Honoring Your Inner Voice & Quitting a Family Business | Lauren Lemieux

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just figure, we'll figure it out, we'll figure it out. And it just, we just went downhill from there. And it wasn't until the fall right around Halloween that I had a breakdown at my desk. You know, I just, something had happened and I lost it. And I was sobbing. And it was the first time that she physically saw what I was saying. And then in that moment, she accepted, it was time for me to go.

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and I didn't know what I was gonna do. I think it was just a reality that she couldn't unsee her daughter hunched over her desk sobbing, saying, I don't wanna be here anymore. And that was the beginning of the transition of me leaving. Today's guest is Lauren Lemieux. She's the founder of Coaching to Fulfill Dreams, and she's a whole life coach.

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who's really made a big shift in her own life, and because of that, she now guides others to do the same. She's really turned her innate ability to connect with others and guide them in listening to their inner voices into a profession that changes lives. After you hear her conversation today, you'll understand why. In this conversation, Lauren shares her journey from working in a family business, which was really secure and kind of a predetermined path.

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to really listening to her inner discontent and making significant decisions for her life. She bravely stepped away from these societal norms and expectations and chose to instead follow her own path, one that led her to become a whole life coach. Our conversation today sheds light on the power of listening to your inner voice and that transformative effect that it can have on your life.

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And you know me, we definitely talk about the societal pressures that can trap us in these careers that we're not passionate about and the importance of breaking free from those expectations so that we can pursue what truly aligns with our values and desires. Lauren's story shows the power of kind of honoring your truth and defying what other people want of you or think you should do and embracing that change so that you can live the life that you want to live.

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But before we get started, I'd like to thank Emily, Tracy, Sari, Brian, Gail, Nick, Dream Vacations, and everyone else that supports the Life Shift podcast through Patreon. If you'd like to help support the production of the show, you can check out patreon.com slash the Life Shift podcast, and you can find out all the information there. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Lauren Lemieux. I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is The Life Shift, candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

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Hello, my friends. Welcome to the Life Shift podcast. I am here with Lauren. Hello, Lauren. Hi, Matt. How are you? I am doing pretty well. It's been a couple of weeks since I've recorded an episode. And I'm so used to recording two episodes a week. And I gave myself a little bit of time. So it's nice to get back into it and learn about people in this way. It's I never knew that I was going to be able to have something like this, where I could essentially talk to strangers about

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the most pivotal moments in their lives and see how it changed them and how we move through it. Great, and I love the premise and I'm very happy to be a guest. Well, thank you for wanting to be a guest. For anyone that's listening that's brand new, this show, The Life Shift, really stems from my own personal experience. When I was a kid, my mom was killed in an accident and at that moment in my life, everything changed. I moved to a new state, I had to live with my dad who wasn't...

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my primary caretaker at the time, all the things in my life changed. Growing up, I really felt really alone in that experience because it was late 80s, early 90s and people weren't really talking about those things. I was really curious of other people in their lives had these moments that significantly shifted things and very specific moments. Now I've had the opportunity to talk over a 100 people about these moments.

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Thank you for listening. If you are brand new, I hope you stick around for other stories because there are so many stories that although totally different, we have a lot of the similarities in the way that we process, whether these are super positive experiences or super challenging experiences, there's a lot more that we have in common than we have different from each other. Absolutely.

04:43
All right, Lauren, so before we jump into kind of your story and your pivotal moment, maybe you can kind of paint the picture of who Lauren is right now in 2024 without giving away too much. Sure, yeah, I'd be happy to. I am a early 50s woman who is about 10 years into a career as a whole life coach. My professional certification I'm very proud of. And when I tell my story,

05:12
how I landed in this position. I call myself a whole life coach for two reasons. My first is because when I work with a client, I really encompass that whole life persona. There's so many different coaches and different ways and specialties. And I like to just work with someone viewing everyone as a whole. And the second reason is because when I first learned about coaching and I watched a promotional video from the certification company I went to,

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I was this person my whole life. It is just a way I've been with people in my life in relationships, in seeking to provide them opportunities to figure things out for themselves. Not me giving advice or telling them what to do when I was asked, you know, any questions about situations. My first question back was always, well, what do you want to do? And how does this, you know, what's important to you?

06:09
So it was interesting to have that full circle moment at 40 years old, realizing that this was a profession, which I had no idea when I was working in a family business and left after 18 years. So that's a little bit about me. Dropped a little bit of a hint to your story. But I think it's interesting now and it's funny because before I started the life shift in 2022, I don't think I talked to a lot of coaches.

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outside of maybe like a fitness coach or you know, like a personal trainer or something along those lines and to find out how many different types of coaching and coaches there are out there and the people that I've been able to talk to and the way that everyone kind of leans into like their particular niche and the area that they're kind of focusing is so fascinating to me because I was like why do people need

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this kind of coach. And as I have all these kind of conversations with people, it just reminds me of like, kind of the same reason we go to a personal trainer, or kind of the same reason we go to a therapist, or kind of the same reason we go to whatever else we're looking at. A piano teacher of some sort is that someone out there might have some tools that we don't have, and not every single person is meant to have.

