Jaime Konzelman

Marty: welcome back to the True You Podcast. hope that every time you tune in, you're truing up a little bit more to who you're really meant to be and want to be and feel most fulfilled being in this life Today we have a really special guest, Jaime Konzelman. we're also here, I'm also, of course, with my partner in this wonderful endeavor, bill Tierney, who is a compassionate results oriented coach, informed by the internal family Systems. model So let me just, uh, let's hear your voice as quickly say hello, and then I'll, I'll read a little bit about Jamie for our listeners.

Jaime: Awesome. Thank you so much Marty, and thank you everybody for having me today. Super excited for our conversation.

Bill: Thanks for reaching out and, uh, offering to join us

Jaime: Yeah.

Marty: Well, okay. Oh gosh. That's an old fashioned term. Today's guest is Jamie Conman, a former Chief Revenue Officer. Nationally ranked triathlete, award-winning author and speaker who's led billion dollar sales teams and closed nine figure tech deals, all while keeping a secret that once threatened to unravel everything she built. Jamie started her career in strip clubs. And for years buried that part of her story under titles and trophies and tenacity. But now she uses her voice to help other high achieving women stop hiding, start healing, and learn from a place and lead from a place of radical truth and power and love this. She's the author of Deal Maker and the upcoming rewriting of the Rules of the Game leading to the divine feminine. In business and the creator of the Messy Middle, A newsletter for anyone navigating identity shifts, leadership transitions. And the question is this really it? She's known for her bold storytelling, deep honesty and uncanny ability to challenge people to burn down the roles that no longer fit and rise from the ashes. Wildly holy and unapologetically themselves. Just so you know, she lives in Las Vegas with four rescue Labradors and a foster pit, might be the only thing crazier than corporate life. Who says, oh, awesome. Welcomebio.

Jaime: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Bill: Lots of teasers in there. Where do we wanna start?

Marty: Let's just start with my observation from before we actually went online today, which was that with a life full of so many diverse experiences, how do you know who the true you is?

Jaime: Hmm, that's a really good question. I think it's a feeling, right? The true you sort of evolves over time and I think it's a process of really being still and getting quiet and getting to know who you are, right? And actually practice showing up. There was a time in my life where the true me only existed in my journals, right? My true voice and what I liked and what I wanted. But for me, my heart as a teenager was learning to take those private thoughts, put them into words and share them. And I think the more you do that, the more you develop sort of like a, just like working out at the gym, like a muscle memory for your own voice. And I think our voice is access to giving life to our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions. And to me, that's where the true you starts. But it's not easy. It's not, it's not an easy place to connect with. And I think over time you can be connected and you can lose that connection. So it's sort of a lifelong journey of. Unfolding and reconnecting and grounding into what's most important to you at any given moment, and then practicing bringing those things to life through action and whatever those actions may be.

Marty: So you're saying that somehow getting still and working with a journal, you started to recognize more of who

Jaime: I

Marty: really are.

Jaime: 100%.

Marty: Now for people who haven't gotten still and worked with a journal, how does that happen? What do you mean?

Jaime: Well, I'm a writer, but just that's who I am. So it's probably a little bit easier for me than maybe the average bear, but like when I work with clients or teams that I lead that are looking for that, how do I create that stillness and, and um, space for themselves? It could be as simple as asking really good open-ended questions and then giving yourself time to sit with those answers. And, and not being attached to the outcome, like I call it freeform writing. If you get up every day and you ask yourself, who am I? What do I care about? What's most important to me? The reality is many people, even most people I'd beg to say today, maybe wouldn't know. But if that's an exercise you did for 30 days and you gave yourself 30 minutes every morning, maybe over your coffee or your tea before you've picked up your phone, chances are by the end of those 30 days and then you look back, you'd start to find some consistencies.

Marty: Hopefully, right. That would be weird if you didn't, honestly. but so I just, I just wanna milk this point a little bit more because, uh, I'm, I wanna convert people to stillness and journaling. Wow. How is that, how does, how do you get a better view of yourself outta doing those things? Something that you mentioned before we pre press. The, um, record button was about the difference between. Internal and extra, like letting your life be defined by externalities. And so I'm taking it that by getting still in journaling, you're going, there's an internal look at self that wouldn't be available. And, and I, I think that's something that maybe 99% of I'm, this is a ridiculous statistic. I'm making this up, but 99% of the people walking the planet today. Don't have that distinction. What else is there? But the external world, what are you talking

Jaime: That's right. That's right. Well, I think what you've touched on, I think about as the paradigm of like, we've forgotten that whatever it is we want in life. Actually starts by looking in ourselves and getting curious and excavating what those desires those wants actually are. Right? People walk around with their phone. It used to be that they could Google everything and now we chat GPT it. But if you're constantly looking outside of yourself, I think it's too easy to forget to put it through the lens of, is this right for me? Right. And before you know it, what is that analogy or metaphor where you've hopped on a train. If you get on a train and it's going in the wrong direction, you wanna get off as soon as possible. So it's a course correct. I don't know how you would know that if you don't take time to connect with your internal compass, whatever you call that, your intuition. Yourself, your higher being. But I don't think it's a practice, and I use the word practice on purpose that many people take the time to implement into their lives because we're busy, right? Jobs, responsibilities, and people go through life so externally focused that you get to a point where you don't even remember how to connect with yourself. And that can be really scary place to be.

Marty: There's the busyness factor, and I think there's also. Check this out. I don't, I don't need to be right about this, but I think there's an another factor I'm noticing in my clients, which is about just like, there's, there's no honor of self. Like, why would I bother to do that? I'm nothing. I don't

Jaime: Yeah.

