Interview with Jen Coken: Founder & CEO of Embrace the Ridiculousness of Life. Jen Coken is a life coach of 20 years who helps CEOs overcome their self-made limitations and reach new levels in their business and personal lives. Jen’s first book “When I Die, Take My Panties: Turning Your Darkest Moments Into Your Greatest Gifts” chronicles the experience of coping with her mother's death from ovarian cancer, and shares Jen’s core message—everything that comes our way is meant to teach us about ourselves. (https://www.jencoken.com/)
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. The series interviews women (& women-identified & non-binary) entrepreneurs, founders, and gurus across all industries to investigate those voices in business today. Both the platform and discussion are designed to further the global conversation in regards to the changing climate in entrepreneurial and founding roles.
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with female and female identified entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners and industry gurus. These podcasts speak with women and women, identified individuals across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game, as well as those deeply embedded within it histories, current companies and lessons learned are explored in the conversations I have with these insightful and talented powerhouses. The series is designed to investigate a female and female identified perspective in what has largely been a male dominated industry in the USA to date. I look forward to contributing to the national dialog about the long overdue change of women in American business arenas and in particular, entrepreneurial roles. You can contact me via my media company website Wild Dot Agency. That's why Elle DEA Agents C or my personal website. Patricia Kathleen, dot com. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. [00:01:25][77.9]
[00:01:29] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. This is your host, Patricia. And today I am sitting down with Jen Coken, founder and CEO of Embrace the Ridiculousness of Life. Welcome, Jen. [00:01:41][11.5]
[00:01:42] Thank you so much for having me, Patricia. [00:01:43][1.3]
[00:01:44] Absolutely. I'm so excited to have you here. I'm going to read a quick bio on Jen. But before I do that, for everyone listening, a roadmap of today's podcast, should you want to skip around or refer back to it? We're going to get into Jen's academic background and early professional life, and then we're going to drop straight into unpacking her company, embrace the ridiculous of life. And we'll get into the who, what, when, where, why, and of all of that, especially since it's such a unique company, how it's structured. And then we'll go straight into other endeavors that she has, including books and speaking engagements. And then we'll go straight to goals that Jen has over the next three years in regards to all of her endeavors. We'll wrap everything up with advice that she has. For those of you looking to get involved with her, work with Jen, or kind of model your life after what she's done. So a really quick bio on Jen. Jen Coken wants to live in a world where you're free to be yourself and achieving your soul's purpose, a vision that has driven her work as a coach, speaker, author, comedian for more than 20 years. Drawing on three decades of experience as a nonprofit leader and grassroots organizer, Jen helps CEOs and entrepreneurs overcome their self-made limitations and do their hearts work. But Jen's impact doesn't end there. She spent six years on the Denver standup comedy circuit and brings a sense of humor to every topic she addresses, including the experience of coping with her mother's diagnosis and death from ovarian cancer. Jen's first book, When I Die, I Take My Panties Turning Your Darkest Moments into Your Greatest Gifts, chronicles that experience and shares Jen's core message that everything that comes our way is meant to teach us about ourselves. Her second book, Embrace the Ridiculousness of Life A Pocket Guide to Being a Better You. We'll show you how to look at the hard stuff at life's absurdity and raise the bar on yourself. Each chapter gives short no nonsense how tos to get you going, combined with pondering questions and exercises that will help you level up your skills and retrain old habits. When she's not crafting best selling books or speaking to audiences around the country, you can find Jen eating Nutella by the Spoonful in the nearest grocery aisle. You and me both. Jen, that is such a fantastic intro. And and I think after looking over your companies and synopsis of your books, it's a it's a perfect introduction to you. But first, before we jump into all of your current endeavors, I wonder if you could just walk us through some of your academic history and early professional life. [00:04:23][159.3]
[00:04:24] Sure. Thank you so much. [00:04:26][1.7]
[00:04:26] So, interestingly enough, what I was educated in has nothing to do with what I'm doing now and everything to do with it. So I have my master's degree in political campaign management. So I was trained to manage issue and electoral campaigns and did that for twenty five years around the country, local, state and national elections. And I also started non-profits and consulted with nonprofits to teach them how to raise money for the most part, because I found they didn't know how to talk about themselves in a way that wouldn't for people to tears. They were had great issues, but just couldn't recall the elevator pitch. They just couldn't boil it down. Yeah. And at the same time, I was doing all that. I was also a coach for international personal growth and development company, leading their programs and coaching people. And that's what led me to coach somewhere at the end of that career, like over eight thousand people in 20 some years with them. [00:05:23][56.6]
