2025. They’re gonna do it. I mean, I’m looking at their numbers. They’ve been at it for about 15 years. I’m so excited I get to interview the c e o next week. Her, that podcast will probably land maybe a month from now, but Anyway, we’re gonna do that in your name, and thank you for your time, Greg.

And why don’t you just tell people how they can find you? Super simple. I would say, if you [00:39:00] want more of what I was talking about I have a YouTube channel where I release a video every single week. And the fastest way to get there is just go to greg’s videos.com and it’ll redirect you right to my YouTube channel.

Or you could just Greg Hickman on YouTube and you’ll find. That’s so fun. Greg’s videos.com. How many people have that u url? Well, just you obviously just me, but yep. It’s good. It’s good. Well, Greg, it’s super fun to just see you again and again. Thank you for your time and wisdom.

 

 

End Credits

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Saving Animals with BestFriends Animal Sanctuary – Julie Castle

No-Kill by 2025: BestFriends Animal Sanctuary

Miriam: [00:00:00] Hey friends, I am beyond excited today. Today we are gonna get to hear from Julie Castle and she is the CEO of Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. And you guys know anybody who’s listened to my podcast knows that we always gift someone at the end of the podcast with a donation to either you know, pet planets or people an organization that helps with that.

And the one that we hear from like that we donate to an awful lot is best friends. So I’m beyond excited, Julie, that you would give us a little bit of your time. I know you’re super busy and just thank you.

Julie: You’re welcome. I’m really honored to be here today, so thank you so much for having.

Miriam: It’s, this is gonna be a great conversation.

The Background with Best Friends

So I, I’m gonna give a teeny bit of my background and then we’re gonna jump into your story. I mean, my background with best friends. I feel like I became exposed to your organization [00:01:00] probably between 10 years ago and 15 years ago, and it started out with things like Strut Your Mutt and things like that.

These, these programs that you, To sort of connect the unknowing public with the needs of animals. And at some point I started hearing things like we are gonna end senseless euthanasia here, here, here, here.

And then it became by the country 2025. You guys have an audacious goal and you’re gonna get there.

So let’s start there a little bit. Talk about. How, how you came up with this goal and how is it going? And then we’ll kind of go backwards from there.

Julie: So the, before I talk about 2025, I feel like I need to give a little bit of history in, in animal welfare. And I think, you know, it’s one of the few.[00:02:00]

Causes where there’s virtually an animal shelter in almost every community in America. And if, if you don’t have an animal shelter, you probably have that neighbor down the street that rescues cats or dogs, or has a cat rescue or a dog rescue. And so it really is such a universal cause, and it, and it’s so up, up, close and personal, you know, 80% of American households have a pet.

And so clearly the, the term “best friends”, they are our best friends.

[00:02:34] The Origins of Animal Shelters

Julie: And so the animal sheltering movement started about 150 years ago in back in New York City when There was a, an outbreak of rabies and the public was deeply concerned that there were dogs with rabies running around the streets.

And so they said, Hey, city officials, we want you to do something [00:03:00] about this. So the city hired bounty hunters. And these bounty hunters were getting a quarter ahead. They would grab dogs, they put ’em in a giant cage and dunk them in the East river. And that was the original means of population control.

And the public was outraged and said, Hey, that’s not exactly what we meant. You know, let’s look for a more humane solution.

And so what ended up happening is shelters started popping up all over the country.

Julie: The first shelter was in Pennsylvania, by the way. Sadly, the same thing was happening only behind closed doors.

These animals were going in to shelters and they were dying, and this methodology of population control went on for decade after decade after decade. Same thing, same shelter system.

Sheltering Animals in Kanab

Julie: Until [00:04:00] the founders of best Friends broke ground at the sanctuary in Kanab, Utah in 1984 and really asked the simple question of Why are we doing this?

Why are we thinking about the best ways to dispose of our best friends rather than the best ways to save our best friends.

And so that really was the, you know, they became this beacon of light in this, this system that needed massive disruption. And back then, in 1984, everyone thought they were, Crazy.

When I joined the organization, everyone thought we were crazy.

[00:04:39] Is “No-Kill” Even Possible?

Julie: You know, no kill isn’t possible. It’s ridiculous notion. It’s pie in the sky. And back then about 17 million animals were dying in America, even, even at in that era. And sadly, you know, they weren’t measuring, they weren’t counting how many animals [00:05:00] were dying.

They were measuring them by the pound. Essentially, oh my gosh. So animals would go in barrels. The weight would be measured. That’s how they were calculating, you know, the destruction of what was happening in, in America’s shelter system.

And so, you know, best friends started working toward, as you say, let’s start with a community and try to get a community no kill or a state no kill to prove its efficacy.

Let’s Prove It’s Possible with Best Friends

Julie: And so we. Set out to design programs both in our home state of Utah, in Los Angeles and all over the country. And back in 2007, there was one no-kill shelter that we were aware of out of 4,200 shelters in this country. And we basically started to develop programs from there. [00:06:00] And. We knew that more and more shelters were going no- kill, and there was momentum on our side.

And internally we were doing our own analysis of what we thought, you know, can we get this country to no kill? Like every shelter in every community?

Julie: And what we designed internally put us on a trajectory of 2030. And we had our annual conference in Salt Lake City. and I was about to go on stage and I was like, this was back in 2016 and I was about to announce to the crowd we can get there by 2030.

And I thought to myself, that is a really long way away. Yeah. And I made the decision on the spot to move it up five years.. And made the announcement without any of our staff [00:07:00] knowing and they were freaked out. Yeah. Like, Julie, this isn’t possible. This isn’t the, this isn’t the plan.

No Kill by 2025!

Julie: And so we went back and designed our, in our first meeting we said, okay, what’s the big picture that we need to solve for an incredibly Back then in 2016, nobody in this country knew how many brick and mortar shelters there were in America.

There was no documentation of that. Let alone how many animals were dying in America’s shelters. And so we set out with a team of volunteers and our staff to find every shelter in every community and figure out exactly how many animals were dying in those shelters.

The Best Friends Pet Lifesaving Dashboard

Julie: And we developed our pet lifesaving dashboard.

From there, it’s a massive data project. It’s a really cool visualization tool that anybody can [00:08:00] use. You go to our website@bestfriends.org, and you can look up your community in your state or any community and see how well that shelter is doing.

And it really, for us is a public engagement tool. It’s also a B2B tool for shelters to be able to use, but.

So that really is the premise of 2025 and our data drives our strategy. So absolutely we look at that data every day to to figure out what move we’re gonna make next. Yeah.

Miriam: Oh, I love this, and we’re gonna get into all of this. First of all, I mean, just something that I should have said at the beginning in the introduction.

You are a high level leader. I mean, you are dealing with budgets of, I mean, as of 2014, I think you had raised 132 million, so I bet that that number is a lot higher.

And how many, just really quickly, how many employees [00:09:00] and volunteers do you have with best friends, would you guess The volunteers part is a, is a game changer cuz it’s huge.

[00:09:07] Best Friends Animal Sanctuary: 900 Employees

Miriam: But so, so

Julie: when I started at Best Friends, I was the 17th employee. Wow. And today? Today we have. Over nine, 900 employees in about 48 to 49 states, depending upon the day. Yeah. So we are, we’re, we’re a rapidly growing organization and Absolutely. It’s, it’s a great experience. Yeah.

Miriam: So I think the important thing about this dashboard that you’re talking about is, You, you cannot create clarity for your company unless you have something you can measure.

What are we measuring to say, is this happening? And unfortunately, animal deaths is not useful “Animals saves” is a lot more useful and you can’t do that without knowing how many, you know, shelters. [00:10:00] There are the whole nine yards.

A Personal Story of Rescuing Animals

Miriam: When you were telling this story, I was thinking about when my husband and I were first married, and this will date us, but this was about

34 years ago we were in an apartment, no pets allowed. And I came home one day with this huge black lab that I found on the street, and he’s like, oh my gosh, we’re gonna get kicked out. We need to call animal control and whatever. And I said, we can’t. They’re gonna kill her. Gimme three days. I can find her a home.

And he’s like, no, no, no, they’re not gonna kill her. And I said, they will kill her. And Then he called animal control and they said, yeah, three days and we can put ’em down.

And that was everywhere, you know, until you guys really started doing what you were doing. That was everywhere. And at some point in time we got an animal shelter and they started creating foster opportunities for people.

And we’ve, I think we’ve foster. , I wanna go with 18 puppies and four adult dogs. And [00:11:00] all of them found good homes and many of them I’ve stayed in touch with and whatever.

All of those animals would’ve been euthanized.

And it’s because a group of people made the decision to say, yeah, I know this is what happens everywhere, but it doesn’t have to be, and we’re gonna change it.

Staying Friends 

So I wanna ask a little bit about. I think something you’ve managed to create is a company culture and employee employee engagement that is unusual.

Also best friends started as a group of friends who decided this is not okay. And a lot of times when friends go into business together, they either get married, divorced, or they hate each other at the end.

Like it’s unusual for people to stay friends. So what was it in this culture? That allowed people to stay friends and bond even more closely. What are you working on with your culture that’s making this possible?

[00:11:56] The Founders of Best Friends Animal Sacntuary

Julie: Well, I think it really goes back to our founders and [00:12:00] luckily we, we still have living founders with us who are involved in the organization, who are there for us as a resource to you know, really be our North Star.

And I think, you know, The, the, the sanctuary. If you haven’t been here, you really need to come. It’s, I have visited once. Yeah. In any other state it would be a national park. It’s got that kind of beauty and it’s a, you know, the sanctuary was built by a group of about 25 friends who Did all the plumbing, the electrical, framed up all the buildings.

They had no idea how to do this. They learned it all from time- life books or the local hardware store. It was built on grit and determination and really that recognition that they, there, there was something bigger than [00:13:00] themselves.

And that’s not to say that they didn’t have disagreements, they didn’t have knockdown, drag out fights. They did. And I think what really helped them together, That higher vision and you know,

it’s that, that African proverb of if you want to go quickly, go, go alone if you want to go far, go together.

And I think that they understood that they each had their own unique skillset that they could bring to the table that really created this environment of dependency on each other for success.

And with the highest value being, generosity and kindness.

And those are, those are our two highest values internally.

The Culture at Best Friends 

Julie: And so taking that from the founders, you know, for me as CEO, culture, My number one priority because if you don’t have a strong culture and [00:14:00] if you don’t take care of your employees, you have nothing.

You think about life and you, you go through high school, you may or may not go to college.

You graduate from undergrad or graduate school, you get your first job. You are working from that point forward until you’re 67 or 69, you’re spending most of your waking hours with a group of people that you don’t, you don’t really have any choice over, and then you retire and you maybe have 10 years left, 15 years left.

It’s kind of a, a really sour view of life, , but that means that where you choose to work and where you work should be incredible. The experience there, that’s delivered. Should be one of [00:15:00] respect, one of kindness, generosity where you feel safe and you feel like you’re, you’re truly taken care of. And so I feel like creating that platform and providing that for our employees is, is critical to me.

Something that we work on every day. I think people, when they feel that way, they show up they show up and do their level best every day.

Yeah, so that’s, that’s kind of a an outline of our culture and we really, really, really believe it and we really live it. Yeah.

Miriam: So let me throw out a question that will come with a statement, but first I wanna say clearly you’ve done a good job because you got the top place to work in 2022 award.

