Bullied for being holy, moved before making friends, never safe anywhere

What happens when you spend your entire childhood learning that nowhere is safe and no one stays? Janice Debo was the preacher's kid who got picked on for being "different" - bullied for being holy in a world that punished goodness.

But just when she'd start to find her place, just when she might make a friend, her family would move again. Six different schools. Always the new kid. Always the preacher's daughter. Always the target.

"I think I went to six different schools growing up," Janice remembers. "I was always having to make new friends and didn't know how to stay in touch with other friends."

The cruel mathematics of her childhood: Get bullied for being different. Start to adapt. Begin to belong. Get uprooted. Repeat.

By the time she reached high school, Janice had learned the most devastating lesson a child can learn - that home isn't a place, it's wherever hurts the least. That safety is temporary. That belonging is always borrowed time.

Discover how a woman who spent her childhood as a perpetual outsider learned to create belonging for others - and why your feeling of never fitting in anywhere might be preparing you to help others find their place.

Chapters

• 0:00 Preacher's Daughter Journey
• 3:51 Growing Up Through Segregation
• 6:07 Building Relationships Across Differences
• 9:05 Fear vs Connection in Business
• 10:02 The Courage, Confidence and Connections Journal
• 11:53 Path Elements Coaching Assessment
• 17:05 Closing and Contact Information

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode, whatever it is. Can't remember what episode we're on now, but this is part two. I'm with janice debo and the first part of this is where we're talking about how she went from an e-commerce brand to a coach. I know it's a bit of a mindset and a mindset switch, but the challenges from there, the fear, the understanding that she was meant for more into a bigger version of herself. But I want to backtrack way back when now you grew up in north carolina and you were growing up the daughter of a preacher what the hell was that all? Because that's just a complete and a foreign world to suddenly me and whoever's listening to this going preacher daughter what the hell, what was that like?

Speaker 2: 0:50

oh it. You know, when you're a kid you don't know any different. You think everything is like that across the board. We moved a lot. My dad was in the methodist church and they I don't know what they do nowadays, but when I was growing up, if you were, if you, if the preacher resonated with the audience, with the congregation, same thing, then he would tend to stay longer. My dad was a bit of a rebel, so I have to say I kind of got that independent rebel tendency from him, I'm sure, and apparently he didn't get along with everybody because we moved and moved. I am in the process of doing a timeline on all of this, so I go oh yeah, I forgot about that one.

Speaker 2: 1:36

I think I went to six different schools growing up and in doing so it was I guess it could have been stressful. I was always having to make new friends and didn't know how to stay in touch with. I was a kid, I didn't know about staying in touch with other friends, but moved and moved and it seemed like when I was. One of the toughest ones was when I we moved from when I was in the seventh grade I was. We spent one year at the place that I was in the eighth grade and that was it, just one year, and that's a teenage year. So I remember that that was difficult because I had really good friends there, made them quickly, but then we got moved and I went. Thankfully I'd stay in one place for four years. So my dad did well. He behaved himself and lived there for four years through high school, which was great.

Speaker 2: 2:28

I was in the ninth grade in one school, but then the last three years of high school I was in one school and having the last three or four years really reconnected with some of those high school chums, and so it was tough in the sense that we were in the south. At the south my parents have. I don't remember a single word coming out of their mouth that was racist or anything. They I was raised to accept people as people, but I was raised in a time of segregation. That was, we were, the culture was changing and the south yeah, being a preacher's kid, I got picked on. I got picked in a time of segregation, the culture was changing and the South, yeah. Being a preacher's kid, I got picked on. I got picked on a little bit. My siblings may have I don't recall that they did but I do remember getting picked on in the ninth grade especially.

Speaker 1: 3:18

You know I'm coming from a place where I was bullied as well at school. I didn't call it bullying back then, it was called character building. It certainly built character, but the whole thing is sacred. I wasn't in the US, I was in the UK Completely different culture, but one you're speaking to now. It still goes on in certain parts and in America it's hidden very well in lots of places, but it still happens, yes, but you've lived through that era and you've seen the change happening. How have you helped enforce the change, not just within people you meet but in your business as well? Because that is a hell of a background and a hell of a journey.

Speaker 2: 4:02

I am really. I've always accepted people. Some of my best friends are different skin color, to say the least, and close friends. As a matter of fact, one of my best friends in North Carolina was there for me two years ago when my mother was passing and she would frequently go visit my mom. She's very African-American but a sweet gal. Two days I think it was the day before my mother passed. I texted her and I said mom's right on the edge, Is there any way you can go over there? And, personally speaking, I never even thought twice about it. She picked up. She drove a half hour or 45 minutes. One way to see my mom and get my mother on camera so I could say goodbye to her that was. She's just a very special friend and I've never seen color or culture differences.

