Episode 2 - Jaime White - Mother, Owner, Coach

Join Jaime White and me as we talk about her amazing experience including growing up with a serial entrepreneur, her 20 years of experience in real estate development and small business ownership, that lead her to her true calling in coaching others to help them find their true passions. Jaime is a mother of 6, she is outspoken and a strong woman, definitely a conversation I truly enjoyed having.

 

Leighann Lovely  00:22

If you are an HR professional business owner or at the operations level trying to understand what people want, you may be struggling. Our systems have been shocked practices have been questioned and culture is the leading conversation. Let's learn how culture is created, sustained, and why it should be the leading conversation when discussing hiring, training and retention. This is the foundation of any business and it's time to address it. So tune in to Let's Talk HR humanizing the conversation. We tackle topics that influencers of change need to understand and struggle to overcome every day, such as where to start, and what the new workforce wants and how to attract and keep positive momentum going. I'm your host Leighann Lovely.

 

Leighann Lovely  01:09

I'm very excited to talk with my guest today, Jamie white. Jamie White is a wife and business coach with over 20 years of small business and real estate development experience. Feeling a call to the coaching industry, Jamie is now focusing all of her energy into developing a faith based coaching business that focuses on helping people become the best version of themselves. Believe crew is a group of coaches learning together and helping others develop and grow. personally believe crew is for coaches that don't want to do the business part of coaching alone, Jamie has walked the walk of exhaustion juggled the challenges of leading multiple businesses while raising their six sons, and the potential of a divorce of an almost 20 year marriage to a former addict. Today, she's on the other side of that with lots of energy excited about the next 40 years with her husband and their boys, while leading their combined personal development and coaching businesses. So much can change when we change our beliefs, and start to invest in ourselves.

 

Leighann Lovely  02:23

Welcome, Jamie, I am so excited to talk with you. You know, I had the opportunity to talk with your husband in my previous season. So this is a treat. I am very excited to have you on and talk with me. So welcome.

 

Jaime White  02:36

Thank you very much for having me.

 

Leighann Lovely  02:37

Yeah, so why don't you you tell us a little bit about yourself?

 

Jaime White  02:41

Well, thank you, Leighann. This is something that I'm getting used to talking about. And so you know, when you have so much experience in life, and it sort of like what defines you what defines a person and when you're starting a new business, and you're trying to figure that out. So, but it's the 22 years of business experience that really keeps coming back as like, oh my word I've been through that. Like, you don't have to explain it to me, I've been there. And but I but I absolutely love business and real estate development. And so now I'm going into the coaching lane, which is something that I started to have a passion for. A couple years ago, as I started developing personally, then I realized that there was an issue in the coaching industry where there just wasn't a lot of support for the business side of coaching. So now I'm coming in combining my interest in business with coaching and hoping to help other coaches.

 

Leighann Lovely  03:37

That is awesome. And you're right. There's in the, for businesses versus individuals. There's there's kind of a lack there isn't there? Because, you know, if I want to go out and get somebody to work with me on an individual basis, there's a lot of there's there's some availability there, but for a whole company or for you know, yeah, you're absolutely right. But you just said,

 

Jaime White  04:03

Yeah, so what I'm actually looking to do is bring together coaches that are interested in doing personal development into a larger group so that we can share resources and recommend each other and everybody can have their specialty, but it's still a part of one community. So that's, yeah,

 

Leighann Lovely  04:23

yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Okay. So you are like you mentioned, you're, you're interested in businesses or business, but you are a business owner and a successful one at that you've, you've owned a couple is that, is that correct?

 

Jaime White  04:39

My husband and I have owned some rentals and some real estate and we actually have an escape room. And so we do have some businesses, but mostly what I was doing in the past was running other family businesses. And so I'm completely disconnected from that now and just really, really free to just go straight into the coaching lane.

 

Leighann Lovely  04:59

Okay. So, before we jump past that, so explain so you've you've run businesses, you're disconnected from that. Walk me along that journey a little bit. How does that all come about?

 

Jaime White  05:13

Well, when you grow up in family business, you just sort of, I mean, I, I started snowplowing, you know, before I had a license, he dropped me off in the Kmart parking lot, you know. And so just, you just born with it, it's in your blood. And then as you go through, I don't know if anybody else has this experience. But I have a dad, that's a serial entrepreneur. And so there's always the next new business that he's interested in starting. And so when I was 18, he asked if I wanted to start my own furniture store, and I thought, No, and I said, Yes. And I had no interest in design, I had no interest in furniture. But I had an interest in business. And so I thought that that would overcome all the other issues. So just, you know, all the different experiences that you can have along the way. And then when my mom died, a couple years later, he asked if I would come in and help with the other businesses that he already had running. And that's when I found my passion and my lane because I could actually scale something. The other one was more of like this design store. It's a long story. Long story. And I think you had said that you're, you know, like this season, you're one of the questions that you're planning on asking is like, what age would you start at? So it's just like, Oh, my word, all the thoughts come into my, my brain about like, all the different things that happen along the way of life. So when you ask about running businesses, and tell me about that story, and dig a little deeper, you know, really, what's the healthy and the healing part of where I'm at now is I'm so thankful that I had an opportunity to run multiple six and seven figure businesses at the same time, and I loved what I was doing, and the team I was building. But at the end of the day, the owner, which is also my dad, was not interested in the same things that I saw. And so it was time for one of us to go, and that person ended up being me. And, and the other way to look at that my team that I had built up, said, It's time for you to go and do coaching. So there's two ways to look at the same situation. You know, the one is like, oh, Ouch, that hurts. And the other one is like, Wow, that's awesome. You know, that, that I was in a position where we had built up leadership, and we had built up so many good things that they were like you go, you know, you empowered us. And now it's your turn.

 

Leighann Lovely  07:45

Wow. So you went in? And how many businesses at that time? Were you actively assisting and running?