[00:05:24] Wow, that's a lot. Yeah, that was a lot. So what caused the pivot then into like the current how did you start finding the book with your mother's passing? [00:05:35][11.4]
[00:05:37] It sounds like that was the impetus for the book, but when did you launch Embrace the Ridiculousness of Life, your company? [00:05:43][5.8]
[00:05:43] It was a happy accident. So I had written the book. I started it in 2011 and it was my way of working through the grieving process. And I would write bawling my eyes out at like 5:00 in the morning till seven in the morning or eight in the morning when I had to work. And then it was four years of rewrites. If anyone's written a book, you know, it's not for most people, it's not what I had done. It's it's a it's a labor of love. So I went through seven rewrites. Well, that I had a crisis of confidence. I really have something to say. Is anyone really going to read this? And my writing coach and another coach that kind of shook me by the shoulders and said, no, you've got to publish. So at the time, I was a lobbyist for solar company lobbying municipalities to hire us to be their solar installer in their community. And my book was coming out. Any day in June sometime, and I walked into work on a Monday morning, my boss estimate with me at eight a.m. and he laid me off and basically they reorganized the entire company did away with the whole department. And I had built up over the last couple of years. And that was that. And the next day my book came out and I you know, how auspicious how interesting it. But it took me a moment, right. Because it kind of feels like I loved what I was doing. I loved the company. I love the team I had built. And I had hired a publicist to help with the book. I just kind of figured the publicist would get the book out to whatever degree it was going to get out and that was going to be that. But it took me about a week and I remember my friend's husband called me and I swear, Patricia, I don't remember what he said, but it was a five minute conversation. And at the end he said, What do you study? Hung up the phone. It was kind of like, what are you doing? What do you do and why are you looking for another job? I've been laid off of four jobs over those four years right in the bush. So it was sort of God universe, whatever you want to say, goddess, Buddha, Allah, whatever you believe, your fence post, whatever you want to say, was trying to knock me on the head and say, you've got something to say. And so within a week, I said, all right, I'm going to go into this full time. I'm going to be a coach full time and I'm going to get my biggest thing was getting the book out there. And I knew nothing about marketing a book I knew nothing about. I knew marketing from campaigns. Right. I knew how to write speeches and that sort of thing. But I didn't know what it took to be an author, what it took to get my book out there had no idea that it doesn't matter unless you're a big, big name. [00:08:01][138.1]
[00:08:02] You've got to market it all yourself. Right, right. And as it was, my mom had given me her I had taken her iPod Touch. I had a list from there to tell people about the book. And a distant cousin wrote to me and said, you know, I'm a writer, too, and I use this guy and he's really great. He's got some great tips, is named Steve Harrison and he has Harrison. Communication's been really big with Jack Canfield. Brenham Bershad, like, helped them get on the map. And he was having having a one hour session with Jack Canfield on how to be a successful writer and getting your book out there. And I thought, OK, let me listen to that. [00:08:39][37.1]
[00:08:40] But, you know, I had been laid off and I had a severance, but I didn't have a lot of money. So as I was listening to it, it occurred to me, you know, I should have known this before, midway through, they were about to sell me something and I thought, I don't have extra money until I said, and if you buy right now and it was nine hundred ninety seven dollars, best seller Blueprint was the name of the course you buy right now. [00:08:59][19.2]
[00:08:59] Jack Canfield will tweet about your book. And I launched out of my chair, got my credit card and bam, put the credit card down. And long story short, Jack, I did a whole campaign around it. We reached a million people, became an Amazon best seller. [00:09:13][13.1]
[00:09:13] But my my only thought was I need to save women's lives. My mom, if I knew now, if I knew then when my mom got sick, when she didn't know, when we didn't know what she had, what I know now, she might still be living. And so September's Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. And I wanted everything feeding into that and then went to a publicity summit to pitch media and got on TV and radio and then realized, I'm not making any money and I had to make money. And Steve actually pulled me aside and said, how are you going to make money? And I said, I want to coach goes, OK, you need to start making money. And his team helped me much. I mean, they that first piece, they helped me launch the website. How do I get income from Internet marketing? [00:09:53][40.0]
[00:09:54] What does it mean to have a green an evergreen content on your website? What's a trip wire? I didn't know any of these things and they really helped me launch. [00:10:04][10.5]
[00:10:06] Nice, oh, they helped you design you, but you had the knowledge I mean, you had the years of experience in the information, a lot of the logistics that you're talking about are just that. They're kind of like these technical expertize and they do make or break, you know, a bottom line. [00:10:21][15.7]
[00:10:22] But it sounds like the coaching skills and the things that you had acquired were kind of built into that. How does tell me about how does the comedy circuit play into this time scale now that we've kind of developed this trajectory from being a lobbyist to the book, launching the day you leave the lobbying job to these campaign moments with the book in order to get it out and where it should be. And then from that, going into developing your coaching empire, where is comedy fitting into that? [00:10:52][30.0]
