Discovering Strength in Shadows: Meredith's Path to Self-Realization and Success

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And what I found was when I was going and I was doing all of these things and I was posting on Facebook, I had asked my Facebook friends what do you want to learn from me? And I thought that they were going to say something about relationships, given all of my work as a mediator, and instead they said we want to know how to do what you're doing, because the reality is, most people don't do a big jump like I did and continue to do big jumps, right? So I was laundering the world, I had changed everything and people just couldn't even believe and couldn't catch up and they wanted to know how do you do that?

Welcome to the Undiscovered Entrepreneur, the podcast where brand new entrepreneurs come to life and could quite possibly be discovered. Join me, dj Scoob, and the rest of the Scoob believers as we help these new businesses become a reality. And now way we go. Hello Scoob believers, and welcome to another episode of the undiscovered entrepreneur, with me, dj Scoob, coming at you whatever device you happen to be listening on. All right. So today we're going to get right into. The very first thing is my Scoob believer of the week. So today's Scoob believer of the week is Sky Armin from Sky Kitchen Adventures Facebook group. Check her out in the show notes. Thank you, sky, for being a Scoob believer. I really appreciate you. All right, so today we are talking to Meredith. Now, meredith is an entrepreneur and she has some amazing stories. You're going to get all the great stories. We touch a lot of different things. We talk about mental health, we talk about gathering customers all kinds of great information. It's a little bit longer, but I got to tell you every minute is worth listening to. So let's listen to Meredith. Salutations, scoob believers. And we are here again with another amazing brand spanking new entrepreneur. Today we're here with Meredith. Hi, meredith, how are you?

I am doing well. Thanks for having me.

Great, great to have you on the undiscovered entrepreneur. Okay, so I have a really kind of semi-serious question to ask you. Okay, you ready.

I'm ready.

All right, are you a Scoob believer?

Of course I am.

All right. Thank you so much for being a Scoob believer, meredith. I really super appreciate you, okay.

I appreciate you too.

All right. So I'm going to ask you just real quick here to give an idea of who you are and what your entrepreneur venture is and how long you've kind of actually been doing it for. Okay.

Do you have any tackle all three of those or are you going to put it in the smaller content?

No, no, just tackle all three and we're just going to go right through it.

Okay, so I am a coaching endotherapist and I hope for heroes and overachievers and goal debtors to stress less, do more and have more fun in the process. I became a hypnotherapist because I survived an attempted kidnapping and that completely changed the trajectory of my life. So I used to be a mediator in the middle of people's conflict. All the time I was a superhero. I was always running in to save other people and ultimately, at the end of the day, I needed to save myself and hypnotherapy for me. Hypnotherapy and coaching was a way for me to save myself and I'm proud to offer it now to other people to help them to save themselves too.

Yeah, and you find that a lot too with entrepreneurs. And I'm going to be honest with you right up front too I suffer from superhero syndrome for sure I have. Most of my life I've always wanted to be the one to swoop in and save the day, but they came to a point in my life where I was like, okay, I'm the superhero, but who saves the superhero when superheroes are there.

Yes, it is a hard lesson because it is something where you can have a lot of pride in being a superhero. I have no desire to change being a superhero. It's a very powerful place to be when you get to run in and save everyone else and you don't actually recognize that being a superhero is very dysfunctional until you are stuck in a place where you need to save it and you realize, oh, I've got a lot of people around me who like to be saved or they expect me to always be the superhero and not to have needs. Because I was really good at tending to everyone else's needs and tending to my needs if I admitted that I have them and I was absolutely terrible at asking for help. That was a completely underdeveloped muscle for me and it was something I really had to learn.

Yeah, it is a hard lesson, but when you get to that point, you really have to look around and realize that there's other people out there that love you, that want to be a part of life and be able to help you when you need help. Don't turn away from those people. Don't deflect the people that want to actually help you because they actually want to help you. They're not just doing it because they think you're weak. They actually genuinely want to help you. Asking for help is not a weakness.

No, asking for help is a strength, and it's a really new lesson to those of us that have been superheroes. Right, so I'm a recovering superhero. Now is how I would define myself. There's still a piece of me that can want to run in, and they have to remind myself this is actually not mine. So I have a choice I can take it on, but I have to take it on, whereas before I would just jump in to be rescuing before I even thought about it. And I do have a better quality people around me too. I have people that are more balanced, that don't need me to be in that superhero role all the time. I have a lot more people who are recovering superheroes themselves. Truthfully, I have a lot of kind and gentle people around me, and that's a lovely place to be.

Yeah, absolutely, having those people around you and you are the culmination of the five people that are closest to you. That just seems like those five people that are closest to you are who you actually end up being a part of. And if the longest those people around you are caring and giving and want to genuinely help you, then you'll be okay.

Right, and I think, even so, even if you don't have five good people around you, right, even if right now, you were in that spot where you're like, oh, actually, I realize I'm a superhero, I've got a lot of people around me who are really good at taking, you can start by listening to a podcast, right, you can start by paying attention to this podcast and being like, oh, this counts as a person around me because this is a new voice in me. Right, you can be reading books. You can have a coach. There are ways to pull in top people so that the voice inside of you changes and that you grow and change.

Exactly. All right, good words. Thank you, meredith. I really appreciate that. I will definitely keep that in mind and in my heart, because it is really close to me as well too. Thank you. Now I know that it seemed like a little bit of a subject, but what actually made you start your business? I don't know if you want to get into that a little bit or not, or Sure.

