In this episode, ex-Silicon-Valley tech entrepreneur, Krista Mollion, shares how she walked away from her wealthy lifestyle to embark on a journey of self-discovery to live an authentic life and find true happiness and the secret anyone can tap into to change their life.
There is also an uncut video version of this podcast episode.
Click Here to get access.
Resources mentioned
The Sassy Method https://kristamollion.com/
How to Crush it in Business Without Crushing Your Spirit, How Entrepreneurs Can Overcome Depression and Find Success
http://ellenlikes.com/crush-it
Books Business Abundance Facebook Group
3 Key Points
Habits are just actions that are done over and over again.
If you want to live an authentic life you have to be willing to change and change is hard.
Living your authentic life is what leads to true happiness.
COVID Tips:
Social distancing doesn’t mean social isolation.
Watch comedies and bring humor into your life.
Journal to deal with your emotions.
[0:51] Ellen: Hi everybody, I want to do this a little bit differently this time. I want to, first of all, say that I hope everyone’s doing well. I know it’s kind of a tough time right now with this coronavirus and we’re all done adjusting. I know we’ve had to do a lot of adjusting the last few days.
So, I just want to say, if you need help, please reach out, ask for it, and be sure to connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. And I will help in any way that I can.
So, welcome to Episode 41. My guest today is Krista Mollion and Krista is a seasoned Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur and the founder of The Sassy Method, a business blueprint program for new founders. She’s also a mom of four and loves the beach podcast and travel. And we have been hanging out actually quite a bit on Facebook, but we had never met. So welcome to the call.
[1:55]5 Krista: Hi everyone. Thank you, Ellen, for having me on your podcast. I really like what you’re doing, and I’m happy to be here today.
[2:01] Ellen: (Birds chirping) On nice. Well, it was so much fun. Just getting to talk a little bit before we actually started the podcast. And you have a fascinating background. You want to tell people more about it?
[02:15] Krista: Yeah, sure. So, I have worked in marketing and tech marketing for twenty years and mostly in the Silicon Valley. So, I’ve been blessed to have worked with a lot of the big companies like Google, Hewlett Packard, Apple, Samsung, and many, many more. And my company, that I built and grew, specialized in virtual reality. So, we were one of the VR pioneers. And as you know, that’s a very booming industry. That’s, we’re going to see a lot more VR in every aspect in the future. So, that’s my background.
And in 2017, I wanted something different. So, I kind of got to the point where I was burnt slash lacks motivation, and I was doing a lot of self-searching to figure out what is missing in my life. I have kind of checked off all the boxes of what I had planned for my goals, but for some reason, I just lost it.
[3:17]: I lost my motivation. I didn’t know what I really wanted to do next in my life. So, I sold my shares, ended up leaving the agency, and that was a turning point in my life. And so, for the past four years now, I have been on this transformational journey.
So, it started off with a lot of inner reflection. For the first time in my life, I found out what a life coach was, and did some sessions with a life coach, learned a lot more about mindfulness, and just really went deep inside myself to understand why am I here? Like I’ve lived half my life almost, right? And by the age of forty, so, at that time, right now, I just turned forty-three, so at that time I was thirty-nine when this all happened, and I’m thinking, “Okay, that’s it. My life’s almost over”…
[4:18] Ellen: Hardly.
[4:18] Krista: At least the first part. But you know what I’m saying, metaphorically.
[4:24] Ellen: The second half goes even faster.
[4:19] Krista: Well, there you go. So, forty. Well, you’re right, every year, every decade, I see the years go quicker. So, I’m like, “Oh, that was two years ago. That was four years ago.” Whereas when you’re twenty, there’s like oodles of time just within twelve months. Somehow, times stretches for you more. But I definitely felt like I was at this turning point where I’m like, “Okay, have I really left something behind? Have I done what I wanted to do?” And I started panicking. I started thinking, “No I haven’t.” So, I don’t want to just say, “Oh, I’ve done some, I’ve helped other people visualize their projects in 3D, pretty much.” It’s how I would describe my business. And I was like, “That’s not a legacy. So that’s fun, and that’s useful, but have I helped millions of people? No. Have I done something that I’ll be remembered by? No.”
[5:13]: And so that triggered me to kind of make some drastic changes in my life. And there some good ones, but it had to start with some bad ones. So, I ended up getting a divorce from my husband, my ex-husband who is a great guy. But at that point, I knew that we had grown apart and that I had changed, and I could not go backward.
