Speaker 1 0:02

Welcome to Retail Checks and Balances , a podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the bustling world of commerce and culinary delights to help you grow your business and win . Join us as we explore the fascinating stories , trends and challenges that shape the retail and hospitality industry , from cozy corner cafes to sprawling shopping malls and everything in between . And now here's your host , kevin Spencer .

Speaker 2 0:31

Welcome to Retail Checks and Balances . Today , my guest is the amazing Jamie Nolan , a life and business coach as well as CEO of the Animal Collective . Welcome to the show , Jamie . You are awesome when it comes to the many hats that you have , so tell me about that .

Speaker 3 0:55

So I run a community called the Animal Collective . It is a space where entrepreneurship and soul development meet . So it is an online community for entrepreneurial spirited women where they come together and talk about the different aspects of being an entrepreneur the good , the bad , the celebrations , the crying , all the things that happen in the course of one day of being an entrepreneur , and how you bring those things together . And then I also do life and business coaching . Most of the work I do for that is on your mindset and how you can live the life you really want to be living , especially if you are a business owner , like how to accelerate your business while loving the life that you have .

Speaker 2 1:47

Well , that's awesome because I know you're . I mean , you're a woman and you know it's . You know , being in this world we've seen how challenging it has been for women in business , especially from an entrepreneur perspective , and I must say I'm amazed of how women have fight to get in front of most men and I think it's an amazing predicament and I'm sure you share the same privilege to be here .

Speaker 3 2:22

Yeah , it's super interesting to see , especially since the pandemic , like how many women have taken charge of their lives through entrepreneurship , right , the idea of like you really can be running what you want to be running , and that also the way that , like normal businesses that are set up don't really fit with you know the life that you want to have , right , if you have kids , you know like when they're going to school and when you're working and how to work those things out .

Speaker 3 2:56

If you don't have kids , like what's the life that you want to have ? And entrepreneurship really does provide that space to be able to open up into it . It's a little bit scary , like there are these spaces where you're like , okay , I'm going to have to like figure out some of this stuff , but it is a real sense of freedom , I think , for so many women . And you know entrepreneurship was on the rise already but the pandemic , I think , really accelerated that when people saw , like one , they're faced with some life . You know , let's look at my life kind of pieces as well as like , oh , when I had , you know , if I had this job , and then I'm kind of like trapped in the hours and the things and like where do I want to be what's important to me as a person , and you know who do I want to live like .

Speaker 2 3:50

Oh , awesome . I want to , you know , dig in your brain a bit in terms of your experience , you know , I mean you sung very experienced in terms of when you speak . So let's talk a little bit about the experience you experiences , sorry that you've had throughout the years .

Speaker 3 4:14

So I've been coaching for about 20 , 25 years . If we add up all of the different jobs I've had , so I've been an entrepreneur basically since the beginning of my career . I was telling a client the other day I haven't interviewed for a job since 1999 . And so I was like , first job I was a personal trainer directly out of college . My degree is in exercise science and then I and while I was , you know , personal training people I was really fascinated by , like how people made decisions , like what made them , what made two people that came into the gym at the same time you know , one decides to bring it to like come every day and they start working out and they start seeing changes and then they change their actual lifestyle and their life shift and what makes , like the other person , like try to avoid me and be scared that I might ask them a question , right and like because they don't really want to change .

Speaker 3 5:15

And as I like my career progressed , I became a health coach . I worked with a lot of people with different like pretty serious ailments around food . I worked with a lot of kids that had autism and ADHD , autoimmune disorders , and then if you're going to work with kids , you're working with their parents , and so , one , a lot of the parents have the same conditions . And two , they're like how do you get people to change things around food ? It's a big shift . A lot of the things that we do in terms of food is very traditional , like how we grew up and what we want to eat and how we think to eat , and , and it's also like very emotional , and so I did that for a long time . I was a health coach for like 15 years and eventually I got very burnt out of food , because I really love food , but I got talking and talking about it . But the thing that I really loved about that type of coaching was what is going to get the person to shift to do the thing that their body needs them to do to feel better .

Speaker 3 6:19

And so much of life is that , like we know what we're supposed to do , we know what we want to do , we know what the difference between the supposed to and want to a lot of times is Like . How do we get ourself to jump into that ? How do we get ourself to change the way we think and the way we do things ? Because as far as you have gotten , you have gotten with the mindset that you have right and to do something greater than that .