 

Jaime White  07:58

Um, you know, there's multiple LLCs, you know, what it is when you start a business? Or maybe, I guess I shouldn't assume that everyone knows, but somebody's like, oh, I want to start a business. And they're like, somebody says, I want to start a business. And they're like, do I need to start an LLC? The answer is technically no. But it seems like we all think we have to go run and get an LLC. So there were like, 10, LLCs. But technically, you know, there were probably five or six that were really. And they were in different industries. It was retail and storage and rental properties. And then he had bought a dumpster company just before I came on board, and they were managing the dumpster company, from a whiteboard. And so when you would erase where the dumpster had been, then you wouldn't have to have records, no records, right? And so that was like my first project where that the group was like, the office manager at the time, we thought differently. And, you know, we didn't know that quote at the time, like dad said, Hey, can you come in and help me? And so I was like, Yeah, sure. And then they're like, Hey, we've got this problem, like problem.

 

Leighann Lovely  09:10

You've got, you've got to get more than a problem.

 

Jaime White  09:14

Yeah. So there was just a couple, but

 

Leighann Lovely  09:17

How old were you at this time?

 

Jaime White  09:21

You know what, I think I had just hit 30. And I, the year before I had been asked to come into his office was like, my best year, you know, physically, I was in really good shape. And that was tan I'd taken a lot of days off. And then he asked and I was like, no, like, a couple times. And then he just asked enough and I was like, Okay, fine. You know, it's like that moment, like, Okay, fine. If you need me, I'm here, you know, and, and it was such a mess. Like, I'm not just let's be real. It was a mess. There were 10 companies, the books were not an order and the person that The way it was being run, there was no leadership. You know, my dad was a serial entrepreneur. And he just kept saying, it's fine. You know what I mean? It's just the office. Like, there wasn't a lot of respect for the people in the office, and there wasn't a lot of an understanding of what new things could be done. And so he would come in, and he would say, Can we do the card file system? I was like, Oh, my mom. And he's like, your mom used to run this on index cards. And I'm like, Have you heard of the computer?

 

Leighann Lovely  10:31

What year are we living in?

 

Jaime White  10:34

This was not it was 2011. You know, it's like, Oh, my word. And then, you know, when I tried to change the phone system, it was like, well, we could just put four phones on the desks, like, I don't understand why you're making this so difficult. And I'm like, I need a phone system that can take multiple calls coming in from multiple companies. And so I found that stuff. So fascinating. And I loved it. We were definitely butting heads all the way along. But at the time, he, he had other things that he was interested in pursuing. And so it wasn't a focus. And then, you know, eventually, it was like, Oh, hey, I think I can do this now.

 

Leighann Lovely  11:15

You know, and that's it. It's interesting, because there are there are people out there businesses out there that are very progressive in nature. And then there are businesses that you walk into, and you're like, Whoa, I think I just stepped back into the 80s.

 

Jaime White  11:31

Yeah, in certain industries, you can get away with it. Not really anymore. Well, there is there is still a local industry that she has like carbon copies that she mails her invoices out on. So I'm gonna say that in, because in the, in the hands on work, like in our area, it's like an excavation business or like a sand hauling business or something like that. Like there's just not enough people out there competing. And so then technically, they can still get away with it. But they're not growing. They're, they're not adding people, they're not growing. There's no way you grow in that environment,

 

Leighann Lovely  12:11

Right. Know if you're small enough, but even I mean, so I originally went to school for computer programming. And during the time that I was in school, I was approached by somebody who was in the truth. Yeah, I was supposed to be in the independent contractor. He was a fire inspector for the city, contracted out by the city, the city wasn't able to handle the workload. So they contracted him out. They approached me and said, Hey, you're, you're in school for computer programming, do you think you could build us a database? And I'm like, do you really need a database for the amount of customers you had? And then I saw the stacks of paperwork. I mean, and I'm not just stacks upon stacks upon stacks and boxes of boxes, and I went, Oh, yeah, I have to find a way to be able to track and document where you've been, where you're going. And in today's world, even if it's 100, even if it's 200. Even if it's 50 isn't, it's that much easier if you're able to just sit down, but there are a lot of old school mentality. Now I was in school, this was would it this would have been like the early 2000s When I was, you know, pursuing my computer programming degree, which I almost, you know, it was a class short of my degree. And then I was like, I don't really want to do that. Switch to another degree and pursued that for another couple of years, to eventually, you know, settling on my my bachelor's in business in emphasis in HR. So what I did, helped me pay for some of my classes was I, I designed a database for them. Very simple. But I mean, you can use very simple deck just to enter in the basic customer information to make it searchable. Because I can't imagine looking at Rolodex and calling it but this is, of course, the way that it was done. But even even just that one, he was one man. And that's how he tracked all of his customers and have renewal dates and everything else. So it is even for a small shop like that. I don't think it's feasible anymore for most companies to be able to do and

 

Jaime White  14:31

I would agree. Right. But I didn't own the business

 

Leighann Lovely  14:35

You didn’t own the business. I suppose that it had to be even more difficult coming from the fact that you're one a coach to your the daughter.

 

Jaime White  14:45

Yeah, there's there were layers to work through it. But you know, I had done a lot of hiring and firing over the years. And I definitely took something huge away. Because I'd been there 22 years technically if you took you know the the furniture store experience and then tie I did in with all the other companies. And when I was doing the furniture store, again, that one was owned by him, but it was also they had no experience in retail. So that's how I ended up feeling like the owner the whole time. But at the end, I was just told we don't need you anymore. And I understand personalities. And so when I look back, you know, I have a really high D, in the DISC personality, and so I don't want to be considered obsolete. And, you know, my, my immediate reaction to that is not very good. But what I realized is that what I was missing was the Thank you. And so if I'm in a position, I expect to be in a position again, in the future to disconnect, you know, from people and maybe not specifically firing, you know, maybe it's just letting contractors go or something like that. And I just want to be in a position now to be able to say, thank you for the service for when you were with us. And it, it did make sense, you know, there's a point where it's no longer the right fit, and I I was no longer the right fit. And just hearing thank you for 22 years before being kicked up out of the door would have felt a little differently.

