Speaker 0:03

Have you ever woke up at 3:00 AM wondering if the life you're living is truly fulfilling?

Speaker 2 0:09

This is the Your Next Success podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Caroline Sangal, I'm a life first career coach and strategist on a mission to normalize questioning your career because I believe each of us is made on purpose for a purpose only we can fulfill. The longer we live out of alignment with who we are, what we do best, and why we are here, the more we miss out. And the more the world misses out on what only we can give. The Your Next Success Podcast is where we explore how to build a career that truly fuels your life. We talk about self-discovery, smart job, search strategies, professional growth, and you'll hear stories from people who have navigated big career transitions themselves, so you can create a life, first career and become your own version of authentic success.

Speaker 1:06

Jenn Meacham is a speaker mindset coach and consultant who helps individuals and organizations unlock their potential through elevated thinking. Her journey was profoundly shaped by a final gift from her father. A copy of the film'The Secret', which inspired her to explore the power of the Human Mind. Today, she's trained in Bob Proctor's'Thinking Into Results Program' and lead seminars through her company, elevated Thinking, empowering others to expand their vision, shift their mindset, and achieve meaningful success. In this episode, Jenn shares how quiet dissatisfaction can become an invitation to growth. She reflects on the legacy of her father, the beliefs that shape our lives and the mindset shifts that open the door to new possibilities. This conversation explores what it means to elevate your thinking, redefine success, and pursue a life aligned with purpose and fulfillment.

Caroline 2:06

Jenn Mecham, welcome to your next success. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time now.

Jenn 2:13

Oh, thank you Caroline. It's so great to see you here. I love your show and um, yeah, we've met in person a few times and I just love your energy.

Caroline 2:23

Aw.

Jenn 2:24

Thank you for having me.

Caroline 2:26

I love yours as well. so for those who don't know, Jenn and I met at the National Speakers Association. North Carolina chapter has meetups. the Raleigh area is every second Saturday. So if anyone is in the RTP area. Please join us at the second Saturday meetups. We would love to see you. and it's a group for speakers, aspiring speakers, anyone who wants to better with their speaking. I'm totally gonna edit that later. Anyway, Jenn, it was to meet you there, and I'm so excited to be talking to you today to share your story. Now we will get to all of the amazing work that you do today as a coach, as a leader, as a guiding so many to have fulfilled lives and success. Let's start way back in your journey. Help us understand where were you born? Where did you grow up? What was life like for, you know, your very youngest self?

Jenn 3:23

Okay. Yeah. Well, I grew up, I was born and raised in Utah, um, Central Eastern, Utah. Just, um, about an hour out out of Moab. A lot of people go there for national arches.

Caroline 3:34

Yeah.

Jenn 3:35

Desert kind of life. But, uh, my, my father was a coal miner in Emory County and, um. And that was life. Life was, you know, I had two very loving parents, big family, six kids, that's Utah.

Caroline 3:52

Yeah.

Jenn 3:53

But my parents always struggled for money. So my dad, you know, had this hard job of working in the coal mines. It's hard work, low pay. I mean, it's higher than a lot of, a lot of industries for, you know, but it's still paycheck to paycheck life. Um, and we never, you know, emergencies happen, we just never had money. It was always stressful. Money was always the stressor in our family. And, uh, to, to address this, my dad in his off time, now, well, first let's go back to why would he choose a life of coal mining? He was a welder, actually. He'd been told that working in the trades, he chose welding, would always provide a secure income. It would always be there. It would always be needed. Um, and working in the coal mine, the coal mine industry, they would always need welders. So he bought into the idea that this would be a good, safe, secured job that would pay him for the rest of his life, would pay his retirement, um, you know, health insurance, all of that. So he bought into that, but he was miserable. He hated it. Every day, he hated that, those coal mines. But he, he stuck it out and he worked his entire adult life in the coal mines there. And, um, his off time though to, to his dream was to strike it rich by, uh, looking for gold in the mountains of Utah. And he spent uh, most of his off time, always looking for gold. And it wasn't until the end of his life that he actually was introduced to the film'The Secret'. And the messages in the film'The Secret' were so profound that it really hit him hard. It was like a gut punch to him and he, it was like he learned all of a sudden that he'd bought into an idea that was wrong. In the film, they talk about the power of your thinking, and it's your thoughts that dictate your life. If you're thinking thoughts of abundance and um, success and, um, greatness, then you will live that life. But if you are thinking of, um, thoughts, it's your thoughts that'll pull you down to a life of struggle, hardship, poverty as well. So, he was so passionate about us all having this message, getting this into our minds so that we wouldn't have to live a life of struggle like he did, that he made a copy of, of this film for all of us, uh, telling us go learn this live a life of less struggle. And so that's what started me on this. But yeah, that's where there's where, um, that's where I started out in life was in the coal mining towns in, in, uh, Utah.

