House of JerMar

Women in C-Suite: Thriving in Male-Dominated Industries with Heart-Centered Leadership

• Jeanne Collins • Season 1 • Episode 52

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Have you ever felt that subtle nudge from your intuition telling you to completely change direction? That's exactly what happened to Adele DiMarco when she realized her carefully planned medical career wasn't aligned with her true purpose.

Adele shares the pivotal moment when, while reading a book by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, she experienced full-body clarity that medical school wasn't her path. "I literally felt like I set myself free," she reveals, describing the physical sensation of liberation that came with honoring her intuition. This moment launched her on an unexpected journey toward becoming a "mastery level facilitator" and founder of Yinovate Consulting and Coaching.

What makes Adele's approach unique is her ability to integrate seemingly separate domains - strategic planning, culture strengthening, team building, and leadership development - into one cohesive process she calls a "whole systems up level." Working primarily with C-suite executives, particularly women in male-dominated industries, she creates spaces where authentic leadership can flourish.

Perhaps most compelling is Adele's perspective on the workplace as "this highly underutilized learning community for personal transformation." Rather than compartmentalizing professional development and personal growth, she sees our careers as powerful vehicles for evolving as whole human beings.

Adele's Book Recommendations: The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business: Patrick Lencioni 

Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh

More about Adele:

YINOVATE
Adele DiMarco is the founder and chief consultant of Yinovate Consulting & Coaching. With a deep passion for leadership development and group facilitation, she specializes in helping executive teams operate at a higher level by making communication and implementation smoother and easier. Her work fosters a ripple effect throughout organizations, enhancing morale, engagement, and profitability on multiple levels.

Adele has collaborated with hundreds of organizations and coached more than 1,000 leaders across diverse industries—including start-up social enterprises, statewide healthcare systems, publicly traded multibillion-dollar corporations, and multi-generational family-owned businesses.
www.yinovate.com

House of JerMar: houseofjermar.com.
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YouTube Channel: youtube.com/@Houseofjermar
Read Jeanne's Book: Two Feet In: Lessons From and All-In Life
WELCOME TO OUR HOUSE!

Speaker 1:

My artistry, if you will, as a consultant is I am I refer to myself as a mastery level facilitator and so essentially what I've honed over the years. I work with the C-suite, so the CEO, cfo, whoever and you know, not everybody uses those terms but basically the people at the top who are running the show right, and I, through a series of both, asking them questions, I take them through what I call a whole systems up level, the whole of the company, and basically my process integrates or combines strategic planning, culture strengthening, team building and leadership development into one process that I lead people through. So it's very efficient.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the House of Jermar podcast, where wellness starts within. The House of Jermar is a lifestyle brand, empowering women to live all in through interior design and personal wellness. We are a destination for women ready to reimagine what is possible in their homes and lives and then create it. We are honored to have you join us on our mission to empower 1 million women to live all in. I am your host, jean Collins, and I invite you to become inspired by this week's guest.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the House of Jomar podcast, where wellness starts with it. I'm your host, jean Collins, and today we have Adele DeMarco. I am so excited to talk to her. I have never met her before. Actually, I take that back. We tried to record this once, about six weeks ago without my producer, and we were completely unsuccessful as two very intelligent entrepreneurs trying to figure out how to record and make it so that I could hear her and she could hear me, and it didn't work. So here we are again. So, adele, I appreciate you giving it a second try. And, before I forget, your firm is called Yinovate Consulting and Coaching, so I am really excited to talk about your journey, wellness, what Yinovate even means, and I thank you for a willingness to come on a second time. So welcome to the show.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, my pleasure, it's an honor and a delight. I love what your show is about and I am always delighted to talk about women and entrepreneurship and career for every stage.

Speaker 2:

Every stage right, exactly Because it can be constantly evolving, and I love that. You're also, you know, you're into wellness, you're into a little woo and spirituality, right. And so you and I connected on our false first try at this and both of us were like it's just the universe, we're just not meant to do this today, it's just because today's just not our day. But here we are, today is finally our day. So I also love getting connected to like-minded women who kind of believe in the power of the universe and spirituality. So we'll touch on that too.

Speaker 1:

Great.

Speaker 2:

Let's start with your career journey, because you're now an entrepreneur, you have a consulting and coaching firm, which is not where you started. So I love to share people's journeys so that people can recognize that how we got to where we are today is not linear. There are lots of paths, there are lots of steps. It's all linear. There are lots of paths, there are lots of steps. It's all a process. It's all evolving and to help inspire women that there are a lot of things that are possible in life if you just open yourself up. So if you wouldn't mind sharing a little about your journey, how you got to being the founder of Yinovate, yeah, thank you, and it was definitely.

Speaker 1:

My journey was definitely not a straight path. I feel like it had lots of loop-de-loops and sidebars, and mainly through my 20s. So I'll tell the journey from two different angles. One, what inspired me at a younger age to do what I'm doing now, but it didn't cause me to immediately follow that. So I think that's a really important point for people to listen to is to notice. It's kind of like collecting the nuggets along the way of things that impact you.

Speaker 1:

So, starting out, when I was in high school, my mom went through a divorce and went back to work and she loved her job, she loved what she did. She was in nursing but she would come home and she loved taking care of the patients and she would come home and she would complain about the management right, about her bosses, and she was like you know, I don't understand how they just don't know what's best for the patients and what really supports us as the employees to best take care of our patients, right, in other words, to do our jobs the best that we're able and, for whatever reason that just stuck with me, you know, filed it away. Life went on. I was still on that at that point in time, because my mom was in healthcare, speaking of healing and wellness, I thought I was going to med school. I was a biology major.

