Megha Success! Transforming Your Trauma into Triumphs (and Triathalons)

Megha Bradley: Transforming Trauma Into Triumph

 In this episode, we welcome Megha Bradley, an abundance and mindset coach with Higher Humanity. Megha shares her inspiring journey from childhood abduction and trauma to becoming a successful coach helping clients achieve personal and professional growth. She discusses her unique approaches, including human design and purpose identification, to align individuals and teams with their highest potential. Megha also introduces her involvement with the eWomen Network in Nashville and offers insights into maintaining work-life balance, the importance of physical health, and her upcoming sprint triathlon in Honolulu.

 00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:47 Megha's Early Life and Career Beginnings

03:46 Challenges and Triumphs in Business

08:15 Discovering Purpose and Overcoming Adversity

15:15 Human Design and Team Dynamics

24:01 Real-Life Examples and Impact

28:37 Aligning Personal Values with Business Practices

29:06 Real-Life Example: Business Pivot

31:44 Building and Leading Communities

38:11 The Importance of Niche Marketing

40:04 Balancing Work and Personal Life

45:02 Physical Health and Business Success

48:26 Maintaining Relationships as an Entrepreneur

50:29 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

https://meghasuccess.com/

https://higherhumanity.com/ 

https://www.ewomennetwork.com/chapters/572 

Transcript

0:00

There is a lack of confidence that you can get specific and narrow on your market. A lot of people try to be generalists and serve. I, I love when I stand up at an event and somebody will go, I target people between 30 and 70 or 35 to 65. That's usually somewhere in there. And I'm like, that's like three generations and a whole lot of different problems. And I think as small business owners. Most small business owners don't have a red velvet rope. There's not an exclusive group that they say, these are my people, and that doesn't mean I don't serve you, but these are my people. And usually, as they say, niche is rich. I. The more willing you are to become expert at your niche, the more powerful your business becomes. This is Minding Your Business podcast, exploring the minds of successful business leaders and industry experts to uncover strategies and insights to elevate your business. Join us as we spotlight inspiring guests. Who will empower you with practical advice and fresh perspectives to help your business thrive. Now let's get started on your journey to success. Okay, so everybody, we have Megha Bradley with Hire Humanity. She's an abundance and mindset coach. She's involved in everything in anything. To help her and her customers and her clients do more and do better. So welcome to the show, Megha. Thanks. Glad to be here. Let's jump right in. In all of our groups that we have with Megha, we call it going down a rabbit hole, you know this is gonna be a two hour episode, right? This is gonna be awesome. This is, you know, I, I, we've had some really great, phenomenal guests. And this is probably my favorite one so far because I just know where we're going. We've been waiting for this one a long time, haven't we, Scott? Yeah. That's why we waited to get you on the show so that we were a little bit more prepared. So we, you're racing yourselves. We could be at a higher level when you got on the show. All right. Let's start with your background. Where are you from? What's Megha All about? Career Journey. Mm-hmm. All of that. Well, let's see if we can fit that into about two minutes. That'll be really good. Where I began was, well, it, I can't skip my origin story to say the rest of my career. I was abducted at the age of four and taken away due to someone who was a religious, I don't know what you wanna call it, that's a whole nother rabbit hole for another day. But anyway, I ended up on 40 acres of land, not schooled, so I was unschooled. How old are we now? I was four to 11. So seven years. Yeah. Wow. Until fifth grade. And it would also be impossible to skip over the fact that my abuser took me as his second wife when I was nine, which sets up the story for the rest of why I do what I do today.'cause I had healed from that. Right. Trauma. Yeah. But it, it, as soon as I was released to public school, I became an overachiever. Ended up at the top of the, you know, I made sure I was in the honor list at all times because I think sometimes we medicate our suffering by means of overachieving, and I ended up leaving. Get into college. I was homeless with two bags of my, my belongings and ended up at a 40 hour a week job and I got into graphics design. So I straight out of high school into graphics design. Now, of course, this is back in 1990. Oh, I don't know what, but it was a while ago, back when computers swerve much larger and you couldn't put'em in a laptop case. And where are we geographically? Texas, east Texas, specifically in my junior year, I was planning to be a i I was. My final settled on degree plan was to become a marriage therapist. That would prove some foreshadowing. He had some experience already. I've been doing it since I was nine, so I know something about it right now. The listeners are like, oh, wow, make sure my seatbelt's buckled, but they said something to me, which was, it just did not sit right. And they said, no, ma, your job as a marriage therapist is to keep people together. And I, as the heretic that I am, said, what if they shouldn't be together? So about that time, me and my professor got into it and I was on a full ride presidential scholarship, and I said, I'm done with college, because I had also gone around and surveyed for a lot of people that I talked to that were, you know, degree holders. And in East Texas back in the nineties, they were like, no, you can make 60, 70,$80,000 a year. And I said, that's not I, I wanna make a lot more money than that. So I quit and dropped my scholarship, dropped outta college. And I went to work for a printing company in Dallas and I ended up with this big fancy desk and it was 21. And, you know, it was, I thought I was really special and I figured out that they actually were paying me to look really cute and get very large checks from the clients.'cause I was a salesperson. I, I wasn't clued in on that. And then the sales guys who were way my senior were like, you don't understand, they're just using you. And I was like, no, I'm, you know, like I'm professional and I'm this and that. And I really didn't understand business at that point, but I was really good at. Relationships with people. So I was great at client retention and client relations, and then one day I came in and the entire, there was, have you ever seen a Heidelberg press? There's these huge printing presses that are literally like the size of this room. They had tractor trailer trucks lined up beside the building. And my