[5:34]: So, I ended up getting a divorce. I ended up giving up most of my material possessions. And that was a big hit for me because I was one of those people living the American dream, like spending oodles of money on material things. And I just had these really high, lifestyle standards and suddenly it lost its importance to me.
And I honestly, maybe I’m going crazy because I’m like, “This is so strange. Like, why am I not excited anymore about these things?” Like before I could buy something and to make me happy, or I could go to a spa day because I could afford all this, right? I could just be like “I’ll just pay for a short retreat. I’ll go away somewhere, and I’ll feel amazing and nothing was working.
[6:25]: So, I realized I couldn’t buy my inner peace anymore. So, once that awakening started, it was like, no more. The old lifestyle wasn’t working.
Ellen: That’s a biggie.
[6:30]: Krista: That’s a big journey that I’m on. So, I ended up writing a book that I haven’t published yet, and we’ll get into that in a minute. But I wrote a book about my life and most importantly about this self-discovery journey that I was on and rediscovering myself, rediscovering self loves, for example, like really, what is it to accept and love yourself? Which I thought I did, but I didn’t.
On the contrary, I was living for everyone else, and also self- confidence. Like what is true self-confidence. So, how do you really feel good in your skin? And I’m not talking about fake-it-until-you-make- it, outward self-confidence. I’m talking about just being okay with yourself, how you show up, whether it’s a good day or bad day, whether you’re rich or you’re not rich, you’re okay with that.
And that was a huge step for me. So, I documented it all. So, I wrote it all down, and it actually turned into something bigger, which this biography/ self-help book, it morphed into me creating something called The Sassy Method. And that’s something that is kind of a comical name. I know Sassy is a weird name.
Ellen: I love it.
[7:42] Krista: It actually is an acronym. So, it stands for seriously authentic, smart, self-confident you because when I was journaling a lot, I realized that that’s what I really wanted in my life. Like when I would say, “How do I want to feel?” Like “How do I really want to feel?” And I thought being successful wasn’t enough anymore. That was an old title that I would have told you in my twenties, in my early thirties. By the end of my thirties, that didn’t matter to me as much anymore. What mattered to me was being seriously authentic with myself. So, to stop lying to myself. So that’s a key component of the sassy method is just stop lying to yourself.
Ellen: So, how do people know if they are lying to themselves?
[8:22] Krista: Oh, my goodness. You unravel it. Because what’s happened is we’ve kind of bandaged ourselves in protective layers like a football player. We’ve got padding. And why do we do that? Because our little heart inside is so fragile. So, we think we have to bandage it and we wrap ourselves in all these little lies that we tell ourselves. And most importantly, our reality is not what it seems because we’re focused on an outward projection of who we think we should be versus who we really are. So, there’s a disconnect there. And that’s why I say, it’s a lie, because it’s not what you want, it’s what you have been conditioned to think you want, what society has told you you want, what your parents wanted for you, what your neighbors, and your colleagues and everyone-you’re living up to their standards to their, standards, to their expectations.
[9:16] Ellen: Yeah, that was very much the beginning of my journey because I ended up at graduate school in architecture trying to please everybody else. And after two years, I was like, “I’m never going to use this. I hate this.” I became agoraphobic. I couldn’t leave my house for six months and I had to completely change my life. So yeah, I know what that’s like.
[9:39] Krista: Well, you know that feeling and what I like to tell people is they’re like, “Well, how will I know?” You asked that question. Well, you’ll know because you’ll become deeply unhappy and
Ellen: Or, phobic, or panic attacks or migraines or whatever.
[9:54] Krista: Or, or you develop some kind of a coping mechanism. So, I think the phobia is just one of those. But it could be an addiction. You could develop an unhealthy interest in…you attract the wrong people. So, you constantly have train wreck relationships. You gamble, you drink, you overspend, you overeat, you develop these bad habits and then you wake up and you’re like, “My life is a mess,” and you don’t know why. Well, it’s because you’re not really living in lights and these are warning signs. You should be paying attention to that deep down you’re not living in line with who you really are meant to be. And that unhappiness, instead of recognizing it because you’re afraid to recognize it, you drowned it with distractions, with numbing things, with endorphins. So, some people are constantly creating the rush of endorphins, right?
Ellen: With social media.
[10:47] Krista: Yes, there’s a lot of great things you can get addicted to. So, anything can turn unhealthy, right? But why? So, if we take all that away, that’s all the padding, and we get to the core of why are you unhappy? Like you’re doing this to yourself because subconsciously you’re unhappy. Why are you unhappy? Well, because deep down, and here’s where we get to the juicy part, you’re not living in line with your true values. So, I developed a whole curriculum on how to recognize your values and write your own mission statement. Just like a company would write one for themselves and say, “Here’s the goals and objectives of the company. These are the values that we care about at the company. This is our mission,” right? “of the company.”