Speaker 1:

I then because I'm a little bit, you know, I don't always color inside the lines I also became very drawn, after getting a degree in biology, into the field of anthropology, of looking at cultures. I was fascinated by cultures around the world and so initially I was in this MD PhD program right, super rigorous, super nerd, and I actually it was when I was reading. This was started my spiritual journey. I was reading a book. I know you love books, I do so. This is one book. I have two to mention, but this was the one that first impacted me, and it was. I was in my twenties still, I was in grad, I was in a PhD program. So I was kind of doing the MD PhD thing one at a time, and I was reading a book by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, and I was reading a book by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, thich Nhat Hanh.

Speaker 1:

Some of you may know him and the book was called being Peace P-E-A-C-E, B-E-I-G Peace and I can't tell you exactly what I read at the time, but I just remember I had this full body experience of knowing that I could completely put down going to medical school. It wasn't aligned with who I am Wow. Now, mind you, I was already in a PhD program at this point, but the moment I made that decision, I remember right where I was sitting and this clarity just came over me and it I literally felt like I set myself free, Like I literally jumped off, jumped off of my bed that I was reading it on and I like I mean I didn't do a cartwheel in that room, but I kind of did an energetic, you know, like the happy dance, because it wasn't that I knew what I was going to do, but I just knew I wasn't going to do that.

Speaker 1:

Like I got off that bus, wow yeah.

Speaker 2:

I love the power of that because I talk to people all the time about learning to trust their intuition and learning to be able to tap into their intuition and know when their intuition is speaking to them, and it's a it's an incredible skill to have. It's actually amazing at such a young age that you did have that. That's a gift.

Speaker 1:

I do. I feel very blessed, like in hindsight. I did cultivate my real I call it my relationship with the divine and, yes, I coach and guide on intuition. And I will tell you, after intentionally working with my own intuition and doing my best to talk about it and teach it with other people, I have come to realize it's not like a flip a switch that you just flip and all of a sudden you can work with your intuition. It's deep, it's personal. It's not like a flip a switch that you just flip and all of a sudden you can work with your intuition. It's deep, it's personal, it's unique to each individual. It is the voice from within, but the way in which that speaks to us varies so much from person to person. Even again, in that moment, my intuition didn't tell me what I was going to do. It just really clearly told me this was not it. This is not it, this is not your divine destiny.

Speaker 2:

And what I was going to do. It just really clearly told me this was not it, this is not it, this is not your divine destiny.

Speaker 1:

And what I realized. I just I'll do my best to stay focused on one line because I integrate so many things, but a little bit of what I've been studying in the past year or two is human design. I actually I'm a bigger devotee to a body of knowledge that grew out of that called the gene keys, but that's a sidebar. But what I've come to appreciate in human design is part of what that premise is, is waking up to your own true self, and in that you do it by recognizing the ways in which you were conditioned right Away from your authentic true self. And in that moment, with the story I shared of reading the book being Peace, what I realized my mom's coming into the story again is that was my mom's dream.

Speaker 2:

Oh, fascinating yes.

Speaker 1:

And because I was like, how is it that I knew when I was five years old, I was going to go to medical school? Well, because she was a nurse and she and she also really from a place of love she wanted to empower me. It was the seventies, and what were the two things like? If you, as a woman, right, we just emerged out of the three career choices let's see secretary, nurse and teacher. And then I had added in, you can be a doctor or a lawyer, right, like those were the career paths of empowerment. Of course, yes, there's truth to that right. Definitely greater earning power. I loved science, I love biology, I love studying. You know life. So anyhow, yeah, that was that moment as I woke up and I was like this is not my dream. So then, what.

Speaker 1:

So then, what right? So then the work up and I was like this is not my dream. So then, what? So then, what right? So then the work starts and I feel like I've still been on that path in many ways.

Speaker 1:

So I was very blessed At the time. I had just started a job working for this is a big term an academic medical center. What does that mean? I worked in a hospital that was connected to a medical school and I worked for the children's hospital. I was so blessed I was hired to start this very unique pediatric center this was in the 90s that was specializing in the care for children who were being internationally adopted at the time. Wow, yeah, that was a very, very unique experience. Yeah, fascinating. I learned so much about early childhood development. Yeah, it really became a spiritual awakening for me as well, because it really deepened my awareness to how much our early childhood affects us for the rest of our lives. So, because I worked I mentioned that academic medical center thing.

Speaker 1:

I actually was an employee of the med school and that meant I got to take classes for free. So I was running this medical clinic, managing five pediatricians and consulting with families, and it was. I got to go to Russia and visit orphanages. I was in this management role and I was like I don't know if I know, even know what I'm doing. I was kind of the doctor who hired me was always traveling around the world. She was like always being called in by the International Red Cross to work for like help with refugee crises, and she was a very inspiring woman, definitely ahead of her time. But anyhow, I was kind of left on my own so I took some classes in the business school because I could, for free. And the business school that I went to was also very unique. It was Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, ohio. It had a very strong emphasis on the field of organizational behavior, which I had no idea was even a thing. Right.

Speaker 1:

But I literally it felt like the clouds parted and you know that image, for like the sunlight just shines through the clouds on some sort of path. I mean, I know that I totally nerded out. I was like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to do anthropology even which I had already had a bit of a background in anthropology and my focus was actually on it was called medical anthropology, but it was all on health and and healing and wellness through the lens of culture. Yeah, I was like this was awesome. I ended up doing an MBA program and that, because organizational behavior was so much a part of the whole of this program, they had us as students take pretty rigorous, basically, career assessments to get a sense of, like, what are your strengths? It just kept telling me to be a consultant. It kept saying you're meant to be a consultant. I didn't even really know what that meant.

Speaker 2:

Like that's broad, that's broad, thank you, thank you, universe. That's very broad.