little egoic world of making six figures back in the early, mid nineties all evaporated overnight. And I ended up in unemployed and I went to the temp agency and I went into hr. They said, we have a job for you at in human resources for Texas Instruments. And I said, solid career path. Yeah. I said, okay, there's one essential riding problem in this whole deal is that I am independent way more than is really good for a corporate environment, and I wanted to make way more than you can make in a corporate. I. Environment, although they gave me the golden ladder and said, you know, get your degree in HR and everything and you'll be fine. And, and I said, I talked to the people who were above me. I said, what do you make a year? And they said, you know, 80, 90, a hundred thousand. I was like, still not enough, because I just had this really big vision for my life, which was around freedom that lasted until I ended up becoming a massage therapist. Of course. Because you know, if you got a solid HR trek switch to massage. Yeah. So, but it wasn't just become a massage therapist. I started a business and I had a full, I ended up with three three clinic, or three room clinic. And this was before Massage Envy and we were on top of our game out in Phoenix. Ended up with five locations, 40 employees. I knew that HR thing, right? Yeah. That was, you had that, that was good tools. And I ended up building a very successful business. But the big foundational problem, as I found out, and what I do today with people as well, is that the, if the foundation is crack, the rest of it comes down. So my husband at the time, and I, I will skip all that because this is being recorded, but let's just say that marriage didn't work out. I left the business with him and I left everything else, and I ended up sleeping in the second bedroom of my friend's apartment, and I started over in marketing and I ended up in a business partnership in the world of marketing. And in that process, I gained a ton of knowledge, again, around client relations, a strategic marketing positioning, and it was in the internet modem industry. Our job was to beat Comcast to the doors of apartments, and then we'd sell it back to Comcast. So we wanted as many enrolled subscribers as possible. So I got really good at sales, got really good at client relations again, and it just continued on. And then social media was making an up trend in about what? 2006. 2007 I became a digital marketing strategist. So the theme here is evolution and show up wherever the opportunity is. You seem like you're not afraid to completely change direction. When you get the feeling, it's time to make a change. Oh, yeah. I'm not afraid at all. Just ask my three ex-husbands. Oh, three. Hello. Do you count the first one? Yeah, I do The bad, bad one. Okay. Yeah. Now he's, yeah, he's come a long way. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That happens in life, though. You know? We, we all just hit the wall and learn. Right? Or we don't, yeah, I, I agree more with you about there are certain people that should not be together. And you should help them exit. So it, that would've been an interesting career path as a marriage counselor. So, so do you feel like on each one of these steps that you're taking, each one of these changes that you're making, do you feel like you're getting closer and closer to the target of where you need to be and where your skills are being best used? Or is it just circumstances that are kind of driving the, the change at that point in my life, around the 2009 and 10 range, I had just gotten married for the third time and I was, I grew up in the south and any woman who listens to this is from the south can identify, you know, we're supposed to have 2.5 children and be a good wife. And that's the, that's the prescription for happiness. And I'm around my mid thirties. I went, oh, I better do that. I oh kids. And in that process, I thought my purpose was to be a wife and a mother and somebody. A personal growth process that I went through said, actually, your purpose is nothing to do with who you're married to or the kids you have. And I, I said, well, I wish I would've heard that back when I was 20, whatever it was, because I was aiming towards that being my purpose. And so when that came apart and I realized that my purpose was to help end cycles of generational abuse and poverty on the planet, like, and so I scaled that vision up way bigger. It changed everything about my life, and so I began to figure out how I could become a leader to help end those cycles and patterns in our society and around the world, and wife and mother was secondary because of that identification of purpose, which is now part of what I do with my clients. It shifted my business, it shifted my message and it actually shifted how many people wanted to show up to help me in my business because they knew that my mission wasn't just to be around the corner with my two kids and show up at the grocery store on Saturday. So it, it created a lot of movement behind me. A lot of people that were like, I wanna help you tell me how I can help you. In 2014, that all came to a, I would say, a grinding stop. I was on the, I was in the backseat. My cut, my, now 11-year-old was four months old. At the time my business partner was driving. We were on our way to a meeting to go do a project in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to help women managed to work after they'd been divorced. Because in, in Saudi Arabia, they're second right citizens. Once that happens and a texting driver hit us at 70 miles an hour, no breaks. And I was in the backseat. My four month old flew almost through the front windshield and both my hips were shattered and I crossed outta my body. I saw the rest of the accident outside my body, and then I saw the white light. And while we were waiting for the complimentary first helicopter ride that I ever had in my life, I got to experience why purpose is so important.'cause the only thing that I could remember. While we were waiting for, and it does take a while, as you know, if you've ever been on the freeway and you're like, oh my gosh, there's an accident. Shut down the freeway. It takes a while. It's really an awkward moment when you're sitting in the pinned in the car position trying to keep your head on straight. And the only thing I could remember was my purpose. So when they, when they got me into the, um, hospital, I was like, I'm not dying. Like it was, it was, I had seen the white light and I had been back and said, mm-hmm. I didn't show up to not do what I'm here to do. And I ended up in ICU for over two weeks. And in that time I would sit there, you know, of course I had a little complimentary morphine and, and fentanyl, but hi, in the moment I said, how can I make this bigger and better? And I said, I have to do, I have to take what I had learned in the healing of my trauma. Of the settling