I am so super excited our podcast today, we are welcoming our guests, Sherria Reid. Our podcast is called, Unbreakable, and we are sharing stories. Women’s stories of things that they have gone through that have really, and truly helped them to become unbreakable. Today we get to share the experience with Sherria as she talks her a particular story where she faced a challenge that once she faced it, overcame it, and it helped her to become unbreakable.
Sherria is a mom, a mom of a nine-year-old and a wife of 13 years. She has been in corporate America for several decades managing technical partnerships with a formal background, computer scientists and public health analyst. In 2017 she launched Butler Owens and Reid, a financial capital company.
Sherria grew up in very humble beginnings. I was poor. I was raised by my grandmother and my mom and dad were both on drugs. I went to school, got my education, but somewhere along the path I recognized was that a lot of the trauma from my childhood was holding me down.
Listen in to find out how Sherria became unbreakable through a series of life events…
- by seeking help
- finding happiness in success
- life – work balance
- finding self-worth
Sherria found herself breaking through the negative whirlwind to come out UNBREAKABLE! Her amazing story will inspire everyone second guessing decisions and living with past trauma.
I find that sometimes the people with the biggest smiles on their face have had the most traumatic stories and had to have had to overcome the most. They choose to have a smile on their face. They have known that other side.
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WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
How to develop your mental toughness
Our experiences with Spartan Races
The role fitness has played in our lives
What you can get out of our Unbreakable Retreat
FEATURED ON THE SHOW
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Jennifer: Alright. Yay. Here we go. I’m so super excited. You guys, on our podcast today, we are welcoming our guests, Sherria Reid, and I being the excellent host don’t have her bio. We’re going to dive in and I’m going to start it off with letting her, just introduce yourself, just give us a high level of who you are and your amazing self so everybody knows who we’re talking to today.
Sherria: Awesome. Hey Jennifer, thanks for having me. You know, I always love to introduce myself with the things that I love. I love my family. I’m a mom, a mom of a nine-year-old. He’s so cool. His name’s Miles, I’m a wife, 13 years. Malcolm Reid is my husband, love him, adore him.
I have a whole host of family of loved ones that I could go on about. Wife, mom, I’ve been in corporate America for a few decades, managing technical partnerships. My formal background, computer scientists and public health analyst. I had some fun in corporate America. I’m kind of at a crossroads in my career.
I became a corpornuer in 2017 where I launched Butler Owens and Reid we’re a financial capital company. Really, I like to say we’re a legal lender. Helping small business owners become financially equipped from a literacy perspective and helping them to use other people’s money. To leverage that to go far with their business and to look at some of their strategic goals and align that to how we can help them financially. So that’s kinda me in a quick nutshell.
Jennifer: Oh, I love this so much. I love that you introduced yourself by starting with, you’re a mom. So often in this busy business world, so many of us are mothers, but it kind of gets put off a little bit. I love that you start that with, I’m a mom, I’m a mom too. These kids, they are the best learning experience, the best life experience. They teach me something new every day and it’s such an amazing gift for those of us who have been lucky enough, fortunate enough to get to go on that journey.
Sherria: You know, it really is. And it’s one that I don’t take for granted. That was never supposed to be a gift that I brought to life. So I don’t take that for granted. My son and I know I’m biased here, but my son is the absolute best. He has all of the best qualities of me and my husband combined. He’s kind, he’s nurturing, he’s loving and he checks me.
So when I’m not operating at my best. He’s really in my face telling me mommy, you can do better. I can appreciate that.
Jennifer: Oh, don’t you love that? The best lessons. You’re a money woman so you’ll appreciate this one. My 10-year-old daughter who is now 23. When she was 10 years old, we were living in Florida. I had a corporate job. It was a very, very dark time in my life. Even though I had a fancy whatever corporate job we were living check to check. I was very stressed out about money. I was trying to support us at the time. I was a single mom with three children, supporting them, paying another mortgage from a house that we had previously and I had actually had a failed business.
I was also paying off the debt from that failed business. I had a lot of things going on. It was a very hard time in my life. I remember one day I was in the kitchen. I was kind of stressed out about money. I had probably made some comments and I try not to bring my kids into any of this stuff.
But I remember I must’ve said something. I don’t even remember what it was I said. My 10-year-old daughter, she looks at me and she’s like, mom, it’s just money. You’ll make more. I’m like, dang momma got schooled by her ten-year-old because she was right. I have carried that with me every day.
If I ever even think about getting stressed about money, she’s just like, mom, it’s just money. You’ll make more. I’m like, she’s right. I’ve made a whole lot more and we’ve come through that time. It’s just amazing the lessons that they will teach you. She gets the award for teaching me. That was probably my best money lesson ever.
Sherria: That’s awesome. I’m sure she learned that from you somehow some way, you know. Quickly, I grew up in very humble beginnings. I tended to have this poverty mentality that things were so scarce, and that money was very hard to come by. My son has the same mentality as your daughter.