Speaker 1:

So I kind of filed that away. But still, I mean I interviewed for McKinsey and those you know big firms, but I was like at that I'm sure I don't know if it's still this way, but that in time I mean it was very lucrative. You know, they started you at great salaries but you basically like got on an airplane on Monday and lived in hotels till Friday and I was just recently married and I was like I'm going to be divorced in a year, right, I just I was still working at the children's hospital and I just kept. I just kept following my interest. I was really interested, through my graduate school work too, in again and how I'm still always interested in women and children.

Speaker 1:

That was my focus when I was in the MD. Phd focus was always interested in women and children. That was my focus when I was in the MD. Phd focus was how to support women and children, because I still to this day, 25, really almost 30 years later I still believe that if we really want to change the world for the better, intervening with women and children is the most powerful intervention point, the most powerful leverage point.

Speaker 2:

Couldn't agree more yeah, and women as entrepreneurs.

Speaker 1:

And I'll share a quick little anecdote. When I was in that graduate program in medical anthropology right so it's such a esoteric term, I don't even know if they still refer to that. It's a very 80s term. But anyhow, I was in a class and this actually really impacted me.

Speaker 1:

This man it was a lecture series and this man who had formerly worked for the World Health Organization he was a physician, he was the head of the public hospital in Cleveland at the time and it was really a lecture series about careers. And so many of the people who attend this lecture series were nurses and doctors in training. And he came in and he said to everyone there, all of us in the audience he said so why do you want this career as a, you know, as a nurse or a doctor or a nurse practitioner? And people answered you know, kind of like, I want to help heal, I want to, you know, make the world healthier. And he was like well, I'll tell you right now.

Speaker 1:

And he's like if you really want to help the world get healthier, you're in the wrong career, oh my goodness. And he shared data. Wow, yeah, he shared data from the World Health Organization. And he said, findings have shown, when we do research in developing countries and other parts of the world that were parts that aren't yet developed, that and, in particular, places that have really high morbidity and mortality rates right, a lot of sick people and high death rates that if you really want to make the biggest difference to help everyone heal, the number one thing you can do is educate and empower the women.

Speaker 2:

The number one thing you can do is educate and empower the women.

Speaker 1:

Yep, love it. Research has shown and now this was in the 90s, so I think research, like with Grameen Bank and other micro lending programs, have grown since that time. But he said we have found that if you give women access to education and access to resources by basically becoming their own entrepreneurs, the whole boat rises Right Sure.

Speaker 2:

The impact is broad.

Speaker 1:

Right and I think that I don't have a memory of like that, if that was before or after that aha moment I shared with reading the being peace book. But I think it just started to file away Right, and I think that's really important for listeners to hear of. Like, sometimes it's just little pieces of information that we file away. File away it kind of builds up right, instead of just like one quick switch, like okay, now I'm doing this.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Right, there were things that happened along the way before you had your aha moment that prepared you and built up the ability to be aware and to have the aha moment.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't just happen like that Right In the moment, it feels like it just happened, but we're not aware of the bank account, the internal bank account, so to speak, of data points that built the case.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, it's work that's potentially been happening over years.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, just to honor that and have reverence and have patience, you know, because I do believe that every single one of us is exactly where we are meant to be, and I and I. It doesn't mean that if we're going through a hard time we're supposed to just kind of like, eat it and suffer, but to know that even those times like I'm personally in another, you know, tumultuous phase of life. But after being such a student of I call it now universal laws because I work in the business community, so a big part of what I do is like how can I translate these terms that are considered kind of woo-woo into things that are palatable to people in the business world, right?

Speaker 2:

Correct Right. You don't want to turn them all off and scare everybody.

Speaker 1:

Exactly and, at the same time, I really want them to benefit the value of some of these concepts, right? Yes, so that's kind of. One of my personal charges is making the information around personal growth and universal laws as accessible to as wide of an audience as possible, and that's part of what I'm doing with Innovate.

Speaker 2:

Oh, which is so great. So talk to me about Innovate the name. How did you start that? What made you decide to take that plunge and get in that direction?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you. So Innovate it's like Yin Yang or Yin Yang, right, yeah, innovate means to innovate from the inside out Ooh, I like that and specifically through your heart and from your soul, and it's a concept. So the name of my business is both the name of my business and it's the term for my process to innovate, so I say it's a noun and a verb Right Okay, which is good.

Speaker 1:

And it applies and I'll talk a little bit more about what I do and how I got there. It applies on like I work with organizations. That's really my jam. Going back to that story about my mom I shared in the beginning is I'm really, really passionate about the workplace. It's this huge opportunity for evolution. I believe that the workplace is this highly underutilized, underleveraged learning community for really personal transformation through our professional work.

Speaker 2:

Sure Well, it's where we spend most of our time and the reality is is most of the country has a W-2 organizational job. Not everybody is an entrepreneur like we are.

Speaker 1:

That's actually the exception, not the norm, right right and, having coached entrepreneurs myself, one of the greatest challenges and I know I struggled with this as well is when you're on that path of awakening, it can become really lonely, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Oh sure.

Speaker 1:

I mean, that is the most common struggle when people first start out, especially if you're an entrepreneur right, because you're already kind of, you know, doing a solo show as a woman, right, yes, unless you know you already have a big company. But even then, if you're at the top, it's still kind of lonely, very lonely, yeah. So I'm like, hey, you know, you've at the workplace, you've got this built in community of support With other people who are on this, on a similar path, if you bring some of these concepts into the workplace. So really, I mean, I've coached, I've consulted, I've done more consulting than coaching, and the simple way I discern between those two is consulting is where you're working with the organization and coaching is with the individuals. And then I also coach groups and teams, which is kind of hybrid of the two. So the way I got here I shared.