Speaker 3 6:48

You're probably going to have to shift something , and sometimes that shift is tiny , like it's a really small shift , and sometimes that shift is like , like really changing your perspective and what those different things are and what it takes to feel comfortable in it and to make it as a whole like to get all the way to like this is now the habit , as opposed to like , oh , I'm still , I'm not in the diet and this is the lifestyle , right , and that's with literally everything that we think , everything that we're changing the way we think about our business , the way we think about our life . What's important to us is are those things showing up on our calendar To me like , if you really like , audit your time ? Are you doing the things that you say you really want to be doing , and does that feel in alignment with you ?

Speaker 2 7:39

Fabulous . Let me know if I get this straight , because I'm thinking from a you know what you're teaching is . Is discipline right ? Because you know most of us are not disciplined when it comes to certain things . So you're teaching us to be different , discipline from the perspective of life and business , and that balance right ? Is that ? Is that clear ? Yeah , okay , great , I mean . I mean .

Speaker 3 8:06

And I think it is like in the discipline . It's the like you have to be clear on your desire , right , like it's very hard to shift to something that you don't believe in .

Speaker 2 8:20

That's correct .

Speaker 3 8:22

So right . So , like you know , there's needs , there's wants , and then there's desire and so much of like our life . We're like convinced that we can't have the desire but desires too much , it's a lot Like you're not , you're not allowed to have that's , it's too indulgent , it's too whatever , and it's like , but sometimes within that desire , there is this like magical piece that you're like that's what the people that are living the life they really want to be doing . They're admitting what that desire is . And sometimes it's like little right , like I want to be able to go on a boat once a month , right , like . And you're like that to someone else might be a Tuesday , right Like . But it is the like you have to be able to get from . Like all right , here are my needs , like I need these . I need to have food and shelter and love , and like I need to feel a certain way , right . And then your wants are a little bit more right . They are in that space of like I want to feel like loved , I want to feel I want to have you know better food . I want to have you know a nice car , whatever those things are .

Speaker 3 9:32

Those are wants , but the desire is like something that is like you know whoa , that would be amazing and so many people . One , it's good to know what those in which category . And then , two , it's really good to know , like , what you need to get you there . Like , if you know that the discipline you are using here on yourself is to get you into desire , then it's like the world starts to open up . Right , you start to step into that space of like oh , okay , you need to have a why . Basically , all of your like okay , I need the discipline . If you don't have a why under the discipline , you're not going to do it . We were , we , the humans , are not doing that . Like , that's not the way to do it .

Speaker 2 10:22

You're right and I like that . You speak Frank about that , so I'm getting that you . You put the building box together to the top to get to that desire , right .

Speaker 3 10:37

Yes .

Speaker 2 10:38

Perfect .

Speaker 3 10:38

Yeah , I take the , I take the pieces and I put them together . I mean , most of the time I I don't care what your goals are Right , I care that you know what your goals are right , like , I care that you know what your goals are and I'll figure out how to get you there . But most of the time , people know what they are , people know what their goals are , people know how to get there , they're just not doing it . And so then it's like attaching the reasoning why do you want to get here ? And sometimes they figure out very quickly those goals are somebody else's . That was their mother's goal , that was what they were supposed to do , that was what society told them , that's what their teacher said , that's what their husband said , that's what their wife said , and it is that space of like is this what you really want ? Because if it's not what you really want , it's not what you desire , you will sabotage yourself every time .

Speaker 2 11:28

And those are echoed words because you know , up until a year ago I didn't even know what a business coach was . Right , because you know my business was transcending into you know , getting into the US and you know a whole different dynamic . And you know I met this guy and he put things in perspective and you know it's one of my friends , my close friends recommended this guy and it was amazing in terms of what he put me on the path to the horizon that I always thought wasn't there and , as you said , desire . It just brought back that memory to me in terms of you know , I could achieve what I want once . I know what it is and you know you perfectly said that and that's just an amazing feeling now that I have now , after , it feels like I can grab anything that I that I want . You know , and I think that's what you've done for other people , correct ?

Speaker 3 12:29

Correct . It is really being able to understand what you want and admitting to yourself what those things are . A lot of times people are like oh , this is what I've been told I should want . This is what I've been told . This is the box I've been handed . I should stay within this . Maybe I can max out to the top of the box . But you can open the box , you can step outside of it , you can look around .

Speaker 3 13:05

Your goals don't have to be what everybody else thinks . I've had clients who are like I've achieved all the things . I have the big house , I've got this , I've got the cars , I've got the things . I'm not happy . I'm like what do you want ? They can't even imagine Everything was here . I was supposed to do this . Then they're like it didn't make me happy . If that didn't make you happy , can you break it back down to ? Sometimes it's little things you just need to do within that life , but sometimes it is . Maybe you need to downsize . Maybe you do need to change the way your business is . Maybe you want to write the book . Maybe you want to do the thing that's slightly different than you had never even considered .