([11:35]): Well, for me personally, that’s what it came down to. And that’s what the whole thought process of, “What life am my living? Nothing really pleases me anymore.” That’s where it morphed into me having to design my life differently. So, how can you design your life differently? Or, how can you even live your life if you don’t know what your values are? And we don’t talk about values, right? It’s kind of like we were raised a certain way. We may or may not have even agreed with that way. So, some of it we may have adapted by default is because we learned it, but we don’t really believe it.
Or, maybe we married into a relationship and we kind of just adapted their ways. And so, it’s really hard. Like I married really, really young and when I went to therapy, my therapist was like, “Well, I don’t think you really properly acknowledge your own identity. Like you just automatically grew up from your family, and then into your marriage with your spouse. And you just kind of took over that identity,”
So, the first thing of The Sassy Method is to becoming seriously authentic and this is what it means. It means living in line with your values, knowing what your mission is and only then, can you design your life and act.
Ellen: Right. But I didn’t have the courage to be willing to make changes.
Krista: Absolutely.
Ellen: That’s the key.
[12:53] Krista: The fear, especially women, we overthink and we’re fearful. So that’s a big one that I had to go through as well. And, I like to say, “You have to step into your fear.” So, instead of trying to avoid the fear, or rationalize it, or even lie to yourself, “Oh, there’s nothing to be afraid of.” Yes, there is, change, and this can tie back into what we’re talking about.
Ellen: Scary.
[13:17] Krista: As a country right now, as the world right now, going through this Covid-19 outbreak, there’s tons of fear, right? All of us have some level of fear. And just before we started recording, I started talking about this, and I think this is relevant for everyone right now over the next couple of months is that some people are downplaying it and acting like this is all a hoax, or conspiracy, or coming up with the wildest theories that this Covid doesn’t exist or something like that. And the honestly,
[13:49] Ellen: The one I love, actually, shouldn’t say love, the one that actually irritates the crap out of me is when they started talking about how “Well it’s only so many people are going to die,” and you’re like, “Well, yeah, but if that’s you or somebody you know or somebody you love, I mean, “ What is going on?
Krista, I heard a little bit, but it’s okay. He’s probably drilling, he’s probably assembling something.
Ellen: Because we just moved in. They just came to fix the lock on the door.
[14:16] Krista: You know what though? I think, honestly, podcasts, it’s not as a problem as you think. Like sometimes I listen to podcasts, there’s a little bit of noise, and so what? Like I’m interested in what they’re talking, right?
Ellen: We had a dog barking through the last one.
Krista: Oh gosh. Yeah, that one’s annoying. That one’s annoying, but like I’m laid back. When I listen to podcasts, I’m like, “I get it, this is real life.” And that’s another thing that’s very relevant to what’s happening in the world right now is a lot of people are having to drop the formalities because they’re working in their pajamas, little kids at home, and their spouse in confined spaces.
[14:57] Ellen: Yeah, if people are seeing this on the video, they
may look at me and go, “Hey, you look tired today.” Well, I am tired. We had the move yesterday in the middle of all this. So, I’m tired today.
[15:03] Krista: Oh, well I’m tired too because my dad, who’s in his seventies, is quarantined in France. You know, France did a complete lockdown and he’s in right outside of Paris, and he called and woke me up at one in the morning.
Ellen: I saw that.
Krista: … because he was worried. He tried to call me on messenger and it was, I don’t know, messenger must have done an update on my phone because when I logged in, it made me re-enter my login information and like, so for some reason I didn’t get his call. and he was panicked. He was like, “What happened to you? “And I understand that nerves are, you know, people are very nervous right now, especially in families who like mine. who have a distance between them.
[15:54] So I don’t think any of us are getting a lot of sleep right now. That’s why I was just before this, I was writing down a meditation about how to distress and decompose, a guided meditation, because I think that from now on, most of us should try to do that before bed, just follow this guided meditation. You can listen to the voice, have a nice dark room and just close your eyes and listen because that will soothe us into sleep.
[16:22] Ellen: I’ve been on that every night and I don’t know whether it was from you or somebody else, but there was a meditation, his name is Jason Stephenson.
[16:31] Krista: I think it might’ve been for me because I’ve been researching them and just compiling them.
Ellen: Yeah, it’s really good!
