50 | How to Rebrand Your Life with Jamie Hess

How do powerful women turn pain into purpose—and gratitude into their greatest strength?

In this episode of The Art of Badassery podcast, Jenn Cassetta, sits down with Jamie Hess — TEDx and keynote speaker, media personality, and lifestyle expert — for a raw and inspiring conversation. Jamie opens up about her powerful journey from addiction to 20+ years of sobriety, sharing how fitness and gratitude became the foundation for her transformation.

We dive into what it really takes to reinvent yourself, build a personal brand rooted in authenticity, and step boldly into a purpose-driven life.

Tune in to learn how to rebrand yourself, rise stronger, and live a life filled with fulfillment and gratitude.

Connect with Jamie Hess

• Website: https://meetjamiehess.com/
• Her Podcast Gratitudeology: https://meetjamiehess.com/podcast
• Freebie from Jamie -  coachjamiehess.com/pitch-kit for her freebie

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So fitness and wellness became the foundation for my new life and my new personality and perhaps became my new addiction, but I'm fine with it. I'll take it. Yeah. And then the second part is they always say that addiction is the only disease that you come out better on the other side than when you went in. If you had cancer, you just come out back cancer free. But when you go in and you get sober, what you get in that framework of recovery, that blueprint for living, makes you a much better person than you started out. And so when I started to understand things like having integrity and making my bed every morning and making amends to people I had harmed, and most importantly, the understanding that an attitude of gratitude is the heartbeat of happiness. That is the day that my entire life changed.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Hi there, I'm Den Cassetta, your chief badass three officer. If you're feeling drained, hesitant, stuck in self-doubt, or you just have a case of the vlog, the Art of Badasserie podcast is here to help you unleash your mojo once and for all. We'll provide you with tips, techniques, and real-life examples of how you can take ads in all areas of your life. You'll learn how to flex your mental muscles, rise above fear, and turn setbacks into superpowers. So let's enter the dojo and let's get to work. Welcome to the Art of Badass 3 podcast. I'm Jen Cassetta, your chief badass 3 officer, and today I have a very special guest. But before I bring on Jamie Hess, I just wanted to say thanks for listening. I know I usually say that at the end of the episode, but I just wanted to catch you all, the people that probably don't get to the final few seconds of each episode, but I just want to say thank you for being here. It means the world to me. So today's guest, Jamie Hess, will hopefully do that for all of you today. Jamie Hess is a TEDx and keynote speaker, media personality, and entrepreneur. She's a lifestyle expert, social media creator, and is the host of the Gratitudology podcast. Jamie's an on-air personality on QVC. Maybe you recognize her from there, mom, all that stuff that you buy on QVC. Do you recognize Jamie? And contributes to healthy living advice to hundreds of shows, including Good Morning America, The View, and Beyond. Today she integrates her expertise to teach people how to optimize and leverage their own personal brand through her course, Brand Ninja, where she helps solopreneurs, side hustlers, and thought leaders achieve the high-paying brand deals of their dreams. Welcome to the show, Jamie.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

So much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Yes, it sounds like you are definitely a black belt in badasserie, or else you wouldn't be here because everyone knows that a black belt in badasserie has gone through many difficult challenges in their life, overcome them, and then shares about that in order to help others. So before we even get into that, can you just take us back, give us a little background of where you started on this whole journey? It sounds like you're you have this amazing career, probably a career that many people dream of. And like, how did it all start?