I'm happy to get into it. You can ask me just about any question about it and I'm happy. What happened was I needed to figure out what else I was going to do with my life. I found out the attempted kidnapping in 2015 and I faced off against my attacker in 2018. So a little over five years ago, five and a half years ago. By that point, my marriage had failed. My then husband had married a superhero. He didn't want somebody who needed rescuing herself. That wasn't what he had signed on. I was mediating. I was still in the middle of people's conflict doing that, and I knew I didn't want to live in Maine anymore because I couldn't get my body to reset to feeling safe. So what had happened for me with the attempted kidnapping is I had defaulted from feeling like always, that'll be fine, because when you're a superhero or you can run into danger because you're always believing that'll be fine, I'm going to be able to solve this, it's going to be fine and I had defaulted to feeling unsafe, unless proven otherwise. So it was always sort of buzzing with that unsafe feeling and still doing these things and just pretending that I didn't feel that. So 2018, when I faced off against my attacker, I got really triggered and after that I did not want to be a mediator anymore either. So now I had a failed marriage. I already was planning to leave the state and I couldn't do my job anymore. The trifecta of nothing right there. But what I didn't have was I went to Norway three weeks after the trial and I had farmed in Norway on the family farm. My great grandfather had come from Norway and I had farmed there in my early 20s and when I went to that family farm for a visit I felt like I came home and I felt like I came home to me and they happened to have the house that is literally called Great Grandmother's House available for rent three months later. So I came back to the states, I checked in and went no, really, this is where I need to be. And I contacted them and they were very happy to rent me Great Grandmother's House. And so I started finalizing my marriage. We were splitting personal property. As a divorce mediator I was good at that, so doing that wrapped up my business told everyone I'm going on on page sabbatical for 90 days and I left for Norway and I went there and I wrote a memoir about my life after the attempted kidnapping and at that point I really just thought, okay, that I can do right, I can hide out on a mountain overlooking a fjord in Norway, I'll write books. That's what I could do. But I also couldn't do any of that until Norway said yeah, so I had to respect international treaties. I went and I stayed at a friend's house in Australia for a couple months. I started studying Norwegian super intensively. I started pitching my book to agents. I came back to Norway and I started learning it super intensively in Norway for three months. I thought I had an agent. I thought things were going to go smoothly, but it wasn't happening fast enough. So I had to figure out something else to do and I thought well, oj had Cato. Somebody should be willing to pay a responsible person like me to stay at their place and take care of it. I should be able to find something like that, and I couldn't quite find that. But what I found was international pet sitting. So people would, we would trade, I could stay in their place, right, and they would get free pet sitting. So it was a wash. So I spent six months in the United Kingdom doing that, and then a month in Greece, on a little Greek island, a month in the vineyards of France, and I came back to the US in March of 2020, just before the borders shut down. So my life completely changed as a result of that. But while I was doing this wandering, I still didn't get the agent. So I had to figure out, well, what else can I do? And because I had been a mediator and a conflict coach, I was always really good at figuring out how to help people get from point A to point B. Right, I was really good at figuring out what are your strengths, what's the best version of you? Helping you to see that best version of you, feel that best version of you, helping you to see where to go for next steps. And all of that I could do as a coach for people. And what I found was when I was going and I was doing all of these things and I was posting on Facebook, I had asked my Facebook friends what do you want to learn from me? And I thought that they were going to say something about relationships, given all of my work as a mediator. And instead they said we want to know how to do what you're doing, because the reality is, most people don't do a big jump like I did and continue to do big jumps, right? So I was laundering the world. I had changed everything and people just couldn't even believe and couldn't catch up and they wanted to know how do you do that? So that was my world into being a coach. What happened in terms of how I became a hit and all of their best was I was in my own way in terms of marketing and I would have told you that. Well, of course, I'm in my own way in terms of marketing, right, two people tried to kidnap me. Marketing is perfectly normal to want to hide out after that happens. However, what really it was was I was also really mad at my mother and I didn't know why. I was really mad at my mother, because my mother is some sane mother I've always had. But our subconscious brain is formed basically age zero to seven. But I mean, when you have trouble, it can go up higher than that, right, so you're talking about childhood, but a lot of what we do instinctively, a lot of what we do on everything we do on autopilot, is our subconscious brain. So it wasn't anything to do with the attempt to kidnap. In the attempt to kidnap, in just reinforced a belief that I had from when I was much younger, and the hypnotherapy was what helped me to heal that, and so after I experienced that so this is wonderful Like I want to provide this to other people because it is the. It is the fastest thing I have ever found to get you out of your own way, and I have always been an impatient person. I don't like having to do things just like by road, over and over and over again. I was not good at doing affirmations and things like that, for example, because it felt like lying and I didn't believe that it would really work and I was going to have to do whatever you have Hypnotherapy. It's different. It's an hour and a half with me and you up level right, so I haven't found anything else that comes close.

That's a lot. That's amazing, good, so good. I like the fact that you change your surroundings to change your kind of mindset. Even though you're jumping to a lot of different places, you're getting to explore a lot of great things and I'm so glad that what grandmother's house came around to help you out and that was just kind of like a meant to be kind of thing, because there you are and there it is and poof, there it is. That's awesome. I'm glad that worked out for you. We all go through tough failures. You know it's, it's. It could be different for everybody. It was definitely different for you. But out of those failures and out of those struggles that we have on the other side of the things, we have to remember that there's opportunity to for us on the side that things that we learn from those failures are things that we take with us to help us move on to the next thing that we need to go to. And I was just curious about did you ever finish that book and publish that book?

