We want more peace or more clarity so we can have fulfillment in our lives. Life coach Michanda Lindsey wants all of us to see the beauty of oneness, the freedom of being enough, the power of presence, and the treasures found in stillness. In this episode, she joins Stephen Jaye to talk about the concept of spending time to look deep within ourselves so that we can head in the right direction. We can never control every outcome in our lives. Michanda shares how we could develop a sense of efficacy. If you’re a leader who wants results for organizational growth or an individual who wants to find clarity and get on the right path, then this episode is for you. So take a deep breath, listen within, and tune into this episode!

---

Listen to the podcast here:

Peace And Clarity Through Presence And Introspection With Michanda Lindsey

One narrative that we have in our current day culture that I find particularly suffocating is this narrative that you have to pick just one thing. I observed a lot of people that have also felt suffocated by this. That one thing has to be a clearly defined item from some previously conceived list of jobs. It plays into the whole question, “What do you do?” One of the reasons I tend to dislike that question is because it tends to put your identity into one of however many job description boxes you have, “I am an engineer and that's the only thing about me.” My guest, Michanda Lindsey has a couple of different endeavors as well as her primary endeavor in coaching, which doesn't necessarily fit into the box that we consider coaching. Michanda, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Stephen. I'm delighted to be here.

Thank you very much for joining us. One thing I'm wondering is you describe yourself as a coach because that's how people wrap their brains around your services, but give us a little orientation into what your services are about.

I have a challenging time describing myself according to the labels that many people are so used to using. Because I know it helps in understanding, I relent and do use the title of coach. What I provide is a doorway for people to have a safe space to drop down into these parts, the heart, the soul, the spirit and beyond the head. We spend so much time in the head. My services are related to dropping down into this deeper part of who we are and helping people identify their own answers.

I love to tell people that your answer is already inside of you. You don't have to travel to Mount Kilimanjaro to go find your answer. I offer executive coaching, meaning I simply work with executives and leaders, whether in the business world, corporate world, education, non-profit. I also do life coaching, so I help people with areas of their life. I do spiritual coaching. The funny piece is that people ask me, “What's the difference?” I say, “It depends on which doorway someone enters because I provide the same thing.” I'm going to talk about slowing down, making space to look inside-out, and cultivating a knowing of who we are beyond the exterior.

When you talk about these life coaching and executive coaching, and how they're all pretty much have the same theme, what's the profile of the individual that would need your services in this broad category that we discuss as coaching work? It could be pretty much anything. If you love that show, Ted Lasso, he's technically a coach too. It could mean a lot of things.

I got to catch up with that show. One of my sons was watching that show. I need to watch it. I haven't watched it yet. You're my next push to watch it. I would say, yes. What I mean when I say executive coaching, life coaching, spiritual coaching, they're all the same in terms of I'm going to help people go deeper because there's so much more. The ideal or profile clients, I don't have one. I look for people who say they want more. Whatever that more maybe, “I want more peace. I want more clarity. I want more understanding.”

For a business to succeed, you have to find and market to the right customer. Identifying the problem and creating value for your customer ensures revenue and success. In this episode, Stephen Jaye talks to growth strategist John Gies as they explore marketing to your niche. John talks about demographics and psychographics and why you need to pay attention if you want to find your customer. Tune in for more marketing tips and strategies as Stephen and John talk shop.

---

Listen to the podcast here:

Finding Business Success In The Right Customer And Niche With John Gies

One mistake a lot of people make when we start trying to build things on our own is to do everything on our own. In that case, we're trying to be not only the technical person or the person physically building the objects but we're also trying to be the person that controls the budget, the person that worries about other aspects of the business. Also, marketing and getting the word out is another daunting task that prevents a lot of people from doing what they want to do.

My guest, John Gies, has a business called RAS, which I believe stands for Revenue Acceleration System. His entire business is based around helping you network your product, network whatever service you're providing and develop the revenue you need to make it a viable business. John, welcome to the show.

The Right Customer: Ask yourself a question, “will your customer's life be better if they do business with you?” If the answer to that question is yes, then you're doing them a disservice by not helping them make that decision.

 

Thanks. I'm glad to be here.

Thank you very much. The first thing I want to ask you is what made you determine that business development was the field you want to be in?