[00:10:53] This Kofman comedy is one of my outlets, you know what I mean? Like I when I first started doing it, I had a dear friend who I have been a comedian for a long time and is still in Denver. And she helped me. I mean, you always need people around you. You're right. From the perspective of what it took to coach her, those experiences of launching campaigns, it becomes second nature. And then there is kind of a skill set you have to build to launch the book or what have you. But comedy for me was my outlet to write, to perform, to be in front of people. And I loved it. I loved connecting with people. And I would always write comedy about what was going on with me. So I wrote a whole skit sketch about my mom's cancer and she helped me write some of the jokes. And my friend Christine and I, before I moved, I was living in Denver and moved back to the D.C. area. And so I was continuing to perform when I could. I used to do it once a week without fail. That was my commitment. And then it became once a month when I went into writing my book and then kind of this whole. A series of my life, if you will, this piece of my life, my Ukai, which we can talk about now, it has I haven't been doing as much comedy. It's maybe once a month. And there's a couple of rooms around me here in the Rockville, DC area that will call me and say, can you Kofman can you do a set for us? And then that gives me reason to write. But I honestly don't have as much time and I miss it. I miss the performance aspect and I leave comedy into everything. So I you know, I say to people who are going to work with me, if you can't laugh at yourself, you can't handle me dropping a couple F bombs or kind of poking fun a little bit. We're not going to get along. You know, I'm not the I'm not the speaker for the financial industry or the insurance industry. I'm the speaker for entrepreneurs and startups and the tech industry and all creative types because I am a storyteller by nature, and that's where the comedy fits in. So on one hand, I get to weave it into what I'm doing. On the other hand, the speaking allows me to be in front of people. But it's still not the same as performing comedy, which I love, love, love, love, love, love. [00:13:00][127.9]
[00:13:01] Doing well to itself. I have maybe more of a novice understanding. I have a great deal of understanding of writing being third generation writers of all formats. [00:13:12][11.0]
[00:13:12] But comedy writing is very, very specific and the performance after comedy writing is its own genre, its its own moment. There's the comedy writing and then performing it, dealing with the timing and all of the other things that writing doesn't have the minutia mixed into it. It sounds like a very arduous, like free time hobby. It sounds more stressful than it is releasing. So it sounds like your personality is just based towards those things generated. And that is that the creativity you said the performance helps you. Is it do you find it to be an outlet for something that connects with your businesses outside of the humor, or are there other elements involved? [00:13:51][38.8]
[00:13:52] Well, it doesn't feel arduous to me at all because I see humor everywhere. I'm like, are you kidding? That just happened. Like, what are people thinking? Or I'll think about myself and how ridiculous I am when at the age of you know, I'm fifty five now it's the age of thirty five. I'm walking around Dupont Circle by myself on a sunny day when all a sudden I burst out laughing so hard about to pee my pants. Why this is, this is I'll tell you this story is ridiculous because I realized why Noah brought the animals on my two. It wasn't to have a body like when you were sweating in CAP and they blew the whistle and you're like, hey, I got my buddy. Nobody's drowned. It was actually to procreate was to make me way animals after the flood. Right? I'm like, who? Why? This is how my brain works. Yeah. So it just came to you on. Yeah, that's a good outlet for me. I'm dating and relationships to tell these stories and I love that. [00:14:50][58.4]
[00:14:51] I love the I find it more virtuous to write books than I do to write a comedy. [00:14:55][4.6]
[00:14:57] Do you think that Washington is more funny or a corporate America? [00:15:02][4.7]
[00:15:03] Where do you find more material? Well, Washington for sure is more funny these days, but I just think human behavior is hilarious why people do the things they do. And of course, I'm saying this and I'm like, well, what's an example? And I have none. I've none are not funny. Totally blacked out. Total, total blackout right now. I got it. [00:15:23][20.7]
[00:15:24] What about so you do you did you launch embrace the ridiculousness of of life in 2011. [00:15:29][5.3]
[00:15:30] And when you found it, it it sounds like you had these advisors that were kind of helping you with the logistics, as I referred to them before. Was it just you alone? Did you take any funding? Did you bootstrap it? Who are your first clients? How did you get that huge boulder of a ball rolling? [00:15:45][15.4]