 

Leighann Lovely  16:09

So how was your relationship with your dad? No,

 

Jaime White  16:13

we're not talking, does that tell you anything?

 

Leighann Lovely  16:16

I'm so sorry to hear that.

 

Jaime White  16:18

I think, you know, I come from a family where you couldn't beat each other up, and then you, you know, get together again the next day, and it's totally fine. And so right now, I'm realizing that that was actually happening a lot. And I'd like to actually take a step back and say, you know, I don't actually need to get thrown under the bus that much and, and just, I'm taking some space, I think that it'll be good in the future. If, you know, there is a point where we are talking again, but right now it's, it's really good to have that space.

 

Leighann Lovely  16:47

Right? I have to admit, I know a little bit about you, because I well, you and I have not sat down and really had an in depth conversation. I have had multiple conversations with people in your circle. One being another Jamie White's actually.

 

Jaime White  17:04

That's funny. Yes. And

 

Leighann Lovely  17:07

I have to compliment you before I you know, really dive into the coaching side here because she was actually I interviewed her her for season one of my podcast and, and anybody who listened, you know, to her, you You fired her and said it right. You You did you you did and basically gave her an ultimatum you can you can leave here or in Actually no, I think it was I'm firing you from from being my caregiver for my children. You can either be my housekeeper or be a manager at is this the retail store?

 

Jaime White  17:47

It's antique. It's like an antique mall. So antique antique.

 

Leighann Lovely  17:50

And she now speaks so unbelievably highly of you, because you've given her an opportunity that she seemingly is thriving at.

 

Jaime White  18:01

Yeah, yeah. And that took me a long time to get to that point to be able to have that conversation like that, you know, it's not something that was natural. It was something that through coaching, I learned that giving people an opportunity, and letting them choose, but being clear about it. Like when it's no longer the right fit, you know, thank you for the time that you've been here. But now it's time for something or maybe and and here's a new opportunity, how would you like in one of my gifts. And this is what makes it so hard for me with the position that I was in and how it all went down, is I love to study the StrengthsFinder. And one of my gifts is Maximizer. That's my top one, which means I believe in people's potential. And then the other gift is individualization. Which means that I can see people's gifts and strengths and how they work well together with others. And so I asked my dad, I said, you know, if you were given all of this money, today, would you buy the same businesses that you currently have? And he said, No, I would buy a ranch. And I said, then go go buy the ranch. Like I'm completely supportive of whatever people want to do for their dreams. But what I wasn't doing was taking care of what my calling was and what my dream was. And so my kids were starting to see that. And they were saying, Hey, Mom, you're busy coaching all of us and telling us what, you know, what we should do or when we're not staying true to our core values. And they're like, but you're still staying somewhere that, you know, isn't true to your coaching. And I was like, Oh man, when your kids wake you up and kind of smack you in the face, right?

 

Leighann Lovely  19:37

You mentioned your kids. You're a mother of six. And I have to say that's insane. But you have a range, a range age where your children and some of them are much older, and they're getting to an age where they're able to call you out on because now they're able to recognize that in you, right?

 

Jaime White  20:03

Yeah, we have three older ones, and then three younger ones. And the three older ones were no mercy, which, you know, I haven't been super. I definitely let them know, you know, along the way, I, I said the other day, something that came out, and it's probably more true than I'd like to admit. I said something like, I breed entrepreneurs, so they're probably going to need therapy, if they decide not to become then so I've just been so you know, they've been my guinea pigs and practicing coaching along the way, and they were picking it up, and they picked it up really fast, like they can see when somebody is not being true anymore.

 

Leighann Lovely  20:41

Right. It's awesome that you have taught them that skill. But at the same time, like you said, kind of a slap in the face that now they're saying, Hey, Mom, guess what?

 

Jaime White  20:52

Yeah. And oh, man, it doesn't matter what I say anymore. You know, it's like, it's like living with coaches around here. You know, all of us are like, Did you hear what you just said? Like, that might be a belief. That might be a belief that you need to take care of. Okay, thank, you know, go work on that.

 

Leighann Lovely  21:14

Yep. That that would be like, my lip. That's every time I'm around my dad, my dad will look at me and go. Are you venting? Or do you want me to give you advice on this? Like, right? I'm just venting. And he's like, good, because you should not say that to anybody else. Okay, thanks, dad. Thanks. I'm aware of this. Yeah, you know, we all grow up in different but that's, that's awesome. So, mother of six. So what are the age age, the true age range here,

 

Jaime White  21:48

from two to 20. So our oldest is starting his own business as a machinist. And so he has a little teeny tiny workshop that he pays rent debt with a large machine, like it takes a crane to get it in. So it's one of those CNC

 

Leighann Lovely  22:04

Oh a CNC machine. Okay. very lucrative business. That's you. That's awesome. honing in on a skill.

 

Jaime White  22:12

Yeah. And the thing is that he loves learning and education. And so he's, I think being an entrepreneur is perfect, because you're constantly learning. So hopefully, he's challenged. But yeah, so from two to 20. There's six boys. And on Fridays, we take them to gymnasts, Cody Russell up in our area, he traveled the world touring as a, you know, like in one of those Cirque de Soleil type. And so I found something that the boys can all do together. And so he private coaches them on trampoline flipping. So I love to just see if I can get them to do stuff together.

 

Leighann Lovely  22:51

Right? Well, that's fun. And they all all of them all age ranges. They're all fun and all that's cool.

