146. How to go From Being a Best Kept Secret to Household Name
Confidence comes from consistently sticking with the commitments you make to yourself - Jen Gottlieb
Hey you wild woman!
Want to get ahead in business and life? Here's the solution: Pour your energy into something you love. Then commit to taking daily action towards that thing.
More importantly, screw what everyone else thinks.
Seriously --- screw it.
Nothing is more heartbreaking than seeing women create very low limits because they are afraid of disappointing their mothers, worried about the backlash if they shine brighter than their peers, or feel shame in earning a lot of money because they were told it is selfish.
It's a story that I've seen hundreds of times with women at every stage in business, and this is why I had to have Jen Gottlieb, Co-founder of Super Connector Media and former VH1 co-host, on the show. She defied the odds and staked the claim to become one of the best motivational speakers ever. And hey, why the hell not?! She decided to stop pleasing everyone else to follow her dreams, and she's driving that bus 100 miles/hour down the freeway.
"Your subconscious is the thing that's driving the bus, and if it believes that you are the champion, it's going to help you take action in the way that is going to get you the things that you want." - Jen Gottlieb.
In this episode, you will learn about:
How to take rejection
How confidence comes from consistently sticking with the commitments you make to yourself
How failure doesn't ever feel as bad as the fear of the failure
How to get really good at making NO your best friend
The secrets to how she grew her agency
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Episode TransCript
Jen Gottlieb: [00:00:00] One of the fun things that I do is I get rejected. I've gotten rejected a lot this year. I want to become the greatest motivational speaker of all time. That's my goal. So I've been pitching a lot of stages and people may see me on Instagram and be like, Oh, you're doing it. I'm like, Yeah, but you should see all of the stages that I get told no, that I pitch. And so I have an album in my photo album of screenshots of all of my rejection emails, emails where I got rejected.
Renee Warren: [00:01:27] Season run as a co host on VH one and a successful career as a Broadway actress, my next guest co-founded Super Connector Media, a full service PR agency and events companies, which was awarded the best new agency in the 2019 Bulldog Awards and is one of the 5000 fastest growing private companies in America for 2022. Jen's ultimate passion is helping experts and entrepreneurs gain the confidence and knowledge to get into the mainstream media or on the stage of that major event, giving them the authority and social proof to place them at the top of their industry. She speaks around the world to entrepreneurs and has been featured on numerous top podcasts as well as in Forbes Business Insider Shape, Women's Health Well and Good. Cbs, Good Morning America, PBS and in Goop as one of the top 11 professionals helping people find satisfying and successful careers, please welcome the incredible Jen Gottlieb. Oh, I'm loving this. So my background is the wild woman fluorescent sign with some I think they're called snake plants. And then you have Manhattan.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:02:39] Manhattan? Yeah. That's my real background is not a Zoom background. It's such a gorgeous day to day. Well, it's kind of a fake, gorgeous day because it's freezing, but it looks really sunny and perfect.
Renee Warren: [00:02:48] So it does look almost tropical. Yeah. If you had a plant there, I.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:02:53] Would go outside.
Renee Warren: [00:02:54] Yeah, Same here. It's I don't know what it is in Fahrenheit, but it's -34 here. So that is 34 degrees below freezing. It's so cold that if you throw a pot of boiling water in the air, it instantly freezes and vaporizes.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:03:08] So Dan's going to go walk for 12 hours in that.
Renee Warren: [00:03:11] Well, it's going to warm up. Yeah, we're just having this. It's called a polar vortex. We have in Canada these fancy terms where essentially the Arctic comes down and takes over all of Canada and then it goes away. So then it's plus for the day. He actually does this 12 hour walk. Okay. Yeah. So if you ever were to come and visit, tell me ahead of time in the right months to come up here because it'll come now.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:03:33] Vortex. I'm good.
Renee Warren: [00:03:34] Yeah, the vortex. So quick questions for you. I'd love to know where are you from originally?
Jen Gottlieb: [00:03:41] So I was born in Chicago, Illinois. So I was born and then I grew up in South Florida. So right around the Parkland, Boca Raton area, Like south like our north.
Renee Warren: [00:03:50] There, that's well, I guess kind of just there. It's where Tony lives. Tony Robbins. Tony, my BFF. Yeah. We just did the date with Destiny.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:03:58] Did he love Town Hotel?
Renee Warren: [00:04:00] No, he did it at his new studio, which is insane. But it's like, I forget, we flew into, like, Fort Lauderdale. Yeah. Area. So cool. Yeah, I love Florida. Yeah. What was one of the toughest moments you had to experience as an entrepreneur? Oh.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:04:17] Wow. You just kick started off pretty good.
Renee Warren: [00:04:20] I know. Right?
Jen Gottlieb: [00:04:21] Moments that I had to.
