SS 008 You Are Valid, You Are Valuable, You Are Miraculous!

Standing Stronger Podcast episode number eight! That's right, it keeps getting better and welcome back to another episode. I'm Shannon. And I'm Shannon. That's right. We have the same names. Can you believe it? Big Shannon and little Shannon is what they call us or boy, Shannon, girl, Shannon. You don't know. Whatever, whatever you want to call us. It is okay. Today is actually a very exciting podcast because we have our first guest and we went went ahead and went all out with our very first guest and brought an amazing person, someone that I look up to a lot, even though I've never actually met her in person.

She has been an amazing example for me, someone who has led me like many others couldn't. You know, in my opinion, she ranks up there with Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn and all of the greats. That's right. She's an amazing lady. I'll read something real quick about her and then we'll introduce you to her. But anyway, her name is Carrie Wilkerson. She is a barefoot executive. She's a voice of experience from corporate life to teaching high school to direct sales to information marketing and coaching. She has been there and done that professionally and personally. An overnight mom to two toddlers through adoption. Her priorities instantly changed and so did her workplace.

She's now built several businesses and coached others to do the same while overcoming extreme debt, losing one hundred and ten pounds and having two more children for a total of four aging from toddler to teen. That's right. We have with us today the one, the only Carrie Wilkerson, the barefoot executive. Yay. Yay. The crowd goes wild. Thank you, Shannon. Wow. Yeah, I need I need that. I need that sound effect to get the crowd. Yep. All the roaring applause in the background. Thank you for that. That was super nice. Not a problem, actually. So we told you a little bit of stuff. I read some stuff. Why don't you go ahead and let the audience know who is Carrie Wilkerson right now?

Do you have dogs and all that good stuff? You know, I'm not a pet person because I've just got so many darn kids. I kind of have a rule right now that if they can't feed itself, it can't stay. You know, she Shannon gets that. Yes. I do have a hamster. We have a hamster, but the little takes care of her. So baby barefoot handles the hamster and four kids ranging in age from seven to almost 19. The older two that you talked about, my adopted two are now out of the nest. So they're they're college and and then Mark goes to a special school. And then the two littles are seven and ten. So those are my mini me's. No pets except for the hamster live in Texas.

A southern girl as my brand, the barefoot executive would demonstrate live pretty close to my family, real close to my brothers, three brothers. And, you know, just doing my thing, getting paid to talk, getting paid to write, working with business owners, doing what I love and, you know, carting the kids back and forth to activities and staying busy with our church and loving on our friends. And, you know, same as the people that live in your town, I'm guessing. That's amazing. You know, it's it's funny. I always told my wife if I was going to leave Florida, the only other place I would want to go is Texas because I once lived in Texas. And man, the people are just so nice.

And that's why I think, you know, you just come across so, so awesome. Oh, thanks. Well, you know, the other thing good about Texas is we don't have a state income tax, which is pretty awesome. And our cost of living is so darn affordable. It would it's hard to move from Texas to other places because you take such a hit economically. I love sunshine. So I love Florida and I love California. And I really enjoy those places. But the fact is, I just really love like you said, the hospitality of the South. I'm a Southern girl for sure. But I just really love how affordable everything is. They're kind of finances my travel to everywhere else. Awesome. And you have the blue bonnet. So yeah.

And the long horns and, you know, and expansive land. I mean, just good grief. It's just hard to beat. Awesome. So basically what we are is we are a podcast that helps bring hope to the hopeless. So we bring inspiration through motivation, inspiration and stories. So what we would like to do with you, Carrie, is we read a little bit about some of your struggles, but I want to go back to a time when you weren't the barefoot executive, when you weren't speaking to hundreds of thousands of people with this huge platform and some of the struggles that you went through. So can you take us to a place back when that was going on? Sure.

So guys, the real truth is the reason Shannon and Shannon picked me for their first guest is because I'm such a certifiable mess. Everybody can learn from me. Holy smokes. So I can take you back to 2001 actually. Yeah. End of 2001. I was 110 pounds heavier. I had two small children, one who had just been diagnosed with being special needs. A husband who traveled about 50 to 60 percent of the time. My parents, we had just moved to town to be closer to my parents. And then my dad, when he retired, he accepted a position in the mission field. So they moved 3000 miles away. That does a lot for your complex, right? So my parents had just moved 3000 miles away.

I had another business and had done well in that business, but had not done well keeping my books. And so I kind of embezzled my own self into some debt. And when I added it all up just through mismanagement and not paying attention, I was six figures in debt and married to a financial planner. So that was a fun conversation. I said, you know, you're in too much debt when you have to tell your spouse 30 grand at a time. So that was, yeah. And I've dealt with depression off and on my whole life as someone who is a creative personality and also highly empathetic. I would actually consider myself an empath, but unaware of that for many, many years. I feel very deeply.