Caroline 6:41

Now growing up at, at your very youngest self, one of six kids, where were you in that order?

Jenn 6:47

I was the second. So I, yeah, I had an older brother. Um, he actually passed away when I was 15, he was 16. Um, and it really shaped our fal. It really turned our family into a different direction. So my parents, um, not surprisingly, they were Mormon, they were raised Mormon. I was raised Mormon. Um, but my parents decided to leave the church when I was a child. So we were kind of had that perspective of, um, being on the outside looking in. Um, but it was, you know, you still have this thought of the ideas that you were taught from the time you're little about God and our purpose here and, um, you know, beliefs that we're taught about why, you know, judge, a lot of judgment things like, you know, God's watching you and heaven and hell and all of that stuff. So, you know, you come, you have these ideas of what life is, is supposed to be, what, but, uh, when my brother died, he was accidentally, um, it was an accidental gunshot. Um, and it really, I, it was really hard to watch my parents go through that, losing a child. My parents found their way out of that through learning about stories that documented, documented cases of where people died and it was documented that they died and then they came back and they shared their stories of what they saw in the afterlife. And it was these stories that really shaped my parents to teach us a different way about our purpose in life. So a lot of those stories were about people when they passed away. It was all about love and how great it was, and there was no judgment. And um, and you know, and people have their own beliefs on if these after death or near death experiences are true or not. But my parents, to them, they felt real. And you know, when I started reading some of these messages that, you know, there's a lot of things that happen that you're like, you can't really explain. Um, but it really provided our family a lot of comfort to know like life isn't about judgment, about good and evil and it's just about living a good life, loving each other, being there for everyone, and just really appreciating this life because it is, it does go by fast and. And to know, you know, it just provided my parents this comfort that they needed to know that Josh, my brother was fine. He was there, he was having a great time, and you know, it really helped them deal with that sadness.

Caroline 9:41

But that's, so firstly, thank you for for sharing your brother sounds like a, and your parents sound like they, they were into this continuous improvement and kind of learning and trying to pass along those messages as they, as they received him. Now, what about you? What kind of activities did you enjoy both in school and out of school or at home as you were growing up?

Jenn 10:04

So growing up, oh, I had so much fun. Lift on my bike all the time, which kind of makes me sad now to see the kids just stuck on their electronics indoors most of the time. Uh, I, I can't imagine. But you know, I was outside with my friends all the time on my bike, just living it, living the dream.

Caroline 10:26

Yeah.

Jenn 10:27

Though we were poor, you know, you know, everyone there, most of their parents worked in the coal mines. So, um, we, we didn't have a sense of difference then because we just all played. Um, um, but we, you know, we moved away for a time, uh, when my grandparents, um, passed away and then, but my dad always stayed there at the mines. Um, and you know, it's interesting, I never saw my dad in his coal mining gear.

Caroline 10:59

Oh.

Jenn 11:01

Because he always showered and changed before he left the mines. And um, it's an interesting story. But the one time I saw him in his coal mining gear, and I don't have a picture of my dad in his coal mining gear because he didn't take pictures either. So, but the interesting thing is, the one time I did see him, see him in his coal mining gear was on my 10th birthday. And it was the end of the day. We'd already gone to bed, so we'd had my birthday and, and then here comes dad into my bedroom, into our bedrooms. We all shared a room and he was in his coal mining gear and had the coal dust and everything. He was dirty, you know, and,

Caroline 11:41

Yeah.

Jenn 11:42

and he just felt our faces and, and to my 10-year-old self, I didn't know why he was doing that. I thought maybe he felt bad that he missed my birthday. And it wasn't until the next morning that we found out why, and it was because there had been, um, an explosion fire at the coal mine that killed 27 men that day. And my dad came home and just was so grateful that he was able to come home to his family, you know, when so many of his friends lost their lives and so many of those kids would never see their dads again.

Caroline 12:19

Oh wow. And so you were sleeping and kind of woke up to this happening?

Jenn 12:23

Yeah.

Caroline 12:24

Oh, wow.

Jenn 12:25

To my dad coming in and just feeling our faces and then we found out the next day what had happened. So yeah, that was the Wilberg mine fire, um, that happened on my birthday when I was 10 years old, but that's why, you know, that's the only time I ever saw him in his coal mining gear.

Caroline 12:43

Yeah. Be, yeah. And then I, I guess from your youngest viewpoint, kind of knowing your dad was working in the coal mines, knowing that a lot of your friends and their parents were working in the coal mines. Did you have a vision of what you thought it meant to be an adult or what you were going to do as you were an adult or any sort of you know, success in any, like, did, were,

Jenn 13:08

Yeah.