And that’s not easy. Out of all the companies in the USA one of the top places to work. That’s pretty cool.

I would love for you to give some specific examples of this, and I’m gonna back up just a second. I mean, I, those of, [00:16:00] I, I am a therapist as well as a executive coach, and I have worked with a lot of people who love.

Animals and a huge percentage of those people who love animals, hate people and don’t have a lot of good people skills. I’ve seen this in vet techs and I’ve seen this in like, you know, just all ranges.

And I, I mean, I love people, so I don’t, I don’t care. But I can see how it could be difficult to create a good functioning culture with people who love animals, but hate people, and obviously that’s not everyone, but tell me some of the things that you’ve done that help your team function as a team?

Teamwork at Best Friends 

Julie: Well, I think that, I think the biggest thing comes down to what you described earlier, which is oftentimes I encounter other nonprofits or people organizations that are in our same space or field and [00:17:00] I think one of the mistakes we make is we, we all are in this because we love animals.

We’re in this because we do wanna change the world and therefore I think we have a tendency to try and do too much mm-hmm. and we try to boil the ocean rather than super LA laser focused on what’s that big thing that we can achieve and let’s take out all the rest of the stuff and just focus on this goal that we can actually really get to, and I think that clarity of mission and that clarity of a goal unites a team better than anything that you can do.

[00:17:43] Clarity of Mission and Strategy of Best Friends

Julie: And so I think it goes to your strategy first. People need to understand why they’re there, what they’re doing, what they’re focused on. W what good looks like, what achievement looks like. I think setting those foundational things [00:18:00] really it that that’s the, that is the basic premise of building a really strong team.

And so to me that’s number one. Number two is once you have that, you can start going down the list and checking the boxes. Empowerment becomes huge, you know, really empowering your team based on that bigger vision. They’re gonna create their own roadmap map to success and, and it’s exciting to see, you know, how people become problem solvers once they know.

What direction they’re going, and so, To me that that’s the most important thing. Hmm.

Miriam: I love that. And I, if I can, I wanna give a specific example and then let you comment on that. In 2017, I was wanting to expose my daughter to, who was like a young adult at the time. She was in college. But I [00:19:00] wanted to expose her to.

Volunteering After Hurricane Harvey

Miriam: Traveling somewhere to help. And at that point, hurricane Harvey had just happened and Houston was under a ton of water. And I said, if I buy you a ticket, will you come with me and can we help in whatever way we can help? And she said, oh my gosh, yes. Let me just switch some things around. And she got off work and we, we flew from different cities, but met in Houston, gave each other hugs, and then made our way to this place that you guys had created. Oh, how cool. We walked in you guys had set up, I wanna say 500 kennels for dogs and probably 120 for cats. And these were all animals that had been abandoned or whatever, just they needed to be rescued. The hurricane came in and separated them from their people.

And one of the things that I saw as I talked with whomever was in charge. Everybody knew [00:20:00] their job. They handed us name tags and they handed us, they said, okay, go over to the cat enclosures and talk with so-and-so. And we went and talked with so-and-so and he said, these cages need to be cleaned out. So we cleaned them out and then when that was all done, we went to the next person who said, go over and talk to so-and-so.

And we talked to them and they said, these dogs need to be walked. And I think in an hour, Like 40 dogs. It was quick, you know, take ’em out, zip ’em around the block and let them, you know, pee and sniff for a second and get ’em back. And every dog got two walks a day at least. And the cats were cleaned out.

Focus Your Efforts

And the kid, you know, I mean, it was just a smooth machine and we couldn’t be there very long. And I wrestled because I said, You know, the money that went into these flights I could donate to you and it probably would go better. However, my daughter talked about it and showed pictures to all of her friends, and I thought, well, that is an act of spreading awareness.

And spreading to these young people. You can do things [00:21:00] like this. You don’t have to just go somewhere and spend money to spend money. Not, not that there’s anything wrong with a vacation, but you know what I’m saying. You can choose to focus your efforts in a way that will further something along. So I saw clarity and specificity and you know, it started with mission and then it got broken down into these little things.

I would love for you to share another story similar to that and maybe you could talk about N K L A. I thought that was brilliant, and if I understand correctly, you guys achieved your goal with that.

Julie: we did. And, and I have to say thank you for coming down to Houston and your daughter too. It was a really big effort on behalf of, you know, not just best friends, but a lot of animals welfare organizations and, and rescue groups.

And it, it was it was a lot of work. So, so thanks for doing that.

[00:21:55] Best Friends: No Kill Los Angeles

Julie: But yeah, I mean, I, nk l a. Ah, that was such a big [00:22:00] moment for us in so many ways. And just by way of background, so at the time I had been diagnosed with a very aggressive advanced stage cancer. Wow. I basically moved to LA to get treatment and while I was there, when I first got there, I just thought, you know, cuz at that point there, there was a lot of uncertainty as to whether or not I was gonna make it or how much longer I might have to live.

And I thought to myself, you know, I could sit here and feel sorry for myself and wallow in this and, and I was pretty young. This was in 2010 two, the end of 2009. Or I could like just continue to live the best life I can because to me it was [00:23:00] sort of emblematic of cancer winning. And so I remember talking to one of our founders who had really develop.

Programs in la. We didn’t have a physical presence back then, but we had a lot of, you know, super adoption events. Strut your Mutt, foster based programs, spay and neuter programs, and I said, Hey, you know, we’ve got this strategy for no-kill.

I think we need to go big or go home. And take Los Angeles, no-kill.

If we can take America’s second largest city, that’s 400 square miles, seven city shelters, 30% of the population is below the poverty line. The physical footprint, the geographical footprint of LA is enormous. We can do it anywhere there. Then there’s no excuse for anybody in the whole country.

and he was [00:24:00] like, are you crazy?

Achieve Your Vision

And you know, LA is also ha very well-known in the animal welfare space for being a, a tough city. You know, there’s lots of drama, lots of in-fighting, lots of politics, not a lot of love for each other there. So the first thing that. Did is I went around to. The, the key stakeholders in that community, the thought leaders in animal welfare, and there were about five or six folks who were leading relatively large organizations who kind of set the tone for that community.

And I can remember I’d just gone through my first or second chemo treatment. I didn’t have any hair. I looked terrible. I sat down with them and sort of painted my vision and really what I was doing was I was [00:25:00] importing the same vision and strategy that we’d used in Utah, which is, was very it was very data driven and very strategic and.

I described the, the vision to them and they were like, no, it’s never gonna happen in LA. It’s just, you know, we’ve been talking about this for 15 years. There. There’s too much love lost here. You know, too much in- fighting. We just sit around in these meetings and never achieve anything. And I said, look, I promise you, give me three months if we, if you don’t feel like we’re achieving.

Then we’ll, we’ll pack it up and call it good. And so I sat down with that group, that, that team of people, and we developed a strategy for LA based on the data. And we started meeting and started talking and started to get excited. About this. [00:26:00] Eventually we built a, we decided to involve the entire animal welfare community, which was comprised of about 160 rescue groups.

Doing it Together for Animals

So we had this whole coalition of everyone swimming in the same direction and people taking their piece. Mm-hmm. . So whatever skill they did really well. Okay. Over to you. We’re gonna support you. We’re gonna promote that. We’re gonna put money behind it. We’re gonna direct people to you. Rising tides, lift all boats.

We can do this, but only if we do it together. And we officially launched it in 2012 at the House of Blues with a whole cadre of celebrities like Hillary Swank and, you know, a, a bunch of A-list folks who really got behind this and.

And sure enough a city that [00:27:00] was taking in nearly 60,000 animals a year in those seven city shelters who had a save rate of about 52% is now above 90%.

Wow. Is it perfect? No. Are there still animals that should be saved in LA? Absolutely. But we hit that benchmark that we consider no kill. And it, it was definitely a huge moment for us.

Miriam: Oh my gosh. I love, love, love it because you’re right. If you can take LA who can, who has an excuse anywhere else? I mean that place just had so many problems.

[00:27:42] The “Bix Fix” – Neuter Your Dog!

Miriam: So one thing I noticed when I was in Houston that I had never seen before in my life. Were so many un neutered dogs. And later as I talked with people, they started saying, well, first of all, this is Texas and maybe it’s not as popular an [00:28:00] option to get your dog neutered.

They also felt like some of them were strays. It seems. Part of this initiative to end senseless euthanasia of healthy animals has to come down to having less puppies to begin with. And so I wondered if you could talk about some of the programs that you guys have done to help people with this to help awareness.

I know you had one called The Big Fix and I just would like to hear how you helped change public sentiment. About something that was very ingrained. No, I want my dog natural. It needs to be this way, blah, blah.

Julie: Yeah. I, I feel like it, you know, in the beginning when I first started working here, the problem seemed so overwhelming and it was, it was really, really overwhelming.

And, you know, seeing something like that in Houston you know, you, you think is the, is this ever. Really, truly be cemented in our national [00:29:00] fabric that we as the wealthiest nation in the world end this senseless killing of our best friends. And so when you, when you think back, when I think back on some of the early programs that we started, we, we were developing them to make it okay that it was not only okay, but it was cool to to fix your pets. Mm-hmm. , because you know, that is one part of the equation is getting your animals sped and neutered.

Neutering Animals in Utah

And so we, we hired an ad agency that we worked with and had a lot of fun. With them. And back in the day, you know, we had this mobile spay neuter clinic. It was one of the first in the country called The Big Fix, and it would travel around Utah offering discount spay neuter services to pretty much every community in Utah.

And so we would send out postcard mailers ahead of the, the big fix getting there. [00:30:00] And this agency helped us come up with, Like, because Utah has too many pregnant females,

and, you know, stuff like males fixed cheap. And it, it, it was you know, a humorous approach to a very serious topic. We did a lot of cool promotions with like Hooters. Hooters for neuters and that might, you know, rub. That’s awesome. Some people the wrong way. But we were targeting a very specific demographic, right?

That was the demographic that was likely. To not neuter their dog because the machismo factor. Mm-hmm. and, and, and, you know, we made a lot of progress. A lot of progress. And I think that today when we look at spay neuter, we’re, I think we’re much smarter about it, meaning that not every spay neuter is created [00:31:00] equal.

So, You know, we started looking at zip code areas and where most of the animals were coming from and into the shelter system. And then we were able to target those zip codes and do it in a cadence that mimicked the breeding cycle so that we could actually stop this hamster wheel, so to speak.

Keeping Up with Animals’ Breeding Cycles

Because if you just go into a community once a year, you’re wasting your money. You really are because you can’t keep up with that breeding cycle. Yeah.

So I mean, is that like every six to eight weeks you would be going in kind of thing or like add a few more words to that? So it just would depend on the community, the volume of animals, what type of animals.

You know, cats are obviously way more prolific than dogs and they’re also very seasonal. There’s seasonality to it. And so it, you know, when it comes down to it a lot of this is [00:32:00] targeting. Its formulas. It’s following the data. And really being smart about your resources because obviously we don’t have unlimit unlimited funds.

Mm-hmm. , no, no nonprofit does. So we’re always looking at things Through the eyes of what’s the biggest bang for our buck.

Miriam: For sure. So many times you’ve mentioned, you know, strategic thinking, strategic actions. I have a feeling that’s one of your superpowers, you know, in terms of how you approach leadership.