Speaker 2: 5:01

I think the biggest culture difference I saw was when I got to Oregon. Now we're talking culture shock from North Carolina. Very big culture shock out here. Now we're talking culture shock from North Carolina very big culture shock out here. And one of the funniest things I swear I was here for a week or two at that time and I'm married. That's how I got here. I got married to someone who lived here.

Speaker 2: 5:19

I'm looking around and I'm like what's wrong with this place? It looks so different to me and it wasn't the landscape, it was. The people of color weren't missing and I'm like what that's so different. But I am so unbiased, I am so accepting and I don't understand that whole problem that people have. So I do my best in my business and my life to be a positive influence, to accept people for who they are on the inside and forget what they look like. I've even got a nephew that has mental problems and I was his guardian for five years.

Speaker 2: 6:00

I had to learn to be around and he didn't live with me, but I had to learn how to adapt and work around people of nature, of all kinds of things. And in the retirement home I mentioned in the last one we did, I went into that and I was around people in their 80s and 90s every day and let me tell you they've learned their life lessons and it is worth listening to your elders. They were a hoot and a lot of fun. So I guess I grew up respecting my elders, respecting other people for who they were, period. And so in business I do the same thing. It doesn't matter to me it absolutely. If you're, if you've got a good character, it's going to be from here. If you're going to you've got bad character, it's going to be from here, it's not from the outside.

Speaker 1: 6:51

So I love that. The other thing that strikes me as well with this and I love the conversation about this is you can really define where you're going with your own values, and you mentioned it earlier about making sure your value is aligned with who you are and also who you want to become, and equally, you attract that backwards. It comes back to you in different ways. Yes, you mentioned something earlier about the culture shifting. I think one thing has been lost in a lot of humanity, and this isn't just North Americaica or another segregation. This is in humanity in general, and that's the, the division of people that are created by what they don't understand, and it's the fear that what they don't understand which makes them scared and makes them retaliate. One thing about entrepreneurship and working in these environments as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, operator or however you define yourself fear runs life. Fear will run you if you allow it, but what will cure it is coming together with relationships. Now you wrote a book and it's about connections and confidence it is.

Speaker 2: 8:12

can you see this a little bit? Yep, got it. Yes, it's called courage, confidence and connections and it's a journal. It's actually a journal. So I'm a big journal, right, I journal every day. I've got a big stack of them right over here next to me. I've been journaling for over 30 years and I took my blogs, which I have about 160 on my website, janisdepotcom.

Speaker 2: 8:41

So I have about 160 blogs and a good friend of mine and this was someone from a bartering organization speaking of bartering we talked about before, and she said you've got some barter dollars in your account. Do you want to use them and we'll publish a book? And I was like, no, why not? And she looked at my website and she goes you pick out. We decided to go with a 90 day journal. I said, well, let's do 120. She goes no, the book will be too big. So we went with 90.

Speaker 2: 9:14

And the way the book is set up, it's one blog and then across the on the other page, there are questions that relate to the blog, that you can relate to your own life and you can journal about it and write about it. So it's a practical journal for personal development. And the name Courage, confidence and Connections came to me one day when I was just writing a blog and so it came to me and it struck me really strongly that I decided to just make a note of it and see where it went. And next thing I know, last year I'm publishing a book by that name, because my whole journey has been is relatable to courage, confidence and connections, and I can relate pretty much my whole life on those three things.

Speaker 1: 10:03

I love that. So you're now coaching. You've gone from to, so you're now coaching. You've gone from to. Now you're published author, which is fantastic. Congratulations. I know how that journey works. I don't know how scary it can be. Like, oh my god, people are gonna read this. Oh no. So I completely understand that. What do you? What is the aim of the book? What do you hope people are going to get from this?

Speaker 2: 10:33

Encouragement, which has the word courage in it, of course, to be encouraged that if they're in a bad situation, there is light on the other side, or if they are looking to make life changes, that there may be some guidance in there. So what I wanted to do for people is help embolden them in their life, to get that courage, to build their confidence in who they are and what they do. I tell stories a lot. I'm a storyteller and a lot of my blogs are stories or they're based on music that I really like or movies. I teach life lessons in my work to help people. It's like a path. My book can provide a path for people and you can choose. If you don't want to go sequentially, you can look at a topic and simply go to that page and say, okay, this applies to me right now, so read that particular one. But I want people to be encouraged to follow their own path. But even though we're following our own, we can learn from somebody else's.