[00:15:47] It was 2016. So it was that moment after I got laid off and that week and then because I've worked on campaigns so long, I get stuff done. I don't know if I can swear on the Park podcast. You can go for it. I get shit done like you tell me x that I'm going to go do it and nothing is going to stand in my way. Kind of like your philosophy if you don't take. No, that's just an opening for a conversation. Right. So same, same, same. So I had incorporated the following week I was like OK, I don't know things. What don't I know. Who do I know that could know that Facebook was always my friend. Hi community. I need to do x. What do I do. How do I do it. And then once I got a hold of Steve Harrison's group, they, I mean, his stable of coaches, they kind of had everything. Image makeover. What's a what's a speaker page. How do you put together your website and they what are their coaches. Help me design my first offering and I pulled my list from my Gmail, you know, email addresses and some folks from LinkedIn and said, OK, here's what I'm doing. And I had my when I left Steve in October at this publicity summit and he said, you got to make money. And I said, I know. And I had worked with this guy Jeffrey to do my first email, which was going out that day I had. My first client in a week, and that guy was a client for over, well, we just were just sort of ratcheting things down almost three years and then it became about testing things. And I think you have to be able to throw spaghetti on the wall. I tested online webinars. I hated it. Like, Hey, here's my webinar for twenty seven dollars. I hate it. I fucking hated it because I was marketing that every month, distinct from thinking big picture and trajectory. And where do I want to go. And really I love being in front of a lot of people speaking. I love coaching. People live on stage. I don't care if it's thousands of people, whoever it is, hundreds of people, ten people, three people. That is my sweet spot, because I want people empowered and I want people to feel like they've got the space to pursue their dreams. [00:17:46][119.9]
[00:17:48] So how do you find the topics that you you find most predominantly effective when you do these this public speaking and the coaching and things like that? And also, do you take individual contracts for your coaching or how is it set up? [00:18:05][16.4]
[00:18:05] You have public speaking. You kind of work through things that felt or don't feel right since the launch. But what are your main areas right now? [00:18:12][7.3]
[00:18:13] Well, there's there's a couple of things that I and the way I found the topics was really a little bit hit or miss. When I launched the webinar, I had 12 topics, everything from courageous conversations. You know, I don't think Kim Scott's book, Radical Candor, had come out at that point in time. And I certainly didn't know about it. But I knew that if you were willing to have tough conversations with people, you could literally transform your relationships. I knew that everybody has an inner critic and how do we identify it and let it go? I knew that in in business, I'm a huge believer in Gallup's strengths finder, which is a way to identify your natural talents. And so I often do workshops both with my clients and their teams because it leads to people working better together. They're more productive. They're happier. Emotional intelligence was a big one. I'm now effortless networking. I've been asked to do that quite a number of times. And some of these are born out of the fact that, for example, I hate networking, why I love people, but I hate networking because I'm really a closet introvert. I spent a lot of time by myself because I'm with people all the time and I love being in my space, reading, writing, watching Netflix, whatever it is, or cooking dinner. Cooking is a huge outlet for me with friends. And I would go to walk into these events where I knew I needed to meet people and would find myself with the same group of people in the corner or only meet like meeting the first person and kind of talking to them the rest of the night and going, OK. But I wasn't I didn't achieve my goal, which was to meet as many people as possible, and that has been a big topic. And then I was recently asked, and I'm so honored about this, to be the keynote for a group called Hatch Tribe in Charleston, which is a global collection of women entrepreneurs and CEOs who this woman's been working with them through the years. And in their last event in July, impostor syndrome came up and they they they are my too ambitious know. I don't know how to ask for more money. And I said to her, it's based in Charleston, South Carolina. Is it cultural? It's like a southern thing or is it a female thing? We know it's a female thing for sure, you know. And so I'm creating a talk called Are You Willing to fail spectacularly? Because 15 years ago, a buddy of mine looked at me and said, Are you willing to fail spectacularly in so many words? Because I was about to say I sold everything lock, stock and barrel and move to Colorado to be with my then boyfriend. And that was a pivotal moment for me where I was willing to give it all for the possibility of something, the possibility of love, the possibility of saving women's lives. So it's kind of trial and error. [00:20:58][165.2]
[00:20:59] And then there was another piece that you had asked me besides I was wondering about if you took individual clients at this point, are you just mainly focused on these more large audience speeches and conversations? [00:21:12][13.0]
[00:21:13] Absolutely. And the way I find a lot of those individual clients is through their speaking engagements. I mean, obviously, I want to touch as many lives as possible because I want to empower as many people as possible. But for CEOs in particular, they don't have a confidant. They don't have somebody they can talk to about what's going on in the boardroom or quite honestly, their bedroom, meaning just their personal life and how that's impacting their professional life. And I become their confident. But we have fun doing it because people have got to laugh. They've got to be able to laugh at their own absurdity and the ridiculousness of life because life's absurd. [00:21:44][31.4]
[00:21:45] Absolutely. I want to claim really quickly into your books. We before we began recording, we talked a little bit about and you've mentioned your first book, When I Die, Take My Panties, turning your darkest moments into your greatest gifts at chronicling your experience of your mother's passing and things of that nature. [00:22:04][18.7]