Speaker 1:

When I was in business school I discovered organizational behavior. I was on the, I was going to go work for one of the big firms and one of the other things that happened to me that totally relates to career is I was now in my late twenties. I had a lot of girlfriends who had followed that path that my mom had told me right, become a doctor or a lawyer. I had a lot of girlfriends who were doctors and lawyers, right, and we were all around the same age late twenties, early thirties and you know, we were kind of told that this was a career of, of empowerment, and that perhaps what that meant was we got to call our own shots. And what I saw happening is my girlfriends who were doctors and lawyers once they got married and then when they started to have their own children, once they got married and then when they started to have their own children, they had no freedom Right.

Speaker 1:

They were left with choosing between do I put my child in 60 hours a week of daycare Right, or do I get off my career track? Yeah, and having just worked in early childhood development and knowing how important and I am not sharing this with any judgment for women who need to use daycare, maybe when I was younger I would have been a little more, whatever judging on my soapbox, but everyone's journey is their journey and we do what we need to do. Yes, and there's no way we can deny it's not optimal.

Speaker 2:

No, because it's impossible. It's impossible.

Speaker 1:

If you're thinking you're going to have perfection and do all of those things at the peak of your ability to perform in those different roles, it's just setting yourself up for failure, because it's not possible our nation, like so many issues, like I now connect the dots I haven't done this formally yet, so this is my first time I'm saying it on a media platform is there is a connection between our early childhood experience and the way we show up in the workplace? Sure, of course, right. And what it means to be a air quotes a leader and I say air quotes because to me a leader is about the way you behave, not necessarily a position or title or role.

Speaker 1:

I agree.

Speaker 2:

Right. That's why leading through the heart it's right on your website leading through the heart is so important. It's like if you're leading with your heart, you end up with much more productive teams because they feel that you have empathy and they feel there's a connection of vulnerability and then encourages the people on the team to have that as well. And if you treat people like they're humans, not just a number on an org chart, it makes a big difference in people's performance and their satisfaction with their careers Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

All around, check, check, check everything you just said. Right, and people hear the heart and they think the heart is soft and I'm jumping around a little bit, but anyhow, when I back to being in my late twenties, early thirties girlfriends, witnessing them as doctors and lawyers like really having to make this difficult decision of choosing between, basically, mom or career, yeah, and it was heartbreaking and so and I was also still finishing up my MBA at the time so I did an MBA with this big heavy focus on organizational behavior and I kept going to the professors and like, can you show me the case studies with the companies that have won like who are the like five, like the big winners of work-life balance that support work-life balance? Now, again, this was the late nineties, early two thousands. And you know they would show me cases of of companies where the five star award winners had on-site daycare. You know, like that, and I was like, ooh, that's as good as it gets, man.

Speaker 1:

Helpful However those companies for on-sitecare that makes people's lives so much easier. But I was like I don't know if I can do this, and so in that moment is when I decided I needed to become an entrepreneur. So it really kind of happened by default more so than by it ended up becoming by design, but the choice at the time felt like a default. It wasn't like I woke up and I was like I'm going to be an entrepreneur.

Speaker 2:

You know it was like. This is what.

Speaker 1:

I want. I knew I really wanted to be a great mom based on my own challenging childhood. I wanted to break patterns. I wanted to break generational patterns, yes, and I was like, if I'm going to have a child, I want to give it my best. And I also knew, from growing up in the 80s and living through as a kid to divorces, I needed to be able to support myself, no matter what. That was the one thing my mom always told me and she kind of told me and I witnessed what happened because she didn't do what she was telling me to do and she just said you have to be economically independent.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and I think that is the most important message for women today. The best that you're able you, I mean, it's been the most empowering thing for me is my own economic independence Of course, it's incredibly empowering.

Speaker 2:

And then it helps because there's fear along the way, with so many different choices in life and and let's be honest, be honest everyone has fear. Entrepreneurs have even a larger amount of fear than most, and so it's not that we don't have it, it's how do you deal with that fear, and recognizing that you have economic independence, or recognizing that you have an understanding of how to financially support yourself and an understanding of how to financially run a business, is an incredible skill that takes some of that fear away.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there's so many layers to being an entrepreneur. Oh, I continue the longer I'm in it. I mean I've I've technically been an entrepreneur since 2005,. But the first seven years I was working with another woman who was 15 years my senior, and that was another divine intervention, speaking of how I got to innovate, right To innovate. So I realized I had to become an entrepreneur. And even at that point I know the inflection point, right I still was like what am I going to do? Right?

Speaker 2:

I know that's what I need to do, but what exactly? Right, what am I going to do?

Speaker 1:

I just knew I needed the freedom and the flexibility to call my own shots, to be the mom I wanted to be and to be the woman I wanted to be. Sure Now flashpoint sidebar I'm also really into astrology and just just more recently, last year, I had my Vedic chart done and the man who did my chart he told me about what. He was like oh, you could have never worked for anyone else. And I was like oh, I guess it was kind of in the stars. It was there you go.

Speaker 1:

You know and even the few jobs that I had. I was left completely on my own. He was like that was the only way you could be successful, because you're just so determined, and that was really an empowering moment for me personally, but also on a big picture, thinking about entrepreneurship, I was like you know, not everybody is cut out for it.

Speaker 2:

No, no, not at all. Not at all. This isn't for everybody and there's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 1:

Right and there's nothing wrong with like I mean, and I think that's you know. I know this is a sidebar to the question, but it's such an important point about right now. We are going through massive change on Earth right now.