Bill: That's just what I was thinking as, as I heard you say that, Jamie, is that. Getting in touch with yourself, you have to kind of know who that is first and who you think that is, is someone to despise or to improve. why would you wanna be in touch with that?

Jaime: Absolutely.

Bill: think.

Jaime: And what, what scares me even more as I look up at, and I think in the business sense, the corporate leaders, I think we've glorified as a culture self-sacrifice for so long that. Many people are little aware of the impact, and so when I, you know, coach, senior executives, or when I speak to, you know, C-suite leaders or board members, I actually challenge them and say, you know, to say that if you are modeling the type of leadership where you are abandoning yourself, your passions, your desires, the things that fill you up. Then you're subconsciously teaching the people who look up to you that the price that you have to pay to make it to those positions is sacrificing yourself at all costs.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Jaime: And to me, this is more than just woo or bubble bath and self-care. If you look at the statistics since COVID of. Work related illnesses, and I don't remember the stats off the top of my head, but they're pretty, pretty scary. If you look at them, there's two to 300% and more increases in stress related illnesses like hypertension, migraines, weight gain if you to get, not to be too bleak, but even scarier. If you look at in North America, the demographic, the two demographics of people. Who are dying by suicide. So death by suicide year over year. The two largest populations that that is increasing in death by suicide are young people, teenagers

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Jaime: and corporate executives at the top of their career over 50.

Marty: Interesting.

Jaime: Right? And so to me, that signals, there's something really wrong in the culture that we've ascribed to that says Work at all costs. If we've got young people so stressed and dealing with so much that there's no other way but out, and that on vice versa, somebody at the top of their career who seems to have it all, maybe a spouse, a family, multiple homes, the wealthy income, but something is so drastically wrong that they choose to leave this place to feel better or many other cases. Right? Not to minimize mental illness and, and all of the things that go with it. Something's really wrong. It's, I think there's a wake up call that needs to happen.

Bill: Oh, definitely. And your, your, your question is this really it you, here's the sentence from your bio, a newsletter for anyone navigating identity shifts, leadership transitions, or the question is this really it? These two categories of people where the suicides are, are the highest, the youngest people, the young people that you're pointing out, and also the over 50. Uh, executive leaders of corporations, they've answered that question, haven't they? Is this really it? Yes, apparently it is. And if that's the case, I'm done. I'm out.

Jaime: Yeah, I had cases for sure.

Marty: So what about the, these things that we're talking about now? Um. Recognizing something about yourself, getting in touch with, um, not looking to the external. All of these ways that we've been describing it, how have, did they play a role in your own personal growth and development?

Jaime: I, I think it's been, it's a journey like anything else in life, right? Like if I look in my rear view mirror at the, you know, points of inflection or what I would say were big growth moments.

Marty: Yeah.

Jaime: The first biggest one that comes to mind was, you know, I was. Maybe 32 years old. I had been doing all the things right, recovering from taking a long time to graduate college, all in on career, getting the director, then the senior director, title I owe, had a Mercedes. I had the house like on paper. It was great. And then I went through a, you know, romantic relationship break up and I kind of stuck my head up and had the journal and maybe a glass of champagne and sitting in my backyard watching the lights come on and went, wait a minute. If I could do anything, what would it be if it's not career related or taking care of somebody else? And I didn't know. And I went, wow. I'm in my thirties and I don't know. And I thought, all right. And I poured another glass of champagne. I said, I'm gonna make a list of everything I've always wanted to do for myself that's been on the back burner, because I needed to be more successful, or I needed a relationship. And it took me a long time. That night I couldn't come up with many things. And when I woke up the next day, and obviously the champagne bottle's empty, there was eight things, and number three was be an athlete. And I thought, oh my goodness. You know, when I was a small child, right? Like I was a chunky little kid, young as of eight, my parents didn't really believe in sports. They thought it was, you know, too expensive. They weren't gonna give up their weekends and all the uniforms. And they said one day, if you wanna do that, you do that when you're older. Well, on Long Island, New York, there is no playing a sport for the first time in middle school or high school, right? Many kids have been playing since they're five. And so here at 32. When I wanted, if I could do anything, I thought, be an athlete, well, I'm like, I gotta do something about that if that's still buried in my heart. Now mind you, at this point I'm a gym rat. Like I worked out, I was very fit, but I'd never done a sports. And so I asked a friend like, Hey, if I wanted to learn to run or do like a 5K, where would I go? And she was an attorney and said, well, I just did a marathon. And I was like, you did a marathon? Holy cow. And so I went to her run club intimidated as all Get out, right? I didn't know have the right spandex, clothes, the sneakers, I mean I still worked out in basketball shorts and one of those little tank tops right from from Target or something. And the coach was buff and lean and she looked at me and she said, I believe there's an athlete inside everyone. I will be in your life as little or as much as you want. And what did she do? She reached into that childhood dream of being an athlete and what happened? And she goes, by the way, we don't train for five Ks. We do half marathons and marathons, but you can just keep coming. And I thought, I am never gonna do a half marathon. Well, half marathon turned into Sprint triathlon, which turned into Olympic triathlon, and within 13 months I did my first Ironman

Bill: Wow.

