Stop Waiting For Permission : The question that changes everything w/Mari Wuellner

How many decisions are you postponing because you're waiting for permission?

Permission to change careers. Permission to start the business. Permission to charge what you're worth. Permission to prioritize yourself. Permission to want more.

In this powerful conversation, I sit down with entrepreneur, coach, and founder Mari Wuellner to explore the hidden ways we outsource our lives to the expectations, opinions, and approval of others.

Mari shares her journey from college dropout and single mom to building a successful insurance agency from the ground up, only to discover that external success wasn't the same thing as fulfillment. Through panic attacks, personal growth, entrepreneurship, motherhood, and countless identity shifts, she learned one life-changing truth: no one is coming to hand you permission.

Together, we dive into self-trust, mom guilt, identity, entrepreneurship, and the conditioning that keeps so many women stuck waiting for the "right time," more confidence, or someone else's approval.

Mari also shares the inspiration behind The Crew Life Coaching Collective, a coaching membership designed to make expert coaching more accessible through support in mindset, accountability, wellness, relationships, business, and personal growth.

If you've ever felt like you're waiting for the right moment, more confidence, more credentials, or someone else's approval before taking action, this episode is your reminder that you already have everything you need to make your next move.

About Mari Wuellner

Mari Wuellner is an entrepreneur, coach, real estate investor, and the founder of The Crew Life Coaching Collective. After building a successful insurance agency from the ground up, Mari discovered her true passion was helping people create lives aligned with their values, purpose, and potential.

Today, she helps women stop waiting for permission and start living intentionally through coaching, personal development, and practical tools that build self-trust and confidence.

Connect with Mari:

The Crew - www.thecrew.com

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mariwuellner/

CONNECT WITH KINDYL

https://www.instagram.com/kindylkeeton

https://www.facebook.com/kindylkeeton

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

When I tell this story, so many women, you could almost see the lightness or their eyes start to shine because they're recalling their lived experiences. You do not need the title, you do not need the degree, you do not need permission from external sources. Most of our lived experiences is the resume. It is our magic. It is what we bring.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Change doesn't start with what you do. Change starts with who you are. I'm your host, Kendall Keaton, and this is the Identity Advantage.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

All right. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode. We have a very special guest guest with us today, and we're diving into a theme that I absolutely loved. So much of this show is wrapped around the idea of identity and really trying to become who we really feel like we are at the core. And there's a few things that really keep us stuck, and we're going to dive into one of those things today, which is stop waiting for permission and learn how to give permission to yourself. And here with us today to really lead this conversation and help us, help us with this is Mati Woolner. And Mati is the CEO and founder of the Crew Life Coaching Collective. And Mati's mission is to be a catalyst for others to realize the magic of a life truly lived on purpose, one permission slip at a time. Mati, welcome. I am so excited to have you here today.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

I have been looking forward to this conversation for a while now. So thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Oh, I'm so glad to hear that. So glad. So I would love for you just to tell me kind of in your own words, let us know what it is that you do. What is your work right now?

SPEAKER_02 1:49

So I have multiple, I'm a multi-passionate engine uh entrepreneur. I think we we throw that around a lot. I I have an insurance agency that I started back in 2008, which feels ancient. And uh so I still have that insurance agency. My team runs that. That's amazing. I think that's gonna be a big part of our story today. I launched the Crew Life Coaching Collective recently. We can talk about that. And so I'm the founder and CEO of that. I also am a real estate investor, podcaster, and mom to three, but who are out of the house. So we're getting close to empty nests, which is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Oh, that is crazy. I have a 19, almost 20-year-old, so I feel you. And yeah, so multi-passionate entrepreneur. I think so many of us can feel that in our soul when you say that. Like we identify as that, right? So, and I would love for you to take us back because I do want to talk later about the crew. Um, I think it's a fantastic, I think it's something that would be a fantastic resource for so many people. I think it's brilliant what you've put together there. So I do absolutely want to get to that. Um, I would love for you to take us back, though, a little bit, because when I was kind of learning a little bit about your story, I resonated so strong with you. We were a single mom. I'm a single mom of three kids. I was in college but dropped out, right? And still trying to figure out how to take care of my family. So, really, kind of, if you don't mind, take us back to like Maddie in her 20s. What was that like for you? Where did it all start?