I was like most people. When I was in college, I took Marketing. I wanted to be the Don Draper of Minnesota. He was the head guy for Mad Men. As I went out and interviewed with companies, they all said, “You should sell something so you understand the whole process, why customers buy.” I got into sales. As I went from company to company, I found that I didn't fit with them or they didn't fit with me. It was time to move along and help small business owners grow their businesses.

When you talk about small business owners, is this a group of people that you feel a certain passion about? Is there a reason you picked small business owners?

I was in the corporate world. I was what you call a road warrior. I was on the airplane all the time. I watched what happened when investors got involved in businesses. They would come in and put some money in and things would be good for a little while. They'd start cutting back on service and cutting people. Pretty soon, customers and employees would suffer. Back when I was in college, they talked about this. Even a few years ago, I heard a DU professor talked about most workers in acquisitions fail to deliver value to shareholders, customers or clients.

I liked the small business owners. COVID is a good example. The government goes through a lot of stuff at the wall. Some are willing. Someone will work most of their relief on someplace else. Wall Street doesn't care but small business owners are the people that are going to buy your tickets to your ball game. They're going to support the community. They're going to be in the Chamber of Commerce, then become the leaders in the community. My passion is to help small business owners on Main Street thrive so we don't have to rely on Wall Street.

Would you be able to elaborate a little bit more? This is a topic that eventually ends up affecting almost everyone's life unexpectedly. What happens when there's some merger acquisition, some buyout and what impact it has on your everyday worker as well as the product? What do you think causes a lot of these things to go wrong in these situations?

If I knew the answer, then I'd be the guru. I can tell you my experience.

Imagine starting a startup a day. That sounds crazy and impossible to handle. But, apparently, for Greg Tanner, this wasn't all too crazy. Greg did 31 startups in 31 days. Having spent the majority of his career in Information Technology, Greg has mastered how to run a business from an IT sense. He is the founder of several companies, including Aspen Capital Fund. Join Greg as he sits down with your host Stephen Jaye to discuss how to successfully start a startup. Learn what are the best high-income skills you need so that you can be more flexible. Discover ways on how to spark your creativity. Learn how to be observant of your surroundings. And remember to take care of yourself. Startups can be stressful. Make sure you don't overwork yourself and ruin your health. Learn all this and more today.

---

Listen to the podcast here:

A Startup A Day: The High-Income Skills You Need To Start A Startup With Greg Tanner

There are a lot of people out there who start-up businesses and companies and I have a lot of admiration for that whole process. My guest here is Greg Tanner of Aspen Capital Fund spent his July starting up 31 companies in 31 days. Here to talk about that experience, Greg, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate being here.

The first thing I need to ask you is how busy did that make your July?

Know when to walk away from some of your ideas. You can't be too in love with them.Share on X

It was very busy. It took a lot of discipline and what I call high-income skills to get these all going. I had some of these ideas before. I watched someone do 31 startups in August 2020, a guy named Mark Grimes. I also watched another guy named Doc Williams do 100 startups in 100 days in 2020. He's a phenomenal inspiration. He builds a business every Thursday on a YouTube show and he shows you how to do it. It's cool.

Anyone reading that's wanting to learn more about the process and how to start up a business can check out this Doc Williams' YouTube channel.

He shows you how to do no-code, app-building, all sorts of types of businesses. It's crazy. There are a lot of how-to and good ideas there so that was the inspiration. I was going to do it in 2020 with Mark. However, my August was too busy. I wasn't able to do it. In 2021, I decided to do it and had a lot of ideas since I started Aspen Capital Fund. My nephew and I have this thing called the Tanner Idea Factory. We have all these ideas. Some of them we never got to or that's a good idea but then it was just an idea. I took some of those out of there. I've taken some things that I've been wanting to do for my business at Aspen Capital Fund and some of the other things that I thought were good ideas.

It was a good experiment. I've done startups before but now in this age of creators, it's interesting to try to figure out how do you monetize your idea and how you scale it. That's the biggest takeaway I've learned from it and some of these ideas, I stood it up and I was like, "No one's going to ever give me a dime for this thing." It was a failure the day that it was opened or started. You got to know when to walk away from some of these ideas. You can't be so in love with it. It does take grit but you don't want to be wasting months on a startup that's not going to make any money.