Speaker 2:

no-transcript, janine what does that mean to you? You're pointing to the tip of your finger for those who can't see this right. Your finger's out and you're pointing to the tip of your finger, and that is where our fingerprints are. Ah, fascinating. Okay, that is where our fingerprints are when we hear the word fingerprint.

Speaker 1:

What does that bring up for you? What does that?

Speaker 2:

evoke. That's your own identity, that's your uniqueness to you Completely unique.

Speaker 1:

And you know what? If you even ask a fifth grader that they would answer it the way you did? Right, we're unique. You're all different. Yes, we all know this, but very few of us and I, I'm myself included really comprehend the depth of what that means. Sure, we are completely unique, completely down to our DNA. Even identical twins, there are energetic differences. Yes, of course, and that is this journey at this point in time is to really wake up to that uniqueness of who we are Right.

Speaker 2:

Like you're talking about the uniqueness of who, you are, waking up to it and embracing it as a positive.

Speaker 1:

And cultivating, going back even to the workplace, cultivating an environment where discovering that uniqueness is nurtured.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, where discovering?

Speaker 1:

that uniqueness is nurtured and honored from some type of organizational design, which is part of what I touch on. So, yeah. So back to I'm like, okay, I'm going to be an entrepreneur Now what I still don't know Right, I'm kind of remembering I took those career assessments that told me, you know, be a consultant. But I I mean, I just went through grad school and so I got a job for a hot minute, but that didn't work out, of course not, but it was really cool. I got this really cool job down in Charleston, south Carolina, working for a green real estate developer who was integrating environmental preservation and social.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so that was a cool little sidebar in that phase of like, what am I going to do? Right, I'm standing in Starbucks. One day this is how the universe is speaking to us when we're paying attention I'm standing in line at a Starbucks and I look over and on a coffee table. There there was a magazine and on the cover it said the three secrets to success, the three top success secrets for entrepreneurs, and I was like, oh, you know?

Speaker 2:

message from the universe. What is this?

Speaker 1:

So I flipped through it. I opened to the article and I'm like I don't want to read the article. I'm like where's the text box that has the top three secrets, right, just where's the cheat sheet. And well, what would you guess was the? According to this article, right, it was a local business publication in Cleveland. What would you guess? The number one success factor they listed was for entrepreneurs.

Speaker 2:

I would say commitment drive, resourcefulness flexible. Those were probably in the top 10 because You're like, yeah, those weren't the top three though, so share the top three. I don't even know.

Speaker 1:

Here's the thing I'll just own up. I don't even remember two and three.

Speaker 2:

I just remember the top one.

Speaker 1:

That's great. Which is what? What they say is the top one work for someone else first oh interesting. Okay, ramp you up the learning curve. So again, I call it bread crumb from the universe. I'm like I don't know what I'm doing yet, but I know I'm supposed to work with someone else first to help me. Right Makes sense.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

We have that learning curve, same same, yes, yes. So I ended up working with a woman at Charleston, moved there, didn't last. It was like two years stint, great opportunity, love, the beautiful ocean. Charleston's a great town in many, many ways was was not a vibrational match, for for me, I'll just say in terms of my mindset and everything. Anyhow, I worked for another woman who was what was doing, what I was interested in organizational behavior. She was an entrepreneur. I worked with her for seven years, almost to the day, and then after that I launched on my own, having really had the blessing of working with her. She had had a company before an architecture firm, a corporate interiors architecture firm, and she knew how to be a rainmaker, she knew how to bring in six-figure contracts and so really just being around her and that, I think, really helped me learn more about, because you've got to know how to sell right, of course.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, it's a requirement and I learned that. I learned how to write proposals. I learned kind of the artistry of what I still do now. And then I launched on my own in the very end of 2011. I'm a numerology junkie. I wanted to launch my business on November 11th, 2011. 11, 11, 11.

Speaker 2:

Love. I'm a huge angel number person 11,. 11 is my number, yep.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's awesome. And here's another little like story about. You don't have to have it all figured out. I was like praying and meditating what's the name of my business? What's the name of my business? No answer, but I was like determined I'm going to file this business on 11-11-11. So I just came up with a placeholder name. Yeah, it was Blank Canvas by Design.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 1:

And then a few months later I kept kind of, you know, asking the universe like what's the name of my business? I was working out and it just dropped in.

Speaker 2:

Isn't it amazing yeah.

Speaker 1:

And I really have to say like again, following the mystery, I loved the name, but I still wasn't 100% clear on what it meant. Right, it took me time to kind of just dive in and start swimming around with.

Speaker 2:

What does it mean to innovate and, of course, from a place of integrity, to live it myself and to create a business platform that you can clearly articulate to someone who's going to be buying it as well. There is that whole part of this equation, especially when you're trying to sell services consulting services to organizations that aren't as woo and aren't as spiritual, and the narrative that you have about what you're doing is really important, because you have to resonate with them and they're functioning at a very different vibration corporately than you're going to be functioning at.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. You named it, sister, and I will tell you it was a struggle. First time Now I had an advantage that I so I was in Cleveland, ohio, living there, northeast Ohio. I cut my teeth as an entrepreneur there, very, very grateful. I consulted with all kinds of sectors. I did a lot of nonprofit work. There's a ton of nonprofits in Northeast Ohio that are funded by a huge foundation funding community and there's also what organizational behavior it's also called organizational development is a known thing in that business ecosystem and that business geography. There are two PhD programs in it, like people know it.

Speaker 1:

I was responding to requests for proposals and competing against other people who did the same thing that I did so, and I didn't bring the woo until much later. I was still using concepts that I had learned and even though there was kind of a woo behind, just because I knew it was a lot about energy and relationships, then I didn't bring the woo until the past seven years. Interestingly, however, in the past three years I've moved to Southern California, nice, yeah, I live in Orange County now in Laguna Beach, beautiful.