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for letting me tell the story. And as I was, you know, getting to know you a little bit before this, I was like, oh man, we have lived some parallel situations. We have lived a parallel life. This is gonna be such a fun, juicy conversation. And I know so many of your listeners are gonna be nodding along, saying, Me too, me too. So I uh was raised Catholic, went to Gonzaga uh university in Spokane, Washington. And my junior year, I studied abroad in Florence and I got pregnant over there. Uh we were not super wealthy, and so my parents couldn't afford to fly me back early. And so I spent the second semester pregnant in Italy, really sad, really lonely, and um knew that I needed to pick myself up from my bootstraps when I got home. It was kind of a beautiful opportunity to be sad for four months, somewhere where I could just kind of relax in that sadness. And when I came home, I got to work, I started working at a bank and uh bought my first house. Really started living life as a checklist. Really, like, okay, I messed up with getting pregnant, I messed up with dropping out of high school or uh college, I messed up being a single mom. I'm gonna get myself back on track. I'm gonna, I'm gonna listen to the prescription or the to-do list that everybody tells women that we need to follow, and I'm gonna get back on track. So get the good job, buy the house, find the man, get married, have a couple more kids, start my first business. And I was doing a really great job at um following the permission slips or following the rules that society uh had conditioned me to believe was what was going to make me successful, but then worthy. And I was in my insurance agency probably, you know, over a decade ago, and I was hustling. I started that agency from the ground up with no policy holders and made it into a really successful thriving business. And as I was sitting there in the office about 10 years ago, hustling and grinding, being the kind of boss I didn't even recognize in myself, being the kind of human that I didn't even want to hang out with. I was so stressed, I was so grippy, I was living in scarcity mentality. Um, I was living like the bros did. Uh, and I had my first panic attack. I thought I was dying, I thought I was having a heart attack. Um, but as a um girl boss does, I drove myself to the emergency room. And the doctor was wonderful. And he said, Oh, oh, honey. I don't think he holded me, honey. I probably would have had something to say about that. Uh, but what I heard him say was, you, you poor thing, you this is a classic case of a panic attack. And I literally probably said, like, what? No, do you know who I am? I'm following the rules. I'm living life as was told to me. I'm doing everything right. I'm hustling, I'm a girl boss. I don't have time for a panic attack. That's not who I am. And he listened, but also sent me on my way with a prescription and instructions to get to therapy. And so I went to therapy with that same mentality, with a pen and paper, and said, okay, tell me what to do. I'm so good at following instructions. I'm so good at living life on everyone else's terms. You tell me what to do, fix me, and I will be on with life and back to hustling. And my therapist said, Oh, that's just not how it works. And through therapy, I realized that I had been outsourcing my life. I was successful on the outside for sure, but I had been outsourcing what that looked like, what success meant to what was supposed to mean. And it landed me in a really scary situation. And that was the first, one of the first invitations that I've had to ask myself, what do you want to do? How do you want to live your life? And start to grant myself permission to do it differently. So that is a very high-level, um, very quick explanation of how I got to this permission slip. Um, and and I've been granting myself permission in different ways through failure and pivoting and tweaking and trying ever since then.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

So I love what you said about life as a checklist. Like I feel like, and it's almost like, and and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it almost like I got this resonance of it's life as a checklist trying to fix everything that I've already broken. You know what I mean? Like I messed this up and this up. How do I, what is my to-do list to get my shit together?

SPEAKER_03 8:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

So, and life throws this blueprint, right? That we think because this person did it this way and this person did it this way, that this is what I have to do. How do you like how do you give yourself permission to do it differently when no one else has done it like that before?

SPEAKER_02 8:40

Yeah. Um, and I think whenever people ask me questions, I'm always like, oh, you're gonna hate my answer because it's such an active answer. And it's gonna be so um original and different and unique for every single one of us. And so to do things differently for Motty, and um the I'm a I'm a self-proclaimed rebel, I'm gonna constantly do this, is gonna look much different than granting yourself permission to do things differently. And also, um, some women listening might say, like, oh, but that checklist worked for me. Perfect. Perfect. And as long as we're being honest and self-reflective and aware, uh, then we get to, you get to keep doing it that way. You get to keep on down that checklist path, absolutely. Uh, but the first step is gonna be asking, like, am I truly happy? Is this is this the way I want to be living my life? Um, do I feel content? Do I feel proud of myself intrinsically? Or am I really looking externally to for my barometer of success metrics? And it's gonna be your differential, your your you know, how can you do things different is gonna be unique and it's gonna just take time and a lot of self-reflection and self-awareness. It's an unsexy answer.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