Krista: I honestly just need those. I need to have a lot of those in my life right now.
Ellen: I do too!
Krista: And I don’t look at the news at night at all because it’s sad. I feel like the TV right now is showing more post-apocalypse movies than usual.
Ellen: Yeah, I saw you post that.anxiety
[16:55] Krista: They’ve been showing like all these movies and I’m like, anything with any kind of violence or panic or drama is not the time to watch that everyone. No horror, no sci-fi. I know that some people love those genres, and I respect that, but we already have a natural level of anxiety from this situation. It’s a good time to revisit those comedies. Like tonight, I plan to watch a comedy.
Ellen: I don’t know if you noticed but I’ve been posting more funnies lately.
[17:23] Krista: Yes. I love that. See, and it’s not disrespectful.
Ellen: I need that.
Krista: Right? We need that. One of the things I’ve responded to people is I really, really take this Covid outbreak very, very seriously, but we do need comic relief. So, do not consider that. Please notice the difference between someone being audacious and disrespectful and saying, “This doesn’t exist.” or “So what? We’re going to die anyway.” And somebody who’s posting a Corona joke, right?
Like today, I one about Corona babies. I said that in nine months from now we’ll probably see a lot of Corona babies because people were confined to their homes.
Ellen: And one of my friends, in a decade we’ll see quaranteens.
[18:12] Krista: There you go. See and it’s not being disrespectful, we’re just trying to lighten up the mood. Right?
Ellen: Right.
Krista: Big difference. I did see a woman on Tick Tock who went viral for licking a toilet. Have you seen that? A twenty-year-old woman.
Ellen: No.
[18:28] Krista: And I think USA Today picked it up and was saying that this is just awful for attention that she would do that just to prove her point. And a lot of young people are thinking they’re immune to this, but they’re not because they’re going to carry it, and transmit it and that’s how we’re going to continue spreading it.
Ellen: Well, not only that I saw something that really shocked me, which was they were showing the statistics from Italy, and they were talking about what the percentage was of who was getting the virus and the different age groups. And the biggest one was actually thirty-five to forty-four.
Krista: Interesting.
Ellen: And I think that’s because a lot of older people aren’t maybe aren’t working anymore. They’re more at home.
Krista: Yeah. Yeah. Interaction.
[19:14] Ellen: Yeah, more interaction. And, like you said, people just aren’t taking it that seriously. But you know, the more you can work at home. I know a lot of people, I was talking to somebody today in a company that I needed to connect to, and I was having trouble hearing her and she said, “Oh it’s because, I’ve got this new setup cause I had to start working at home,” So, people aren’t expecting a whole lot right now in terms of technical skill or any of that.
[19:39] Krista: It’s a great taste for everyone who has not worked from home. Like I have worked from home a lot in my life. I’ve also managed a lot of remote teams. So, in a way, I’m ready for the Covid outbreak because I know how to set up communication channels and manage people remotely. But I’ve been surprised in my career how rare that skill is.
Ellen: Well, I really like it because I was on music business before this, writing songs in my house. I started like in 1979.
Krista: Wow.
Ellen: Yeah. And then, I got online in 2004, and even before that, I remember when computers came in, and in the 90’s was when I started going from… I would write lyrics, and I would write them all longhand, but then, I would have to keep rewriting all the lines every time I wanted to put a new line in. And, at first, I was so resistant to being on a computer, and then, all of a sudden, I made the leap, and I got my first Mac, and then it was like, “Oh my God, how did I ever live without it?”
[20:40] Krista: I know what you mean. My mom used to type, and she had Whiteout, and she would go back and she would read, I don’t know, respool the machine. And she had been trained to be a typist, so she could type very fast. She wrote her Ph.D. on a machine, right? A typewriter.
I remembered the papers and the little Whiteouts, and then she’d be like, “Okay, I have to redo this one.” Oh, my goodness. Speaking of which, we have so much to be grateful for in the midst of panic. Every day I wake up and I say, “Thank you,”
Just thank you to the universe. Whether or not you’re religious, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you woke up in a bed. Did you wake up in a bed, where you out in the cold and the rain? No. You had a roof over your head. The air, we can still breathe. I’m outside right now because it’s been raining so long. I’ve been confined inside. I wanted to be outside. But you know, our ecology is damaged, but it’s not unlivable. It’s not to the point of the air, it’s not being transmitted like a virus.
[24:49] When we think about what is worse, a viral outbreak or a nuclear outbreak. So, I would totally take the viral outbreak because I so believe in science. My dad is a biologist. My sister’s a biologist. I have several doctors in my family, so I have confidence in the human race to figure out how to solve this, how to create better tests out of, create a fast test, how to create a vaccine. I believe in those things.