I never was able to get it published. So I did finish it and I actually did a couple workshops about it. I was a geist when I was marketing it and looking for an agent, but I was not able to find an agent and, truthfully, at this point I would write a different book. So I had to. I had to end the book in order to be able to market the book right. So it didn't have this happy and ending as Americans might like, because I was still in sort of that unfinished space of I'm not sure where I'm going to be right, my life is better and it was better, but it wasn't finished. So I was able to get a story published in Newsweek. That's probably closer to what I would have for a story now. So Newsweek in 2020, at the end of 2020, they wanted a happy COVID story. There had been a lot of unhappy COVID stories and they were looking for a COVID story with a happy ending, and so I said I can do you better than a COVID story with a happy ending. How about I'll give you an attempted kidnapping and a COVID story with a happy ending? And they liked that. So I ended up with my own article in Newsweek.

Oh great, that's awesome. You know, you should just write two books. You have the one book have the one book up and then end where you said, and then the new one, the next one which really has the happy ending to it. I think that would be awesome.

I agree with you. I think that it would be too, but as you know, there's only so much time in the day and when you're starting up a new business right to do that, plus writing a book and going through the marketing for the VAT. It's a little much. But I'm not saying it won't happen in the future. But I think I want to get this business on a good footing and then I can be looking at the book. To go along with that, I can redo the previous book. We'll figure it out, okay.

What gave you the idea for the pet setting, the international pet setters? That's amazing. I never would have thought of that.

It honestly was. I thought about OJ Simpson in the back, that he had somebody that did his base and just was there to take care of things, and I thought, well, there must be something like that that I could do somewhere. And I don't know how it morphed into pet sitting. I know that I had to have a pet sitter from time to time for my dog. I had gone away when I had a dog, so I thought I probably just looked at that and there were a couple of websites available that do link pet sitters. So there was one in particular that I liked the best, but I used the other one as well, and it was just something where you would pitch it and they could pick between everyone, so you would end up having a conversation with the person in advance, right? So we would each be dubbing each other. I would show that it helps to look like this is doubt fire, like it helps to be older people, like, oh, my granny's going to come and take care of my dog or my cat, that's great, that's exactly what I want. So if you look at me, you're not thinking that I'm going to have wild parties, right. You're thinking, oh yeah, she's going to nurture and take care of the animal, so it worked out well.

All right, that's good. You just got that little bit of advantage over most people out there. I couldn't imagine leaving my pet to somebody that has a tank top on and just chewing bubblegum and has color in their hair. I was like the baby's sitting from heck.

So I was just I think people find what they're comfortable with, so I don't know. There probably is a market for that too.

There could be.

One who makes people comfortable, but I do think that it helped me to be an easygoing older female. Right.

All right, what I want to talk about too is and you really touched on a really tender subject for me too and the stuff that we learn as a child we take into our adulthood and it becomes kind of our subconscious kind of thing. So can you explain a little bit more about how that works? Do you know a little bit more about that?

So we are. When you think about a child, they're trying to figure out how the world works from the moment they're born. Right, when they come into this world. Their legs, legs and they are figuring out. All right, who are my people? I recognize my people sort of from what I heard in utero, right? So how do I interact with these people? How do I have them understand me? So you're looking at babies that are smiling from the get go because they're trying to have that connection with you. Now, before they're even able to communicate verbally, they're already connecting with you and already figuring out how you work and what you need. And they're figuring out how the world works. Right, if they cry, do their needs get met or do they not? Those are two very different worlds. I mean, the good news for parents is that if you meet your children's needs most of the time, then you're not going to do that much damage. It's the not meeting the needs for a lot of the time that does damage, and so that's when you get into more child abuse and neglect. The reality is that we all have messages that we learned in childhood, even from people who meant to do right by us. Right, there still can be messages that we learned that shape them how we interact with the world. So if you had the message, either spoken or un-spoken, that children are to be seen but not heard, that's going to be hard then for you to do marketing of yourself because you're not supposed to be heard, right. So that little you is always going to feel like, oh no, no, that's not our job, even though you're an adult. And so the little you that will struggle with being able to command the room or even to speak up at the table, right. If you were raised to believe that women are supposed to take care of men and take care of children and put everybody else's needs first, right, be in that caretaker role, then it's going to be very forward to say but these are my needs and I need these needs to get met. And similarly, as you were talking about, men, can also be raised to be superheroes, right. And so men are raised as boys not to have emotions, right. You're not supposed to cry. You're supposed to be stronger than that, and so we're told from a young age which emotions are okay and which emotions are not okay, and how we're supposed to do with things. If you are raised to always be achieving, if you're raised to that you need to perform in order to get love, then love is not unconditional, right. That love comes with strings, and so you can learn to be a very high achiever because you're really good at finding a way to get love, and you might even think that you love yourself more than you do because you're really good at finding a way to get love right. So I know for myself doing the healing journey right. So it starts with did I love myself? No, no, that wasn't what I was taught. I was taught to be an achiever, and so nothing was ever good enough right. So I was taught to always be looking at the next roth of the ladder. But when I took care of that piece, when I was like no, no, I figured out how to love myself. One of the things I do with hypnotherapy is also working with people on accepting themselves fully and completely. And when I did that work, I realized oh, actually I still am not good at unconditional love. I'm really good at meeting the conditions that I set for myself. Which is different Accepting all parts of you is accepting the shadow self too, accepting the self that not only do I not want to show to you or not show to the rest of the world, I don't even want to show it to me. That's the whole different level of acceptance. And I mean so this younger us, right, this younger us that I'm saying is in charge. When we're looking to do something and we get anxiety about doing it, it's really that younger you trying to protect you and keep you safe. So if you think about any kind of anxiety, whether it's coming up as feeling stressed or feeling anxious, or avoiding doing something or running away from doing something or procrastinating, or the new trick for me is I get really tired. So I found a way around all of these, really all of these energetic ways to get me to not do things. So the new one became well fine, I'll just make it so you can't move. I don't actually know how to deal with this. This is a new one in my life, in my 50s, but all of that is designed to keep you safe, right, and so if you can work with yourself a length, let you let the younger you know that you're safe and that actually what it's doing is causing more harm than if it actually let you do what it is you want to do, then often that's all it takes to be able to go forward and do what you want.