Jaime: and it changed my life. Why? Because it was one of the first top points in my adult life. I thought if I could do anything, what would I be? I'd be an athlete.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Jaime: Right. And 13 months later I crossed the Ironman finish line. I was like, wow, where else am I limiting? And you know, you do a race of that magnitude. It transforms not only your body physically, but your mind. And I asked myself, where else have I been limiting myself? I thought, wow, let me go back to that list. What else is on the list? Well, the list is get more passports. Dance, become an author, learn to teach or coach. And so what it really doing, Ironman made me do what was that process made me say, I'm gonna look within myself because that's where it has to start. So I finished that race and I said, I'm gonna find my life purpose, and then typical Jamie Conman. I'm a little analytical. I'm a little rigid at times. It had to have a definition. My life purpose was gonna be my passions. My purpose and being of service to others, and it had to support me somehow because I sort of liked the lifestyle that I had and I thought, just like Iron Man, it would be a six to 12 month journey. Well, it actually took me another 10 years,

Marty: Hi.

Jaime: but that's part of the journey, right? And, and right was, was figuring out

Marty: course.

Jaime: at that moment I thought, well, I don't know what my gifts are. How could I be of service if, if I don't know what my gifts are? So that was like a big part of it, was trying to understand. What natural gifts I have so that I could learn how to, as they say, right, give them away to other people and lean into the gifts that I've been given.

Marty: Can I pause for a second? Um, I'm just. Um, keeping track of the things you're saying that would serve the listener to the podcast when she sits down to introspect and look at herself. What are those great questions to ask yourself? Now, you said something at the very beginning about what got you to sit down with the champagne. What was that? What was the first question you asked there?

Jaime: Well, if I, if I could do anything, what would I do,

Marty: If I could do anything. Great. So I'm gonna just, if you don't

Jaime: please?

Marty: I've got five, five of them so far, and so the, the listener can start

Jaime: I love it.

Marty: writing these down and use them. So if I could do anything I, I, I wanted, what would it

Jaime: Mm-hmm.

Marty: It's number one. Then how am I limiting myself? What is my purpose, my life's purpose, and what are my gifts? Those are the four I have so far. I said five. There are four so far, but we might come up with more. So I just wanna, so, you know, give the listener time to write those down and use 'em this

Jaime: That's great.

Marty: bill.

Bill: Well, here's where my curiosity is right now. yeah, that, that first night sit down with the champagne and asking yourself that question. Did that, was that, did that come question come from?

Jaime: Hmm. I've always journaled. I mean, I've got journals going back since I was five. I mean back, back then it was really catalog of what I ate that day, but it was a practice that I've always leaned into.

Bill: Wait, wait, wait. You're five years old and you're cataloging what you ate that day.

Jaime: Yeah, if you look at my journals from when I was about right before kindergarten, four and a half, five years old, all I ever wrote about was what I ate that day or.

Bill: Why? Just because you loved eating

Jaime: I love food. Right. I don't know. I didn't have much going on at four and five. It was, this is what we ate today and I played with the cat and my brother annoyed me, and that was sort of the theme of most of the journal, the journaling from back then.

Bill: Wow. Did you keep all those

Jaime: Mm-hmm. Have them all.

Bill: Oh my. Wow. What a gr what a great, a, a, a great that it must be. Okay, so now you're, you're asking yourself what do I want? And I heard you say, I don't know what I want.

Jaime: Yeah.

Bill: More champagne apparently, and let's, so let's drink some more champagne and see if something else comes and something else did come.

Jaime: yeah.

Bill: How did you find your way to, I don't know what I want to, here's eight things that I want.

Jaime: It was just, just sitting with it and, and freeform writing, just not limiting myself, putting down whatever comes out right in that moment, be an athlete. Didn't seem like a rational thought. It wasn't only till I sat with it for a few days that I went. Uh, that probably came from wanting to be an athlete as a kid. And if that's that important to me, couldn't I lean into that today? You know, it doesn't have to be being a pro athlete. Maybe I could just learn a new sport or learn a sport.

Bill: I, I, I, I just wanna connect with your

Jaime: Yeah.

Bill: little bit. I was 31 years old and had been sober for about three and a half years

Jaime: Awesome.

Bill: when I was, um, in a, in a therapy called Bioenergetics. the therapist was also a recovering alcoholic and asked me what I was doing physically to support my recovery. And I said, what do you mean? And, um, I'm smoking two packs a day. Does that count? No. He said, if, if you're, if you don't do something with your body, it's gonna be very hard for you to maintain your recovery. Something very physical.

Marty: Hmm.

Bill: And I said, well, okay, so what do you do? And he said, I run. And, and then the other counselor in, in the same agency, he, he ran he was gonna be running two months later, he was gonna be running the Portland five miler. And so I decided that that was gonna be my goal. I was gonna start running and I would, I would run the Portland five miler. And I did. And I did very well at an, and I found that I just loved running and I, I'm 70 now. I don't run anymore, but I ran for about 35

Jaime: Amazing.

Bill: before, before I just settled for walking. yeah, that's how I'm relating at that level. And I'm very intrigued about the, the idea of identifying what it is that you want, my process for arriving at that had to start with what I didn't want, because that's where my mind was. I was so oriented on what I didn't want. That I began to leverage that and look at the opposite to consider maybe what I, what I, what is the opposite of I, what I don't want. Do I want that?

Jaime: Smart.

Bill: It worked. It worked really well for me.

Jaime: And I love that you said considerate, because I think today, especially with the internet and AI and all of the media and imagery people get, we can get, so, especially as people have successful careers, we're so programmed to want that answer instantly and want it to be the right one. Like

Bill: Mm-hmm.

Jaime: think we've forgotten that we can. Get curious and try things and sometimes you won't know if you like it, you try it two or three times because of fear or discomfort or maybe environment.

