The Brad Weisman Show
Welcome to The Brad Weisman Show, where we dive into the world of real estate, real life, and everything in between with your host, Brad Weisman! Join us for candid conversations, laughter, and a fresh take on the real world. Get ready to explore the ups and downs of life with a side of humor. From property to personality, we've got it all covered. Tune in, laugh along, and let's get real! #TheBradWeisman #Show #RealEstateRealLife
The Brad Weisman Show
Redefining Success Beyond Shattered Dreams
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Imagine facing a defining moment where a lifelong dream slips through your fingers, yet finding the strength to pivot and redefine success. Meet Nina Sossaman-Pogue, affectionately known as the "resilience queen," as she recounts her journey from aspiring Olympian to esteemed news anchor, and beyond. Her insights on resilience, drawn from personal triumphs and setbacks, remind us of the extraordinary power to rise and transform the narrative of our lives.
Shifting gears in life can be daunting, especially when it means leaving behind a successful career. Join us as Nina shares her humorous take on navigating career transitions at 50, and how she embraced opportunities in the emerging digital landscape after her career in journalism came to an unexpected halt. Her story is a testament to the courage needed to venture into the unknown, showcasing that even after a celebrated career, there's always room for reinvention and growth.
In a world dominated by social media, the allure of comparison culture can be overwhelming. Listen as Nina and I unpack the pervasive issue of FOMO and the illusion of perfect lives online. Drawing from insights in "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers," we explore the absurdity of constant comparison and stress over imagined threats. Through metaphor and personal experience, we emphasize the importance of embracing our individuality and focusing on the present to break free from the cycle of envy and dissatisfaction.
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Welcome to The Brad Weisman Show, where we dive into the world of real estate, real life, and everything in between with your host, Brad Weisman! 🎙️ Join us for candid conversations, laughter, and a fresh take on the real world. Get ready to explore the ups and downs of life with a side of humor. From property to personality, we've got it all covered. Tune in, laugh along, and let's get real! 🏡🌟 #TheBradWeismanShow #RealEstateRealLife
Credits - The music for my podcast was written and performed by Jeff Miller.
You're good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here we go.
Speaker 1:From real estate to real life and everything in between, the Brad Wiseman Show and now your host, brad Wiseman. All right, we are back. Yes, we are. We're back Thursday 7 pm every week, don't forget, don't forget. Yeah, we got a really good guest here tonight, and I say that every time. I think I say we always have a really good guest, but she's really fantastic. She's got some great stories to tell. It goes from gymnastics to a news anchor, to corporate America, to now public speaking or doing speaking arrangements all over the United States. I call her the resilience queen because her big thing is about how people can become resilient about things that go on in your life that maybe are some dark areas, some things that aren't as good, that you can get past those and there's ways to get past those times in your life, and she's going to walk us through some of that right now. So, nina Sossaman Pogue she is hopefully here with us, unless she ran. So how are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're welcome, Very welcome. You know, I can tell you were an anchor at one point, because you have that, like you know, like you're going to tell the news to me at some point. You know what I mean. I feel like you're going to say something, you know. Hey, this tree started on fire.
Speaker 2:You're never more than an hour away from the latest news on your 24 hour news source. I can go there if you want me to, but that's pretty funny, that is funny.
Speaker 1:But no, we'll get into that. But no, you, you've really gone through some different times in your life and which is obviously why resilience is what kind of keeps coming up as something that you are able to share, something that you're able to help people with. Did that happen overnight or no? I mean you went let's go back a little bit you started as an Olymp almost Olympics. You were almost in the Olympics, right, you were on the US gymnastics team, which is a huge deal at 14.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's. I say it's my chapters in the story of my life, the story that keeps unfolding. Uh, and I like being a queen by the way, resilience queen, I'm going to take that, you're more than welcome to.
Speaker 2:I was thinking more like guru or something, but I'm queen's nice. Yeah, it sounds good, it's good, yeah. So I was, um, I was a gymnast. I was a Navy brat growing up and found gymnastics. It was kind of the youngest of four kids Like, put Nina somewhere, she has a lot of energy and so gymnastics was my thing. And then I moved away from home when I was 13 and I moved into an Olympic training center.
Speaker 1:Let's just go. You didn't get kicked out of the house.
Speaker 2:The first thing I thought when I saw that on your bio.