Starting Startups: There is a fine line between taking on any endeavor and giving up on something too quickly, knowing that something is not going to go anywhere despite putting a lot of energy into it.

 

That's a very good point because there is a fine line between whether it be starting off a business or taking on any endeavor, between giving up on something before you even give it a chance and sticking with something that's not going to go anywhere when you've put a lot of energy into it. How would you say or what would you recommend someone who's reading this starting up their own business or any other thing in life?

The COVID pandemic has shown us that now, more than ever, that authentic connections are needed. Beyond networking, people need to build a conscious community. In this episode, Stephen Jaye sits down to talk to the founder of Conscious Business Connections, Kristin McGinnis. Kristin delves into the effects COVID has had on how we work and do business, and why we need community in these trying times. Tune in and learn more about the conscious community movement and be inspired to build your own.

---

Listen to the podcast here:

Beyond Networking: Building A Conscious Community With Kristin McGinnis

We're going to talk about community. Community has been a common theme throughout my life. At a young age, I read the Robert Putnam book Bowling Alone which came out in 2000 and talked about what happened to our communities from the middle to the end of the 20th century. As you're all probably aware of what has happened since with the social media and all this other stuff has only seemed to further weaken our communities, even accelerate the trend a little bit.

One of the things I'm trying to cover on this show is different people who are trying different methods of bringing back our communities for various purposes. Our guest Kristin McGinnis has started a group called Conscious Business Connections, which has a pretty extensive mission and even goes beyond just the business. There are some events that are a little bit more social in nature. It seems to cover the whole range and spectrum. Kristin, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Stephen. I'm glad to be here.

Thank you for joining us. Let's start by orienting the audience to what you're doing. What is Conscious Business Connections? You've put all of yourself into this pursuit. What inspired you to start Conscious Business Connections and what made you feel like this was the thing that you were supposed to be doing right now?

It was during the pandemic when we were in lockdown and I was taking time to understand what my passions were in life, what my calling was in life. I was doing a lot of reading during that time. We were all staying at home, so I had a lot of extra time. I did a lot of soul searching. I have so many interests in life and so many passions.

I wanted to find a way to continue my current career but also wrap in more of my passions for philanthropy and animals. A lot of different elements from my event planning experience and my finance experience. I came up with this concept as I was seeing the world shut down and I saw all of these amazing people with beautiful gifts, namely in the coaching, yoga and hospitality world.

The pandemic has people finding their true passions in life and doing what they love and having meaning and purpose behind that. Share on X

It's all these businesses that were struggling to stay open and make money during the pandemic. With my gifts of entrepreneurship, I thought my skills could help their passions and I can help them start businesses. I started a yoga business and practiced that out a little bit and have some retreats. The belonging that was growing from the community I was building with this yoga business was just beautiful.

That has since dissolved when I started Conscious Business Connections on a larger scale. I have a much larger dream around Conscious Business Connections. I've taken that yoga model and expanded it even further. I'm hosting amazing events and yoga is one of those. It's a way for people to network and do things that they love while they're connecting.

Combining their interests, what lights them up in the world with fun things we want to do and then naturally, we have conscious conversations. We're connecting in ways that are supporting our businesses, bringing target market to you, bringing clients to strategic partners, people that are going to help you keep your mind on and that's the tagline of my email address and my website.

Keep your light on because that,

India is a big country with varied colors, culture and cuisine. The best way to experience India is through a personalized travel experience, and our guest knows the best way to travel. In this episode, Stephen Jaye chats with the founder of Merge Experiences, Mona Contractor. Mona talks about India as only she can, describing the colors and flavor of the country. She discusses her experiences helping western travelers in India and gives some travel tips, too. Tune in for more as we learn about the country, its people, and the unique experiences that it offers.

---

Listen to the podcast here:

Colors And Culture: Experience India Through Personalized Travel With Mona Contractor

One of the themes that some of you who have read some of my earlier episodes might see emerging is the theme of travel. Travel is something that's always been quite important to me. One of my other pursuits is writing a travel blog called Jaye Travel Blog. I've always found that travel opens people up to different possibilities, options, and experiences.