Amazing, amazing words, meredith. I think that's something we can all kind of take in within ourselves as far as mental health and how things come about and why things happen the way they happen in our childhood up to adulthood and how that interacts. So I really appreciate that.

Thank you, Meredith.

Thank you. All right, I know we talked a little bit about a few things here, but I always like to talk about pitfalls and problems getting started in our entrepreneur adventure. So when you were first getting started in your entrepreneur adventure, what were some of the pitfalls and problems that you came across?

As I said to you, the big one for me was marketing. That was the biggest chore because I had already been an entrepreneur, so I had already had my own, I had had a law firm with someone else, I'd gone out of my own and started a business where I was doing mediation and guardian of light and work representing the best interest of children and core. So, going through the general hurdles in terms of, I don't know, knowing how to start up a business. I had that under my belt. I would say that the challenge for me also at that point was can I actually make this work? So it was sort of the testing, trial and error. See what it is that actually resonates with me. So sometimes you'll think, oh, this would be a great solution for me. So, for example, Pinterest marketing. I thought that would be a perfect thing to drive people to my website. I don't mind going up Pinterest for recipes, so I thought this would work. I took the class, I implemented and I realized I hate Pinterest it was level I need to trust in order to make it it. Just, it made it too much work for me, there was no joy in that for me, so I had to then figure out okay, what kind of marketing will I do? What kind of marketing is something that I can do and it will bring me joy, because there has to be that piece of it when you're going to be getting out and meeting people and finding people to go up to work with you and driving the traffic to you. There has to be the joy in it or you won't do it.

Yeah, you gotta find out what makes work, you gotta find out whatever it is that makes work and you could experiment with it and that kind of thing. And maybe it's a good thing that you find out you didn't like Pinterest. I mean, what if you just kept doing it anyway and you just went to?

I have done that before, yeah.

You know, when it comes up to things like that, I like to reference a book written by a gentleman named Pat Flynn and I think I've mentioned him a million times in my podcast. But he wrote a book called Will it Fly and it's basically a step-by-step blueprint process of testing out different parts of yourself and in the market before you spend too much money and time on it. So, to avoid a lot of those things that you just talked about, that would actually be a great book to think about looking into. But you can never know for sure until you experiment with it a little bit, see if you're actually like it or not, and then, if you don't, at least you didn't get into it too far to where it's like, but I just don't want to stop everything just because it was so bad. Right?

And I think that there's also. There's the trade-off right, because you have to be willing to try things and fail, and you have to be willing to fail empirically and over and over again and still believe in yourself and at the same time, you have to be willing to say, okay, this isn't working. Right, so it is a balancing act I'm figuring out isn't working, isn't not working. Let's not take this personally. The business of working, let's have it. Be that I just need some more information. Right, it might work if I tweak it a little bit, as opposed to taking it as one more failure. Because I see a lot of people who they like the idea of being self-employed and they start out with it and they have high hope that if they build it, that they will come, like field of dreams. Right, If I build it, they will come. And it turns out that with some professions yes, right, there are certain professions that if you build it, they really do come. But for the feminist, well, she's a vast majority, but probably if you build it, they don't come unless you go knocking. They don't know you exist, right, even if they know you exist, they don't know that they need you. And so how do you help that conversation with people so that they understand who you are and what you do and why they would even need you in the first place?

Right, we can't just assume that they're going to follow us in there. They need to know who we are in the very beginning. So they know that they like us, they know that they want to follow us into whatever it is that we're going.

Exactly.

Yeah, and you make a good point on failure. I mean, failure is definitely the ultimate learning tool if your mindset is set to where failure is, not throwing up your hands up in the air and saying I'm done with this, but it's more long lines. Okay, I failed. What did I learn for this? What can I use in those learnings onto my next thing? Do you know the acronym for fail?

What Find another? I don't know.

That's pretty good, I don't know. First attempt in learning.

Okay.

Yes, and whenever I think about failure, that's the first thing that goes through my head. It's my first attempt at learning something, even though I failed it. It's something that taught me something that I could use onto my next adventure, or whatever it is that I go to and being it. You talk a good point about pivoting too pivoting into something else after that failure. Okay, this doesn't work, let's move on to this. This might be something a little bit the same, but different. At the same time of work, use those learners into something new. So pivoting and being able to pivot is super important.

It is. And I think too, I know that sometimes we get caught up in running after, sometimes we get caught up in banging our head against the wall. So, just like I really do want this, and if I keep banging my head against the wall, eventually the wall is going to give, and it's a lot easier if you find the door. So if you can't get through the wall and I'm not saying I haven't run at a wall before, but look for the door, look for what's an easier way that I can be doing this Some of that is, you know, finding who knows what you need to know. So if we had had this discussion a couple of years ago, before I settled in Oregon when COVID happened, I was planning to be a snowbird in between Norway and Greece and I was looking at am I going to live more in Norway or Greece? Am I going to set up my business in Norway or Greece? And I was starting to do my research into both places to see what was going to be a better fit for me, what was going to be a better fit for me in terms of quality and what was going to be a better fit for me in terms of setting up my business, I knew that to do it, I was going to need to get professional help. Right? I do not speak Norwegian well enough to be filling out those forbes, and even if I did, I would still want to have a professional with me who knew the lay of the land, who could help me through it. Right, I still don't speak Greek at all at this point. I mean, I learned a very little bit with Duolingo, and so all of that was going to be about how do I make this work right, and that is a piece that we need to have. When we are setting up a business. Professionals are your friends. You want to have the people that know how to do it and do it well, to help you set it up, because when you don't set it up the right way, then you end up with bigger problems later on, and nobody wants that.