 

Jaime White  22:58

 Yeah. So they all go out on the trampoline the rest of the week in practice their flips.

 

Leighann Lovely  23:03

That's fun. That's got to be difficult, though, to find something that two to 20 that all enjoy doing together

 

Jaime White  23:12

A bigger challenge than you know, it was it was easy. The first three, you know, when they're all kind of boom, boom, boom. And then when you have space, you're like, Okay, we're doing stuff together. And I love to plan trips. And I love to plan trips with everybody and engage everybody. And then when you have the next set of kids, and they're not the same age, it just slows the whole trade down. And you're like, Wait, now, what are we gonna do together? So it does take some extra level?

 

Leighann Lovely  23:35

So what's the gap?

 

Jaime White  23:38

Let's see. There's an eight year old and then a 15 year old, so it's a seven year gap. So it took a while for me to be willing, for more. Wow, I

 

Leighann Lovely  23:48

just want to put that out on the record that I have a four year old and I'll never have another one.

 

Jaime White  23:54

There's still time. You know, I

 

Leighann Lovely  23:55

I'm 41 I'm not I'm not having any more children and just taking care of one child. For anybody who's considering having children.

 

Jaime White  24:05

One is a lot one is a lot. It's you've got a

 

Leighann Lovely  24:09

you've got a woman with six children and you've got a woman with one child. I will tell you if you want to message us you know after you listen to this I will tell you all the horrors of having just one child and I'm sure that Jamie will tell you all the horrors of having six and if you want to be talked out of having children I will surely be able to do that for you.

 

Jaime White  24:36

Yeah, one is, one is a lot yet.

 

Leighann Lovely  24:38

I love I would never ever not want to have her because she is the most pure, perfect thing in my life. Yeah, there's there's nothing more pure and she could probably she could do the worst thing in the world she could do Yeah. And their

 

Jaime White  25:01

energy, their energy is amazing like that. You just want to snuggle, you know, where it's like how can I just soak up just a little bit of this energy in this? Yeah.

 

Leighann Lovely  25:13

Yes. And I'm 41 She wants to play in the mommy come sit on the floor with me. And I'm like, Can we sit on the couch? Because mommy. Before? Now you? I have obviously spoken with your husband, Kevin White has also been I like I said, I you and I have never actually sat down, really gotten, you know a great comment. Well, we we've talked before, obviously. But I've spoken with a lot of people in your circle. Yeah. And you've gone through a lot with your husband, and you've come out the other side and your family seems to be whole and doing well. Tell me a little bit about that.

 

Jaime White  25:50

Yeah, so when I first was married, Kevin and I were married at 20. And even when we were dating, he had told me that he had had an addiction to porn, and I didn't understand what that meant. And so, you know, then later when it showed up in the marriage again, and he was he was honest about it most of the time, and I got to the point where I had really good intuition, and I could tell, and so I would call him out on it. And it was always better to talk about it versus leaving it hidden or pretending it didn't exist, because the energy is just so different. When someone is an addict, and they're hiding it. The energy of shame and guilt is, is, you know, under whatever is going on at the time. And so there were times my mom. So my mom had cancer, she was diagnosed at a young age. And so Kevin and I are early. I think we got married right after she was diagnosed. And then we had our first child within that first year. So I was 21. My mom is sick with cancer, I have a little one. And those first couple of years were crazy, hard, crazy hard, like where you just wonder, I mean, then I had the second one, and they both had whooping cough at the same time. And so now my mom has cancer, she's out, going around the country trying to get treatment. And then my younger brother and sister were home, so we were staying with them. So we were, you know, parenting teenagers, while having two little ones with whooping cough. And that was when I hit my hit my max capacity. And I called Kevin up. I called Kevin at work. And I said, I need help. And I grew up in a business. So the customer always comes first. And so when Kevin said I can't come, I questioned it, because I knew he wasn't running a business. I knew he was in management. But I also just at this point kind of questioned the decision of like, really? How could that be more important? And I think, you know, his response was like, Well, I'm sure you have some help, you know, you'll be fine. I, you know, and like that position of leadership. But I didn't understand the addict mindset that he just didn't really have the emotional capacity to understand what I was actually in the middle of and I, to be fair, didn't say, the house is on fire. You know, I wasn't super clear that this is like, like, this is a big deal right now, this is mental breakdown moment. And so then, you know, just going through that stage of life where there's just a lot going on, and you're slogging through and you're not sure what you're doing right and what you're not. And my, we would go visit my mom on weekends to try and help her out because she was getting so frail. And you know, she's in a walker at 44. But like, her bones were breaking and brittle. And and so it would be you know, what, one of the stories is one of my kids birthday. And Kevin is hiding, you know, like a lot of our marriage, he was like hiding, you know, and just like that low energy that comes from addicts. And again, I didn't know, I didn't totally know that. That's why we were having these struggles. And so, you know, looking back, I was the enabler, I was the, you know, we're gonna make it work. We're gonna figure this out. I'm a problem solver. We're gonna you know. And so, we had three kids and my mom had just died. My sister had just died. His mom was now sick and dying. And so they, you know, our moms died early on, and there was just so So much going on that you just do life, you don't just over you don't, like, we're running business, you've got your job, you know, I'm going this way, you're going that way, and you just keep kind of doing life. And then I think I had mentioned early in the podcast here that, you know, when I was about 30, I was feeling great and physically feeling great. And I just, you know, been really taking care of myself. But then within a couple of years, I hit a low point, and I just didn't even know that, you know, for years, I wondered, like, How did my mom get cancer? And how could you not like, would you know, that it was coming and then I had this thought when I was in my early 30s, like, you know, actually be kind of peaceful to die. And I realized that, if I kept having thoughts like that, I could see how your body could be cancerous, like how you could be in a not good state. If I continue to have these kinds of thoughts. What am I going to look like five years from now? Right? And so I remembered I thought, you know, usually we say, well, I don't have the time, or I don't have the money. And my mom had spent a ton of money, trying to get help, and a ton of time trying to get help once she was in a really bad state. So I thought, Okay, well, I'm not going to wait that long. But to give myself permission today. And I told my boss, aka my dad, and I told my husband and I said, I'm gonna go get myself some help. Like, I don't know what this means right now. But I'm basically telling you, I'm spending money. And I'm taking time off. I don't know. And I think that was the moment that I started taking care of myself. And I didn't realize how important that was. Before that,

