Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:02 Welcome to the balanced perspective podcast, where we're going to be challenging perspectives on what it actually takes to be successful in both business and in life. I'm your host, Terry and Richards. And with 16 years as a serial entrepreneur, I've experienced some life's most epic successes and failures. Join me as we journey on a mission to blow the lid off of some of the best kept secrets to living a life of true success from the inside out. Speaker 1 00:00:38 All right. Well, welcome back to the balance perspective. I am here today with my new friend Jacquelyn Gallo Jacquelyn, say hello. Speaker 2 00:00:49 Hello. Thanks for having me here. <laugh> Speaker 1 00:00:51 And where do you hail from Jacquelyn, Philadelphia. And I'm up here on the east coast of Canada. So how's Philly looking today. Weather wise. Speaker 2 00:00:59 It's sunny, it's cold, but not awful. Okay. Pretty Speaker 1 00:01:04 Good day. It's snowing out today here. So that's why I have my to on <laugh>. I love it. So I'm excited to get into the thick of things, but before we go there, uh, reason I brought Jacqueline on Jacqueline's got some cool stories about going into entrepreneurship, hitting the brick walls, falling on her, took us and getting back up. And now she is on a mission to really be empowering, uh, our fellow females. So I'm excited to chat with her about that, but Jacqueline, why don't you give us a little bit of a, a short story before we go into the long story of who you are today and what it is that you've been up to? Speaker 2 00:01:39 Yeah, so I am the founder of clarity and action can consulting, which is a women's empowerment company on a mission to help women create lives. They love, I am a life coach, a speaker. I publish two books and given a TEDx talk. So I love sharing messages with the world about personal development, business, entrepreneurship, creating your best life. And, and I'm excited to dive into it here today. Awesome. Speaker 1 00:02:05 Awesome. Okay. So I have to ask Ted talk. So that's on my bucket list. Oh yeah. And I'm a bucket list, girl. Like I legit have a whiteboard in my bedroom and the goal is to knock four things off a year. I've not slayed this one yet. So tell me about your Ted talk. Speaker 2 00:02:24 Yeah. I'll tell you about it. And I'll also tell you exactly how I landed it. Cuz I get asked this a lot. I think it's really valuable and I don't think it's talked about, so, uh, my Ted talk is about courage. It's called the simple formula that builds courage and I create it a little equation and this gets a bit into my story, but essentially back at the end of 2018, I was in business for about two and a half years. And when I say in business, I put it really loosely cuz I had only spent money. I had really not made money. So I failed a lot. I started a product that failed. It was like this plate that encouraged healthy eating. I created an app that we launched three different times, failed all three times. And at this point it was kind of what I would call my rock bottom. Speaker 2 00:03:05 I had lost a lot of money. I was living home with my parents. I think I was accumulating credit card debt. Just really feeling like how the heck am I gonna figure this out? And when I was giving my Ted talk in 2020 and I was right writing it, I was thinking about what I wanted to write about. And I thought I wanna write about that moment at the end of 2018, when I decided to keep going. When I had virtually no evidence that I was gonna be successful, no real reason to believe that this business would work, but I chose to keep going. Whereas so many people give up in that moment, especially after multiple failures. So in order to really get back into the head space, I went through my old journals, I'm a big journaler and I was able to find some journal entries from that time in my life. Speaker 2 00:03:55 And I read through them. And what I found was it was with mostly pain, probably 80% of it was, this is so terrible. I don't think this is worth it. This is there's no gratification. Is this ever gonna work? Do I have what it takes? But every once in a while there was a glimmer of hope. There was a line like, but I don't wanna give up on myself because I know I can do that. And what I realized is that it was that glimer of hope that kept me going. So I wanted to turn the traditional narrative around fear and being fearless on its head. So the courage equation that I created is courage equals belief greater than fear. So you can be filled with fear. You just need a little bit more self-belief than your fear to take the next step. And then you can do that over and over and over again. And that's what it's about. Speaker 1 00:04:45 Girl, you're speak, speaking my language, right? So I literally just got back Sunday night from a weekend retreat finishing my second book. My book is called the courage to be, you're just, you're speaking my language right now. Speaker 2 00:04:58 Feel like we're soul sisters having this things in common. I Speaker 1 00:05:02 Totally am with you right now. Okay. So talk to me about Ted because yes, you might just make my dream come true right Speaker 2 00:05:09 