Mommy. You’re very smart. You can do anything. I believe in you. I seen you go and make a lot of money. I mean a lot of money to him at that time, it was probably twenty bucks, but it’s like I’ve seen you make a lot of money, mommy. We can do it, mommy. Just to know that fearlessness. He doesn’t have that poverty mentality, that scarcity mentality that I used to have. When I look at him and I hear those things, I’m just like, thank you, God.
Thank you. I’m so blessed. I’m so lucky. So yeah, you did that. Great job raising her.
Jennifer: Yes. Thank you. What I would love to talk a little bit further about, so obviously our podcast is called Unbreakable and we are sharing stories. women’s stories of things that they have gone through that have really, and truly helped them to become unbreakable.
I would love to hear based on that topic, like, is there a particular story or a time in your life where you faced a challenge that once you faced it, you overcame it, and it helped you to become unbreakable.
Sherria: Yes, I think personal and corporate wise but I think it ties together. I will start on the personal journey. I mentioned I didn’t come from a silver spoon. Definitely humble beginnings. I was poor. I was raised by my grandmother and my mom and dad were both on drugs and that was not pretty to watch. I think as I went into my teenage and early twenty years, my grandmother always said, go to school, get a good education. No one can ever take your education from you. Get a good corporate job. Retire at 65. Save all your money.
What else could she tell me? She had very humble beginnings herself, but I took that advice. I went to school, got my education, but somewhere along the path, I said, ah, okay, I got this education, but something’s happening.
What I recognized was that a lot of the trauma from my childhood was holding me down. When I looked around corporate America, I didn’t feel successful although a couple of paychecks here and there told me that I was. I was a 23-year-old homeowner. I drove a Porsche at 24. I, by all means from the outside looking in, I should’ve been happy but I wasn’t. I was missing my mother. I was missing my father. The family unit I had was not a true family unit. It was so toxic. I held onto that for so long. I didn’t realize how it carried into meeting after meeting internally, externally with clients. I didn’t come with my head held high.
I didn’t feel like I could ask for what I was worth. I questioned myself so much and I never tied it to my childhood. There was a part of me that kept reflecting back to those old memories that didn’t serve me well. Then there came this point in my career where I got pregnant. I got married, I got pregnant. I was on this world wind when I was really happy. Then my job at that time said to me, okay, we realize you’re going out on leave. Again, I was putting together these very profitable technical partnerships and putting together market strategies where we co-sold together. We have very large fortune 500 companies.
I have been working on this deal for three years. It’s a $22 million dollar deal. My VP comes to me and says, you’re going out on maternity leave and yada, yada, yada, you may be gone for a maximum of 12 weeks. We’re going to have to split everything that comes in during that time. Split as in everything I’ve worked on for the past three years, the $22 million deal, the payout I have to split.
It was like I was being punished for becoming or bearing a child and starting my family. I lost it. I usually can be poised, but when it comes to things that I think are just cut and dry, basic common sense, I lost it. I put in a two-week notice. I came home, I told my husband, I said, we didn’t talk about this, but screw them.
I’m sick of this. I went back and rescinded that notice.
Jennifer: You did? You did, you went back and rescinded it.
Sherria: Worst decision ever. I’m all about five second decisions now, but then I came home, and I cried. I worked on that deal. I flew to Bentonville, Arkansas when I was 32, 33, 34, 35 and 36 weeks pregnant to close this deal. I was hurt. Everyone talking to me from the outside, oh, this is an emotional response. Go back and talk to HR. You can work it out. I took half of that payout and I continued to stay with that company for two and a half, three more years. It was hell on earth. To this day, I still don’t know why I stayed, but I tie it back to not being enough.
My mother didn’t want me. My dad didn’t want me. My grandmother wanted me, but she was raising everyone else because her kids were not doing what they were supposed to do. When I finally woke up and said, your past is holding you back. Your past isn’t allowing you to be great. You’re second guessing decisions.
Good decisions. You’re making bad decisions on top of good decisions. You’re harming your family with being stuck in this negative whirlwind of things you can’t change. So, girl, what are you going to do? I had a, I call it my come to Jesus talk. I had a come to Jesus talk with myself and I said, you know what?
I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not reflecting on thoughts and, and the past and traumatic experiences that do not serve me well. Again, I could go on and on, I can make this a tear jerker. I could tell you about my uncle and how he touched me inappropriately for years. Again, I sat in all of that for years.
So I went to therapy, put my big girl panties on. My therapist said, we’re going to work through some of this. We did empty chair exercises. We wrote letters. We have bonfires on the beach. We burnt those letters. I went to my mom and had conversations that she didn’t process. I went to my job and I said, screw you for the last time.