[22:18] Ellen: I believe in that too. What bothers me though is like you see things like the seas rising, and in Holland, they’re doing fabulous things with the canals and building it up. It’s the will I worry about, the will in this country. It’s like nobody wants to pay for anything.
[22:34] Krista: Well, Ellen, the problem is that in this country people are selfish. And that’s sad to say because I don’t want people to be offended by that. I want you to look in your soul and say, “I’m going to be part of the solution, not the problem.” And if you say that every day you’ll become selfless. And I know that because the American Dream is to accumulate wealth, build wealth and buy, buy, buy, buy. Right? And that initially is going to change a lot.
Ellen: Initially, I actually said that in a post, and one of my followers says, who I’ve worked with before, music. He’s an ex-client. And he was shocked because he thinks of me as “a good person”, which I am. But it was like, “How could I possibly say that people were selfish? And it’s like, because that’s what I think.
Krista: Let’s put it this way, there is absolutely nothing wrong with building wealth and wanting to better your life and better your circumstances.
Ellen: And take care of yourself first. I mean, that’s the way, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
[23:27] Krista: Right? But here’s where we draw the line is we’ve been taught that every man for himself. So, what that means is “I’m going to build my wealth, and then I’m going to fight tax increases. I’m going to fight anyone tried to regulate me.” And we’re so terrified of that freedom, freedom, freedom. We’re so terrified of losing our freedom and losing our hard-earned dollar, that we do it at the expense of our neighbors. And we do it at the expense of the quality of life in our country, the quality of education and quality of healthcare.
And I don’t want your listeners to shut down and be like, “Oh no, she’s talking like a socialist.”
Ellen: Right, right. We’re capitalists.
Krista: I am a capitalist. We are capitalists. This country, we cannot live except capitalism. I’m well-studied in politics. I studied economics. But I did a lot of, a lot of studies at university about political systems in relation to economics podcast.
[24:25] Ellen: We’re kind of getting off the topic of this podcast in a way, it’s all kind of related right now because of what we’re going through. But I do just want to say that, and then we’re going to move on because there’s some other things I want to ask you.
In Italy, one of the things that they said that has happened is that the canals in Venice are cleaner than they’ve been in sixty years because they don’t have people throwing stuff in there all the time, and all of the human things that people usually do. Also, the air has been cleaner. And there are people working on turning plastics in the ocean into getting rid of that or reusing it or whatever. There is a lot of innovation that can happen, and I just pray that it is happening.
Krista: Absolutely. It’s the will, it’s the will.
[25:21] Ellen: I know you did it, you’re doing a challenge on habits. So, why don’t we talk a little bit of how can people have good habits during this crazy time.
Krista: I think this is the perfect time to work on your habits because when I started this, so let me back up and say that I’m kind of obsessed with habits. And I started in January of this year with saying my keyword is “focus” this year. and focus so that I can implement routines and measure my successes better, better manage my progress because I tend to be a person who is all over the place. I’m a creative.
Ellen: I think most of us are. Yeah, I’m a creative too.
[26:01] Krista: And so creatives, what that means is that I have 1,000,001 ideas, so I’m never out of ideas. And this is great because I’m your gal to help you with your content because I never run out of ideas for you.
So if you’re like, “Oh, I’m having writer’s block or I’m stuck,” come to me and probably to you too, because we’re going to help you. Trust me. We’re creatives; we know what we’re doing.
[26:57] Ellen: None of my clients get writer’s block
Krista: There you go.
Ellen: …because I talk to them for five minutes and they’re fine.
Krista: Right, right, right. So creatives, we have ideas, but we’re not good with systems. So, what I’ve had to do in my lifetime is really work hard to have systems in place. And when I switched from being an agency co- owner and having a team, having a lot of people working for me to being a solopreneur, it’s a lot like right now, people switching from being an employee in a company to working from home, and so you have to relearn your habits. So, what that made me hyper-aware of is what is the basis of success?
[27:04]: Success is measured by action, but actions are really just habits. So, all these little things we do from the time we get up to the time we go to bed are habits. And we have to be more conscious of what we’re doing. And then, we have to instill small habit changes that lead to major results. So, I’m all about tiny habits.
So, I started this challenge inside my Facebook group because, first and foremost, my Facebook group is only to make people’s lives better. So, I made a commitment to myself that I’m not going to sell to people. I’m not going to try to lure them into something else. I just want my group to be about helping people live a little bit better, their lives. Right? So, last year we did a morning challenge. This time we’re doing a habit challenge, we’re going to redo the morning challenge again.
