ReLaunch and Redefine Success Through Disruption

Welcome to the ReLaunch podcast. And so happy that you are here today for this conversation. Because when I think about what we're talking about today, everybody needs to hear these messages. Because it is so relevant in everything you do in your life in trying to become that relevant person, the one that's going to disrupt whatever industry, you're in the one that's going to allow you to really stand out amongst the many. And so today, I have Jennifer Frey, She is the CEO of appreciated asset business solutions. They create, build and fill sales pipelines for their clients. Hey, we're talking sales here, everyone. So have you ever thought about how you're going to be a disruptor? In your industry? Have you ever thought about what it means to be a disrupter and how that impacts your sales? Well, there's a lot of misconceptions around sales, there's a lot of important things that you can do from a mindset perspective. We're gonna go all into that. And Jennifer has created a disrupter designer method. And it creates absolute precision messaging that will light a fire and you know how I like to ignite clients, and she's going to ignite sales. She's been doing this, she's so darn good at it. She's gonna be giving us all of those key tips, takeaways. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina, she's with her nine year old son, Max. And we're going to get into how she helps women, especially single women. And I was one of those for seven years with three kids redefine having it all, how good is that?

Jennifer, welcome. So excited to have you here.

This is awesome. That was quite the layup. Thank you.

I got in telling you your lie type of gal. And I'm like, okay, yeah, let's go there. So we're gonna start with the whole significant relaunch, cause I gave a little bit of a, you know, intro into it. But what do you think has been that most significant relaunch that has really changed the trajectory of where you are right now and who you are.

In my business, that biggest relaunch was when I really decided to, to rebuild my business model. It was during COVID. So there was a lot else going on. But I was getting a lot of job offers to be salespeople, for people. And look, I first of all, I make a terrible employee most entrepreneurs do. But also I realized that they didn't need a salesperson, they just needed more opportunities. And I could do that. So really developed at this consultative service. That was the most significant relaunch that we've had individuals, because

because I believe your business is a direct reflection of who you are. What was happening during this time, was this the time that you were relaunching your relationship and taken aback a little bit, a little bit more. Yeah. Because, you know, for people listening, it's like, okay, yeah, we're, we're getting in, we're changing our business, we got that COVID COVID happen. But you it all kind of came together as a massive relaunch for you. And I'd really love for you to share that story.

Sure. So a few years before that, I had turned 40. And at the time was in a very, very toxic, unhealthy marriage. And facing my 40th birthday, was the biggest relaunch because I decided that there was no way I was going to enter the next decade, doing the same thing. And so I did change everything. Right. And

how long were you married for 11 years, 11 years. And at that time, when you made this decision, how old was your son?

He was five.

So you had a young, you know, young and all of a sudden you're like, Okay, what about the marriage wasn't working for you?

Everything How long do we have? Here's, here's the thing. You can't have a relationship where one person is doing the work. It doesn't matter how committed you are. Doesn't matter how bad you want it. But at the end of the day, A Being alone is better than being in something unsafe. And we were in a situation that was very, very unhealthy and becoming increasingly routine for us. And I had to drop. I had to drop the idea that anyone else's opinion mattered because no one else was living my life, no one else was living through the terrible things that we were living through. And it just, it could not continue, it was escalating, and it was just getting worse and worse, and, and hitting 40 was such a wake up call for me that it's like, this isn't changing, this isn't getting better. This was like this entire decade of my 30s. I'm not doing this again for another 10 years, to see if it changes to see if it gets better.