Not in those words. I don’t believe in jeopardizing relationships. I try to salvage them as much as possible. But in my head I said, I will never, ever turn back ever. So I think a combination of letting go of those thoughts and feelings, remaining in quicksand, having my son, and valuing that experience more than the career at that time told me I should. Making the decision to do those two things was probably the most powerful thing that happened in my life.
There was one other thing that was happening in the midst of all of that. My brother, my younger brother, we were a year apart. We are kind of Irish twins. We are very close. He was shot in the head and he suffered from a traumatic brain injury. He’s forever disabled. When I left that job, I said, I’m going to medical school.
I’m going to do what I set out to do. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a pediatric cardiologist. I wanted to save the hearts of young kids so that they could love, be free, and be happy. I got accepted into medical school, got the call that my brother was shot, put my entire life on hold and proceeded to integrate into my family and become a wife and a mom full time.
I proceeded to become the guardian of my brother. To this day, that was 2006 that he suffered his injury. To this day, my brother is the happiest person I’ve ever met in my life. I said he can smile every day. If he can find a reason to be happy, if he can get out there with me and run his 5k. Sherria, you need to get over it.
I got over it. I wasn’t able to change those things still. My mom’s where she is, my dad’s where he is but my brother, my God, even when I think of him, it’s like a breath of fresh air. I found so much happiness in becoming his guardian and such a blessing. I’ve had to overcome many obstacles and I could go on and on. But those by far have been the largest.
Jennifer: That is so inspiring and it never ceases to amaze me how you can meet a strong, powerful woman. You can be like, wow, she’s really amazing. But then when you start hearing the stories and what you’ve been through, like sometimes you think because somebody has a smile on their face that, oh, nothing bad ever happened to them.
I actually find that sometimes the people with the biggest smiles on their face have had the most traumatic stories and had to have had to overcome the most and they have a smile on their face because they choose to have a smile on their face. They’ve known that other side. I love what you said about you realize that your past was really affecting your present, but also your future and your past was really holding you back from what you could be out in the world doing and living and achieving.
I experienced something very, very similar with that because I did not have a great childhood myself. We, of course, didn’t have money, which we didn’t really notice. I didn’t really notice that. I didn’t feel like a poor kid looking back. I mean, I do remember times in school where you had to give your number to the lady in the lunch line because you were on the free meals.
I remember being very embarrassed by that. I think that was around sixth, seventh grade, where I started to become more aware of that. Kids would make fun of you. There were a lot of days that I would just skip lunch because I didn’t want to go through the line. I remember being so embarrassed and not wanting to give that number, but for me, my father was sexually abusive.
To carry that with you. You had that with your uncle. To carry that with you, it’s such a heavy thing. It took me years to figure this out because I naturally am a giver and I want to help. So, what happened was as a small child, my father would say, you know, your mother doesn’t do this for me or whatever. I need you to do it for me. This inappropriate thing. You’re a kid, you don’t know any better, but you just have love in your heart. That’s it. This is your father and you love him, you want to please him, and you want to do good things. So what happened was I learned that if I wanted to love somebody, I had to sacrifice. I had to do something that I didn’t want to do.
That took me so many years and lots of therapy as well. There was a lot of bonfires and writing things on balloons and letting them go and lots of letters, you know, all of this stuff, done it all to help heal from this, but it, it took me actually getting into a good place to look at this and realize, holy smokes.
I learned this from a very young age, that to fulfill my desire to serve and help others, I have to somehow sacrifice. And like what you said, where it carried over into your business and your career. Same thing for me. And looking back on, how many clients did I discount or do stuff for free because I literally was programmed that in order to help them, I have to suffer.
I have to take one for the team. I have to be the one, the bigger one. It’s like, what? That really hurt my profitability. There were a lot of times where it’s like, I’m living, you know, check to check. I can’t do this. That pattern followed me from early childhood all the way through my life. And even in relationships, it was like I’ll be the one to not go where I want to go or eat what I want to eat. Or always be saying, no, no, no, you go first. You know, because it was something from childhood that I literally just picked up and learned as almost a coping mechanism. So thank goodness, I’ve recognized that now and have kind of broken that chain kind of like what you did too where one day, you just said, I’m not going to do this anymore.
I’m not going to do this anymore. You could just let go. I love that you were able to just let go of some of this old stuff that you carried with you for your life. When you made that decision to let go, I’m just curious. Did it just happen instantaneously? Did you have to battle with it for a while? What did that look like?
Sherria: Absolutely not instantaneous, although I wish it was. Sometimes I make up my mind and it happens like that. But I have to pretend I don’t have a bleeding heart, but I do. For years I dealt with it. For instance, I dealt with my mom by telling everyone in high school and middle school that I didn’t have a mom, that she was dead.
It was easier for me to deal with it that way. I went to an all-girl high school where I saw moms and daughters have parent daughter teas and dress alike. No, my mom’s dead. It was surprising to a lot of people when they found out she wasn’t, you know. I didn’t know how to deal with it and process it.