[00:32:32] Mentorship and Modeling at Best Friends 

Miriam: I wanted to ask some questions about leadership. Maybe What did you name a couple mentors or things you had modeled to you that really stuck with you about how to lead a company?

Julie: You know, I, I had a really great I had a really fantastic college experience. I went to Southern Utah University and I was, A little bit [00:33:00] nervous about attending that institution because I’d grown up near Salt Lake and Cedar City is a vastly different community than the, than the salt, than the Wasatch Front.

Sure. And I loved, loved, loved that college. And I had two incredible mentors.

One was the president of the university and the other one was one of the vice presidents. And. The president was J, his name was Gerald Shett. He’s since passed. He was such a visionary. He was one of those people who had the ability to, to look beyond this year or this decade and really Really dream big and, and it, and had a lot of the same qualities as a somebody like a Walt Disney and, you know, to create what he created was so fun to watch and be around.[00:34:00]

And he didn’t, he never went with what are our, what, what are our, you know, the SWAT thing. He never did that. Hmm. And honestly, Try to encourage my team to stay away from that in the beginning. Mm-hmm. , because you know, stay away from budget limitations, stay away from resource limitations. Let’s think about the solution here and what that looks like.

Empower People

Then we can back into solving for this other stuff. That was such a great lesson that I learned from him. Mm-hmm. The, the vice president, his name was Sterling Church. He’s still with us. He’s still a dear, dear mentor to me. And he was very, he taught me the, the art of trusting, but verifying with your staff.

[00:35:00] And really doing it, not looking over their shoulder, micromanaging here, here’s your roadmap. Here’s the end result. I’m looking for. You figure out how to get there. I’ll give you these very large guardrails and when we have our check-in meetings, I’m gonna be trusting, but verify.

That has been huge for me because there’s no way you can get to where you need to go if you don’t empower the folks that are smarter than me, more talented than me to actually get their job done.

And, and I think those two mentors really, really, at a very young age, helped me understand those two very, very, very valuable things.

Miriam: If everybody had those kind of people in their lives, you know, how different would our world look?

You know? So trusting, but verifying I assume [00:36:00] verifying has something to do with gimme an update. Where are we with this, this, or this?

[00:36:05] How to Course Correct with People

Miriam: If someone is taking. Maybe not a wrong term, but it is just isn’t where it needs to be. How do you maybe, course correct.

Julie: It’s so interesting that you bring that up because I think this is one of the hardest things for people to do and it’s really, I don’t know the root of it.

I don’t know if it’s a. Not wanting to hurt people’s feelings or, but I, this is where I feel like people just need to have a kind, honesty, and, you know, you don’t have to be upset. You don’t have to get brutal with people. It’s just about, hey, you know, This is off track. This is what we talked about last [00:37:00] time.

You know what? What’s challenging you to actually get to where you said you’d be and let’s talk about how we can fix it. And I think just that simple honesty is missing and so many. Relationships, so many management situations that, that I witness. And so for me it’s you know, that is the approach that I take with people who are my direct reports, and I think it’s, it’s vital to success.

Speak the Truth in Love

Miriam: Yeah, I would agree. It seems to me, as you model that with your direct reports, then they model that with their direct reports.

And it, I agree that there is just not a lot of. I kind of say speak the truth in love, you know, there’s speaking the truth or there’s, there’s kind of this love space and you need both of ’em in order to have a functioning company.

So let me think. One of the questions I wanted to ask you [00:38:00] also got an award for being one of the top women led companies in the us. Can you talk about maybe some of the challenges of that? You don’t find a lot of women CEOs, and I’m not entirely sure the reason why, but I would just like to hear your experience.

[00:38:21] Being Best Friends’ CEO as a Woman

Julie: Yeah. You know, this is some, this is a topic that I have a lot of energy around because I, I think it’s undeniable. You know, I was reading something the other day. There are more CEOs named Brad than there are women CEOs. Wow. And I, I don’t know if it was actually that name, but it was Right, right. Yeah.

The idea and, you know, and then you think about just women in society and you know, the fact that women couldn’t have a credit card until like 1972 or something. I, I can’t even believe that. [00:39:00] Hmm. That is there. There are some core foundational issues in our world around women and women’s role, a woman’s role in the workplace.

And for me, I think about, honestly, I feel. It is the essence of our founders and best friends that has allowed me to get to this position. So basically it’s sort of that proverbial, I started in the mail room and now I’m C E O. I basically have done virtually every job in this organization. Yeah. It is because they, and they are very it is a very matriarchal organization and always has been.

And there is a certain there is a certain collaboration that comes along with a women, women leaders, I believe. And it is [00:40:00] a less about a sprint to the finish and more about the, the essence of stronger together. And I’m not saying that men, men who are leaders don’t have these attributes, but I think there’s certain things that women do that should be celebrated more and valued more in the workplace.

Environment of Kindness and Generosity

And You know, sometimes some, sometimes the, the act of creating an environment of kindness and generosity and love, and again, I’m not saying men aren’t capable of that, but I think that is women’s innate nature. Mm-hmm. , it’s why we’re mothers. Mm-hmm. , it’s why we’re grandmothers. It’s that nurturing side of humanity that creates a, a, a beautiful.

and it’s the challenge is, is that I think those softer skills and those qualities [00:41:00] in a very, you know, competitive, capitalistic society are sometimes surround upon. Yeah.

Miriam: Yeah. I was gonna say , they’re hard to monetize those qualities. And in a capitalistic society, a lot of times people are chasing after that almighty dollar and they don’t appreciate collaboration unless it adds six, seven zeros to the bottom line.

Julie: As well. I, I, sorry, I, I think you’re absolutely right, but I think it does. I agree. Yeah. It, it does add it, but they don’t think it adds. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s where again, it might not be the, the most direct route, but it’s the most sustainable one. Yes. It might not be the most direct route, but it is the most sustainable one.

[00:41:51] Ways People Can Help in Shelters

Miriam: Absolutely. Well, let’s talk a teeny bit about, I wanna respect your time and we need to be done in a couple minutes, but When, if [00:42:00] people would like to help beyond just, I mean, I’m super big fan of go to the website, make a donation. Beyond that if people wanna help, what kinds of programs are you guys doing these days that people could be a part of?

Julie: So there’s so many different ways you can help no matter where you live in the country. We have an action team that’s called our 2025 Action Team that you can sign up for, which, You’ll get alerts about your community and you know, you can volunteer online, you can volunteer in person. There, there are virtually things going on all over the country every single day that are being led by best friends.

But, but also, I will say this, we are in the spirit of generosity, we are an organization that understands. That we are stronger when we build other [00:43:00] organizations to be stronger or help them become stronger. We have a network of over 4,000 organizations across the country, and a lot of these organizations are, they’re either rescue groups or municipal shelters.

Helping Organizations Like Best Friends

Rescue groups are always in need of donations, supplies, and volunteers. I promise there’s one in your community that could use the help. On the other hand, municipal shelters. While they’re publicly funded, they are desperate for volunteers in foster homes and people coming to help their staff clean kennels.

They’re usually way too underfunded. If you live in any, any community in America is gonna have a shelter or rescue group. Group that’s desperate for your help, I promise.

Miriam: Yeah, and what I think is great about that is let’s say you don’t wanna clean kennels, go volunteer to walk dogs, and if you don’t wanna do that, go [00:44:00] volunteer to feed kittens bottles.

You know? And if you don’t wanna do that, and you like to shop, go buy paper towels and dog food. And if you don’t wanna do that, foster an animal. And if you don’t wanna do that, tell your neighbor who loves animals about it so that they can do it. Like there’s just so many levels where people could get involved.

Julie: Or marketing, or we need data entry or accounting or, you know, every nut and bolt situation you can think of that makes a small business run is what a rescue group needs.

Closing the Gap

Yeah, and so it, it’s just we can do this. There, there are 17 million animals are gonna be acquired this coming year by Americans. There are 350,000 animals dying in our shelters. That we can close that gap. Yeah. We are really close.

Miriam: When you went from years ago, 17 million animals dying and now you’re down to 300,000 [00:45:00] dying a what an amazing, amazing job you guys have done and.

B 300,000 animals is a lot of animals. I mean, for those of you who aren’t watching the video, Julie’s German Shepherd has come in and said hi probably six times and it’s an amazing animal that you rescued, you know? And right now, pretty much, I mean, I think we have. I’m gonna go with five or six or seven rescues.

Not all dogs. We live on a little farm and we have all sorts of animals, but yeah, 300,000 is too many, so.

All right. If, if I have your permission, I would love to ask a coachy question because I’m a coach, so I love coachy questions. Sure. Okay. In between now and this goal of no kill 2025 or whatever you see as your personal next level of growth or your future.

[00:45:55] Mindset and Your “Why”

Miriam: Everybody has these internal mindsets that govern our [00:46:00] emotions and our behaviors, and I was wondering if you would share a mindset. Like, it’s not necessarily a switch, but it’s a bridge. Like I struggle to think this way and I’m working on thinking this way, but instead, I tend to think this way. Like, can you just share a mindset that sometimes gets the better of you that you work on?

You know, living in B but you struggle with a, does that make sense?

Julie: It makes total sense. And so I’ll, I’ll just give you a quick, just a quick story. I ended up at best Friends because. I’d finished undergraduate and I was on my way to law school at the University of Virginia Law School, which I’d been working toward for years.

And my friends and I decided to go to Mexico as one last hurrah. And we took off in my 1979 Dodge Colt, which had a different, I’d been in so many accidents, it had a different color panel. [00:47:00] We got down there, realized we ran outta money, had to. Jump in the car, drive 1800 miles back. We had just enough money for gas in a candy bar each.

Wow. And one of the friends that I was with begged us to stop at this sanctuary in southern Utah, and none of us wanted to. We were tired and hungry. We pulled in and it was so magnificent. And the vision of the founders and their ethic, I called my dad from a payphone after that visit. And I said, dad, I’m not going to law school.

Moving to Kanab

I’m moving to Kanab, Utah and I’m gonna work for the animals. And he was not happy . But the point is, my mindset challenge is that I have been here since I was a, I was a kid. I was a little baby, you know, I started out here I was really poor. I lived in a van for the. [00:48:00] Several months showered at the local gym.

My first paycheck was 183 bucks. I really hadn’t had any professional experience. I worked in every area of the organization, and so a lot of this is kind of self-taught or looking at people that I can emulate, or mentors that I have, or you know, other leaders that I call. So because I, you know, haven’t had sort of that executive training, there are moments where I’m like wait, is this real?

Like, are are the founders aware that you know this person. I pr, I don’t know if I had sent it an application to be c e o here, that I’d be c e o. Yeah. And so that creeps into my head as a, a moment of doubt, I’ll be honest. And, and you think about, you know, wow, this is such a cool opportunity and cool [00:49:00] experience, but you know, or Yeah.

Miriam: Oh my gosh, Julie, I appreciate your willingness to be vulnerable like that. I’m working with a coach right now who says, stop trying to get rid of imposter syndrome, because imposter syndrome means you are stretching and reaching for the next biggest thing. Mm-hmm. . And if you didn’t feel like an imposter, you would have.

Your Purpose

you would be coasting. And those words have really helped me, as I’ve said, who am I to coach executives or high performing people? You know, who, who am I to? Whether they’re, it doesn’t matter, founders or et cetera, et cetera. That message of Imposter syndrome means your stretching has been really helpful for me.