[00:22:05] Can you kind of reflect back now and and give some information for everyone listening regarding like the trajectory that writing that book and then editing it and putting it out? It took you seven it sounds like seven rewrites in four years. But looking back now, what are the pieces of advice that you gleaned from that to be the most crucial? [00:22:28][23.5]
[00:22:29] Yeah, one point I forgot to make about asking you about it ties the comedy with the speeches, as I often will do workshops on how to inject humor into advocacy or how to inject humor into telling your story about having cancer. I'm doing that event with a group in June kind of tying that piece together. So the book, the first the first iteration wrote itself. It was my grieving process and I found a writing coach and she had a group. She's now an agent. But back then she had a group of women who were all writing books and we were a collective. And so I would make promises to her about how often I would write. And then once a week we'd get on Skype together. I think what was once a week, every other week we were writing on a Saturday from nine to four, depending on the time zone, we'd say what we were going to accomplish. We'd support each other on Skype during the writing process. And at the end of the day, we would say what we did accomplish. And then I had a writing partner as I was going through the editing, and she was living in Switzerland at the time. And so she was six hours ahead and I was working full time so I would get up at five thirty and we'd log in from six to seven. And OK, this is the piece I'm going to work on. But everything I've ever done has always been in partnership with others, whether it's an individual or a group, except and even. Not necessarily writing itself, but the creative thinking process, because I enjoy the process of having someone else to bounce ideas off of and just hear myself speak out loud and challenge me and wait a minute. That sounds goofy. Or what do you mean about this? And help me articulate so I can hone things down. I can only get so far when I'm by myself in this noggin. So I asked for asked for a lot of help from people. [00:24:19][109.9]
[00:24:20] How do you feel how did you originally find these these writing groups and all of these workshopping efforts that started off your original push for it? Did you where they just meet up or these days these random social interactions? [00:24:32][12.4]
[00:24:33] Or how were you introduced? This was a group of my friends back in Denver and we all knew each other through the I used to coach for a personal growth and development company called Landmark Worldwide. They did something called the Landmark Forum, which was a basic introductory course. So we all knew each other and had been in courses together through the years. And so I had kind of a same lingo in parlance. And I knew this one woman was through saying, you know, I need help writing my book. I don't know how to get started. Someone said, Have you spoken to Kristin Mueller? She's an author of three books and she's helping people write their books. And so I just phoned her and said, how do you work? What do you do? You know, help me. And then she found me, my publisher, because she became an agent for that publisher. And she really pushed for my book to be published by them because it's very much a Christian based publishing company. And given that I dropped the F bomb originally, it was twenty seven times in the book and she thought that was a little overdone. So she asked me to cut it, to cut it down to thirteen. And there's an F bomb in the first chapter like that was a little out of their comfort zone probably to people to me. Oh my goodness, I like that. [00:25:40][67.4]
[00:25:40] Well, so I mean it's from from what you've kind of sussed out through your musings about it. [00:25:46][5.8]
[00:25:46] It sounds like turning humor into advocacy and everything being done in partnership and your ability to ask for help, even with this process, really formed the tenants of the book. Do you think that you carried those in more of a refined form back into your second book to embrace the ridiculousness of life, a pocket guide to being a better you? [00:26:07][20.1]
[00:26:07] Yeah, that book I jokingly said you can read it on the toilet or over a glass of wine because it's 60 pages. And there was a coaching group that wanted to have me on their site and they said, you need a tripwire. And I was like, a trip. What? They're like a trip wire. You need something we can sell for like four ninety nine point ninety nine. Then I'll get people invested and interested in you. I said, OK, and I and I, I used to write every week and set out to do a blog every week and an email every week. And so I kind of pulled from and all those emails and the writing I did. I always use my own life as an example of where, where I quite honestly screwed up and been a jerk and a big asshole. And what I learned from that, to teach others, A, that I'm human and we all screw up and you just got to be able to learn from it and not beat yourself up. So I kind of call it the best of those lessons into this book that I tell people like throw at your person. If you're having a rough day, just open it to any chapter. They're like three pages, four pages long, but each one has an exercise. So, for example, if you're having a rough day and how you know you're having a rough day, when I tell people if you're not empowered, if you've lost your sense of humor, you're not empowered at number one red flag if you've got no sense of humor. So open up the book. And there's a chapter called I forgot the name of it, but it's about what have you been stepping over know? Ignoring what? What messes? Have you not cleaned up for yourself and start looking at all those things you haven't said, things you haven't done, where you've broken your promises, your agreements, etc. Start putting all that stuff back together, because when when we step over things, our self-expression just whittles down. It just we lose our self-expression because we have all these things we haven't said or we're hiding, etc. So it's a little quick parables and lessons get you back on the horse and back on the trail. And I was trying to think of another horse, the bridle back, the bridle from the horse's mouth. Whatever you get my. [00:28:11][123.9]