I first had to learn how to process my reality because I ran from it for so long and I told lies to myself about it. Then once I processed my reality, I then had to be okay with having feelings about it. I never allowed myself to feel I became cold, loving and giving but cold. Very matter of fact, very right to the point.
Sometimes I can still be that way, but I had to learn to allow myself to feel and know that it was okay if it wasn’t reciprocated. Once I accepted my reality, I allowed myself to feel. I then had to be okay with expressing those feelings again and not getting those same feelings in return, but not feeling bad about that.
That was a long journey for me. The toughest part was allowing myself to feel. Feelings bring so much for me, especially as it relates to my mother. When my grandmother passed away, the same year my brother was shot. I kept telling myself some harsh things. I wish it were my mom. This would be easier.
I can’t deal with this. I’ve lost the only thing that meant anything in the world to me. This was before I had a son and things like that. So those realities, I didn’t want to feel them. So allowing myself to feel that for my mom, I had to also process that my grandmother wasn’t there anymore because that’s who I consider my mom.
I had to learn how to be able to care without taking on other people’s problems. So caring for my mom for me, looks like I bought her a house. I bought her a house knowing full well that she was going to destroy it but I said to myself at least when she’s found dead, God forbid I’ll be able to locate her.
She won’t be a Jane Doe. I’ll be able to bury her with some pride. I bought her a house. I go and I give her clothes and I bring her food. I just have one rule. I don’t give her money because you won’t overdose on my dime, but I want to make sure you’re safe and have clothes. You’re warm, things like that.
In my mind, I’m telling myself, this is how I properly deal with this. At first I came up with my own way. Learn some strategies and therapy. I quit therapy because it started to feel too much. I started to feel like I was being sensitive. I backed off and I went back to therapy, backed off, went back to therapy.
So no, it was not a linear process. It was very, very hard to accept my reality. It was also very hard to accept the fact that a lot of my innermost feelings and lack probably stemmed around my lack of that maternal relationship, which probably stemmed from my inability to make friends with women and my trust issues with women and things like that.
It was so much to uncover that every time I went to pull a little bit of an onion back, I said, oh no, this is too much. But I finally get to a point where it’s like, Sure. Yeah, you can’t eat the elephant in one bite so pick which part you want to attack first. I said, okay, you like the trunk, let’s go for the trunk.
That was really, let’s fix you so that you don’t hurt your son. Let’s fix you so that he doesn’t grow up to feel like he has maternal issues because of you. I officially said, I’m going to fix myself first and then everybody else can come along for the ride if I have room. I’m so thankful for one my therapist, two my husband. My husband saw something great in me long before I did.
And number three, my son, and my brother. Without their constant noise in my ear, as I used to call it, I don’t think I would have stuck to the therapist journey. I don’t think I would have gotten as much out of it as I possibly could have and that therapist journey included three different therapists.
Jennifer: On these kinds of journeys, it’s often not just one healer that comes into our lives. I can’t even name how many different. I did have one primary therapist who was a trauma therapist. Her and I worked together for four years. So I love that you’re saying no, this was not just like some aha moment. Yeah. Woo. I’m cured now. It really took some time and effort and in and out of therapy, but you continue to work on it, work on it, work on it.
Sherria: Absolutely. I wasn’t the type. My default was adding chaos or confusion. So the way I dealt with things was to make it more chaotic. That’s how I operate. If something was calm and smooth sailing, it was not good for me. It was too quiet. I needed noise. I needed drama. I needed chaos. I needed to make it exciting. I had to unlearn so much.
Jennifer: You and I, we have so many things in common, really, because even it’s interesting, the abuse that happened with my father, he was the one who was doing the bad things, but yet my mother knew about it, and she was the one who didn’t stop it.
In many ways, I feel like I almost hold her more accountable. As the mother, when you know something’s happening to your child and then you make the choice not to do anything about it. I’ve never had a really good, close relationship with my mother. It was my grandmother and my grandfather who really, if I have to say, where I learned how to be a good human being, it came from them.
They were really those parental roles for me, certainly not my parents. And like you, I didn’t really foster a lot of relationships with women. Now, when I was young, my parents moved all the time. They were not in the military. They were just messed up. We were just moving all the time. By seventh grade I’d been in 13 different schools.
I remember I was not going to make friends anymore because it was pointless. I knew we were going to move and we were going to be gone again from wherever we were going to be. I just never really made those female friendships I did in high school. I had a best friend and it was interesting.
We didn’t like each other. Then we got to know each other and we became very, very best friends. We were friends in high school and then sadly, she was killed in a car accident when I was about 16 and I lost her. And so because I had not been in one place for most of my life, then I was in one place and I had opened myself up and let this person in that I didn’t even like. She ended up becoming just one of my very, very best friends. Then I lost her. I know I just shut down. It was just like, I never really had good close female connections. I know that that comes from the relationship with my mother. I’m the one who maybe you do this too, Sherria. If you watch a movie and it has a great strong mom character, and I’m just like, oh my God.