It's incredible what you're saying that it was the significance of the birthday coming up. That cause you to say, Okay, you reassessed what had happened in the decade prior. And as you said, things were getting worse. Things were progressing, and it wasn't a good environment for you or your son. When did you actually finally make the decision that you are going to do this? Was it right before the 14th was right after? And what did you do? How did you do it? Because there's so many people out there right now that are listening and thinking, wow, I'm, I'm in kind of a relationship that's I don't want to take into my next decade. And

it was two days before our fourth birthday. And there is an incident that was there was no coming back when, for me, it became very black and white. And physically, we say to us, I was in jeopardy cell. As scary as that was, I'm incredibly grateful for it because it was so black and white for me from there on. And, you know, I think that depends kind of what your situation is, as to what to do next. I was so scared that I was going to make a mistake, I was so scared, I was going to regret it. I was so scared that I was jumping the gun or I hadn't tried everything. But at that point, it was so black and white to me. But what I wish, I wish I knew earlier that it doesn't have to get like it's going there. I wish I realized all of the times that I was physically intimidated, that should have been removed.

Now when you say physically intimidated, what do you mean?

Someone lying behind your car, or blocking the door. So you couldn't leave a room having things thrown at you, even though it wasn't their hands and those sorts of tactics were you know, while I didn't touch you, it's so incredibly manipulative, and again, increasingly dangerous. So what I would say to do is you have to get your finances in order and make sure that you have access to money that it cannot be removed from funnier, which means opening an account late a separate bank, definitely have your account somewhere else. changing passwords, changing nodes, changing all of anything, that's an open access personal ratio DRAM

I must have been a really scary time for you. Trying to put this all together to leave to be able to be financially secure when you maybe not even secure, but just financially to have something. What was going through your head at that time? Did you have anyone that you were talking to or anyone that you could at least you know, share what was happening? I

did have some some that disappointed me in the most significant ways. And some that surprised me in the most beautiful moments. So it's

it's the ones that you know, you kind of count on that you're like, oh, they'll be there for you. And then and then they're not the ones that come out of left field are like what?

Yeah, I think that um, in order for like, what you need to do and who you need to talk to, you need to be really, really selective and really careful. And really spend time processing your own emotions rather than looking externally for validation. When you're in a situation where your reality is challenged daily. You know, the sky is green, not blue, you tend to it's like drowning, you don't know which one is out. You don't know which one is up. And when you're that confused, it can make it very confusing for other people also, because can be all. So I think there is something really beautiful about COVID. Canadian when it did, for me this lockdown situation where calendars were cleared and no one was going anywhere doing this. It forced me into some solitude that was discovered, you know, it's incredibly knowledgeable. That's how we grow. You have to be really, it's getting quiet out here what's going on? Um,

that's so powerful, what you just said, because so many people when they're going through a really, you know, significant relaunch, or just like, put on the blinders just keep going as fast as you can, because it's an uncomfortable place to be.

You I mean, I can't, there was so much to do, there is a lot to do. But we'll got It'll all get done. You can do it, in alone is better than being in something on a happier on your own. And your children I did for so long. I was like it's for my son, it's my son. All your kids want to see you have it. All

they were like, can you please just say that again? All

your children want us to see you happy because it's not about what you say. It's about how you be. That's what they see. And it's the consistency over and over and over. So when you are always tense and uptight and scared and anxious. They feel that your person no matter what messaging, you're telling them, it doesn't matter. Because you're creating a lot of confusion for them really, if you tell them one thing, and they're behaving a different way.

They feel the energy, right? Totally do. So Jennifer, you make this huge move, you're in COVID, you're locked down, you're given the opportunity to have what I call you the big pause the pause principle of being able to just stop. And as a single mom, there's a freeness to it, as well as there's like a lot of pressure that comes with all of a sudden being that single mom, can you share your experience?

Okay, I this may be an unpopular opinion. But I feel really, really strongly that women, no matter what your relationship status, we always need to be able to take care of ourselves and our children financially, always, no matter what else is going on. Because even if we're not doing it necessarily actively, you need to have the ability to do that. I've heard so many stories of people where there was an unexpected event, or they uncovered something about what they thought was a very healthy and happy marriage, where it wasn't, and then they had to go provide. I think it's really important in order to move into any other phase of your life. Because it gives you that freedom of choice. I had the ability to take care of myself and resign and it was still really difficult to make that decision. I cannot imagine how frozen, you would feel if you weren't able to do that. So I encourage people to really, really look at that in their lives. Again, whether you're