Speaker 2:

The sun, yes, the energy, the sun being outdoors, it's good for the soul.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, after living around the Great Lakes which love all that fresh water, the energy, the sun, being outdoors it's good for the soul. Yeah, after living around the Great Lakes, which love all that fresh water, I love my trees, they're my people I'm like I just can't do eight months of no sunshine anymore. Yeah, I'm with you, I totally hear you, and I finally realized that my own well-being speaking of wellness was paramount and I have always had a strong sense of purpose and calling that if I really was going to serve the world, I had to put myself first, and that was not easy and I still am waking up to that it's work, making yourself a priority and a commitment first in your life and recognizing that's not selfish, but that's what's going to put you in the greatest position to serve and to serve others and to be able to be the best you can be for others.

Speaker 2:

It definitely takes time to learn how to how to do that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and we say it, and I've said it for 10 or 15 years and living it. Oh my God, it's totally different. I mean it mean it unfolded my marriage of 20 years. It ended because I had put my own needs first and stand there and being concerned about being thought of as selfish and self-centered. It's hard, but you have to walk through that fire?

Speaker 2:

You do and I bet you have found. Are you now attracting more like-minded people into your life now that you've done that, who can be there to support you at this new level that you're at?

Speaker 1:

Absolutely my new. I have mom friends out here in Laguna Beach who have walked through very similar journeys. You know different but divorced single. You know single moms and we're you know many of them entrepreneurs, because Orange County is very entrepreneurial. It's a very different career and business environment where I was in Northeast Ohio and again, they're just different, right, yes, right, northeast Ohio was very much about you get a job. You go to college, you get a job, you have a career. You kind of I'm saying this with respect and dignity you kind of keep your head down and just do your job. Yeah, sure, and you'd be grateful for a great salary. You go to Florida for a week in spring break. You take a family vacation in summertime.

Speaker 2:

And rinse and repeat, and you do that again next year.

Speaker 1:

Dreaming. That's irresponsible, right? Yep, yeah, so I always kind of resonated with the west coast mindset. That is a more you know. I mean, our business economy comes from the west coast, right from Seattle to San Diego and everything in between. There's a lot of innovation that comes from this part of the country and that comes from a mindset. So even here in Orange County there's a lot of entrepreneurialism. Everything here is much younger, right? I was used to having clients. My top client back in Northeast Ohio was a 73-year-old family third-generation family business.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

You know. So here it's very different. You know there's tons of money flowing through here, lots of entrepreneurial spirit, lots of people who have started companies, sold companies. You know they're living on the $10 million that they sold their company for Right and they're thinking about maybe doing another one. You know it's so different.

Speaker 1:

So different here, same country, such a different culture, and not many people have heard of what I do. Now, all of a sudden, I'm like, okay, I need to. It's a whole new opportunity as an entrepreneur to share my business case and to describe what I do. So it is starting over. You know, we're just never done right. Right, you're evolving, we're evolving, you're evolving.

Speaker 2:

We're evolving.

Speaker 1:

You're evolving. So now I mean I'm now single, I'm kind of I'm still doing Yinovate, but the beautiful thing is it's really inviting me to become even more crystal clear on what I offer in my value proposition yes and becoming more distilled with how I describe what I do.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so who's your ideal client?

Speaker 1:

Well, my ideal client-.

Speaker 2:

Today, in this case, today are Because it evolves.

Speaker 1:

Yes, thank you. My ideal client are women in the C-suite level in male-dominated industries.

Speaker 2:

That's not hard to find those.

Speaker 1:

And in particular I would have never guessed this, but it kind of right now, here in Orange County, I'm focusing on the construction industry.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, oh, very male dominated yes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I have just had drawn to me women who are at the very top or close to you know, one step away from the top. They're the only.

Speaker 2:

Yep Sure.

Speaker 1:

And the thing that's so fascinating and the amazing opportunity is one on some level, people know that that woman is the glue that holds the company together. That's kind of a pattern, sure, right, and I've actually I'm working on a keynote for a woman in construction initiative here in orange county and what we were talking about just this week is that the way women lead is different. Right, I'm speaking in large stereotypes.

Speaker 2:

I know there are exceptions to this on both sides 99% of the time. It's very true, yes.

Speaker 1:

We're more collaborative, we're more adaptive, we're inflexible, we are juggling the kids home work, right. Again. There are exceptions to this, but especially if you've made it to that top level, if you're in a director level or above, you're a badass. You're basically a freaking superhero Like where's your cape, where's your costume? Right, yep, right. And so we're talking about these attributes.

Speaker 1:

Right, these capacities are not only holding the company together, but they're really the direction that the business world is going to need to move in or is moving in Correct, it's just, it's the capacities that not just women are bringing, but that companies need to bring more of, and you know every, every business and industry is going to be at their own pace of of recognizing that, right, yeah, so how just to get specific for a minute, and then we're going to be at their own pace of recognizing that Right yeah.

Speaker 2:

So how just to get specific for a minute and then we're going to switch gears. How specifically are you helping your clients? So what way are you specifically helping them? Just so we could give some people some context behind the actual work you do.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, thank you. So what I'm now referring to in this book I don't know if this is the time to mention it I specifically my artistry, if you will, as a consultant, is I am I refer to myself as a mastery level facilitator and so essentially what I've honed over the years, I come in and I'm all about, I'm coming to work with a C-suite, so the CEO, cfo, whoever and you know, not everybody uses those terms but basically the people at the top who are running the show yes, correct, right, yep, and I, through a series of both, asking them questions, I take them through what I call a whole systems up level Okay, the whole of the company. And basically my process integrates or combines strategic planning, culture strengthening, team building and leadership development into one process. Great that I lead people through. So it's very efficient.