 

Leighann Lovely  31:50

You know what, oh, I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt you. But I think that the majority of us don't realize that. And you're you the fact that you were so self aware. And the fact that you were strong enough to tell your loved ones that hey, I need to take a beat, I need to take care of myself. We all forget, you know, the the old saying of if you're on an airplane, your masks drop. put your mask on first. Yeah, yeah, it is. 100% true. But so as in, and I see this a lot in women, a lot in women, it's, it's also in men. And it's becoming just as equal but women predominantly the the responsibility of children, and the responsibility of a lot of the house duties have always fallen on them. Yeah. And you have that the idea that the housework and keeping everything always pieced together and held together, falls on. So women

 

Jaime White  32:55

were really, were really good at it.

 

Leighann Lovely  32:57

Yes. And so we just assumed that, well, if I just continue to just squeeze and keep everything in place, and just hold it together, I will be fine. I will be fine. But eventually, you realize that I'm not fine. And yeah, the more and the harder I squeezed to try to keep this together, the more life I'm squeezing out of myself, and possibly everybody else around me. Yeah, having that self awareness. And again, I'm not just saying it's in women, I There are plenty of men out there, who, who need to also be aware and self aware that they have to to, it's just that men for so long have have not been willing to ask for help or feel that there is shame in asking for help. And not one person in this world has accomplished anything 100% on their own unless, of course they're climbing or scaling a mountain on their own right. But the majority of us the things that we accomplish in business in life, there's usually somebody there backing us up or helping us or training us or teaching us or helping rise, you know, helping us rise, right?

 

Jaime White  34:06

Yeah, if if I wouldn't have seen my mom, then I don't know if I would have connected the dots. You know, I am definitely someone that thinks about things and you know, can be in the overthinking category. But seeing it and living through it with her and just wondering what how did that happen? Because technically, the life looked perfect on the outside. I mean, she was absolutely beautiful. She ate all the right things. She exercise, you know, millionaire, like, technically very successful looking. And I didn't know there was a problem behind the scenes with you know, emotional pain that you know, she was working. I mean, I knew later. So I was aware, I was aware and i There were a lot of things that I had learned through her journey. And that's what keeps me you know, where I was like, Wait, it's not going to be any better. If I just keep letting this go, something's going to have to stop. And you're right, that it can be men and women. And I think at its core, I really feel for anybody that says, I'm exhausted. And when you can't sleep away the exhaustion, because that's probably one of the first signs that you're heading for burnout. And so it happens to both sides. And I really have a passion and a heart for people that are in that space of burnout. And just being like, I can't figure this out, I can't figure out why I can't sleep this off. I'm just and you know, that's when I realized that I wasn't being true to my core values. There were there were beliefs in conflict, there was another level that I didn't know existed. And that's, you know, that was the start of the coaching journey for me, because I didn't know that there was like this whole nother level of thinking. I was just doing life, you know, when that question that, you know, what, what's the question? What age?

 

Leighann Lovely  35:57

So you want the question of this? I do. Okay, well, let's do this. Yeah, the question of the season, if you could go back to your younger self, and give yourself advice, when would you go back? And what advice would you give yourself?

 

Jaime White  36:16

Yeah, so there's a song, dear younger me. And I think about that often. And, you know, you go back, okay, for me, I go back to 18. Because up until 18, everything was almost magical. Like, I lived in a bubble, it was great. And all the sudden, the bubble popped. And, you know, so in some ways, you could say there's pros and cons to having a bubble. But it goes back to this idea. I think we're all meant to grow. I know, we're all meant to grow. It's a basic human need. And there's something that happens when you're at that, you know, 17 or 18 Age frame where people are like, What are you doing next? What are you doing next? And, you know, you don't know you can't figure it out. But you're like, Man, I gotta figure this out. I don't know, what am I doing next? And you're just trying to figure out, how do I get my life together? Like, I'm moving and I'm transitioning. And but there's just this really high awareness about the transition, you know, people are talking about it all the time. Well, technically, there are a ton of life transitions. And we just don't talk about them at the same level. And we just stop asking the question, what are you doing next? What are you excited about? You know, like, how many people do you meet? And you're like talking to them? And you're like, what are you learning now? Or are you going to school? Are you doing this, and people just don't ask the questions in the same way that they do. When you're in that, you know, high school years of like, or early teen or late teen, you know, early 20s have, like where everyone's excited, they know that you're gonna be doing this transition. And there's just a lot of conversation around it. And maybe different people had a different experience. But for me, when I look back, I feel like there was just this idea that you're launching into something different around that timeframe. And then

 

Leighann Lovely  38:09

what? So what advice would you give that 18 year old girl,

 

Jaime White  38:15

that this is just one of many transitions? Like, how do we navigate life successfully, we already have it inside of us, and trust your gut and intuition. And don't feel like you're making this, you know, lifetime decision that and really, you know, I think for me, and maybe this isn't for everybody. But for me, I don't think that I felt like there was going to be somebody else with me on the journey after you leave school, you know, like, in your high school years, you have your parents, you have your teachers, you just have different mentors and coaches along the way. And then it's sort of like, okay, I didn't, I didn't have this idea that there would be somebody else that would mentor me besides my parents, or besides, you know, if you go to school or something like that. And so, today, I just feel like there are meant to be so many mentors in our lives and Institute.