One of the great benefits of travel that I've always observed is that you learn to get a little bit outside of the narrow view of just your specific place in your specific time. There are plenty of other places in the world where people do things differently. That means you get into the mindset of understanding that there are different ways to do things than the way your family, your neighbors, and the people in your immediate vicinity do in your current place in time and culture. My guest joins us from Mumbai, India, Mona Contractor, with her business Merge Experiences, which gets groups customized travel experiences. Mona, welcome to the show.

Thank you for inviting me. It'd be a pleasure to speak to you and your guests.

Thank you so much. My guests and I included will benefit from hearing about your business in planning people's travels. Let's start by telling us a little bit about what Merge Experiences is all about. Who is your clientele is and what do you do?

I used to work for somebody doing the same thing where you sell in the Indian subcontinent, but working for a bigger company gives you a lot of restrictions. I was literally living out of a suitcase, and I wanted to get out. I got a bit lucky when I started this particular business because my past clients kept on encouraging me to start on my own. That's what I did. My whole focus was to give clients experiences and that's what I used to do in my job as well. They remember that and said, “We want to work with you because we enjoy working with you.” That's how we started.

What I wanted and I still want to, and I have been pretty successful in giving people, is an amalgamation of experiences as far as the Indian subcontinent is concerned. The neighboring countries are maybe more popular, but India is popular for some different reasons. My whole idea was to introduce the country the way it is, that real India, which is an amalgamation of so many things. For example, I do a lot of mic tours. If you're a first-timer, I would amalgamate the entire experience and give it to you. India offers a lot of cultural experiences.

If you are a seeker, then India is the place for you. It can hit you sometimes and it can be an experience of a lifetime.Share on X

A lot of art, India is full of art and artists are everywhere in terms of paintings, clothes, and color. I would like to introduce India as an amalgamation of all the architecture, the history, the culture, the festivals, the noise, the smell, and the flavors. I call my country a glorious chaos because it is chaotic and crowded. It is overwhelming. We always tell our guests, “It's going to be a bit overwhelming.” We also prepare them nicely when they come to visit the country. That's what I offer.

The advantage of working for yourself is that you get to choose. You choose your suppliers also. When you work for a big organization, they stick to their officers.

What would you do if you want to be promoted in your job? You would most likely change the way you speak to your boss. You would do things that you normally wouldn't do. Now, you may get that promotion but are you truly being your authentic self? Learn how to get that promotion while still being yourself. Join your host, Stephen Jaye and his guests, Cristina Amigoni and Alex Cullimore, on how to be your authentic self. Cristina and Alex are the hosts of the Uncover the Human podcast and the Co-Founders of Siamo. Understand how you can create your own personal values and boundaries so that you can find your true self.

---

Listen to the podcast here:

A Discussion With Podcasters Cristina Amigoni And Alex Cullimore About Being Our Authentic Selves

One thing that I sincerely believe is that we are in a period of transformation. We are embracing a new way of thinking. Some of these new ways of thinking involve what we believe as far as potential competitors and collaborators. In the old days, people would say oftentimes, “If you want to do something new, you have to either be unique in your idea, bring something completely new to the world or you need to outcompete anyone else that's doing anything similar, that traditional view of competition.”

We are looking at a lot of people that are doing similar things in this world and saying to ourselves, “We can collaborate because not everyone reaches the same audiences, the same people with the message like how musicians can have similar lyrics but in different genres and bring the same message to different groups of people. They are not a person that appeals to everyone.”

One thing I say about my particular show is that I'm trying to encourage people to broaden their horizons, open themselves to new ideas and go for the things that they care about. That's all of you in the audience. Whatever your idea is, I want to encourage you to consider following your true passions.

There are a lot of people out there doing it. Tony Robbins has been doing this for years but Tony Robbins isn't reaching everyone the same way. Pitbull isn't necessarily reaching everyone with his From Negative to Positive podcast but he's reaching a whole new audience. To embrace this kind of frame of mind, my guests are podcasters, Alex Cullimore and Cristina Amigoni. They cover topics quite similar to mine. Their podcast is called Uncover the Human. I would like to welcome you to the show.

Thank you so much, Stephen.

Thank you.