male or female. You know, this actually happened in my family. In 87, the stock crash and or the financial crisis, I think that it was really and what happened was my stepdad hadn't really my mom never really asked to see any of the finances didn't really no just assumed everything was great. And they had money and all that. And then all of a sudden, he comes to her and says I don't know how it happened, but I've lost it all. And she's like, all like what do you mean? And it was a time where I was a senior in high school. And it was just like what? And I mean, I talked about it and I don't talk about that specifically, but I talked about my mom asking if we could paint the house and my stepdad saying we have no money to paint the house. So my mom ended up doing it and ended up later getting a divorce and trying to create her own. What she called her NASDAQ. Right and I yeah, you just said is so important for people to realize that you have to have exposure to the finances, you have to understand. That's, you know, and I did that from my first marriage. And my second, you know, that I'm in right now that I'm always like, I have a I run the spreadsheets. I'm the one who, you know, tracks everything. That that trauma around. Like, what what does it mean? We have no money. But But how did that happen, mom? And I remember her just like, so thank you for bringing that out. Because it is something that you have to take ownership of.

And look, sometimes things happen out of someone's control. I mean, it could have been a terrible mistake. There could have been a, you know, bad investment scheme involving, there's so many ways that people can be victims and lose things. So you're right. And I think I would also like to say that it would be really refreshing if women in general, we could drop this whole thing. We're like being dumb about this stuff is cute. Because it's not cubed, to not know what your mortgage is

going there. You're saying, Well, yeah, we need you do thank you for saying that. Yes, this business that I wasn't good at, you know, I'm not good at math. I don't understand finances, I don't like it. First off, if you're running a business, you gotta like it. Right? I mean, it's business. So really, and I, we could talk about this forever, and I'm looking at the time, I'm like, I got it. I gotta get to these, like, incredible. You then decided, in probably a lot of what we just said that you wanted to start a business, you wanted to take it into your own hands, can you share with us that process of all of a sudden, like, I'm going to do this?

Yeah. So I, the year before I filed for divorce was what I opened up my own consulting business. And it started basically working for one main client at a time. So it looked very different when I started it, as it does today, and that was that kind of relaunch and COVID that I had referred to earlier. But that was also you know, I think that relaunch of leaving working for someone and starting my own business. That was the relaunch before the relaunch of my personal life and getting all these things in order. And it's funny you even though it was intentional, each of those moves that I made. looking back and seeing the enormity of what happened in a three year span. It's a little

there's a lot of relaunches, though. I

realized when I filed for divorce, and we were having a pandemic, where are we going to be shut down six months later, but gosh, thank goodness that I did when I did, or else we would have been stuck in a house together. And that would have been terrible. Terrible. So, you know, it's just amazing way. But it happens, it feels like it's all at once. But then when you look at kind of a span, oh, it all really fell into place exactly when it needed to.

Totally. So when you talk about appreciate an asset business. And you talk about often this idea of a disrupter. Yeah, a lot of us want to be disruptive. We want to be, you know, an influencer in our space. But you're actually how do you help women to become one to become a disrupter?

I think so many of us already are, but we're not going in it. Right?

Early and comment right there

is just about teaching us to like show up. Look, I've been called disruptive my whole life. And it usually was not as a company. When I brought kind of this came about a few years ago with our disrupter designer and a real specialty and working with industry disruptors. It was because I realized that that's where we did our best work. That was the psychographic for us, where we had the best partnerships, the best collaboration, and mu space to really create something special. And before

you continue, though, there might be confusion out there. In what exactly how are you defining, defining being a disrupter? That's

a good question. Because honestly, I think no matter who you ask, it's, it could be a subjective answer, right? For me, a disrupter is someone who stands outside status quo, and who operates in a way where they provide service product or service that is so far superior more industry standard, that you're basically eliminating the perceived competition consideration. It's someone who is not afraid to rock the boat, who wants to be bold and say, Look, just because it's always been done this way, does not mean it always has to be done this way. And I realized that we were disrupting lead generation, the traditional lead gen that was out there. Because the way we operate is so vastly different. We have no competition. No one does what we do my business model is completely your

It would be ridiculous why denounced? Okay, so tell us how like, what does that mean? What does it you're doing that in this space and there is out there?