Speaker 1:I'm like, oh my God, she got kicked out of her house at 13. That's terrible. She must have been really bad. No, but I get it. You actually were. You were dedicated to your, to your talent right.
Speaker 2:I had an opportunity to move into an Olympic training center at 13. You sort of you know, I was an elite, I made elite. I made that caliber of gymnastics where they were interested in training you for a coach would take you on. Um, I did. I moved from my at Florida we were in Jacksonville at the time, my dad was the airbase there and I moved to Maryland. Silver Spring, maryland, right outside of DC, was where the training center was at 13. And then I made the US team and I went all over the world. You know Japan, hungary, germany, and just doing my thing Back in the day with Mary Lou Retton, oh my gosh, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:And Bart Conner, yeah, back in the day with Mary Lou Retton.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Yeah, back in the day.
Speaker 1:I remember those names.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the eighties. And then I didn't make the team. You know, I always say like Mary Lou's maiden name is my maiden name is Rofi and she was Retton, so we were like both R's and we roomed together but I was not the top. I was kind of in the you know like fifth or sixth through 12th you know of those athletes and only if you make make the Olympic team. And then I bombed a qualifying meet, uh, and so you know, after being on the cover of magazines and this big hype and moving away from home, uh, it was, it was. I was so full of shame, I was embarrassed to go walk all to my high school. I felt like I was a failure. I'd let down my family and my friends and obviously my coaches. So it was a really difficult time. That was my first big. This is too much.
Speaker 2:I call them my this is because we all have and I have my story, you probably have yours too. Nobody gets past. But I was like this is not part of the plan, this was not how it was supposed to go. So that was one of my first big failures, where I had to figure out how to get you know. Go forward from there. I felt like my life was ruined at the ripe old age of like 16.
Speaker 1:So it's a defining moment, obviously. You know what I mean. It's sunny, I think we have. Uh, I was at a thing years ago it was, um, I forget what the name of it was, but it was a thing where you basically it was a class where you figured out the defining moments in your life. You try to kind of figure out why you are who you are, dissect yourself and kind of go down to the core and go, okay, this makes sense of why I do this, whatever. So that was a major defining moment there for you.
Speaker 2:It was and I had to figure out who I was going forward. And I regrouped and I did become one of the top recruits for college for gymnastics, and I went to LSU great gymnastics program, d1 athlete. I had that experience. But then my freshman year at LSU I blew out my knee in competition. So then I lost my sport altogether.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I really was floundering like who am I without this sport? Because if you think about it, brad, back then it was like my sweatshirt and my bumper sticker, my t-shirt and stuff.
Speaker 2:Nowadays it's these kids, instagram and their Tik TOK Like they really identify with, whether it's their sport or band or you know whatever they're into. So to lose that piece in me was really hard. I floundered a lot. I sometimes joke. I ended up getting through the rest of college and graduating in booze and boys getting through the rest of college and graduating in booze and boys.
Speaker 1:I love the honesty.
Speaker 2:I didn't always make the best decisions there for a while, but I did. I found journalism when I was very, you know through, through a lot of you know tough times there. Well, when I lost my scholar, when I when I lost my sport in order to keep my scholarship, they asked me to, you know, to work for the university. You had to back then. So I had to work for the athletic department and they put me to work in the laundry room, oh wow.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Not like laundry room, like washing, cute little leotards.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, I'm thinking kind of just disgusting.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, I worked in the athletic laundry room. So I sometimes say, I sometimes say my claim to fame was almost that I, I, you know I could have washed Shaquille O'Neal's jockstrap. That could be my claim to fame. Thank goodness I didn't stay there.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, yeah, thank God. That's not why you're on the podcast, for grace sakes. I mean by the way, the lady that swashed the jockstraps is on the podcast right now. That's hilarious. So so you go and do that. So now you're you're, so what happens then? I mean, that's amazing. We're all through your, your childhood gymnastics, that that whole thing, everything was that's your life. That was it Right.
Speaker 2:It's what I knew about life, and if you think about it when you're 19 and you lose your sport, I spent my whole life in the gym and if you do the math, it's 70,. More than 75% of my life had been spent in a gym.
Speaker 1:So of course, it felt like my whole life was over.