That’s the kind of mom I would have loved to have had, or that’s the kind of mom I want to be. Even in raising my children, I have three, two daughters and a son who are of course perfect. And yes, of course I’m totally biased. But with those relationships with my children, we have very close, strong relationships.
That was one of the things I’m like, I got to break this chain. This chain of wherever it came from. I’ve got to break it.
Sherria: And you did.
Jennifer: I did. I have to make sure I do it with my kiddos. We are great. We love each other. We support each other. We’re very, very close. Yeah. I think sometimes when these really crappy things happen to you growing up and you don’t have the relationship that you deserve from a parent, that the only way I think sometimes to really cope with that is to turn it around, break the chain then have that relationship, put a child out into the world that was loved. That did get the parents they absolutely deserved.
Sherria: Yeah. And you know what, I’m so proud of both of us for not being victims of our circumstances. We could be sitting here moping in it, still sitting in it, still wallowing in it, but we’re not. Kudos to us, high five.
The second part of that, when I look at my son and my son isn’t keenly aware of the drug addiction that my mother faces. But when we drive to Baltimore, my son knows she lives somewhere in Baltimore and he’s like, mommy, we cannot come to Baltimore without finding Grandma Gina. He doesn’t care what she looks like, what she smells like, what she has, what she doesn’t have.
He wants to know she’s safe. And I say, you know, what Sherria, you did that.? He cares from a genuine deep place, and you’ve allowed that. I’m proud of that because I know what it feels like to have a hard heart. I know what it feels like not to be vulnerable. I know what it feels like to have trust issues with everyone around you.
You just sit around, and you wait for hurt or pain or discomfort to come. He is not like that. I’m so, so proud of that. If I’ve done anything right. Not the money, not the cars, all that stuff. I got all of that stuff and figured none of it made me happy. It’s nice to have though. If I did anything right in this life, it was my son. It was becoming my brother’s guardian and being Miles’ mom.
Jennifer: I love what you said about, we’re not sitting here being victims and anybody who is listening to this podcast and maybe you’ve gone through some traumatic things or you’re going through something traumatic.
I really do believe that for me when I was 13. I remember I saw a news story on the news about a girl who had been sexually abused and something terrible had happened to her. She was on the news. I don’t even remember. I just remember it was really, really bad. I remember thinking, oh my goodness, like, that kind of happened to me too, but I made a commitment to myself.
I was like, but I’m not going to end up like this girl on the news. Whatever happened to me is not going to determine the life that I’m going to have. I’m still going to go out in this world and I’m going to do good things and I’m not going to let this destroy me the way that it had destroyed her sadly.
I do believe it’s a choice not to be a victim. That’s the first part of making that choice. But then after that, being willing to you open yourself up to feel, right, it’s sometimes easier to just push those feelings down or what do we do? We distract ourselves by eating or shopping. We’re drinking, we’re drugging.
We’re doing whatever it is that we’re doing to cope with these feelings, because we don’t want to feel the pain. When you decide that you’re not going to be a victim, part of that decision is deciding to work on yourself, being willing to feel the things you need to feel. Like you said, in therapy, out of therapy, in and out, you keep at it.
Even if you stop, you go back and you keep at it and just be willing. Right. We’re talking about being unbreakable, unbreakable often isn’t pretty. But it does happen with that diligence and with that determination and with that decision that we make that I’m not going to be a victim and I’m going to do the work on myself to not be a victim.
Sherria: Absolutely. Thought process, your mindset to your point is one of the most important things that you have. For me, I’m happy that I am now in a place where I can sit back and look at despite everything I was so blessed. I didn’t have a mom. Even after my grandmother passed away, I had so many moms come into my life.
When I ran away after the molestation with my uncle, I finally got to a point where I said, okay, no one’s listening. I’m just going to run. I left my grandmother’s house. I had moms; I have my friend Latanya’s mom. I had my friend Rihanna’s mom, I had my friend Brandy’s mom. I had my friend Miss Andrea.
They all let me stay in some way, shape or form, even if it was, they noticed I was sitting on the couch a little too long or it got a little too late. They noticed that happened day after day. I had a friend’s mom taking me to take my driver’s test. I have a friend’s mom who didn’t ask a lot of questions. They just knew I needed a mom.
I have a friend’s mom who helped me apply for college because I knew nothing. I didn’t know what I was doing. Financial aid applications. I didn’t know. So somehow, some way I was able to manifest things that I needed even before I was able to articulate it. So now. I’m at a point where my mindset can look at those things and say, girl, you were blessed.
You were really, really blessed. Couldn’t see it then could not see it right. But that mindset can carry you so far. It really, really can. I could be sitting here saying, oh, look at my life. It’s not perfect. I can sit here and say, wow, I don’t have a lot of friends, but those I do have, have loved me for a very long time. For that I’m so, so grateful.