in, of the unsettled parts of myself, all this part of me that would always run away from things. And I said, I gotta help other human beings because if I don't do that, I'm not doing, doing why? I showed up here. So after eight months in a wheelchair, I got started going back out to business stuff. I'd walk with a cane for like the next year, and I went to an event where somebody was speaking and she said. You can find your purpose in your hands. And I said, here comes the rabbit hole warning. I don't know, whichever rabbit hole. Beep, beep, beep. Alright, we're warned. If you're in a car, please pull over now. So long story endless. Basically, I am where I am today, helping people become visible to identify their purpose and live into who they are. From everything that I just told you as a backdrop. Yeah, I think it goes without saying, but everything that you went through in your life in the past has made you uniquely qualified to help others. Yes. Because you've seen quite a bit. Yeah. And so I'm sure it's pretty rare for anybody to come to you saying. Well, I'm having this trouble in my life. I'm having this trouble in my business. Nothing surprises you or shocks you. No, it doesn't. It makes me safe space. People are able to put down stuff they've carried for a long time, but I would imagine it's also the big thing that makes you different from all of the other quote unquote business coaches out there. Yeah. Right. Who, eh, they worked a corporate job for several years and decided, hey, uh, why don't go on my own and be a business coach. You've got the, you've got the street cred. School hard knocks is literally on my LinkedIn profile as my degree. That's good. I want to touch base. When you talk about finding purpose in your hands. Mm-hmm. Tell us from going to that seminar, learning from this person. You develop that same talent? How do people, we live in a very conservative area. Mm-hmm. How do people react to you when you say that? Well, usually the first thing is they clutch their pearls and then they go, is that the devil? And I usually say something along the lines of, no, but I've come to face to face with it. The hands are not, now there's palmistry. I don't do anything predictive because I, we live by our free will. Amen. And I think that what we're warned about, and if we were to, obviously probably largely here in the south, conservative Judeo-Christian influence, the reason all of those things are so treacherous is because people live by predictions rather than faith. And if you live by predictions rather than faith, and you're not being governed by your ability to be in touch with your creator, you're not able to be in this relationship with God. Yeah. Instead you're thinking you can outrun whatever somebody predicted for you. So I often say I, I'm here to help you be able to listen better to God, not pull you away from God. When you work with people, what's the balance between personal and business? I would imagine a lot of people come to you telling you that they have a business problem. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. And I would also, knowing you imagine that very quickly, you probably let them know that you've got more than just a business problem. Yes. Is that fair to say? That's very fair to say. Okay. So we start with a business problem and people think that their lack of money and lack of sales and you know, oh, it's this person or this competitor rolled into town, or you know, all those business environment things. But because of the rabbit holes I've been down. I understand that the quantum field, which is, if anybody's ever heard of Joe Dispenza, you can Google that. He's got books in Barnes and Noble. He talks about how we create the reality that we're in. So it doesn't matter if you're in business or relationship or you know, dealing with your kids or whatever. The reality that materializes in front of you is a direct reflection of the dominoes you've set in emotion. So what I typically find is that people don't have a business problem. They have a misalignment problem with them and the business, and if they can tweak it, that's when they open up the engines and go full speed. So how do you uncover the things that they need to tweak? So that's another thing that I do. It's a diagnostics process called human design, so the hands identify life purpose in the fingerprints, and this is the guy who created this science, validated it with 35,000 sets of hand prints and then took it to neuroscientists to actually validate how we're able to do that. The other piece I use is something called human design, which again, there is lots of woo woo out there that uses it on the predictive side. I don't use it that way. I use it more like taking a Strength finders test. And if I can figure out what you're doing, like, so we'll use speaking for example, a lot of people are like, I gotta go speak to grow my business. There's actually things inside of people's, what we call design their archetype, that they actually aren't, they're not able to reach people through speaking. So they may need to use writing or they might need to use some other means. And so that's an example of identifying the human who's running, whether it's a CEO of a company. It's got a whole team. Or a solopreneur, it doesn't really matter. And so if we're able to figure out where to where to pivot, how they're approaching the business problem, then we are then able to look at the solution based side of what do we need to change in the message, or what do we need to change in the, you know, who's sitting in which desk in the company. So based on who's, who's who, you also do a lot of work with teams, right? I do like mm-hmm. The dynamics of a team. Mm-hmm. What do you normally find is kind of blocking productivity when it comes to teams? Unworthiness on whose part on everybody's part. Unworthiness drives insecurity, jealousy, competition, A lot of things. Usually there's a need to try to prove who they are. So it the each team dynamic is different, but sometimes there's a person who's very gentle and soft spoken, but because of that, they're not using their gifts. So it goes back to the unworthiness piece. They're not willing to show their boss that skill they actually have because they feel like they've gotta go get another certification or another. If they go to three more certifications, it will prove their validation of who they are. Then I'll get the raise. But the problem is in the belief system of the unworthiness. So when they pull that thread and change into becoming worthy and deserving their demeanor, and they're also where their power, where they carry the power with themselves. So the biggest problem I see in teams is usually there is, uh, blaming other people. So even if you are feeling like I'm not worthy, no one listens to me, it doesn't matter what I say, I'm gonna sit in the team meeting and be quiet. Well, if you understand