Speaker 2:It was a very real feeling. My life experience, everything I've experienced up till that point had been mostly that Now I can see fast forward. It's part of what I do in my framework. When I talk to people about resilience. You know I can see it fast forward. By the time I was 50 and my kids left for college, you know then that gymnastics was like 28% yeah exactly, and if I live to, be a hundred.
Speaker 2:You know I need to drink less wine and take better care of myself, but if I live to be a hundred, no, no.
Speaker 1:Wine's good. I think today it was in the news it's good. Tomorrow they'll say wine's good yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm on team Brad on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm telling you it's the way to look at it, yeah, cause eggs were bad yesterday and now they're good today. You know how that is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, I'm all.
Speaker 1:I'm all in on wine and chocolate as long as I can keep live to be 100, then it's gymnastics is only 15 percent.
Speaker 2:But at the time it felt like so much and I really floundered trying to figure out who I was without it. And thank goodness I had some people in my life who pointed me in a different direction and I found journalism and I loved being in a newsroom Once again very competitive, fast, moving. Get to think fast, move fast. It's different every day.
Speaker 1:You're on your feet and you're you're thinking on your feet too, you're, you're like. You know, I mean news. Anything with news I always think is I mean, obviously there's a teleprompter, but it's constantly changing, everything's changing, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's, there's a teleprompter once you become a news anchor, but when you that for a while, and then that's how I found my way to Charleston. That's where I am now, charleston, south Carolina. And speaking of real estate, we're real proud of our dirt around here. The real estate here it's pretty pricey, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so anyway. So I found my way into journalism and I loved it, and then I became a news anchor and had real success there. I did have a period through that, though, in my thirties, where they went younger and blonder and I got laid off in a bunch of layoffs. So is that really?
Speaker 1:so that's something that happened, like they went towards a different look for the news. That's amazing. I won.
Speaker 2:Charleston's favorite news anchor seven years in a row and you'll like this. I won it on a Thursday and then on Friday, you know, it comes out in the paper picture of me. And then on Friday I'm in the newsroom doing my thing and we're getting ready to go down. The weather guy and I are going to go cut a news brief at three o'clock Like, hey, you know, like you see on the news coming up later, this happened, this happened. So we were walking down to get to cut that and the GM, the general manager, comes like one of his people, comes around the corner and says, hey, nina, the GM wants to see you, oh no.
Speaker 2:I think they're going to like I just won this award. I think I'm going to get like a bonus.
Speaker 1:Right, right or promotion or something.
Speaker 2:Thank you or something? No, no, no, no. They pulled me in there and the young woman from HR came and sat down across from me and they said per your contract, we are releasing you without cause and I was like yeah, so this was not part of the plan. But you know, years later, when I got into tech and I was part of you know difficult financial decisions and force ranking people.
Speaker 1:But that's wild. How do you go from the anchor to tech, Like were you always into tech, Were you? Is that something that you thought this is what I want to do eventually, or is it just? This is just something that happened?
Speaker 2:No. So I I love doing news and I think I would have stayed there like for even longer, but I had. I had some things going on in my life and I was looking like what else is out there? Yeah, and I did like a lot of people do. I kind of said what am I good at outside of like reading a teleprompter and having nice hair? There's got to be more to me than that. So I had to figure out what that looked like, and so I I and I encourage other people to do this when they're in these life transitions and if they're transitioning careers. I met with people that I admired. I met with a guy who was in. I had coffee with a guy who was in marketing, ran a marketing firm, and I'm like, if you had to hire me, what would you hire me for? And he's like I would have you do like car commercials and I was like no no, no, I don't want to do that.
Speaker 2:And then I met with a woman who ran the Center for Women and I said, if you've been in a lot of boardrooms with me and a lot of events with me, what would you hire me for? And she had some ideas. And then I had the opportunity to meet with some other folks in the tech space and it was very different. So I had a buddy who had a startup and Google had just very much timing and luck. There's some luck involved in it, of course.
Speaker 2:Google had just bought YouTube and it was like video's going to be big online someday, oh my gosh, this is 2007.
Speaker 2:This is 2007. Video's going to be a big deal. I got to figure out how to make videos, how big that file is, how to put them online, all those things. I need somebody, and he and I had sat on some charity boards and things, yeah, things. And so he made me an offer. I couldn't refuse and I left TV and went to tech to stand up a media studio and start on the ground floor of this new thing Like YouTube was like all it was all real new back then and it was like what are we going to do with video online? And look where it's come now it's so neat to see.