No, but it's real, it's real, right? And it is, it is different for everyone. That's the whole point, right? That we're all gonna have different paths to get there and we have to figure that out for ourselves, right? So, and you had said you kind of really started asking yourself, and people at some point, I think it happens where we start asking, is this really what I want? Is this it? Right? Is this like what point was that for you when you really because for so long, I think we go through and we just assume this is it and we don't question it. And then at some point we start questioning if this is actually what we want to be doing. What when was that point for you?

SPEAKER_02 10:44

I think multiple in multiple different um identities, right? We carry different identities. Like in my role as a mother, it was at a different time than as my role as a business owner or an insurance agency owner. It was also different um as a coach that that's been more recent. And so when it comes to um realizing I needed to do insurance differently, the panic attack for sure was the indicator. That was my body saying, enough is enough. You've got to slow down. And so I started um in therapy and I started on this personal development journey and I hired a coach and started learning about myself and learning ways to um answer that question. But really, and and all through that time, I was like name and shining lights. I earned all the awards, all the trips, made all the money, you know, was flying to Paris and Bermuda and all the things. And people knew who I was. They knew who I was because I was successful, and I'm putting that in air quotes because I was successful based on the company's metrics. Okay, fine. COVID hit, and we all went home and my team um moved. They moved from the location and they had babies during that time. And when when the corporate company came and said, okay, it's time to get back to the office, I thought, oh, wait, what? We're we're doing just fine from home. My team is actually happier. Um, they're able to spend time with their families. They've relocated to physical um cities and locations that get them closer to home and and around more sunshine. And I thought, I can't do that. I'm not gonna have them come back. And so that's really when I started doing business differently there, granting myself permission to be in the bottom of the list. My name was no longer in shiny lights. I was no longer and am no longer earning those trips to Bermuda and Paris. And from the outside, it definitely looks like I run a less successful business from the inside. If you were to ask my team, my family, and me, we have never been happier, we've never been more successful, even though we're not at the top of the uh external list.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Yeah, so it almost like sounds like granting yourself permission to be successful without everyone else knowing that. Like that you don't have to appear as that to anyone, right? Um, I hear so many identity shifts in there. Like if COVID didn't force so many of us to change identities, like that is a forced identity shift. Like sometimes your situation forces it on you and you have no option but to conform and to change. And then I feel like there are other times where we have to take initiative to do that ourselves because our situation doesn't change until we change our situation, right? We have to change it. And I, and correct me if I'm if I'm wrong again, but I feel like it sounded like maybe there was one that you had to go from, like the first shift possibly from you're a single mom in college and now I want to start this business, but I don't have any experience.

SPEAKER_03 14:08

What was that like for you?

SPEAKER_01 14:09

How did you have how did you assume that identity?