Speaker 1:

And I facilitate with a series of questions and frameworks of how you think about the company to have them answer the questions and the act of them answering these questions. One, it helps them become clear, so it generates clarity. And because I'm facilitating which one of the biggest values of having a professional facilitator is, first of all, it allows the person at the top to actually participate and not facilitate. Yes, there's kind of I'm building awareness of to help people understand the value of actually having a facilitator.

Speaker 1:

Yeah sure, right, because facilitation is an art. I mean I did post-graduate training in the skill of group process facilitation.

Speaker 2:

Yes, right, yes, it's a skill for sure.

Speaker 1:

It's important more than ever. One, you need to have a neutral outsider holding space for the conversations. Two, if you're paying those people at the top the salaries that you are, they're bringing the talent that they have. When you're having important decision level conversations, you want them to fully participate and bring their best to the conversation. Right, of course. Right, and as the owner if I mean if it's, you know, a privately held or even if it's an employee owned right, an ESOP you, you want everyone to fully be able to engage. And as the person, if you are, you know, as the CEO you want to be a participant.

Speaker 1:

And it's impossible to be a facilitator and a participant in decision level conversations. It's two completely different skill sets. It's beyond like trying to pat your tummy in your head at the same time. It's another whole level. So I come in as a facilitator to make their lives easier, because I design the conversations kind of assessing conversations with the people at the top to like understand, like what are the issues, where's their clarity, where's their vagueness? Yep, where almost always there's siloing, right, that is a major thing, you know and you've got. Think about it. You've got these very driven type A people who end up at that level. They're not as accustomed to playing ball together.

Speaker 2:

Right At the top.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and they've got their whole area that they're trying to just protect air quote or make sure it's high performing. Yes, so that's really what I do is I have this whole system up leveling and I address three levels then of the company of course, the whole of the organization by working with and through the people at the top. I also have a program that brings in the science of the heart, bringing that tagline back, leading through the heart on kind of training and building team. That comes from the HeartMath Institute, which I am trained. I have multiple certifications through them. And then so that's organizational level, which I just mentioned, and then group or team level, because everything happens via teams today.

Speaker 1:

And then I have a, a, a Yinovate. It uses the hero's journey where I work with individuals, and I do that either one-on-one typically CEOs like to be working, they like one-on-one, but I can also do it in small groups sometime and it's called Yinovate, your hero like it. And it takes the coaching program I lead people through has a curriculum that takes them on the journey home. I call it home to your heart. Yeah, home to who you really are the hero of your own life. It goes back to that fingerprint, bringing out what it is that you are uniquely here to live and give the world, because we all are here for a reason.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, and I love that you're bringing that to organizations and bringing a touch of that into corporate, quite honestly, because it needs that. Corporate needs that, that human component. So that is really interesting. Thank you for sharing. I love that. Okay, so can we switch gears before we run out of time, because I think it's really important to share this. I love for people to understand what wellness means to us personally in our day-to-day lives, because I think it's important. People see some of us as public figures and they're like, oh, my goodness, like how does she have it all together and how is she so connected to that? When the universe speaks, she knows, and she knows what to do and all of those things. So if you wouldn't mind sharing with people you know, what does wellness look like in your life? What are you practicing to be able to be your best and your optimal self?

Speaker 1:

in your life. It's a great question and I love that. That's what your show is about. It's such a service to the world.

Speaker 1:

For me, it all comes back to something we talked about earlier. It all comes back to something we talked about earlier, and that is having a relationship with yourself, and the way in which we talked about that earlier was your intuition, right? Yep, now that's a generic term, your intuition. But what that, to me, what that really is about, is a relationship with yourself. Yeah, and specifically what I teach with the Hero's Journey is the awareness that we actually have two a minimum of two, but on a high big picture level two parts of ourself. We have our higher self and we have our human self, and wellness really starts with cultivating that relationship with your higher self, which comes through the voice of your intuition. And there's a lot underneath that.

Speaker 1:

But I mentioned that first and foremost because, to me, wellness is about you have to know yourself and what really takes care of you. We could get lost in the amount of podcasts and YouTubes. I mean. There's so much information out there of like, do this practice or that practice, or the 5 am wake up, and all of that. I mean one of my spiritual mentors said to me people used to always ask her what's your morning routine? And she said I could tell you it, but it's not going to help you because you need to know your morning routine. Right now we can experiment with things that resonate with us to find, like, if we don't just know it automatically, right, we can go through trial and error. But to really honor and the more we know about ourselves, said another way self-awareness, which is a journey.

Speaker 2:

Sure, of course yes, and recognize it's not a destination, it's a journey, it's a process, it's going to ebb and flow and evolve Right.

Speaker 1:

And then just that framework of like starting with our health, like what takes care of me physically. We know generically like food, diet, hydration drink water movement.

Speaker 1:

But like, what does that mean to me? Do you like to run, do you like to walk? What environment takes care of you? That's something that human design has been really awesome and I want to give a shout out to my human design teacher, jamie Palmer. She's amazing. Jamiepalmercom, I think, is her website. But to really know what takes care of you, what lights you up? For me, I finally was like I love being by the ocean. It nurtures me and it took me years of guilt to move through, guilt of like who am I to think I could live by the ocean. Right, who do I think I am? But it feeds my soul to see blue sky and blue ocean and to hear the sound of those waves. Like that takes care of me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

You know, and yeah, it was a big, bold move and I know that's not something everyone does, but when I was in Ohio, it was walking in the trees and in the forest you know Cleveland has a lot of trees and making time in my calendar for that, or as simple as like taking a hot bath and so on, a very granular I know I'm speaking big picture, but I think it's really like putting it in our calendar right, our calendars are our most powerful tools for transformation. If you, as you're listening, know one to two things that you know take care of you working out, taking a hot salt bath, walking in the woods, sitting and just staring out the window, because we know, generically, that nature takes care of us.

