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

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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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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.