Speaker 1: 11:39

That's great advice for anybody who's listening to this now going. I don't want to follow that. That's a model I don't like. Follow your own path, but you can just use a tool like the Courage Conference and Connections Journal to actually do it. You obviously coach. Who are you coaching? What does this person look like? Who are you after? Go on, put your bait in the pond. Let's have a look, come on.

Speaker 2: 11:59

Okay, I work with small to medium-sized businesses and single business owners. Entrepreneurs of all kinds. I've worked with about every industry not every industry, of course, but I've worked with a woman in construction. I've worked with realtors multiple times, mortgage brokers, people in transition from an office job to sales, or people in transition from one job to another, and they hire me to help them through transition times. I've worked with big companies and small. I also utilize.

Speaker 2: 12:37

Probably the most fun thing that people love about what I do is my path elements assessment, and that is a personality type assessment based on earth, water, wind and fire. And the joke is the band earth, wind and fire, but they left water out. So what can I say? But the path elements is an assessment that tells you what your primary and secondary elements are and how they play a part in your life, and it helps me to assess and work best with a client. Let's say they're a fire, I'm water. I'm a real high water with what I do, with who I am. It shows you who you are, not what you do, but it shows you where you fit the best. So if I'm working with a fire, they're results oriented. They want to get it done. They want to get it done. They want to get it done fast, like fire, fast and furious. I work within that to coach them according to their element and I think, like a book let's say Earth a CPA or a bookkeeper would fall definitely in Earth. They are very results oriented because they want to see that bottom line and they want to get it done. So fire and Earth are results oriented. Wind and water are relational and of course that explains a lot about who I am, because I'm very relational.

Speaker 2: 14:01

But with my elemental assessment I'm able to determine the best way to work with teams and help build trust with teams, help improve communication and help people understand on a team, especially what their coworker needs and how they need to be communicated with. There are so many problems with companies cannot keep employees and there's a lot of transition going on, and so in that regard, I can come in with my assessments, find out where the problems are and coach that team according to how to improve their communications with each other. And maybe that somebody's got a person in the wrong position. Maybe they've got an earth person. They've got out in the field trying to sell. Well, that earth personality is not going to be comfortable with that, or they've got a wind or water sitting behind a desk trying to do the calculations and they're going stir crazy, yeah. So in looking at this assessment, I'm able to help a team and the leadership teams are really good at this Determine do you have the right people in the right position and how can you improve your communications.

Speaker 2: 15:16

And I love the trust building effect with this particular assessment. I love that.

Speaker 1: 15:22

So, people, how can I get a hold of you? Obviously the website you're on LinkedIn. Have anywhere else you wish to just say about where they can get a hold of you, where they can get the book, where they can get the assessment, and how do you want people to find you?

Speaker 2: 15:37

Janisdebocom, which is here, and you can go there. You can purchase my book there. You have to scroll down a little bit, but there is a free ebook if you want to get that first, or just go ahead and order the journal. If you order directly from my website, you'll get it from me and it will be signed to you. So you'll have an author's copy, and I always write a nice little note to everybody that buys one from me directly, and it is on amazon.

Speaker 2: 16:05

We authors like to self-promote a little bit more, so go to my website and buy that. There it's. It is an awesome book, even if I say so myself. I've had a lot of good comments on that, so you can. Also, if you're interested in being on a podcast, baz, your turn's coming up soon in the fall, I always welcome people to contact me to be a guest and as far as coaching on everything, if you don't know what you want, how you want to work with me, you can just send me an email for free consultation. I'll sit down with anybody for a half hour 45 minutes and determine if we're a good fit, if what I have to offer can be helpful. My website has a lot of information on it and you can reach me through that for everything I love that, janice, thank you very much for your time today.

Speaker 1: 16:57

You love your energy. It's been a pleasure speaking with you.

Speaker 2: 17:02

It's been a pleasure on my end too. Thank you, Baz You're welcome To everybody listening.

Speaker 1: 17:07

Thank you very much. You make the show, not me. I'm just part of the furniture. I just turn up and ask the questions and I don't even look pretty on the camera. So whatever you're here for, I hope you got what you feel you came here for. Please share the episode. Please inspire someone else's life. This is rice from the ashes. I'm baz porter. It's a pleasure and it's an honor. Have a great day on purpose. See you soon.