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Yeah, okay. So, first of all, there's so much magic in being young, in the naivete, right? In the the unearned confidence of like a teenager or a young 20-year-old. And also there's so much beauty in remembering that identity that we used to carry. Over time, we shed that identity. Culture tells us you aren't worthy, you shouldn't be confident. I heard you record a podcast about this about like um confidence versus oh my gosh. Yes, you just you just talked about this. Luckily, we don't really see that back when we're 20. And so I had no business applying to be an insurance agent with this company. I had zero, zero business. They required back then a college degree. They required six figures in the bank so that you can invest in this company. And because I was just so confident and naive, I thought, what the hell? Like, I'll just go for it. And so I walked into that interview and sat at the boardroom as all dudes and in um their suits. And I shared the story that I just shared with you. Like, yep, I got knocked up, dropped out of college, moved home. I've been in banking, I've been doing all I bought my first house, all these things. Here's all, here's my list of accomplishments that a degree um won't show. And they said, uh, okay, well, this is hard. Like building a business is hard. What why should we believe that you can do it? Single mom. Oh my god. I was probably on the in the perfect uh timing of my cycle where I was so emotional. And I started crying in this interview, and not the cute cry, like like emotionally charged, could barely get out the words, and I I responded with something like there's there's no other option. I'm a single mom. Like, of course I'll succeed. I'm the identity that I've taken on is I will be a success no matter what. And I left that interview like, oh, I bombed it so bad. But what those people heard was my lived experiences were more valuable than what I could have learned from that last year of college with that, with that degree. And so many, when I tell this story, so many women, you could almost see the lightness or their eyes start to shine because they're recalling their lived experiences. You do not need the title, you do not need the degree, do you do not need permission from external sources? Most of our lived experiences is the resume. It is our magic. It is what we bring.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Yeah. And I think I love your like the unearned. You said the naivety, like of your 20s, like the unearned confidence. But I really like I speak a lot on evidence. We believe what we have evidence for. And in our 20s, we don't have any evidence to the contrary. Like we have not yet, we still have a little bit of that. I can do anything if I just put my mind to it, until somebody else tells us that we can't. And we don't have that yet in our 20s. The things I have not thought about this in a long time, but I actually started my first business when I was 24. Um, and when I think about the things that I that I did, I thought the audacity that I had to run into that bank at 24 and ask for a loan and then I got it. Like I but I had no doubt in my mind that I could do it. And so the confidence that you went into that interview with, right? With no doubt that you could do it. We somewhere between, you know, 24 and 44, whatever that number is for you, we take on, I don't know, and you can tell me your thoughts on this. I feel like personally for me, I took on the identity that other people gave me. Well, you're this, oh, you're impulsive, or you, you know, you can't do this. And we start to believe what the world says about us instead of believing what we say about us.

unknown 18:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

And it sounds like you grabbed that back. Like what you had in your 20s, you found. I would love for you to kind of talk about that, or maybe even that's what the shift that took you from, you know, state farm into coaching. Um but yeah, talk about that if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Yeah, absolutely. So I also wanna, I think maybe just like a the little caveat is there was no social media when I back then, when I was 24. There, there I wasn't dealing with the external identities uh uh placed on me that we we are now with social media. And I am we I am not immune to it. I mean, I remember during COVID sitting at home scrolling social media and thinking, I I've I gotta start baking sourdough bread.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Or my life is not complete.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

What? I'm not a mom. I can I could barely do HelloFresh. Like, give me a break right now. And so let's also acknowledge that we are under so much more external pressure than we were 20 years ago.

unknown 19:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

So what so quickly, pretty quickly in the insurance agency, I realized after hustling, after grinding, after getting some therapy, um, I realized that selling insurance really wasn't my favorite thing in the whole world to do. Um, but I really loved coaching my team. I love talking to them about sales strategies and products and all things insurance. And I started coaching them on the regular. And as I built some rapport with them and trust with them, they came, they came to those coaching calls and said, Hey, yeah, for sure, let's talk about insurance. But can we save like 10 minutes? Because I'm having this other issue at home. Can we can we dig into that? And so I started coaching my team, yes, on business, but also on like how to pay off a credit card, a nagging credit card debt, or how to have a conversation with a roommate that is coming home at midnight really loud and keeping you up at night, or how to uh set some boundaries with a partner. And coaching days became my favorite days. And so this was about 12, 13 years ago. I would post on social, or I post on Facebook, and I would just say, Monday's my favorite day, coaching day. And I would just do that every Monday. And organically folks started reaching out to me and saying, could you coach me? I want some coaching. I I want to start a business, I want to write a book, I want to set some boundaries, I want to do what you're talking about you do uh with your team uh with you as well. And so I organically launched my coaching practice about a decade ago. And I think the permission slip there that other people did hand me, but that I was open to receiving is um leaning into the gifts, like leaning into what you're naturally good at, and then also allowing yourself to be available to earn money from what you love doing, creating a life around the things that you're passionate about versus, you know, just going through the motions. That was the permission slip that I granted myself back then. And that's how I got into coaching about 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Okay. So two things that I think are so important that you just like talked about. One, I think I'm just curious, I'm super interested and impressed by the fact that you were in insurance. Parents and you're having a meeting with your teams, and they just start asking you questions that you are coaching them through now on their personal life, right? Like, so they must have seen something in you that said she is trustworthy. She's like, did that affect you any? Like, hey, wait, if they're willing to ask me these questions, did that affect any of your confidence? And yeah, I could, I could, I could do this. But that did that affect?