who you are and what role you play in the team and you understand the other person, you stop blaming the other person for being the loudmouth. When you understand that they just naturally are designed that way rather than, that's so annoying. It's like, well, they're not you. And that's what we call, we call, uh, human design is a science of differentiation and a lot of times what I find is that we often resent other human beings for their differentiation. Rather than just simply recognizing that that differentiation is a compliment to us if we can figure out where it's, and so that's what I help people do is figure out where they actually play to their compliments and then allow the place where there's conflict to just be. So if there's, if I can look at two Cuban design charts with two different people, I can literally see where that person will always lose. So if you now know that's where. Every conversation, I always end up being overtalked or this person never listens to my feedback. If I can tweak that and you go, you know, I know that you typically don't hear what I say, but now that we're aware of this, now there's not anger. Now there's understanding shifts in language and communication. That's fascinating. How long does it take you to kind of identify what these, what the home human design, how long, what's that process look like? How does it take you? We have a software, I, I pull software and, and I can look at someone's chart within 10 minutes and tell them probably 10 to 15 things about themselves to lean into or things to allow. So they take an assessment essentially? Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. It's like a personality Yep. Profile thing. Okay. Yep. And if I'm dealing with a dynamic of people, so let's say that there's five people in a, in a team, then I will sit there with all their charts. Like I just did this with my mastermind group actually. I, I match them all based on their, their designs as their accountability partners. I sit there and take all the charts and figure out, you know, whatever the goal is. So the goal is really important because we have what we call magnetism. So. If I put the two of you together, and you're really good at, at one aspect of say, ideation, but you're good at expression and if I push you together, uh, separately, you got all these ideas, but you can't get'em out. So if I put the two of you together, suddenly it becomes magic and then you're like, oh my gosh, I live working with this person. So I look at. Depending on the goal, that's actually pretty accurate. I'm, I'm kind of, I think we're pretty magical actually. Idea guy and the expression guy, she knows this. Scott, I feel seen and validated. So it, it sounds like one of the things that does is it allows people to be themselves. Mm-hmm. Do people ever use that as, do they ever maybe hide behind that and say, well, yeah, I yelled at you because that's who I am, because Megha told me that's who I am. Oh yeah. Well that lasts all of 2.5 seconds in a a meeting. Actually, one of the things that I tend to do that I love doing is working with married. Couples who own businesses together, that is some snake wrangling that just that takes a gift, which I have. I had a husband and wife come in one time, and so the wife was super, way more. Supercharged than her husband. And he had reached a level of, a certain point of resentment, let's just put it that way. And he was like, it doesn't matter what I say, she's not gonna listen to me. So we did the whole diagnostics thing and I pulled up their charts and I said, oh, I do see why you feel that way. And she said, see, that's just how I am to your question. Mm-hmm. I then told her, then you need to begin to listen to his feedback when he's telling you that you're not respecting him. And he felt, then it empowered him to remind her that the, just the way I am, I. Was the place where they were able to then they needed to come back together and, and bridge some things in their marriage because of course when you're got a marriage riding on top of a business, you've got a Tinder box of problems if one collapses. Sure. Particularly the marriage, I would imagine it also takes a very open-minded team manager or management leadership to go down this path. Oh, yes, it does. I am finding though, that more and more people are, are being stressed by the pressures that humanity is under. Like just. All the things. When you look at our world, there's something stressful going on in the world right now. I know, right? Road rage. Shocking. So I find that leaders are more motivated when it begins to hit their bottom line. And if people are in a mental health crisis or a severe distress, just. In terms of feeling futility or fear of where the direction is of their business or where they're going, that hits their wallet. So I'm finding that what the point where people can understand that the, the emotional back to the emotional wellbeing of a human being is directly proportionate to how much profit they will generate or what effectiveness they have in the business. Then. They don't care how conservative or how close-minded they are or how traditionally old fashioned they are, they start to go, okay, what kind of crazy stuff do you do? Let's have a conversation. So do you have any concrete examples that you can share of a team that was dysfunctional before and then kind of what it looked like after they learned how to work with each other? The best work I've done, the team piece, I've done it more in like group coaching circles where it's not necessarily, I'm spending a lot of time with the team, but I've used a, I have a real estate company that has 20 some odd agents and they brought me in for four months of back to back training. So every month I was the. Speaker to come in and we basically, through the group, went through the human designs with each other. What we found was that, of course we're dealing with real estate agents, so they're all their own color unicorn anyway, but inside of a brokerage, the thing that we saw was more. Loving acceptance of one another versus that person really gets on my last nerve. And they brought me back a couple years in a row.'cause I, I brought a different series of money mindset stuff the next year. But the first year we spent. Really identify and owning those pieces of who they are. What happened was some of the really quiet agents that you sometimes go, how are you, a real estate agent? Kind of people started performing better in their sales because they said, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna own this aspect of myself. Like it gave them more confidence and so they would come back and say. You know, I'm gonna start living more into my brand. I think that's for, for that particular group, that was one of the most empowering things because you're dealing with such different people who actually technically, in a way, are competition