Speaker 1:It's amazing yeah.
Speaker 2:So so we. So he hired me to do that, and then I I being both a gymnast who can fall down and get back up and, uh, being a journalist who can learn fast, I learned fast and I had I moved into different areas of the company.
Speaker 1:Good for you. And now, obviously that's, that's past, and now you've moved on to uh, did you just retire from there, or how'd that? How'd that yeah?
Speaker 2:I left there. I you know I'd done this about 12 years and I was the vice president of marketing and communications when we took the company public. So, I got to do the IPO road show. Goldman Sachs was lead left.
Speaker 2:I got to get on the little jet and fly to the airport and get out of the fancy little Teterboro and like be all that you know and it was. It was a really cool time to be a part of it, and so we had a very successful IPO. Forbes magazine had it as one of the top 10 tech IPOs of the year, and so that was a financial opportunity for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would think so. Hopefully you were vested.
Speaker 2:I was very much so I had a lot of options.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good for you.
Speaker 2:So so it gave me the opportunity to let my kids go to any college they wanted to pay off some debt those kind of things. I'm not a big house, fancy car kind of person, but there was stuff that I like. It felt so good to have that worry.
Speaker 1:Sure absolutely.
Speaker 2:And so I, after that happened, you know, then I started looking at life a little differently and said okay, now, without having to be the breadwinner and having to do those things, what do I want to do, like, who do I want to be, what do I want to give back? And that's where the first book came from and that's where the speaking came from the book.
Speaker 1:is that the? This is not the end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the first book is is this is not the end strategies to get you through the worst chapters of your life?
Speaker 1:Yeah, worst chapters of your life. Yeah, yeah, and this is where resilience comes in.
Speaker 2:It is and it took me a while, like you said, to get to that word, but when I started doing some research I became this go-to person for people when they were going through a tough time because people my stories were also public.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, let's dig into that a little bit, the fact that the the, the reason you have, um, let's just say, credibility on knowing what it's like to be resilient. You told us a little story and I think actually we should go there because it's going to make it that people that are listening go wow, she had a bad thing happen and look where she is. She's doing podcasts, she's doing speaking arrangements all over the United States or all over the world and, yeah, she got. She got through something that was really tough. So do you mind telling that story that you told us before we started recording?
Speaker 2:Sure, sure, and I always ask beforehand trauma dump and I don't want to know. You know it's triggery for some of your listeners, so I'll tell you a kind of watered down version of it but yeah so so think about, like, the resilience piece.
Speaker 2:So I didn't make the Olympic team and then then I blew up my knee in college and I'd gotten fired, I'd gone through a divorce, all these things that already happened in my life and I was a very popular news anchor at the time and I went to pick my kids up. I took a day off of work to go pick my kids up from the school, the school bus, and so I, you know, went on a beautiful sunny day and it was a crowded bus stop and the bus comes and all of our kids go piling off and I'm there with my best friends and she has this new, like 11 month old baby that's crawling around. We're playing with the baby, and then the bus comes and all of these moms and siblings and spouses, and we're all just having a gorgeous Charleston October day. And then, in the commotion of all that, when it's time to go, I, you know, throw my kids in the car. Hey, it's time to get going. I had driven over because we were going to run errands. It was special for me to be home and in all of that commotion, no one had noticed that my friend's sweet baby had crawled under my car and I backed up and he was badly injured. He lived. He is in college now, very badly injured, lots of head injuries, and he um, it was days, weeks, months before he we knew he was going to be okay.
Speaker 2:And in that time, um because you know I'm such a public person there were news trucks on my front yard. Uh, there were prayer vigils all over town. It became very much a part of who I was and I didn't want to be this person. I wanted to be, you know, the world class athlete and everybody's favorite news anchor. I didn't want to be the lady who had injured her friend's baby. And so I had a really hard time figuring out how to go forward after that and I went into a really dark place and thank goodness I had some good people around me, because I really thought I couldn't imagine. I kept replaying everything that I should have done differently or could have done, or maybe that, you know, shouldn't have taken the day off work. And then I kept looking at the future and I just couldn't see anything happy and I couldn't ever see myself being happy. I'm like the world's just better if I wasn't here. I can't do this. So I went through a really tough time, and that's where what got you out of that?