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the ability to do everything, so why not get help from the different people that can do things that we can't do? So it's been a fascinating journey for me to just learn about coaching in general. Yeah, and what I like in the specialties too is similar to doctors, right? You have your overall general practitioner who's your go-to for your physicals and everything. But then if you have a special need, whether it's, you know...

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cardiology or gastroenterology or dermatology or whatever your specific need is, there's a physician out there who specializes in it. And I think coaching in that vein is the same way, depending on what you're seeking from a coach, there's someone who specializes in it. Yeah, it's been a whole new world for me to kind of explore through people's stories and how they got to these, because usually there's some kind of...

08:26
boost or some kind of shift that pushes them in that particular direction. And it sounds like your whole life you had kind of been doing this, but didn't really kind of see it as a job. It was just kind of how you kind of facilitated the relationships around you, which is a great quality to have by the way, and to help other people. But then also to realize the things I like to do and the things I naturally operate in could also be a profession like good on you for finding like

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those pieces where they finally aligned, you know, when you hit your 40s. Well, there was as well as I'll share, it wasn't my doing totally. I had some divine intervention along the way that really kind of guided me in this in this way. Yeah, it's important. Maybe you can kind of paint the picture of what your life was like leading up to kind of this intervention or

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this push in the direction that kind of changed your life, I'm assuming or hoping for the better. Oh, definitely. And in reflecting on our talk today, it really was evident to me that, there's been a couple of times over the course of my life where you felt these shifts. And one of them was right before I went to college and the other was when I was 40, but they are connected because when I was in high school

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going off to college back in the day before there was email, right? We had these paper applications to send to the scholarship organization. It was in Princeton, New Jersey. And long story short, they lost my application, but they had the check. So they cashed the check and processed it. But then when it came time to send my application off to the school that I had already been pre accepted at, I was all excited to go.

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I was disqualified for financial aid. So the school I had wanted to attend and go away to school and live there and have the whole school experience really shifted because I ended up in April of my senior year applying to a local four-year college that I could commute to, who didn't have the major that I wanted to study. So in doing that, that was, I think, that first shift of...

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I imagine what my life would have been like had I gone to the school that I intended and had that played out in the way that I wanted. It just didn't happen. So here I was in school, four years commuting, which, you know, there's pros and cons to it. You just don't get that full college experience. But I was working and I had babysitting jobs and the company, the family business that I ended up working with after graduation is a boatyard and we had Hurricane Bob.

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And that really threw a big wrench in that company. So I started working there part-time. When I graduated, they asked me to come on full-time, even though I had really no thought to do that as a career. And 18 years later, I was still there. So it was one of those scenarios where when I started working there right out of college, it was the safe opportunity. It was a job. I was 21.

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It wasn't a bad place to work. It was a beautiful location. I worked with my mom, but I was, I knew from the day I started that it wasn't what I was meant to do. And over the course of 18 years, I had many times I thought, what would I have done? What could I have done if I wasn't working here? But I really never let myself get to the spot of I wanna leave because it would be leaving my mom.

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And she and I were in the office together and it just wasn't something that I really thought about. And halfway through that time, I got married and my husband ended up starting to work at the family business as well. So now it was my mother, my husband, my stepfather, who it was his actual business. We were all working together. And it wasn't until 2011, 2012, where he made a change.

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by bringing in someone into the office without really talking it over with us, that really started to put the reality of, I don't wanna be here anymore, was front and center. You mentioned that there were many times in which you were reminded that this wasn't the journey that you had pictured for yourself or kind of went to school for or kind of did that, but you also said that your mom was kind of the reason.

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Like you didn't want to leave her. Was there any part of you, and this is really coming from my own personal experiences, where you stayed there because you're like, well, it's too late to go do something else because I'm X years old or I've been here, how can I pivot into this industry or anything like that? Or did you just like, you were like, all these opportunities are out there, but I really need to stick around for my mom. You know, I think it was a combination of a few of those things because

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The profession I had wanted to get into was very education and degree specific. So it would have been, you know, going back to school and going through that process. But at the time and over the years that desire wanes a little bit. And it was really from a place of what would I do if I wasn't here. I had really no dream. I had no vision of what I wanted to do.

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Did you have this dream though before that application or the scholarship application situation? What was that teenage dream? Well, it was back in the late 80s and I graduated in 1990. My dad was working at a local hospital system and he had told me, public health administration, that's the direction. Because even as a teenager, I really didn't have a career in mind.

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I envisioned myself as a professional, as a leader, the business suit, you know, the the meeting, like the administrative managerial. I saw myself in that way, but not it wasn't like I wasn't a didn't want to be a nurse or a teacher or a police officer. Like I didn't have a profession in mind. It was more of a you were going to be a business professional.

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Yeah, I talked to a lot of people about this and I definitely subscribed to this. Was this like society's checklist of like, I don't know if you felt this way at all, but it was like we had to graduate high school and then we had to go to college. We didn't necessarily know what we wanted to go to college for. We just had to do it. And then when we graduated, we had to get a job. It didn't matter what job it was. It was just had to be a good job. And then you had to get promoted and get married and buy a house and have a nice car and all these things that never really served us any purpose. And I feel like.

