 All right, I'm really excited today to be with Jen Loudon. She is just fantastic. Jen, I wanted to first say hi to you. George, I think you're fantastic. And I just want to say, I think you're doing such a good job with your teaching and your mission and your content. You know, I've watched you since you came on the scene. We've coached together. And I just think you've really had a deeply authentic place for you and you're such a good role model. And I'm learning from you and I save your posts and all kinds of things. I'm incredibly honored. Thank you. You're making me blush now. But let me first share with everybody your bio because I want people to know. I mean, I think a lot of the people who are watching this have either heard of you or have done your work or read a book or something like that. So let me read your bio and then we'll get into it. So Jennifer Loudon is a personal growth pioneer who helped launch the concept of self-care with her first bestseller, The Woman's Comfort Book. Since then, she's written six additional books on well-being and whole living, including The Woman's Retreat Book, The Life Organizer, close to a million copies of her books in print in nine languages. And her newest book is Why Bother, Discover the Desire for What's Next. Jennifer has spoken around the world, written a national magazine column for Martha Stewart Magazine, been quoted in two of Brene Brown's books and has appeared on hundreds of TV programs, radio shows, podcasts, even on Oprah, which is amazing. And there's a free chapter of Why Bother that you can download from JenniferLoudon.com, which of course I will put in the link, they'll put the link in the notes below. There's so much that I wanna ask you, but maybe we'll start with this. I don't know if you can give us what you feel is the premise of Why Bother, your latest book or one of the key points that people find helpful. Yeah, the main premise is Why Bother is built into being human. We may have it for an afternoon, hopefully we don't have it for a decade like someone I spoke to in a talk I've given since the book came out. And we pathologize it, we freak out about it, we try to solve it. And you may never say Why Bother y'all, when you may say it's too late and too old, there's no point, it's all been done, right? We all have our different language, the way we language it, but built into it is the answer, yes it is. You shouldn't bother. And so what I'm saying is normalize it and then actually ask the question. Of course things get taken from us, the pandemic is a perfect example, George. We were talking before you started recording that I usually make a big chunk of my income from live events, no live events last year. So of course Why Bother is sometimes we lose someone we love, sometimes it just creeps up on us from age, from doing something for a long time because I was just talking to someone who said they had gotten into doing work for money and not doing their great work, right? Very common thing that happens. So it's about getting curious, normalizing it and then going into this juncture, this sweet spot, this curiosity of building our energy and our desire again so we can actually move forward with more clarity. Yeah, it's beautiful. And tell me like the, who would be the ideal reader of the book? I mean, I know there's, you have lots of people in your audience so a lot of different types of people reading the book but I'm wondering if you could imagine who is the reader that might get the most out of the book? What, where is she in her life or her business? I will say the reader that I had in mind, I had two particular readers in mind. I had a woman who had never listened to what she wanted and had always done what she thought she should, right? No, you can't be an artist but you're good at math so go do the math or taking care of everybody else. So she was, and I actually had three very clear legal people that I knew in mind. Another person had had a lot of success and wanted to do something new in her career, in her work. Her personal life was not a why bother but her career was but she was like, do I really have it in me to do it again? Do I care enough? What do I care enough about? I've had success, I could just keep doing the same thing. So she was, those are my two main people. And then interestingly, most of my books have been written for women, George, but this book actually has a guy readers and guy examples in it. Yeah, no, thank you for that. So one of the challenges I think people have with regards to well, inventing, reinventing themselves is, well, there's so many challenges but let's say there are external challenges and then there are internal challenges. Maybe we'll just break it down that way real quick and I don't know which part you wanna take first but how do you, what's the typical? Well, let's start with external challenges because oftentimes maybe it's easier to see possibly but what is a common external challenge you're seeing that keeps people from creating, from inventing, from really taking their fulfillment and career fulfillment in their life to that next level they could. Yeah, what exterior challenges get in people's way? I think maybe the three, the top, first one is money. You know, how am I gonna, if I make changes, how am I gonna pay the bills? The second one is no one's gonna support me. We're gonna threaten the family structure or the dynamics of power in the relationship or whatever. Even parents still, even for grown people, parents seem to still have a strong influence and then I think the third thing is the idea that you don't have time, that there's no time and then I would add a fourth energy but that is sort of exterior injury. Yeah, yeah and how you, I mean then I think the reality is that they're of course connected. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things you talk about is having to define what is enough, I guess. And I think that's connected. That's kind of connecting the internal and external but talk about that. Why is it important? What does that mean? Yeah, I went through, I've been through lots of why bother times in my creativity and there's a lot about that and my business which are deeply intertwined and I wrote about that quite a bit in the book and there was one time I didn't write about this in the book that I was really stuck and so I went, I was invited on this really amazing right wish retreat, a creativity retreat. Everything was paid for, it was even your flight, it was these really luminary people. It was moderated by Mark Nepo and I was like, what am I doing here and I'm so stuck and I don't know what I'm gonna write next. And on that week, I wrote one of the most important sentences of my career and that was if you don't declare what is enough, you will never experience satisfaction. And our brains and our culture is wired to say if George likes me today, then I'm enough. If I fill my business mastermind, if we have a good Oasis launch, I'm enough. If I sell 50,000 copies of why bother, I'm enough, right? You fill in your own, right? If I keep everybody happy in my family, I am enough. That's never gonna go away but what I try to train people to do and train practice, because it's a practice is to declare on a daily basis, what's enough for me dependent on what I can do, not on someone's approval or outcome or sales or anything, but what can I do? And it's a subtle, powerful shift. I mean, every time I say it, George, I feel it right here, right? It reminds me of your energy reboot practice in a way, you know, because it's kind of bringing you back into your own energy, your own focus. It's not that those goals and desires for influence and sales and all that, they don't, are making your people happy. It doesn't go away, but you stop living out there, right? A little bit more of the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And it is, it's true, you know, so this brings me to like all of the internal, because what I see, the reason I kind of call this the external internal thing is because my guess, maybe let me know what you think about this, but there are, it's kind of like, we see what our framework is in here, you know, like we have lenses and that's how we see the world. And so sometimes what we consider to be external reasons that we can't, we can't, you know, take our business to the next level or create a new business or create more or whatever is because they are keeping me from doing it because I need to take care of them. Oh yeah. Because of these reasons, whatever the reasons are. And it's like, sometimes I wonder, it's like, is it really coming from within? That's creating the, right? But what's been your experience around that? Oh gosh, yes. I mean, there's sort of an umbrella concept that I call your emotional immune system. I did not make it up. And it's the idea that we all have certain things that we're comfortable doing. And then there's things that are outside of our immune system. And so when we go to do them, our immune system does, our emotional immune system does the same thing our physical immune system does, which is go, uh-uh, no, no. And so that's why you say, I'm gonna build this new business and suddenly you decided to get a promotion at work and you're working way more. And you're like, why am I doing the exact opposite what I said I wanted? That's our emotional immune system. Why am I watching so many hours of Netflix? Okay, it's a pandemic. Watch as much Netflix as you want. You know, special conditions right now. But in general in life, when you're going the opposite direction of what you say you want, your emotional immune system is trying to protect you because your emotional immune system believes that if you go for what you want, even that much more, you're gonna die. I don't mean, you know, die, but humiliation, failure, public exposure, no one will ever love you again. You'll live in a motel six with 20, 25 minutes. Yeah, right, right. And sometimes there actually are people in our lives that are very comfortable with where we're at right now with things, with not being busier, with whatever work we're doing. You know, it's like the time we're spending with them, whatever it may be. And it's like, well, it seems like, well, then that's why I don't wanna rock the boat too much. And why is that person getting