Caroline 13:09

Dreams or visions and, and what was that from that youngest vantage point, and we'll get to what it is today later, but.

Jenn 13:16

Right. So of course, you know, in school, um, I, I always had this, I always had this, um, I. this pull of trying to understand. So I loved school, I loved learning, I loved my teachers. I had a great time in my high school. I loved my friends. You know, we, we had a great time, even though I was the non-Mormon in the mostly Mormon, predominantly area that I, I had great friends and my memories are all, you know, really, really fun memories of those times. Um, but I was always drawn toward racism for some reason. I don't know why, but it always was something, there was always something there, and I studied it quite a bit. I didn't understand why there was racism and I lived in Utah, which is not very diverse, um, or was there, or where I lived, but, um, why racism existed. And so I started to kind of dip into that when I was in high school. And then when I got into college, that's where what really pulled me. So I, um, my background in college was minority studies. I really wanted to learn more about, um, racism. You know, our history, the United States history of slavery and, um, I, I worked with my major professor to work with her. Her work was looking at racial socialization of black and white children during the Jim Crow years. And that, you know, my time I went to Utah State, um, for my bachelor's and for graduate school. I had a great time, um, learning that with my professors, like really, you know, they were from, uh, areas outside of Utah and they really opened my eyes to really some great concepts and I learned a lot and that's what I assumed that that's what my plan was. I'm going to teach this so I act. That's what pulled me out here to North Carolina. I had a plan to get my PhD in um, and, um, teaching minority history. But when I got here, I worked with an African American woman who just kind of, um, kind of blew that off and said, well, you can't teach that you're white and even though all my professors were white teaching this and I learned so much, I just thought, well, she's probably red. I'd have to go back out to these areas that are not very diverse to be able to teach this stuff. Um, because nobody would probably want to, you know, think, I mean, you know, what, what are, what's my insight? I am white, so how do I, how can I relate to this, to this history? Even though, you know, I can teach it all day long. I know these stories and powerful stuff. My thinking at the time though was that she's probably right and I wouldn't be able to get it, get into this field. So I just dropped it and I moved into, um, healthcare research. Um, and that's where I stayed. You know, it was safe, comfortable. I mean, it was secure. A lot of research here in the RTP, um, but it wasn't very fulfilling. It wasn't my calling for sure. It was just, it, it was a paycheck. And so I just lived this paycheck to paycheck life. Not satisfying. I mean, some studies were more interesting than others for sure. But, um, I just, just. I kept on that train just, okay, I should be satisfied. I'm doing, I'm living better than my parents lived. I am living in a cookie cutter house. I was married, um, Utah. You know, we get married early, so I was married at the age of 19, but I knew we were never right for each other from the very beginning. But I stated that marriage just because it, you know, it was just, those ideas of it's just you should try to work it out and it's better for the kids if you stay together and all of that stuff.

Caroline 17:23

So in your youngest years you thought being successful was going to be being being educated and working in some sort of field or capacity is maybe what you had considered from the earliest stages,

Jenn 17:39

Yeah, I always, yeah, geared, well, success was not marriage. I just, that was just, it just happened. Yeah. Just part of life. Um, but yeah, as far as my dream of what I love to do, I was always minority research. It was always trying to find out more about why racism existed.

Caroline 18:00

How did you get even introduced, like being in a not very diverse, Utah area. How did your knowledge and insight into all the beautiful diversity that the world has, how did that start to even come in? Was it through school or some other, was it TV? Like how did you even get introduced and start to have this fascination and desire to wanna make a difference there?

Jenn 18:28

Well it was probably, um, you know, popular culture. You see things, you're like, people that don't look like me are all over this world. And then I'd hear comments, small thinking, small, small towns. Um, and I would just hear racist comments and it just always, I remember from the time I was little, just hearing these comments and wondering why. And I remember sitting on my mom's lap one day and she was reading Dr. Seuss's, um, uh, the Star-Belly Sneetches. And it's the story about how these sneetches with stars lived better than the ones without stars. And so the ones without stars, here comes a man and says, Hey, I can stamp a star on you. So you live just like them. They're like, sweet, sign me up. So they're getting their stars. Well then the Star-Belly Sneetches were like, hey, well then we'll just take ours off then. We still wanna be different. We wanna be better than you. So the guy made a machine that took stars off and it just went back and forth, you know? And it was all about the concept of this group is better than that group and we wanna maintain that.

Caroline 19:36

Interesting.