The first question I want to ask is, how did the idea of Uncover the Human come together? What made you decide that you were going to do this and bring this message to your audience?

Honestly, it started a lot over a bunch of happy hours. We started working at a company for a long time and we kept talking about, “How do we make this a little bit better experience for people?” We kept coming back to the people's side of things. “How does this relate to how people interact with each other on a day-to-day basis? How can we bring that more into the workplace?” The more we talked about it, we came up with all of these concepts and tons of research. I have a bookshelf full of books that we put together in the first six months there and we have continued adding to that list.

We enjoyed talking about, “How do you bring more people to this?” We want to do consulting or coaching in that space and that started to grow. COVID happened and that shut down. We had always wanted to launch something like a podcast or write books around these topics. The podcast became the go-to method to get the message out and talk more about interacting as humans.

In my show, I always begin every episode, “Your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less.” For Uncover the Human, what would you say is your core message that you are trying to get to your audience?

When we were thinking about the topic, the overall umbrella of the podcast,

Following your dreams and building things are goals we all share, despite generational differences. It is no different with today’s guest, multimedia artist Ben Barr. Stephen Jaye interviews Ben and they talk about how he got his start as a musician and as an entrepreneur. Ben also talks about his future plans as an artist. Listen in and be inspired by Ben’s journey.

---

Listen to the podcast here:

Building The Sounds Of The Future With Multimedia Artist Ben Barr

In previous episodes of this show, we've talked a little bit about the different generations that we encounter, both in the workforce and in our places where we go and how each generation has different experiences, different outlooks and sometimes different ways of communicating. We've always had some pretty positive discussions about how to go about understanding one another as opposed to driving one another.

One of the things that I've been encouraged by an emerging trend is amongst the generation behind mine, Generation Z or iGen, that has been referred to in some circles, has had a pretty interesting desire to do a lot of the things that we talked about on this show. There seems to be a strong interest in starting up businesses or starting up something, building something on their own. Representing this particular group of people is the man that produced the intro and outro music to this show, Mr. Ben Barr, who has a multimedia company where he does several different things, including music lessons, video production and producing music for shows. Ben, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

How is everything going for you?

Great. Things are going well. I'm excited to be on the show and have a conversation.

You're in the Gen Z category. You have your multimedia business. What brought you into that? What got you interested in doing that and made you decide that rather than just a hobby or something you do on the side, that you're going to turn it into something where you're going to make money off of it and produce things for lots of different people?

It was an accident. I was just interested in music. I loved it as a hobby when I was younger. I never intended it to be a business, but when I was thirteen, my mom was teaching piano lessons. I've been classically trained on piano. Since I was little, I'd been taking piano lessons. She needed help teaching, so I started to help her teach and take on some of her students. That became the first business thing that I did. It was totally by accident. I even think of it as being a business. I thought of it as a service that I was trying to provide to help educate people. That's where it started for me. It was teaching piano and loving music.

How old were you when you first decided you loved music? Is this something that happened at 4 or 5 years old like you see a lot of people?

As soon as I could walk, my parents made me learn instruments because both of them are musical too. I got a piano right away and then later, I played the French horn for a couple of years. I played the drums a lot and the guitar. I loved music, but the classical music and stuff was boring. I wasn't into that as much. I was eight years old or something when I was messing around on my dad's iPad. I found the app GarageBand and I was making music on that. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. It was like a video game but way better. That's what got me into the music production side of things.

Out of curiosity, what kind of music do you generally enjoy?

I enjoy a lot of kinds of music. I like some pop music, a lot of rap music. I've been a big Twenty One Pilots fan. Their newest album wasn't as great as I've heard, but I still like it. I enjoy it. I'm interested in any kind of music. I've got open ears. Country music is harder for me to swallow, but I like all other kinds of music.

There's always going to be a differential on some types of music and others.

Do you want to become more calm, creative, and emphatic? Then you need to practice Positive Intelligence. Positive intelligence is built on mental fitness, which is your ability to handle life's challenges. Stephen Jaye’s guest in this episode is Darren Kanthal, Founder of The Kanthal Group, where candid career conversations take place with clients. Darren talks with Stephen about how positive intelligence helps you face your insecurities and fears head-on! Doing so motivates you to take the right action for yourself and your business. Tune in!