[00:28:12] I got you. Yeah, I'm here for you and all your money. Thank you so much. [00:28:16][3.9]
[00:28:17] The retraining of old habits, that is a term that sounds simple, but I think it's like at the crux of what's holding everyone back, especially as people kind of continue through even finding people who are I find luckiest, who know what they want to do. What makes them happy is just finding that can take the first forty years of life and then retraining old habits. [00:28:43][25.7]
[00:28:43] For me, when I look around and I speak with all of the women and non binary individuals that I've been interviewing. [00:28:48][5.5]
[00:28:49] It seems like those that aren't quite getting to the happiness are those that are still trying to retrain the brain and and you see the goal that the proper goal in the distance now and you're looking towards how to get there. And I find that habits get in the way. It's not so much as the tools needed, but how to also kind of relinquish these tools that are hindering. [00:29:11][21.9]
[00:29:12] So what are your main do you have like some kind of key axiomatic pieces of advice when you get into retraining habit? [00:29:19][7.0]
[00:29:20] Yeah, and I think what you said is so important, you are retraining your brain into neuroscience. You're talking about neuroscience because any habit we have that doesn't serve us, we have put together when we were a small child. And it's usually in the response to some threat someplace. We didn't feel safe someplace we felt all alone. And that first reaction becomes a brain pattern. And then the next time it happens, it ingrains that brain pattern. The brain doesn't distinguish between you physically being at the Grand Canyon or thinking about it. It thinks you are already there. So if there is the same threat coming or some threat coming at you, it thinks it's the same level as all the other times that you felt threatened or you felt alone or you felt lost and that that is our brain. That's an amygdala hijack right in the middle is that flight flight fight or freeze response. So the first thing is admitting you have a problem and being able to identify those reoccurring patterns or limitations that you have. I say all my coaching and there's like an inside game and an outside game, the inside game is the self awareness piece. This is what we're talking about here, because once you're able to count on that, then there's the outside piece, which we can talk about in a minute. But besides being able to identify the habits that, OK, where do they get trigger the most? What relationships is it at work? Is it at home? Is it with your mom? Is it with friends? What are the situations we can identify the things that that caused you to kind of react? We all know we're doing it and it's like a bad accident. You can't take your eyes off it, but you can't help, can help yourself and react in that way. So we look at the triggers around you and the red flags that are telling you you're about to react that way. And then we come up with new ideas for exercises, for practices to interrupt those patterns. Interrupt, interrupt. And you're right, it is a retraining. It's an interruption of that brain pattern until the moment where you go. And part of it is connecting with the emotional piece of that was coaching a client yesterday. And her big thing is getting to sleep early. And we talked about I said to her, how does that make you feel? And we got to it. We got to it. We got to it. And ultimately, it makes her when she's in bed at nine o'clock because she runs a school and she's got a family and she's a treasurer at her. She's got a lot of things going on. When she wakes up rested, she feels like she has freedom because she can then get in a work early. And I said, OK, so instead of putting in your calendar, go to sleep at 9:00 p.m., put in I am free and in parentheses. Go to sleep at 9:00 p.m. You get connected to that emotion, then boom, you're creating a new brain pattern. But that one's a baby brain pattern. And we got to keep putting that whatever those practices are in place to ingrain that new brain pattern. As I am familiar with Joe Dispenza and his books and he talks a lot about this, but I call it brain glue. Like you have your neurons and there's a pattern between them and your sticking the brain glue and creating a new stickiness for a new a new pattern. And you've got to hear that pattern and ingrain it. [00:32:22][181.9]
[00:32:23] Yeah, absolutely. And it's you know, it's it's practice. I think it's not one of those I picked up skiing. I know how to ski. It's it's a constant revisit to learn, especially retraining. [00:32:33][10.5]
[00:32:34] It's I find it at least within my own personal life, 14 times more difficult than originally learning and learning and then relearning. It takes patience as well. [00:32:45][10.6]
[00:32:46] So that's that's important, Patricia, because I think it takes patience with ourselves and compassion and compassion for ourselves. And we the human brain is fifty to sixty thousand thoughts a day in 80 to 85 percent or negative. So we don't have a lot of compassion for ourselves and we compare ourselves to others. You're right, it is the harder thing. It's the hardest thing to do as an adult. Yeah, absolutely. [00:33:11][25.4]
[00:33:12] It's interesting that you dove into that. [00:33:14][1.7]