Renee Warren: [00:04:22] Experience the punch in the face.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:04:25] So I always like to. Of course, the toughest moments as an entrepreneur are always they always end up being the most powerful moments of growth, right? Always. No matter what. You don't always know it in the moment, but they always end up being some special gift in disguise. And the one that immediately comes to my mind as one of the toughest moments, but also the greatest gifts is the first time that I ever had to sell something from stage. And this was so you know that Chris and I, when you met me, I was not partners in business with my now husband, Chris. We were not partners. He did his thing. I did my thing. And somewhere very shortly after I met you, we decided to come together and really build this company into something bigger together. And Chris was doing these events by himself before I was part of the company called Unfair Advantage Live. And they were these great events that connected entrepreneurs to the media. But at the beginning, when these events started, when it was just Chris, it was literally Chris a screen, a clicker and an audience, and that was it. There was no music, there was no it was no show. It was like Chris talk stuff. And then he brought in some media people and they connected with the entrepreneurs and it was great. And so I decided to come in and do these events with him, and we made it a little bit more of a production, a tiny bit, not what it is right now, but a little bit more because of course I'm a performer and that's what I brought to it.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:05:41] And this specific event he decided to have we decided to have a back end product. We were going to sell something for the first time before he had never sold anything ever. And so I was like, I've been speaking. I like performing on stages as an actress my whole life. Like I could totally sell this thing from stage, right? I knew nothing about selling from stage. I know nothing about selling. But I was like, How hard could it be? I'll read the slides, I'll say a few things like, Great. And in practice, I didn't run through it at nothing. Like, I'm going to be great. So get on stage to sell this. Like, I think it was like an eight week program or whatever it was that we were offering as our first offering at this event. Little did I know that there was strategy behind this, and I got on stage with the clicker and the screen and I started reading. Slides. And I completely like if you want to say like it was so bad, Renee, like I tripped over my heel. I didn't know what the slide said. I skipped over a few of them. I was like, It was so bad. People were staring at me like I was a comedian. Bombing. You know how bad you feel when I.
Renee Warren: [00:06:40] Throw tomatoes at you?
Jen Gottlieb: [00:06:41] Completely. And I was just like, in the worst that it got, like, the worse I felt. And then I was like, stumbling over my words and stuttering. And it was so bad that when I was done sharing what this offer was like all over the place, completely wrong, incorrect, messing it up, physically messing up like, like tripping everywhere. There were these gift bags on the stage and the whole plan was to say, okay, everyone that wants to sign up, come on stage and get your gift bag. So I go, okay, everyone that wants to sign up, come on on the stage and get your bag. No one goes. The whole room of 125 people is completely silent. Everyone feels terrible. For me, it was horrible. Chris is like, this is like crying. I'm like, tears are welling up in my eyes. I just ruined this entire event, ruined the show. And so nobody comes up. My chief publicity officer, Angela, who ran our PR agency, comes up on the stage and basically starts begging everyone to sign up. She's like, Please sign up. It was just the most cringeworthy, horrible moment of my life. So I go backstage after this happens, I can't even talk to Chris.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:07:41] I can't even face him. I look at myself in the mirror in the bathroom and I'm like, You have two options right now. You can either leave the building, like literally walk out and leave and never come back because this is clearly you just really screwed this up. Or you can figure out some crazy way to shift your energy and just get over it and move on. And at that time, that event had no music. There was like a DJ in the back that did like walk on songs and walk off songs for for like Chris or the speakers or like background music. And I thought, okay, I have to shift my energy. I can't leave, I have to do something. So I didn't tell anybody I was doing this. But I go up to the DJ and for me, you know, I'm a performer. The only way that I can shift my energy is to dance and move and have music. So I had this idea and I was like, Okay, DJ, I want you to play this song. The Justin Timberlake song Can't Stop the Feeling, you know, that song at the ceiling.
Renee Warren: [00:08:28] So like that muscle.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:08:30] Yes, exactly. Play the song when we get back from lunch the whole way through. All right. Like just play it really loud. He's like OC because he saw how bad I took to the bed on stage during that thing. And he was like, All right, I don't know if I should listen to you, but okay, I'll play the song. So we all come back from lunch. We had zero sales, everyone was freaking out and everyone's like sitting at their table. The energy's kind of dull and I'm like, All right, TJ, go, like, hit the music. And he plays the music and I come in and I'm like, All right, everybody get on your feet. And I make everybody get up. And all of a sudden we have this huge, massive dance party. People are dancing on the tables. Everyone's like, coming onto the stage. We're all dancing our faces off the entire room, like the energy shifts. Everyone's having a party, having the best time ever. I'm like, dancing my face off because I'm like, I don't know what else to do. I'm just going to lose my mind here and completely dance and go crazy. And we created this huge dance party. Now, what did that do? Number one, it shifted the energy of the room. It put me back in control.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:09:27] We ended up making a ton of sales after that because different mindset and a different mind frame. I erased what just happened and I got myself feeling better. So we ended up making over seven figures at that event. So that was the first gift. But the second gift that ended up happening because I did that was now our events. If you ever look on Instagram at any of the events that we do, whether they be in Zoom or in-person dance parties are part of our tradition. We have drummers, we have music, we have dancing. It's like part of our company ethos. And then also another gift that it gave me is I promised myself I would never be so terrible at selling from stage again. So I made sure that I was going to be the best person at pitching from stage ever to walk the planet. So I studied and studied and studied and now I'm really great at it. It's one of my favorite skills and favorite things to do. So it was probably the hardest, most difficult moment of my life as an entrepreneur, most embarrassing, but also the greatest growth, the greatest lesson and like the best hidden gift ever that could have been given to me.
Renee Warren: [00:10:26] But is a nightmare on stage. You can't hide. It's not like you can just turn off your camera. Wow. Well, good for you. I'm coming back and I know that in order to be great, we have to be okay at being mediocre when we start. And I mean, you didn't even make mediocrity. You're below that.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:10:43] It was way below. I wish you were there to see it.
Renee Warren: [00:10:46] Like I know you described it very well. I did experience it. Thank you. That is like I mean, they say public speaking is more feared than death. And not only are you doing it, but you were tripping over yourself. You came back and look at you. Now, you could probably sell anything because they say you can sell ice to the Eskimos.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:11:04] Right. I'm pretty good at it. And now. Yeah. And motivational speaking is my jam. That's what I love now. But you have to fail a bunch and you have to get to the bottom, bottom, bottom, bottom. I believe in order to really feel that contrast of like, how great it can be. Because if you don't really mess up and you never know how good the good can be. So I'm always grateful when I look. Backwards at the contrast. Like because if I didn't have that moment, none of the goodness would be as good, you know? Now I'm like, ha, you know, every time I win, I know how bad it could be. This was really good.