Yes, exactly Exactly, and actually you know what's funny is you mentioned kind of that's escalated awesome. Segue into my next question, believe it or not was if you had any influencers or help or anything mentors that you looked up to when you were actually getting started.

So I did. The coach that I had was a hypnotherapist. She also. She had an online coaching program and so I did individual work with her and then I also did her four month program, which was targeted to entrepreneurs online entrepreneurs. When I heard that then she was going to be doing a program for hypnotherapists specifically right, people that wanted to coaching was it in therapy send, absolutely, sign me up. And so that was then a nine month program that I did and I also am still a part of her membership so I'm able to go in and access online trainings that she has done. So all of that helped immensely in terms of doing this. I also, when I moved to Oregon, when I moved to the Oregon coast, and then I was looking at getting involved more with people in person, not simply doing things online I went to a networking event at the Chamber of Commerce and I met the person who was the director of the Tillamook Small Business Development Center and so I started talking with him that they were going to be doing a small business management series. I said I could help with that, I could do a topic with that, and so we started talking and then we talked more, and the more we talked, the more he was just like you need to be my partner in this, and so he brought me into the Small Business Development Center. So I was doing now the full nine months with him. So he ended up mentoring in that capacity and then I'd grown that position so that I also got that to do a mastermind program and so last year I was mentoring because we have a new director and now I'm in it to a lesser extent. But, yes, I mean you're finding the people who help you to get a foot up right and you keep paying it forward that way. I just started today a solpreneur support circle in the local area for people who are in various, various entrepreneurs. I pulled them together in my old county and we had our first meeting today and it is all about collaborating and lifting each other up and it's all about that support being able to mentor each other, being able to brainstorm with each other, being able to use the hive mind to figure out things that we could be doing differently, so that we can all be collaborating and we can all be working together. And I'm looking to create more of the solpreneur support circle because I feel like being an entrepreneur can be a very lonely business and we all think I'm the only one going through this, or I don't want to show people that I'm being recreated to that superhero syndrome. I don't want to show people what's behind the scenes, I just want to show them that I'm successful and that no one will work with me. So having people that we trust, that are safe people emotionally, that we can help these discussions with, and they can help us and we can help them, it just strengthens the whole community. It makes it a better place. And when you have those people now, instead of being surrounded by the walls, now you're surrounded by doors because you're creating this community where everyone is opening the door for you and you are opening the door for everyone else.

And that's one of the main reasons why I even put this podcast together, to be honest with you, meredith is to build that community of people that is starting. I mean, there's all sorts of people starting businesses but, like you said, they all feel alone. Like, am I alone when doing this? Why do I feel this way? Having somebody to go listen to, having somebody to reach out to hey, can you help me with this? And have them say sure, I won't even charge you or whatever. Being able to be there for those people to open up those doors, just like you talked about earlier, and it really makes me feel good to be able to do that for somebody, and it's nice to know that somebody will actually do that for me too, whenever I need it to.

Yes, and that is the thing it's wonderful being a podcast guest with you, right? I mean, it's an honor to be putting that and it is opening up that door and now waiting over people to see that they're not alone in this, because we do we have that thing? I'm the only one who can't get it. And part of the messaging when you're buying the courses and I've bought plenty of online courses but you buy the online courses and they're like and this is the secret sauce. And when you buy this sauce, everything is going to go smooth sailing from here on out, because all it took for me was this one secret sauce. I learned this secret and done, and so you get to a point where you get a bit jaded right Because you do, you fall into this trap over and over and over and you think, okay, I bought the course, I did everything, and you know what Secret sauce didn't work for me, so it must be in another person with another secret sauce. So you buy the course and you do the work. You're like oh, this secret sauce doesn't work either. And so you go find the next person with the secret sauce and then maybe you give up or maybe you keep trying. But a lot of people give up, right. A lot of people. That feeling of failure is so great that they just don't believe in themselves anymore and they think I just wasn't able to, I wasn't able to find the secret sauce, I didn't make it properly. I don't know how to do it, and part of the trick is to keep showing. People need to see you. We get so much information thrown at us every single day and when we're the ones putting it out there into the world, we think, well, of course, they saw me, like I put it out into the world. But when you think about all that, you scroll past and how the algorithms don't even show you so much stuff because there's so much coming at you. There's a fire hose that's coming at you and you are just one little drop of water. The reality is we need to touch people a lot more, right? So there are different types of people with respect to change. So some people, as soon as they hear about it, they're just like yes, I want that. I know, I want that here, let me sign up. But then that's not everybody, right? So the next stage they need to see that it actually worked for someone. So they're the ones that are going to be reading your testimonials. They're going to be watching to see did any? But did other people have a good experience? What's getting posted about it? Okay, if these people are, you know, if these people are, that makes it safe, now I can do it too. And then there's the ones where she's like, well, half the world is doing it, now I guess I can do it. And then the last ones are the never, never, never, you can't make me. And those are the ones that they still have a landsline, even though there's plenty of good internets or risks available to them and they could right, they could have a cell phone, they're still getting their old phone book, or maybe they just keep their old phone book that they've had forever because they want to have it like that. They're complaining about what it is that is changing, and I know for myself I had to go through when you're trying to figure out who your ideal grant is right as a superhero. The ones I wanted to save were actually the never, never, never, you can't make me. People because then thought, well, they really need my fault, it doesn't matter, because they don't recognize that they do right. So my actual client is the one that says, oh yeah, that sounds cool, that would be great, sign me up. That is the open door, right, I can bang my head forever against the never, never, never, you can't make me. And they're still never, never, never coming. So don't bang your head, find the open door.