Bill: Most of us don't know, and I didn't know for a good portion of my life that deep down inside me and everybody else is, is an individual wisdom

Jaime: Hmm.

Bill: that once we begin to tap into it, and this is that, in that it what you were calling, um, what did you, you had several names

Jaime: Yeah, it could be your intuition, internal wisdom. There's lots of words for it. Some people, you know, in an esoteric sense think they're connecting to some source or calling that God or universe.

Bill: Yeah, I, I call it the internal guidance

Jaime: Hmm.

Bill: kinda like GPS and,

Jaime: Yeah, it's important.

Marty: Oh, I just also wanna carve out a little space here. Sometimes the, the nudge comes from without, but it's how we look at it. So it's like a. You know, there's like a cooperation, I would say, between God giving us a sign and us recognizing the

Jaime: Right.

Marty: But it, you could say nature in that same place or, or even society. And I wanna tell a quick story that involves a stripper. When I first got into business, I was an academic for my first career. And when I first got into business. You know, I'm trying to fit in. So external meant everything, you know, to become one of the guys. And I, I, hiding that. I really didn't feel like one of the guys, Partially because I'm gay and they liked to go to strip clubs just to get through the mustard here of the story do a lot of other guy things that I really wasn't into. I, I really wanted to get this business thing and be part of the group that was succeeding. Right. And, um, so one night they, they took me to their favorite strip club and. The woman who was dancing for us, clearly she could see that I was suffering. She, she, she had insight, she had wisdom, she had compassion for me. And so when they were clamoring up to put bills in her panties, um, or whatever they're supposed to be called, um. She, she, she came over to me and unbeknownst to anybody else, she put a $5 bill down right in front of me

Jaime: Yeah.

Marty: I would have, because she could see, I was like scared. I didn't know what to do. I wasn't reaching in my wallet like everybody else. She could tell, she read me, read me like a book, and so she, she, so nobody else could see. She. that I would have a bill to put in her panties, right? So that was a wake up call. It's like, I really don't fit in

Jaime: Yeah.

Marty: not being the true me here. I'm trying to match the outside circumstances and it's not working. And this woman made it very clear to me.

Jaime: Hmm.

Bill: I gotta say there, you must be spinning some magic here, Jamie, because Marty and I have done something like 75 or 80 episodes together now, maybe more. And that's the first time he's ever outed himself as gay on, on our podcast?

Marty: Oh, I don't think so.

Bill: I think so. I would've, I would remember. Yeah.

Jaime: Safe.

Marty: Yeah.

Jaime: Safe space. I love it.

Bill: is a safe space.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Jaime: I love so much about that story that you shared As you recognize, it sounds like she gave you some grace and maybe an opening to participate, but you are to make you comfortable and that's, that's awesome. That's so much of the gifts I received from that world was I think when you are comfortable to, to be naked in a room full of people, you probably have to be pretty comfortable in your own skin. Right. And I, I think you can't really. Connect with other people in a way that's deep enough to be in. Maybe it's be intuitive connection to read people in that way. If you're not actually comfortable in your own skin,

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: Yeah.

Marty: exactly. So yeah, and she could see that I was not comfortable in my skin and I had all my clothes on.

Bill: mm.

Jaime: if you strip away the power dynamics and the, you know, the sex appeal of all of those things at the, at the core. It's people connecting to people.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Jaime: Hmm

Marty: So now I could have, I could have missed that clue that was co because it was coming from the outside if I were strictly focused on, you know, the, in the introspective side of it. But. I saw that as a sign like this, this is so not what's going on here. This is a, this is something for me to notice and take to heart.

Jaime: Powerful reflection.

Marty: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Bill: many different directions we can go here. Uh uh I don't wanna break the the flow. Mar Marty, you were onto tracking questions.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: more questions, uh, Jamie to offer along in that process that, that, uh, Marty was so closely paying attention to there?

Jaime: Well, I didn't bring it up in there, but one of my favorite genre of questions, if you will, is when, when, whenever I either, I'm self-reflecting myself. Or working with a customer or a client or whoever it may be, is to have a question that's action based. You know, when I was a little kid, um, I, a lot of energy, a lot of ideas. My dad would always look at me and say, Jaime Lynn, insight without action is meaningless. And of course, when I was little, I, I didn't know what that meant. And as I got a little bit older, I hated it because he was basically saying like, all that's great, but whatcha gonna do about it. What I didn't realize is he ingrained in who I am, a proclivity for action. That is not natural to a lot of people, right? So, so one of my unique abilities that I like to share with other people is when you have an insight, when you write something down, when you have a curiosity or you realize something about yourself. Commit to doing something about it and, and, and don't over aggrandize it, it doesn't necessarily have to be, I'm gonna go change the world. Or we can think of service as like, you know, you know, part of my own journey of service was thinking one day I had to be successful enough to write bigger checks. But the reality is you can actually show up every day and, and be of service to others. So if you're in that mode of self-reflecting and asking yourself questions. You can go, one of, you know, there's lots of routes you can go, but I always like to think of when, you know, how would I feel if I brought this insight into, into action and when am I gonna commit to taking action by? So it's sort of a time bound by when, and you can phrase those questions in a lot of different ways, but I know for me, I find when I anchor into the feeling I'm gonna get from after trying something new, I'm that much more likely to actually do it because new things can be hard or scary or uncomfortable. But if I realize at the end of doing that, wow, I'm actually gonna feel really proud of myself, or I'm gonna feel really alive because I'm expressing myself well, then you can get through the discomfort and cold email somebody about their podcast and say, Hey, that's really cool. I'd love to have a conversation with you guys.