[27:52] Krista: So that’s what I do,
Ellen: That’s so funny though, I have to say, because the group for the podcast of mine,
Krista: Yes.
Ellen: People started kind of posting things. I was on the same page as you. I wasn’t going to do anything in there. And then, people started complaining. And they said they wanted to be able to market. And so, I finally said, “Okay, and now we do a “Marketing Monday” day.
[28:17] Krista: But no, that’s true. I think groups are honestly, groups are for community. So, I really think you have to let people build community. So, if they want to introduce themselves if they want to share things, that’s important. I complain a lot about this because I find that some of these group rules are so absurd.
Ellen: I know.
Krista: So anti-community.
But in any case, my group is all about hacks to live your life a little bit better. So, we do time management, productivity, focus, and now we’re doing habits. And so, this habit challenge that I started was because of my own problem, right? So, I always liked to experiment on myself first.
Ellen: I think we all do, yeah.
[28:57] Krista: And that’s the way to do it, right? All of us are, we’re at different stages in our lives. We have different levels of comfort or previous knowledge with things. So, if I throw you into anything new working from home, if I throw my whole team into working from home, well three people are going to thrive because they’ve previously worked from home, and in their old companies, or they were freelancers. And five people are going to just sink because they don’t know what they’re doing. So, you can’t just expect from everyone to thrive the way. So, it starts with recognizing where you’re at, you as an individual. And that’s where I think a lot of coaches and course programs fail, is that they don’t really articulate before you buy the course or the programs
Ellen: Who it’s for.
[29:43] Krista: Who it’s for because they want to make as much money as possible. So, they say, “This course is for consultants, coaches, online business owners.” And I’m like, “Okay, who?” I’m waiting for the who. And then, you explain a little bit more. And you can say, “Have you just started your business? You have no idea what you’re doing.” Or, you’ve actually been running a business for a while, but you have these pain points, like sales. Sales is going to be always on. “How do I get consistent sales into my business?” Right? Or, maybe you’re overworked because you’ve done everything yourself, and you make enough money, but you’re terrified of hiring anyone. And that’s a different pain point, right?
So, first and foremost, to change a habit, we have to recognize who you are and where you’re at without shaming, without blaming, and be like, “Okay, I’ve done some self-reflection” because I can’t tell you where you’re at. You going to work with a coach too who can ask the right questions to help you figure it out.
But no matter if you do it by yourself or with somebody else, it comes from you to recognize, “I’m really honest with myself because why should I lie to myself or to anyone else? Here’s where I’m at. These are my pain points,” like me. It was always having too many ideas and not having enough systems in place to accomplish them and pull them to the end. That was my big problem. And it’s always been, right?
[31:06] Ellen: Well, it’s mine too but what I found really interesting too is I’ve worked with a lot of different kinds of people over the years. I worked with business owners and professionals and doctors and lawyers and all that kind of stuff. But I’ve also worked with laws of attraction-just the gamut. But what I found is exactly what you’re saying is the people that I enjoy working with and really can help a lot are the creative visionaries and the leaders because they’re like me, because I understand what it’s like to be creative and be all over the place. I understand having too many ideas.
And like when they’re writing books, what will happen is they’re all over the place where they’re trying to, like you said, have their book be for everybody or they can’t kind of focus sometimes. And so, yeah, I think that the people that we have the most affinity with or have the most affinity with us are the ones because we’ve been there, we’ve done that, or we understand how that kind of mind works. So, it becomes really difficult when you’re working with someone, like for me, I do have one client who is totally a tech guy and it’s hard. It’s hard, the way their mind works is so different.
[33:16] Krista: Yeah. So, and that’s the thing, we can’t please everyone. What we have to do is we have to help them, give them tools to guide them how to self-coach themselves. So, I don’t want to just do done-for-you services, but there are great done-for-you services. So, you’re like, “Wait, this is way out of my comfort zone.” I like to build relationships with a lot of experts.
Ellen Yeah. So, do I. Yeah.
Krista: And then, I can refer.
Ellen: And what you don’t want to learn, you shouldn’t try to learn.
Krista Right, right. You shouldn’t force yourself.
[32:47] Ellen: But, let me ask you, how can people get in that challenge?
Krista: So, they can go to Sassy Business Bosses, which is my bit from The Sassy Method, right? Krista Mollion on Facebook, and you can just request to join. And what I’ve done is I’ve documented a four-step process, and we’re on step three right now, but this is a system that you can go back when you can watch the three videos and get up to speed.