Renee Warren: [00:11:31] Think. Exactly. And even in that moment. But you're like, Oh my gosh, I'm never going to do this again. You corrected yourself and you came back. But it's probably not nearly as terrifying going back because you're like, I already did the worst thing that could possibly happen on stage other than my dress falling off. But maybe you felt that way anyway, and now you're just incrementally getting better every single time you're on a stage.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:11:54] Yeah, I mean, yeah, I felt completely naked. And what I always say is confidence comes from consistently sticking with the commitments you make with yourself and the more difficult and uncomfortable and scary. Those commitments are like coming back on stage after failing or getting on stage and pitching for the first time, even though you've never done it or doing a Facebook Live for the first time ever, even though you've never done it, every single time you say you're going to do something that's hard and you get to the other side, you realize you didn't die. You put another coin in the confidence bank, you become more confident. So then the next time you go to do that thing, it's not as scary. The only way to the other side is through. And discomfort is temporary. It doesn't last forever, but the growth that comes from the other side is permanent. You become more confident over time. So people that never stretch and never do the scary thing because they're too scared. They never become more confident. They always just stay in the fear. But successful people are professionals and you know this at doing things with fear in the passenger seat of the car, like if you're going to be here, but I'm going to go and I'm going to do it anyway because I know that once I've gotten through, I'm going to have less fear the next time I go to do it 100%.
Renee Warren: [00:12:53] And you know what happens most of the time on the other side of this is everybody says that wasn't so bad. We always overthink these moments and then we're in it. And like most of the time it's because we care, but we're also fearing the failure and we come out the other end. We're like, Oh geez, that wasn't so terrible. I could do that again.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:13:12] Even if we do fail, the failure doesn't ever really feel as bad as the fear of the failure. And and also, we're never necessarily really scared of failing. We're more so scared of other people seeing us fail or judging us when we fail. And the cool thing is, is that when we fail, we realize that people aren't really paying that much attention to us anyways. People are worried about themselves. They're not that worried about you. They don't care that much. So it's always good to see that when you fail. And number one, you can always fix it. You can always bring it back. Like Marie Falco always says, everything is figure out a all. It really is right. Time doesn't stop. I got so I got my first tattoo. It's so teeny tiny, but it says time on my wrist because it's my reminder to me that time never stops. So whatever discomfort you're in, no matter what, it's going to end. Even if you're in a beautiful, magical, amazing moment, that moment's going to end. So you either need to be completely present in that moment and absorb it and milk it and be in it. Because it will time will stop. You'll end up in your bed. You'll end up the next day before you know it. Or if something's hard like a workout, you know this like it hurts. It's hard, it's painful, but it's not forever. Time will go on. You'll end up in your bed. You'll end up waking up the next day and it'll feel like it was a second ago. So time never stops. And that is just such a great reminder for me whenever I'm in the thick of it and it doesn't feel so good, I'm like, You can be here because it will end and it will be okay. And on the other side of I'll be like, Oh, that wasn't even that bad.
Renee Warren: [00:14:35] It's like jumping into the cold plunge. We got a freezer that we've filled with cold water and you're in it for like 10 seconds. You're like, This is the worst feeling ever and you think it's going to be forever. But it's only, what, ten, 20, 30 seconds? The time you get out and you start warming up, guess what? You feel better than you did before you went in. Of course, it's almost like that old shock or the painful shock or the embarrassing shock is like that thing. You need to actually feel good again.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:15:01] Yes. Oh, my gosh. And this just reminded me of something that happened today. I looked into my Facebook memories and it's so funny to do that because now 15 years ago, because Facebook's been around for a long time now and I had a memory from 15 years ago when I used to post everything that I did like back in the day. We say like Jen is happy because. Yes.
Renee Warren: [00:15:21] Yeah.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:15:21] So this was 15 years ago and I wrote down Today was the worst day of my life. This is 15 years ago I wrote that. I looked at that this morning. I actually screenshotted it. I sent it to Chris. Do you want to know something, Rene? I have no idea what happened to me that day. No clue. It was the worst day of my life. And today I can sit here and say to you, honestly, I have. If you could pay me $1,000,000, I couldn't tell you what happened to me that day. I don't remember.
Renee Warren: [00:15:45] Yeah, like it was the worst day ever. You were in your twenties. Everything is the worst day of your life. If your clothes don't match, I get it. I love this. So for those of you who don't know Jen, she is this strong, powerful, beautiful soul of which I've had the honor to watch over the last 12 months. See these most incredible moments come to light for Jen. Cover of Magazine Getting Married, Selling half your business.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:16:12] An arm of our company.
Renee Warren: [00:16:13] Yeah, right. And army. And what else? I'm missing all of these things. And we were talking about this before. We press record how a lot of people, that's all they see. But what they don't. See is all these little moments, these micro moments of you building up who you are today that took you years to get to where you are. And and you have a podcast, too, that you launched in the fall. Right. So a couple of months ago, what's it called?
Jen Gottlieb: [00:16:36] I dare you.