agency over your life? It's a good question. It's a good question. It's really worth coaching on, asking, right? But let's say, let's say that we were able to carve out the space and the time to create, you know, whatever, whether it's writing or a business, there's still a lot of hesitation around it. So some people, you know, and you actually sent me some notes in advance of this call. I'm like, these are brilliant. I'm like, okay, they need another certification or degree. Which a lot of the people, I think that we help ourselves included, like, you know, I have a master's degree. It's like, did I really need to get that master's degree? I was like, it's like, we, you know, we love to learn. And so naturally we love to, the fact that people are watching this means they love to learn. And so it's like, okay, there must be another secret that if I only knew that secret, that's gonna liberate me from finally creating it. It's gonna give me confidence. And you said something in your framework course. There is no truth with a capital T. And I had to learn that like, you all can't see, but there's a bunch of my books up there. And the first time I published a book, I was like, okay, great, yeah, I got it. And then it came time to write the second book. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm allowed to think about something else. I'm allowed to have another set of thoughts that do more research. And then I wrote a few more books. And then I'm like, but wait, that book's out there in the world. And I don't really believe that part of it anymore. Can I go tear out those pages from every book I ever wrote? Every book that was ever printed that has that in it. No, because you get to keep iterating and changing and growing. And I love how you said that in the framework course. And I believe that is so important to just remind ourselves over and over again. So it's not that the learning isn't great, it's, but why are we motivated to do it? Are we motivated to do it because we're finally gonna know the truth or the secret? And then we think we're gonna be confident. And confidence only comes through action. Yeah, yeah, this is so good. Yeah, I could completely resonate. I mean, relate to what you just said. I wanna rip out the pages of the early books. I'm literally writing a second edition of my first book right now. I'm like, how do I make the first book go away? It's just, you know, right? But- Try having almost a million copies of all those books in print. In fact, this is a funny side story but I'm divorced and remarried. And when I was going through my divorce from my first husband, we were together for 20 some years. And I woke up in the middle of the night and I set up in bed and I went, oh my God, I wrote a book about couples. I wrote the couples comfort book. What do I do? Oh my God, right? It was like, I just, it was like this physical, like I just gotta find every one of those copies and everyone overbought that book and say, I'm so sorry. I'm like, no, Jen, in fact, you don't, you never guaranteed that you were gonna stay married because you did the things in the book. Right, right. Yeah, that's the part where I think a lot of people are freaked out. It's like, okay, if I put it out there now, right? It's, what if I changed my mind? What if it's wrong, et cetera, et cetera. But you and I are living proof that it's okay. We can get through it. And actually, it's interesting. Like even the people who read the earlier stuff, maybe where we were at that stage is where they can benefit from, right? Exactly. The other thing I wanna say about this is I think of your creative life, business life, however, combination of things you do as a runway. And if you don't get a plane off of it, then no more planes can land. And I see this so much with the people I work with, they're like, oh, wait, not that plane. I'm gonna make a new plane. And I was like, no, no, no, you gotta finish the plane and let it take off. And that's how you actually learn and iterate. If you keep stopping the plane, tearing everything out and rebuilding it on the runway about it ever taking off, you are not gonna change and learn and grow. You've gotta be seen. You've gotta share it. You've gotta iterate in public with other people. And this is terrifying to so many people I work with. They're just terrified of it. Yeah, I mean, that's a great analogy, what was it meant for? I never remember the difference. It's so embarrassing. Yeah, it's like what my English degree didn't help me with that. Exactly. But whatever it is, it's a really good example of, so brilliant because it's, I mean, I see this, for example, with people with their websites. It's like, they work so hard on a website. By the time they finish, they've already evolved past it and like, oh no. Oh my God, no. I mean, my website is so outdated that it's like. I know, we just like, we're just every now and then I'm like, okay, wait a minute, we checked the links and all of that. And then at one point we had, when it was really popular, you'd have a lot of pictures of yourself all over the site. And then I'm like, I am so sick of that. I must take all those pictures off. Like