We specialize in prospecting and appointment setting. I've been in sales during your career and leading up to this, because

he was only thinking like, Okay, that's good, because there's a lot of companies that do that lead, there are prospecting. Great. So how do you show up as a disruptor, we

reach out consultative ly to our clients prospects wish list. So rather than calling, pretending we are the client, pitching, selling, we call for appreciated asset. And we recommend we do this after really strongly vetting each other. So this isn't like off the cuff, right? We really know who our clients are, and do a really deep dive on our discovery process. And we recommend them. So rather than trying to sell or close anyone, we are educating people about phenomenal solutions they need to know about. And then introducing them to the people that to have that next level conversation. It's a really different approach, a totally

different and you also do something which I'd like you to discuss, in terms of sales. There's so many misconceptions around it. Yeah. Right. How do you again, you're doing it differently. But what do you think are those biggest misconceptions?

So I was trained in classic sales training in New York City, with that straight line pitch, where you hear an objection, and you do the rebuttal to help close and you do that really hard clothes and push. And I was good at it, like really good at it. And it works to get you transactions, but it does not work to build your relationships. Because typically, in a situation like that, you are not building a relationship based on value. It's on speed or price. And guess what, then someone can come behind you and cut you by 3% or 5% faster. They're gone. Because you didn't have a relationship is built on value in collaboration.

That yeah, and as I was thinking about this, because it's so funny, I also took my training in New York, I worked with a company, Xerox and they sent me and the principles that they were teaching was Neil Rockman, SPIN selling it, it was very like it very regimented. Right. And then I get into Oracle, and I'm in 20 Plus deals one month, and I'm like, okay, the only way I'm going to be able to do this is start to feel it from my heart, like how am i Because I, if I keep going head base, and I tried to do the four steps and the five here and all this, it's never gonna work. So I really appreciate what you're saying there. And mindset is such a key component, how are you seeing? Because mindset when you know, when we were kind of in our, in our younger years, it was your you didn't talk about mindset, you didn't talk about emotion, you didn't talk about intuition, or you would have been laughed right out. But now, it's a huge part of it. And so how do you how do you go like, and work with somebody? And let them know that this is such a critical part of success?

Well, I think we use certain products when we are creating our messaging that speaks directly to the prospect, right? I don't you'll never hear me talking about pain points. Because I think it's cringy you won't hear me talking about kind of some of those typical straight line sales strategies. And I don't even really think what we do is sales anymore. To be honest, I think that mostly what we do is we're mostly in education, outreach, cold outreach, but we really educate rather than sell anyone anything I think that when you're looking at the different ways to, to message for a client, you really want to remember not just about who the client is, but who the clients ideal prospects. So one of the things that we do is we take their ideal demographics, right size, location, all those things, you can filter by the radio button, then we cross reference it with your ideal psychographics. So this is psychographics are the things that create commonality and chemistry, values alignment, right? You ever get on the phone with someone, kind of like our first caller, we're like, Oh, my God, of course, we're gonna do sat together, this is awesome. Because we have a line psychographics in our field, we're both women, business owners have been through the single mom game. We both have huge dreams, and are really unapologetic about what we want to create. And we also want to elevate women, and give them the tools that they need to get themselves into a better situation. So there's so many you salaries like aligned psychographics, you and I are aligned psychographics are appreciated assets, or businesses have instructors, they're disruptive, or they want to be. And I'll tell you, people will hand raise data, they will self select. And more importantly than that, they will self select out too. If someone doesn't identify like that, they don't see the value in that. They were not for them as

now one of the things that I when we first started talking and you there's a lot of people talk about work life balance, blah, blah, blah. And we started to go a little deeper, and it was how do we redefine having it all? How can you be as you know, we both were single moms. And even if you know no kids have kids marry nightmare, it's still, at some point, you're going to relaunch into this next best version of you. And I love how you talk about redefining having it all for yourself. Talk.