Yeah, especially when my dad's like that. I gotta tell you he was very technical for a while, but as soon as he retired he shut it all down and just yeah, anyway. So, yeah, you make a good point through it. You don't want to concentrate so much on the people that don't. You can't change anybody, especially especially that never, never person. They're not going to change, no matter what happens. So you want to work on the people that are open to opportunity, that are open to the change. That way you can help them out because they want to be helped. If people don't want to be helped, then they're not going to be helped. Right, and you make a good point about the secret sauce and going out and trying to find different places this sauce isn't working with. Pretty soon. You've got so many secret sauces. Your sauce turns of vinegar because it's just not working. What I like to do instead, instead of letting my sauce turn to vinegar, is, even though I have different things that I've learned from different people, I integrate the best things that I've learned from those people and make my own secret sauce.

Yes, that is exactly what you do and that shows that you're actually doing what needs to be done, because that is the integrating process, right? So if you just go and you learn it and you never implement it, it doesn't ever become yours. And if you go and you learn it and you never go beyond copying the other person, it hasn't become yours either, right? When you are fully implementing it, like you're talking about, then it becomes yours because your style comes into play and people want to work with you. It is your style, it is your energy and what you bring that makes them want to work with you.

Exactly Great words. Thank you so much, Meredith. That's amazing Great analogies on the sauces. I like it. I like a good sauce. So yeah, we'll take that to heart for sure. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right. So I like to know and I like asking this question because I always get a different answer from everybody but in your vast you know doings, when will you know you've made it, when will you think you've made it to that one pinnacle point where it said this is exactly what I want to be at this particular time? What's that look like to you?

So it looks like different things at different times, honestly. So I am going to say I used to be quite terrible at this because I always saw the knack of the wrong and I didn't allow myself to sit and celebrate that joy of having made it right. And my trick, my trick for celebrating that I've made it is actually to look back in 90 day increments and see how far it's come, as opposed to always looking forward that when I look back and I say, oh well, a year ago, this is where I was and I'm so much harder than that. So look, I'm already making it, I'm already a success in so many ways. So in some ways I've already made it. In some ways, I live in one of the most beautiful places on this planet as far as I'm concerned, and I have great neighbors and I have a great community that I really enjoy, and so all of that is already having made it. I can make it better, I can do more with that, but that in and of itself is already making it. And then there's the financial goals. So that's the other piece is getting to the point where there's the bucket. That is, for what I have, for what I need to make every month for a minimum, then putting money away for savings and putting money away for retirement, and then, honestly, what I'm looking at is still creating that life where I am living in Norway and or Greece and or Oregon, and going back to that little Greek island of Salmos and checking to see if I still want to live there, and going back to Norway and seeing my family and friends. When I get to the point where I can spend summers in Norway, I will have made it. That's really the thing is being able to be with the people that you love most on this planet, and I think that the one thing that has held me back from doing that sooner is that, coming to Oregon, I met the best boyfriend on the planet, so I had the best first date of my life on July 4th of 2020. And we have had a fabulous relationship from that time forward, and so I actually don't like being apart from him, and it makes my little wandering heart stay close. I think it's the not wander the world as much and instead we go out on little adventures nearby. So I need to fully be a success. It's going to involve also convincing him that he should spend the summer in Norway with me. But yeah, I think that would be for me.

We'll leave the boyfriend convincing part to you, but everything else that you talked about there. You wanted to be close to family and I like the fact that you don't look too far forward or back. I mean that way you can literally see where you're coming from and where you're going. That's really important. Some people look too far and it's just you don't really know what's going to happen in the future and the past is already the past, so you really can't do too much about it. But what you could do is measure the growth that you've had from the past to now and see where you've been.

What is it? Honestly, that was when I learned from the attempt to kidnap me, so before that, I was somewhat always focused on the future. I lived in the future. Whenever I was doing now was based on what I wanted to get to with the future. And having that event and then the second triggering in 2018, I got a forward lesson on how little control I have over life, and that really all of our power is in the present moment, and so we can do things in the present moment that we want to then result in something in the future. But there's no guarantee that any of this will happen, and so you can make yourself quite miserable, always chasing a future that may never exist instead of focusing on what is happening right here and right now. And similarly, like you said, past is the past, and so we do. We carry that trauma. We can carry it in our bodies as well as in our brains, and so there has to be that goal of releasing it, because we want to release and let go of it. We don't want to carry it around everywhere. If it's something painful, it's much better for you to be able to literally shake it off, and so all that you can do to let go of all the baggage right and just be able to be here in this present moment. That will make your life a lot better.

Okay, let's all remember that. School believers, that's good stuff right there. All right, this is one of my favorite questions here, and I think everybody. This is the one question that everybody really listens to most is if you're to meet somebody that wants to take the same entrepreneur adventure as you, or at least similar, what kind of advice would you give them? What kind of steps would you have them take?