Now. I'm gonna be completely honest and say, it's not as hard as people think it was also on my bucket list and my vision board. And I spoke with someone who had landed one. So I like this conversation. I'm like, how back did you do it? And she's like, I applied. I'm like what? <laugh> I'm like, she's like, no, really like there's applications and you, you apply. And I was like, oh no one ever told me this. Like I had no idea. I did not get the first TEDx I applied for. I applied for many. I started to learn a little bit about what they were looking for. I started to talk to more people who had given TEDx talks, looked at what the talks were about and I will share all of that here. None of it is secret. The thing that I learned the most through the application process is they're looking for an idea worth spreading. Speaker 2 00:05:55 They're looking for something that is unique. It doesn't have to be brand new. You do not have to reinvent the wheel. There are probably honestly, thousands of TEDx talks about courage in some way, shape or form. But I created my own equation, my own, take my own spin based on my own experiences. They love that. That is something that's innovative that they wanna share because your perspective, the way you say way you explain it can really resonate with someone and change your life and that's what they wanna share. So that's really big also establishing your credibility. I learned how to describe myself in just a few sentences through my description of my talk that made me really credible, but was short and concise and didn't take away from so they really care about the meat, but they care a little bit that you're someone credible enough. Speaker 2 00:06:41 So that blend of how do you kind of describe both cuz on these applications, there's usually a word limit. Like how many words you can even put. So that's big and then just keep applying, keep applying until you get one. The last thing is there's usually a theme. So if you can tie your talk idea to their theme, which you can probably do for almost any idea you have, because these are powerful transformational themes and you're probably sharing a transformational message, but tying it all together, they love that they want talks that are really in alignment with your theme. So that's basically just apply, keep applying and eventually you will get one. It'll be the first time you apply. Speaker 1 00:07:19 I love that. And you know what that's, to me, that's the true definition of grit or tenacity or per, you know, perseverance and being resilient. It's understanding that most of the time when we go after things, you don't just wake up and things happen. You typically have action that you have to take and sometimes you fall and the falling could be failure, right? And the falling could just be somebody saying, Nope, not not today, but then you go back and you do it again. So talk to me a little bit about the fact that, and I love that you are so transparent and so honest about this because, and I think this is becoming a little bit more of the norm in today's entrepreneurs talking about the road rash along the way, but it still is an icky subject for some right. And so talk to me a little bit about having a product business, it going TIS up and then, and going after this app, once, twice, three times that not working. Talk to me about that evolution and how that brought you doing what you do today. Speaker 2 00:08:22 Yeah. So I wanna take you back to who I was when I started the business, I was 21. I was in college. I was doing, uh, my dream internship, which was corporate marketing. And I was at 80% happiness fulfillment. And I say that loosely because obviously each day our emotions fluctuate and we're human. But generally the overall was, I was at an 80 and I, it started as a really small whisper at the beginning of that summer of could I be at a hundred? Is that possible? And first I was exploring it within the company I was working for, meeting with people who had different positions. I was booking myself with the vice presidents trying to figure out, Hmm, am I just at 80? Because I am an intern. Right? And as the time went on, the voice in my head started getting louder and louder and louder whispering. Speaker 2 00:09:15 You need to start a business. And I, I remember vividly hearing it as I would drive home because I was about 30 minutes from where I live with traffic. It would often be a 45 minute ride. And all I heard was like business, business business. But unlike most people who start a business, I didn't have any ideas. I'm like, okay, universe, I hear you. Like I I'm listening. I promise, but you didn't give me an idea. So how the heck am I gonna start a business? So in August of that summer, I decided that I would just write down a business idea every day, one idea per day. And I gave myself a deadline because I knew the type of person. I don't even wanna say type person that I am, but the type of the way our human brains work, usually if we don't have a deadline, we could just stay in that future, future phase forever. Speaker 2 00:10:04 Right. And so I decided that when I went back to college, the day I moved back in for my senior year of college, I