---

Listen to the podcast here:

How Positive Intelligence Helps You Live A Happy Life With Darren Kanthal

My guest, Darren Kanthal, is an Executive and Leadership Coach with The Kanthal Group. He's here to talk to us about a whole new idea behind how we assess ourselves. There are a lot of self-assessments or assessments of others. Everyone here is familiar with the IQ test, the intelligence quota, which is a measure of our intelligence and how smart we are. People have different feelings about whether or not they're biased or useful measures.

What other measure that's coming to a more recent utility that most people probably heard of is the emotional intelligence or the EQ, which is a measure of how well we read our emotions and emotions of others, how mature we are with that. It differs from IQ because it's theoretically something we could improve on overtime. Darren's specialty in his leadership coaching is talking about something called Positive Intelligence or the PQ. Darren, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Stephen. It's great to be here.

Tell us about what PQ or Positive Intelligence is. What does this one measure when it comes to individuals or leaders?

Positive intelligence is built upon what we call mental fitness and we define mental fitness as your ability to handle life's challenges with a positive rather than negative mindset. There's lots of talk about mindset and this positive intelligence has its own vernacular, way of practicing, being more mentally fit, etc. PQ, Positive Quotient, is measured by taking a short assessment to see how often your brain is in positive thought versus negative thought.

Does this relate to that inner chatterbox that a lot of people talking about having in their head that, " I'm not good enough. Something's going to go wrong," and all that type of stuff? Does it go further than that?

That's the starting point. It takes many different names. The internal dialogue and conversations we have, the imposter. In the world of positive intelligence, we call it the judge. Positive Intelligence is built upon a book written by Shirzad Chamine. He too, is an executive coach and his book has been translated into over twenty languages. There are positive intelligence coaches in over 50 countries in all languages and in all cultures. We all have some judge and the judge is judging ourselves. It's judging you and it's judging our circumstance. When we start hearing that voice of, “I'm not good enough, you’re not good enough, my situation isn't good enough,” that's when we know where our judge is at play.

If you have strong roots and you're in the right environment, you flourish. Share on X

There's an internal judge, which we all have in our head, that's telling us and possibly telling some of my readers, "My idea is never going to work. I'm not the one to implement it." We have external judges, which are the people around us, the people who are telling you your unique way of viewing the world is not sufficient. You don't have a right to your unique way of wanting to be or whatever. What I'm wondering is in your view, do you think the external or the internal judge is more dangerous to most people?

I believe the internal judge is. It's interesting how quick a lot of people are to point the finger and say, “It's you. It's your fault. You're the reason why things didn't go right for me,” the wind blew or whatever.

College planning can easily become a headache, especially when you start to talk about money. So many things factor into the price of a college education. How do you know which school to go to then? Do you focus on the price or on your major? These are the things Tonica Johnson takes note of when dealing with her clients. Tonica is an education consultant of Cardinal College Planning. She helps students and families pick the best-fit college for them. In this conversation with Stephen Jaye, Tonica explains why expensive doesn't necessarily mean high-quality education. Join in and learn what to watch out for when looking for the right college for you.

---

Listen to the podcast here:

Helping Teenagers Find The Right College Solution Through Cardinal College Planning With Tonica Johnson

There's a certain common story that I've heard a bunch of times in different forms. This is a story where someone who is both curious and observant, identifies a need and finds a way to fill that need using something about their unique talents. These stories vary in the exact topic. Certain specifics are always going to be different from person-to-person but there are some commonalities amongst all these stories. One of them is of course, as I mentioned before, being observant, curious and looking at what's around you and responding to experiences both your own and the experiences of others.

The other is taking some form of a leap of faith, some leap, some believing in yourself. My guest is Tonica Johnson who started her own service called Cardinal College Planning, which is a service in a topic that I would never think of myself. This is one of the things I find so amazing about hearing all these stories. Some of which are on my previous and will be in my future episodes. It's oftentimes something that I would have never thought of but as soon as I hear what's happening, I'm like, “This makes a lot of sense. This is something that needed to be done.” Tonica, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for joining us.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

We're excited to have you here. First of all, to orient our audience, I know college planning can be a daunting task. I think almost everyone remembers the process of submitting applications, getting the letters of recommendation from the right people, having the right extracurricular activities. What does Cardinal College Planning do for the teenagers and parents that you work with?