I would probably check with them and see if they actually knew what they were in for. Are they just believing what they see on social media or do they really want to? Because it is two questions, I think that I would want them. So it really depends on how hard-cored it is about what they wanted to do. So if they wanted to do the specific hypnotherapy, I do yes, they could do that tomorrow. I could give them the website for that. But what they wanted to do was to do what I did, which was to completely change their life because life had become untenable. I would say first, how about we see if there's anything in life that you actually could do before we do the jump-buffer-cliff and build your wings on the way down, because that is a lot to go through. And the piece that I don't tell. Let me start with that. So, because I had so much fear right after the attempted kidnapping, the first day I literally just stayed in bed, I just hugged, I hid out in bed and my then-husband took all the calls and he got the call from the police that they had caught the attacker and at that point he felt safer and I still didn't. So the next day he made me get out of bed, he made me leave the house and go and walk the dog as far as I could go and I could only go a block holding his hand and having the dog there and I had to turn around. So the following day I walked the dog without him that same area, because it was like he cleared that space for me and I could go there and then made myself go a little bit further until I couldn't go any further. And then I turned around and I came back and I did that every day and I reclaimed my town that way, by walking everywhere. So I had been someone before the attempted kidnapping who was a wanderer like I just talked about. I had been someone who studied abroad in France and studied in Russia and formed on the family farm in Norway, and after this I could not sleep outside of my home. So I retrained my brain how to do the things I wanted right. I started small and I built it bigger, and so then I, a couple of years and a year and a half in, I went and I stayed at a hotel by myself for the first time and did that as an overnight as part of a conference that was nearby, within like an hour and a half. So if I had to I could drive back home, but it was going to be hard enough that it was going to be either one was going to be work. If I had to drive home in the dark, I wasn't going to like it, and if I had to stay there by myself, I wasn't going to like it, right? So I was growing that comfort zone, and then I I kept growing, so I went and I stayed in Canada. First, when I was looking at going internationally, I went with a friend to Canada and we drove up and then the next time I drove myself to, I still had control over my vehicle, but I intentionally went to French speaking Canada so that I would be doing a different language right. So there was always this pushing that was happening. I would say that my tendency can be to just jump into the deep end of the pool and slip, and that I can run right through my comfort zone and leave it in the dust, and that is not necessarily a good thing because it sends your body panicking even more. And if you can do things to stretch your comfort zone as opposed to putting it into the panic, you actually will help yourself to heal faster. And that is not always my strength this is the only strength is to get myself to do more and to right and to push. But I can push too hard, and so I would be cautioning people to to listen to themselves, to listen to their bodies. That it's. It's taken a long time to get to where they are right, and they can take a longer time to get to where they want to go to, and that there will be a part of them. When I left to Norway but I was going to figure it all out in 90 days. I had 90, that was my goal, right? 90 days I'm going to be. I'd clear my decks. I can't. I don't have anything I can do there. I couldn't work right. So what was I going to do there? And I had wanted to write that memoir, and so I went over and I brought with me a book on a writer's block and procrastination, because I knew you've cleared your decks. You don't have any excuse now. It's not that you're working, it's not that you're volunteering, it's not that you're hanging out with a friend. You've got nothing. You've got all the time in the world to write a book, and so if you can't write this book, it's only because of you. So you don't have to push as hard as I pushed myself. It's actually not good to push quite that hard, but you can be strategic and make it a lot easier for yourself too, which is also what I do.

All right, that's amazing. I think we could take that along and just about any kind of adventure that we're going to do. I mean taking those little steps to move forward just a little bit more out of our comfort zone, a little bit more out of comfort zone. But if you go too far you break your leg or something, you know it's just Right. And then when you stretch, and you just stretch too much and you actually get yourself hurt. So taking those small steps to get out of the comfort zone is the only thing that's going to make us move forward as far as what we want to do.

Exactly, and so it's taking any stuff, right? So, if you know, this really scares me, so I don't want to do it at all. Just set the timer and do it for a minute, because you can handle anything for a minute. Or, personally, for me, I hate filing. So filing is something that I delegate in my head, even when there's nobody to delegate it to, and so it does help me to set the timer because it is something that I will avoid. But if I put it for five minutes, I'm like, oh, it's not as bad as I thought it was. It's just that you know there's this wall of resistance. So I think something like that, that it's boring, it's whatever. Set the timer for five minutes, but then also don't use that as a trick for yourself, right? So one of the things that we do is overachievers is we're like, oh good, and now you're doing it, so keep doing it. No, because then you're lying to yourself. And who wants to keep negotiating with a liar, right? So, like five minutes, I said you could have a break. You get to have a break. If you don't want a break, if you don't need a break, you don't have to. But the reality is I said five minutes so you could be done.

That's actually some advice I give some of my coaching clients too. When it comes to you're like, well, I don't have time to do meditation, so you have time, you could set yourself a timer for five minutes and after that decide if you have more time or not. If you can't find five minutes and 24 hours in a day, then there's something going on. So just set yourself for a time or for a minute, for five minutes, whatever it is, and take small steps as you move along and then decide from there if you can move on from it or not.

Absolutely.

All right, I guess maybe that's how you get your book written just five minutes a day.

I don't have mounts to climb right now. I would write the book and it would stress me out, and then I would go climb the mountain.

This is a question I get a different answer from every time and it gets a little bit tough. If it gets past that comfort zone, let me know. But what is the one question you wish I would have asked you, but didn't I always miss one really good question that everybody's ready for, but I never asked that question? What is that question you're out of?

I honestly I don't know, because I didn't come in with a preconceived notion of what it should be. Yeah, I know, that's what I said, and so I think that, yeah, I think it's an easier question if you come in with a preconceived notion of what should happen, and I've given up a lot of that. I gave up a lot of that as a mediator because I did transformative mediation, which is the most empowering for other people. So I am not coming at it as the expert. I am coming at it as the person to help them, as opposed to being the expert on their lives after not knowing them really. So for this, yeah, you're the expert because it's your podcast, so I'm just here to answer the questions that you want and because you know your audience best. Right, that's how I look at things now.