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yeah, it's really funny. This is the fun backstory. I was brought up in a nice and loving family to, I'm gonna do air quotes normal parents. And I really can't complain at all about my childhood. It was lovely. In fact, my mom is TV journalist Joan London. For you young people listening, but if you're around my age, I'm 45, then you might have grown up seeing my mom on television while you were eating your morning pancakes. My mom hosted Good Morning America for almost 20 years. Talk about a dream job. 20 years she did that. And not just a dream job, Jen, but like she talk about breaking glass ceilings. Because when she got that job on GMA, there were not women on television in that capacity. There's one. Her name is Barbara Walters, and that was it. And certainly there was no women who had been pregnant and had their babies with America on TV and had that experience. When my mom got the job on GMA in 1980, when her agent called to tell her that she was getting the job, she then got a call directly after that from her OBGYN telling her that she was pregnant with me. My mom and my dad were newlyweds. And my mom was on WABC at the time, which is the local ABC affiliate. My dad was a producer at the Today Show. So they were living their lives, but she got this big job opportunity right at the time when God had said time to start a family. She got two choices in that moment. I can hang it up and be like, I don't know, maybe it's not the right time, because she really didn't know what the executives were going to do with this information. Instead, she chose her hard. It's hard either way. Any in life, usually either decision we're gonna make is probably gonna be hard. So it's like she chose her hard. She was like, I'm gonna do the damn thing. I'm gonna go have a conversation with the executives, hard, right? I'm gonna take this on, which means getting the baby bundled up and breastfeeding in the back of the limo on the way to GMA every morning at 3:45 a.m., which she did, and run her script in one hand and breastfeeding in the other. Wow. Up until a couple of months ago, a nanny, and I could hardly work a full-time job. How she did this back in the day. I bowed down to her so much because I'm so impressed with what she was able to do in choosing her heart. She also knew that America was gonna have a thing or two to say about it because America always does. She really was this icon for women and strength and working women, working mothers, and really showed America what working mothers are made of. Sorry, did she get a lot of blowback from people that were not on board with that? So I will say this. What's interesting was that at this first press conference, when she was getting announced as the host on GMA, they told her, whatever you don't tell them that you have the baby upstairs. Like we're gonna try to keep that shit because like I was upstairs in the dressing room and there's this whole press conference there. And she said that as they opened the floor for questions, the first person, hi Joan, John from Time magazine. So we're hearing that your baby is actually at work with you. You also have to remember Good Morning America now is more on the entertainment skew. But back then, my mom interviewed four sitting presidents. This was a very serious news job, right? And so they were concerned. But credit to John Goodman, who was the PR person for ABC for a couple decades and was at that time. He said he made a quick decision and snapped his fingers and said, Somebody get the baby. And they went and they brought me down because I thought I was friggin' Simba. And they bring me through the crowd and she picked me up. And that's that was the first moment of her owning it and being like, Yeah, I'm here, baby's here, let's get to work. It was awesome. And America really, for the most part, women still come up to her when we're in restaurants and say, You gave me strength to be a working mom. We had our babies at the same time. I'm like, they really remember that. So so if I could say she was really America's mom, and you would think that I would just be like Pollyanna Princess Perfect, like that I would just come through that and look at her as a role model and just set forward on a perfect path. I think what happened to me, and probably this is relatable to a lot of your audience, I think a lot of people can relate to looking up to a parent or a mentor or an icon or even somebody on social media and thinking, man, they are so perfect. That could never be me. What can start out as aspirational can become very discouraging and it can almost make you want to give up.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Especially in the minds of young people.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

And so me, as a young person at that time, I just didn't feel that I would ever be able to step into those shoes. And so I quietly exited stage left, and I fell into a life with drugs and alcohol. But by the way, for me, it wasn't even exiting, it was taking on my own personality that wasn't America's mom waving an American flag and baking apple pie. I was like, I wanted to know the DJ and be on the guest list. For me, that was finding my identity. And so I had pink hair and everything pierced, and I was a raver in the 90s, and I fell in hard with a life of drugs and alcohol, and it literally almost killed me. Like it was not a joke and it was not a little thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Yeah. Can I just so I listened to your podcast, your gratitudeology podcast, the first podcast is you and your mom telling the story through both of your eyes, and I was just shocked that you started that lifestyle at 15, right? Which is really young, and you're fully functioning for at least, was it 10 years?

SPEAKER_00 8:52

It seemed like about 10 years. And I think the people that are high functioning addicts have it way harder. Yeah. Because you think of an addict as somebody in the streets, and like when you're getting good grades in college and like going to work and getting promoted, in what sense you're like, I don't know, what's the problem? It doesn't sound like a problem. Yeah, but you're spiritually bankrupt. Like you're dying on the inside. Just because you can hold it together on the outside doesn't mean that you are feeling very good. And um, what ended up happening was, and by the way, that podcast. So to anyone listening who's interested in listening to that podcast, link it. We'll link it. Yeah, we can link it, but it's called Gratitudeology. But that first episode, that first interview, that was the first time my mom and I ever sat down to revisit this.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Wow. Really?