And I gotta say, Julie, look at the numbers they speak for themselves. The amount of money you’ve been able to raise, the amount of employees, the amount of awards. [00:50:00] Wow. It’s pretty impressive. Thank you. Before, before we get off, is there something I didn’t think to ask you that you would like to speak about?

Julie: I think the greatest gift that we can give each other is to recognize that you’re, you’re here on this earth for a purpose and helping others and yourself find what that grand passion is, is probably the greatest gift you can give somebody.

Miriam: Tremendous. Tremendous With that, we’ll end in the show notes, we’ll have all the links to your organization and ways that people can help.

I asked you beforehand, we would like to make a donation in your name to one of five charities and you chose the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. So we’ll, I’ll get off this podcast and we’ll make a donation to them and you’ll get updates on your baby Elephant [00:51:00] who’s been rescued from poaching and I think you’ll love it.

I think you’ll just love those updates. And for anybody listening, go check out the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and also check out best friends org. Thank you so much.

Julie: What a great opportunity. I love talking to you. It was so much fun. Thank you. Oh, agreed. The same.

End Credits

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts, or wherever podcasts are found.

Full audio episode found here.

Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

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Music by Tom Sherlock.

If you are curious to know more, please contact me!

As someone who has been a therapist for over a decade and has been coaching people for over three decades, I am uniquely qualified to address your concerns.

Live an Incredibly Full Life – Martin Salama

Martin Salama

Miriam: [00:00:00] Hey friends, I am excited to have Martin Selma with me. He is from Brooklyn. He has a really interesting story. He is a life coach. As you know, I’m a business coach, and so we are gonna have so much fun talking about things that will help you grow, whether it’s in your life or in your business.

 You have an interesting story, so I would love to start with wherever you wanna start with the things that impacted your story, and then we’re just gonna go from there.

And thanks for being on my show.

[00:00:32] Martin’s Defining Life Moments

Martin: Thank you, Miriam. Thank you for having me. You know, people have what I call defining moments in their lives. They don’t know exactly at that moment that that’s what’s gonna define them, but you could look back and say, you know, that was a moment.

And for me, I was 10 years old and I was walking home from school with one of my four older sisters, and there was a school bus stopped in front of my house and we didn’t understand what was going. And as we got closer, my mother came [00:01:00] running out of my house carrying my five-year-old brother Michael, in her arms.

She jumped into the car and drove away. And my sister and I are looking at each other, what is going on here? And the bus driver says, your brother got off the bus. And when he was in front of the bus, he dropped something and I didn’t, I don’t, we found out later, this is what happened. He dropped something, the bus driver didn’t see him and he drove and as he drove, he hit him.

And four days later, my brother, you know, died from the injuries that he suffered that day. Yeah. And it was the most tragic day of my life, even till. Even until now, 50 years later, it’s almost 50 years ago that it happened. And it’s something I think about almost every day in, in my life because at that moment, you know, when I finally started to sink in at as a 10 year old, the thoughts going through my head were, were all over the place, but they were like, [00:02:00] I’m the only boy now.

A Different Life

It’s my job. My parents are devastated by this. I’m devastated. My sisters are devastated. But it’s my job as the only boy to carry on the name to carry on the, the, the traditions, the legends, the whatever, the traditions, you know, the, the, the name. And it’s my job to make sure that my parents never feel sadness like that again.

So in my head I said I gotta take care of my parents. I. That’s what I started to do. Looking back 40 years later, I finally realized that at that moment I became a people pleaser because I was trying to please my parents and it, it grew from there for me to then start to be a people pleaser for everyone.

Few years later, or 10, 12 years, 13 years later, whatever was I got, You know, I was 23, 24 years old when I got married and I was pleasing my parents and I was trying to please my wife and here I am trying to please everybody, spending all these place, [00:03:00] not realizing that every time something was coming up I was rationalizing that what I was doing was for the greater good.

Only to realize many years later as I wasn’t pleasing anyone. So I was a people pleaser, pleasing. No one. They might have been, you know temporary pleasing.

But in the long run, not only was I not pleasing anyone, I was not pleasing myself. My heart and my head were always in misalignment.

So now let’s move forward to 2008. I’m in my late forties by. And I’d been working on a project with my wife for about five years to build a multimillion dollar health and tennis club in New Jersey.

Project Rebuild

 If you remember before that in 2005, 2006, seven, the banks were giving money away.

September, 2008. We all know what happened. Bernie Madoff subprime loans, the financial world crashed, and [00:04:00] when that crashed, I crashed. I lost every penny I had in my life. The money I borrowed, the money I got from investors, my house was foreclosed on.

And in New Jersey, because of the way things happened, we, the house stayed for a few years, but it was still foreclosed on. The cars were repossessed. That’s how bad it was. Wow. And I’m like, how am I gonna get through this? And it took me about a year to pick myself off the floor after that and be able to say, okay, what am I gonna do now?

And I thought about it and I said, I’ve been a businessman my whole life. I never loved business, but I did love getting involved in community organizations and being a leader there and as a leader. I realized what I was doing was I was coaching those around me to get the most out of them, out of their potential and show them that they had the potential that they could do more than they think they can.

Life Coaching

I realized I was a life coach without [00:05:00] even being a life coach. So I decided, okay, I’m gonna go into coaching. , and about two months before I started, it was my 24th wedding. Ann. And my wife says, I’m done. I want a divorce.

I’m, I was devastated. It was the kick in the pants, the punch in the gut that I needed. And I think God was sending me a message to be the higher universe, whatever you want to call it, saying, okay, you’re gonna go to the life coaching, you gotta fix yourself first, and since you’re down, let’s, let’s really get you down so that you realize how, how much you gotta do

Miriam: Wow, this is like project rebuild.

[00:05:39] Life as a People Pleaser

Martin: Exactly. Exactly. But you know what I found out is because I was a people pleaser, or a few things else came into play. Number one, I took everything personally. Number two, I was a control freak. And number three, I had a very short temper to the point I, we’d react to everything overreact and even be kind of like a nuclear reactor [00:06:00] because as a people pleaser in my mind, now that I’m looking back, If everything wasn’t going the way I thought it should be, it was my fault.

I was taking the responsibility. It was, I was taking it personally. The world was on my shoulders, and so I had to be a control freak. And if it wasn’t, then I had to freak out and make sure that it was, and the person that was on the other side had to know that they weren’t gonna get away from me until they saw my point of view and agreed with me

So now I start going through life coaching and they go, you know, you need to read a few books. They gave us a syllabus of books to read. Read two or three of these. And one of them was called the Four Agreements. Mm, yes. I know. Four agreements. I do. Yeah. All four of them were eyeopening. But for me, the one that stood out just a little more was the second agreement.

Don’t Take Everything Personally

Don’t take anything personally. Cause I was taking everything personally, and I guess I was already open to hear what things were being said, cuz I looked at that and I was like, [00:07:00] What an idea. I don’t have to take things personally. It’s not all on my shoulders, and it was as if he told me a secret that everybody had been telling me my whole life, but I wasn’t ready to hear until that moment.

Yeah. Let me stop you for a second because I wanna hear more, but oh my gosh. I also wanna ask some questions. So the first question I wanna ask is in, in that case where you don’t have to take things personally, there is a real difference between this intellectual knowing that happens in your head mm-hmm.

and then that 12 inches between your head and your heart, where your, you, your soul believes it. Excuse me. And I just think so many people Take things personally. You’re not the only one. Your reasons might be, you know, unique to you, but that is a very common thing. And how would you coach someone through that space of, I know [00:08:00] I shouldn’t feel this way, but Right, right.

[00:08:03] L.I.F.E Code

Martin: So, you know, let go back a minute. I, I didn’t say that. I’m, I’m known as the architect of the Warrior’s Life Code and Life stands for live incredibly full every. Yes. Okay. So obviously from my story you could tell that that’s not how I lived the first almost 50 years of my life. , right?

Miriam: Yeah. Well, you had some hard knocks.

I mean, can, can we agree at the moment your brother died? It’s almost like your childhood died too. Yeah. Yeah. You had to become this adult all of a sudden. And so yeah. I love that you can take responsibility for the, maybe the maladaptive ways you responded, but also you had some hard stuff come your way.

Martin: I did. I did. I, you know, thank you for, for acknowledging that, but I have to say, you know, my parents never put pressure. Okay. It was not on them. It was self-imposed pressure. Sure. And looking at some of the things my parents [00:09:00] did afterwards. My mother, for example, I’ve got to say this, I, I don’t say this very often, but I should say it more often, but it, she was devastated for a long time.

This was her baby. Yeah. And when she finally started to come out of her shell and come out of that deep hole she was in, she said, I need to find other, This is the seventies. Okay. These things, these things didn’t really happen. Mm-hmm. , I need to find other women who I can connect with who can say I know how you feel.

Yeah. And there’s only one type of woman that can say that. And that’s other women who lost children. Yeah. So she started a bereavement group in our community for other women. And at the beginning they had a counselor.

Greif

 Who would help counsel through them. Help them counsel through their gr their anguish.

Yeah. And what happened is, over time I come from a Jewish [00:10:00] community and part of the Jewish tradition is when someone dies, you have a week of where there’s mourning and people come to visit you. It’s called a week of Shiva. Mm-hmm. . My mother would go during those weeks to the mothers of the children who, who, who they lost and say, I’m here.

I know how you feel when you are ready. You have a group of women to help you. Do you know how many women have come up to me over the years and hugged me and thanked me for my mother? Wow. Wow. Good on her. Yeah. So I wanted to say that mostly because I, I did have a. And what was happening was really more self, mostly self-imposed.

We never talked about my, my brother after that for many, many years. Cause my parents felt like they didn’t how to handle it. This was the seventies . You know? It’s just what happens. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I mean, this is before therapy was even a thing. I mean, [00:11:00] all we had back then was like psychoanalysis, which is not the psycho.

Right. And my father’s from the old country. He’s from Egypt. Where you didn’t talk about your feelings. No. . No. Oh my. Yes. I wanna pause on your mom for a second and say, you know, She took the deepest despair of her life and she turned it into something of value for other people. Yeah.

[00:11:25] Your Gift to the World

Miriam: And I, I just know that there are people out there listening who have had terrible, terrible things happen.

Mm-hmm. and, you know, we all have this choice of do we let it destroy us or do we let it turn into. Our gift to the world.

Exactly. And, and it’s an an extremely strange concept to wrap your brain around how can the thing that was the most devastating thing to me become the thing that I, that I gift the world with?

Martin: But that’s what she did. Yeah, she really did. And, and yeah, she’s a beautiful soul.

Miriam: But jumping back into your [00:12:00] story mm-hmm. The situation where everything e I mean, it’s like God and the universe kicked out every leg of the table that was propping you up. Yeah. And it, it gave you this incredible opportunity to remake yourself or to be destroyed and kind of go into that space of poor me. Why does everyone hate me? Why I just can’t catch a break. I just am, you know, why am I being kicked when I’m down? Yep. What is it that allowed your brain to fight for air and say, I, I can do better and be better cuz not everybody does it.

Martin: Yeah. You know, that’s a good question.

I have to say, what happened was,

it’s, it’s funny because after this happened, you know, my family’s getting involved, my four sisters and their husbands are getting involved and they’re saying, you know, you gotta seek some therapy. [00:13:00] Right. And figure out what’s going on and maybe get on some medication.