Renee Warren: [00:16:37] I dare you. And there's one story that I love is how I want you to explain it. The story about how you would walk from downtown Manhattan to uptown. Tell us that story. I love it.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:16:46] So I still do this. And now I actually have named what this strategy is so funny because I launched one of my podcast, went out today talking about this topic. So it's perfect. We're talking about this today. So back in the day when I was single and I was a personal trainer living in Manhattan, and I had this dream of meeting my soulmate and I was dating in New York City and it was terrible. I was like on the apps, you know, it was just like, not fun. So, you know, my life was good. I had like a nice personal training business. I was like, starting to think about becoming an entrepreneur and like, but I really just wanted to find love. I knew I just knew in my heart that, like, this guy existed out there and we were going to, like, become a power couple. That was always like my vision. And all my friends would be going out on Saturday nights or like, I would have all these people on the app that I could go out with on Saturday nights. And I was like, You know what? Screw it. I would rather do this thing that I do that I didn't really tell anybody I was doing. Like, I'm busy. So I'd get on the subway and on a Saturday night I would take it all the way downtown. I lived on the Upper West Side, which I still do now, and I'd get out at a random stop like 14th Street, I don't know, Greenwich Village, all the way down, maybe even sometimes five.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:17:47] I like Financial District, which is like all the way down, all the way down Tribeca. And I'd get off and I'd put on my headphones and I would walk all the way back. So and I would just watch the city change. This would be at like 7:00 at night. And I would just like walk all the way back uptown to like where I lived on 72nd and Broadway. And I would watch the city change. And as I would walk, I would visualize that I was walking as the person that had everything that I wanted. So I would walk as if my soulmate, my big, handsome, hunky, six foot tall entrepreneur from the Upper West Side with tattoos that was into personal development. And like he was walking next to me holding my hand and we were just walking back from a date night and I was just feeling the way he would make me feel. And when I would do that, I would actually make my body feel like I was in love. And there was this person walking next to me and I would like be on a date with someone. And in New York, it's totally cool if you talk to yourself because no one thinks you no one thinks about anything new.
Renee Warren: [00:18:42] Like, Oh.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:18:43] Yeah, she's talking to herself. That's great. Normal New Yorker. So I would be like, you know, listening to my music and like, walking with my date. And sometimes I would walk as if we were we had this successful business and I would visualize all the things that I wanted to be on these walks, and I wouldn't just think about them, I would embody them, and I would walk around as the person that had those things. And that did a lot for me. A couple of things that it did for me in the moment. If you're thinking about trying this now, I call them Wonder Walks. I gave them a name because I do it all the time, even now, when I need to feel better to get on, to get motivated, to fix a problem, to manifest what I want. But what it would do is it got me really familiar with the way that I would feel when I would meet the person that I was meant to be with. So any time I went on a bad date with someone that wasn't the guy, I would be like, Oh, you're not the guy I guy. I go and walk with them every day. It's not you. That's cool. So it wouldn't be anxious about it. And then when he did come into my life and get this, Renee, when we did Chris and I on our second date, one on a walk from the restaurant that we went to that was downtown, and we walked all the way back up to the Upper West Side together. We walked the exact same street that I would walk by myself. And this time I was walking that exact way, seeing the exact same sights. And the guy was actually next to me.
Renee Warren: [00:19:53] Oh, I have goosebumps.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:19:54] Feeling that I was feeling when I would walk by myself was the same feeling that I had when he was walking next to me. And that's when I knew it was like, Oh, this feeling, this is it. I know. And so I don't know if I magically made it appear by visualizing it, but I know that my subconscious knew the feeling so strongly that when the thing appeared, I was able to receive it.
Renee Warren: [00:20:15] And I was like, when it appeared, you knew that was it.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:20:18] That's it.
Renee Warren: [00:20:19] Right? Oh, I love that day.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:20:21] I didn't do all the things that a lot of us girls do sometimes when we get scared. I was like, Come on in, hubby, you're mine. It's on. Like, I know that this is right.
Renee Warren: [00:20:31] Oh, my gosh. It's so magical. Imagine we could do that for all of these challenging parts of our life in our business. Personal life with our money too. Oh, my God.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:20:39] I do it now to this day.
Renee Warren: [00:20:41] I did the high five habit with Mel Robbins. This is silly. High fiving myself in the mirror, and I kind of tweaked it. I would actually put both hands on the mirror, look at myself and be like, You are a winning CrossFit athlete. You are a CrossFit athlete. Because my whole life have been this tall, skinny, weak girl that some people joked about, didn't even look like she did yoga. I was like, okay, so it's challenging for me, but I can do this. And I kept doing it. And then sure enough, I finally came third in a competition. First one I signed up for. So yeah, I believe in manifestation. I believe in you create positive imagery of what it is you want to achieve and you keep thinking that. And then when that thing shows up, it's like, Oh. There it is. It's right in front of me. I'm going to take that. It's mine now.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:21:25] Yeah, well, the subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between a real memory and a fake one. So if you can create the fake memory in your subconscious like you created, you are a CrossFit athlete. Your subconscious started to believe that because you made it believe it by thinking about it and believing that it was yours and saying it to yourself a bunch of times. So what that does is when you go to the competition, the fear is less. You have more belief, right? Your subconscious is the thing that's driving the bus. And if it believes that you're the champion, it's going to actually help you take action in the way that's going to get you to the thing that you want because you have that belief that you've solidified in your subconscious. It's like, Oh, I already did this, this is mine.
Renee Warren: [00:22:01] You know what else is crazy? Like, I totally believe this and you are so bang on on this. What else is crazy that happened that day was that there's a Canadian CrossFit athlete whose name is Brent Makowski. He is the taller of the CrossFit athletes that actually go to the game. So he came like second a few years in a row. He's world renowned and because every CrossFit athlete that goes to a games has to be affiliated to some gym and he lives here in Colonia, Canada, and he's affiliated with our gym, but he doesn't work out at the gym because he's a pro. He has his own gym at home. No one ever sees him. This was the only time I've been working out at this gym for two years. The only time I've ever met him in person. He came out to that competition. I didn't know he was there. And after I was like, coming off the floor and some of the other coaches were like, Hey, we need a judge for the next event. Can someone judge them again? I know how to judge. And I saw him and I'm like, Wait, is that really him? Because he's like a person I idolized in this space.