was gonna start the business, which seemed kinda silly because I had to unpack, travel all the things, but I'm like, you know what, that's the day good deadline <laugh>. So that day came and I looked back on all the ideas and I thought, my best idea was this plate. So I was gonna build this plate or manufacture this plate that would encourage healthy eating, following like U S D a guidelines. I had struggled with an eating disorder. And so my relationship with food and wellness was really important to me. And I'm like, okay, this is the thing. It so long story short, we spent $10,000, which I waitressed on campus. I saved up 4,000 of my own and I borrowed 6,000 from my parents. Speaker 2 00:10:46 And I was able to place the initial order and probably a few months after the initial order came, I knew that it just wasn't the thing wasn't working for a variety of reasons. The first reason is because my heart was never really in that idea. I cared about it. I was connected to it. I had a personal story that related to it. If those plates were my, my life purpose, I would've kept going with them after three months. No one's buying them. They're breaking. When they're shipping, they have to be ex explained. They're not, self-explanatory lots of different issues. The price of shipping was really excessive because of how heavy they were. I just thought these issues are redirection immediately. I thought that I thought these are not the thing. So I pivot it quick. I knew I was certain, I didn't have to overthink. Speaker 2 00:11:35 I trusted my gut, this journey and continue to make business decisions based on intuition at the time I thought, well, everyone has an app. This was not a good business decision and not a good way to think about it. I should probably try to turn this into an app. We don't have to ship anything. So I was kind of looking at the problems that we had had, and trying to figure out something that didn't have those problems. But of course there were other problems I couldn't foresee. And the moral is that in every business there are potential problems. They can be solved and you have to have a business that you are so passionate about that you're aligned with that you're willing to work through those problems. And so in this second stage of the app, again, I wasn't, our biggest issue was cash. So I raised 20,000 on Kickstarter. Speaker 2 00:12:22 I was able to pay my parents bag of 6,000, which left me with 14,000 to fund the app. And the only app developers I could find for $14,000 were college students. So the college students, they did a great job, but they were really busy. It wasn't their first priority. So we were way behind schedule at this point, like a year behind schedule. And then when we launched with our initial beta test, there were bugs. The app was crashing partially my fault because I didn't know anything about a minimum viable product and trying to go to market with a small number of features. I had bells and whistles and all these crazy things. And of course it caused problems. And then at that point it was like raise money or pivot again. And I ended up finding a program at a local university where more college students could help develop the app. Speaker 2 00:13:11 So that's what I went with. And then two more to times, two sets of students tried. And by the end, I was just like, you know what? This is not the thing. Again, my heart wasn't there. I just wanted to feel fulfilled. I just wanted to be happy. And so I think it's really important to zoom out and ask yourself if you're hitting a wall, like, why are you doing this? And for me, it wasn't about that app. And wasn't about that plate. And so I knew that pivoting was serving me because I just wanted to find something that was gonna work. And I would say anything can work if you keep sticking to it and, you know, making the adjustments, but my heart just wasn't in them. So this was the end of 2018. When I'm now having this pivotal, it doing a ton of personal development. Speaker 2 00:13:57 And I came across a Facebook ad that said, get paid to be a public speaker. And I was like, that's something that I would be good at. And then all of a sudden it was like a light switch went off in my brain. And I realized that I had already been speaking. I just wasn't calling it speaking. I was calling it marketing because to get all those beta testers for my app, I had traveled to colleges and universities in the area and spoken to groups of women and told them about the eating disorder that I struggled with and why I created this wellness app. And I got awesome feedback. I would get messages afterwards and I thought I'm already doing this. I might as well get paid for it, but I had tons of imposter syndrome cuz I'm like, well, what the heck am I speak about? Speaker 2 00:14:36 I'm a failure. And then I was like, that's it. I'm gonna speak about failure because I'm really good at failing. And that's something that I love that are not so good at people. Once they fail one time, they're done. They're out here. I am. If you count the three app failures and the product, I failed four times. So I'm an expert at failing. So that's where I started. And 2019 was my absolute quantumly