SPEAKER_02 22:24

Um, I knew intrinsically that the happier my team was at home and in life, the more productive they'll be in the office. We women, I mostly work with women, we compartmentalizing is almost impossible. That we are multifaceted. And so if shit is going sideways at home, you're gonna bring it to the office. Like you're just gonna do that. We are we are emotional, we are just real, you know? And so I realized like, oh, if we have this nagging credit card debt, or if like my car keeps breaking down, I want to figure out how to buy a new car, and you have this stress that just feels like insurmountable, you are gonna show up to the office with that stress. And so I do a lot of things selfishly. And what I mean by that is when I get selfish, so many people benefit. I have like live my life that way. And so selfishly, I started coaching them. Like I knew that they'd be better in the office, and then vice versa. And so it did boost my confidence for sure. Uh, but honestly, I wasn't doing it for that. I was doing it, I was doing it selfishly for the business. And then like we all liked being around each other. It was a more enjoyable work situation after I started coaching the team. The confidence boost came when the outside people, the people I wasn't paying to coach them, when they said, Can I coach you for some of this?

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Yeah. I love that you just announced that selfish portion because I I try to articulate that and sometimes don't very well. Like I, when I talk to a group, I a lot of times will say, Hey, you have permission. I literally say you have permission to be selfish during this time to just think about what you what you need and what is good for you because it filters out. Like there is a reason. I always kind of push it back to that golden rule, do unto others as you would have do unto you, because you are doing it to yourself. Like if you just take care of yourself, you're taking care of others. Take care of others, you're taking care of yourself. So I love that you kind of announce that that it's okay to be selfish because by being selfish, you are actually helping others in the process. And it happens naturally, like it just happened naturally for you. It was just yeah. So the second thing that I love, and this this permission right here, um, I think is something that so many of us struggle with, is you said the permission to make money doing something that you love. Because we have no problem going to a job that we hate and taking that paycheck on Friday, like absolutely give it to me. But the minute that we're doing something that we love, we want to say, no, that's okay. I just enjoy it so much, don't pay me.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Okay, right.

unknown 25:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

That is something that so many women, especially when we start following our passion, doing something that we love, doing that side hustle that we don't want to charge anybody for. You should get paid more, in my opinion, for the things that you love because you're probably a hell of a lot greater at it than you are than the thing that you don't like, right?

SPEAKER_03 25:18

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

How often does that come up with me? Because I know you coach on the regular, how often does that come up that we don't let ourselves get paid what we're worth? We don't give ourselves. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Absolutely. Yeah. Today I was on a coaching call, a group coaching call inside the crew, and this woman is launching a business, a side hustle, and we're we're talking about the the beta, the beta testing that she's gonna be doing. And she's like, I'm just thinking about, I'll just like beta test it for free. I'm like, honey, we are not doing that actually. I don't care if you beta test for $20, but we're not doing it for free. That is just energetically, it just is misaligned. Because why do you what's that what is a side hustle? First of all, it's a fled, it's a business. Let's not um downplay our passion. Calling it a side hustle feels like, I don't know, it's just like, oh, it's just this cute thing that I'm doing, bro. That's what my kids call me. It is a business. Call it what it is and treat it as it is. And so this is this comes up all the time. Like, no, no, no, we're not doing, we're not doing it for free. I do not care how much you charge, but the whole free, the whole free thing, women, we are expected to give away our brilliance for free. And I am not about that ever.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

So true, so true. And I, you know, I use the term side hustle, and it's funny that you said that because I was talking to someone, somebody the other day about um their side hustle wanting to turn it into like a main their main gig. I said the reason your side hustle is still a side hustle is because you're still calling it a side hustle. Like an identity, like you're a CEO. No, I just do no, you are a CEO of your business. You have got to adopt the identity of a CEO. This is your first priority. Um, I would love, I guess, to touch on that because you you work with with women who are in business, right? Who are probably several of them building businesses. Um, I know that when I wanted to transfer out, I used to work for UPS, you know, it was I can call it my nine to five. It was like a nine to seven, nine to nine. One thing I had to admit was that when I was building my coaching business on the side, I wasn't building it on the side, I was building it first. I was building it first. It's the first thing I did every morning. I didn't get out of bed and put my uniform on for UPS. I got out of bed and went to my office, sat down, and I worked on my business first, not my side hustle, not my side project, not the thing I wanted to do someday, the thing I was doing today.