SPEAKER_00 9:40

And I've been sober all over 20 years, so my god, it was just too painful. And like she didn't know, she didn't confront it sooner because she didn't know how, like, she had no experience with that. Like, what is this crazy daughter of mine doing? I think maybe I'll just maybe if I stick my head in the sand and go, my fingers in my ears, it'll just go away. Yeah, it doesn't go away.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

What she shared, I thought was funny is if people asked her, like, or would tell her that you were out running with a bad crowd or whatever, she'd be she would confront you and you would talk her out of it, like in such a good way, like that she believed you. And don't we all just want to believe our young people?

SPEAKER_00 10:21

And that's our magic skill as addicts, because it's funny too, because you think of an addict and you think, why don't you just stop? If it's screwing up your life, just stop. And it's man, I wish I could explain to people who aren't addicts what it feels like, but it's your brain is hijacked, so you're actually just not in control of your not to diminish all responsibility, but you have to understand what I'm saying. Your brain is hijacked, so you truly are not making rational decisions, or you're not in control, or the pleasure part of your brain actually overrides the rational part. But my mom would say, What's going on? I heard this information, but then she would step back and look at my life. And I was a champion horseback rider. That was my sport, and I was doing outwardly a lot of the things that I was supposed to be doing. So she just believed me. She'd be like, How could things be that bad? And they they really were that bad.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

They really were or weren't?

SPEAKER_00 11:12

They really were. They were that bad. They were terrible.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

The drugs that you were doing were like party drugs, you would call them back in the day.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Yes. And so to be really clear, because I'm very candid and transparent, I started with things like ecstasy and cocaine and ketamine. These were the drugs of the 90s rape scene. And I think this is a whole other conversation that I won't get into because I could go for an hour on it. But I think it's crazy that we've normalized a lot of these drugs now therapies. But I do think that as an addict, that could be very harmful. So those types of drugs that I'm seeing people like normalize now, and I'm getting served ads on Facebook to do ketamine therapy, and I'm like, thank you. But but what it ended up being at the end was crystal method. And it's so, but in the gay party scene in New York City, it's very common. And I'm a straight woman, but all of my best friends were gay men. So it was like very it was just a hop, skip, and a jump that would come into my party world. And it's an unbelievably addictive drug. And this is the last thing I'll say on like my party stories. Even after I had gotten sober, that I had relapsed in and out for a few years before it really stuck. My last relapse was with Adderall because I'd been prescribed it because I self-diagnosed ADD. So I convinced the doctor that I needed that. And I would just warn anybody out there who's thinking that might be a good idea. If you have any proclivity towards addiction, it literally just says on the bottle, amphetamine salt. It is one step removed from that drug that I had become so addicted to. And I shared this a lot because I just want people to know that actually got worse for me than anything that had happened in all those years doing kind of street drugs. So you were addicted to Adderall. The last year I didn't do any hard drugs, but I had was just on Adderall, and that was the worst. It was the longest runs, meaning I would be up for three to four days. And that's psychosis inducing.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Wow. A lot of this when you're talking about New York brings me back to my New York days. I was the manager of a nightclub. I don't never talk about that, but I was in that world, but also not because in the daytime, all I was doing was training in martial arts. So I never really partied that hard. It didn't take over my life for sure. Eight years when I moved to LA here, almost 10 years, I think, I worked at centers for teenagers that would come in with addictions and or mental health problems. So the amount of kids that I saw, I was just their nutritionist, so I only came like once a week to talk to them. But I was always just so heartbroken, especially kids that had serious addiction problems. And I would think about their parents, what they were going through. And it's just it's really hard. So is there anything that you would say right now, most of our listeners are parents or of that age, where we know young people, we have teenagers in our life. Is there anything that you can share something to look out for? Because, like you said, it's not even just these hard drugs, they could be addicted to prescription drugs as well.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Here's the thing communication is key. I my God, Jen, I picked up the phone 100 times to call my mom and ask her for help. And I would get the first two numbers and then the first three numbers, and then I would hang up because I was, I didn't want to disappoint her. And I kept telling myself, I'm gonna fix this myself tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'm gonna fix it myself. I don't even need to put her through it. But the reality was I could not fix it myself. And so the day that I tell this whole story on the podcast, so I can say some of it for if you got if you want to listen to that episode, but like she basically came and banged on my door, and it was the bravest thing she ever did. And I give her so much credit because it I know it took her years to work up the courage to do that, but once you get your secret out, the fear of like walking through something, it's always worse to sit in the fear than to actually walk through it. It's like the Tony Robbins, like walking over the hot stones. It's like standing at the front and waiting is so much worse than just going. And so getting that out and getting someone to want to help is just it's oh my god, it's the first step to the rest of your life. So the longer you sit and putz around like I did for a lot of extra years, the longer you sit in pain and the more risk you run of something terrible happening.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Yeah. Wow. Amazing. Okay, so that is like history for you because you've been sober for 20 years and created an entire new life for yourself. What was the one tool that you really go back to? And obviously, is the name of your podcast that that really helped with that?