breakthrough year. My business income went from $11,000 in 2018 to a hundred ten, twenty nineteen. I booked a speaking tour to colleges across the us. I launched my life coaching side of my business. I created my first online courses, everything. It was fantastic. And from there, it's really just been an evolution of where do I wanna go? Who do I wanna be? What do I wanna talk about? And really just my, my own evolution as a person being the best version of my shots and sharing it with others. Speaker 1 00:15:33 Okay. So I got a couple things I gotta unpack there. So number one, I really, really am digging the fact that you seem to be very in tune with your inner voice. You're being honest with yourself and saying, you know, you were some people call it filling a void, but you were just trying to be fulfilled and kind of grasping at straws. You're like, I know that it's the business world know I'm gonna be an entrepreneur, but what exactly is it? And I totally have been there before where you just don't, the idea might not be there and it's just not coming fast enough. So you just keep moving and pivoting. But I love the fact that you took a step back to try to figure out who you were at every point. Cause it really sounds like, you know, and one of my favorite words is introspection, right? Speaker 1 00:16:21 To go inward, have a conversation with yourself. And you said two distinct things. You said alignment. And you said passion. And I find when people are very passionate about something that passion can sizzle out through being tired or feeling like a failure or just hitting a lot of walls. But when you're in alignment with your purpose, it's sort of like the engine that can't stop, right? Like the Energizer, but right. You have this ability to just keep going. So the thing that I wanna unpack with you is, so you're getting, I think you said end of 2018, was that when the last business was yeah. Okay. And then you decide, okay, I'm gonna be a speaker. And how did you decide who you were going to speak to? Cause that's the next thing, right? Like it's sort of like, I'm gonna speak. Who, how did you decide that your target or the individuals that you felt the most comfortable speaking to were going to be college students or whoever it is that you decided next? Speaker 2 00:17:30 Yeah. So I did end up taking that online course that saw the Facebook out for, so I learned a little bit about the industry. What are the different markets? So there's a youth market, there's a college market, there's conferences and events and there's corporate. And I based most of my business decisions and I still do this every time I expand really on confidence because I know that confidence is so powerful and I'm not quite sure I believe in fake it till you make it. I believe in putting yourself rooms, maybe you don't feel fully comfortable in, but something that's helped me is actually the opposite. It's it's where do I feel? I've made it. Can I show up with that full confidence and then that builds and then I can take that and, and move bigger. And so it, that is exactly what happened for me. Speaker 2 00:18:19 I thought, well, after hearing about all these markets, I think I would be great to talk to college students. I'm a few years out of college. They can relate to me. I started my business when I was in college. So if there's a spot hiring entrepreneurs, I would be so good at that. And then what happened was I built my confidence in that area and I thought, wow, I can expand to conferences and events. Now I can expand to corporate. So I rarely ever speak in college anymore. I have a few like longstanding relationships, but I mostly speak at events and in corporate now because that's kind of the next level, but I would never have gotten there. And that out if I didn't just start where I was confident. Speaker 1 00:18:53 Hmm. I love that. I went to a conference a couple years ago and the way the woman worded it, when you are out there becoming a coach and or a speaker you're speaking to her or him, it's who you used to be. And so that is almost the most natural easiest path for individuals to find success in the speaking realm or the coaching realm is who were you? What's the journey that you've taken to get to just where you are, cuz there's somebody where you were right now trying to figure out which door to take. Right? So I love that you, I love that you did that. So talk to me a little bit about what you're doing now. I, I know that you have two books, your most recent book. Let's talk a little bit about that. Speaker 2 00:19:42 Yeah. It's called stop getting in your own way. I actually wrote it at the end of 2019, reflecting on that year mm-hmm <affirmative> and it's all about bad habits and limiting beliefs that I had to stop on order in order to create the success that I did. And it's really fun. There's a lot of awesome shifts in there. And more recently I'm working on my third book, which is about happiness. So I feel like each kind of chapter of my story is a different breakthrough, a different realization. And it's really cool in this current chapter because it's not just about me. It's about all the stories of my clients too. I have so much