Bill: Wow.

Marty: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Very good observation. That's where the magic really

Jaime: Yeah.

Marty: This can be all of these great. Observations, but once you act on it magic, like it's a new world, something has actually changed.

Jaime: don't remember who said it, but it's an expression I grabbed onto 'cause it resonated with me. And it says, when, you know, when we, when we get into action, the universe conspires to support us. And I really believe that. Like you got all the ideas in the world, but when you have the courage to act and that gets that sort of to a topic we haven't really talked much about, which I think we share some common views on is alignment, you know. Which I think is the way I define a, a personal alignment, and there's lots of different words for it in different cultures, but a definition is a single threat of continuity between our thoughts, our feelings, and then the actions we breathe into life. And when you can find that, that is probably one of the most powerful places you can stand for yourself.

Bill: Brooke Castillo says something very similar. Are you familiar with Brooke Castillo?

Jaime: No, I'm not.

Bill: She has the life coach school. She also specializes in coaching, not not just women, but she attracts mostly women. She's a powerful woman herself. one of the things that she and I have in common is that we were introduced early in our personal development, to the work of Byron Katie. Uh, who taught me and taught, um, Brooke Castillo, also the ability to do what, what she calls the, uh, turnaround where than focusing and judging and evaluating the external world, we take our judgments and we turn them around on ourselves to see what's actually true about that. And, so after studying for years and, and utilizing the work of Byron Katie, I began to get some insight and clarity about, about some truths that came from just. From just practicing, um, self-exploration and, and examination. And, and that's one of 'em is that if my actions align with my values and, and my true beliefs, then your language, and I love that language, I'm, I'm out of alignment and there's something inside screaming to get back into alignment

Jaime: That's right. That's right. And I think even if, we'll, if we ignore those screams long enough, they become physical.

Bill: Yes.

Jaime: I, I have a physical therapist. I, I, I ignored an injury and of course it got worse. And he said to me, you, you're an athlete. You know this, the body whispers before it screams

Bill: Mm-hmm.

Jaime: and there's a really popular book right now. I think it's just a reprint. Gabe, Gabe Mart. Um. Not the body. Keep the score. It is, it's about the hidden cost of stress on our body. Getting the title in the moment. And what's really interesting is I went through a period for the last year where I kept catching everything from a plane or sick over and over and over. Foster dog broke my toe, more physical illnesses and things in a year that I've ever experienced. I thought it was work stress. And then you read this book and it talks about, and I was reminded that. Don't give power to our voice when we're out of alignment, when we, all the things I believe, but somehow had a blind spot in my own life for a moment. 'cause we can forget in the busy right, that the things I was ignoring I think were manifesting itself physically and wearing down my immune system.

Marty: What about the alignment? I wanna expand on this alignment conversation. Um. Because I, I agree with you. This is a very important piece and I wanna bring it into the realm of social alignment. You know, you've worked in different companies, you've worked in different, um, fields, let's call it. Um, how important is extending that alignment of your own thoughts, feelings, and actions the people around you?

Jaime: For me personally, I think it's very important. And I think the older I get, and the longer I live, the more I realize how crucial it is, right? Like we can all put on a compartmentalize emotions, right? All the things you're taught in the old school, school rules of business, there's no emo, don't take it personally. There's no emotion in business and all of those things. Can I survive in, in, in an environment like that and play that game? Absolutely. But not without a deep physical cost to my wellbeing, to my satisfaction. And, and so to come to what you said part of, to, part of where I learned that was what I had abandoned myself and was trying to play the corporate game by the old boy rules. Um, and I was very fortunate that I had a boss that said, Hey, you know, like, how can we get more Jamie? She's like, when I spend time with you, I just feel better. How can we get more of the personal Jamie conman to the company? And I said, well, you can let me do coaching and training within the company. And she's like, why haven't you? You are a deal maker. You do the biggest, so $40 billion company. She's like, you do the biggest deals in this company. You have more power than you can imagine. What's been stopping you? I said, well, I asked hr. And they said, no. I asked the diversity group. And they said, no. She's like, if it was for a big deal, would you take no for an answer? No. You would just do it. And she was the chief sales officer at the time, and I reported directly to her. She's like, well, what would you do? And I was like, well, I don't know. Tomorrow's Wednesday. Let's call it Wellness Wednesdays. And I will. Do a quick little session and I'll share some tools that I've learned in the coaching world that help me in corporate America and, and my, and happiness and all the things. And if, but I said, no one's gonna show up, Jen. And she said, just do it. And so I went to one of the teams, I was managing the inside sales team and I said, Hey guys, Jen challenged me to do some of the exercises I do with you, but for the company. I don't think anybody's gonna show up. But would you come and just, you know, put things in chat and then if no one shows up, we'll cancel the series? And they said, yeah, of course. The invite went out to about 30 people. We were gonna start small before we even got to session one. The following day, over 300 people were live on the

Marty: That's amazing.

Jaime: panicked because I was new at sharing that part of myself in the corporate world. Right. I

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Jaime: still living where I had Jamie. The coach was passionate about training and all of the things. It was outside of my job. I only found the courage to share that with my teams because they were younger people who were early career starters who were really struggling. And I thought if I can give them tools for personal development, it will impact their professional development. But it felt safe. It's very different when you have 300 people on the call from around the world in India and Mexico and it's tech, right? So it's predominantly men, predominantly older than me. And I'm gonna talk about, you know. Making a personal mission statement and doing breath work and doing all of these things, and it was really a, I think we, we talk about how do you know your true self? Well, I knew my true self, but once I got over the nerves, it was probably one of the best meetings I'd ever facilitated because it felt so connected and I watched, got the privilege of watching everybody come alive. But then even after that, you know, I did little exercises and I said, okay, if you like this, we'll do a different one next week and we'll do six or seven of these. And afterwards I got texts and emails and phone calls that just flooded from all over the company of how hungry people were for tools to help them find more satisfaction in their careers to help them reconnect with their selves. But I

Marty: And so that becomes part of the true you or was always latent in the true youth

Jaime: correct.