SPEAKER_00 15:56

So here's the thing, and I love that we have the shared um foundation of fitness. And because what happened when I went into the rooms of recovery, two things happened. Um, number one, I like discovered fitness. And what was crazy about fitness was that everything I'd been searching for on the dance floor of the nightclubs, the tribal energy, the friendship, the finding my space and fitting in and the communal like movement and rhythm, it was all there on the floor of Gary's boot camp and soul cycle. And I was like, oh my God, I could have been doing this the whole time. This is just as good. So fitness and wellness became the foundation for my new life and my new personality, and perhaps became my new addiction, but I'm fine with it. I'll take it. Yeah. And then the second part is they always say that addiction is the only disease that you come out better on the other side than when you went in. If you had cancer, you just come out back cancer-free. But when you go in and you get sober, what you get in that framework of recovery, that blueprint for living, makes you a much better person than you started out. And so when I started to understand things like having integrity and making my bed every morning and making amends to people I had harmed, and most importantly, the understanding that an attitude of gratitude is the heartbeat of happiness. That is the day that my entire life changed. And it came through little lessons. It sounds like oh woo, like speaking in platitudes, be grateful, but you have to understand. I'll give you an example of a lesson. So my dad and I have always had a little bit of a contentious relationship, as people often do with their dads. So we just gone at it on the phone. And I was so frustrated and I hung up the phone and threw it across the room and called my sponsor. I'm like 23. I'm a baby. But we don't do this anymore, but your phone is totally fine. It's don't worry. I'm 23. So I call my sir and I'm like, I want to, I'm rehashing it because I want her to hear how much he harmed me. She was like, have you ever she was like, and she knows about my dad because he's also, by the way, the most loving, like he's a men, she's like a good he just is like a frustrating person. He's like, She's like, have you considered that there's a lot of people out there who don't have their dad whose dad never said they loved them? Who that's at the end? She goes through a list of five things and just reframed it like that.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

And it wasn't what I wanted to hear at the time, but I did, I had to sit with that and be like, oh. And like it took me out of this place of being a victim and put everything in perspective. And that was my first little micro lesson in reframing things through a lens of gratitude. And look, it's not about toxic positivity. Things happen to us that are not fair in this world. Not everything, you know, is rosy. However, the majority of your life is a set of choices between two different perspectives. You can choose every single day to wake up and be like, another day, I have to go to this job. I hate this car, I hate this commute. Or you can wake up and jump out of bed and be like, man, I am gainfully employed. So many people don't have a job. There's people in war zones right now, there's people going through all sorts of struggles. And I get to get up and go someplace where I am employed and needed and wanted and show up as the best version of myself and do a great job. And like it starts there at seven o'clock in the morning.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