And so depression is something that I wrestle with on a regular basis. My highs are very high, my lows are very low. You know, truth is that's pretty common in entrepreneurial circles. And also I think those of us that lead spiritual lives, we're just sometimes a little more tapped into that. It's not fun to talk about, but it is what it is. And had dealt with infertility for at that point now, 11 years, I guess. You know, so there was not a whole lot of fun things about being me at that point in my life. Wow. That's, that's amazing. And you know, you don't know that, especially looking at you and listening to you speak, you think, man, this lady has it together.

She's always had it together and she's not like me. You know, she doesn't struggle with those things and those type of things don't happen to, to her. It only happens to me, but realizing that, especially someone in your position that actually, you know, you came from the same place we all came from, that you do struggle with the same things that we all struggle with. And, go ahead. Well, I think that's the big, that's the big secret of life, right? We all do. We all do.

And how we deal with it, number one is what sets us apart, but also how we love on other people and sympathize with other people and take care of other people while they're dealing with it instead of feeling like they need to suck it up or get over it or whatever. I mean, I think, I think that's what, what makes it work. You know, I just, I don't have any patience for people that don't love people where they're at. So, you know, that, that may not even be a pathway to go down today, but yeah, we all deal with all the same things. We all put our shoes on, you know, one foot at a time, our pants on one leg at a time, and we all deal with mess.

And just because I'm an optimist and just because I see a silver lining and just because I'm happy or funny, well, let's look at Robin Williams, right? It doesn't mean we're not dealing with mess. It doesn't mean we're not dealing with stuff. Everybody's got their own stuff and it's just, some of us deal with it more visibly than others, I guess. Carrie, with that, and thank you so much for sharing all that with us because we know that's our whole point is to try and help them understand that they're not alone. So in those circumstances that you were going through, and that was a lot at one time, you know, how did you deal with it? Did you have support groups?

Did you, I mean, what got you through it? Well, you know, I've grown up in a fishbowl and that'll probably be the topic of a book at some point, life in a fishbowl. My dad was a military officer, high ranking, and then when he retired from that, he created for myself, even my persona that I have now, right? One fishbowl to the next. I keep jumping from fishbowl to fishbowl. You're just becoming a bigger fish. Yeah, I guess so, or a smaller bowl. I don't know. But the fact is, that doesn't really lend itself so much to support groups or reaching out. I will say, at one point, my husband made a point with my doctor. He said, you've got to talk to somebody.

I just feel like you're a mess right now. Now, he's had always been so super supportive, but at that point, he's just like, you're starting to scare me. You've got to go talk to somebody. My doctor had been my family doctor since I was little. He said, Carrie, here's the bottom line. First of all, I don't know that you deal with chemical depression. What I think you deal with is what I would call a little more situational depression. He said, you thrive on change and you love to make things happen. We're designed as humans to deal with one or two max situational things at a time, a death, a job change, income loss, one of those big things in life.

He said, you create three to five things at a time. You constantly have three to five major life shifts going on at a time. At some point, your body and your psyche just says, enough is enough. You just have to be aware that you need to back off a little on this so that when life throws some of these at you, it doesn't tip the scales because you're always creating all this other change your own self. He's right. I'll move, change my name, change my state, change my job, change my major, do all those things at the same time thinking I'm just being efficient, I guess, and I put myself in a tailspin. He did. I was on meds for a little while, but the fact is I didn't feel like myself.

I didn't like them. I just learned how to control my scenarios a little better, how to pace myself with my change, but at the same time this year, even this year, we moved over the summer while my daughter went to college and my son is changing schools and my littles changed to a new school and my husband went to a different job. It just tends to happen like that. I just have to be really aware of it. I have to take good care of myself. I journal. I recognize that I'm not alone and that I'm not crazy, that it's okay to be sad and that it's okay to push through some stuff. As a female too, I've just had to really watch the calendar and chart how that all figures in the cycles.

It's not a popular thing to talk about, but holy smokes, we've got some cliff jumping days in there and you just have to be super careful with all that. First thing I would say to everybody is we don't have to be happy every single day. You can be joyful about life and joyful about your circumstances and about your new baby and your great family and still have a profound sadness some days and that doesn't necessarily mean that you're broken or that something's wrong. You're definitely correct about that. You were talking about as a female, I understand because I have a girl's name, so I relate. I'm right there with you. He thinks he knows, Carrie. I believe men do have hormonal cycles too.

I do too. I totally think that and that if we were more sensitive to that and if guys were more careful about charting their highs and lows, that it might help them feel a little more control of that because otherwise you just feel like you're super caught up in it and it's a helpless feeling. How do you make changes? To go back and answer that little Shannon, I'll say that it was one change at a time. It really was making a decision that I was done letting all that happen to me, that I was taking my life back. It became a fact of, okay, so I'm not going to do a big radical diet, but I can switch to all water and cut out processed stuff.