Jennifer: Oh, I love that so much. I’ve often said the same thing. My mother was the best teacher of what not to do. If I ever have to wonder, should I do this with my kids? If mom did it, it’s probably not the best idea. But you have to shift that mindset and pull those lessons out, pull that good stuff out.
When you do get to a place where you can be grateful for any experience that you’ve experienced, in my opinion, like that really is true freedom. That is true happiness, true bliss. When you can be in that state of gratitude for things that were unpleasant and uncomfortable and really, really painful to endure.
Sherria: Yes. When I think about my mom now, I just think about what she must have gone through as a child to want to turn the rest of her life over to drug use and it just progressively got worse. What did she go through? I got to a point where I just wanted to know what her story was. It allowed me to have more compassion for her. When she calls me, I don’t care how many times and say, I want to get clean, I show up for her every time with the blinged out bag. Everything’s better with bling. I get a bag and it’s blinged out. It has pajamas and tennis and everything she could possibly need. The last time it happened, she left the next day, the next morning. I probably cried like a baby because I was hopeful, I got my hopes up and I wanted her to get clean.
I’ll show up again and I’ll have friends that say, no, you shouldn’t do that. No, that’s crazy. You keep hurting yourself, blah, blah, blah. I’ll do it again. Now again, very different from where I was maybe 10 years ago, maybe even 10 minutes ago, but we’re going to celebrate the small victories.
Jennifer: Well, I love that you’re saying this. For those of you who are listening, based on wherever you are. you might be thinking about, Jennifer and Sherria, you know, they’ve over the years developed these, you know, powerful mindsets and it’s true. It’s taken years and years of work and of diligence and being willing to open yourself up.
You do end up kind of developing a mindset. When I hear you saying, mom will probably call again, I’ll get my hopes up again, but I will show up for her again. That is all mindset. That is an unbreakable mindset right there. That truly is part of the reason why we have, so the unbreakable podcast comes from our unbreakable retreat that we are putting on where we’re combining business coaching with a Spartan race.
You’re so cute because when I mentioned that we were doing this and you just got all giggly and all happy and you’re just like, oh my God, like, I want to be part of this. Most people do not have that reaction. Most people are like, oh my gosh, this scares me a little bit. I don’t know that I want to do this, but you were just like, oh, that sounds so amazing.
This is part of why we’re combining it. Last year I had committed to do three Spartan races. I ended up doing 12, and if you’re not familiar with Spartan Race, obstacle course racing. I don’t really race. I’m just like out there and you’re going a distance. You’re going over terrain. There are going to be obstacles. You’re probably going to get wet. You’re going to get muddy. You’re going to be dirty. But the thing that I love most about it is the mindset.
When you start one of these courses, you’re going to be afraid.Then you’ve got to push through, and you’ve got to overcome that. You’re going to be uncertain. You’re not going to have confidence, especially if you’ve not done them before. Even though I’ve done quite a few, I’m still like, ah, what obstacle are they going to throw at us? You know, what are they going to have me doing that I’m not sure about?
I’m fresh off of two Spartan races this weekend and Atlanta, Georgia. At the start line. I know on the start line on day one. I seriously was at the start line. My mindset was like, I don’t want to do it. It’s going to be hard. I could back out. I should just stop. The mind is creating all this nonsense.
I was almost in tears thinking about how hard it was going to be. I’m just like, shut up. Just shut up. Just shut up. You start, you go and you just put one foot in front of the. It was about mile three on Saturday. We did the 10 K and so usually Spartans can’t count. What’s supposed to be six miles was really seven and a half, almost eight miles.
Around mile three, I started to get that mojo back and I’m like, oh, that’s right. I love being out here. Here’s the thing. The course wasn’t getting any easier. The course was getting harder. They had all these rains, they ran us through probably a quarter mile of swamp where you’re just like, you know, waist high in this water.
You’ll step in a hole. You trip over roots. It’s muddy. You can’t see the bottom. It’s hard. It’s really hard to be like, okay, I’m here. And then you’re going through mud. They have this huge mountain face with a web and you have to literally climb up the web and the mud and you’re just dirty.
The course is getting harder. My mojo, my confidence is getting stronger and just that miracle, whatever it is that happens, that when you go through something hard. If at the start line, I had said, all right, Jen, you can just forget it. You know, you don’t have to do it. I would have felt horrible that I didn’t at least get out there and try.
When you go through these hard things, it strengthens your mindset. If you’re listening to this and you’re just like, but how do I? What can I do to strengthen my mindset? Well, here’s something that you can actually do in the period of, you know, a few short hours. You can take on a challenge. You can overcome it.
What happened was that mindset I took into my business and my business revenues last year grew two and a half times. I wasn’t really trying to grow my business, but it was what happened because of that unbreakable mindset. It’s like, I can do all of this. I brought it into the business and then things in the business, which had been hard didn’t really seem that hard anymore.