Going to Therapy

So I went to therapist and I went to psychiatrist, and I was on Wellbutrin for a while because I was depressed. Yeah. And then here’s the, here’s the, here’s the juxtaposition. You know, the, the irony of it. So I have no money, right? So I stopped paying for my health. I. Because I didn’t have the money to pay for it.

Of course. And I was too proud to go to my family and say, you know, pay this bill. Yeah. They were helping us, but I, I, I didn’t have the energy to say that to them. So as a result, I couldn’t afford to buy my medication anymore. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So I look in the mirror and I’m still regular the, as well, and I’m talking to the therapist and I go, you know, and he’s killing me for, for letting this.

I go, okay, well I gotta figure this out. And I, I go deep within myself and I go, why am [00:14:00] I depressed? Is it physiological or is it psychological? Which is really another way of saying, is it a situational depression? Yeah. And I recognize that that’s what it was, and that the medication was just masking. What was going on within my own head.

Now the medication is important for many people. For sure. Yeah. Who are physi who need it physiologically. Yeah. But for me, I didn’t need it. I just needed to recognize that I didn’t need it. . Yeah.

[00:14:31] Depression

Miriam: And you needed to make some changes. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I, I agree with you. I mean, I don’t know if you know this, but I also am a therapist and Oh wow.

I see people who are depressed in a variety of ways, and there are some who are physiologically depressed, and there are some who are situationally depressed, and the ones who are situationally depressed need to change their situation, and then they stop being depressed. Exactly.

Martin: So here I am explaining it to a therapist,[00:15:00]

I love it. You were explaining it to my audience, so we’re all good. So yeah. So once I recognized that, I said, okay, now it’s in my hands. Yeah. And that’s when I started to say, what am I gonna do with my life now? . Yeah, it took me that year. Yeah. I do therapy and I say it all the time. Therapy is very, very important.

And I’m not saying that cause I’m on with you. No, no. Yeah. As a coach, I learned, and I think this is a great way to look at it cuz people say, what’s the difference between therapy and coaching? I go, therapists take you from dysfunctional to functional coaches take you from functional to optimal. Yeah.

Ooh, I love that Definition. Yeah, it’s great because you know what I can’t do? I can’t get someone that’s dysfunctional to functional number one. I don’t have the training, but number two, that’s not my field. My field is to ask the questions and show the people they’ve got the answers. I’m just gonna help them figure it [00:16:00] out. Yeah.

The Arc of Life

Miriam: Yeah. Okay. So you’ve lost everything and you’ve now gone to a therapist and you have taken Wellbutrin and gone off Wellbutrin, and your life is starting to kind of put back together again, and you started getting some coaching and all of these different things. And I think people have to be. I’m gonna go with at least in their forties or their fifties, to be able to look back and see the arc of their life.

When you’re in your twenties and thirties, everything feels like now. Yeah. And there’s such a difference between the family of origin you grew up in and then whatever you’re doing in college or in your first jobs and whatnot, you just don’t have the same perspective. But no, now you’re in this latter part of your life and you’re getting coaching that is.

I’m gonna use the word like, it’s, it’s pushing on some of your previous mindsets. Yeah. Talk to me about us, talk to us about like [00:17:00] mindsets that you would say you had before that were holding you back, and then as you began to shift them, you saw your life opening up in ways you really didn’t imagine.

Mm-hmm. ,

[00:17:12] Your Life Mindset

Martin: I, I’m loving this conversation because you’re hitting things that people. Talk with me about, and it’s interesting because it’s true. I mean, it really is the mindset. But, and, and I look back at my life now, and in two days from today from one hour we’re recording, I’ll be 60. Okay. So I, and I joke that I’ve hit the, hit the, the, the midpoint of my life.

I have another 60 to go. You know? That’s good. That’s optimistic. Yeah. It’s, but growing up I always had this.

This mindset of my father’s never proud of me, I could never do right. And that I’m not worth it.

I started to peel away the layers of the onion, as it were, to recognize these things that I talked about that were holding me back.[00:18:00]

Mm-hmm. . And a huge thing of me was, yeah, but I can’t mm-hmm. . Yeah. But mm-hmm. , I never, 99% of the time, now I don’t use the word I can’t. Yeah. Good for you. It’s poison, man.

It is. Instead I say, how can I?, oh yeah. Right. Or for example, I was talking with somebody yesterday and they go, well, if I say something like, somebody wants to go out for dinner, you said, I, I, I can’t afford it.

Making It Work

So instead of doing that, it’s really about being with the other person, even if it’s a friend. Mm-hmm. . So instead of saying, I can’t. Why I go to Whole Foods. They have a food area where you could just totally sit down and be with each other and just get what you could get and say, how about we do this instead?

Mm-hmm. . And now you’re taking the, the focus away. I can’t afford it to how can we make it work? And then you build on that in different ways. So for me, it was making that mind shift.

 And what happened was when I went through [00:19:00] coaching school and I came out the other side, I said, I’m gonna become a divorce recovery coach.

Makes sense. Right? Cause I absolutely, totally makes sense. And I was doing that for a few years and then I looked in the mirror one day and I was the heaviest I ever was in my life because I stopped being coached by others. I was just coaching and I wasn’t taking my own coaching. And I said, I gotta change this.

It was another time for me to do some, some soul searching. Mm-hmm. . So I said, I’m working a dead end job. I leave the house at seven, I get home at seven. When am I gonna, what am I, how am I gonna change this with exercise? And a friend of mine posted on Facebook, Hey, I’ve got a 30 minute video workout you can do.

[00:19:40] How Can You Change?

Martin: I’m like, oh, how can I change it? I can wake up a little earlier, take more than 30 minutes cause I have to work out for 30 minutes. Take shower, whatever. Sure. Get up an hour earlier and do what I need to do to get myself endorphins started. Kick in. Yeah. And after nine months, I lost 65 pounds. [00:20:00] Wow. But I also gained a lot of more self-worth, self-esteem and self-awareness.

And what happened was

Miriam: yeah. But if I can also say you did more than just that because you didn’t say, I am this way with a period. You said I am this way. How can I change? You also said I’m worth investing in.

Life Trajectory

You also said How do I pay attention to future Me? Mm-hmm. instead of present day. Me. I mean, just that tiny example. There were a whole bunch of things that you did that were. Shifts a shift here, a shift there. And I, somebody years ago, I don’t know if I read this or it’s a common example, but if you are on one end of the country, we’ll take your end.

If you’re in New York and you are flying west and you just turn the plane’s nose 15 inches, it’s [00:21:00] gonna be the difference between landing in LA or landing in Seattle. And That’s right. You know, that difference doesn’t make any. In, in New York, but by the time you have a little bit of time, it makes a huge difference.

Trajectory makes a huge difference.

Martin: Yes. So, you know, and I mentioned something earlier, I want to go back to it, is that when I was a people pleaser, I would rationalize a lot. . Mm-hmm. . And I realized going through coaching and the self-awareness that, that I was using the word rationalize as a way of, of you know, like kind of like justifying what I was doing.

Yeah. And I realized the word rationalizes really two words. And I’ve trademarked this. It’s rational lies.

Miriam: Oh my gosh. That’s great. Good for you.

Martin: For I that it’s rational to do something that goes against my core. Because I’m trying to please others or I’m trying to make the situation work.

Miriam: Sure. So can you give a specific [00:22:00] example?

Rational Lies

Martin: Sure. How about on a very basic level? Okay. Mm-hmm. , you look in the mirror, you say, I gotta start exercising. I gotta start working out. I gotta start eating better.

Now you wake up in the morning and you go, Ugh, I’m just too tired to exercise. I’ll do it tomorrow. That’s I rationalize right there. Mm-hmm. , you’re saying I’m too tired because, you know, deep down inside you don’t wanna do it. Right. But if you want what you want, if you really look in the mirror and you think, I don’t look good, I don’t feel good.

Cause it’s not only about looks, it’s also about feeling. . Mm-hmm. . Then you’ll say, how can I get this to happen? And I’m gonna get myself out of bed and I’m gonna find a, I gotta say those first two, three weeks of doing those videos, I was following the mo, following the moderator on the video.

The guy one that’s doing it in the moderate pace. I was breathing heavy through the whole thing, . I even vomited a few times, like, wow, I can’t do this. Cause I was so outta shape. Yeah, but I was like, [00:23:00] I’ve got to push through, and I built up my stamina. I built up my endurance, and I got it because I said to myself, am I telling myself a rational lie?

Am I giving myself an excuse not to do what I need to do? Mm-hmm. , because an excuse is just a, a reason that you say is an excuse. In disguise. Yeah, so the reason I bring it up is because also with that comes self-aware versus self-conscious, and I recently took my course and made it into a card deck.

[00:23:34] Worrier to Warrior

Martin: Okay. Yeah. The warrior to warrior card deck. So in there I talk about rationalize. and I talk about self-aware versus self-conscious. Mm-hmm. , and it’s just a little way of getting to get an understanding of what I do on a, on a small picture before you get into the bigger picture.

Miriam: Sure. No, I love the card deck because I’m on, there’ll be in the show notes how to, you know, find you and find that.

Mm-hmm. , when you have something concrete, I’m always [00:24:00] asking people if they have, Site if they know an action they need to take, all right, where are we gonna put this? Write it on a sticky note. Write it on your mirror. I don’t care. You know, put it on your phone, but you gotta put it somewhere because our brains have the ability to have this moment of insight and you go, oh.

Identity Shift

And it’s like you can see this space you could enter into, and then it also has the ability to like just pull you back into homeostasis and hey, let’s just stay the same. Right. Right. So something I wanna comment on. Yeah, I was gonna say, something I wanna comment on in your example with the weight thing is that initially, I don’t know what was motivating you.

You might have thought you were gonna die, or you might have hated the way you looked in the mirror or something, but at a certain point in time, and nobody knows when this happened. Some part of your identity [00:25:00] shifted into something like, I’m a person who’s fit, or I’m a person who keeps my word to myself.

Like there was an identity shift that happened and I wanted to ask you what that was from this.

Martin: So I was walking home from synagogue with one of my friends, so I got to my house and I turned to walk up my stairs.

And I tripped.

And I go flying into the wall, ah, scrape up and, and I hurt my arm and I’m scraped up and everything. My friend comes running back and goes, Martin, are you okay? It sounded like an earthquake. . He meant nothing by it. Yeah, he was just, but I looked at it, I was like, I got it to the shower. I go, It sound like an earthquake because I fell so hard that the, that the, the earth moved.

Cause I’m so freaking heavy. .

Creating Life Habits

Miriam: Oh my gosh. There is a wake up moment. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So that was the motivation

Martin: I think God, Yeah, I get the [00:26:00] message. I get it. . as I’m pleading the blood off my arm that I could barely pick up . Oh man. I bet you were sore the next couple days. Oh, man. That first week of exercise, I couldn’t even think of a bur because going down on the two hands was not happening.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Hmm.

Miriam: Over time, as that became habit, what changed in your brain about how you thought about. .

Martin: Well, the endorphins started kicking it. Yeah, for sure. You know, and I liked that the way I was starting to feel. I liked that when I got on the scale, the numbers were going down. Yeah. So I said, well, I’m single.

I’m living in this house all by myself. Every once in a while, my my kids will come in, but I’m not really doing anything at night other than sitting on the couch watching tv. So I’d work out in the. I’d have my dead end job. And as I drove home, my friend would say, well, what are you gonna do now when you get home?