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I bought into that so much that I also felt at 18, like, I don't know what I wanna do. Like, how am I supposed to determine this? And like you rattled off, there were like six options that you could really identify as a job, you know, like those really clear jobs. And then it was like everything in between that was just this gray space of being a business professional. And I felt the same way.

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but totally was like just bought into this journey of like, these are the things I'm supposed to do. So I'm just gonna do them. And if I have a good job, then I'm gonna keep doing that. So I don't know if, does any of that resonate to the way that you kind of move through life early on? Yeah, and I think when, you know, and if I preface it a little bit, that the whole connection to the intuitiveness I had in my relationships as a coach, when I was 16, I'm an only child.

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And when I was 16, I told my parents to get a divorce. I was a junior in high school. I overheard them arguing in the basement. And I heard one of them, I don't remember which one, say, well, when she goes off to college, we're gonna get a divorce. And I remember thinking, that's a year and a half away. So the next year and a half of our lives, my senior year of high school is gonna be tainted and fake. And I was like, what is the point?

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So I went to them and said that. And they were like, they must have thought to themselves, well, if she's not gonna be upset, then I guess it's okay that we do it. Yeah, yeah. So that was kind of my first offering to someone of, I was like, don't worry about me. Like you guys take care of yourselves. In the beginning it was awful and there were moments that sucked and it was not fun.

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But when I graduated high school, I told them the only thing I wanted was for them to be sitting together in the stands, and they were. And, you know, ever since they both remarried and we've had many family functions where we've all been together. So it was definitely the move that our family needed. And in hindsight, looking back, that was that part of...

17:48
guiding people to have the courage to make those decisions that are best for themselves, not for other people. Because we're so tied up into that. I feel like, you know, like if you get married you're like, well now I'm married I gotta just prove to everyone that I can be successfully married when sometimes people change and sometimes things change and situations change and you gotta do what's right for you. So good for you for pushing them, but also good for them for listening because that's that's big and hard.

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Yeah, for sure. And then I feel like that was the, that was the, again, from a pivotal life shift moment, you know, in hindsight, I look back and I, and I was heard, right? They listened to me. They didn't just push me off as they're, as a child, you know, even though I was 16, they listened and they appreciated the honesty and they took that opportunity to model for me.

18:44
Because what good is it to see a marriage like that? Like what kind of example is that for your kids? I have a very unique opinion about divorce that is unlike, I don't think it's a bad thing, especially if you're trying to stay together for the sake of the kids. It's just not healthy. Yeah, and what kind of example are you setting for them? What are they gonna think marriage is? And I'm not a psychologist, but I know that from my own experience and...

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it's just not a way to try to mask or have a masquerade of what you're putting out there for life to be. It's like you've got to live the life that you're meant to live. And if your kid sees their divorced parents living a good life separately, I think they're going to get a lot more from that to see that their parents are happy in their own lives and doing the things that they need to do. But again, I always think back to like...

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society taught us that like a happy life had parents that were together, you know, and all these family was xyz, you know, was defined in a certain way, especially in the 80s, 90s, 70s, 80s, 90s, those kind of things. I think we kind of all bought into that. And I think things are changing or perspectives are changing a little bit more across the board about those kind of things. But I mean, good for you for early on kind of leaning into

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I guess the comfort in saying something hard to your parents, because I think that there's something that's difficult about that as well, because you're like, I think there's a lot of vulnerability on all sides that comes along with a conversation like that. So, good on you for helping to change their lives. And in turn, probably changing yours in a way, because you were able to see modeled behavior that was healthy. Yeah.

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If the rest of my life played out the same, if they hadn't got divorced, I wouldn't have been going off to school because the application got lost and I was disqualified and I ended up staying home. So, it's just interesting how things unfold. And you wouldn't work for your stepfather's company. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, she was working there well. So, she actually worked there since I was three. So, she worked there. So, she was already working there.

21:12
So maybe, but good on you for making that move and also tying it back to kind of thinking about these relationships that you had. But then you get into this job and you said you were there 16, 18, 18 years. Did any part of you kind of push down that like intuitive feeling of like, this isn't right, this isn't like where I wanna be? Did you just push it? Was it, you know why?

21:42
Often. Because I really feel like that I, you know, being an only child and the way my personality was and the way my mom's personality is, I am very much a doer and a caretaker. And you know, I felt like I had to take care of her even though it was a professional setting. I didn't want to leave her alone doing all of the responsibilities.

22:09
Honestly, it never really crossed my mind. Hey, why don't we just hire somebody? And why don't you just bring someone like that? Never. I, I, I had this obligation, I think, because I had signed up for it. And then once my husband started working there, I was, I was six years in. When he started working there. So now that we became a team and then the two of us were running it. So it became our life, right? That that's what we were doing. And, and I didn't want him.