[00:33:14] That's one of the main core points of your book as well, because I think it's it's a it's a crucial one that people overlook when especially when they're goal making, you know, or trying to obtain more difficult goals when they're outlining a game plan for the future. When you speaking of game plans, when you look forward to the goals of where you're at with the ridiculousness of life, the company, as well as book writing and things of that nature, what are your goals over the next three years and how do you do set that up? Do you vision board when you go to make your own personal goals for yourself and for your company to delineate those two? Do you keep a horizon as broad as three years? How is that set up for you personally? [00:33:57][42.7]
[00:33:58] Well, it's it's a lot of different ways that I set it up. [00:34:01][3.0]
[00:34:02] I have a strategy partner, accountability partner I meet with once a week, and we actually have two or three hour chunks set aside before the end of the year, one to complete the previous year, because I have a I have a free workbook on my website that's called Celebrate Your Wins Achieve Greater Success, because when we fail, we're great at picking up, picking it apart. When we succeed, we're like, great, good onto the next thing we don't figure out. Well, what made me successful? What was my secret sauce so we can repeat that stuff. So it's important. Have a clean slate before you create and then we're going to be creating those longer term goals. So once is again, theme, partnership, teamwork, doing that together. I've got a whiteboard or draw it out or design it. I use power mapping, which is like you start with a circle like here's me in the middle and then branching out. [00:34:49][47.6]
[00:34:49] What are the pieces and how do they all connect? How? I did a lot of my work as an organizer because I think visually and so I have to see that layout. But then every morning part of my ritual for myself and self care, I tell people I'm not ready for prime time until 10:00 a.m. Eastern because when I get up in the morning, I meditate and I journal. And part of my journaling is five things I'm grateful for. Ten dreams I have as if they've already happened. New York Times best selling author When I Take My Pen is the movie I wanted on the Oxygen Network because I got to educate more women about ovarian cancer being in a committed, awesome partnership with a great man, you know, things like that, all the thing of being a world traveler, going to umpteen countries, all the things as if they've already happened. And then I write in there what I want more of in that day. I want more joy, flow at ease. And then I write my affirmation. So I have my gratitude, my dreams, my intention, my affirmation. [00:35:48][58.8]
[00:35:50] And then it's continuing to have an accountability partner to make promises, say, whether I achieve those promises or not, with no loss of power, if I didn't make new promises or whatever it's going to be. So that's the way I kind of approach the whole thing. But one of my big goals over the next three years is to have my next book out. But I've been working on and it is called The Best Mistake I Ever Made. Now America's top CEO succeeds, who I've been interviewing some of the country's best top CEOs, like the chair of Duncan and Texas Roadhouse Investment Corporation, a bunch of other other entrepreneurs and CEOs. Because my theory is those people who succeed have failed but never became a failure. Their mindset didn't go to failure. They just got it was to fail. Great move on. And that's what I'm finding out. So there's going to be a story woven in there. That's number one. Number two, as I want to launch a podcast, I'm in conversation with a good friend who has a a group called Million Women Strong. And the foundation's strategic direction is to empower women financially, emotionally and spiritually. And we're talking about her and I doing a podcast together to empower women and have them succeed in life. And I always say this, a client waiting list and speaking all around the world because I actually want to live. I just want to I want to. I'm a nomad at heart, so I'm going to live everywhere. Yeah. You know, when I do my goals, it's personal and professional because I can coach people from anywhere also. [00:37:26][96.3]
[00:37:27] Yeah. I don't think one can live in the vacuum. Not anyone I've spoken to thus far. Maybe I will meet that rare individual, but I find that when goals are separated out or delineated from one another, I don't believe that personal denotes the professional or vice versa. [00:37:44][16.8]
[00:37:45] But they live together in tandem, like the brain in the stomach. And it's out there very much so influenced by one by the other. [00:37:53][8.6]
[00:37:55] I want to know if you it's this is a curious situation. [00:37:59][4.1]
[00:38:00] If you had a young woman or a woman identified individual come up to you and say, listen, I had a good couple of decade long run in Washington as a lobbyist, and I just started to write my first book, I'm leaving that industry behind. I'm getting ready to kind of start my own thing. What are the top three pieces of advice you would give her, knowing what you know now? [00:38:27][27.2]
[00:38:28] So I just had this conversation with someone last night legitimately. Number one, you are you familiar with this term? [00:38:34][6.0]
[00:38:35] I know. So I just. Oh, yes. No, go ahead. Go. Yes. [00:38:40][5.2]