Absolutely. And two things that you said I like. The first is, you know, there is this whole backlash of toxic posity. And I just say to myself, like, I'd rather be toxically positive than toxically negative. Thank you. That's my take on toxic posity. The second thing is where you say, I get to. So that's one little takeaway that we can all try on today. Instead of saying, I have to do this thing, I have to get up early, I have to walk the dog, I have to take care of the kids, I have to get to work. I get to do all of these things in my life because I'm I'm above ground, and there are people that are not. There are people that are going to take their last breath today, literally. It doesn't have to be these huge things. It could literally be, I'm alive. Okay, let's start there.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Great place to start. Great place to start. My husband and I say all the time, because we started together in a studio apartment. And it was like me, him, and my dog, and and but we were super happy in that studio apartment. And then we grew our life, and life has gotten much bigger over the past 15 years that we've been together. But if all of the cash and prizes went away tomorrow, we lost the big house and the big light, and we moved back into the studio apartment, we would be just as happy.

SPEAKER_02 20:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Because we have a gratitude practice. And some people hear that and they just think, ugh, it's but I gotta tell you the life-changing properties that gratitude has when applied. And I need to be clear gratitude is a practice, it's not something you choose to do once and then it's just there. Like it is a practice, it has to do with your neural pathways, it has to do with affirmations, it has to do with how you speak to yourself and others. But when you start it as a practice, everything changes. And that's why my podcast is my podcast. In my podcast, I tell stories of people, celebrities, thought leaders, eight, nine-figure entrepreneurs. But what was that moment? The switch flipped, and you start saying like through a lens of gratitude. A lot of them have had near-death experiences, they lost millions or billions of dollars, they went through an IVF journey, whatever their thing was, something flipped. And then how did that propel your business going forward?

SPEAKER_01 21:27

And yeah, they were grateful for their cancer diagnosis. Like when people truly take it on as a practice, you can see the transformation right away. And I think your mom even said it in that podcast about her breast cancer diagnosis.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

When she first got cancer, I'll never forget the day. So, to fast forward to my story, after I get sober, I became a public relations executive, which I did for 17 years, climbed the ranks in that job, and then became what I call an accidental influencer. Well, I was still at that corporate job, seated in my chair, I was the SVP. Of a company having a busy day, having no idea that in one second my life was about to change with one phone call. And so the phone rings and I pick it up and it I just hear on the other side of the phone, Jamie, I have cancer. And when my mom told me that, my entire life changed. And then she said to me something I'll never forget. She said, I know how you're feeling right now. And I gotta be honest, I thought that too. Like when I first got the diagnosis, it was like life is over, what's gonna happen? She goes, but then I realized what an opportunity. She said, Her dad, my mom's dad was a doctor. He died in a plane crash when she was 12. So she had always wanted to follow in his footsteps and honor his legacy, but she didn't become a doctor and is squeamish of blood. So that wasn't in the currents for her. But she said, Wow, I have an opportunity to like bring the camera with me into the chemo room and bring people through my journey and show them how I'm gonna beat this and be a warrior. And I have the opportunity to show up in that way that I always wanted to. And now I have a chance to do that. And that's what I call like a rock star reframe. I think we have the chance to do them all the time. And again, it's the difference between going through life as a victim or a victor.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Completely. Oh my God. And that is truly a black belt in badassery. That oh, I love it so much. Thank you for sharing that. Okay, so you're fast forward now. You're PR marketing. How did you fall into influencing?

SPEAKER_00 23:37

It's really funny. I had risen the ranks. And again, once I got sober, I started like falling up. I didn't get any new accreditations or particular business education, but I just started getting promoted. And it was because I was wearing this new sense of myself like a loose cloak. It just became, I stepped into this higher, more aligned version of me. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