to each other. For them to come in and go, you know, you do annoy me, but I do understand now. Now why you annoy me, and it's a little bit softer. Mm-hmm. To make the brokerage more functional. So I think that was one of the more concrete examples was because we could see it actually changing the way they were marketing themselves and the way they were carrying themselves, and how they were sitting around the table with each other in the room, sharing these things that they had been afraid to own. Whenever you get a group of two or more employees together, you're gonna have all of that tension. Mm-hmm. What it sounds like to me is when you go in and work with them. You're kinda letting the air out of the balloon, right? Yeah.'cause you're examining you. You're not ignoring it. Let's bring it all out on the table. Mm-hmm. And let's look at it from every angle. And once you do that, once you talk about it, it takes some of the power away, the negative energy away. Yeah, I call out elephants in the room. I, I like to say that's like one of the things that I do is I like bring the elephant to the center and go, let's look at the elephant. And whether that's two people or 20 people, if there's a person in the organization that everyone knows is annoying, that person has to go home at night knowing that everybody thinks they're annoying. And, and I, one of my two children is in this camp, so I, I, I live with this. What happens is that when that person understands what about them makes people think they're annoying, they stop taking that as a personal affront. And that allows them sometimes become a little nicer to the other people.'cause then they own it and they don't take it as an insult. They go, oh you, but to notice that about me. Yep. That's how I am. Mm-hmm. And that's huge. There must, when you go in and do that kind of work with a team, I'm sure there's people going, oh, thank goodness she's calling out Mary. Mm-hmm. We've, because I've been waiting for this day a long time for Mary to be called out. And now finally somebody's doing it. That there is, they sit there, you can see the looks. You can even see sometimes the owner, in this case, the, the owner of the brokerage. I, there was some things about their, their characteristics that they shared with the room. And everyone's like, aha, finally we have an answer. It was like, roast the boss, but the boss is like, yep, now you know, now you know exactly what you've been dealing with is exactly who I am. And they're like, now they can kind of, it's, it's more of a haha, not from a toxic place, haha. Mm-hmm. So it allows them to grow there. Yeah. Gives them an opportunity to identify and, and. Change course or at least be able to relate. Relate to each other better. Exactly. So you work with a lot of entrepreneurial teams, a lot of solopreneurs, people who are trying to find their way. They came up with some great idea, concept, this is what I want to do. Mm-hmm. And I'm gonna try to monetize it. And then they discover that they're not any good at it, or maybe they're not quite organized enough, or they're focused on the wrong task, whatever it is. So when you deal with some entrepreneurs and they're seeking to align their personal values with their business practices, how do you walk them through that? So I start my own business. I'm going to be X, the best X person in the world, and I walk in with you and I say, I need to hire Meghan'cause she's gonna help me get to the next level. She's gonna help me. 10 x. Mm-hmm. And so I start working with you and you say, well, Scott, let's back up talk, talk. Walk me through that process a bit. Well, I can give you a a real life example if you'd like. The, obviously we start with the assessment and a lot of times some people go into business'cause they have a passion they're pursuing. But a lot of people go into business because they got jettisoned out of the corporate world or out of something and they just went into using their expertise. I have somebody who, they got out of corporate and he said, where can I make money right now? Because that's, a lot of times the question is like, I need to pay the bills next week. Where am I going? And then there's the business card, right? So he saw, he decided he was gonna be a coach and he came to me because he had plateaued at what many people would be perfectly happy to make, which was, you know, it was, it was north of$25,000 a month. And again, some people are like, yeah. That'd be nice for at least three months. But he was frustrated because he felt like, I dread dealing with these people. I really would prefer not to talk to humans if I can help it. And I'm like, and you're a coach. Yeah. And this is how it tends to go, right? Because people are like, well, I can make money being a coach. Okay. It's like, great that I don't know how good of an idea that was. We look at his design. And it's like, well, actually, you know, you really shouldn't be working very hard. There's actually an archetype of people that literally cannot work hard. It's just, it's their least productive. Means the majority of the planet actually operates and work really hard and fall into bed at night. Tired. But this 20%, they really have to take it easy. So I said to him, I'm like, well, so great. You got a client load and you're over here trying to, you know, get more clients and you're resenting your business and no wonder you're not making more money'cause you don't want to make more money'cause it means more of the same. He was like, oh yeah. I said, so we worked on some beliefs. His father was a pastor. He had a belief that you can't have God and money. So he excavated that. It got a little better, started moving in the right direction. And then of course then he made more money. He started selling more of what he was selling, and he is like, you know what? I really don't like these people. And I'm like, well, good problem to have to understand what it is, but now you have to switch. So he fired his clients. So this is an example of making a business pivot when I'm doing the assessment with them to understand where the business isn't working. So he fired his clients. He's now averaging 50 to a hundred thousand dollars a month. He works about 20 hours a week on the schedule. He wants to, he shifted to content and information creation instead of coaching. I. Still coaches in a group setting one to two hours a week, but he got away from having to deal with people individually, which was his greatest dread. Sounds like a good pivot. I know you are very, very involved with building communities. I'm sure that's probably one of your, you feel like that's one of your, one of your gifts. Yes. So you've recently gotten involved with a new community. Yes. Do you wanna talk about that? Oh, I'd love to. Yeah. Okay. I had gone to a lot of business coaching programs around the country, and I kept running into these women that were like multiple