 

Leighann Lovely  39:09

And statistically speaking, when it comes to that age of of individual, you know, I think that a lot of people, again, an 18 year old, they're graduating high school, they're moving on to college, or some and I'm not a college pusher at all, some moving into a trade school or or getting an opportunity to actually work in the trades or like your son opening up his business. You know, what CNC machine? And you're right, there's going to be so many transitions. Oh my gosh, if I talked about all the transitions that I had in my life, we would never stop talking. Right? Right. But statistically speaking, the thing that somebody goes to school for is unless they're going to school to be a doctor, unless they're going to school to be an accountant, something that you actually have to have a specific degree in usually doesn't end up what they become.

 

Jaime White  40:06

We and you, I, you, we might be on here for another hour if we get started on this subject because I, I am the type of person that would say, Okay, you want to be a teacher, let's find a different way besides the traditional system like I go online and I google how to become a teacher from and I go to the Wisconsin Department of, you know, whatever I need to find. And there are a lot of alternative ways to get to even those things that you think you need to have a traditional degree for. I am so anti system and pro education. That's my lane.

 

Leighann Lovely  40:41

Okay. Wait a second. Anti System Pro education? Well,

 

Jaime White  40:45

pro learning?

 

Leighann Lovely  40:46

Yes. Pro learning. Okay, I am. Absolutely I am anti give your money away to the government, for you to walk away in debt to start your life out? Yep. I, seriously, you want me to give you $80,000 For a piece of paper that says that I have a degree in XYZ that I'm never probably going to end up doing unless I'm a doctor that's going to sorry, if you're not, if you're gonna do surgery on me, you better have a

 

Jaime White  41:15

better degree, some experienced someone else.

 

Leighann Lovely  41:19

Right? And, you know, I, you know, if you're going to do my accounting, I would really prefer that you've had some, you know, schooling on on the laws and accounting. You know, how many people I come across who are like, Oh, I went to school for blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, so what do you do for a living, they're like, Oh, I do, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, that has absolutely nothing to do with what you went to school with. I would love for school to become all tech schools, hey, let me go to school, two years, get the hands on experience that I need. And walk away with that, and then have more large organizations, very large companies say, we will take on these individuals and get Hey, the government gives them a little bit of money to to actually bring on and give them real world experience. And now, speaking from a recruiter, I would speaking from somebody and you're right, we could talk for that. Go give a company money, go give company 40,000 a year, or 50,000 a year to take on three students and train them on how to do you know office accounting work, how to do billing, how to do payroll, how did you machine whatever it might be, instead of having them go into debt to become the we did this in the trades for years, we had all of these, you know, apprenticeships and all of that stuff that what went away, now you have to go to school and pay to become it.

 

Jaime White  42:45

Why? So I love that you open this door, because this is this is a door that I you know, try and keep closed and I use the word try loosely. So what you said about trade schools, so I used to totally be in agreement with you about trade schools. And then recently, I found out that they're doing a class that is a needed class that I needed to hire people that knew how to use Microsoft Office Word OneNote Excel, like I want people coming into the office, knowing how to use this product, the class is so bad, it's it's actually so bad. I'm not sure the statistics are a bad thing. The class is so bad, that I don't want to hire anyone that has passed it, I would actually prefer to hire the people that have failed it or have chosen to withdraw. Because it doesn't even allow you to think like I need people coming in that want to work for me that want to think that want to grow, they want to be given opportunities, because with technology the way that it is today. What I'm seeing as way more important is that companies that have these new technology, they're creating their own certifications. And kids can go online and say hey, I want to learn how to do HubSpot, you know, or something and become certified in Salesforce or something like you're way more ready for the workforce. If you go get a certification from a company that is a sob that's providing a solution to businesses, then going into the school systems. And I was under the misunderstanding that academia or college was to prepare you for the workforce. And some people have been saying, Well, no, it wasn't even that wasn't even the point. I'm like, Well, okay, good to know, because that was not taught to me

 

Leighann Lovely  44:31

know, I'm at high school, and they teach you in college. And this is a battle that recruiters fight a lot. They teach you in school that when you graduate, you should be making a minimum of six.

 

Jaime White  44:45

Kevin told me that line when we were getting when we were dating and then thankfully, I only plan for half of that.

 

Leighann Lovely  44:50

Right and I and I'll talk to some of these college students and I'll go wait, I'm sorry. Why do you think that you should be making this much with no experience and only an education and they're like, well because that's what our professors told us when we graduate. And I'm like, Okay, well, good luck with that,

 

Jaime White  45:06

oh, man, I did not think about how recruiters are dealing with it, because that was the issue for me. And hiring and firing, like, the position I was in, I actually found that the best thing that I could do to get the workforce to be in a good place was to hire, the higher the education, the more it gave confidence to the people that were under qualified, under certified, you could say, like, people coming in with no experience and no education, were nervous when they're starting. But they had a desire to learn and desire to do the job. They weren't so Oh, yeah. And so and they, and they looked for ways to solve the problems, they didn't just expect the problem to be solved. And so then I would hire the four year or, you know, college degree students. And it ended up being that that was the confidence builder, because when the other people were like, wait, I'm training you on this, you don't know, well, then never mind, like I got this. And it just it, it was the best, cheapest way to build confidence in the team. And it was like an internship, you know, you have an internship for a little bit. But if schools if anyone is willing to help these students, it's building the soft skills. And we know this, we say this all the time, but it doesn't seem to matter. They're not interested, I called the college and I said, Look, I actually need you to teach this product. Right, this Microsoft Office product, I got nowhere, I talked to the dean of the college, I got nowhere and I was told that it is a required course by the state. And I am telling you, it is so bad that I will hire the people that withdrawal from the

 

Leighann Lovely  46:42

course right now, and I want to, I don't want my audience to think that I am anti school, I am not anti education, I am not anti learning. I'm not me either. There are some individuals that need to that need to experience college in order to to get a true understanding of the world, they need to get out there. They need to experience college, it is a good experience for them. But there are some individuals that that need a different experience. And that's a true work experience that that's a true and there are certain disciplines, engineers, accounting, obviously, doctors, there are certain areas that you do need to go to a four year college, but going to a four year college and getting a bachelor's degree in economics, what for being so that you can say that you have a degree, a bachelor's degree I struggle with that I struggle with with people who say, Well, my child is going to get a degree. Yeah, for what? So that you they can waste your money or their money will be in debt. There's a lot of

 

Jaime White  47:53

degree guilt, a lot of degree guilt, they stay in an industry that's not even there. It's not their gift and strength, because somebody else told them to go for it. Right?