Speaker 1:What got you out of that, like, what, what? What was like the one thing that you can just think of, or maybe there's many things, but your family, obviously, maybe friends and what. Talking to people, I mean what? What got you out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, family and friends obviously the people is a big part of my framework that I talk about. I had to get several things and that's where my framework comes from, because I can see how I got through that, okay. And then I can look back at how I got through the gymnastics and the getting fired, and it's the same. And then I did research on the commonalities when people go through failures or through difficult times, and it's the same four things. But what got me really through that then was one the I had a good therapist. You know I'm big into people and I'm very pro therapy.
Speaker 2:But what he did for me was say hey, it's not always going to be like this, like the new cycle is going to move on. Five years from now it's going to feel different than it does now. He got me out of my own head space in the moment and said you know, news is going to go go on to something else. The story is going to move on and you've got to be here for it. Your kids are little. They are to need you. Like. He got me thinking ahead, which was a good part of it.
Speaker 2:That's the timeline piece that I talk about.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Just like with gymnastics, like I thought it was my whole world back then. It's not my whole world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause you're looking back Right A lot of times. You look, we look back and so, yes, that was a large part of your life. But when you look forward, there's creativity. You can create what's going forward. You know it's not, it hasn't happened.
Speaker 2:I call it, yeah, I call it, all the blank space ahead on that timeline Absolutely Well.
Speaker 1:You had a good therapist.
Speaker 2:I had a very good therapist. If you draw a line on a piece of paper, I have people do this and put 10 little dots like 10, how old you are 10, 20, 30, 40 to live to be a hundred and then I say, okay, put a dot on where you are right now, and then there's all that blank space ahead and I even do that. So that's the one thing that I did, and then it's called this framework. So that's the T is this timeline, thinking, this perspective, play it forward. And then the second part is humans. I did have some good people in my life. I had a good therapist. My husband really protected me from a lot of things.
Speaker 2:My ex-husband at the time took the kids, so I took to village, so it took a lot of us to, you know, to help handle through that. And I always say you have to edit your people, so if you go through something difficult, who's helping, who's hurting? And sometimes some people who love you the most are not helping and you have to kind of get them out of the way during difficult times. Um, so that was that piece. And then the other is this uh, isolate piece like not what happened before and not what may happen in the future. But what can you actually do? And, um, I really had some good help with hey, let's go back on the air. Let's define what you know.
Speaker 2:We I held hands with this mom we walked down the hall of the hospital. We said we were going to get through it together. We, you know, took advantage of the platform that we had and we use really positive language. The doctors were, you know, amazing and it was miraculous and we were, all you know, praying for him and that kind of stuff. So the language we use was really key. So that was the last piece of it. So this whole timeline, humans isolated what can you actually take action on? And then let's edit the language in your head. I wasn't the villain. I was, you know, just a person who was involved in this. It was an accident. Getting to that word was really hard for me to get to.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting, getting to the word accident.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, you just, I just I get accidents, should have someone who's like it was just hard, and these are also stories you hear. You normally hear about somebody else right, and so that's why, when, when, you, when, when it's happening to you, you're like, okay, this should be happening to somebody else, not me I should be reporting this on the news I say I went from reporting the headlines to being the headlines and you know I I'd done these stories before.
Speaker 2:And then, once we did some homework on it and looked at it, it was like oh um, this actually happens more often than you think and most times they don't survive. So I guess we were, you know around here.
Speaker 1:we've had situations where it's the parent that did it and they didn't make it Right. Right, so you know, but luckily the he's in college and or she or she's in college and and obviously you still stay in touch.
Speaker 2:We've been in touch. You know one of the reasons I went back on the air for a year or so and then I said, you know, I need to be less public, I need to kind of do my own thing, step away, yeah, so I stepped away and um, but I, obviously from a distance, I'm always cheering for him and seeing what he's doing and his parents are here, still here in town, and you know, yeah, that's great, that's a good.
Speaker 1:Well, that's good and that's. But that's the reason, or that's the that's many of the reasons that you have that you, you've come through a lot of different things and so you are um good at training people and how to get past these certain times in their life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I didn't know that I would end up here, but it wasn't something that I planned for. Like, like, most of us don't aren't where we planned when we were little children. Like, when you were a little boy, did you plan on being in real estate and doing a podcast?