Jenn 19:37

Yeah. So yeah, from the time I was little, I always wondered about that.

Caroline 19:43

How did you even decide that you wanted to go to college being a coal miner's daughter, how was college even a, a consideration and an option? And yeah. How does that come?

Jenn 19:54

Well, you know, it's high school discussed and that was what everyone pushed. The, the, the way to get a better life is college. And I remember there was a poster in my guidance counselor's office that said, if you can't promise your daughter that her husband won't leave her or won't die or all of these things, then you can tell her she doesn't need to go to college.

Caroline 20:22

Oh wow.

Jenn 20:24

And so that was, you know, that was important. And I loved to study and I wanted to study. Um, so it was just natural for me to want to go into school.

Caroline 20:35

Did you live there? Like was it far enough away? I don't know the, the geography of Utah very, very much.

Jenn 20:41

Yeah. No.

Caroline 20:42

Yeah.

Jenn 20:43

No. Um, so I got married really young at 19, right after I graduated. Um, and the guy I married, he was from Logan, which is about four hours away. And so I went to Utah State, um, up there in the mountains, um, which is just below the Idaho border.

Caroline 20:59

Oh wow. Wow. Okay. So lots of studying, learning, getting fascinated by minority studies, then achieving your, undergraduate and, master's degree, and then you decide to come to North Carolina, was there a draw? Were you, were, were you still married at the time? Was there a draw for him as well?

Jenn 21:20

Um, he just came basically for me. So, um, yeah, I did worked with my major professor, um, on a study the Behind the Veil oral history project that was, um, conducted by Duke University where they'd gone through and interviewed, um, hundreds of African-American people who'd lived through Jim Crow. They wanted to, um, record their stories before they passed away, and so I'd worked with her on those that. On that project and then, and use those for my thesis. And then I came out here with my plan to further those and work more in this field. But then I heard that one little comment that said, no, you can't do it. You're white. And that was enough to say she's probably right.

Caroline 22:06

Oh, oh, okay. All right. So then you go and you get involved in healthcare related research and you're doing it and you're kind of feeling not fulfilled, but still doing what you think is the right thing to do as an adult. tell me a little bit more about that. Like what did it feel like for you? In this middle of what somebody else could say was success, and yet you're feeling counter to that.

Jenn 22:35

Yeah. So interesting. And I look back at that now, that statement, I'm like, oh, I bought into one statement of one person. And let that guide my entire life. But, you know, every, I do believe that everything happens for a reason and I had to walk through what I needed to walk through to learn the lessons I needed to take with me. So, um, you know, and a lot of my, so it was fascinating to me too, was, um, reproductive health. I did a lot of, um, um, studying about Margaret Sanger and, you know, birth control and everything that went around those. So being able to work on those types of studies was always really interesting to me, and I liked that. Um, so that, you know, I was just kind of, um, it, it depended on the study, which study I was funded to work on, you know, but then COVID hit. And everything came to a standstill in my life. So I had two daughters by this time. Um, same, same marriage. I've been married 26 years. Um, but the routine stopped because I would just, instead of focusing on, you know, what it was, I, I couldn't do for years. I couldn't sleep. Like, I would wake up at 3:00 AM every morning and my mind was just racing and I didn't know why. And I was all this, this thinking of dissatisfaction in the background.

Caroline 24:07

Yeah.

Jenn 24:07

Why was I dissatisfied? Why was I waking up with this feeling? Wake up, I feel dissatisfied. I should be satisfied. I've got this cookie cutter house. I've got a decent job. I've got two great kids. I, you know, I was very involved with their lives and their school and the activities and I should be satisfied. But there was this voice that I wasn't satisfied, and it wasn't until COVID hit that everything just stopped and I had to, I had to just, it just got quiet. The routine stopped. No, no driving kids around. I couldn't cover up myself anymore. It's like, yeah, that's what it was, was I was busy in the habit of just lifing and so I didn't really get a chance to just be quiet with myself and, and figure out something's not right. I've got to actually address this. So COVID comes, everything comes to a standstill, and there's the film, The Secret. It was just laying out there like I didn't even have to go look for it. Weird, but there it was and I popped it in. And this time it, it was like a gut punch to me too. Just like my dad years ago, but this time it really, it really hit me. And so I started doing research on all the teachers in that film and I was drawn to, um, Bob Proctor because he'd been studying and working in this field the longest, but all of'em had such great stories of rags to riches, you know, being at the bottom of life and creating magical lives.

Caroline 25:46

Hmm.

Jenn 25:46

So. But yeah, it was Bob Proctor's story that really pulled me, and that's where I, where I, where I went. So are you familiar with Bob Proctor?