Speaker 2 13:48

Oh nice . You mentioned earlier the reason why it sparks out to me , because just yesterday my mailman I mean I stopped to have a conversation . We always have great conversation . His name is Robert , which would be just a hello . It's not there with him because he brings so much energy . He's a veteran as well . He brings so much energy when we have a discussion . He brought up that he raised his grandson , who is autistic . It's something that some of us in this world don't even know what it is or understand what it is to have a child that is autistic or somebody who's autistic . I would like you to expand on that a bit in terms of your work when it comes to that , because that's a very important topic I think a lot of people need to be aware of .

Speaker 3 14:48

Yeah , my oldest daughter has autism . When she was diagnosed I was already health coaching and I was like , okay , if this is like Autism is a very large spectrum , right , and it's not an idea of like a straight line . It is like if you took like a color graph , right , and it's like , oh , some pieces are gonna be out of the normal and some pieces will be inside , and then like , how much is like out of whack is kind of like the severity is the kind of the easiest way to think of it , right and so . But it's all blended and everybody has a lot of these traits , right , you know . And autism , adhd , a lot of the autoimmune disorders all fall within this kind of giant spectrum and figuring out like what is happening in the body to be able to just make them feel better , is can make remarkable changes . My daughter had a ton of sensory issues . Once we cleared up some like gut things , then we could address some pieces , which then made therapy a lot easier , right , and so if you think of like in terms of if you are physically uncomfortable , it is going to be very difficult for you to learn how to do these other pieces , right , if you are , if communication is hard . If the processing of things going into your brain is not going well , then , like , the aggravation that comes with that is gonna be there and it's not like surprising . And so you know the ability to be able to like really look at the whole person and be like , okay , where where did the problem lie ? And then like , what are the other pieces that are really great , right , like , about this person and how do you like bring out more of the traits that are really great and then work on the pieces that need some adjustment . And you know there's a lot of advancements in medicine and different things that are happening , a lot of like natural , you know , supplementation and different like gut healing things that are , you know , helping . Like your stomach is the second brain and so , like , if you can take care of some of the issues that are happening in your stomach , it could help with some of the issues that are happening in your brain as well . But the ability to really look at the whole person , how to get that person to succeed in life , the same with ADHD , like if , if you're skewed over this direction , if taking food die out of your diet , you know changes the way you think , like try it for a little while . Right , and those are the pieces . Like .

Speaker 3 17:33

The brain is this ? You know , we think of it as a very like solid mass in our head . That is like operating like a computer , and it's not really true . It is a like ever changing , ever moving , ever evolving , like group of cells that are doing things and it's affected by what's put into your body . And so , if you can , you know if what you're putting in is really there to nurture like your whole body , then you know you can really change the way you think about different things .

Speaker 3 18:04

What do you need for support ? Is always my like friend , health coaching all the way through to business coaching . Like what do you need for support ? Because most of the time it is that idea of like whatever you're putting into your body , whatever you're putting into your business , whatever you're putting into your life , is what you're going to get back at . And so it's like if you're like , oh yeah , the thing is not important , it probably is right , it probably is that thing that does shift things just a little bit .

Speaker 3 18:30

Right If you ever have in one employee that has a bad attitude and every day is coming in and a terrible mood and everything is like whatever . If that person's like absent for a couple of days , you're like , well , big shift , right ? Oh , the whole energy changes . The same thing is happening within the body all the time . Take out the things that are not serving you and really adding in the things that do . And with autism and ADHD and a lot of the other autoimmune disorders , like being able to look at them and be like what do you need to provide ? Better support is like is the approach that I've gone on for a long time .

Speaker 2 19:12

Amazing , amazing , amazing Jimmy , and thank you so much . I mean this has been very uplifting in terms of the energy , in terms of perception that we have on the topics we discovered . Where would people find you ? What's your social handle so they can reach out to you and whatever need they have , because you have many hats , right ?

Speaker 3 19:43

Yes , on Instagram I am Jamie Nolan , and then also the Animal Collective , and the same with websites as well . So be animal collective and be jamienolancom . That's fantastic .

Speaker 2 19:56

Thank you so much . You have a great day and I'm sure people would love this episode . Thank you very much again .

Speaker 3 20:03

Thank you for having me .

Speaker 1 20:05

Thanks so much for tuning into this episode . We sure do appreciate it . If you haven't done so already , make sure you're subscribed to the show . Wherever you consume podcasts , we'll get updates as new episodes become available . If you feel so inclined , please leave us a review . Until next time , friends ,