I bet your confidence in yourself for doing something so hard, because I'm sure as an addict, every single day you have to make choices, right? To keep in alignment with your sober self.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Yeah. And absolutely. And so it was through this new framework of living that I was applying that to my job, but and this is a lot of what I speak about on stage. 12 step recovery is like it's the most incredible group and context that is essentially just people being of service to other people. And it helps you in every area of your life. So here I am, I'm going back to work and I'm getting promoted. And I find myself as the SVP of this big PR agency. I'm running the book of business on McDonald's. So we're doing all of their celebrity experiential and influencer marketing. I represented brands like General Motors, LinkedIn, W Hotels Worldwide, Barry's Boot Camp. And Barry's Boot Camp in particular, my husband and I, my boyfriend at the time, loved it. And we were there like every morning for the 7, 10 a.m. class, it was like our church. And so at the end of one of these classes, the trainer says, Okay, everybody back to their bench and George get down on one knee. And I'm like, what did he do? And as I turn around, my boyfriend's down on one knee, my whole family pops in, and it was a surprise proposal. Oh my goodness. That proposal went a bit viral and launched this Instagram account that we had started as a LARC. At the time, it was called NYC Fitfam. Don't look for that handle now because it's now my name. I've changed it to my name. But for about seven years, it was NYC Fitfam. When I started, we had started this fitness and wellness Instagram account around the New York City fitness scene. It took off. And I say accidental influencer, but I'm also not a dummy. And because I was representing and hiring the influencers for the biggest brands on the planet, I knew how to monetize it and how to grow my presence as a paid content creator. Very smart. You I'm doing both. My side hustle outpaced my full hustle. And I was like, yeah, I think it's time to pick a lane. So I left my corporate job in 2019. And a lot of people, including my own mom, were like, You're out of your ever-loving mind. You do not leave a multi-six-figure year job with health insurance. Oh, I was pregnant, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

And I was like, with all due respect, I think you're wrong. And I think it's gonna work. Thank God it did. That would have been embarrassing, huh? But within 18 months of leaving, I had 5x my income and built this like thriving job as a content creator that also became my springboard to my work on television as a podcaster, author, and a speaker and all the other things I do.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Wow. That's pretty inspiring, I will say. Whew! It's getting like my wheels are turning. Like how what I want to hear about this course you have, this brand ninja. Or can you frame it though, in a way for anyone listening who might not want to monetize necessarily their presence, but really just feel more confident putting themselves out there in a way that could possibly your life, maybe not through a brand, but like you said, showing up at your work different, where all of a sudden you're getting promotions and offers and opportunities that you normally wouldn't, because now you're almost magnetizing people to you.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

I'm so glad you asked the question that way. Thank you, Jen. Because here's the thing what I do today is I do have a course called Brand Ninja, where I teach people how to do exactly what I did in getting brand deals. And the reason I was able to do that so impactfully is because keep in mind, I was the one writing the briefs for these influencers. So I know how I would want to get pitched as someone on the brand side. But on stage, and I speak a lot internally to companies, so I'm not trying to teach their people how to go be an influencer. I don't want their people to leave. One of my two signature keynotes is your magnetic rebrand. And it's just helping people of all ilks rebrand from the inside out to become magnetic. You don't have to want to be an influencer to need to understand that everybody in the year of our Lord 2025 is a personal brand. And when I say that, I mean that in the sense that we are all showing up both in the room and online. The way that we carry ourselves matters. The words that we speak, the clothes that we wear, the intention, the tenor in which we speak, all of it. And that is your personal brand. And it is your marketability. You don't have to want to be an entrepreneur or an influencer to understand that it is going to impact how much you earn at your job, how you get promoted, or how you get looked over for the promotion. Right. Because how many people feel like a victim? Oh, everybody else is always getting good things drawn to them. And I always get overlooked. At a certain point, you have to step up and say, Whose fault is it? Whose fault is it? And I mean that with the most loving way. That's the velvet hammer, right? If bad things are always happening to you and good things are always happening to other people, and a certain point you have to say, Am I the common denominator? And if so, how do I change that?

SPEAKER_01 29:07

First responsibility. Blame comes with a lot of things like shame. So at least when I'm working with myself, I'm like, how is this my responsibility? What part of it even can I take as my responsibility? And then what can I do with it going forward? And I'll work with my clients that way too. It's so easy these days to place blame. It's sometimes really hard to take that responsibility, like you said. So what do we do from there?