Caroline 25:58

Just from you. I think it had come across my radar maybe, maybe during grad school or after, but, but then I was re reminded from you, but please do tell more about, Bob Proctor.

Jenn 26:09

His story.

Caroline 26:10

The Secret. Yeah. And then, and then we'll catch up to, and then what happened, like, and, you, you were working in this thing and then what happened? Yeah. Okay. Please, please enlighten us. Yeah.

Jenn 26:20

So Bob Proctor was featured in the film, The Secret. Um, and his story was he was, he was born during the Depression. He was kicked out of high school. His, you know, his parent. Well, his family was poor. It was his, a single mom, uh, raising three kids by herself during this time, and he was kicked out of high school, not just a dropout. He was kicked out. He spent his nights drinking at the bar, and he spent 10 years bouncing around from job to job. He couldn't keep a job. He was just going nowhere. And it wasn't until one of the most influential men in his community in Toronto, pulled him aside one day and said, I've been watching you and you've got to be one of the most miserable people I've ever met. You're always broke. You're always asking for money. Look like you're, you're just miserable. He says, your way's not working. Why don't you follow my way? And he gave him a copy of the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Are you familiar?

Caroline 27:21

Totally. Yeah. It's down here a foundational. Where is it? It is,

Jenn 27:31

Think and Grow Rich. Right?

Caroline 27:33

Yeah.

Jenn 27:34

So the story of Think and Grow Rich, really quick, um, just for viewers if they haven't read this or heard of it, is, um, the author, Napoleon Hill was a reporter who was working on a paper. Um, just a small paper, nothing of significance, but the paper assigned a few of the reporters to go out and interview successful people to learn their secrets of success. He was assigned to interview Andrew Carnegie, who was the world's first billionaire. And of course, Napoleon thought, why would he accept an interview with me? I'm nobody. But he did. And um, he met with Napoleon for quite a few hours. And, um, at the time, Andrew Carnegie was also, he's older now, and he was looking for someone to create a recipe book for anyone to create the success he had. So in comes Napoleon Hill and he's got all these great questions and Andrew Carnegie's thinking this might be my guy. So he invited him back to his place. And, uh, they spent a few days together just talking, and he said, now I've told you all that I can't tell you about my life. What would you say about dedicating the rest of your life to Interviewing the most successful people and creating this book, creating a recipe for anyone to create success? And he didn't know it at the time, but Andrew Carnegie was holding a stopwatch under his desk. He was going to give him just 60 seconds to make up his mind, and if he couldn't give him that answer in that amount of time, he knew he wouldn't. He was not the man. But Andrew Carnegie gave him, um, gave him a yes. Within it was like 20 something seconds, he said yes and now, Andrew Carnegie told him, I'm not going to fund you for this. You're going to have to wait to do it. You're going to have to find a way to do it yourself. And back then, I mean, cars were just new. Transportation was, you know, it wasn't easy. Um, so he had to go home and what did I just do? I'm not going to get paid. I just signed up to do this and I'm not going to get paid for this. And it's interesting that Andrew Carnegie didn't offer to pay him to do this because Andrew Carnegie was so wealthy and he was so generous, and he knew part of the secret of success was generosity. So why didn't he fund Napoleon Hill? And I think, I haven't heard this, but I think it's because he knew, Napoleon Hill wouldn't go deep into this if he was, if it was just surface, and if he would, if he funded his trips, if he funded everything, he wouldn't do the deep dive into this. So, um, Napoleon Hill spent over 20 years interviewing successful people, and he, he, well, he interviewed 500 of, um, the most successful people out there. Amazing names, you know. Um, and the Rockefellers, the Wright brothers, you name it, the names are in there. But he came up within these, after interviewing all these people, he interviewed thousands of people, not just the most successful, but he learned the threads to success are only 13 principles, but there are 29 reasons to default. And if you buy into these 29 defaults, then you won't make it. And so yeah, that's what he did. He, he, he learned in these, so he's principles of Think and Grow Rich are pretty, pretty straightforward. You've gotta have a desire, a burning desire. You've gotta have persistence, you've gotta have faith. You've got, you know, all these things. Okay. That's not surprising that that is in this book, but it's the deeper stuff that's in this book that, I think he had to learn. So the deeper stuff, things like, um, spirit, spirituality giving, uh, working with energy, vibration, uh, self, uh, autosuggestion, all of these, all of these deeper layer things that, um, that, that came out that are these main principles too. So, yes. He just taught you, okay, these are the principles, take it or leave it. So I was actually, I'm like, when I learned about this book, I'm like, wow, this is powerful stuff. I was talking to a friend of mine who got his, um, MBA at Duke and I, um, I just assumed that they would teach us in the business schools, but he said they don't. And I said, well, why, if this leads back to all these success. These are the threads of the success. And it leads back to, on Andrew Carnegie, why wouldn't they teach this in the business schools? He says it's because of the spiritual factor.