It was just. Girl if I can go through two miles of swamp in New Jersey, it was 17 miles on the mountain. If I can do 17 miles on the mountain, that was a beast. It was a really long race. But it’s just like, if I can do that, I can do anything.
I can do anything. Here’s the thing when we’re out there, I am slow. I am fat. I can’t do half the obstacles. I am not the super athlete that you see on the YouTube videos. I’m just a normal person, but just getting out there. I start, I finish, and I do the best that I can do. There are obstacles that I can’t do. But even knowing there’s so many other people out there that are better than you, you still walk off being like I’m a badass. I can do anything.
Sherria: I went to YouTube and I looked up the Spartan race and I was like, what did I commit to here? I’m an adrenaline junkie. I’ve been whitewater rafting and then four, five category wraps and fell in the water and had to swim. That type of stuff is thrilling to me, crazy, thrilling though.
Yes, I’m going to do the Spartan race, but I think the most important part is outside of you and your team, Jennifer. That mindset thing we talked about. That small thing becomes even bigger and greater, and it doesn’t seem like something that’s so far off when you’re surrounded by other people who have the similar type of mindset.
So for your retreat, you’re going to be around women who think positive. You know, it’s so easy to sit around a bunch of people who just complain that it’s raining. Or that person or group of people you’re sitting around can say, you know what? The flowers will finally get some water or, you know, we can finally deal with these forest fires in California. We needed this rain. That mindset can be helped when you’re surrounded by the right group of people.
So not only will we be able to conquer that Spartan race. We’ll be able to be surrounded by other women who, like me, have never done a Spartan race in my life, but I’m up for any challenge. I got a team of women behind me who are saying, Sherria, come on, you can do it. Not only that, they will stop and come back and grab your hand too. Where do you see that in any other retreat? I haven’t seen that at any other retreat before. So I have to admit that I’m a little ADHD. My mind can jump and skip a beat and I can’t sit still. I’m not the type to go on a retreat and let’s just lay out on the beach, smile and soak up the sun.
That’s great. I’m not saying that I won’t need that type of retreat one day, but I need the hiking. I need the rafting. I need the kayaking. I need to look out of my window and see the mountains and see acres and acres of God’s beauty and nature so I can look and be thankful. I need that. So, your retreat spoke to me in a variety of different ways, but most importantly, to know that I will be surrounded a safe space by women who are really invested in helping me be better.
Jennifer: It is so hard to find. You and I, we share this experience of not having that bond with our mothers growing up, we had it more with our grandmothers. So what I’ve now found, I have so many female relationships in my life that I didn’t have growing up. When you cultivate a healthy female relationship, not this drama and back stabbing, and I’m not talking about any of that. I’m talking about real girl code. We are here to take care of each other or to love each other, to support each other. There are going to be times I remember my, it was my sister actually, who was with me on my first course.
She’ll be at the retreat. She’s our Spartan goddess. She’s so fit and does so many things. She’s just absolutely amazing. She has an amazing story too, about what she had to overcome in her life with her health, to be able to get to a place in her life where she is now. Pretty fit and pretty healthy. She was the one that held my hand on my first Spartan course.
It sounds so ridiculous, but like you come to an obstacle and I couldn’t get over it by myself. I had to ask for help. It’s the silliest thing. But as women, so often we’re just like, I can’t ask for help. We’re carrying this ego. It’s ridiculous. It literally brought tears to my eyes.
As I was walking away from the obstacle that she of course helped lift my butt up and over, which was great. I was like, what is wrong with you? Like, why are you so emotional? I realized it was, I don’t like having to ask for help, which is absolutely ridiculous. When you leave that stuff out on the course and you just check that ego and let it all go and you ask for help, it’s life-changing. I don’t know how else to explain it other than it’s so life-changing in that moment when you realize, wow, if I can let it go and ask for help here, I could probably ask for help over here. People aren’t going to judge me and it’s going to be okay.
Sherria: It breaks down every barrier. A couple of years ago I became a runner. I didn’t cope with my grandmother’s death so well. I had friends who were willing to go to happy hour, but they weren’t willing to go figure out ways that we can cope in different ways. I didn’t want to go to happy hour anymore. I didn’t want to drown my sorrow in cosmos and crap like that.
So I said, okay, I’m going to be a runner. But nobody looked like me. I said, is this for me? Am I supposed to do this? I’m over here in cute sneakers, like these aren’t functional, my feet hurt. Am I supposed to wear shorts? It’s cold. Am I running in a coat? I didn’t know anything. I just get out there and just try to figure it out.
And you know what? I didn’t have to. If I would just ask the question. I made myself feel like an outsider. I’d pushed myself away because I didn’t see others that looked like me. I pushed myself. I put the barrier there because I told myself no one would be able to understand why I’m out here or why I’m trying to learn this new thing.