[00:27:00] I said, you know what? I might exercise. He’s like, what? Didn’t you exercise in the morning? I’m like, yeah, but I liked the way it felt, . So I started building on that. So I would get home, I would eat cleanly. I would exercise either one or the other and whatever. And then I would pull out a good book with positive things.

[00:27:22] Life is Good, Keep Going

Martin: Like the four agreements, like the Mastery of Love, or The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy or something. And I would start reading it and saying, you know what? This can work and that can work. And I started to change the way I looked at everything and one day I was doing something.

I’m a D H D I know I am. I’ve been, I, I know. Because I, I went and I got checked, you know, about 10 years ago, and I started doing guided meditations. Could you imagine a guy like me in my fifties sitting still for [00:28:00] 10 minutes with a D h D doing guided meditation? Hmm. So I’m doing this. And I’m like, most of the time it’s going to mind as when is this gonna be over?

I’m like, I don’t get it. I can’t get my brain to relax, but nothing, I don’t know how people meditate. And one day I had this download of information saying, I love my life. I love everything that’s going on right now and I wanna share it with the world. And I stopped. I finished, I went through the full 10 minutes.

And I started writing for two hours. My stream of consciousness just wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote. And out of that came life live. Mm-hmm. incredibly full every day. And I said, this is the way I’m gonna start living. And I started dating. More because I was willing to date I before I said, who wants to date a 50 plus year old fat guy?

Checking Off the Boxes

You know, that was my mindset. There are people out there that are okay with the way they’re, and I’m not talking about them, right? It’s [00:29:00] all about me, right? I had no self-esteem in myself. Now I started to build my self-worth, my self-esteem, and as I’m going out on these dates, I’m taking the things I learned from coaching, like what are my values?

Cuz I never knew what values were before. I thought I did. Talking to the women to find out what their values were. Yeah. So I was kind of interviewing them. Yeah. And they didn’t know they were being interviewed. And I wasn’t doing it in that way of like in a clinical way.

No, you were just making conversation.

Miriam: But once you’ve been through coaching, you make conversation differently, , because you just, and,

Martin: and these women are not checking off the boxes. . I’m like, okay, Monday today not working. Then I get a call from a friend of mine who was my matchmaker in my community, we have such a small community. You get calls from this woman who says, I’m here to help you find.

If that’s what you want. I’m like, all right, cool. So she matched me up a few times. She calls me up one day. She says, Martin, [00:30:00] you have to take out this woman. I’m like, well, who is she? She starts explaining me about her, what she is, what she does. I’m like, well, if she wants to go out with me, come in

Being In Sync

So we start going out and she’s checking off every single box. Wow. Our values were so in sync that after a month I turned to her, I said, I gotta tell you something, Sarita, her name is Sarita. I gotta tell you something. And I don’t need to hear it from you. The old me would’ve needed, needed. The recognition needed to know.

I said, I just want you to know I’m falling in love with you because I love who you are and I love that you see me as I am and not looking to change me. I didn’t say anything about her loving me. Two weeks later, she came back and said she loved me too, and we got married about four and a half years. Wow.

[00:30:53] Business of Values

Miriam: Congratulations. That’s so fun. Thank you. Tell me a little bit about like this [00:31:00] business of values. You know how you said, I thought I knew what my values were, but I really didn’t. I think there’s a lot of people out there like that. Yeah. Whether you’re in business or not. And in this space of relationship It’s, it’s hugely important.

I mean, incredibly every relationship important, not just your romantic relationships. Yes. Your friendship relationships. And your relationships with business. The whole nine yards. So let’s, let’s go there cuz this sounds like a fun topic. Yeah.

Know Your Life Values

Martin: So, When I went through coaching, I think it was that, that first weekend they hand you a sheet of paper and that on it, or list of values, there’s maybe a hundred on there.

Wow. And they go, go through them and circle your top 10 that you see on this list. I’m like, okay, I’m circling the top 10. They go, okay, now bring it down to five. How? Five. Alright, five Now. Put them [00:32:00] in in priority order. Yeah. What are the most important values? Cause these are the things that make you tick.

Yes. That gets you going, that you’re passionate about. So for me, it came out to family communication and honesty. Hmm. . Those were my three top values. Yeah. And I realized that going through this, I didn’t even even have to ask my ex-wife, who was still my wife at the time, what her values were, but I knew that.

Maybe family was there, but communication definitely was not there. And the honesty between us was gone for a long time. Sure. And I’m not saying she’s not honest or whatever. No, no. We have a great relationship now. Yeah. We have a very good relationship. And that had to do with me taking responsibility for my life and saying to her one day, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate with with our daughter.

Don’t think it’s not recognized. And she was like, what? [00:33:00] Hmm. It took me a long, long time to get there. Sure, sure.

I start off my day with that every day with my, my main affirmation is I live incredibly full every day. Mm-hmm. , which encompasses the things that I love about myself and about the people around me. Hmm.

Miriam: That’s good. That is really good. And that is actually quite a change from being a people pleaser.

Old vs New

Help me understand an example of like, this would happen in a day and the old you, the people pleasing, you would’ve handled it this way. And the new you who is like having this internal integrity would handle it This. Okay. Help us see the, the one, that context.

Martin: I never thought about it until you asked that question just now.

So I was in a very codependent relationship with my wife. Okay. And I’ll take my, I’ll take my side of the blame for being in a codependent relationship. So we had one of my daughters, when she was younger, my wife would tell her, you know, it’s [00:34:00] time to eat. And she goes, I don’t want to eat. And she’d say, make her eat.

You have to start eating, you’ve got to, well, I was trying to please my wife. Yeah. Right. And the craziest thing happened and, and I didn’t realize it until years later, but I do recognize at that moment, but, and it was me being codependent to my wife and in the mastery of love from Dongo Ruiz, he talks about every relationship should be 50 50.

[00:34:28] Giving the Full Amount

Martin: Mm-hmm. . And that doesn’t mean you’re not giving a hundred percent. It means you’re both giving the full. . So I realized looking back that in my relationship with my life, often I would, she would say, I love you. I’d say I love you more. Which was the truth. I was giving more to the relationship than she was.

I would be the one that every morning, you know how you get up for the, the mother gets up for the kid with the kids, gets ’em ready for the bus, gets ’em on the school bus. That was me. Mm-hmm. , my wife never slept well, and I played into it. I enabled her and she would sleep in every. [00:35:00] I would get up, put the kids scream for the bus to wait for my kids to get on it and all that stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. But so now my father gets ill, and he’s in the hospital for six weeks and I’m traveling back and forth and my wife is traveling back and forth on New Jersey to New York, and we’re not over my daughter to eat. In that six weeks, she gained 12 pounds. Mm. Because there was nobody there to tell her, you have to eat.

Cause in her mind as a psychiatrist, as a therapist, you know, it was a control issue. Mm-hmm. . And the more we told her to eat, the more she shut herself down to not eat. Yeah. So when we weren’t around, she said, I’m hungry, I’m gonna eat.

Pleasing Others

Miriam: Yeah. Fascinating. Fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. It is very interesting when people see behavior that they’re doing to please someone else and it creates this disharmony either within themselves or, I mean, it just creates a mess.

It was all over, the mess was all over the place. Yeah. [00:36:00] If you had a do-over in that situation where your wife said, make her eat, what would the present day version of you.

Martin: The present day with her version, her say is she’ll eat when she’s ready. Yeah. And if she doesn’t eat, she’s not gonna die. Yeah. And it’s not about you making her eat.

It’s about right within herself, her making herself eat. Right. And that’s taking into not even taking into account what I would’ve said to her, it it with my coaching. Part of me might have said to her, it’s a control issue. You’re letting her, you’re giving her the control. When you tell her what. You know, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near that, but that’s really what it’s about.

Right, right, right. Yeah.

Miriam: Where would you say people need to start to optimize their mindset? What’s the step?

[00:36:47] Optimize Your Mindset

Martin: Well, first thing is, first thing is it’s admitting to yourself that there are things that are dis harmonious within you. Mm-hmm. , right. You know, I can [00:37:00] tell my ex person, this person, that person, whatever it is, you need to change, you know?

But until you want it, it don’t matter. That’s right. You know, in a Brooklyn vernacular, it don’t matter. , you know, , it just doesn’t matter. . Yeah. But when you finally, you get to that, it could be you hit your low point. It could be you hit rock bottom. I hope not. Yeah. But it could be. I, I talk about this a lot because I learned how to change.

Reactions to res to responses. I went from reacting to responding and it’s part of my course and I go through it and it and it. And it could be that you just recognize that you’re going into confrontations instead of conversations. Hmm. Maybe people are avoiding being around you because they don’t feel like getting into a confrontation with you cause you are always right.

Mm-hmm. or you think you’re always right. And how does the world not see what I. . Yeah. So that could be it. [00:38:00] You could just look for those little signs. Do you feel stress all the time? Why? Why do you feel stressed? I gotta say 95% of my day, I, I don’t feel stressed. Maybe even more than that. Yeah. Because if something’s coming my way, I’m going, why is this affecting me and why will I allow it to affect me?

Unconscious Competency

Now I, I’ll be honest, and you as a therapist can tell, can attempt attest to this? It didn’t happen overnight.

Miriam: No, no. All of this happens incrementally. I don’t know. When you were saying, you know, you have to become aware. I was thinking of the competence gradients, where you have unconscious incompetence.

Mm-hmm. , you don’t. That you stink at this. You like you don’t know that you’re broken in this area. You don’t know that you don’t know what you’re doing. Yeah. . Exactly. Then it moves into conscious incompetence where it’s like, oh my gosh, I’m broken in this area. I gotta do something. Then you [00:39:00] move into conscious competence, which means I can do it, but boy, I gotta think about it.

And that takes quite a while. And then you move into unconscious competence. You don’t even have to think about it. Like not true. My, my guess is 90% of the time you don’t even have to think about controlling your emotion and not blowing up you. You have practiced and practiced and practiced. Yeah. And your neurophysiology is like, Hey, let’s think about this before we get emotional.

Yeah, exactly What I do in a layman’s term, I go, it’s muscle memory. You’re building the muscle memory of that brain. Of that emotion. Yes, yes, yes. Oh my gosh. Martin, this has been such a fun conversation. I feel like we need to come to an end to honor your time in mind, but maybe we could do this again sometime.

I would love it. I would.

[00:39:48] Where to Find Martin

Martin: So why don’t you tell people where they can find you and your classes? I love that you have some digital classes, so people all around the world can, you know, utilize those and your cards and [00:40:00] yeah, tell people where they can find you.

Connectwithmartin.com. Oh, that’s awesome. If you go to connectwithmartin.com, it’s easy to remember. Yeah. On there you can find my cards. You can find different things that are, I’m giving away.

I’m always changing what’s up there. For example, right now, like if this comes out in the next month or so, let’s say 2022, at the beginning of 2023, you’ll find things like a coloring book for adults and a coloring book for kids on the word warrior and how it’s the seven. To having an abundant mindset.

Love it and I break down the word warrior. It’s free. Yeah.

Miriam: I love it. Well, all of that will be in the show notes.

This has been so much fun. When we were talking beforehand, I mentioned that we do a gift in your name to one of four charities. You chose Mercy Ships. They are a hospital ship that provides free surgeries for people on the continent of Africa. They go country by country this year. They’re outside of Senegal and so we’ll do that today and we just wanted to profile them.