Caroline 32:41

Oh wow. Yeah.

Jenn 33:26

Yeah. And so anyway, back to Bob Proctor. So he was, um, Ray Stanford gave him this book. He said Napoleon Hill spent his entire life writing this book. It would do you a lot of good to spend your entire life reading this book. And so he started to reading, reading it. And you know, Bob didn't listen to a lot of people. I mean, he was mostly stubborn, but he was so tired. He just said, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. And so he really took this to heart. He could see Ray Stanford was living the dream life, so okay, I'll follow this man. And he, he started studying it and he's like, well, what do I do? I have no education. I have no business experience. And Ray told him that doesn't matter. You don't have to have an education to be successful. And so he, he learned there was good money in, in cleaning, so he opened a cleaning business and started cleaning offices on the side. He went from earning$4,000 a year to$175,000 that year, and that was 1961. Then he took it over a million dollars just a couple years later, which in today's dollars would be over$10 million. So all of a sudden he's just like, how did this happen? So he was giving people the book here, read the book. This is what I did. But he saw it wasn't having the same effect. He's like, oh, he noticed other cleaning businesses were not as successful as his. So what was it about him? He wanted to know. He really wanted to know. So. I mean, he could have just lived his life making all this money, but he, he decided to offload his company and he went and worked with Earl Nightingale, who was directly mentored by Napoleon Hill.

Caroline 35:16

Yeah.

Jenn 35:18

And he spent five years with Earl and then spent actually the next 10 years learning, really the psychology, he really wanted that understanding of why it happened for him and not other people. And so, yeah, for 10 years he just studied this and tried to understand why. And it wasn't until he came up with a concept that really sunk it all into place. He'd learned the concept that, and, you know, and then he spent the rest of his life teaching people how to do this 63 years. He just got up there on that stage and, and, uh, went for it and he decided. He decided this is what I wanna do with the rest of my life, is help other people. And so he didn't know how it was gonna happen, but he said he just sat down with a pen one day and he said, I'm going to build a company that operates all over this world. And he did it.

Caroline 36:12

And so during COVID I, you refined The Secret. You pop it in, you become fascinated with Bob Proctor's story. You start digging into that and still in that time, you're in this quote, successful job with this cookie cutter house. And this, I, what some could say is a dream life, but you're miserable. So now you find this example of The Secret, so many people's stories introduced to Napoleon Hill and all of these others and, and Think and Grow, Rich and Andrew Carnegie and, Earl Nightingale. And now what effect does this have on you and your life, and what you chose to do next?

Jenn 36:55

All right, before we get into what I chose to do next, there was one other question I had from that book, Think and Grow Rich, it didn't address racism.

Caroline 37:07

Hmm.

Jenn 37:09

And I thought, oh God, you know, there's so much that happens in this country of brown racism that people are the, you know, darker colored skin or the last hired, the first fired, uh, opportunities are blocked everywhere. They, they look, but it wasn't really addressed in Think and Grow Rich and so that really perplexed me. He's saying, anyone can do this, but he's not seeing this aspect. He's not addressing this aspect. But then one day I was listening to, after I'd read the book, um, I was listening to Earl Nightingale talk about the story of SB Fuller. Are you familiar with him?

Caroline 37:49

I mean, I've heard the name, but that doesn't mean that I'm not recalling as specifically about SB Fuller, before.

Jenn 37:56

Okay.

Caroline 37:56

I heard the name.

Jenn 37:58

So here's another story.

Caroline 38:00

Yeah.

Jenn 38:02

So SB Fuller was a, a black man. He was born, um, to sharecroppers in the south in Louisiana. Dirt poor. And he, his, of course, you know, money was a struggle for them during the depression, his family. Decided to, well, from the time he was little though, he knew he wanted to do more and he started selling soap door to door from the time he was a kid. And, um, he learned that, you know, that was a great way to make extra income. Soap is something everybody needs and, and so he started as a kid in the world of, um, business and sales. So, um, but his family left Louisiana, moved up to Tennessee when he was just a teenager. His mother passed away, and his father wasn't great at taking care of the kids, so that left him. He was the oldest one to take care of his, I believe he had seven younger brothers and sisters, and he was just a teenager, but he got out there, he supported them. And he was thinking of ways to make money. And so he, um, found a company that would supply dresses and he sold them to the domestic, the black workers in his area. The, they mostly worked as domestics, you know. Um, but so they started buying his clothes and it was generating him a business. Um, but then when they would wear these clothes to their jobs in the working for white households. They were told if they bought their clothes from SB Fuller that they would lose their jobs. Yeah. So they,

Caroline 39:43

How does that make any sense?