we'll do some things like that. But I see these people with beautiful websites and I have website envy, but I'm not about to spend my money and time on that. Yeah, I think that's smart. Well, because I mean. And logos, the obsession with logos. Someone coaches with me and they start with the logo on the tagline. I'm like, ah, ah, ah. Oh my gosh. Well, you're speaking from experience. I mean, you have sold lots of books. You have sold so many programs, retreats, obviously with, you have lots of clients. So it's like, you are someone who's speaking from a grounded place of what's actually important in business. So maybe let's switch gears a little bit. You have a business mastermind that you're launching. Your first business mastermind, you should have been doing this a long time ago because you already have so much experience in business. And you've been coaching people more or less off and on. Yeah, usually behind the scenes. Behind the scenes, exactly. High level will come or something. You know, a couple one-off sessions, but yeah. So now you're actually structuring your business mastermind. So let's talk about it. So what is, what are you going to be helping people work on? And just so, you know, there's not that everyone watching this has to join your business mastermind. Yeah, no, it's going to be very small. It's not for everyone. But give us kind of a bit of the framework of what you feel people should work on to really launch their play. Yeah, that's a really good question. I want to say one thing about why I haven't done it before. And that is because there's so much unethical business stuff out there. I don't want to be anywhere near it. But when I went, I went through my own why bother time the end of last year. And there was one of the things that came out that I really wanted to do was take this 30 years of experience and my deep ethics and create a container for people to share that. So anyway, I just wanted to get that context. So what I, one of the things that's coming to me that's always been a genius of mine, but I've usually done it live on retreats is bringing a group of like-minded people together. In this case, I'll be applications and hand selected. And then really listening to what concerns they have and building something from that. Like I'm great at that. Oh, I see that you need some help with this. I need to land the plane. I'm not land the plane, get the plane flying and then land the next one. So it'll be really customized. But I think that the highlights that I see in the masterminds I've been part of as a participant is you cannot do this alone. You can't do business alone. It's crazy hard. There's all the technical stuff and all the offers and business models and all that stuff. But to me, it's the inner work. What has messed me up in business is what I call them root stories or root beliefs. I'm too stupid. So I have to give you more and more and more. I had undiagnosed learning differences until almost the end of college. So I have a lot of deep shame about my brain. Shame about my brain. I got shame about my brain. So I used to over-provide a lot. We need other people to help us get clear, to have that safe place to go, okay, this is the thing I'm offering. Now, what tell me again? Now, what is that exactly? I mean, we need those people to help us language things. We need other people. So I'll be the expert guide and you'll get individual coaching every month from me. But then we'll meet every week. And so really helping the group to brainstorm and hive mind together. Where are you at? What's holding you back? Is it your business model? Is it your pricing? Is it your over-providing? Is it that you hide, that you cannot stand to market because you think it's sleazy? What is it between you and greater profit? And I'll tell you, George, the sexiest word in the business, lexicon is incremental. So this will be about how can you make real incremental changes that bring you more profit? Because I'm all about what money do you get to keep? Yeah, totally, totally. Absolutely. You know, so much you said there is worth unpacking. I mean, one of the things is, of course, I'm surprised to hear about the learning difficulties or whatever. You know, I'm surprised and I'm not surprised because you're so much stronger today because you have done whatever is needed to overcome that and to be able to succeed in the world. And I still do it, George. I mean, I still have to get up and walk around this little tiny office and tell myself, Jen, it's okay that it takes you longer to write than other people. It's okay that you make spelling errors. It's okay that if you ever give a time to your team or a date, it is the wrong time and the wrong date because it's one of my dyslexic things. You know, I'm constantly working on that, soothing myself and just taking the shame out of it. Totally, wow. That's amazing. I've mentioned this before to others, but it's like when people don't know that I used to be extremely shy, I was bullied as a kid for being quiet because I didn't speak up in class. Of course, blah, blah, blah. But anyway, long story short, through a lot of nurturing and practice, et