 

Leighann Lovely  48:02

Yeah, I truly believe that some of these individual they go in, they hide at school, and they stay there as long as they can. Because they are afraid that they Yeah, know what they want to do. Yeah, absolutely. And then they come and talk to me and go, Well, I you know, I was in school, but I don't really know what I want to do. And I'm like, What did you go to school for it? Well, I just went, I just went and got my general, you know, economics degree. And I'm like, Okay, do you have any areas of interest? Really? Just, I'll take anything? And I'm like, Well, I can't help.

 

Jaime White  48:32

Oh, yeah. I love that. So I used to have a booth at the job fair. And, you know, so I would ask, you know, what are you here for thinking, you know, maybe they had an idea of what they were looking for. And the response more than often than not was a job. And I said, like the other booth?

 

Leighann Lovely  48:53

It's, so if that's what we're kicking out, then maybe there needs to be a, let's learn about all of the different types of industries out there. Let's learn about what, what an engineer does. What does mechanical engineer do? What does an electrical engineer do? What is you know, based on somebody's skill match? What does a computer programmer do? What is a, you know, aeronautics engineer what and I'm listing all these engineers, you know, what is what is an accountant? Do you know, based on personality types, maybe before they go to school, they should take Yeah, personality is absolutely once which is obviously going to change the more they get exposed to the world to the more they come out of their shell.

 

Jaime White  49:39

But so our kids all know we have one really high D in the disk and he's got learner as his number one strength and then the next kid knows that he's totally different. And that really helps their communication to understand like, just because this is what drives you. This is not what drives your brother. And so the first one is a machinist you know super high person Vision oriented and driven results. And the next one is totally into the next movie that's going to be released and looking at, you know, becoming an influencer on tick tock and who knows he is going to have a digital PhD by the time he's done doing all this research. And the next one is doing construction, but wants to write a book, like, we totally embrace that you get to, like, really dig into you and not be shamed for not, you know, being a good speller or loving math or whatever, because I saw that, you know, as an A student, I needed to work for the other people, because I was still looking for the A versus the people that weren't getting the A, and they're like, Hey, I'm just gonna figure this out on my own. I was like, actually, that's actually maybe a better idea. But, you know, when you go back to the idea about debt, I don't know, this is kind of a foreign concept for me. But maybe, let me see, it's not really a foreign concept, it makes so much sense to me. But maybe it's a foreign concept. So I'm encouraging my children to be entrepreneurs, and to go into a field, and then be able to write that field off when you go to get some education around it. So I'm wondering, like, instead of going into debt about college, if we can look at it as a business write off.

 

Leighann Lovely  51:22

Hey, if I could write off my college expense right now, I would be like jumping for joy because I graduated with my my bachelor's degree finally, in 2008. Now remember, I started you know, so I was in the military, I came back, I couldn't figure out what do I want to go to school for it was recommended to me that I go to school for computer programming, because I am high, extremely high and math skills, you're you're off the charts, you're extremely great with math. So you should go in for accounting. Well, unfortunately, accounting didn't work. For me, I have a disorder called mixed dominance disorder. It's a form of dyslexia. So yeah, that's not going to work. Right? When you transpose numbers, and you know, transport, I write letters backwards, I write it. Obviously, accounting is not going to work when you're flipping numbers around. So computer programming, I'm like, okay, great. I liked it. I enjoyed doing it. Like being able to, you know, write code, write little databases here and there, blah, blah, blah, but realized, I don't really want to do this, because I love people write and write is not a match, I'm not going to sit behind a desk all day long and write code and the only way you're going to grow in that, you know, in that discipline is if you at least do that for a couple of years before you reach any level of being able to communicate with people.

 

Jaime White  52:42

So technically, what you're saying speaks to the other problem that I see, which is how many of the higher education courses are sales based, are really people based. And sales is like not talked about at all people went through interior design, and then I would hire interior design students. They had no sales ability. What do you think? So you're gonna be selling to somebody,

 

Leighann Lovely  53:05

right? But here's the thing is that I went, so I switched my degree to my bachelor's degree. I was able to put all of my Gen Ed courses towards my bachelor's degree. They all transferred, graduated in 2008. With a discipline in human resource management. I was working in the field, then the floor dropped out. Yeah, yeah. Economy. Yeah, I had to defer my student loans for a long time. Because I was making Well, what 2008 I was making 50,000 base plus bonus, based on you know, production, blah, blah, blah. After I was able to get back in the market, I couldn't make more than 30,000 Yeah, barely pay my rent. Yeah. So if you have yours, I deferred my student loans. I know still, to this day, I owe $10,000 more than what I originally took out to pay for my student loans. On my government student loans now I've paid my my private student loans way down really quick. But my government student loans I owe $10,000 More than I originally took out still.

 

Jaime White  54:18

I'm really glad that you're sharing that because when I've talked to people about that, and I'm pretty good at getting deep with people. They struggle to share that because it's so much shame

 

Leighann Lovely  54:28

because it's embarrassing as all hell yeah. That in tooth out since 2008, it is 2022 Yeah, and I am still struggling to pay that down. And I am a successful businesswoman that right I'm not gonna say I'm a millionaire, right but there I own my own home. I have two cars. I own a very nice home, but it's

 

Jaime White  54:53

it is going where the payment plan is set up.