Speaker 1:No, not at all. I was going to be a rock and roll star. That didn't happen.
Speaker 2:I was going to be a vet and and an Olympian. Yeah, that was it. So we, we how we react to the world, like the world changes around us, and how we act to the react to, that is where we end up, and so I have. I didn't think I would end up here, but I got to that point where I became because people knew the things I'd gone through. I became this go-to person and one time I had a buddy of mine. I heard a knock at the door. I go open the door and a neighbor standing there with two beers in his hands, tears running down his eyes, down his face, and I was like are you okay? And he said I just lost my job. I don't, I can't go home, I don't know how to tell my wife, I don't know what to do. And I was like I got you. We came through, walked through the house and sat on the end and I said, okay, let's work through these things. And I knew I was helping. And that was just one instance. I had other ones that had happened too. I knew I was helping people. I knew the things I had learned and experienced were helping.
Speaker 2:In the books I'd read and the, you know, cognitive behavior therapy things I'd gone through and the PTSD workbooks I'd read. I knew that I was able to help other people. But I didn't. I didn't have it organized and put together in a way that I could help more than one person at a time. So that's why I left corporate. I said you know something? What if something happens to me? I'm not here to share this with my own children, you know, because I have three adult kids now or with people who I love, or just if I have this, how do I put it together and put it out in the world? So that's where the book came from and it's my mashup of life experience and stoicism and cognitive behavior therapy and a little neuroscience thrown in.
Speaker 1:It's awesome. It's really cool. The experiences are incredible. So let's go down through here before we would wrap it up. We got some time here, yet. The reverse resume I thought was interesting. I've never heard of anybody say that before. I always like to pick out things that I've never heard before. What is a reverse resume Like? That didn't make sense to me. So what is that?
Speaker 2:Excellent, I love it that you picked up on that. So I coined that phrase a couple of years ago and we all have a reverse resume and I say, if you take a piece of paper and again draw that line across it, and above the line is all of your accolades, all the stuff you would see on LinkedIn all the stuff you would put on your resume goes above the line on like on, above the line on the ages when it happened to you, you graduated or you got an accreditation or you won an award or you had a baby or you took it.
Speaker 2:All the good stuff goes across the line, the stuff that you would be proud of, and then below the line. I encourage people to go and say now let's look at all the things you've gotten through. You've been fired or divorced, or you raised a child with a disability, or you were bullied in high school or like all everybody had. Nobody gets a pass, everybody's been through some stuff. So you put that down at the bottom and then you can sort of it's kind of neat, you can connect the dots and it does like this up and down of life. It looks a little like an echocardiogram.
Speaker 1:I was going to say it looks like somebody's heartbeat. You don't want to be flatline. No, no, no, that's not good. That's not good, that'd be bad.
Speaker 2:That'd be a boring life. So this is life. It has these highs. Reverse resume is all the stuff below the line, and I will argue that that's what makes you who you are.
Speaker 1:Not the wins. Oh, absolutely, I love that the stuff down below.
Speaker 2:Your reverse resume and I have executives do this when I do executive off sites and I'm like you better hire some people who have some stuff down below the line Interesting I don't always say stuff but you need that down below the line, because when stuff hits the fan, you're going to need these people. You don't want people who haven't been through some things.
Speaker 1:So true, but that reverse resume is key.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. That is nothing like what I thought it was going to be. That is awesome. I love that. And you know what's funny? I never heard anybody say that before. That's why you're here, because this is great you have down here. Another new thing that we'll talk about that you brought up was FOMO culture. You said you talk about we're constantly connected and there's a thing called FOMO culture that you say Are we hurting ourselves? How are we doing with that? Tell me about the FOMO culture, because I know I get FOMO.
Speaker 2:I mean, everybody does you know people talk about FOMO and we all have it. You know, before there was anything online. We just saw the neighbor come home with a new car, or we saw you know somebody have an outfit that we like, or somebody was better shaped than us.
Speaker 1:Do you think it's actually the new jealous?
Speaker 2:it's jealous. It's a little different because we're feeding this culture, but there's some gel obviously some jealousy, it's this fear of missing out, or fear of missing out on a different life it's fear of missing out on wait. Why didn't I, you know, marry that guy or do that thing, or take that career?