Marty: influencer, this leader, right?

Jaime: Well, and the irony was this was leading up to publishing the book, which I, which told my backstory about being a dancer, which I thought would ruin my business career. But I was wanted to walk through those doors to be an integrity with my beliefs, right? That there's no shame in walking a different path. I thought, God, if Ellen DeGeneres can come out and lose her TV show and have to rebuild her career, certainly I can have the courage to say everything I learned about business started over a lap dance, right? And this is who I am. Most wild part was, that was only three years ago, last July, and I've had five promotions in corporate America since, which led up to me being, you know, tapped by private equity firm to be their Chief Revenue Officer. So the very things that I hid were actually the things that have not only given me more credibility, but elevated my brand, elevated my level of leadership, and given me an opportunity to impact even more people along the way.

Marty: Say that sentence again. The very things I

Jaime: Yeah. Um, well, I'll say, I'll say it a different way 'cause this is, this is,

Marty: Okay.

Jaime: um, is, I, I, you know, we, there's a lot of talk these days about shame or more growing talk around shame. And I think most people think that shame is what we fear. Others will think of us.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Jaime: found is whatever we are most afraid of, people finding out about us wherever we play our deepest shame,

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Jaime: have to share it with the world, but you do have to release yourself from its hold over you. That's a different context,

Marty: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jaime: and I can remember years ago there was a Brene Brown quote about you either stand inside your story and own it, or you stand outside and you hustle for your worthiness for the rest of your life.

Marty: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Jaime: been a huge brand, brand fan. Love all of her books, love her Ted Talks, did her program, you know, all the things. But that one quote I never liked, and only after I published my book and shared my story and started talking about it was I was like, oh, that's why I didn't.

Bill: Oh. Yeah.

Jaime: Right. So it's really interesting.

Marty: Well, I know that Bill probably wants to talk about that piece. That's something that he is, uh, quite interested in and good at. But before um, if you want to bill, um, what's the difference? So you can really sell this to our audience between the results you were able to produce as a, a soul salesperson versus those as a leader of a team.

Jaime: I think for me, the biggest distinction was, look, I love doing deals. That'll always be in my DNA, the chase, the commercial strategy, and all of that. But I can see very clearly a lot of that was coming from a place of inauthenticity, of trying to prove something. And when I stopped dancing and hit, you know, hung up my stripper prompts, I made a commitment to myself that I would never tell a soul about my past. But even deeper than that, there was a mantra that said one day I will make more money as a business woman than I ever made as an adult entertainer. And that

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Jaime: over 15 years. So for me, there was this, um, collapsing, if you will, of my worthiness with financial outcome that I had to learn how to unbundle.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Jaime: And so the art of the deal and sales as an individual contributor at that level will always be something I love, but over time for different reasons, right? Corporate, politics, environmental, you know, economic headwinds and not getting harder, my internal values started to shift and that what feeds my soul now is supporting other people. I'll, I'll always love deals, but what really drives me is helping others to find their success in whatever that is, whether it's their career, whether they're a seller, whether they're a senior executive, and they're going, wait a minute. I don't know who I am and I wanna leave a legacy, right? Using the tools and all of the things that I've been through to pay that forward, to give other people tools in their toolbox, that's my purpose.

Marty: Awesome. Clear.

Bill: I so many things, ways to go here. One of the, let me just ask what's on the top of my mind right now? What, what is it you love about deals? I'm imagining you've got, we got a provider and a consumer and you put those two together. Is it that or is it, what is it about making deals that you, that you love so much?

Jaime: Um, I think at a sim at a, I'll think of it this way. There's a model that I actually made because I drew it on a napkin over the last 10 years. So many times, if you think of a sale or a deal in any B2B landscape, at their most simplest form, they can be boiled down to two metrics. The value on one side, right from zero, a tech deal can go from zero to a billion dollars in total contract value. And on the bottom side, complexity. So whether you sell a watch a car. A piece of hardware, a piece of software. Things go from a single product to multiple products, to products and services, to solutions. All the way at the end are sort of digital transformation deals, the, the really big tech deals that will transform the way a company goes to market. I'll use like Nike as an example. If you go back seven years ago and you read the 10 K at Nike, they were a retail company that distributed through wholesalers and retail stores with very little direct to consumer relationship. You know, the Amazon effect of everybody wanting to order things on their phone, their leadership said, we wanna be a technology company. If you read Nike's 10 k today, they are, they, they call themselves a technology company and the bulk of their business is actually direct to consumer. Right? They bought, they had their own app and then they bought another app. Nike Plus, they built a community, right? Retail stores are less direct to consumer. The biggest deals in the technology services space are the deals where you work with a Nike, a Coke at Disney, and you help them transform their business based on how you support from the IT environment. And so if you think of that, those two metrics that I just talked about, the model is this, the model that I made, right? Which I call a sales maturity model, but it applies to other job functions of sale that applies to leadership. The higher you go on any deal in terms of either function, dollar value, or complexity. The deeper the foundation of skills you need across three areas. Business acumen, which has a whole bunch of skills in there, leadership abilities, and then domain expertise, whatever that domain is. If it's seller, you need consultative selling skills that has all sorts of things underneath it. If you're a solution engineer or product engineer. Tons of skills underneath that. And so you asked me what do I love about large, complex deals? It's the complexity, right? I mean, the average, if you take, you know what they call a mega deal, so something that's a hundred million a year in run rate. So if it's a five year deal, it's a $500 million deal in an enterprise. You know, ISG who tracks the industry will tell you there's a minimum of 25 to 30 stakeholders at the, at the customer. At the same token, you've probably got equal or double that amount of stakeholders at the services provider. That it takes to orchestrate something like that. A sales cycle like that could be 18 months. I the privilege of being in a company that supported me and would challenge me and say, how can you get that sales cycle shorter and shorter and shorter? Right? Which taught me not just sales and business acumen, but how to look at something so complex and create a business case that delivers value to the board, to the executives that we got that sales cycle down to six to nine months at certain times. What do I love about that? If I go really deep, the passion, where the passion comes from. You know, growing up on Long Island, New York, I was surrounded by high finance, right? I knew kids whose parents worked on Wall Street. They were typically the kids that got really good birthday presents. They probably drove a car by their high school graduation. That was not my family. Right? And that's okay. And you know, when I dropped outta school became the adult entertainer, I came back with a vengeance and said, I'm gonna get into an iBank. Okay,