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working there. I pushed back and I said no and the three of them didn't listen to me at all. Part of your intuition was like, this is going to get us stuck. Exactly. I was completely against it. But my husband is a very talented equipment operator and that's what they saw. He's so good at that work.

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because of his mannerisms that they knew he would be an asset. So, and it's a fun job. It's it's different. You're outside, you know, you're you're working with boats. And it was just it was a unique experience. And, you know, we did have a lot of good times. It wasn't all bad. But I feel like superficially it was the fun. And deep down, it was always the heaviness of what am I missing?

23:32
It wasn't as fulfilling as it wasn't filling all the parts. It was satisfying, I guess, in ways that it needed to be, but maybe not as fulfilling as it could have been, perhaps. You never know. We never jump out. Right, in a professional setting too, right? You always seek to perform, right? And have, do well, and accolades and promotions. None of that was a part of my life because my

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Mom was my boss. So of course she was going to say, you're great. You're wonderful. You're doing an awesome job. Exactly. So even though I know I did well at some of the aspects of the job and I was appreciated by my fellow employees and some customers and everything, you just didn't get that same validation that you would get from a boss.

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that would pat you on the back and say, we appreciate you. You're doing a great job. Yeah, because you envision, too, like you envision this business professional gets promotions, gets these award-winning trips, or whatever you do. And you keep progressing. And I think we picture that. And then I can see in a family business, a smaller family business, you're not going to have those more traditional or what we picture in movies or what we see in movies or read in books. You can't really have that. What was like? What?

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brought you to that moment? What was that wall-hitting moment that really changed things and got you out of there? Like I said, changes were made that kind of set the shift in motion. And it was actually, it was April of 2012 that my stepdad and I had just a real heated conversation. And he didn't view me as an ally.

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And so something he said, it really got to me that it was just a trust and loyalty. He questioned it in me. And in that moment, when I tell you it was the epiphany of, then why am I here? And I started, now that there was someone else in the space, then I let myself think, if I'm going to go.

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now's the time. Like this is my opportunity. He made his decisions thinking my mom was gonna semi-retire because she was in her 60s, but she had no plan to do that because I was there and he was there and there was no need. She was doing her works. But what I quickly realized is from a universe perspective that it was my opportunity, that all of this stuff was set in motion. So,

26:24
I could leave. And it was a very challenging time because my mother didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to believe that she was against it from the day I mentioned it. And I want to say that I tried to go back and give it a second try, but I think it really just made it worse because I was just so angry and frustrated and- All from that conversation.

26:55
And from the subsequent one with my mom, when I first told her that I wanted to leave and that was in May and she told me, no, she goes, you can't leave you. You know, you do too much. You are too much. I don't want to do this without you. Yeah. So there's a guilt. Figure it out. Just figure, we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. And it just, we just went downhill from there and it wasn't until the fall right around Halloween that I had a breakdown at my desk.

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You know, I just, something had happened and I lost it. And I was sobbing. And it was the first time that she physically saw what I was saying. And then in that moment, she accepted, it was time for me to go. It was like a permission. And I didn't know what I was gonna do. I think it was just a reality that she, she couldn't unsee her daughter hunched over her desk, sobbing, saying, I don't wanna be here anymore.

27:55
And that was the beginning of the transition of me leaving. It's hard because there's so much wrapped up in that when your family is there and the expectations. And like you said, you kind of want to make sure that, I don't know if people pleasing is the right word, but you don't want to let your parents down.

28:17
I think there's this element of that and I can imagine working with someone and then your mom saying, you can't go, you do everything. There's the kind of this guilt that comes with, well, if I leave to seek out my own joy, then I'm now hurting her, which in reality probably is not necessarily fully true, but maybe the way that people are feeling at the time. And I can imagine how that probably like sucked so much energy from you trying to like...

28:45
fake things or trying to just be present for all that time, when eventually, we all know, eventually it's going to bubble out and bubble over. And it's not a great situation when we do hit those moments. But in a good way, you hit that moment in a fairly short amount of time, I guess six months or so, right? Do you see that as like, well, thank God, I bubbled up just enough to kind of react in that way so that you could, not that it was fun, but.

29:14
Do you see that as like, oof, thank God my body was actually responding in that way? I never really thought of it like that because it was more than just the emotion on that one particular day. I mean, I had lost so much weight just from the stress and not taking care of myself. And it just was, it was just a very, like I was very depleted, right? It was not healthy for any of us in that state.

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and to just kind of jump ahead just by one day. So she told me in that moment, we'll figure something out. I left, I went home and I had already talked to my husband. He knew exactly what was going on. So when I drove into work the next morning, it was country roads up in Massachusetts and it was by the water. So there was a beautiful drive-in. It was a November morning, crisp, gorgeous. And all I remember thinking...