Okay, we'll just keep it at that. That sounds good to me. Okay, here comes one of my favorite parts. This is getting towards any here. So what I do with all my guests, it's a set, a six month goal for you. So where do you see yourself and your company in the next six months?

That's a good one. So in six months oh, in six months I would really like to have my ticket to Norway. That's what I would really like.

Oh yes.

My ticket to Norway in six months. I'm going to be starting doing mediation again for the courts, so I've talked with them about that and I think that will be starting either late this year or early next year. I've been doing facilitation as well for nonprofits, nonprofit boards. I will be building the solpreneur circles, both in person and online. So I'm looking at I think I'd like to have three or four of them going in person in this area and then have a couple online as well. It's a different feel, but it's still. It's just a necessary thing in this world to have that kind of a space for people. So I'm really enjoying having that space and holding that group space for people.

All right, that's amazing. That's some great goals you have. So here's what I'm going to do with you, meredith In six months, I'd like to have a follow up interview with you and see if you've actually reached these goals. You can get yourself on, you know, take a trip to Norway, get the mediation going and see if you have the solpreneur circles working.

Oh, I won't take the trip to Norway until say, June, July or August, but I will have the. I want to have the ticket to Norway.

There you go.

So, yeah, no, it will. They will still have snow coming down in April and May. I have no interest.

Got you In July and August.

That's good All right, we'll see.

If we have that ticket, then that sounds good to me. I'm really interested in that solpreneur circle. I think that would be just monumental for you. So we'll follow up with you in six months and see if what goals we've reached. For you Is that okay?

That sounds great.

All right, Fantastic. All right, Meredith, this is your time to shine. Now I want you to go ahead and tell us about how to get a hold of you if you have any questions or we need your services. Okay, Ready set go.

Well, thank you. So to get a hold of me, my website just MeredithLRichardsoncom M-E-R-E-D-I-T-H-L-Richardsoncom, and then you can jump onto my email list. There's free group coaching once a month on my email list. If you're in the Oregon area, then you could always come and join for a free hip-no session. I have that happening at the Warrantyne Library next month, Although, by the I don't know when this airs that probably will be alive at that point. So yeah, I would say that's. The best way to get in touch with me is through my website. All right, and people can do individual coaching and hip-no therapy with me as well. It's all spelled out there.

Fantastic, meredith, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the Undiscovered Entrepreneur I have actually, I have a whole page of notes that I took from talking to you, so I definitely learned something. Hopefully the Scooby Delivers all there have learned something from you too, and thank you so much for what you do.

Thank you so much. This has been a fabulous opportunity. I really appreciate it and I want to hear your Scooby impression again, because you haven't done it in all of the world.

Oh, bro, that's awesome.

That was one of my favorite shows growing up.

Oh, thank you. All right, scooby. Thank you so much, meredith. I really appreciate it. Scooblers, make sure you stay tuned for the wrap-up. All righty, everybody, have a great evening. Thank you so much. Bye-bye, bye-bye, bye. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that was Meredith. Wow, what a fantastic interview. Just so much information that went through there. I know it was a little bit long, but it was definitely worth it. Some great analogies going through. She had a great story. Maybe we'll see that book someday soon. I'm really excited to follow up with her, especially on the solo prenuer circles that she was talking about, to see Maybe I can get on that too. So I think that would be some great. Contact me if you want to get on these solo prenuer circles that she's talking about. All right, now a little bit more about me, but I'm going to try to keep this as short as I can, because you've already been listening this long. A little bit about the game show I applied for. That did not work out because they wanted a little bit of money up front to be on the show. Unfortunately, I didn't have that, so I had to decline that, but it's good to know that they wanted me to be on the show. I'm still trying to raise money for getting to PodFest. Please help me. If you can, go to my website, go to be a contributor and really help me out if you can. I am looking for some new coaching clients. I am giving away two free coachings that are two hours long to about a $700 value. If you want to take advantage of that, please email me at doingitodaycoachingatgmailcom or reach out to any of my social medias. T-r-e link tree backslashdjscoup that's lanktree backslashdjscoup to reach out to me on any of my social medias. All right, also, I was looking to start a new segment in my podcast. Just a quick thing here If you are an entrepreneur and you want to help brand new entrepreneurs with some advice, go to tuepodcastnet backslashadvice, give me two or three minutes of your time, give advice to brand new entrepreneurs that you want to help out. This is a really quick way to get on my podcast and help brand new entrepreneurs. So if you want to do that, please once again tuepodcastnet backslashadvice and go into my speak pipe there, hit the record button and just give me a couple minutes of advice that you'd give to a brand new entrepreneur. All right, thank you so much. I just want to say a quick thank you to everybody out there that listens, subscribes. I really appreciate you. I couldn't do this without you. Thank you, and you all have a great evening. All right, everybody. Thank you. Hello there. Dj Scoob here and I just want to personally say thank you for listening to my program. I really hope you learned something. Tune in in two weeks to listen to another brand new entrepreneur and remember I can, I am, I will and I'm doing it today.

So there's two kinds of ways to read music and we play guitar. There's just music, sheet music, which is insanely chaotic and hard, and then there's what's called tablature. Tablatures is really easy.

Okay, there you go, so yeah. Oh, my okay.

Yeah, so this is a D.

Okay, so you don't have okay.

I also say deep minor. There you go yeah. So that's the D, okay. So so you want to do yeah, go ahead.

Second fret. We got three string second fret yeah.

I just want to kind of down from the low end. So the first two low strings you're not going to touch. Then the third string is going to be open Right, which means you play it, but you don't, you don't put your finger on it. Then from there you have the the triangle. This is the most popular chord, I think, in music. Pretty sure, Close Oops. Make sure you look at your other hand too.