unknown 27:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Right. And it's that, so I guess speak to that as far as business identity. Your business has an identity as well, not just you.

unknown 28:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:02

Right. Absolutely. One of the first, one of one of the first coaches that I hired when I was starting in my coaching practice, she recommended like the first tip uh was to create office hours. And I, as simple as that sounds, um, it's not easy. We when we look at this, uh, our business as a side hustle, it's like, oh, I'll squeeze it in on the side. And guess what literally never gets squeezed in? It's what we want, what we're passionate about. And so I thought that like if when you're stepping into the CEO role, when you're stepping into this new identity, lock in some office hours for yourself. That would be a great first step, even if it's only 30 minutes. That's okay. That's okay. It's 30 minutes where you step into that CEO role, where you're running content, where you're working on that website, where you're reaching out to potential clients, you're doing the work, you're acting as if. I know you use that as well. And then you start to, as you say, you know, you can fake it till you make it. There's something there, there's something beautiful. But if you don't start faking it, you'll never make it. Like just start with baby office hours. Step into that identity for 30 minutes a day. As like you said, that's the number one. That's your priority. And then go to your nine to five, then do your mommies, then do whatever else.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Yeah. And I really, yeah, I do, I do believe that there is a sense that the universe kind of is watching what we deem a priority. And if the first thing that we do is wake up and think about getting ready for somebody else's job, the universe is basically source, whoever you want to call it, is is oh, that's your priority. That's what's important to you. And get what's left over versus first thing, right? Even if it's like I had I had a time where, you know, like the very first day, the very first week, I didn't have a coaching client to get on the phone with in the morning, but I had a notebook that I could open up and just write about what it was almost like manifesting practices, right? I'm just gonna write about what my business looks like, you know, and things can shift. I I think, and I people underestimate, like you said, it is simple, but it's not easy. Um, I think we can make it easier if we kind of lower the expectation, like you said, just that 30 minutes, even just five minutes, whatever you can can do. Um consistency. Consistency with what you set a priority. I think makes small changes make big impact, right? If we can do them consistently. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Yeah, absolutely. Um and it is so hard for women, particularly to grant themselves permission to put themselves first. And so I love the idea of just five minutes. Um, and and sometimes uh it's you know, if you can't get yourself to the office hours, five five minutes of of true self-care so that you can show up for your business, show up for yourself. Um at that at your high at your highest level, you know, bringing your best self, your best energy. Um yeah, it's hard for us to grant ourselves permission to put ourselves first.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

Especially as I think there's an identity piece in being a woman, being a business owner, and then being a mom, right? And granting ourselves permission to put ourselves what feels like putting ourselves and our wants before our kids, because it really does feel like that. Like sometimes it probably is. Exactly. I'm putting what I want ahead of them. I'm risking, you know, moving from this job into this when I have to take care of them. That is a hard permission slip to grant yourself. Um, did you deal with that, any that identity between mom and and taking care of your kids and then going after what you want?