30:12
is I wanted my mom to say, it's time for me to be your mom and not your boss. That's all I was, I was also, all I was feeling was that phrase. So when I, when she got to work that morning, you know, she's like, whenever you're ready to talk, we'll talk. And I was like, I'm ready. Like, let's go talk. And we went outside and sat on the porch. Again, it was a beautiful morning. And she said to me that she was

30:40
And I think she had a massage the night before and just, she goes, while I had an epiphany, while I was having my massage, she took a deep breath and she said, I guess it's time for me to be your mom and not your boss. And I, again, like my face just now was saying, my eyes bugged out of my head. I think I even like nudged her and I was like,

31:04
What did you just say? And I'm laughing and she's like, what is going on? And I said, mom, that phrase is the phrase I had in my head. I don't know what happens now. I have no idea what I'm going to do. I said, but I know it's going to be okay because you uttered those words. You said it. You said what I was in my head and my heart wanting.

31:28
you know, as a mom, she was terrified because again, I had no direction. I felt like I was graduating college with just no plan. And, you know, I just said, I don't know what comes next, but I'm going to figure it out. I mean, I think it's important that that you made that distinction, though, too, that you just needed your mom's support. You just needed her to be like what you need, like like you did with your parents, like when you were 16 and you were like, hey, I see.

31:58
this, not great, you should probably go do something about that. And finally, it was like the roles were a little bit reversed, because you needed it. And it finally came to you in that she was like, Okay, I see it now. And you need to go figure it out. You don't know what it is. Your parents didn't know what it was when they got divorced. They didn't know where they were going to go. Right. So it's a kind of a similar role reversal here. And in a sense of, you just needed someone to see you and say, it's okay. You can I mean,

32:27
Let's not discount, your husband saw you, and he probably said it was OK and everything. But there's a difference when it's your parents and in that particular way. So it was probably that moment in which your mom was like, I'm going to be your mom. That really changed things for you, right? Because then you're a little bit more free to start exploring, to explore.

32:52
Oh my goodness. Or, you know, like, what can I do next? Well, and I had no, yeah, I had no, when I tell you I had no idea what I was going to do, I didn't. And all I could think of was I wanted to inspire and empower people to live the life they wanted to live. And in my mind, I was thinking, again, managerial human resources and a company supporting a team. That's what I was envisioning.

33:21
And all the while in 2012, while I was going through what I was going through, I had a childhood friend who was battling stage four breast cancer. And she was doing a email newsletter, keeping everybody up to date on what she was up to and dealing with. So her messages that were coming in were, follow your dreams, seize the day, live your life. And so I was getting those messages all along. And when I reached out to her.

33:50
my mom accepted my resignation. We ended up seeing each other about a month later, it was in December of that same year. And she said to me, she goes, Well, what are you going to do? I don't know. I said, I, I'm just, I want to inspire and empower people to live the life they want to live. And she's like, What about life coaching? And I said, What is life coaching? I had never heard of it. I was to a lot of people. Yeah, I wasn't on social media. I was in a small little company like we didn't.

34:19
I never heard the phrase before. And she was like, hmm, sounds like it's something you should look into. So when I started investigating about life coaching in January of 2013, I came with, I mean, as soon as I put it into the search engine, it was like a onslaught of information came at me. And when I landed on the Coaches Training Institute, which is now called Coactive Training Institute,

34:49
I watched their promotional video about a week after of my last day. So it was early February of 2013. And when I tell you I got chills watching this promotional video, because all I could think of was this is me. This is the person I've been my whole life. The way the conversations are, the intention behind the relationships. I was absolutely dumbfounded.

35:18
that it was a profession. So I talked to my husband and I signed up for the training and the certification program. And that summer in Boston, I did the full training for CTI and then rolled right into certification. Wow. And then just hit the road running or like, was it bumpy? Was it weird? Well, it's still bumpy. It's still bumpy because the one piece that I didn't...

35:47
I didn't bank on was the entrepreneurial piece. I thought when I went through training, I was like, okay, who's hiring? Where am I going to go? In my head back 11 years ago, I was thinking of talent development, employee engagement in that space, even though those phrases weren't around back then, but that's how I envisioned myself supporting staff members.

36:17
getting them out of their own way, overcoming obstacles and saboteurs. And so that for me was what I envisioned. And they were in CTI was like, oh, no, no, no, like, go be a coach. And I was like, where? Oh, go get clients. And so the entrepreneurial piece kind of landed on my lap with not something I was super, super excited about, but it's been, it's been 11 years.

36:45
Being able to connect with clients and companies and support them has been amazing. How do you find the people that are right for you and you are right for them? Is that still a challenge now or do you know like... Yeah, it definitely is. It is a challenge. I work with a lot of referral based. I'm part of a networking group. That's great. You know, clients refer me and just social media.

37:13
Google, someone Googled me the other day, you know, because, you know, when we talk about niches, though the one niche that I would like to say, even though I do work with people, I say facilitating transitions one decision at a time, right? Getting people to trust their discontent with there's something not right, release the obligations, stop settling, all of that is my message. The little piece that I really am passionate about.

37:41
is helping people in a family business who want to leave. I wonder why. Right? So curious. The interesting part about that though is people who are in family businesses that want to move on are not going around talking about it. So how do they get a referral for a coach to help them leave if they're not out there talking about wanting to leave? So it's interesting because I had...