 

Leighann Lovely  54:56

It's the the last effing thing I pay off. I'm going to slow as slowly as humanly possible, pay that off and hope that one day the government finally gets on board and says, Yeah, we kind of screwed a lot of those people, let's wipe it away. Now, they're never going to wipe away a private student loan, the government has the ability to say we need to forgive some of these these student loans that had been sitting out there that we tacked on 10s of 1000s of dollars of interest on top of

 

Jaime White  55:20

It's a, it's a cycle of a problem. Because when I was at the job fair with a booth to offer people jobs, that my biggest competitor, were the other colleges saying, hey, come over here, and you can get a better job. And I'm not saying that I don't want people to better themselves. I absolutely agree with education in the form of learning. I'm just saying that in today's society, I believe that there are a lot of options that do not cost as much, but employers will pay for people to get education when they see someone that wants to hustle. I was at the point where I was offering, you know, $5,000 a year credits to my employees saying, hey, go get some leadership training, go get some What do you want to learn? And they were like, we can't even find a course we're interested in, because everything we want to learn is actually online. And that's why we switched to leadership. Like there's just, it's just a really interesting market. And that's why like, even with our kids, were like, What do you want to learn? What do you want to do? And they're like, Well, I can find it online. Like, okay,

 

Leighann Lovely  56:19

you know, and I have this conversation all the time with, with my dad is my, my mentor, my hero, my, you know, he businessman, for years ran out, you know, had many agents underneath him, he was in the real estate industry. So he was mowing. And I talked with him all the time about, you know, higher education, and you know, am I going to push my daughter or my kid, I'm going to let my daughter choose Make a decision for herself. Now, the nice thing is, is that her grandparents, my husband's parents set up an education fund for her,

 

Jaime White  56:50

right? Well, even if she has that fund, you're saying at this point,

 

Leighann Lovely  56:55

I don't know where the education system is going to go. In the next 10 years,

 

Jaime White  57:00

I had hoped for the tech system. And then when I called because I was like, this program is really bad, like really bad. And they're like, it's basically mandatory. And anybody that needs to take a course, or anybody that wants to have a degree, pretty much has to take this course. And if you would have told me that as a business owner, if you would have said, to put me in a roundtable and said, Hey, this is a mandatory course Microsoft Office Word, Excel one, I would have said, awesome. That's great. That's what we need. Hello, actually look at the course. Oh, wait. They're not training anybody on it. They're training you to memorize. I do not need anyone coming to my office that needs to memorize stuff, because I don't have any training program built out at the level that you can memorize it. And even if I did, I probably don't know how to train you on it. Because what's happening with the generational multigenerational workforce is the technology is changing so fast that what the young kids coming in have the ability to do is learn the new stuff faster than those of us that are there. We don't even know how to use the programs we're using. And that's not going to change that is not going away. So

 

Leighann Lovely  58:08

I Okay, so years ago, Microsoft, I obviously computer programming. Well, we all had to take that. There was no memorization we known it was a build your own, it was like a urine out. It was access at that time. Yes, the database that I use, yes, I built a database in access. So there was no memorization. It was, hey, here's access. Here's what we're going to learn today. And then by the end of that course, you had to go home and create an actual database

 

Jaime White  58:36

I thought when I started the furniture store that I was going to create my database for tracking inventory, because I didn't know that software like QuickBooks existed. And so I was so busy trying to create it in Excel and access that, you know, when somebody came to me, and they're like, do you want to use QuickBooks? And I was like, what's that?

 

Leighann Lovely  58:52

Right. So, yeah,

 

Jaime White  58:55

There's just so much out there that we're not really being made aware of in the school system is where I'm coming from right now.

 

Leighann Lovely  59:04

No, I higher education is. Yeah, we could talk for the next. But we are at time, and we're going to have to wrap things up. So you're coaching. If somebody you're with belief crew,

 

Jaime White  59:22

yes. Yes. So somebody wants to get a hold of us.

 

Leighann Lovely  59:26

If somebody wants to get a hold of you. How would they go about doing that?

 

Jaime White  59:31

Well, thank you, Leighann for hosting and thank you for inviting me on. I did not expect it to go in the direction that it did. And I love where it went. I am been looking for a platform to discuss this because I think it's a huge issue. And if somebody wants to get a hold of me and any coach in personal development, I'm actually looking to bring on more coaches. And so we've created a company called believed crew. So obviously we have a website you can just Google belief crew, Jamie white, if you spelled it my way. I am the other Jaime white, which is J A I M E, and just hilarious that there are two of us that met. But um, and you can reach out via cell phone. I'm always available too, but in you know, in this virtual world, it's amazing how everybody's using these calendar links and scheduling and booking and you know, LinkedIn, find me on LinkedIn and website. I love this. I love this virtual world and in our ability to connect, I don't have to know your cell phone number. I can just find you on LinkedIn and send you a message.

 

Leighann Lovely  1:00:34

Yep. Awesome. Jaime, this has been such an amazing conversation. I truly am a better person for meeting you as well as your husband, Kevin, and it has been just it's it's been awesome getting to know both of you and I look forward to future conversations with both of you.

 

Jaime White  1:00:51

Well, I come back anytime. Thank you, Leanne.

 

Leighann Lovely  1:00:54

Thank you again for listening to Let's Talk HR. I appreciate your time and support without you the audience this would not be possible. So don't forget that if you enjoyed this episode, to follow us, like us or share us. Have a wonderful day.

 

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

business, people, coaching, mom, degree, years, pay, school, firing, college, started, learn, life, student loans, coaches, furniture store, kevin, conversation, dad, world