SPEAKER_00 29:33

And it's about keeping your side of the street clean because the reality of the world is scary. It sucks right now, but that's going to be true one way or the other. So all you can do is keep your own side of the street clean. When I'm on stage and how I direct people to do this, it really is exactly what you just said. It's an audit, internal audit that you then bring to market. I have this framework, the ABCs. So ask, asking yourself, are you the fullest, most aligned version of yourself? And if not, and the answer for most of us is a couple areas, right? Yeah. Really taking a solid audit of what those things are. And then the B is to become okay, I figured out the deficiencies. Where do I need to actually fill those gaps? How can I step into and become that version of myself? What are the exercises? What is the frequency? Like, is this a daily thing I need to be doing? It could be as simple as like you're somebody who rolls in 10 minutes late to work every day and it's stressing you the F out. And do I want to be somebody who rolls in late or do I want to be that person who's seated at my desk when everyone else walks into the office? These are these little choices that you make that completely affect the way you walk through the rest of your day and how you hold your head. The C is and how you show up to others. And I believe that a brand is only a brand in the context of how it connects back to the marketplace to other people. Otherwise, it's just a thing that you're talking about to yourself. But when you plug it in, then all of a sudden the lights turn on and it's how you connect it back out to the marketplace. So where I always leave people with my keynote is I'm a I come from the PR world. So as a branding exercise, once we've developed the brand and we figured out the brand DNA and we've designed the brand look and feel, then we have a launch party. So what if today was your launch party? What if today you got to step into and present this new version of yourself to the world and you made a decision? Today is the day that you step into the new version of yourself and you start practicing those little things that are going to bring you on your journey to that new version of you. And it's a very powerful decision.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Yeah. Wow. And like you said, they could be small things, like getting to work on time. When you work with people or when you're speaking to folks, like what are some of the aha moments for others that put your framework into practice?

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Now let's bridge the gap back to the brand ninja program where people could take this. I'm going to give you a piece of advice that could fit for either of these frameworks.

SPEAKER_02 31:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

And one of the interesting things about social media is it allows us, it's like a public placing diary. It allows us to show up and tell the world what we think, what we believe, and putting a little look, a lot of people come take my course and they're like, I want to make money on social media, but I just don't want to have to post every day. And I'm like, yeah, I want to win the lottery, but I don't want to drive and buy a lottery attention. What I don't know what you want me to do. Things take work. One of my suggestions to people is if you're serious about social media or you're serious about creating a new intention behind your personal brand, creating an editorial calendar to bring forward what you believe to the world and using social media as a vehicle can be very powerful. Essentially, every day through 30 days, I was sharing one part of my personal brand that I believe makes me magnetic. And one day I was just sharing about how much I like geek out on and love my husband. And like I find a lot of my girlfriends I talk to, and when we sit down at dinner, the first thing they do is complain about their husband. That's energy that you're putting, and it's okay to vent to a girlfriend. When you roll up on a group of your girlfriends, who do you want to hang out with more? The one who's like, hey, how you doing, Sally? And they're like, let me tell you. Kids and the or the person who's, you know what? Things are friggin' amazing. Things that how are you? Yeah. I want to be with that energy. Absolutely. I was picking little things from my own life, pursuing grown-up hobbies and all of these little things, and they have nothing to do with business. Things about me that make me that I feel that I want to be forward-facing and I want to make sure I'm sharing about and that I'm putting out there. Those types of things can really contribute to solidifying your personal brand on social media. And then if you do want to then monetize, then you've created a strong brand identity. I have a lot of people who take brand ninja and want high-paying brand deals. But if you look at their social media, it's just like a hodgepodge of different things. And I'm like, you can be different things on social media, but you have to find a point to your pencil. Business and family and this and that. But the point to my pencil is living life in your highest alignment. And brands know that that's what I talk about, that I want to share about brands that also help me and other people live life to their highest in their highest alignment. And so I created like um an overarching sensibility that I can hang my hat on. And that's your your battle cry.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Okay. Love that you said battle cry. That's in my framework. But I will say this, you're inspiring me because I have to admit, and I'm admitting this to everyone listening, the last eight, nine months, I have not, I am so backed off social media. I post reels from the podcast because I want to make sure this podcast is getting in as many ears as possible. Because I have such great guests and messaging, I've found it hard to show up on there in a consistent basis. And I think just because everything just feels so heavy on there, I know we all get our feeds very curated. So what I'm seeing every day on social media is very different than what I need to do a mega cleanse of all the very heavy stuff because it really has taken a damper on my energy. So you're inspiring me to get back out there. You're inspiring me to show up again because really I'm showing up for other people, right? And the sharing, when we are sharing ourselves, then it allows other people to share themselves as well and feel more comfortable. So that's the goal. My intention, my point to my pencil, I like how you said that, is to help people feel more strong, safe in a world that feels very unsafe lately and powerful. So I need to show up. I'm doing a disservice. That's how I'm gonna start reframing it so I can get back out there. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