Renee Warren: [00:22:58] I totally love this guy. He's like this goofy, nerdy. They call him the accountant as a joke because he is or was an accountant, became a pro CrossFit athlete. Anyway, afterwards I went up to him like old Rene would have been like, No, you know, he's a busy, famous person. I don't want to bug him. But I was like, Screw this. Rene And I went up to him like, Brent. Nice to meet you. Can I just say I absolutely love watching you at the games because we've gone to Madison a couple of times to watch these athletes. He sat with me for like 12 minutes and we just chatted about life and Tony Robbins and all this stuff. And he goes, Oh, and good job out there. I was watching you work out Way to Hustle. And I'm like, Imagine meeting your idol saying good job. But it's almost like I manifested him being there because when I saw him, I was surprised that he was there, but there wasn't. Like, it's almost like I expected him to be there for some reason, right?
Jen Gottlieb: [00:23:50] Yeah, that's how it works. Yeah. Because you reprogram yourself to expect all the opportunities and then when they come, it's like, Oh, yeah, here we go. You're not as scared, you're not as nervous. You go right up to him because you expected it.
Speaker2: [00:24:05] Hey, ladies, before we continue with Jen, I want to tell you about my morning practice planner. I know. I know my planner again. But let me just say, Jen talks about her best year blueprint, and I encourage you to all go and download it at the best year Blueprint Dotcom. It's incredible. I printed it out and super helpful. The recording for her live master class was back in December. However, if you haven't already done the work for preparing for 2023, you should do it now. So after this episode is done, take 30 minutes to an hour out of your day to get something down on paper. It has to be achievable. It has to be a little bit outside your comfort zone or else you just won't do it. Now, Jen is an incredible soul. She's accomplished a lot over the course of her career, but this past year was big for her because she a lot of things came to fruition. And what I know the truth about women like Jen is that they create the plan and they keep going. And as we say in this recording, the last mile is never crowded. It's because those that are the winners, those succeed in life, in their relationships and their wealth, are always the ones that are pushing themselves that last mile where there is nobody else hanging out. And so this is why I encourage you to go grab yourself a copy of Morning Practice Planner if you haven't already done so. It's a six month planner that I've created that helps you achieve the most productive version of yourself. And it's not just daily pages. There's actually an exercise at the beginning of the planner that takes you through how to make better decisions, how to create values and mission statements to establish your goals all in line with what you want to achieve for the year. So head on over to morning practice planner Dotcom. Go check it out. Grab yourself and your sister. Copy and we will get back to my interview with Jen.
Renee Warren: [00:25:59] Let's go on this because I know I got this from your husband. Oh, I can say that your husband taught me this, although I know it's not his quote, but he always says the last mile is never crowded.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:26:09] Yeah.
Renee Warren: [00:26:10] And yeah, right. Because no one wants to go that last little bit because that's the hardest bit. Yeah. How do we know we're on the right path? This is the right move to make, to keep pushing through. Through that last mile. How do we know this? What are the signs? What are the feelings? Like, What's the data behind this? Because I know a lot of people they'll launch a program or they'll start writing a book and maybe they publish something or they launch their program and it flops. But it's not to say that the book or the program sucks. It could be the best in the world, but they give up after the first try.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:26:41] Yeah, you know, people ask me all the time, like, or we were just talking about this before we pressed record, you know, like all these things happen for you. And I'm like, Well, the only reason that all these things ended up happening for me is because I kept going even when it wasn't working. And I think the key I don't even think I know this from personal experience. I'm not telling anybody that I don't know anything that I don't know from something personal that happened to me. Like this is just my truth. When I decided that I wanted to go forward with either the book or producing a ton of content and building my audience or getting the podcast up or getting on the cover of the magazine or any of the things that I decided that I was going to do this year selling the company, anything. It didn't work in the beginning. It rarely works right away. The key, the difference between successful people and people that stop before they become successful is the successful people keep going consistently. Even when they fail. They are persistent. They don't stop, right? If you're persistent and you don't stop until you get it, you'll eventually get it. But you may have to keep going and going and going and going and going and going. You have to want it so bad that it doesn't matter how many times you fail or how many times you hear, no, you just keep going until it happens. And what I do to do that, because it's very hard to do that when you get rejected. I mean, I was an actress for years and years and years. My job was to get rejected every day. And I think that's why I'm so good at hearing no and.
Renee Warren: [00:27:57] And going is why you're great at PR because you're like, no, just means not now.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:28:01] That's exactly right. So I always tell myself, okay, that's for me that no was for me. Why was it for me instead of why is this happening to me? Why am I getting rejected? Why isn't this working? Oc That didn't work for me. What did it teach me? That's my immediate thought. And you can reprogram your brain to think that if you do it enough. One of the fun things that I do is I get rejected. I've gotten rejected a lot this year. I want to become the greatest motivational speaker of all time. That's my goal. So I've been pitching a lot of stages and people may see me on Instagram and be like, Oh, you're doing it. I'm like, Yeah, but you should see all of the stages that I get told no, that I pitch. And so I have an album in my photo album of screenshots of all of my rejection emails, emails where I got rejected.