six figure, very successful women. And I, I kept going where, you know, where do you belong? And they kept saying. eWomen network. And I'm like, well, I Google it. I'm like, well, it says Nashville. And I'm like all excited. I'm like, I'm gonna go sign up for the Nashville chapter and, and then there's this, nobody's here doing it. So this is the lesson. And if you open your mouth, you may get nominated. We all know this one, right? Mm-hmm. Right. It in the office all the time, right? So I wanted this organization here. I've asked over the past three or four years, I've probably asked like once a year. I'm like, how is it that we don't have this incredibly. Profound international women's networking organization here in Nashville. Now, I've run organizations, I've been president of organizations, I've, I've blown up organizations and had them re regroup and regrow. I've done all kinds of things with leadership and so they said, you know. It actually looks like you might be a perfect person to do this. No, I am not. I was not. It was not on my bingo card for 2025 to become managing director for a international women's networking chapter. Just one more thing for you to do. Yeah. The person who loves me most said to me, he goes, do you ever just sit down and stop? Because he'd like more time with me. I said, well, you know me and more time with me probably is to the point where you have to take me away and put me out in the woods somewhere. There's not internet and there's not phones. And yeah. So this organization to me is something that I wanted to see because it's more about education and professional development. Than it is about networking.'cause there's obviously a bazillion ways we can go out and shake hands, network and have a coffee. But there's also a gap in terms of how many places where there's a principle of integrity that operates. I mean, I've been a member of BNI for many years, and we know that that's true in BNI, but it's a single seed organization. So if you can't get your seat in the chapter, you wanna get in, you know, you find another chapter. Yeah. But for a lot of people. They are not even necessarily sure where they're going with their business. They're not sure enough to actually have a really high performing, professionally polished business. So this organization is here to not only build community, but it's also to educate and create a more professional level entrepreneur. And the majority, 94% of our members are entrepreneurs. And based on the name, I'm assuming it's for, for women. It is. But you know what's cool, and this is one of the things I love about it, so Sandra Yancy is the, is the founder and CEO was she with CNN? She's a CNN American hero, so, okay. Yeah. But her husband and her built this business together, so he's been a very integral part of it. And men are actually welcome to be part of the organization if they're respectful and supportive of women business owners, which I find to be refreshing because there are a lot of women's organizations out there that are exclusively for women. And I think that I could open up an entire can of worms and a whole nother rabbit hole. But in a time when we talk about inclusivity, I find it interesting that as one group of people who have screamed exclusion. That we don't also include. So that's another reason I love this organization is because men are actually welcome to be members and participate and, and be actively involved. But the thrust of it is women supporting other women in business. Yes. Uhhuh and not only the net networking aspect, not only the the support, but also the tangible tools mm-hmm. To help them grow their business. Yes. Every area of business development, our primary focus, our membership, our primary membership we focus on is called CEO plus, and it's to get. Us out of that solopreneur, no employee's sense of being. And instead, how do we become truly CEOs, not just rot, CEO on the latest Canva business card that was printed right in this, you, yourself and the dog running the business. So how do you grow a business? How do you speak? How do you polish your message? All the things that that are required to actually operate an effective business. And so these organizations are set up in chapters yes. And so Nashville has just recently started. We just got, we're kicking off. Yes. Exciting. We're just getting started and yeah. Do you meet in person? We do, even though it has that word E in front of it. Yes, we meet in person and online. We have some masterminding aspects as well. So who would be a perfect candidate to join a woman who has decided that she actually wants to free up her time, that you know she's built her business? Maybe she's exited corporate, but she knows exactly what she wants to do. But what she knows she doesn't wanna do is literally work a 60 hour week being her own boss and instead she wants. To have a strong referral network, a place where she can reach out and literally whatever question or problem she's got that she can literally go to the, there's a, we have a a group page and stuff where you can go in and go, how does this look? Do you understand this? You know, so there's ready access over a thousand people in any given time to give you feedback without charging you. And we know how important that is.'cause sometimes it's just like, who am I gonna ask? And you ask somebody who has no business reference at all, and they're like, oh, it looks great. How does somebody get involved in the, the organization, uh, eWomen network.com/nashville and we do something called a Strategic Business Introduction. It's a free, well, it's not free, it's it's paid. But if they contact me directly, I can have them come as my guest. It's a mastermind circle and we have an exact format that we follow. So that they can bring one problem to their, to their conversation and get eight to 12 pieces of feedback to help'em solve that problem. And then we do a monthly meeting as well. You've worked with a lot of business owners. What do you normally see is holding back small business owners? I think there is a lack of confidence that you can get specific and narrow on your market. A lot of people try to be generalists and serve. I, I love when I stand up at an event and somebody will go, I target people between 30 and 70 or 35 to 65. That's usually somewhere in there. And I'm like, that's like three generations and a whole lot of different problems. And I think as small business owners, one of my mentors early on is a guy by the name of Michael Port and he wrote a book called Book Yourself Solid, which is a New York Times bestseller. He says, most small business owners don't have a red velvet rope. There's not an exclusive group that they say, these are my people. And most people are afraid to do that. And say, these are my people. That doesn't mean I don't serve you, but these are my people. And usually, as they say, niche is rich. The more willing