Bill: Okay.

Jaime: got 3.97 from UMass Boston. I'm gonna do this. I'm, and, and the reality was everybody I got an interview with said, Hey kid, you're smart. You got some great work experience. But I got four rows from Harvard who are legacy hires, right? The message was the same. My zip code, my last name didn't qualify. I've had the privilege of learning how to do these large, complex deals and the way the amount of investment m and a activity there has been in finance over the last couple years. I now have the privilege of working directly with private equity firms on not just their buy side model, but how do they take these companies that they've bought that aren't delivering to the models they thought they would and create new commercial organizations or transform the sales organization to so that they can get their exit. And for me, where I grew up and the way I thought of that world, that's the major leagues.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: it sure

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: the.

Jaime: I mean, that's the always the way I thought of high finance, right? You got the minor leagues, you got regular business, and then you got, you know, you could have the farm team for the Yankees and only three people, you know, three of those guys ever make it to the Yankees to pitch right? Or, up to the majors. And that's a platform that I've gotten to play in because of learning how to think, shape my brain and shape my skills in a way that I can sort of go from. Value creation at that high level to also the mechanisms underneath that and how do you bring that to fruition from a deal perspective. So it's not just a sales thing, I guess it's a complexity and it's a business acumen thing that's given me the opportunity to continue to learn and grow and universe willing that I'll to continue to lean into.

Bill: And you listed that now as as your second passion. I

Jaime: Hm.

Bill: answering my question so fully and so passionately, clearly you, you love the deal.

Jaime: do,

Bill: you love making

Jaime: I do.

Bill: and you, you just a, a few moments before I asked the question said, that's no longer the thing that you're in the most passionate about.

Jaime: Hmm.

Bill: Isn't that interesting?

Jaime: I guess I'm multi-passionate, right? I, I have more passions and interests than I do time.

Bill: Same here. I know exactly. I, well, I don't know exact if I know exactly what you mean, but I, I'm having the same experience. I have far more ideas and, and enthusiasm for those ideas than I have time to execute even half of them. That's fantastic. And, and so the passion that's, that's ahead of deal making is, is connecting with people I'm hearing

Jaime: And helping them see themselves in new ways. You know, I've been very, very fortunate in my life at even all of these different intersections. That I've been around people who have helped me grow,

Bill: Yeah,

Jaime: the responsibility to pay that forward to other people.

Bill: I'm, I'm curious, there's a, the lingering question from 20 minutes ago, maybe

Jaime: Yeah.

Bill: ago, was the, the quote from your dad. Now I've heard that quote before and it landed

Jaime: Hmm.

Bill: where it to land when I first heard it. I can't tell you where I heard it, but, but insight without action is

Jaime: Yeah.

Bill: Uh, did your dad find that wisdom? What was, what was it about him that had him know that?

Jaime: I don't know. Um, he was a salt of the earth guy. Worked for Geico for 40 years. Grew up, you know, in in Brooklyn. Much. I'm the youngest of eight kids, so my, my parents are long past, but uh, you know, they had me much later in life, you know, and he would tell stories about he had to drop outta school in the eighth grade, but he always was, you know, to support the family. Right. Um, right after the grade, depression. But he always was self-taught. Right. He told, you know, his first job when he dropped outta school in eighth grade was being the cash register. There were no electronic tools back then. Right. So he had to stand there and do the math on the bag. Right. And then graduated up to being a butcher. And so. He just had a lot of what I would call salt of the earth, good skills, uh,

Bill: Yeah.

Jaime: that he passed that on to me. Right? We had, um, very pragmatic in a lot of those thinkings, but I don't know that he ever really credited them from someplace other than a desire to better himself.

Bill: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm just gonna shout out to my daughter Sarah, who's 46 years old, and I'm thinking of you as her and her as, as you and me, as your

Jaime: Um, Aw.

Bill: and, and that's the kind of relationship that we have. So shout out to Sarah. Yeah.

Jaime: I,

Bill: You two

Jaime: I two and 46, so

Bill: Oh yeah. Okay.

Jaime: that one.

Bill: Nice. Well, so what else Marty? What's on your mind?