Speaker 1:

We know that for sure scientifically, that nature is regenerative. Being in nature, yes, it is, and doing things that are creative very generically. So what is it that? What kind of nature nurtures you and what type of creative thingy takes care of you?

Speaker 2:

on some level, right, and that doesn't have to be that you're the next you know Picasso either. No, it could be so many other things I have this right here.

Speaker 1:

I keep these little like from Target, these little art books that like, see, these are my little. I mean, it's like almost stick people that I draw or like plants. That's my one of my other oh gardening.

Speaker 2:

Gardening is something that's incredibly creative that people don't really think about, but if you love to garden, playing with being with the dirt and connecting with nature through gardening is an incredibly creative way. Cooking incredibly creative Music, playing an instrument, dancing things that people can easily do without needing stuff. Totally easily get up and dance and how does that make you feel? By moving your body and dancing and listening to music, and that is a form of creativity. I love it.

Speaker 1:

It's your practical things, of your practical life, right, like that is one of the. I remember I had my first spiritual teacher said you know, your, your, your daily life is your spiritual practice. I was like what I was thinking you know you needed to go to an ashram or sit in some special sacred place and it's like, no, like the way I cook my dinner, the way I plan my food, you know I can dance while I'm cooking. You know, put some music on all of that of keep. Because, as moms and as people with careers, on all of that of keep, because as moms and as people with careers, we got to keep it simple.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, and right, it's the little things that you dip into the day. You know that you can drop into your day.

Speaker 1:

That can help you with that and help you connect to you and the last thing I will say on that note and this is the simplest, and I will say it's been the most challenging and I've been mentioning this for 15 years and I'm still living into it myself, kind of, admittedly, becoming a recovering kind of workaholic. I mean, I just work, work, work, work, you know, is throughout the day. To take a three to five minute pause, yeah, and I actually am a big fan of pausing.

Speaker 1:

I, I a. I don't know if it's okay for me to promote something, but I have this app on my phone. Yeah, it's great If you can see it here. It's called the Triple Flame app. I follow this body of awareness called the Gene Keys. This is the Gene Keys. It's the Triple Flame and all it does is you can set it for, like it goes off every three hours and I can set it if it wants a three minute pause, a five minute pause or 10 minute pause, and then it has either silent or guided, and the whole point of that app is just pausing.

Speaker 2:

I love it. That's so great. I love it. Thank you for sharing that. You can absolutely promote that and share that. That's fantastic, thank you. Is that sometimes what people need? They just need to know where do I go, what do I do, all those kinds of things. Okay, so before we run out of time, I love to ask all my guests to recommend a book that has impacted them personally or professionally. We already talked about one in the very beginning, but I know you have more, because I just feel that books change lives, and your story is a complete example and testament to the fact that a book can change a life. So what other book other than being Peace, which I love, would you like to recommend to our audience.

Speaker 1:

Yes Well, my favorite business book that I use to legitimize what I do as a consultant I wish I had it right here to hold up is by Pat Unchione. It's a business book and the title is the Advantage. Oh okay, I like it. The subtitle is why Organiz trumps everything else in business.

Speaker 2:

Oh, so true. Yeah, yeah, so true.

Speaker 1:

And he's brilliant. He's, he's my, he's like, does what I do. But, like you know, he's up in the Bay area. He went to Stanford, he code, he consults all the bigs but he's written a dozen books. Most people know. Sidebar, most people know. The book that he's written that most people know is called the Five Dysfunctions of Teen. If you're in the world, I totally know that book.

Speaker 1:

yes, so this is. He's written lots of them. This is another one, but that book frames the case for what I do. But he says that basically for organizations he differentiates between a company or an organization being smart versus healthy. Yeah, On your topic of wellness, right and health, Sure and smart is like all the things that you learn in business school, like finance, marketing, IT, you know sales and he's like those are great, but then healthy is low politics low turnover, high engagement low politics, low turnover, high engagement and, he says, is that a healthy company will eventually get smarter and smarter because people are talking to each other, they like being together, they're having difficult conversations and working through conflict.

Speaker 1:

But a smart business isn't always healthy.

Speaker 2:

Correct. Very true, whoa, okay, what a beautiful way to end. I thank you so much, adele, for coming on. I will link in the show notes everything about how people can find you, how they can follow you, how they can reach out to you for more information. You are super inspiring with your story, so thank you for being vulnerable, sharing your journey. I love your approach and what you're bringing to organizations and helping women, especially women at the top, because they really need it. So thank you so much for being a guest and I'm excited to stay connected with you. So thank you.

Speaker 1:

I hope you have a beautiful day you too.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much. It has been truly an honor to be your guest and thank you for the amazing work you're doing in the world. Thank you, I appreciate it. All right soon. Bye, thanks, bye for now Bye.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for joining us for another episode of the House of Jermar podcast, where wellness starts within. We appreciate you being a part of our community and hope you felt inspired and motivated by our guest. If you enjoyed this episode, please write us a review and share it with friends. Building our reach on YouTube and Apple Podcasts will help us get closer to our mission to empower 1 million women to live all in. You can also follow us on Instagram at House of Jermar and sign up to be a part of our monthly inspiration newsletter through our website, houseofjermarcom. If you or someone you know would be a good guest on the show, please reach out to us at podcast at houseofjermarcom. If you or someone you know would be a good guest on the show, please reach out to us at podcast at houseofgermarcom. This has been a House of Germar production with your host, jean Collins. Thank you for joining our house.