Speaker 1:Nobody sees the reverse resume and nobody think about it. Nobody sees the downs. On Facebook and on Instagram, Everybody sees the ups on life. They don't see the downs. They don't see that somebody you know was in an accident or somebody was this or something. You don't put that stuff on there. You put up stuff that makes you look great, you know, so it's interesting, so that's that's what you're seeing is happening.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's this FOMO, it's this fear of missing out, not just on the party or the thing, but on a different life, on something else that could have been. And here's my favorite example of it. There's two, there's one. Okay, like you go on a vacation and you fly somewhere and you do this great vacation, you saved up for it.
Speaker 2:First, you made a goal that you wanted to do it. You save the money, you got excited about it, you packed, you went and say it's some tropical. You did the snorkeling, you got the tan, you drank the pina colada, like you had this great vacation Right. And then you get on the plane on the way home and you're like still glowing in it and, when you know, still sunburned and you're on your planet on the way home and then a little thing comes up in your app and on your phone that says thank you for visiting. You know, give us our rating and you do your little summary and then, as soon as you hit, submit a little, something else comes up and goes thank you. And here are five trips that people like you are taking.
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:Don't miss out on this. Go ahead and you know you.
Speaker 1:You know if you like this. Here are five trips.
Speaker 2:You're gonna like this too yes, yes, and if you don't sign up now, you're gonna miss out on that so it's this. We never get to just be happy.
Speaker 1:It's like, oh shoot, I'm already missing out on the next thing yeah, it's so true, and that is the way we are, you know. You know we always say about being in the present moment. I mean, you know, that's's the problem is, sometimes we don't give it, we don't give ourselves to just be in it and actually enjoy it and go OK, this was great, we're looking to the next, the next trip or the next thing to to do. It's so true, so true.
Speaker 2:So that is, that is an issue.
Speaker 1:What is that? That's an issue for us. I mean for people. It's not good.
Speaker 2:It's a problem. We all do it, I do it. I look at other speakers and I'm like they were on six stages and they were like, oh, they're going to bigger stage, they get whatever. So silly, I'm doing my thing. I'm. I am not them. I've lived my own life and gotten to here. That's right. And I started a keynote the other day and I was like they did my intro. You know, world class athlete like the whole.
Speaker 2:Thing in the award winning news anchor and I walked out and went. Well, actually, I'm not successful today. I'm on a smaller stage than so-and-so and I'm not making as much as like, when do we get to be successful? But the other piece of the other example of that that we all do that also has to do with our telephones. I do this whole thing with this book called why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, and it's all about behavior science and how we cause our own anxiety and stress. Because you know animals, once they're in immediate danger, all the stress response, that cortisol, the norepinephrine, like all that new adrenaline is there. But then as soon as the stress response is gone, it's gone and they go back. And we are constantly going to what, the what ifs and we even imagine things. We imagine the lions chasing us, even when it's not.
Speaker 2:You know yeah, absolutely and so I talk about a zebra, uh, running across and the lion chasing it. But then I have the zebra, you know, pop into some tall, some tall, uh grass to reset. And I'll say and then our zebra, who just just has, like such a good zebra and in, like the most amazing, beautifully striped, just the right hooves, right size heart to be had, you know, to be able to outrun a lion, our zebra ducks in and and as it resets, our zebra pulls out his phone. What's the rest of the animal kingdom doing?
Speaker 2:And he sees flamingo on the beach and he's like ah, look at flamingo on the beach, I wish I was flamingo. Yeah, I want to wear pink. I'm sick of these stripes, I want to eat shrimp. Like he just outran a lion, yeah, he's so good at doing what he does, but in a moment we can look at somebody else and go, I wish I was doing what they were doing, like Flamingo would have been eaten by the lion, you know. So we all have to kind of, we have to get better at being really proud of what we're good at and living in that space and quit looking at each other wishing that we were a different animal, cause we've, all you know, got our own makeup and our own.
Speaker 1:And you're right, we, we do that, as I think a lot of people do that. They look at the other person on social media and go, oh my gosh, look what, look what they have, not realizing what, what you have and what you can have. You should have gratitude for what you have. You know, obviously I do.
Speaker 2:There's. I'll be honest, there are some speakers out there who I really admire and they're just crushing it and they're doing these big stages and this great stuff. And I'll think, man, you know, I wish I could do that. And then I'll remind myself, oh, they have never even had any kids yet.