So you have to drop the guilt. The guilt is like other people's expectations of what you think that they think you should be. That's all it is. So just drop, it doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. It's really dumb. And I get pangs of it. Sometimes I'm like, No, that's stupid. If you think that every day, you're going to eat well, exercise, spend tons of quality time with your family, cook them organic meals, work a full day. What else are we supposed to do? Oh, be mindful. I was

gonna say, getting everything there was your checklist, your to

dues, and her meditation and our yoga, in our walk. And like all the things that we if you think you're gonna get to that every the end of every day and have all that replays, you're crazy. And you're absolutely setting yourself up to fail and look, a lot of these systems, a lot of what is expected of us, we've always been set up to fail. So let's again, derive it, someone else has said that towards me never made those decisions. If you can get to the end of every week, and look back and say that you I'll just say me and saving you, I'll see if I can get to the end of every week. And say that I tried something new that I built my business, which things powered, spend some quality time with my family. Sometimes it's really spontaneous. Move to my body. I'm still working on that, to be honest. It's not a priority right now. It needs to be I want it back. But I'm all about being honest about that. Had some time with friends had some time for myself, took a nap on Sunday. If I can look at a week and say that I was able to do a lot of different things. That to me is balance. That to me is having it all.

That is so that's what everyone. It's not don't think about her list. Think about your own. You're right. I personally raise my hand when you said Sunday nap. Oh my god, that is like, hard for me. And I think that that was the main reason. It was the end of the week feeling like I had, you know corporate guilt when I was at Oracle. I shouldn't be at work. No, I should be at home. Nope, I shouldn't be at work. Then I became an entrepreneur and I was traveling all around raising capital for my companies. I mean, always feeling like I'm not where I'm supposed to be. Orleans. I believe that that is Why the one thing that I created, which was the tune in process to elevate your energy for success, and you can call on it one minute, multiple times a day, and that changed the way I was able to show up. So at the end of the day, I could say, You know what? I did, I didn't complete everything I was supposed to do. But man, I did these few things. And I did them well. So I when I heard you say that I'm like, mean that in so in step with what I believe as well. So as we wrap up right now, I would love for you to tell people, where can people find you? And that that initial process of working with you? Sure.

So our website is appreciatedasset.com. If you want to get in touch, there's a few different ways to do that. You can get on our email, as you can book a call with me right on there, if interested. I'm also on all the socials. So is

it a free call initially,

just for spring call everyone? Totally, totally. And we've got some really exciting ways that we are going to be serving our community. I'm not a coach, I'm, you know, we are strategists. But we've got some really exciting ways that we're serving our audience. And I'm really excited to share that that will be coming out soon Hillary will be capitalist to find out about what we're doing. And I'm just, I feel like this is a year where I'm seeing this, we're businesses, people are stepping up, we are taking control of our businesses we are leaning into to ourselves and really doubling down on that investment. And that's what I really want to leave people with is to when you make these decisions, when you relaunch, you have to go on. And you're all

in with people that can short, short, the line from where you are right now to where you want to go. Yeah, we're not we're not here for what's going to happen in 2, 3, 5 years. Hey, what's gonna happen from now until the end of this year? Yeah. That's what we're talking about. So, Jennifer, thank you so much for being here. Such an incredible wisdom. Thank you for being so vulnerable. So open, authentic, my God. I think it is going to resonate with so many people. And you know, you've heard these, these heart wrenching stories you've heard about how we potentially have it all, how we move forward. Don't sit idle, make things happen for yourself. Think about what does this mean? What is this conversation? How does it light you up? And so at this point, you got to live now love now and look at how you right now today can relaunch now. Everyone will be back next week, and I hope you have a good one. Take care