38:09
connected with some other family business organizations and talked about my message. And the message I got back was, oh no, no, no, family businesses don't wanna hear that. They wanna be supported and they wanna be thriving. And I was like, yeah, that's great. But there might be people in those family businesses who don't wanna be there. So why are they gonna sacrifice their whole life for the sanctity of a family business? So haven't really got the full support of people.

38:37
who are trying to keep some holy grail together. But I feel like- It's all fear based. I feel like Robin Hood in a way, right? Like I wanna swoop in and connect to like in some covert operation to connect with someone who wants to leave. Because that's what saved me actually real quick. Right before about a month before I had that breakdown, I had Googled leaving a family business. Just, it was like a shot in the dark.

39:06
And a blog popped up from a guy who had left, like left his family business two years before. And when I tell you, I devoured his writing like it was a lifeline, because it made me realize I wasn't alone. I wasn't having a midlife crisis. I wasn't selfish. People who are in family businesses that want to leave, feel this sense of, you know, shame.

39:36
guilt, it's just, it's amplified every emotion. I'm not saying people who leave there are like a regular normal situation. You have emotions about that too, but when it's a family business, everything is elevated. So I know there are other leavers as he would refer to them, right? There's other leavers out there and knowing that there's a resource and yes, it's scary and thinking about all the opportunities and everything you have to talk about and all the emotions. Yeah, it's.

40:05
It's not fun, but the other side of it is completely worth it. Yeah. Well, everything that you use to describe what you do for your clients seems like you're doing the things that you wish someone would have done with you during that 18 years, you know, even maybe super early on. And you're kind of providing that space. And you said it exactly. The reason why I do the LifeShift podcast is like.

40:33
There's something so valuable about knowing that you're not alone in your circumstance when for so long you felt like you were. And just to hear that other people, like you're not weird, right? Like you're not, your feelings are validated because other people have had them too. I mean, I love that. I mean, I don't love that for 18 years you had to.

40:59
stick around because of obligation or guilt or some of those pieces. Not saying that parts were not great. It's not saying that parts were not good. I understand life has its ups and downs, but there were a lot of things that you were probably staying because you felt like you had to, but the value of that experience probably makes you a darn good life coach now for the people that are trying to escape similar things. Right? Like, I feel like...

41:27
As crappy as it was, it's probably given you a lot of tools because now you know the things that you wish you would have had. Do you see it that way? Absolutely, and I do joke that had I even known about life coaching, I might have hired one and left long time before I did, but I hadn't even known that it was an option. But what happened during the training was, it was a cathartic experience because through training, right,

41:56
your coaching and you're being coached. And, you know, I offered to be one of the demonstrations, like I offered to participate. So to have that experience of feeling how beneficial coaching can be, it was the whole experience was, I felt like I went to kindergarten. Like I'm back there a second and I can go back in my mind in a second to remember the joy and excitement. So.

42:24
To your point though, yeah, you know, it's important distinction with coaching that we don't have to know what you're going through necessarily. It's more about the tools and the validation and creating that space of courage and confidence and vulnerability. And for someone in my position to see there is

42:50
there is hope on the other side and it might not be the same and things will be different and it will get messy, but it's possible and it's worth it. Yeah, you mentioned if you had known about life coaching, maybe you would have sought it out, but does part of you believe that and part of you also think that you had to get to the messy part?

43:16
Yeah, I say ingest, right? Because I know everything works out the way it was meant to. It almost feels like the dramatic moments were needed because they shift us in a way that it's like, I have to do it or I won't be doing anything because it's that drastic and things needed to escalate to that point for you to be just like, okay, I'm done. It's done, I just need the approval or the support of mom.

43:46
whatever maybe you needed personally for that to kind of push you over the edge. Yeah. And I, cause I think if I were, you know, had I worked with a coach prior to the changes that were made in the company, coming from the space of things, weren't, they, if I, if I entered those conversations and things weren't so turbulent and it was just me having these thoughts and desires and shaking up everything just for the sake of.

44:16
my own dreams, while completely valid, and that's what we encourage people to do, I don't think it would have been such a visceral reaction on my part. Epiphany. Yeah. Feeling that I was in survival mode. So I don't think I would have gotten to that point. And I don't know. It feels like it.

44:44
Like earlier, it might have felt like, oh, well, I'm just being selfish because I want to leave versus like, no, I have to leave to to survive this this moment. You know, maybe that's a little dramatic, but to get to the next part of my life, I need to do this. Yeah. And it's not selfish anymore. Right. It was it was definitely a visceral visceral moment. No doubt about it. Do you notice a difference in you? Like in just how you show up in the world now that you are?

45:14
on this last decade version of your life compared to like when you would show up to the family business to work? Oh my God. Like if I knew then what I know now, I mean, I was in the wrong position. I would have been more, it would have been way better served me working with the staff versus being client or customer facing. I was not customer service was not my forte. And in that, in that.

45:44
business, it was you dealt with some people who, you know, I would say might have been arrogant and talk down to the people. I mean, we had some beautiful, great customers, like very appreciative, but it was always the ones that were challenging and that would want something more and criticize and demean the staff. And I was like a mama bear. I was like, do not come at my guys.