I can just start meeting with my son's principal once a week and talking about his special needs and how I can be more in control of that. I can look at, instead of applying for jobs and being rejected over and over, I can just create my own thing to where I can't be rejected. It really was just a series of those kind of stepping up decisions. One day at a time, paying off my debt $1 at a time and $2 at a time and spending less, educating myself on proactive things. It's going from reactive to proactive. I know that sounds like it's oversimplified, but it really is the case.

People that change to a proactive mindset instead of a reactive mindset can literally turn their lives around in a matter of days. I believe that wholeheartedly. That reminds me of the story Zig Ziglar used to tell about when his flight got canceled and he's talking to the flight, not attendant, but I guess the gate people. He goes up to get his ticket and they said, well, sir, your flight's been canceled. You're going to have to wait three hours. He's like, fantastic. Then he goes in and he talks about the difference between reacting and responding. It's huge when you start responding instead of reacting to your situations in life, I guess you could say.

My daughter was home for the weekend. She marched with her college band at AT&T Stadium, which is the Dallas Cowboys Stadium. It's kind of a big deal in Texas. They showed up to march and then they were going to get back on the bus and go home the same night. I said, heck with that. I want you to stay an extra day. She hasn't been home yet since she left for college. I said, well, I'll buy you a one-way ticket to fly you home the next day. You just stay. Last night, took her to the airport at 5 o'clock, hugged and kissed and sent her through the thing and stayed in the parking lot until she actually boarded the flight, right?

Because that way I was there in case anything happened and came home and she said, well, we never took off. They turned us around. There was a mechanical issue with the plane. And so I'm only 20 minutes away and I said, well, just hang tight for a minute. So they're getting off and she's telling me what's happening there. They are lining up at the desk. Everybody's upset. Everybody's fussing. They're waiting to be told what to do. Meanwhile, her mom, me, gets on the customer service line, call, find out when they've rebooked her because I knew they probably had already rebooked everybody. Find out when they rebooked her. It didn't get her there till this morning.

She would have missed two of her classes already. And I said, well, that's not going to work. So I call a different airline and I rebook her. It happens to be at a different airport. I rebook her to get back to leave on an hour and a half later. Meanwhile, send her dad to go pick her up. I said, OK, hang tight. Go down to luggage. Try to track down your luggage. Dad's coming to get you and take you to the other airport. You're already rebooked on a different flight. Well, what about all these? Here's what she said. What about all these people in line? I said, well, let them react however they're going to react. We've taken matters into our own hands.

You're flying home on a different airplane from a different airport so that you don't miss your class tomorrow. So, you know, even with my kids, I'm just teaching them you have to take control of a situation. You don't just go where the wind blows you. You put up a sail and have some direction. But you're right. Responding versus reacting is very important and proactive versus reactive. Very, very important to make a huge difference. Yes, ma'am. So I guess the next question I would have for you is during you mentioned some of them and I'm going to talk about habits. What positive habits did you develop that help support the change that got you to where you're going?

You already mentioned instead of taking the huge diet, you switch from water to or, you know, from just drinking water. And then you mentioned, you know, paying the debt off one dollar at a time, not 30 grand at a time. Is there any other positive habit that you developed during that time? You know, I think the number one habit that everyone can develop is awareness. This I see over and over with myself and with my clients is when we're aware of what we're putting in our bodies or when we're aware of what we're spending. That's half the battle. When I when I had to guess how much debt I was in, I guessed really low.

It was only after I dug everything out and created a list and just went through the painstaking process of looking at stuff that was hard to look at and adding up some hard numbers that then I was aware. And then when I became really aware of exactly what my bills were and exactly what my interest rates were and exactly what my payments were, it was half the battle. Because once you're aware, you cannot ignore. My kids, my two littles, as part of a PE challenge the six weeks, their instructor has them counting sugar, not fruit, not juice, but anything with added sugar. So anything in a package that has nutritional information, they're being made aware of sugar.

And, you know, it seems like a little thing, but my 10-year-old is just horrified at where sugar is hiding. Ranch dressing, ranch dressing, barbecue sauce, stuff that before she didn't even classify food, right? And now that she's aware, she almost can't enjoy it because she can't ignore it because of all this extra sugar. And so I think that with our health and with our money, the big habit, Shannon, is being aware of what things cost, being aware of what interest rates mean and how they compound, being aware of how food affects you, being aware of your energy states. When I cut out artificial sweetener, I've now learned that I have an allergy to it, which I bet most of us do.