This has [00:41:00] been a delightful conversation. Thanks so much. Thank you.

 

End Credits

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Podcasts, or wherever podcasts are found.

Full audio episode found here.

Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

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Music by Tom Sherlock.

If you are curious to know more, please contact me!

As someone who has been a therapist for over a decade and has been coaching people for over three decades, I am uniquely qualified to address your concerns.

 

Invest In Yourself – Jeanne Omlor

Jeanne Oomlor

Miriam: [00:00:00] Hey, I am so happy to have with me Jeanne, and I would love for you to start out by explaining your name because it is not spelled the way it sounds.

[00:00:09] Name Meanings

Jeanne: So if you think of Aja Gbo and you add an N, not after the gbo, not gbo, but an N after the Jaja part, Jean, you would be saying my name correctly? Yes. And where are you from? I’m actually from California, but I grew up in Australia, but I happen to have a French name.

Miriam: Usually there is a meaning behind a name and why someone calls someone what they do.

Jeanne: Do you, would you like to share that story? I’m pretty sure I know why. You know, St. Joan of Ark was a warrior. Ah. St. Jon Ark was fierce. She’s a young, fierce woman and it’s kind of funny that I was named after her cuz I’m pretty, I’m, I’m pretty much a warrior in my life. been through a lot of tough stuff and like, I can see why my parents without realizing why called me, you know, after, named me after St.

Jon Ark. Yeah, [00:01:00] I love it.

Miriam: My name Miriam, has multiple meanings, but one of the meanings which my family never fails to tease me about is stubborn. Mm-hmm. . And to be honest with you, I’m super proud of my grit, so I don’t mind that it’s stubborn, but also part of the name means deep waters. And I love that because that’s what I try to bring to people and it’s also what I try to elicit in people.

I think names are important, right.

Jeanne: I love names. Yes.

[00:01:29] You are Amazing

Miriam: So welcome. I had sent you a form and said if you had one message you wanted to share with the world, you said you are amazing. And then with grit and determination and the right mindset and strategy, you are ready to have anything you desire right now.

I know lots of people in this part of the world, in, in all parts of the world are facing some pretty hard things. And so I wanna talk about grit and determination and mindset. Let’s start there.

Jeanne: [00:02:00] Sure. I will say that people in the world at all times in history are all going through a lot of, there’s always hardship.

Always hardship for some people. For others, of course, there’s always people that are not going through financial hardship.

They’re going through other types of hardship perhaps, so. Barring, you know, people that are in third world countries and really have no access to any kind of help, I would say. And even some people in third world countries pull themselves out of the gutter and they managed to, to make things happen cuz they have some, some sort of mindset.

Opportunity

Like my mindset mentor was grew up in the slums of India. And he somehow made his way to Canada and, and, and, you know, now as a mindset mentor and has made millions of dollars. So having said that, sometimes you’ll be in a position where you could pull yourself up. I know in parts of Africa, that’s actually impossible.

Okay, so, so let’s just get cut people a break when they don’t have access to, to opportunity. Okay. Yes. [00:03:00] Some places are just so to say, Oh, it’s all fix your mindset. Well, it’s not enough sometimes, right? But for folk in America and other more developed countries, really, we are very entitled. Right? We don’t feel entitled.

We are entitled. Okay. And first, I, I just feel like there’s just a lot of complaining about people’s lives in America cuz they have no idea how bad it is in other countries. You know and, and I know how bad it was. And I’ve been to Kenya, I’ve been to Egypt, okay. I’ve been to Turkey. So I’ve seen countries where things ain’t so great, you know, and, and you know, you see that these people have very little opportunity actually.

Okay? Some people do have opportunity there.

[00:03:44] Changing Your Mindset

Jeanne: Having said that, so to me, this is what I tell my clients, and some people do not like this, but I will repeat it here. Digging ditches in Siberia in Sub-zero Conditions. He’s hard. That’s hard. [00:04:00] That is us, most of us, what we’re doing. And a single mom that has five different jobs and, and never sleeps and taking this to school and all of that and running them childcare and, and that’s hard too.

That’s really hard. Okay.

So my message is that what we’re, unless it’s truly hard, like digging ditches in sub-zero conditions in Siberia, it’s pretty hard. Most of what we do- unless we’re the single mom running around, blah, blah, blah.

That’s hard. Or the single dad, for instance, most of what we do is not that hard. It’s not that hard.

So when people say, Oh, it’s so hard to , , that is not hard. And they’re like, Well, yes it is. I’m like, No, it’s actually not hard.

You’re telling yourself that is hard. You’re sitting in a warm house, eating good food. And you might have financial struggles, but you’re not out on the streets. Okay.

So I think that how, what we tell ourselves about the hardship [00:05:00] is important. What we tell ourself is what we believe. And if we believe something’s hard, it’s hard. So my message is figure out what really is hard and stop complaining if it’s not ,

Stop Complaining

number one thing, if people stopped complaining about their lives, their lives would change. Know. Do we complain? I complain, but I’m really conscious of it. Like, No, don’t complain. You know, don’t complain. And when I have a negative thought, I go, Stop it. Okay? I literally go, Stop it. There’s so much you can do to frame how you’re thinking that changes your life immediately. By reframing it.

Miriam: I have this huge smile on my face because I do ask my kids to listen to my podcasts and they’re gonna be like, What did you feed her? This stuff?

Because I say this all the time. You are speaking my language. Yes. What you say really makes a difference in your mindset and. I also say it’s sort of where you compare yourself to. A lot of times people sit there and compare [00:06:00] themselves to people better off, and then they’re like, Oh, it’s so sad,

if you look the other direction and compare yourself to someone who’s so much less, better off, you can just be grateful. And what I’d really prefer is if people compared them, the them of today, to the them of yesterday. And the question is, have I made some improvements in my life, in my mindset, in my thoughts?

Have I done anything to pour energy into making me a better me so that I can enjoy this life in a better way?

You could speak that all day long and I would be cheering you on saying yes. Yes. More

Talk about grit, because that was mindset . Talk about grit.

[00:06:40] Talk About Grit

Jeanne: Okay, so grit, well, I’ll give you some grit. When I first. Became a solo parent, cuz I wasn’t always a solo parent. I was like, Oh my gosh, what am I gonna do? I had a one year old and a four year old. I was in New York City.

I had no money coming in. Kind of started, you know, partially homeschooling . It was sort of like kindergarten kind of homeschooling and taken to the park every day. I thought, okay, I’ve got, [00:07:00] I’ve gotta do something. I’ve, I’ve gotta, you know, what do I do?

And I started a kids’ blog and I worked nonstop on this kids’ blog and I became quite well known. Kids fashion, lifestyle blog didn’t make a lot of money, but it showed me how to be consistent every single day. Okay, this is awesome. I loved it, but it wasn’t bringing a lot of money in. Okay.

But it got me out there and then, I’d go to these trade shows and get sponsors and it became quite well known in three months actually.

People wanted to be, and they sent me tons of designer clothes for my kids. Awesome. I thought, well, I can’t eat designer clothes. So my kids were well dressed though, and I thought, I have to do something and I have to do something. I have to be on mind site. You know, I can’t get a job cuz how would I pick the kid?

It’s a Process

I don’t wanna get a job. I’ve gotta be able to, I’ve gotta figure this out. So I thought, you know what? What am I gonna do? And I started going through this list of things. I know I’ve always wanted to coach people, but I couldn’t coach when my life was not like authentic cuz it wasn’t authentic in, in that relationship.

And I thought, you know, can’t do that. Okay, now I can coach. So I decided to coach. I got certified online in my [00:08:00] pajamas. Okay. And then I thought, I started following business people and I thought, hmm. How am I gonna do this? How am I going to build this business when I’m taking care of my kids all day?

And I thought, ah, the only time I’m ever gonna do this is at night. I, I, I’m not stupid. I did the maths and I had a, a sort of coach that I, you know, we kind of group coaching a bit here and there and, and she was saying, You need to put at least 25 hours into your business per week to grow it. And I thought 25 hours.

Okay. I thought, Okay, I gotta find, I gotta find hours. I gotta find hours every day. So what I did was I would take care of my kids all day long and I’d sort of do bits and pieces here and there, you know, But, And I put ’em to bed at seven, and I would work from seven till midnight every single night for two years, except I took weekends off.

Find Your Rhythm

Okay. I never watched media. Because it was a waste of time. I thought, How can I possibly know no media? And then after maybe [00:09:00] a year, I thought, Oh, you know, it would be good to have some levity in my life. So , maybe I should just let myself watch one show per week. And I chose Mad Men. And I would watch one episode, a 45 minute episode, and that was it on Sunday evenings.

That was my treat cuz I knew if I got, you know, into Netflixing and I thought that will eat my life up. I cannot spend a minute. I was so mathematical about this. So I, that’s how I built my business, was from seven till midnight. Every night. Wow. And then, and then the girls got a little older and I got some babysitting in place and I probably got like four hours of babysitting and then I could, you know, not have to stay up those late hours anymore and do it in the day.

Discipline

So the grit is, I did that day in day out, learned how to run businesses. Learn how to coach, learn how to get clients, and then, then I’d go out and, you know, network so that I’d have to get a babysitter and go out in New York [00:10:00] City and network and, and you know, I wish I’d known about online earlier because I could have saved myself a lot of pain.

But that, that was my life and it was gritty, you know, And I, I just did it. I didn’t go, Oh, I wanna stay in bed. I knew that if I wanted to build that business, I couldn’t miss a night. I couldn’t say, I’m not gonna do my, I did it every single. Yeah. For two years.

Miriam: That is, that is grit.

Incredible discipline. And one of my favorite quotes says in the contest between the water and the the rock, the water always wins because as it whether it’s drip by drip, by drip. It doesn’t matter. As long as you keep doing it, you will get there. You know, doing it and refining, you know, I don’t think you should be so hard on yourself about the online space because that didn’t become a thing

at the time you’re talking about. It wasn’t quite a thing.

Jeanne: Yeah, it was 11 years ago. A lot of people were making a lot of money online already.

Miriam: Okay. Well I was trying to help you feel better about, Oh well it’s ok.

[00:10:59] It Is What It Is

Jeanne: [00:11:00] I don’t feel bad. Cause I feel it just is, And I think that’s the other thing. I think when we accept what.

I mean, that’s all there is, is what is. Otherwise you have these useless regrets that you can’t change something. Anyway, so my thing is we just have to accept what actually is a situation and accept it. Yeah. And if you can change it, great. I can’t change what happened, you know, and what I didn’t know. But you know, what happened is I became a really great offline business strategist coach.

So when I did come online, I wasn’t some person that learned, you know, a marketing trick and right started.

Miriam: Right, right. You had, you had the feet on the ground experience Yeah. To bring into this space. So one of the things that I think happens with people when they lose their way. Sometimes people lose their way, even if they’re high performing they get maybe separated from their [00:12:00] values at some level.

And I wondered if you could talk about how, how you see people getting separated from their values and then how to reconnect them. . You mentioned earlier you didn’t feel like you could coach because you were in an inauthentic space. I think what you were saying is what your life was like on the outside did not reflect what your life was like on the inside.

So there’s this lack of congruence. This happens to people a lot. So talk, talk about the value space, getting separated from it.

Be Real

Jeanne: I feel like Well, for me, I, there was no question of me being a life coach. My life was in shambles, So that’s what I started being, and then I could say, Look, I, I, I had courage to leave that relationship with two children with no money.