Speaker 1:Like they're 30 something years old.
Speaker 2:I have three adult children and these careers I've already had, but I'm wishing I was this 30 something year old who has this big stage.
Speaker 1:So, but I don't think the age should hold you back. I mean you're just. I mean you're how long you've been doing the speaking that the public speaking.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm just using that as an example. I'm doing fine, yeah, so I'm coming up, of course, because I speak on resilience. I launched this speaking in 2020.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, oh yeah, there you go 2020. Yeah, that wasn't a good time. Not a good time.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I learned very quickly about the speaking business, because I booked a bunch of gigs and you know, when you book you get half upfront and then they pay you the other half when you deliver. That's how my contracts were set up. So I had a bunch booked for the year and then everything shut down in 2020.
Speaker 1:You had to give it back. You did, and I had already spent it. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:I had no idea. So I'm like, oh, I'm so true, anyway.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks, there's one thing I wanted to talk about. Yeah, real quick, and it was a testimonial that I saw that I thought was really, really cool. And it was basically somebody put a testimonial on your page and it said she grabs you by the brain, pulls you in and holds you there. I thought that was such a great testimonial. I mean, I'm sure you've read that one. You know about it. It's on, I think it's on your website. But what a great testimonial. It was really cool.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, this Tom wrote that I can't remember his last name.
Speaker 1:Tom Satterley or something, or Satterley or something.
Speaker 2:Hey, they're in real estate too.
Speaker 1:So that's cool, there we go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I spoke at their conference down in Savannah I think it was. Actually I've spoken at their conference twice. His team really liked me and brought me back to speak at their next larger conference. But you know, some people I don't do just my story from the stage. I really get them thinking about their own life and their own things that they've gone through. And I like the opportunity to make people feel obviously laugh, cry, all those things I do a lot of. You know humor because I think I'm funny, but I, I, I love the opportunity to really get people think about things in different ways.
Speaker 2:And, and I think with that one, we did a lot around resilience, on the definition of it, it's not persistence and grit how it's so different from persistence and grit. People get them mixed up. And then we did a lot around goal setting, because every time you set a goal you are asking yourself to make a change, to get out of your comfort zone, and so why our bodies and our brains don't like change where that comes from. So anyway, thank you for bringing that up, tom Tom. That was a really, really good testimonial and I am proud of the fact that I can get people thinking. I think I did say I responded to it somewhere or maybe I'm online back when he did it and said, hey, I had to give his brain back.
Speaker 1:I promise that's good. That's good, he probably needs it. He probably needs it. Thanks so much for coming. How do people get in touch with you? So much for coming. How do people get in touch with you? I mean, what's the best way? Maybe just rattle off your socials or whatever, so we can, they can, they can find you.
Speaker 2:Great. On Instagram, I'm Nina Speaks and it's Nina period SP. Underscore EAK, because there's other people named Nina who speak, but Nina Speaks. You can find me on Facebook, on Nina Sossaman Pogue, on LinkedIn, nina Sossaman Pogue and I just hey, I just launched a workshop and now what workshop for anybody who's going through a tough time? Uh, and the whole concept around that is you know, it's okay to not be okay, it's just not okay, to stay that way oh, I like that.
Speaker 2:That's very good help figure out a way forward. So, um, but yeah, you can find me anywhere within social. I have tiktok, um it's, I'm working on it, my team is younger than me and they're doing fun things.
Speaker 1:I think the other ones are more important anyway.
Speaker 2:Anyway. So yeah, find me on Instagram. I do daily inspiration or motivation on Instagram. I think motivation is a lot like a shower. You can't just do it once, you keep going back.
Speaker 1:You need it often Absolutely, absolutely All right. Thanks so much for being on here today. I really, really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:This has been great, Brad. I appreciate it. I feel like I rambled a little bit.
Speaker 1:No, you're good. You're good. It was a great conversation, great conversation, thanks so much. All right, there you go. Nina Sossaman-Pogue Resilience Queen is what I'm going to call her. I think she's going to use that, which is actually cool. But no, you want to check her out? You can just look up her name. Her name is spelled a little different, but if you go to see us on Facebook or Instagram whatever we're going to have all of our information there, so you don't have to be searching for anything like that. All right, thanks for joining us again every Thursday at 7 pm. All right, we'll see you next week.