Marty: Uh, just remembering, there were about two years, um, where I, with a business partner, was around the country and doing a program. Uh, like a three hour program. It was a way, it was a marketing tool. Um, you know, people got to see us coaching and um, and some of them would sign up to, to work with us, and the program was called Insight to Action.

Jaime: Smart.

Bill: Yes.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: If someone wants to work with you, Jamie, we're, I'm noticing time. We need to begin to wrap up now. So if someone works, first of all, who is that? Someone that you wanna work with? Let's start there.

Jaime: Um, some, somebody once I was actually on a podcast said, you're not a, you're not a coach for the average everyday person are you? And I'm like, well, I don't normally know what that means. Right? But I guess when you go from never being an athlete to an Iron Man in a little over a year, right? Like I do, people I enjoy working with the most. They're ready to go all in on something. They don't always know what that something is, but they're ready to go deep and do the work, um, to have a breakthrough in whatever that area that is. Sometimes it's something personal, sometimes it's something professional. So it's more of a psychographic and a readiness, um, to do the work. And they wanna have a mentor, a guide to coach by their side that can help them through that.

Bill: And you work with women exclusively, correct.

Jaime: No, um, it, it seems to ebb and flow. In fact, for a long time it seems I worked mostly with men and then it's gone. The pendulum has gone the other way. And so I am passionate about women in leadership simply because there's not, I would say in prior to three years ago, I had not had a mentor in the business world who was a woman who had shared my values and shared my style. Um, and that's probably one of been one of the greatest catalysts for growth in my career was meeting her and having a friendship and mentorship with her. So that's part of why I talk about working with women so much is because I wanna pay that forward. Yep.

Bill: so you work with men or women, um, and, and, and it's not limited to any one category of. Health or, or fitness or business or relationships, it's whatever. They're up as long as they're up to a big game

Jaime: Yeah,

Bill: to go off.

Jaime: very well said.

Bill: And, and do you, how do you provide your service? Is it individual coaching? Is it a program?

Jaime: don't have standardized programming. I've lots, lots of programming I've created over the years, so that I kind of pull from that. If you think of it this way, if you were a celebrity or an athlete or C-suite executive and you had an executive coach, they would spend a whole bunch of time with you and figure out how to build a program for you. And that's something that I really enjoy doing. And sometimes that's. You know, sometimes that's individual over six months. You know, sometimes it's a few quick sessions on Zoom and then we spend a day or two or three days together birthing something in person. I love sort of individualized or small group workshops and creating that for people. Um,

Bill: Customized. Very nice. Okay. And so if someone wants to find you, connect with you and talk about, uh, whether or not there's a good fit, what would they do?

Jaime: My name or Jamie councilman.com is my website. Um, I'm on many of the socials, although I guess I'm falling behind now. I don't, I'm not on TikTok, but I am on Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook, all that fun stuff.

Bill: My, my 3-year-old daughter is all over TikTok. She's, uh, making a name for herself there, but I'm not.

Jaime: Awesome. Me neither. I think that's a little bit beyond me at this point, but, uh, I think my, I think I've got all I can handle with the others.

Bill: So everything that we've talked about today in terms of references to your book, to your website, that's all gonna be in show notes. By the way, the book that you were referring to by Gabbo Monte is called When the Body Says

Jaime: That's the one.

Bill: uh, exploring the Stress Disease

Jaime: Yeah.

Bill: So we'll have a link for that and we'll make sure we get all those into the show notes. Marty, anything left for you? Any comments? Any, anything you wanna say?

Marty: there's something. Elemental and very fun, fundamental and about what you've brought to the conversation today. And, um, it's golden. You know, it's like the element of gold. It's really beautiful and I thank you for being with us.

Bill: Jamie, I wanna acknowledge that. Very similar to what Marty just said. Um, the, work that I do with people goes pretty deep. I'm trained in a therapy model called Internal Family Systems, IFS, and I've been coaching since 2011 prior to learning about IFS my, mm-hmm. goal was to help people accomplish whatever they wanted to accomplish by helping them get out of, get out of their way, what they were putting in their way.

Jaime: Hmm.

Bill: I discovered IFS, which is a therapy model. I learned how to my foot off the gas and, and pump the brakes a little bit and, and approach it with a lot more compassion and a lot less push. when I feel your energy in this conversation, I'm, I'm realizing how much, uh, that push is necessary sometimes.

Jaime: Hmm.

Bill: Uh, I don't know if you would consider your energy. wouldn't say pushy, but, but it is driving. Yeah. That's better. That's a better word for it. And sometimes that's what I need. I've got a marketing specialist, Meredith, who we, who we've had on the show. I get an hour with her when I've got this idea and I say, Meredith, help me to manifest this. And she is so driven that by the time I get out of that one hour meeting with her, I find that I'm, I've got momentum already. I'm running down the road towards my objective. And I feel that from you as well. So I'm sure that anyone that works with you would be absolutely blessed and they need to probably fasten their seatbelt, huh?

Jaime: Thank you. I think it's about a balance, right? And I'm still learning that like when to just slow down and breathe and let things come into fruition versus going into that drive mode.

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: it is definitely a balance and that's what I constantly am striving for in my practice, is to maintain the curiosity, the compassion, the belief in my clients. The belief that they too have that inner guidance system just like I do. And you do. And we all do. And and remember that my job is to help them get there. And it sounds like you recognize that as well.

Jaime: That's right. Well, thank you both for having me. I love the work that you do and this was a super, super fun conversation. So I appreciate you making time for me.

Bill: Absolutely. Thanks for joining us.

Marty: Oh, our pleasure.

Bill: Alright Jamie. So next time. Bye.