So that’s authentic. That’s real. And people, mm-hmm. are like, Wow, okay. If you can do that, so can I, Or you know, something scary like that.

So disconnection. I feel like what happens, what I’m seeing, seeing is that sometimes [00:13:00] people, well, first of all, They’re making it, that making money is a bad thing. It was never bad in the first place.

Okay. I lived years being this sort of virtuous, starving artist, you know? And I, and I realized how dumb that was. Okay. But I think what happens is they sort of start to lose interest in what they’re doing. And then it’s like, well, I’m, I’m, I’m making money, a lot of money with it, so I’m just gonna keep doing that.

And then, you know, you can sort of sense their heart’s not in it. Okay. And they’re kind of lost, but they feel like they have golden handcuffs. You know, and that happens in corporate all the time. But then it’s kind of the question, what do I do? Okay. And I think that question of what do I do? Most people, most people do not have the courage.

Get Past Fear

And I’m just gonna be really bold here. Most people lack courage. Mm-hmm. , we all have fear. We gotta get past that. We’re all gonna have fear. We’re never gonna be fearless. Right? I do lose some fears about certain things, but I’m never gonna be fearless. However, [00:14:00] Most people do lack courage, and it looks like they’re courageous, but when you start talking to them, they’re so scared of, of taking a leap of faith, of investing in a business.

Like, you know, a lot of people I speak to say, I really wanna be a coach. And they get on the call, but then by the time the call ends, they’re back in their fear zone of, Well actually, you know, where I am now is not that bad yet. They just divulged that they’re they’re they’re dying inside. Yeah, but they cannot.,

[00:14:27] Do What You Want

Jeanne: Summon up the courage to actually just change it, you know? And that’s a shame. It’s a shame because they are never going to get the life they really yearn for if they can’t get past that Karate Kid challenge, you know of face your fears. Take courage and do what you say you wanna do with your life instead of just talking all the time. Most people just say stuff.

So how to reconnect is to get really clear on what you actually desire. What do you actually deeply [00:15:00] desire? Most people don’t know what they wanna ask them. What do you want? And they go, I don’t know. I said, Well, that’s important.

They actually sometimes get teary eyed when I say, What do you want? They’re like, Nobody asks what I want. Nobody cares what I want. You think your kids care what you want? Not really. You think your, A lot of people’s spouses don’t care what they want. It’s they, they literally are stepped, stopped in their tracks and they’re like, Wow.

I never even get a chance to ask myself what I want.

Number one question, What do you want? What do you desire?

Once you figure that out, you need, people need to do whatever it takes to get to their deepest desire, or they will die with a song in their heart.

Miriam: Yes, I agree. I agree. Let me ask this question, because sometimes for people, the leap of courage seems too big, and I really think that courage is a muscle and that you try smaller things that feel scary and you get better and better at trying bigger and bigger things, right?

False Evidence Appearing Real

What, [00:16:00] what seems to be some of the gatekeeper type things that give people courage in your experience?

Jeanne: It’s really just this, I feel like, well, I know with people in fear, you know, they say it’s false evidence appearing real, F e a r. They’re, again, the way they’re looking at things is such a huge monster.

That is out of proportion, the fear.

When I first started my, my business, I was broke and then, then I went through, you know, the actual divorce and I was in deep debt from that and all sorts of stuff.

I thought, What am I doing? And I thought, I really need to make this happen because life is short. And if not now, when? When, if not, that’s my motto. If not now, when, when I get 10 years older, when I am demoralized because it’s not worked for so long, when my kids are [00:17:00] in college, then I might be tired cuz I’ll be like 60 something right?

When I don’t know, when my job gives me a raise, I mean, you could find a bunch of wins and people find those over and over and over. They’re just scared.

The roadblocks are, they’re, they’re, they’re larger than life fears that are, are way larger than the actual life.

Your desire to get the life you want has to be far larger than the fears your, your faith.

Has to be larger than your fear.

[00:17:30] What is Your Life Worth?

Jeanne: I mean like what’s your, what is your life worth?

What’s it worth? Is it worth investing?

Is it worth investing? Or is it worth being so afraid of spending money on yourself and developing yourself that you’d rather keep XYZ amount of money for that coach or mentor, whatever, or whatever it is you’re gonna invest in. You’d rather just keep that money.

And not have the life you want because you can’t take a risk. Now that’s the thing. People take risks for stupid things. Like you just spent so much money on this stupid risk. [00:18:00] Okay. And they will spend so much money on getting a new car or

new clothes, which are not going to make you any better off unless you really needed that car cuz your car was breaking down.

They prioritize getting a new car when they really didn’t need one. Cuz they just want a new car, new clothes, blah, blah, blah. Going to restaurants that will never develop you. It’s never, so they don’t invest in themselves.

They just spend money.

Miriam: That is so worth saying. Again, people don’t invest in themselves, they just spend money. There are two different things. Yes. I wanna say on a previous podcast, we were talking about the difference between assets and expenditures. And an asset has the ability to give you a return and.

Many of these self development things have the ability to give you a return. Yeah. They cost 5,000 or $10,000 and usually your income goes up two or three x of that afterwards or more.

Take Risks

Jeanne: You know, I’ll give you an example of a current client. This woman she [00:19:00] sought, she works three jobs. She’s a single woman working three jobs, teaching.

You know, you don’t get paid much teaching in, I think it’s Connecticut, where she lives leading in a. Rental, and she’s slowly, she’s a worker, you know, slowly three jobs all over the place. Slowly had developed a mortgage fund, okay? And she wanted to work with me, and I saw her just look at me and she just went, Okay, I have to do this.

I have to do this. I know I have to do this. I’m gonna do this. She goes, Okay, the only way I can do this is if I take 10 K outta my mortgage. Yeah, she took 10 K out of her mortgage fund to work with me. Yeah. That’s a huge risk for somebody that doesn’t have a spouse. That was it. Working as a teacher and just working.

Open to Receive

Okay. And I know how long that took her to get that fund. I know I have to do this to change my life and I know nothing’s gonna change if I don’t invest in you and you’re the one.

Okay. I said, Okay. So she pays me in. Right. It was 10 k. I charged 10 K for one of my programs, [00:20:00] and the next day she goes, I can’t believe it. She needs me this message. And she says, I just got a message from the person that’s helping me find an apartment that I became eligible to get a 50 K grant that they’re gonna dump into my mortgage fund.

Very soon. Wow. So what happened there? If your fists are so clenched tight, how can you open them to receive? They’re so tight they can’t receive.

Her mindset is just so completely different. She’s ha she’s gonna be able to quit two of those jobs soon. Right. And then get more time. So it’s not like, you know, all or nothing.

So that is somebody who decided she was gonna change her life and she did something extremely hard that most people would never do. Yeah. And they would never say I’m gonna.

[00:20:47] Invest in Yourself

Miriam: Yeah, no. What I appreciate about what you’re saying is whenever you invest in your self development, and that could be going to the university, that could be getting a certification.

It [00:21:00] could be through coaching. I mean, you and I, that’s what we do and we believe in it. There are lots of different ways to build yourself up. Now, I wanna put a caveat and a caution out there. There are some people who love taking joining programs. Yes. They’re not necessarily into taking the action, so it’s not enough.

To just get involved in the program or take the class or this or that. There are some actual trickle down actions that have to happen in order to change your stars. So it’s not just words, it’s also work, but it’s doable. And I mean, really what is the alternative?

Jeanne: The alternative to, to, to not developing yourself, developing yourself and being stagnant and then being sad and, you know, and, and not, I mean, People’s lives.

I was just thinking this last night I was going to bed and I, I think a lot about these things and I thought people’s lives are precious if people could see how I view their life, it’s like a [00:22:00] jewel. Okay? They have this jewel, they’re living and they’re not optimizing it.

They’re just wasting it. They’re being unhappy. They’re, they’re going to a job they absolutely hate, which affects their relationship, which then affects everything, and they’re willing to literally throw their lives away because they’re too cheap to invest in themselves. and then when on their deathbed they’re gonna go, Why didn’t I invest?

Respect Your Life

Why didn’t I take a leap? Because on the deathbed, apparently nobody is saying, Gee, I wish I’d gone into work more. You know, they’re saying, Gee, I wish I’d had better experiences and, you know, had a better family life and spent more time with my kids.

And, you know, and, and having a business gives you that, you know, Luxury.

Miriam: Freedom. Freedom, yeah. It gives you that freedom.

Jeanne: So when I look at people’s lives and they’re like not respecting it and they don’t know, they’re not respecting it, I’m not blaming, They just are in this thing of this is life and I have to hate my job because they’re brainwashed. I [00:23:00] have to hate my job and this is life.

Oh, you know, that’s how it is. It’s not how it is. That is not how it is. That is how it is because they’ve accepted and they’ve created their life and they’re also not understanding that they are not, they’re not exercising their own power over their own lives. Yes, they are. They are disempowering themselves.

Miriam: Yeah. Let me take a little bit of a tangent here. I love your history. I love the ways that you took yourself from point A to B to Z.

What is next in your level of business or personal development?

[00:23:41] What’s Next?

Jeanne: I was just talking to a colleague about this yesterday cause I, you know, you’re always thinking about a person that’s a high performer is always thinking about what’s the next step, right?

Yes. Yes. So my thing is to help people understand that a lot of their lives you can create.

You know, I wanna do a media company and like [00:24:00] positive media and not people all killing each other. Right? I could do more of a, you know, a mindset manifestation, create your own life kind of thing, and reach a wider audience and help people.

Cuz you know, even if people hear one positive thing, it can make their day and it can actually inspire them to take a bet on themselves. Make a bed, Make a bet. Make a bet on themselves, Right? Or, or do something. And people have come to me and said, Oh my gosh, because of that live you did, I did just do Facebook, Facebook Lives that made me do this.

I’m like, Great. Just from one live, they, they reach out and I’m like, Wow. That’s on a very small scale. So, and I’m not the only person inspiring people, but I’m me and nobody else in the world is me. So therefore I’m valuable and my message is gonna be different from somebody else. Just because, Yeah. And it, yeah.

Skill Sets

Miriam: Yes, and it’s, it’s going to impact somebody that maybe I wouldn’t impact. And I love [00:25:00] this notion of even when you’re successful, there’s always a next level of you. That’s something I’m always talking to people about. The skill sets that got you to the current level of you are not the skill sets that will take you to the next level of you.

So A, where do you wanna go? And B, what do you need to learn?

I especially love that you’re looking at how do we create positive media. I know on our end we need, both of us have a hard stop coming up that we need to get to pretty soon.

[00:25:31] Where to Find Jeanne

Miriam: I’d like for you just to share how people can find you and then we’ll wrap things up.

Jeanne: Absolutely. So it’s really easy to find me cuz it’s just my name, Jeanne Oomlor. You could find me on Facebook, you could find me on Instagram, you could find me on LinkedIn, you could find me at jeaneomlor.com. So it’s so simple.

Miriam: Perfect. We’ll put all that in the show notes.

And as I mentioned when we first talked, we like to gift our guests with a donation in their name to one of four charities. You chose the Mercy [00:26:00] Ships because they give free surgeries to people in need off the coast of Africa. So we’ll be sending that off today. Jeanne, thank you so much for your time.

Really appreciate it. This is a pleasure.

End Credits

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Music by Tom Sherlock.

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