46:13
And I would defend them even if it was wrong, but I did not have respect for people who behave like that. And in a customer service role, there's this element of being able to put that aside and do your job. And there were a lot of days where, especially as I got older and my, my patients would run thin and, and then you compound it that I didn't want to be there in the first place.

46:42
So it was like just comedy of errors. And it just, it wasn't, it wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't suited in the right role, you know, going back, like I said, knowing what I know now, of course I would have handled things differently and you know, it would be a completely different ball game, but that's not possible. It is, it isn't. And nor do I want it to be.

47:12
Everyone's where they're supposed to be. Do you notice that in your personal life, in your everyday you, do you show up different? Do you hold your head higher? You're living in your purpose now. Do you feel like a different, not as a worker, but just as a human, do you feel more light? What do you feel? Well, it's interesting. Again, if you go back 12 years, 13 years.

47:42
Texting right was just coming out. It was like a new thing and I remember Having these moments where I would text people and they wouldn't get back to me right away and I would think oh my god Are they mad at me? Like why are they texting me back? What's going on? What did I do? And Once I read the four agreements, right? that book Was like it was right when I started in the coach training and everything and that book

48:11
really was like, kind of set me straight and was like, it's not about you. Like, shit, it's not about you. Don't take it personally. And so now I've really got to a point where I just in that example, I've gotten so good at not really thinking about it that I'll text someone now and literally forget that I've texted them. So when they text me back, I get excited. Then it's like, no, you know.

48:38
They texted you, you know, that's why they're getting back to you. But I really stand. I mean, like I said, I come from a place, something that I was in hindsight feeling that I didn't, couldn't put words on back then. But what I recognize is there was a midlife confidence that I had that I was at a point where I wanted to live my life my way.

49:03
and I didn't want to settle and I didn't want to have it by design of somebody else. It wasn't a midlife crisis, although I think people thought that, knowing what I was giving up and what I was leaving. But I just look back on it now and I'm sure when you talk to a lot of people of my age, there's that space where it's like, we just don't care. You know, I don't- No, I've hit that.

49:30
I'm early 40s and I've hit that as well. Yeah. And it's not from a negative perspective and it's not about being rude, but I really do not care what people think about how I show up, what I do, what I say. And it's so freeing that, I mean, I want people to like me, don't get me wrong. I want to have beneficial and fun relationships and respect, but I gain that stuff from people by how I show up.

50:00
by doing what I say I'm gonna do. But not bending over backwards and doing all the things that we were trained to do growing up so that people would like you. And yeah, I would imagine that as a coach now, probably you're seeing a lot more people leaning into that post pandemic or the pandemic kind of like shifted people's mentality of like what was really important to them and the things that they want to lean into and like what things weren't serving you, even in just like my own friend group and the people that I know.

50:29
so many people have kind of started to lean into, no, this serves me, this is my joy. Not that anymore. That I'll do if I have to, this I'll do because I want to. Are you seeing similar things in the last couple of years? Absolutely, I think that you nailed it on the head. I think what the pandemic did is number one, it gave people pause because we had so much time on our hands to really think about their lives and what.

50:56
meant a lot to them and what didn't and how they were in a rat race and they didn't want to be in a rat race anymore. They wanted to live differently and have different priorities. And I think what coaching does is it reminds people that you are the person that chooses, right? You make the choices, you set your priorities, your boundaries. You are the one that really creates the life you're living.

51:24
So if you don't wanna be busy, if you don't wanna be bringing your kids to seven different activities, then don't do it. Don't sign them up, make changes. When it comes to work, you don't wanna be working 10 hours a day, then you have your boundaries and you clock out at a certain time and you are very clear, yet you work done and you're responsible and you have integrity, but you're not gonna compromise your family time or your own wellbeing.

51:53
for the sake of a job. I talked to another coach recently, actually this week's episode, as the time we're recording this, and he was like, I don't have all the answers as a coach, but I do have a lot of questions. And the questions are designed in a way that will get us thinking as the person on the other side or answering, because I think we often know.

52:19
the answers or we often think about them already. But then when we're forced to vocalize them or share them out loud, they become a little bit more real and like, Oh, I guess I could do that. You know, and it's a fun experiment. But I remember him saying that he's like, yeah, as a coach, I don't have all the answers and nor should I. Yeah. But I do have a lot of questions. And usually those are the things that are helping people move down the line. So yeah. And I would actually go one step further and I would say we don't have answers period.

52:48
Our job is not to give answers. Our job is to create that safe space, that container of a conversation to explore and be curious and to unpack and go a little bit deeper. Like they say, peel the onion back and what's underneath. I may have paraphrased and not, he might have said what you said, so forgive me on that. No, but I mean, I think that's, I think a misconception too.

53:17
Just in the vein of coaching, when you think about like an athletic coach, right? They tell you what to do, what and how to do things where is a life coach is not like that. And I really encourage your listeners that if they've ever considered talking to someone or just experiencing it, it's a different kind of conversation. No, I've been.