you are to become expert at your niche, the more powerful your business becomes. I think that's the biggest mistake. Yeah. And most people think that by going that narrow, they're going to be missing out on business. That's the reason why they don't, or they just have never heard of the concept. Yeah, I, especially if we look at the economics of things, people say, woo, I better figure out how to have a low priced offer. And it's like, well, not necessarily, because the people who have the money to spend are spending it as wisely as they can with the person they trust the most. It's not that they don't have the money, so they're gonna be much better stewards of it. So if you start low balling your prices and discounts everywhere, it just screams desperation. It doesn't scream opportunity. So yeah, I think that to me is the place that I've seen people be the most afraid to shift, but when they do, they're like, oh my gosh, I should have done that 10 years ago. I may be asking the wrong person, but what do you think about work life balance? I think it's a nice concept. I asked that because I think a lot of small business owners, especially the line gets so blurry. Mm-hmm. Between I'm giving everything to my business and I feel like I don't have a personal life. Mm-hmm. So what advice would you give them to be able to separate that at all or should they try to separate it? Number one, on the weekends I keep my phone on silent 95% of the time'cause accidentally gets turned on occasionally. I think balance is to create boundaries of who has access to you when. That's one of the first things I think as a small business owner.'cause you know, we could go to 15,000 coffees and get to know you meetings, but is it necessary? So this sounds, the next thing I'm gonna say is not very nice. I don't have coffee with everyone. If I don't feel like the conversation and the level of energy is going to be met, when I sit down with someone, I, they don't get on my calendar. That piece to me is balanced because why am I going to go drive 20 minutes, sit down, have a random chat with someone who is not intellectually, spiritually, or professionally aligned to me? That doesn't help them in the long run and it doesn't help me. If anything, I might give away my services for free. So I think the boundaries is a, is a big part. Time boundaries, who I'll actually hang out with boundaries I. And I think the other thing is to create certain days where certain pieces of business are done. I focus on trying to get my client based, meaning client interface work done Tuesday through Thursday and that's it. I've gotten a little loose with this lately and I'm going to go back to taking Monday off the schedule.'cause I had some clients that were like, Hey, can I, I can't do any other day. Can you do Monday? I'm like, oh yeah, sure. Monday, as one of my coaches always said, Suzanne Evans, she told me, she said, it's Monday, Monday. It's when you take care of yourself. It's when you take care of your setup for your business, and it's when you do what's necessary to have success on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is Freedom Friday, which means nothing goes on my calendar on Friday. That doesn't make me feel more free. Now, maybe that's work. Maybe it's having a conversation with somebody over coffee and maybe it's going for margaritas at two o'clock in the afternoon and day drinking. Hey, hey, hey, here we are, Scott, where are we gonna be? Coming back? Coming back to our specialty. So I think, you know, and, and maybe you do work on a Sunday afternoon, you Rick, whatever, but I think one of the things is we have to deprogram the Monday through Friday rat race. Programming that's been deeply ingrained in our neurology because it's really nice when you don't get in rush hour traffic anymore. You mentioned earlier about knowing your niche. Yeah. Who is the perfect person for you to work with? What? What is your niche? So my niche is someone who's at six figures or hire multiple six figures. I've had a few seven figure, but they have figured out that the success that they thought business would bring still has them at an emptiness that they can't fill with money. And they tend to be, you know, kind of in the, similar to me in the sense that they're, they're willing to do what it takes. They're high performers. But they have figured out that, okay, great, I got all this money in the bank account, but I really don't know what I wanna do next with my life. And so they're sort of at an a point of ambivalence, like, Lord, I, I, I'm not that excited about all this stuff. And they are now looking for how to get purpose. Either so that they can inspire their team, like so that they become more inspirational as a person to the people in their lives, or that they're just exhausted and wanna figure out how they can learn to breathe again. So that person's out there, they're listening to this right now. What would you tell them in 10 to 15 seconds? What would your message be to them right now? It would be to drop the expectations of others. That's the piece that most burdens us, even themselves. Yeah. Usually themselves comes back from mom, dad, society. Yeah. What you just talked about as far as like, I still, after all of the success I've had, after all the money I've made, after all of the goals I've achieved, I still feel empty. Yeah. I, I don't know if this quote came from purpose-driven life. I don't, but I heard something recently that if happiness is on the other side of whatever it is you're trying to do. If I lose 20 pounds, I'll be happy. If I put a hundred thousand dollars in the bank, I'll be happy. If I buy that house, I'll be happy. If your happiness is going to be on the other side of that acquisition, you're never going to find it. So I love what you do. I think finding purpose in your life, finding what you were put on earth to do. It is probably the most important thing any individual can do for themselves and others in their life. So I think that's a great opportunity to meet with you, so thank you. Yeah. When you work with a, um, small business owner, how important is physical health? I would imagine that plays into business, that plays into your overall wellbeing, your spiritual health. Do you kind of go in that direction at all? I've kind of gone off the cliff on that direction lately. What do you have going on? I'm currently training for a triathlon. It's a sprint triathlon. It's my second one I've done in my life, and I have this When, when? When is the event? It's, it's in May, so yeah, right around the corner. Right around the corner. Are we on track? No, we're not. We're not, no, because I've not had balance. Unfortunately, one of my trauma responses I still haven't gotten outta my system is everything that's done in a crunch finally gets it's done. So I've got about 35 days of serious intensive training ahead of me because I ended up having a, actually, I