How much heartache and pain I could’ve saved myself just by asking a question. I definitely could have saved a coin or two, but now I know what shoes to buy. I know the distance that’s just right for me. I got a new puppy. It helped me with my running. My old, senior dog. She’s been there.
She’s retired now. That ability to ask for help, Jennifer is major, it’s major. I think if I had a little more of that, I probably wouldn’t have fallen out of that raft when we were in Colorado. We could share stories for days.
Jennifer: I know we could. I could just talk with you all day long, cause it’s just so much fun. I just love your energy and your attitude.
I love that this “scary stuff, you’re just like, yeah, let’s go. I’ve always been a little bit of an adrenaline junkie too. My husband has a motorcycle and I’m always like, will you go faster? He’s like, no, he rides like a grandma. I’m just like, come on, trust the throttle. Let’s go. We have a four wheeler.
I ride a horse, you know, just all these things I just love. If you’re listening to the podcast and you’re thinking, you know, I’m afraid to do some of these things. I just really want to encourage you not to pick something. Sherria wasn’t a runner. She didn’t know. She asked a question and she got out there and she became a runner. I just think that’s so amazing that you just pushed through that initial discomfort to go after what you wanted to do.
Sherria: Real quick, my husband and I went skydiving, we’re up in the plane 11,000 feet up in the air and there’s a couple. This couple is in their late eighties. I got scared. I did not want to jump. The lady and it’s a tandem jump. The guys on the woman’s back and she sitting off the edge of the plane and they’re getting ready to drop. She looked at me and she said, you’re going to chicken out and then jumped. I said, I can’t chicken out.
I can’t disrespect her like that and not jump after she’s jumped. She has the heart to do it. I dang sure have the heart to do it so just do it and be like, Nike, just do it.
Jennifer: Oh, I love that so much. That’s so great. So great. You know, and it happens to all of us. I think that’s one of the final things. I’ll let you sum up anything final that you want to leave with the audience. It really does happen to all of us. Even this weekend in Atlanta, I’m going out with my sister, who I’ve said is like, you know, our Spartan goddess and on Sunday was her first age group. It was Spartan. You have open, which is what we do, which is all the, you know, the normal people and you can help each other but they have something called age group where they really are competing. You can’t get help. You have to do everything yourself. You have to do all the obstacles, you have to at least try. It’s definitely a notch up.
So Sunday was her first age group that she was going to go out. We got up that morning, it was so cold in Atlanta. I’m like we came down here for warmth and it was so cold. It’s like 40 degrees. We’d been out on the course the day before. We knew there was a lot of cold water waiting on us. Even as we’re walking up to the start line, she is doubting herself. She’s just like, maybe I should not do age group. Maybe I should just do open with you. Maybe I should forget about this. I said to her, you came here to do this. If you chicken out now, you’re going to be regretting it all the rest of today. You’re going to regret it the whole time. You and I are out there on the course. You came here to do it.
Even if you fail, even if you quit, whatever. You came here to do this and sure enough, she did. Once she got out there, she did her course. She did really well. I want you guys to know that it doesn’t matter how strong your mindset is. You’re going to have those doubts. Those things are going to come up.
With practice, you do learn to just be like, all right, I’m pushing through it and every time you push through it and you overcome. You get that confidence, and you push through again and you overcome. Even little old me at the start line was just like, oh my God, do I really want to do this? I’m like, yeah.
You know that every time you start a race and you’re on the start line, you always second guess yourself. But then you always take a step forward and you always finish. I would love to let you close us out, Sherria with any final words you want to leave for our audience.
Sherria: Everyone needs a Jennifer. We need someone pushing us, telling us we can do it. Telling us that you came out here to do this, get your butt out there and do it. Everyone needs a Jennifer. I believe just one final thought. You can learn something from everyone. I live my life this way. There’s no one that I overlook from a homeless person on the street because that was once me when I ran away as a 12-year-old from my grandmother’s house to your drug addict, like my mom. I always tell people my mom can out hustle your average person. She may not know corporate terminology. She may not be as well-versed and as well educated, but my mother can leave the house with a dime in her pocket and she can come home with a week’s worth of groceries. Have her drug habits satisfied, come home with cigarettes and a bunch of other stuff.
Now I can’t tell you how she did it, but my mom is the greatest salesperson that I know. I don’t take for granted that everyone that I come across in my life, I can learn something from. I would recommend that you take advantage of everyone that crossed your path. You can learn something from everyone.
Jennifer: Oh, I love that so much. It’s so important, especially these days, all the different situations and things that happen in the world, all the different people that we come across. I think that is just amazing advice. So wonderful talk, thank you so much for being here, Sherria, and I know that everybody who’s listening definitely got far more than just one or two takeaways. There were so many great takeaways from our conversation today. Thank you. Thank you.
Sherria: Thanks for having me, Jennifer, as always, and see you soon.