Renee Warren: [00:28:42] That's amazing. And I want to say this is when people actually have the time to say no to you, like the response, saying, No, this isn't a good fit. It's one up. Because the other perspective is that they just don't even reply to you. So the fact that they rejected you is like a compliment. Yeah, like, see you, hear you. But not right now. Yeah. Oh no.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:29:05] And I've gotten a lot of really mean rejection emails too that they don't realize they're being mean. Like, oh, we're dealing with the celebrities first and then we'll get to the regular people. Somebody said that to me like I'm a regular people, but I like, I screenshot all of them and I put them in my album and I kind of make it a joke with myself. And instead of taking it personally, I'm like, This is going to be so fun when I am the greatest of all time and I can go back and I can read all of these and I go back and I really like it. Just if you turn it into no is just a hidden yes to something else, right. Like this? No, just means yes to something else. And it doesn't have to come from this person in this way. And you get really good at making no your best friend. Like if there's a chapter in my book, it's like, make know your new bestie. And like, if no. And rejection and failure is like, yes, that's growth. That's something I can learn that's leading me closer to something that's even better, even a bigger opportunity than you're free from that. That fear of, Oh, maybe I'll never get it right. That's why people stop, because they're like, It's just not working. Maybe I'll never get it. Maybe I just need to shift directions. And then they shift too quickly and they shift before it happened, right? It only takes one yes to kick start that momentum.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:30:14] And like a great examples, like my word of the year, this year was content. I was like, I'm going to produce so much content and I'm going to build a huge audience because I'm not going to go a day without posting the whole beginning of the year. We were spending a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of effort in producing an absurd amount of content, and we were not getting any return. Nothing is working. Instagram did not like me. Tik Tok. It was okay. Not really. It was like just not working. It was like, okay, I'm posting and I don't feel like anybody seeing it. And this was all year, but I kept going. I didn't stop. I think a lot of people would have stopped halfway through and stopped investing time, stopped investing energy because it's just like there was no ROI. I've seen a lot of people do that. Oh, am I getting I'm going to pull out. I didn't pull out because I was like, Nope, my confidence is going to come from me sticking to my commitment that I made with myself all year. No matter what, I'm sticking to this commitment, even if it doesn't work. We're producing content every day. It just takes one. Yes. In November last month, I got one video that took off. It's got like 2 million views now. And because that one silly video that got 2 million views went viral, now Instagram is working. Now I'm.
Renee Warren: [00:31:20] Like.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:31:21] Day. November. November, Renee. It took all year so people may see it and feel like you're crushing it. No, it didn't really take off for that specific bucket until November. So don't give up before it happens for you.
Renee Warren: [00:31:37] It's kind of like you spent these 11 months like turning all these dials, kind of like think about I think of like a safe box, right? You have to click to the number and then click it to the number because you're having all of these numbers. Create the sequence for you to unlock the safe. So it's kind of like all the content you've created for the last 12, 11 months before you hit your viral video was like all of these safety codes being clicked to get into place to finally be like, Bam, you're unlocked. And now it's like Instagram now recognizes you. Yeah.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:32:11] It's crazy. And that's really how it worked. And so I want to make sure everyone listening don't compare your chapter one to somebody else's chapter 20 or what looks like somebody else's chapter 20, because many of us stop ourselves before we even get started, because we get online and we see someone that's been doing it for a long time and been clicking all the numbers, trying to figure it out for a long time. And you don't see that behind the scenes stuff. You just see the beautiful Chapter 20. And it's very frustrating because it's like, Oh, I could never do that because that person's already done it or they've already gotten that far and it frustrates you. But remember that everybody started somewhere and I feel like it's my responsibility to share. Listen, this year I started and it wasn't working until it worked. And I still get rejected for stages. And I you know, it's still a struggle every day. I still get her. No, I still mess up. I still fail. But I'm getting each time I do, I get a lot more confident and each time I get over that failure and get to the next step, I click another. Like what you said, this great analogy. I click another thing into the into the lock box and I open up another box or I open up another opportunity. And that's how growth happens. But if you stop yourself before you even get started or before you get that first, no or right after the first or the second, no, you'll never realize your chapter 20. So don't just compare yourself to somebody like you've been doing this podcast forever, not forever. It looks like, you know, you put the.
Renee Warren: [00:33:31] Work, it feels like, Yeah.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:33:33] I remember when you started.
Renee Warren: [00:33:35] Two and a bit years ago, three almost. Yeah, I even know it's been a while.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:33:39] So it could be really easy for someone to be like, I'm not going to start a podcast because it's not perfect like Rene's. And you know, I don't have all those listeners. But you've been putting the work in for a really long time that they don't necessarily see.
Renee Warren: [00:33:49] Yeah, and I love that metaphor. Now, going back to the combination, it's like some combinations are four numbers, right? And some combinations are 12. We just don't know the length of the combination for this thing that we're trying to unlock. Yeah, and you figured it out easy.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:34:06] Sometimes it happens easy. So sometimes you get a little bit of luck, sometimes you get a great opportunity and you take it at the right time. You get that unicorn that comes across your desk and you jump on the unicorn. It's your job to jump on it when you see it, though, many people don't jump on their unicorns, right? But sometimes that happens and it's like easy. And I think a mistake that some people make is they get something that happens easy and then the next thing is hard. So they're like, Oh, I thought it was supposed to be easy all the time. I'm not going to do it right. So you have to know, like, all right, some things are going to come easy, some things are going to take a little bit of work. And it's just like, that's the beauty of life and business and the people that are successful just they keep going no matter what. They take the easy ones and they celebrate them and they celebrate the hard ones just as much as they celebrate the easy ones.