SPEAKER_02 31:56

So I did a bunch of research on mom guilt a couple years ago. And um, I I it's one of the biggest things that holds women back from doing literally so many things. It's it's insane. And what I realized is that I got lucky with mom guilt because of my scenario. My scenario was not beautiful, it was not easy, it was hard and tragic. Um, but because I was by myself, I had to do certain things. I had to leave my baby with daycare, I had to all the things. And so there was no opportunity for me back then to feel guilty because I was in survival mode. And I think that that helped me. Um, but in, and so now I feel less guilty. But with the research, what I'm what I have learned is that mom guilt is huge. And one of the biggest insights that I had is um when I surveyed these women and I asked them, what's your first experience of mom guilt that you ever had? And most have stories of having mom guilt before they even gave birth. It is conditioned. We are um told that as soon as you are pregnant, as soon as you are even considering uh becoming a mom, you it's time to self-sacrifice. It's time to put the needs, wants, desires of everyone else, including your children, in front of yourself. This is what we have been told. And so, of course, a byproduct of being told that is to feel badly when 20 years later, 10 years later, I don't know how old your kids is, put put their age in this time frame, you're sitting there going, I want something different. And I feel badly because I'm not gonna be as available, I'm not gonna be as um, I don't know, all the things ready and willing to do whatever they need because I'm gonna be working on my business, working on myself. And it takes practice and it takes consistency. And I think the awareness of the conditioning really helps when you can start to spot it, like, oh, I remember being pregnant and being shamed by the barista for ordering a decaf coffee because there was caffeine in there. Like, oh, I remember being shamed by my mom because I bought pacifiers and she didn't use pacifiers. Oh, I remember. And then you can start to like pull back the pieces of your conditioning and say, like, well, what am I modeling? If I'm modeling self-abandonment and not going after what makes me happy or my passions or my desires, what is that teaching my babies? What is that teaching my kids? And that's a tough pill to swallow, and it's an important one to understand.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Well, I think it's uh that modeling, switching that frame, that lens through which you look at it, um, changes that that guilt because I've never used that term modeling, but that's exactly now that I'm hearing you talk about it, that's exactly what I had, what I had done and how I was able to move through that is I changed how I was looking at it. I have three, I have three kids, and it was actually my two oldest, I was having a conversation with, and I was telling my daughter, who was now almost 20, was 16 at the time. My son would have been 14 or so, and I was talking to them about when you go, because it she's 16, she's high school, they start talking about what they're gonna do. What are they gonna be when they everyone's asking them those questions? And I remember telling her, you just have to find something that you love, do something that you love. And I remember telling my son actually just the other day, find something that you're really curious about, something that you love, and do as much of you like as much of that as you can, and just trust whatever money follows, you'll be happy with no matter how much it is, because you love what you do. And when I was telling her that, I'm still waking up every morning putting on a UPS uniform and the hypocrisy that I felt in my soul, because they had been up to that reason, my children had been the reason I had stayed at that job. And in that moment, they became the reason I had to leave. The same, the same situation. And looking at it through the lens of I am not setting the example for them, changed everything. And now it was now I have to leave. Now I have to do this because I can't sit here and tell them, you know, to follow your dreams and follow your passion. And I'm gonna go put on a uniform and go do something I hate, you know. You and so I love that modeling. Like if we can, if we can switch that and say, how can I model in myself? What do you tell your child to do? Would you tell your child, no, sorry, you have to go work 12 hours and force overtime at a job you hate because no, you would absolutely want to tell them, no, what you can do. Anything, you can do this, you can find a way. If we could just speak to ourselves, yeah, like we would speak to a best friend, like we would speak to our children. And it is a skill that you said, it takes practice, but it can be learned.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

Absolutely. You know, one of the things I always like to drop in these in these conversations is, you know, the conditioning or the saying that we've heard is like you can't pour from an empty cup. And I think it only women are told this. Nobody, nobody tells men that you can't pour from an empty cup. And what the underlying message in in that, or like um, you got to put your own oxygen mask on before you can. Okay, what is the underlying message there? The only reason to pour into yourself, the only reason to save yourself with an oxygen mask is so you can help others, is so you can save others. I want women to grant themselves permission to not pour. Just fill your cup for the sole reason of filling your cup. Put your oxygen mask on for the sole reason of saving your own life. That's that selfish piece. Yeah. Where human condition, like, oh, you have a you have a half a cup, you've got half a pup cup to pour. What if instead we just continued to pour into ourselves, fill up our cup, it's overflowing now. There's like splashes and splatters and water and all the things trickling out. That's our goodness that we give to the world. We we will help people. We are going to save people. We are loving human beings. Nobody listening to this podcast isn't. And so the invitation is to continue to pour into yourself, and that might be pursuing that gig, the business, um, the passion. And it's gonna feel selfish. And I just want people to remember like that, that's okay. The happier we get, the more impact we have on the people that we love.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

I love that. I love every bit of that. Um, I know we've talked about a lot of is there any other permission slips that you feel like because I know we've talked about like, you know, permission to do things differently, permission to do things your way, permission to be selfish, permission to get paid, what you are worth, right? Is there um is there any other permission slips that you feel like you have granted yourself or that people should grant themselves that they overlook?