And for each step. I’ve given written instructions, what you can do at home, like in two steps. I even gave some homework like downloadables and stuff. And right now, I’m actually putting together a sample-schedule template for people because people are like, “You know what? This sounds good, but my day is kind of all over the place and that especially now and like it’s not enough, I need even more help.” And so I said, “Okay, well there are these sample schedules for kids right now how to do homeschooling.
Why don’t we take a cue from that and try to do that as adults and have, here’s these time blocks. So, what I’m doing right now is I’m writing a series of time blocks to show here’s your self-care time block, here’s your self-care, your mental break, your physical break; there are two components.
[34:02] So, they have the same color because I’m a visual person, but one is mental health and one is physical. And then, what I’m doing is I’m taking the schedule, and I’m letting you rearrange the blocks to make sure it works for when you get up when you go to bed. And I’m also giving you a checklist. What I want to see is did you try to get as many things in there as possible today? Right?
Ellen: Yeah.
Krista: And if not, you see what we do is we make this key mistake is we say, “I’ll try to get to it tomorrow night,”
Ellen: Right.
[35:30] Krista: That’s not a way to live. You will not get it done. So if you really are serious about getting things done, we have to automate them, so habits become automatic. I don’t even think about what I do when I get up in the morning. I go turn on the coffee machine, right? Or, go sit on my meditation mat or go brush my teeth. We don’t think about those things because they’re habits. So the more you think, you start overthinking, then all these doubts come in, then you get distracted. Then you have what I call “a dump”, where you have all these ideas that come on top of each other, and then at the end you’re like, “Whoa, I just need to go on social media and zone out.” So, very unproductive, right?
[36:15] Ellen: Or sometimes, you go on social media, and then you get caught up in it and I can’t get myself off.
Krista: Well, I actually knew somebody; what I think is right now, all the emotions are really high and people aren’t bad, but what they’re doing is they’re focusing on the negative, and sometimes these controversial topics, especially, anything that can provoke and start drama.
Ellen: I know one in particular that I was really glad you piped in on. Well, we won’t mention who.
Krista: But I think piping in, as you probably see from my style, I’m very neutral. I try to present my argument,
Ellen: But like you said in this instance was like, “Stop this. This was just too upset people.”
35 :54 Krista: Trigger. Yeah. This will trigger too many people. Like just don’t do it. It’s better not to do it. And so, I find that, social media, it’s an escape, but it’s also becomes toxic. So, I think that if we want to change your habits, it’s about having a really clear, mapped out schedule that what you’re going to do, figure out where those blocks go. Use a checklist, so you make sure you’ve put all the important stuff in there. Right? And the more you can compartmentalize, the better. Like we talked right before this about having strong emotions right now, like worries and stress.
Like there’s certain things that none of us want to deal with right now that may be happening
Ellen: Or, have to.
[36:34] Krista: But we have to, right? And so what I advise is what you were saying is to be like, “I’m going to put aside a time where I’m safe, where I can honor that and if I want to l stomp my feet or I want to curse or I just want to let my emotions out, I’ll do it in a safe place without taking it out on other people.” But I’ll acknowledge that the unfairness of it or let myself get a little angry because it’s better than stuffing or carrying it throughout the whole day.
Ellen: It can also be difficult when you are with somebody who’s doing that. Like, my husband is eighty-nine; we’re twenty-two years apart and he’s having a really hard time.
Krista: Change is hard. The older you get, the harder it is to change, hard.
Ellen: And I had to say to him, “You know, this isn’t going to work if every time you get upset, you’re going to be yelling at me because I’ve got nowhere to go, and it’s not my fault. And you’ve got to deal with this because there are other people. You know?
[37:38] Krista: That’s the thing I learned luckily when I was really, really young, my grandmother taught me to keep a journal. She said, “If you’re going to navigate all your, and all your disappointments, and all your hopes and dreams, and all those feelings throughout your entire life, you’re going to need a journal.”
And she kept a journal. And every day she’d sit down, she had a special desk because no computers, and she had a little calendar; she changed the date; and then she would sit, and she’d open the book to the right day, and she would start writing; and she would document everything in our lives. She would document like what we did that day. So, it was almost like an Almanac, you know? Like the farmers. Like “Today the weather was this temperature, we’re getting more rain.”
But you know, I think it’s great because she had some outlet to release. We all need release, that’s like physical activity. Being cooped up is not good. We need to get outdoors. Even if it means bundling up and even if it means driving around the block in your car, just get outdoors people, right?