Renee Warren: [00:34:48] Yes, I love it. No, your journey has been amazing because you were a co host on TV. And so tell us back up a little bit. The whole working with Chris you're now husband at was a super connector, what's it called? The name of the Super Connector media because you guys like didn't really start that right. That was Chris's gig. And then you came in and helped, like, blow it up essentially.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:35:13] Yeah. So it wasn't called Super Connector Media. When I started with Chris, it was just Chris Winfield. In fact, when I started working with him, my email address was Jen at Chris Winfield Dotcom, and I was like, This is terrible. I am Jen at my boyfriend. This. I don't think.
Renee Warren: [00:35:29] I had that to Rene at Dan Martel dot com. I still have did Oh I still have it Yeah yeah I know. Kind of cringe right?
Jen Gottlieb: [00:35:36] Yeah, it's kind of cringe but I did it and it was just Chris Winfield and we built Super Connector Media together. What. That's when I came along. But it was very scary for me to come on to something that he was the face of it. He had built it and I was the girlfriend coming in, and I really did in a lot of ways have to earn my stripes in a big way. And it was very scary and a lot of fear and a lot of imposter syndrome and a lot of like fear of not being good enough and moving through that. And I learned a lot of lessons along the way. And also, you know, this, working with your partner that you're in a relationship with and also business partners with is definitely always a work in progress. And when we started, we had a lot to learn and it took us to get to where we are now in the. The way that we work together, which I would say is pretty damn good. But before it.
Renee Warren: [00:36:25] Wasn't. Yeah, men seem to know, at least in my experience, when to just shut off work. And almost like everything that happened before, that moment is just off the table for discussion. But women are just like, But the way you talk to me in that meeting is totally unacceptable. And now we're at the dinner table with the kids, right? The women bring it into the personal lives that men are so good at, just like putting all that stuff into like a little cube and saying, That's not now. And I find that.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:36:50] Your man is good at that.
Renee Warren: [00:36:51] Yeah, not Chris. Okay. We're learning a lot about grids. You guys built this huge, beautiful, incredible company, working with amazing people, training thousands of people. And then what happened this year?
Jen Gottlieb: [00:37:04] So this year, Well, we had two buckets of our company. Really? Well, actually three. We had events. We had our mastermind, our training, our education and our courses, and then we had our PR agency. So we accidentally built this agency because one day at an event, someone came up to us and said, Hey, I don't want done with you services, I don't want to learn, I want done for you. Could you do it for me? So we're like, Sure, we can figure that out. And so we started doing Done for you PR for this one client and it was working and then somebody else wanted it and then somebody else wanted it. And before we knew it, we had this big PR agency where we were representing some of the biggest personal brands and tech startups and companies and products in the world. And we had all these publicists working for us. We had this agents. We did not plan on this. It happened by accident. We just kept giving what people wanted. And alongside that we had our events that were really amazing and fun and fulfilling and successful. And then we had our programs, our mastermind, our courses, our online challenges, all of those things. And obviously during the pandemic, we couldn't do the in-person events. So we really doubled down on virtual events. We figured out how to pivot and really crush it in the area of online challenges and communities and things like that.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:38:10] But in the background we had this agency running the whole time, and then this year we looked at everything and what brought us the most joy and what was the most? I would say, I wouldn't say the most profitable because our agency was a very, very profitable arm of our company. It was working really, really well, but it wasn't profitable in the way of bringing us joy. We didn't love it. We built it by accident and we were noticing that the people that we were teaching, they were getting just as good, if not better results than our agency clients because they were owning the information, they were owning their relationships. They weren't just renting it and letting somebody else do it. They actually were like knowing the information that they needed to be able to pitch. So they were getting unbelievable results on their own and they were having transformations in their mindset and their life and their relationships. It was just so fulfilling and wonderful. And the agency was taking a lot of our energy and it wasn't something that filled us up. So we asked ourselves what would happen if we took our energy away from something that we weren't enjoying, and we put it into the thing that we absolutely loved. We're like, Wow, we could really blow up this area that we love the events and the programs and the teaching and the transformation and everything like that.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:39:18] So we took a big risk and we got rid of an arm of our company that was incredibly profitable. And a lot of people would say, you know, don't fix what's not broken. Like, why would you do that? It's working on its own. It does well. And we took a big risk and we had that arm of our company acquired and got rid of it and we couldn't be happier. So it was a big decision that we had to make this year and it was a big shift and it was a lot of energy for us to do that, to transition our entire company and to transition that entire arm out and do all of that. But for anybody that is sitting here thinking like, wow, there is an area of my life that I'm holding on to that doesn't serve me anymore, that doesn't make me happy, that doesn't bring me joy. But I'm holding on to it just because I feel like I have to. I would really inspire you to think what would happen or what could happen if you allowed yourself to give yourself permission to maybe take that energy that you're pouring into something that you don't love and put it towards something that you do and see what happens. And that's what we decided to do this year. And it's working so.