got, I got sick last month and so it really messed with my, when you're, when you're, when you get a, a respiratory infection and you're training for a triathlon, it's a very. Contradictory thing, so here we are. But you know, for a long time I sat at my computer for an inordinate number of hours and then I had a, you know, like I started to see the illustrations of that sitting at your desk too long. And my doctor was like, you're only gonna be able to push this envelope for so long before your body revolts. And for me, what I find in doing physical exercise is that there's a mental component to it that is equally important and that it's not just about physically going to the gym and maybe getting some cardio. There is the mental piece of it, which is directly correlated to self-discipline, presence, self-love awareness, and then the dexterity that's created in the brain from actually physically moving your body and not just. Your fingers on the keyboard. So I am focusing on shifting that now because as I've looked at the next steps for me as a business owner and getting out on stages and speaking and everything like that, I said one of the last things I wanna do when I'm in a higher space of visibility is to allow people to justify a lack of self care and say, well, if she's doing that and then she doesn't do this, then I can get away with it too. And it's like, now it's time to raise the bar. Hmm. So here I am. So now you're on a bike and in a pool and running. Yeah. Now what's a sprint triathlon? Is that a different distance? Yeah. Is that what that is? Okay. Yeah. We do a quarter mile swim in the open water mine's in Honolulu, so it's a open water quarter mile swim in the Pacific. And then we get out of the water immediately. We wear the same clothes all the way through. Right? Yeah. There's no change. There's no wardrobe change. Get off the onto the bike. Ride 23 miles. Get off the bike and start running 5K. Okay. So that's a sprint. And of course somebody said to me, he said, is this the only triathlon you're gonna do? And I'm like, no. Joining the Nashville Triathlon Club and I'm going to make this part of my lifestyle for the reason that endurance sports require mental, mental agility more than they do anything else. Oh yeah. Gotta push yourself through. Yeah. So. Yeah, I don't even want to think about driving 26 miles if I don't riding a bike. God bless you. Yeah. Good for you. Yeah, we'll be cheering you on from over here. Oh yeah. So you mentioned earlier about we talked, Dave kind of tried to get you in a corner about the whole life balance thing, and you dodged that question pretty easily. Mm-hmm. I was impressed. So my question is, I'm gonna be. Let's just say that I'm your love interest. Mm-hmm. And I'm your guy's trying to get you to go some place with him, and you'd mentioned that the only way to get time with me is to drag me away to the woods where I can't connect to the world. So how does that make him feel when he, he feels like I'm trying to get your attention and you just won't go? He's gonna listen to this podcast. I, he asked me, he goes, can you ask this question? I bet he did. He probably did. I don't know who you're loving. I told Dave I'd be more controversial on these things. So the thing is, is that it really don't have to drag me away to the woods. I actually find that my romantic relationship. Given the mistakes I've made in the past, I know you have to maintenance a relationship for me, I think that one of the most valuable pieces of that and how I've found balance inside of being a busy entrepreneur. Is find another entrepreneur as a partner because they understand crazy at the level that someone who's just peacefully going to their job and punching out and there's nothing else to do. I think that it's lunch dates and it, it's literally, we've gotten to the point where we literally sit with each other and go What's on the schedule this month? And we have, we both have Monday, Friday. Freedom things going on. So we use our days when the kids aren't around and the things like that to book in time to go do something, like go for a walk or do something that's just completely not requiring a large sum of money. It's not requiring getting on a plane is no, it's just presence and cooking dinner together or something like that. So I think it's, it's little things and it's sometimes stolen moments as is the key to finding that relationship balance. Nice. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Is he going to Hawaii? No, he's not. Oh. That'd be a nice opportunity, but just, he sent me that message too. All right. Sorry Dave, do you want to throw out any kind of an offer or a call to action or. Anything that would help your business? You know, the best thing for me to do is talk to people and I offer a 15 minute, if we need to go longer, we can, but a 15 minute chat with people. Sometimes they just need to recalibrate one little thing. So if they go to Megha M-E-G-H-A success.com, there's a. Talk to me button, hit that, and honestly, the offer is 15 minutes of focus time with me. It's sometimes very life changing for people and I'm, I'm willing to, that's a presence I'm willing to do for anybody because sometimes all you need to do is hear one little tiny piece of advice that pivots you. So yeah, find your why is that right? That's basically it, right? Find your why. Yeah. Find your why. Yeah. Find your, find your joy. There's a, there's a why in that too. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you again Megha for joining us. So those of you that are have caught the whole thing. If you didn't get the whole thing, you need to RS rewind. Start all over.'cause we just heard some amazing things from me. Bradley. Hire Humanity. Humanity. Thank you so much. And the eWomen Network. And the eWomen network. Yes. So Megha's involved in a lot of things. We'll put all the links in the show notes if there's room. And we'll also post her results from another triathlon. There you go. Yeah. Can't wait to hear how it goes. Thank you. Thanks, Meghan. Thanks for having me. Well, that's it for this week's episode of Minding Your Business. And hey, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast listening app. And if you didn't enjoy, why would you not have enjoyed it? Or if you have a brilliant idea to how we can approve a show, drop us a note at Minding Your Business. show@gmail.com and we might mention you on an upcoming show, but we will never sell your data. Honestly, we're way too lazy and that sounds like way too much work. So don't worry. No selling, no spamming, just good vibes. I'm Scott Merri. I'm wishing you peace, purpose, and profits. Thanks for listening to another episode of Minding Your Business. We want to remind you that while the hosts and their guests share their thoughts and experiences, they are not legal or financial experts. 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