SPEAKER_02 39:13

Yeah, I think if everybody can just take a beat and consider what am I waiting for? Like what am I waiting on right now? Who am I waiting for approval from? And my invitation would be to write your own permissions list. Uh because nobody is coming, there is no fairy godmother. Nobody is coming to write these for us. We've got to figure out what what do I need to hear right now? Is it permission to say no? Is it permission to set the boundary? Is it permission to take a nap? Is it permission to invest in yourself? There's millions. And we get to be the author of our own permission. Even though we've been conditioned otherwise, we didn't even get into all of that. Uh even though we believe we've been told that we need outside approval, it's time for us to take, take back our own um lives and responsibility for them. And we can do that by like lovingly write ourselves our own permission slips.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

I absolutely love that question. What are you waiting for? Like it's definitely something that I will will be one of my journal entries, I think tonight or tomorrow is what are you waiting for? Because that's what's keeping you stuck, essentially, right? You're waiting on something. What is it? Can you give yourself permission?

SPEAKER_02 40:32

Yeah. Is it Monday? Is it is it the season? Is it the person? Yeah, the money. What is it? Such a big thing. Waiting to lose the weight, waiting to what, you know, what is it? Yes. So, what can you tell us?

SPEAKER_01 40:44

I would love for you to tell the listeners about the crew because I think what you have built there is is brilliant. I think it'd be useful for so many people. So, can you tell us what the crew is and how maybe somebody might be able to reach out and learn more about it if they want to? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:58

So when I started my therapy journey and my personal development journey, I hired a coach. And as we do, we realize like, oh, this is awesome. I I love what I'm learning here with this coach. I think I could use some mindset work. And so then you go and hindset, hire a mindset coach, and and they uncover some stuff, and you're like, oh, what I really actually need is help with productivity and systems and so on and so forth. So this was me. The last decade, I've hired a ton of coaches. Some were amazing and some were not amazing. And I've spent, you know, upwards of like $50,000 or more over the last 10 years on coaching. And um what I have realized is that that is inaccessible for everyone. And I thought, what if instead of um like a one stop, one coach that's maybe stepping into like a guru um identity, and we've seen that out uh in the in the spaces, what if there was a space where members and clients can come and have access to six different coaches at an accessible rate? And so I founded the crew and I hired five faculty coaches in their different niche specialties. So mindset, accountability, health and well-being, business, and relationships. And for $97 a month, members get access to all of that coaching uh or some of that coaching, whatever they they decide to do for that rate. So there's over 20 hours of live coaching in there. There's a private app, private community. We get goals. It's it's a space to get goals and guaranteed you have the coach and the support that you um that you'll need along the journey as you as you're getting goals. And as a founder, I have hired every single one of these. I've paid their rates. These are exceptional coaches. These are, you know, um $5,000, $10,000 coaches that I've hired. And I pay them really well because like we started this conversation with is like women deserve to be paid. So I pay them really well. And because it's a scaled model, I'm able to do that. And then the members get access to these best of the best top-of-the-line coaches for that $97 a month.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

Thank you so much for all of that. I would love for you just if there's one thing, one last thing, one last tidbit. If you could leave our listener with anything, um, what would what would that be?

SPEAKER_02 43:34

This is just on my heart. This just came to me. Um, you definitely, you know, this was not prepped, but you already have all the answers. You you already have everything you need um right now to make the decision, to make the move, to ask the question, whatever you are waiting on. Um, I want to encourage you to trust yourself and realize that you you already have everything you need in order to make the next move.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

That is the truest thing I have heard in a long time. Nobody tells you that. And it is so true. We are our own guru. You don't need somebody else. It is all inside there if you learn how to ask the right questions. So I have loved this conversation. Thank you so, so much for giving your time and being here. Um, I appreciate you so much. Thank you for having me. This was so fun. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening today. I don't know about you, but I am really walking away with that. I have all the answers. I already know what I need. And if we just sit and take some time to sit with ourselves and ask yourself that question, what are you waiting on? What are you waiting on? Because I would bet that you could give yourself permission and you could move on without it, or you may find that you already have it. If you want to connect with Matty, we will put all of her information in the show notes. Uh, we will have the information down there for you. If you want to check out the crew, the life coaching collective, uh, connect with her on Instagram. We will put her socials in the show notes so you can reach out and connect with her. So thank you guys all so much for listening, and I will see you next time. Thank you so much for listening. And if something you heard today made an impact or changed the way you think somehow, then share it with somebody you care about. Because sometimes it's that one moment, that one idea, that changes everything. And until next time, remember if you want to do something you've never done, you have to become someone you've never been.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

That is the identity advantage.