Jenn 39:45

Right. How does it make any sense? So they are bringing back these dresses to SB and they're saying, sorry, we can't buy from you. Just because they didn't want a black man cutting in on their business. They didn't want a black man moving into the world of, uh, money and being successful. So, you know, most people and most black people would've just said, that's it. That's life in America for us, but not SB Fuller. He just decided, all right, this is not my place. So he packed up, he got his family together and they moved to Chicago and he, again, this was during the depression, so he got a job working in with steel. I believe it was the steel mills. And he was doing such a good job that the owner there said, girl, I'm so impressed with your work. If you work like this for me, I'll take care of you and your family forever, that did not sit well with SB. He was like, I don't want anyone taking care of me or my family, and he just quit. Here's, here it is, the depression. He had this job, which was hard to come by, and he said, nah, no, and he left and he started, he started a business, he, he moved into the insurance market, started selling insurance, and then he came across an article that, showed him that more money was made for somebody else that was in the, or other people in the cosmetics, in the soap, all in those in that field. And so that's the field he went into was that. And he made such a screaming success. He became, you know, a multimillionaire and he carried two books with them, guess what those books were

Caroline 41:25

Think and Grow Rich.

Jenn 41:26

Right.

Caroline 41:28

Um.

Jenn 41:30

And the Bible was the other book.

Caroline 41:31

Okay.

Jenn 41:35

Yes, he carried those books with him and he studied them, and he lived by those principles of, you know, of, of what makes success. He was not going to let anyone stand in his way. And that's what Think and Grow Rich is all about. The obstacles will give way, as long as you're focused on your goal, just keep focusing. You know, just keep, keep the, keep the idea and let the obstacles fall away. And Earl, Earl's definition of success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. So you're at success as long as you're moving toward your goal. It's only when you give up on yourself, that's when you're, that's when you become the failure. That's when you fall into failure. So he, I mean, he just started off that way and he started buying other businesses and theaters and, you know, he grew really wealthy. Um, and he was the, uh, he was the president of his chapter of the NAACP. He knew he worked to improve the conditions and improve the rights of minorities, but that didn't stop him from pursuing his goal. But he was always criticized for saying, well, you're not doing enough for the, for the black men, or you're not doing enough for our, our rights. We should really be focusing on the laws. He's like, yeah, okay, let's get the laws changed, but at the same time, don't divert on your goal. In fact, he, during the, uh, Montgomery bus boycott, he, he's like, great, you brought the bus lines to their knees. Why don't you buy the bus lines now so that we can, you know, grow our economy so that the, uh, black population can grow the economy and have that power base. But they didn't, they didn't, uh, take him up on that idea. Um, but his whole mission was, okay, think better. You know, you're, there's all kinds of obstacles out there, and all you have to do is focus on that end game. But yeah, he was criticized a lot for not focusing on only changing the laws and, um, advocating for equal rights.

Caroline 43:55

Okay. So how does this translate into you figuring out and making a lot of changes for your own growth and development?

Jenn 44:05

So, so Bob Proctor, he's, uh, paid people pay thousands of dollars to attend Bob Proctor, um, seminars. They'd fly from all over the world to attend his seminars, but he would be the first one up there to say 97% of you are going to go home and do nothing with this information because you're going to go home and you're going to get stuck on the how. The how is not your job, you just have to let go of the how and know that as long as you take the steps, the how will emerge. So he has a program that was designed by Sandy Gallagher. She met him about the same time that The Secret was, um, that The Secret was made, and she was a very successful banking attorney. Did billion dollar merger deals all the time. Um, her company sent her to a Bob Proctor seminar and she thought it was just a leadership seminar. Um, but she went and she said what he had to say, blew her mind, and right then and there, she decided that she wanted to work with him, and she was going to create a program called Thinking Into Results that people could apply where they are now, they didn't have to come out to his seminars. Um, it was designed with a trained consultant with the principles he teaches and with the design, um, that goes along that matches their, their principles. So, um, so I enrolled in Thinking Into Results. It's a six month program. Within the first two months, I got the job I wanted my, my salary doubled and I was able to make these big life changes. I was able to support myself, um, get a divorce, um, do all these massive changes in my life, just move on. It happened so fast, I was hooked, and so I went back and I decided I wanted to work with them and stepping into those trainings with the rooms of millionaires. Um, people who are very successful. In my whole life, I've been taught that wealthy people are evil, wealthy people use poor people to make themselves wealthy. It was all negative, but all of a sudden I'm in these rooms with these very successful people who are very generous and they're very kind, and they're very spiritual, and all of a sudden my ideas had to crumble. They just kind of fell away. It was like. I felt, you know, like Im that imposter syndrome. Here I am just the daughter of a coal miner stepping into these room, these room of millionaires, and who am I? You know, all of a sudden I felt like I was the coal miner with cold smudges on my cheeks. But no, I've learned that it's, you know, we've got it all. We've been taught these things and all of the things that we are taught, you have to learn to question them. Are they really factual And why, why are, why do we believe that? Why do we believe that wealthy people are nefarious or only earn their money off the backs of, of the poor? And why do we think money has to be hard? Why do we think success has to be hard? Why do we think it's out there somewhere and not here? And so, yeah. Um, all of a sudden this is just clued me in onto what? Wow, this is very powerful and, and I'm no longer just satisfied with my job, even though, you know, I'm, I love what I was doing, but I wanted more Now I wanted to teach other people this. When you learn this, there's just something in it that you just wanna help other people too.