cetera, now you can't get me, you know, off of video. Now I can't get you to shut up. I can't get me to shut up anymore. What happened? But the other thing you said that's so interesting, you know, related to this is over providing. That's really interesting. I noticed that dynamic within myself, but I think a lot of people who care, which everybody watching this, right? Like a lot of us who care, who want to teach classes or work with clients, whatever. You're great, but even products, like, you know, even if you're creating physical products. Yeah, so talk about that a little bit here. How do we notice that we're doing that? That's a great question. Yeah, I think one of the things that I would do and often you'll have to do this with someone else and we will do this in the business mastermind, but you could do it with peers, you could do it with family. My husband can do it for me. What do you see me doing that is too much? So start to get some outside eyes and then start to keep a list and keep a piece of paper on your desk. What are your triggers that start you in the over providing? So for some people, it's if a launch isn't going well. Oh, let me just throw some more stuff in there. Let me lower the price. For some people it's if they have a client and a client doesn't seem to be making progress. For a client of mine, I haven't done individual coaching forever, but I did a bunch of it last year because of the pandemic and not doing live events and doing all kinds of pivots. And some of those people are still continuing this year. But so she has, I doubled her business. She's just amazed at what she's doing, but she's doing something, she offered a harder program, a longer program and people started to struggle and she started to freak out. Oh my God, it's not as easy for them. So it's like, right, so you have to remind them. It's not just give them the, you know, more can I give you? It's to stop and go, okay, how do I reassure them? It's normal right now for you to feel it's hard. So one of the things I'll coach people to do is watch for the moments you're freaking out. They're so uncomfortable, but have someone there to talk you down. What do you think you're doing wrong? Cause we wanna get results, right? We want sales, we want results. We want our results that feed us and we want our results that feed our clients. And we're not going south. The other thing we have to look for is when we're really exhausted and burned out cause that's the perfect time to over provide and give the store away, right? Wow, so much here. Well, I wanna be respectful of your time. And so I wanna, yeah, thank you for the books you've written, the content you put out there on social media, the just the spirit with which you approach your work. Excited to let people know about the business mastermind to be able to work with you on this. Of course it's gonna be a smaller group, but I'm sure you'll provide other things for those who can't fit into the group for some reason. I'll have the links below, but is there anything else you wanna say about the business mastermind before we close? I'm just very excited. It's exciting to let myself do something different. And I love tapping into so much that I've learned the hard way because as much success as I've had, I've had way more failures. And just being able to love learning from my own experience in that small kind of group with people, yeah. Yeah, that kind of group allows us to, well, launch because we are supported by a lot of cheerleaders and if and when we have a failure experience or mistake or whatever, we have a soft place to land. And a lot of people don't know, right? But people like us who seem to be out there and we have launches and things, yeah, we have a lot more failures than most people see. But that's why we need friends or a mastermind like this to be able to support us. Well, Jen, thank you so much for the work that you do. Maybe any final encouragement words of creating for those who are watching or listening? Yeah, I think if you find yourself feeling why bother, do be aware that as a planet, we're really suffering right now and you pick up on that. You pick up on that energy, even if nothing, even if you're happy and safe in your home and the people you love are well, we pick it up. And so there's a lot of why bother in the air right now. And at the same time, we've never needed, we've never needed to create more. So find some small ways to create, find some small ways to nurture yourself and nurture that part of you that is a learner and a creator and a sharer. And if it needs to be tiny and incremental right now, that's totally cool. This, I feel like is a year of transition for so many of us as we get through this strangeness. And I think this fall will be in a new place. It's beautiful, perfect way of ending. Thank you so much, Jen. Thank you, George. So be sure to check out the book. It's got amazing reviews. The Business Mastermind, for those, the few of you who I think are ready for that, you can check it out. And any other links, I'm sure we'll put below. That goes to Jen's work and social media. So thank you, Jen. Thank you, George, you're wonderful.