All coaches need coaches. Like I have coaches, and I think it's really, I think if you ever work with a coach who doesn't have coaches herself, you should question that. Yeah, Christian. We all need accountability and we all need to hear things said in a different way.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

Absolutely amazing. Okay, before we wrap, I want everyone to hear obviously where they can find your courses, find more about you. But is there one takeaway? I know you gave us so many, but what is like the one simplest thing that everyone can do right after listening to this to have more gratitude in their life?

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Go connect with one other person and tell them to share that gratitude with them because gratitude is a pro-social exercise and it's amplified when we share it with others. It's not just about writing down three things in a gratitude journal. That's a nice start, but let's be honest, a lot of us forget to do it. Go connect it with somebody else because now you're also impacting their life and you're amplifying it a little bit further. And there is a great five-generation study done through Harvard. I'm sure you're familiar with this study. They were trying to figure out the greatest predictor of long-term happiness. They followed five generations of people, and they found that the greatest predictor of happiness was not fame, it was not money, it was the relationships that people have in their lives. And I think increasingly in this day and age, we're losing that.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Such a great tip. Go share your gratitude with someone else. Before we go, I have four rapid fire questions for you, and then you'll share where everyone can connect with you. So are you ready? I'm ready. When you were a kid, what was your favorite food?

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Oh, you know what it was? Egg and cheese sandwiches from the horse show, early mornings with my mom. And it had to be like that. It was a moment and a vibe.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

Love it. Egg and cheese, also big New York, big New York thing. I love it. If you can have a drink, any kind of drink, with someone alive or dead, who would it be? And what are you drinking?

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Oh my gosh, my mom. Because I feel like if you still have parents that are alive and on this earth, you should want to spend every moment with them. Not everybody should. I personally do. And I love spending time with my mom and with my family. And it would definitely be my mom. I don't even have to think twice about it. And I don't drink alcohol, so it would probably be a delightful LaCroix sparkling water, which is my favorite drink.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

Perfect. Favorite flavor?

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Pampel Moose.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

Love it. Okay. Number three, what's your favorite personal development self-help book?

SPEAKER_00 38:09

I just started reading yesterday, actually, and I'm loving it. Uncomfortable Either Way by Brett Eaton. It just came out and it is so good. Also, Move Think Rest by Natalie Nixon. Okay. Two new self-help books I just started to dive into, and both of them like Chef's Kiss.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

And your favorite hype song. So I'm an EDM girly. So it really changes from day to day, but I'm just going to pick anything in the EDM category for the time being because that is my pump-up music.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

Awesome. You'll be, it'll be, I make a playlist of all the different guests' favorite songs. You'll be the only EDM music, but definitely give me a song because I won't even know where to begin.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Oh, I will. Okay. I gotta think about it because I want to give you something really good and yeah, make people get on their feet and dance.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Awesome. And last but not least, please share with everyone where we can find you and all the wonderful things to work with you.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

Absolutely. I meet jamiehess.com. That's where you can learn more about me. If you want to hire me to speak on your stage or you want to learn more about brand ninja, I'm at JamieHess on Instagram. And then you can also text the word ninja to 33777 and you'll get a little text from me with some information. And then also you'll get this free pitch kit, my brand ninja pitch kit. So if you're like, I don't even know where to start with pitching brands, but I want to get paid brand deals. I literally send you emails that you can cut and paste.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

I love that. I'm signing up. Thank you so much. Jamie, thank you so much for being vulnerable, for being magnetic, for sharing so much wisdom with our guests today. Thanks for being here. And everyone out there, thank you so much for listening. I love and adore you. Please subscribe and leave us a review when you get a chance. And thanks so much. We will see you next time on the Art of Badass 3 podcast.