53:44
on this journey with this podcast been more enlightened by the idea of coaches in a different way than I have ever done before. And I always think of my therapist that helped me break through some things years and years ago as very similar to like the way she approached her therapy sessions or counseling, I don't know what we're gonna call them here, but whatever they were, the way she approached it, it all came from me.

54:13
Like none of it like came from her. It was just the question she asked to get me to say these things and realize these things and like open the door to certain things. And so I agree with you. If you're even like remotely like interested in coaching in any way, look for someone that kind of fits the bill for you, right? Like find someone that you feel like you can.

54:35
vibe with, connect with, see what their story is, see all these pieces. Because I would imagine that finding a coach is very similar to finding a therapist. You got to find the right connection, the right vibe. It's not everyone can go to the same coach and have this, you know, like, got to find the people that work for you, right? Exactly. It's just like the same thing with a physician, a doctor, someone who you're, you know, sharing such intimate moments with, and you're really opening up.

55:03
and being vulnerable. So the connection, the chemistry, all very important.

55:12
It's something, definitely, if you're listening and it's something that you've been thinking about, do it. Just start Googling today or reach out to Lauren if you feel like her story has been something that would inspire you to want to talk to her. I like to kind of wrap these conversations up with a question and I'm wondering if like this version of Lauren, if you could go back to the version of you that.

55:35
just had that breakdown at your desk, knowing what you know now, is there anything that you'd want to say to her or do with her that might help her on this journey? I'm getting a little teary-eyed thinking about it. I think what I would tell her, because I'm envisioning myself just slumped over the desk, I think the word like congratulations is just coming up for me, like good for you.

56:04
for just letting it out, saying the words, putting it out there. I didn't know what was gonna come next. And to know now what I've accomplished and the life that my husband and I and our daughter continue to build, I wouldn't trade it for the world. Yeah.

56:30
I hate that there's such value in these really hard moments. You know, like, I certainly would go back and not have my mom die, but at the same time, the things and the experiences that have come because of that tragedy in my life, like, where would I be? Who would I be? What are the, you know, like what would the relationships that I have be like? And so it's so hard to be like, wow.

57:00
I gained a lot from such a really terrible experience and the loss like that. And you too, like getting to this point where life is bubbling up to the point of like no return and you just had to break that day. But all the good that came from that terrible moment that you would never wanna revisit ever again in your life. Right. You know, it's just like fascinating. Yeah, and again, I mean, not to sugar coat it, there were some...

57:28
You know, even up until last year, having hard conversations and a lot of things that are still lingering, even with my leaving. I mean, it's still, it can still bring up real raw emotions, but things evolve. And I feel like the, the pride I feel for putting what my heart truly wanted as a priority. That.

57:57
that makes it all worthwhile. Just feels like now you're able to fully experience all the emotions out loud. Whereas maybe before you had to stifle some of them, you could do some of them in private. Now it's like, like you said, I don't really care in not a negative way, but like, I need to be me. And if you don't like it, well, then we're not meant to be in the same space, you know, like kind of thing.

58:24
And now you can live out loud and you can do, like you can be sad, you can have a terrible moment, you can be mad, you can do all the things and all of it's okay. Whereas I think I grew up where I was like, I could only have two emotions publicly. And now I feel like I can have them all. And I think that's so freeing, right? And it kind of feels that way for you. And what I love about the, just all the additional benefits of learning.

58:52
that I've experienced through not only my coach certification, but from all the brilliant minds and psychologists and neuroscientists, and I am such a geek when it comes to that kind of stuff. And knowing that emotions are just data, right? That's all it is. It's like just our bodies telling us if something's tripping in our mind or our heart or our soul, it's like listen to it. And people are so afraid when what our bodies are saying

59:22
contradicts, like to your point, what society says or our family says or what our friends say. So it can be very isolating and very confusing. And again, those are the moments where when you have someone who is completely unattached to your reality, as a coach to then support someone through that investigation and, you know.

59:52
That's part of what makes coaching so powerful, is that ability to just let people feel whatever it is, whatever it is they're feeling. It feels really fulfilling for the coach as well. If people want to kind of get into your circle, learn more about you, what's the best way to like get in your orbit? I would say Instagram, coaching to fulfill dreams is my page. I'm on LinkedIn as well.

01:00:20
And my website is Coaching to Fulfill Dreams. Those are the three best ways to check me out. Perfect. We will put those links in the show notes so it's pretty easy to get to, connect with Lauren, see what she's got going on. If you're compelled to seek out a coach for the first time, I'm sure she'd be excited to talk to you. Thank you for sharing your story and answering my maybe sometimes silly questions. Not silly at all. I really appreciate the time. Thank you.

01:00:49
I appreciate it. And if you are listening, I appreciate you. And if something Lauren said resonated with you or you think someone in your life might need to hear Lauren's story or an example of so they feel less alone in their experience, please share this episode with them. And with that, I will say goodbye until next week when we have a brand new episode of the Life Shift Podcast. Thanks again, Lauren.