Renee Warren: [00:40:21] Far right, because you want to like I have this shelf behind my lights that has a trophy I won, you know, the book that I wrote and published, my planner covers of magazines, all the things that I accomplished during my days of running my PR agency. And I never want to discount all these things that I've achieved. But I get it. I get the stress agency is tough and it could be very lucrative. We actually went through due diligence to sell it, but then all these things happened and I burnt out and I was like, I'm never going. I'm not going to work for somebody else for three years to get my earnout. So either I do it or nobody nobody gets this, but I get it. And then focusing on the things you love to do, because then you just do them better with more magic. Yeah. Yeah. What's your focus.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:41:09] Today, man? Well, right now, my personal focus is my book is coming out on October 20, 23. I'm publishing a major book with Hey House, and I couldn't be more excited about that. So we're. In the final cover, designing the cover. The fun part. Final edits, all of that stuff. So we're going to be marketing that book. And then for our company, we're doing our first huge live event. So we're going to be doing a 500 person event coming up in May. We've only always done like 100 to 125 people. So this is going to be our first mega major event. So we're planning on that. We've got a lot of just pouring ourselves into our mastermind, which is our main offer where we teach marketing money, mindset and media. All of the EMS that you need in your business to build a profitable brand. And I'm just excited to continue speaking all over the place, writing my book or finishing my book, publishing my book and and teaching people how to be seen, because I know that the people that we teach or anyone that's listening to this right now, I have a feeling if your audience is one of these people that has a service, a product, or a story that helps people in a big way, so the more that more that you can be visible and allow those people to find you by being visible is the more that you can create an impact on this planet. So I feel like part of my responsibility is to help those people be seen and help those people build brands that attract people to them so they can help more people leave their legacy and create more of an impact on them.
Renee Warren: [00:42:28] Yes. So your big event in May, is it in New York?
Jen Gottlieb: [00:42:33] No.
Renee Warren: [00:42:34] Oh, look.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:42:35] We've always only done events in New York, which is a very expensive place to do that. So we are no longer doing events in New York, big ones. We haven't solidified the city. We're solidifying it this week, so we're deciding between a few. So I will let you know as soon as we decide that. But it won't be in New York and it's going to be all about building your brand and we're going to be having big celebrity speakers and it's going to be epic. Three days. I'm really excited about it.
Renee Warren: [00:43:00] Oh, my gosh. It's so full circle for you, right? How you're like, you want to speak on bigger stages, but now you get to be the gatekeeper of who comes and speaks on your stage. Yeah, I love this. Share with us when all this goes live, because I will definitely share it to because maybe I want to come to this event in May. Do you feel it's open right now? You should go. I'm not going anywhere in May. Yeah, we could talk forever. But I do have one last question for you. When I ask you what it means to be a wild woman, what is that to you?
Jen Gottlieb: [00:43:31] To be a wild woman means to unapologetically speak your truth and go for what you want. And that feels wildly powerful to me because when I used to just dim my light to make other people feel better or make other people feel secure within themselves, I'd be like, Oh, I'll just stay quiet and I'm not going to be fully me. Nothing would happen for me and I would feel really out of alignment and really stuck. But the second that I was like, Screw it, I'm just going to be as me as humanly possible and unapologetic for who I am and shine my light. It helped other people inspire other people to shine theirs. It didn't make them feel insecure. It actually made them feel more empowered. Who knew? And it felt wild and free. So that's what that feels like to me.
Renee Warren: [00:44:12] That's so true. I just shared this the other day. I said, I'm sick and tired of worried about whose feelings I'm going to hurt or who I might offend, sharing who I am, the full expression of me and said, I'm going to just shine my light. I'm not going to be a tugboat. I'm going to be a lighthouse where I'm going to shine as bright as I can so that you can see where you're going. And I'll never dim my light for other people. I'll never turn it off for other people. If you don't need my light, I'm going to keep it on for you anyway, because maybe there's a moment that you need it. And I said that thinking all I'm going to get are people that are offended by me saying, I'm not apologizing for offending you. I got so many beautiful messages. Rene, you've been a lighthouse for me for years. Thank you. All of these people coming and sharing their stories. And I thought, wow, if this isn't a reason to shine brighter, then I won't see it anywhere else. And so I love that you said that is just being unapologetically yourself because you were put on this earth as who you are with your thoughts and your beliefs and your charisma, because the world needs that version of you for other people, for yourself. And so I think it's a beautiful message.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:45:17] Yeah, I love that. And that's the way that you're going to stand out, because there's a million other people that do what you do. Everybody does like everybody does some version of what somebody else does, but there is only one. Rene. The way that you speak, the way that you deliver your message, the way that you say, the words that come out of your mouth, there's only one you. And so there's going to be people that only resonate with you. So the more you you can be, the more you're going to call in the audience that needs to hear only what you have to say the way that you have.
Renee Warren: [00:45:41] Yes. Yes. I love this. Well, thank you, Jen, for being such a beacon. If people want to go online to find you, where can they go?
Jen Gottlieb: [00:45:48] Simplest places, Instagram, because everything happens there. There's a link to there where you can get all my stuff. So app Jen underscore Gottlieb.
Renee Warren: [00:45:56] And your podcast too. There's I know in one of your last episode maybe all of them you have this download for New Years stuff, right?
Jen Gottlieb: [00:46:04] Yeah yeah it's the best your blueprint. It is the New Year's planning strategy that myself and Chris do every year. It works. It's simple, it's easy. You don't have to set a single New Year's resolution. It's three parts. So I have a free PDF where you can download the journal prompts and then a video of me explain. Getting it. It's super dope. I highly recommend it for listening to this. Get your whole family involved, print it out, Have everybody do one and set up the best 2023 you could possibly do.
Renee Warren: [00:46:29] Yes. Well, I'm excited to see what comes to you for 2023. But Jen, thank you so much for joining us today.
Jen Gottlieb: [00:46:36] Thank you so much for having me, Renee. This was so much fun. I knew it would be.
Speaker2: [00:46:43] So there you have it. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Into the Wild to make this girl happy and to help reach other women who are dreaming of starting their business. Please leave us a five star review on iTunes and everywhere you listen in. Also, if you want to find me in the wild, check me out on Instagram at Renee Underscore Warren. That's our n e underscore w a r e n and leaving you with one of my favorite tips of all time. The best advice you could ever receive is from someone who has successfully done it before you. Until next time, ladies, Peace out.