anecdotal and qualitative data now to back some of these things that I've found in my own life, it's really fun. Being an author, as you know, it's, it's a beautiful opportunity to constantly evolve. And I'm really excited about my third book, cuz I haven't picked up writing in, I guess about two years, like seriously writing. Speaker 1 00:20:44 Wow. So when are you hoping to have the third book Speaker 2 00:20:47 Publish? Sometime in 2022? So I had the idea, okay. Two weeks ago on an airplane, airplanes are just really magical for ideas. And I wrote the entire outline. I wanted to sit on it for about two weeks because I have had book ideas before where once I sat on it, I'm like, I don't really wanna write entire book about that, but that could be a good Instagram post or even online course, but not an entire book. <laugh> yeah, exactly. Uh, so I sat on it for about yeah, two weeks and I'm, I'm just gonna get started writing next week. I think a book writing is really not as hard as people think it is. I say that about a lot of things and I also say other things are really hard, but I think I could write the entire book in a few months. It's just the process of like putting everything together and marketing that probably will take a bit longer, a Speaker 1 00:21:35 Hundred percent. So let's talk about that a little bit. So your process to writing a book, I, I, I teach a, a program on getting a book done in 16 weeks. Anybody who's ever written a book has kind of figured sort of their own secret path or secret sauce of getting the book out of your head and either onto, you know, pen and paper or, or you know, keyboard. So what is your process that you take in getting the book from your head, your heart into that first Speaker 2 00:22:03 Draft? Yeah. So I start with an outline, always it a changes, but I have a point a to point B, who is the reader when they come in and how do I want them to be transformed when they finish reading and put down the book. That's really important. I keep that in mind when I'm thinking about the journey I wanna take them through. And then I'll just outline the chapters, my actual writing process. I like to write once a week for an entire day. So some people are the daily writers. I am not. And, and this is just who I am in general, like my husband and I need to clean out our basement cuz we're having friends over for new year's Eve and we have so many boxes in there and I told him, let's just do it in an entire day. And he's like, no, let's do it one hour every night. Speaker 2 00:22:44 And I was like, no. So it's, it's my way is not the right way. It it's just the right way for me. So if you're that kind of person that likes to kind of time block and dedicate time to one specific thing, this might be your style. It's definitely mine. And so I will, um, camp out at a coffee shop somewhere with booths. So it doesn't have to be super high vibe. I'm often founding at Panera. Not that Panera's not high vibe, but it's not like I'm finding this like hole in the wall, small business. I just need a booth coffee, food and I'm good. So I'll literally eat breakfast and lunch there by dinner. I'm, I'm usually tired, but I will just write the entire day I write each chapter and then once I'm complete with the chapter, I edit it immediately. So I don't write my full first draft and then add a at the first draft. Speaker 2 00:23:30 Like I think I dread editing too much that I just would probably put it off. But if I'm, if I'm doing it in real time, I'm excited to write the next chapter. And I'm like, I wanna feel like chapter is so freaking good before I move on to the next one. And I'm not a perfectionist. So I think that may not work if you identify with being a perfectionist because you may never move on to the next chapter. I'm like done is better than perfect. Let's get this book baby out into the world. <laugh> so that's kinda my process. Speaker 1 00:23:58 Oh, I love that. Yeah. So I'm more of a, a few hours of writing and I need to walk away from her for a couple days, weeks, and then I can go back. And when I go back, before I go to the next chapter, I go and I edit the chapter that I just finished. So that's my process. This weekend that I went away was the first time I ever spent an entire weekend writing. And I felt like was hit by like a semi truck on Monday. Like it was just so much energy pulled out of me to do the book. So, so yeah, so I, I'm always curious because I find most individuals that I'm connecting with have either a book that they're starting or they've had a couple books, uh, published and everybody have their own little process. So obviously there isn't a shore fire away. There are many ways. And I think it's just finding your sort of your natural space. So what's next for you? What is the next thing that you're working on obviously beyond this book coming Speaker 2 00:25:00 Out? Yeah. So 2022 for me is really about massively reaching more people and helping more people I've thought a lot about deeply helping one person versus a little bit less deep, right? The amount of depth you can give without being one on one, answering a person's questions with many people. I think both are incredibly value able. I will. I