[00:38:41] OK, so I'm using this app to help me meditate. They mentioned it and I started researching it. Is this Japanese phenomenon of finding your purpose and it's the intersection of what your skills are, what you're passionate about, what the world needs and how you can earn a living. And so the first thing I said to this woman last night, she was like, should I write? Should I speak? I could do this. I could do that. I go, No. One, you have to figure out what are your core values? What are the energy, is that you want to bring into the world some of minor playfulness and authenticity. And if what I'm I do everything that aligns with that, I've got to bring play to everything I do. If it's a serious business, I can't I can't thrive. Find out what you're passionate about is your passion to speak about. She was a interestingly enough, I don't know how you would call it. She didn't she was supposed to be using her C Pap machine and didn't. And she almost died because she had too much carbon monoxide in her body and had no idea and was in a coma for a month and didn't know and came out of it and is fine. But she was a wake up call for her. So I think No. One find your passion. Find that guy. And then it's creating a plan, which is what I do with people, that's part of the work I do, because as a campaigner, you have an end goal called an election, and you have to have so many votes. And we know you have to knock on so many doors to get to so many people to turn out those votes. It's all a world. Patricia is a math problem. And if we figure out how many calls we have to make to get to all the people or how many books we have to sell or whatever, we can figure out that plan and then implement it. And some people are good at implementing plans. Other people need an accountability, but accountability, buddy. So how do you do that? So I'd say, number one, find what you're passionate about. What's your number to develop a plan? And number three, implement it. If you're not, count on a bill to implement promises to yourself, which most of us are not. Find someone to help you, whether it's a coach or a buddy system or a group of women or men or whomever that you group of people, you know, whatever human's right to surround you that bring you that that bring you light. That's one of my other dreams every day as I surround myself with people that fill my heart with joy. And I feel theirs with joy. Because if there's people around you that zap your energy or you have this, like, icky feeling around them, jettison those people, jettison those relationships, find a way to do it gracefully. [00:41:09][148.4]
[00:41:10] Absolutely. I think it's crucial, too. I like the the philosophy. And I had come across it ironically with another kind of multifaceted powerhouse, a female entrepreneur and business owner and investor who had written about it as well. [00:41:28][17.2]
[00:41:28] And what I liked when I studied it, after she had referenced it in her stuff, was it describes the nexus of kind of everything. And I think in the American culture, sometimes we say, well, what's your purpose? What are you good at? What do you like to do? What are you most happy when you're doing it? [00:41:44][15.8]
[00:41:44] And the factors that's taken into consideration with the Japanese philosophy is is much more holistic. And so, like you're describing, you really understand all of it in the end when you get those answers and then I like it. [00:42:01][16.9]
[00:42:01] I mean, finding your ultimate nexus, your ultimate purpose, develop a plan and implement it. I mean, I think that that put it on my grave. [00:42:09][7.5]
[00:42:09] You know, that sounds awesome. [00:42:10][1.1]
[00:42:11] I think that's fantastic. And I think those are crucial pieces of advice. You'd be a good buddy. You'd be a good friend sitting next to you on the plane. [00:42:18][6.6]
[00:42:19] Yeah, walking advice right now. [00:42:21][2.5]
[00:42:22] The other thing I was going to say quickly to that I loved when I was studying this as well is they say, you know, maybe your work is your kicky and they say never retire because that's your reason for being or maybe it's raising a family or maybe it's painting. You know, it doesn't it doesn't necessarily have to be whatever you think it ought to be, it can be anything. You can get that same experience of purpose. That's what gets you out of bed in the morning, is what gets you out of bed in the morning. Is raising your family or being a great partner or volunteering with an after school program, if that's what gets you out of bed, that's what you look forward to. That's your idea. And don't ever stop. Hmm. [00:43:03][41.2]
[00:43:04] Absolutely not. Ascribing traditional values to it with money and things of that nature. I agree. And I think that that's a difficult one to do and still try to be prolific in the end, that it takes a great deal of courage and honesty with oneself. [00:43:19][15.0]
[00:43:20] So that's a good point. I like that a lot. When we are out of time, we're going to wrap up. I just wanted to say, Jen, thank you so much for your candor and all of the information. I think that your companies and your work and the work that you're getting ready to do and all of your information is not just valid and useful, but it's also, for me, clever and entertaining is lost a lot of times when we go for exploration and utility. And I think that you've brought humor back into landscapes. It definitely needs to survive and thrive. And and I just wanted to say thank you. I think your stuff is is fascinating and I encourage everyone to go out. Her name is Jen coken and grab. When I die, take my panties. Turning your darkest moments into your greatest gifts, as well as embrace the ridiculousness of life. A pocket guide to being a better you as well as what's the third one on the horizon. [00:44:18][58.3]
[00:44:20] It's called. And I always have to look at the mockup that I did the best mistake I ever made, how America's top CEO succeeds. [00:44:27][7.5]
[00:44:28] So I figure it'll be out in about a year at a time. John, thank you so much for speaking with us today. I really appreciate it. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much, Patricia, for both inviting me this podcast, like all you're doing to empower women, we all appreciate you. [00:44:42][13.9]
[00:44:42] Thank you so much. And for everyone listening, I appreciate the time you've given me today. And until we speak again, remember to always bet on yourself. Slainte. [00:44:42][0.0]
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