Ellen: Just stay away from other people.
[38:46] Krista: Right. There are a lot of ways to just get outside without bothering anyone. And but yeah, and we need that release cause our emotions are all high and that will help us have better habits. It’s like I do my walk once a day or I do my outdoor time once a day, right? And I do my mental health, I do my meditation, or my yoga once a day, and this is a great time to actually build habits. So if anyone needs help, come to Sassy Business Bosses because that’s what we’re doing. And when we’re done with this, we’re going to do the Miracle Morning Challenge again where we go through our morning routine.
[39:15] Ellen: Give me the link and I’ll put it on the transcript page. I mean on the podcast.
Krista: I love that.
[39:22] Ellen: Speaking of journals, I put together a book a few years ago that I often talk about it, but you just brought it up. So, I’m going to plug it and it’s called How to Crush it in Business Without Crushing your Spirit. How Entrepreneurs can Overcome Depression and Find Success. And it was a collaborative book. I’m not an expert on depression, but I got together a bunch of entrepreneurs and everybody told their story, and it was fascinating because one of the keys that was a thread that went through many of the stories was journaling. That was one of the main things.
And, there were people who had some had SAD, some had a childhood thing that they were dealing with-just different stories and different ways of dealing; it was fascinating. But yesterday on Facebook, one of my friends posted that she bought the book when it first came out and she was going to reread it now, and I thought, “I think I’m sharing how she )
[40:19] Krista: I would highly encourage you to repost it. Now, do a special post about it and include the link and say, “This could help people at this time because this is exactly, you mentioned yesterday about as suicidal neighbor.”
Ellen: Yeah. Somebody tried to commit suicide in our building yesterday.
Krista: And that’s just insane. I think that that just shows how overconsumption of media, being confined, being uncertain can really…
Ellen: Being alone.
Krista: … aggravate, yeah, being alone in this time
Ellen: Losing a job. There are all kinds of things.
Krista: Losing a job. There’s so many reasons that can push a person over the edge and that’s why we need to work on our mental health, so don’t consume so much media. Listen to positive stuff, like you posting some comical stuff; that’s fun. Let’s be funny right now because we need it. It’s not disrespectful. We all need a little bit of a break, and we don’t have to stop either. We can talk like we’re doing today.
Ellen: Right, right. Absolutely.
[41:19] Krista: I want to say that social distancing does not mean social isolation, social distancing means not being closer than six to ten feet from anyone else, washing your hands a lot, but it does not mean that we can’t have Zoom calls. I just offered to do a virtual play date with my toddler. I said, “Hey, does any of my friends have little kids? They could show toys? And we’ll do a hangout online” because my kids are bored too, right?
Ellen: I have to laugh. I saw one post where it was like a group of people that usually get together I guess at one of the neighbor’s houses. And what they did was they were all sitting out and they all had their lawn chairs, but they were all six feet apart in a circle on their front lawn, they were kibitzing (hanging out making small talk)
Krista: I actually saw two men on balconies of their apartment playing ping pong over the balcony; it went on for five minutes. They didn’t miss the ball, and then at the end they missed. But it was so funny. It was like they, you know, stay away from each other, but throw the ball.
[42:26] Ellen: Well, we’ve got to wrap it up, but you did say you were going to say something about your book and if you have any final tips, and then we’re going to say goodbye.
Krista: Yeah. So, I wrote this book that I’m, I’m actually planning on publishing this year, self-publishing. This book is for anyone who has come to a point of being stuck and going through a transformation. So, I would like to compare it to Eat, Pray Love, which is a movie I watched, and it’s based on a book by Elizabeth Gilbert. And you know, I didn’t write it with that in mind, but when I tried to compare it to what it would be like that’s pretty much how I’d describe it. It’s like this journey inward.
[44:26] There’s a lot of funny things that happen to me too, so it’s a fun book to read, and hopefully I’ll get it self-published. That’s my 2020 goals.
Ellen: Awesome!
Krista: When I narrowed it down is like “Published the book, finally, Krista.” But, in the meantime, people can get in touch with me via Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. Those are the main ones…
Ellen: Yeah, those are mind too.
Krista:.. under Krista Mollion. So, I look forward to hearing more stories on your podcast. Love your podcast. So, keep it up.
[43:43] Ellen: Thank you. Thank you and it’s so great to finally meet you.
Krista: Yes, me too. Thanks for having me.
Ellen: My pleasure. So that’s it for today.
Until next time. Bye-bye.
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