Maybe what I was pursuing next wasn't gonna work out, wasn't gonna be forever, but it was worth trying instead of something I knew my heart and soul wasn't into anymore.Share on X

It’s definitely a daunting procedure, for sure. Since it is overwhelming and stressful, I advise families through all of this stuff. If I start working with families and they're a little younger, it's got even more crazy and competitive than it has. I'm 30 when I went to college, it wasn't this crazy yet and every year after, it seems like it gets more difficult. It's a matter too of making sure you're choosing the right classes as early as 9th and 10th grade so you can get in the ones in 11th and 12th grade. When you go to apply, they're seeing that you took the courses you needed for their sake competitive business program. I worked with a client and a huge thing that I do is course recommendations. Like you said, adding over those extracurricular activities, won't get too much into detail. There's not a right or wrong but guiding students through their passions and finding activities that they want to do but are also going to look good for their applications.

The big thing is researching the schools. I'm sure we'll get a little bit more into this. Part of why I got into this was realizing students were applying to the same few schools that they knew locally over and over. When there are literally thousands of institutions in our country, there could be an amazing fit somewhere else bu...

Did you graduate from something you love? Maybe you can find something that has enough common threads to it and see if you enjoy that more. Life is too short to just be focused on one thing. Try to do different things. It's never too late to pursue something you're passionate about. If you are working a day job, find time to work on your passions. The money can come later, all you need to think about is you. Learn how to multitask with your host, Stephen Jaye and his guest Linda Sue Shirkey. Linda is no stranger to dipping her toes into different fields. Right now she is the President of Production and Design, Inc. Learn how she went from photography to skating to interior design and more. Find something you love today and make the most out of it!

---

Listen to the podcast here

Follow Your Passion; Don’t Get Tied Into Just One Thing With Linda Sue Shirkey

One piece of advice we commonly hear is to focus on one thing, do only one thing, and get good at it. That does work for a lot of people. I want to make sure I iterate to anyone in my audience reading that if anyone is focused on one thing and having a successful and life, I am truly happy for you. Unfortunately, this advice, like a lot of other common pieces of advice, doesn't necessarily serve everyone well. There are a lot of people out there that are multifaceted and they will prefer to dip their toes or try out many different things and be in many different places throughout their lives. Our guest, Linda Sue Shirkey, has been doing this for several years. She has been trying out a lot of different things and, oftentimes, has been taking part in 2, 3, or even more endeavors at once. Linda Sue, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you very much for your time. Let's start from the beginning. What were the first endeavors that you took part in?

In high school, I was on a fashion board that was an advisory board that a department store did for fashion for high school. During that time, a local man decided to start a magazine all published, edited, and written by high school students. They came into the fashion board one day and said, “Would anybody be interested in being the fashion editor?” I said, “I will.” I have no idea why but I did. I went to an interview and they selected me. I was the fashion editor of this magazine all put out by teenagers. I was fourteen at the time and I set up fashion shoots, hired the models, picked out the clothes, help find the locations, and wrote the pieces on the fashion. The magazine was called Tempo. It didn't last long. We did it for less than a year.

When pursuing your dreams, relationships suffer more than anything else.Share on X

That reminds me of something that we're starting to see commonly in the younger generation, teenagers that aren't necessarily going about, going to school, living out their social lives. They are getting involved and trying to build things. I know a lot of teenagers are interested in building followers on many social media channels or starting their own businesses. They got interested in that. It seems like you were quite a bit ahead of your time. Was fashion something that you were specifically interested in from a young age or is it the writing and the editing that drew you in there?

I was always interested in fashion, interiors, and animals. I always wanted to either be a fashion designer, an interior designer, or a marine zoologist.

Where did you go from there? Eventually, you started pursuing multiple avenues and weren't necessarily tied down to pick one job and do that one thing.

Throughout this whole time, I was also a competitive figure skater. I continued figure skating and then I got a scholarship then to college. My scholarship was University of Colorado. I wanted to pursue fashion design, interior design, or marine zoology and they didn't have any of those. I thought, “I'll do arts.” That was the closest. I got my Bachelor of Finance degree.