don't wanna say never cause I don't like that word, but I can't foresee myself giving up the deep stuff with my select number of clients that I choose to take on in any given year based on my life circumstances. Speaker 2 00:25:41 But I feel that I was born for the masses. I feel like I have a message and a way of delivering it that it's just meant to be heard by a lot of people. I just interviewed a, um, she calls herself a spiritual life coach. She's a medium, she's really cool on my podcast. And she was telling me about this thing. She calls soul contracts where before we come to earth, our souls make a contract with God about the work that we're gonna do in the world. And we have free will. So she was saying we don't have to follow through on our soul contract, but we're gonna get a lot of nudges to pursue that. And it reminded me of number one, the voice that I heard of like start a business and it's that same voice now. That's like, it's time you are ready. I see myself by the end of 2022 having a hundred thousand women in my community that I am truly changing their lives. And I just know that's what's coming. So that may sound a little crazy, but that's, it Speaker 1 00:26:44 Does not, does not sound crazy. It sounds like a woman on a mission and somebody who's been listening. Right. And again, I, it there's that the ability to listen, I think everybody is gifted with these inner voices. And I think so often fear or, or lack or whatever it is happens in our minds that halts us from believing that little voice to be true. Cuz sometimes it's so out there it's so farfetched, you know, I'm gonna go from this to this and you're going, yeah, that doesn't make sense. I'm gonna avoid that voice. And I'm gonna play small over here, which is where most people play. Right. And not become as they wanna be small. It's that, that seems so out there that it couldn't be possible for them. I like that. You're listening to her and you're just like, yeah. Okay. That's the next thing. All right. So what can people get from your podcast? Cause I know that you have a podcast and I was taking a look at some of your, uh, latest episodes, which I will be listening to later on my walk, if somebody wanted to tune in and listen to you, I know you do some interviews and you do some solos. Talk to me a little bit about what they would get from your podcast. Speaker 2 00:27:57 Yeah. So it's called spark your light. And my vision for it is really that we all have this light inside of us. And the light is when you feel like you're at a hundred percent, when you are lit up about your life and the podcast is filled with sparks. So it's filled with different strategies, exercises, stories of inspiration, tips, amazing humans that maybe sparks for you as guests, that maybe people who you love learn from and the sparks aren't gonna create your entire fire, right? Just the podcast alone is not going to be the thing to help you build your entire business. But with enough sparks in your life, you will have a wild roaring fire. So my goal is to be one of those sparks. We have an episode every Monday. So every single Monday morning it's out at 6:00 AM. Even if you're at Eastern standard times, even if you're an early riser, you can listen Monday morning and spark that light. And it's really fun if you're a new listener because there's, there's a lot of content to binge too. If you're someone who wants a big spark all at once, <laugh> Speaker 1 00:29:02 Light that fire. Awesome. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure. I can see bringing you on again and having many more conversations. I didn't know that we were going to chat about Ted talk. So thank you for that extra cherries on top of our lovely cake today. Anything you'd like to add to today's episode? Where can folks find you? Speaker 2 00:29:23 Yeah. I will leave you with this interesting thing I've been thinking about with surrender. I think surrender is a word that we hear a lot. And when we talk about it, we often think it means to let go of our goal, which means we're not going to achieve it or we're not gonna achieve it in the timeline we want. I've been playing with it in the opposite way. Like what if surrender meant that it could happen today? And so much magic could unfold today because I'm not gripping to exactly the way it's gonna look or how it's gonna look or when it's gonna look because oftentimes people of plans of it's gonna happen two weeks from now or January 1st or so. I encourage you to surrender in this new year in a way that, you know, your goals are so inevitable that they could happen any second and just be open to the possibility because that's what creates magic. Ooh, I Speaker 1 00:30:19 Like that. That you need to put that on a teach shirt. Ah <laugh> okay. Where can people find you? I know they can hang out with you on your podcast. Where do you Speaker 2 00:30:27 Play most of the time? Instagram. Awesome. Speaker 1 00:30:29 Well, I hope you have a wonderful day and a great 2022. Thank Speaker 0 00:30:35 You so much for tuning in to the balance perspective podcast. Listen, if you liked what you heard, can you give me a review? Maybe even a five star. All right. Have an awesome day.