Caroline 47:54

Okay, so you end up becoming a consultant for a lot of this seminars and helping other people have the same method that you had such great results, and then what happened? Are you still doing that or now you're, you're doing?

Jenn 48:12

No, that's what I teach. I, I am hold these seminars and I teach the program Thinking Into Results. The same program that I enrolled in.

Caroline 48:21

It's awesome.

Jenn 48:22

So, yep. I'm just, that's where I'm at right now. Um, and I'm, you know, I'm all of a sudden feeling like I'm meeting my tribe because it's not about going to work and coming home and just watching TV.

Caroline 48:35

Yeah.

Jenn 48:36

all of a sudden I meet people that are like. Go-getters and they have high ambitions and that's what I felt. I, I really like, wow, this is what I was missing. Because I would just come home and it's just routine to just unwind, watch a film, whatever.

Caroline 48:52

Mm-hmm.

Jenn 48:53

And I thought something was wrong with me. Why am I always have to be busy? Why do I have to be doing something all the time? And I just, just thought something was wrong with me. And it wasn't until I'm like, oh. Finally the world of business and the pe, the world of people that ha are hungry to achieve and get out there and make something. It was like, wow, this is, this is fabulous. This is what I was missing.

Caroline 49:16

So now from this new viewpoint, what do you view as success or how do you view authentic success for yourself?

Jenn 49:26

So it's all about listening to yourself, you know, first, listening to yourself and not bottling yourself up. And that's something that I wish I could tell my, my younger self, not to listen to those little messages that can really steer you into a, a path of just bottling yourself up. And, and I always, I always maintain that idea of what is success? Success is just the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. As long as you're moving towards something that's fulfilling to you, whatever that is. Then awesome. I mean, when he, I interviewed the Wright brothers, their goal was not money. Their goal was getting up in the air.

Caroline 50:10

Yeah.

Jenn 50:11

You know, I mean, as long as you're moving towards something that gives your soul, your inner spirit, that drive that excitement, that's where the life, that's where the spice of life is. And that's what I got a lot with the um the, um, near death experiences, you know, going back to that is what is the purpose of life? I heard one interview that was just really interesting was just, um, a man who passed away and his experience was he was met with a man, he didn't know who it was, and he was shown a little boy who was just playing and joyful, and he learned the man next to him, he said. He learned that it was Jesus and the little boy playing was him as a little boy. And Jesus's only message to him is, you're not playful enough. Go back to that. Enjoy life. And that was it. That was the message. And you know, he was brought back to life after his accident. But, um, that was it. I need to enjoy life more.

Caroline 51:21

It seems you're enjoying life beautifully. Every time I see you have this radiating smile, you're just drawing people to and around you. And so I'm, I'm so thankful about our conversation being in the same air. And getting to, to, to see you every now and then but how do people find you? How do they work with you?

Jenn 51:41

Yeah. Well, thank you. Um, so my website is Elevatedthinking.net um, my email hello@elevatedthinking.net. I have seminars, I stage seminars every month or more frequently. And, um, they can contact me to find out where. and then I'll be starting my web webinars as well.

Caroline 52:02

Awesome.

Jenn 52:02

And I'm all, and all the, uh, you know, all the socials, so.

Caroline 52:07

Very lovely. Well, thank you so much, Jenn, for sharing your story, for being a part of Your Next Success, and I can't wait to continue to celebrate you and your next success.

Jenn 52:17

Uh, thank you so much, Caroline. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 52:20

Jenn, thank you for sharing your story, your wisdom, and your insights. Remind us what is possible when we choose to think differently. Thanks for listening to Your Next Success with Dr. Caroline Sangal. Remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want.