If I have anything with artificial sweetener in it now, I immediately get a mouthful of ulcers and it just tears my tongue up. Immediately, like within 30 minutes. It's insane. And so now that I'm aware, I can't ignore that. I can't get myself back into that condition I was before because I'm aware. So awareness is huge. Using debit cards instead of credit cards, very important for me personally, very important for me. Also, I'm still a deal shopper. I make good money, but I'm still a deal shopper. I'm not one that's just going to upgrade just because or just going to buy whatever. We still comparison shop and I'm teaching my kids how to do those kind of things.

It just makes a difference and it makes a difference in your health and your business. It makes a difference in your house and the products that you have. And I'm not a huge consumer either. I don't have just to have. I would consider myself actually pretty frugal because a consumer lifestyle just is so expensive to maintain in so many ways, in mentality, in emotion, in finances. And I don't want to model that for my kids either. Right. I'm like that to a point when it comes to electronics. I'm a sucker, though. I have to buy every single upgrade. I can't help. No, see, and I still have an iPhone 4.

And the only reason I have a 4, the only reason I even have an iPhone is because a company contract I was working on, part of their product development was an app and they wanted me to have the 4 at that point to help them test the app, et cetera. So they funded it. I mean, I don't even I'm not even that person. I have to have a good computer because of my work. But in November, my MacBook will be four years old. Yeah, right. That's a dinosaur to you. Yeah. But I love it. It's my little workhorse. It does good. Carrie, it drives my husband nuts that I don't care about electronics.

Right now I'm sitting here with a pen and paper and it's like his blood pressure is through the roof because I'm not using the iPad. That's funny because I just mapped out a big proposal today, but I used the ginormous technical term right there, ginormous easel tablet, the big easel tablet so that I would have it. I mean, I have all these tablets and things in front of me, electronic that I could use. But I really think there's a powerful connection between the kinesiology of writing something down, the tactile of that and how it embeds into our brain. I think that we are not as critical of thinkers, learners or rememberers when we rely only on electronics.

I believe that as an educator very firmly. That's a great point. And my wife is trying to pound that into my head right now because we are we are handwriting out lists now of our to do list and what we need to do instead of me keeping it and things like Evernote and Wunderlist and things of that nature. She's like, no, we're going to write it. You're going to put that in your hand. You're going to write it on there anyway and then we're going to cross it off. He put Google Drive on my laptop and I'm like, it's just not going to work. I need a pen and paper. And the other thing is those of us who trend. Now, this is just, you know, couch psychology.

I am in no way trained in any shape or form. But I also think that all the electronics have removed so much touch and sensory from us that I think especially those of us who trend towards depression or dips or roller coasters, I think touch is important. And so I think the more we can tactically handle things, not just people, but paper and pens and lists, I think it just helps us be a little more grounded and connected. But again, that's just that's just my thinking. I could be totally wrong. I agree with you on that. We actually I just sat through a sermon yesterday that was talking about, you know, people that say, why do you have to go to church and things like that?

And the preacher had said, you know, think about it when you're really going through something. If you're just a virtual watcher, you know, and that's great. But when you really need to depend on your church family, where where is that family? If you haven't gotten in and connected with people, you know, where do you go from there? I think that's I totally agree with you. Yeah, exactly. Now, I know your time's important and we're getting to our time limit here. So can I just ask you just a couple more questions and then we'll get away. All right. So we talked about, you know, what you went through the struggles.

We talked about a couple of really good habits that you developed, how you moved past that. And now that you're past that, what is life like now for Kerry Wilkerson? Well, first of all, I don't think we're ever past. I don't think we're ever past struggle. I mean, it's like the butterfly, right? We struggle to be beautiful. We struggle to be better. Life is always is going to have a struggle. But incidentally, yeah, and I think you and I've even talked about Ziegler's book on that, haven't we? Embrace the struggle. Yes, we have actually. Yeah, I thought we had. OK, I thought so. So now life is past that. I will say that, you know, economically, things are better.

Depression wise, I still have to be super aware. I can I can coaster with the best of them. Weight wise, that's you know, I always say I've lost one hundred ten pounds. But the fact is, I've probably lost four hundred thousand pounds at this point. Some of that 15, 20, 30 pounds you just keep losing over and over again. So back I'm back on track to lose the rest of it right now. I'm gearing back up for that. But, you know, I've added two more kids. So there's I think at some point you have to look and go things are just bigger than me. Things are just bigger than than what I've been focused on before. And you have to just look at a different picture.

So what I would say things look like right now is that when somebody like you says to me that that you consider my work along the lines of Jim Rohn or Zig Ziglar, then I really have to take a step back and go, wow, you know, this is this is bigger than me being sad today or this is bigger than me even paying off my bills. This is this is impact for the kingdom. This is impact for for other people's hope journey. And this is this is this is very cool. So you move from a place of in your life where you're doing things because they matter for you and they matter for your family.

And then when you get to step into that next place of what I might consider significance where you say, wow, this is not just impacting my family and our life, but other people's family. That's kind. That's big. That's that's a big responsibility, I would say. It's a huge honor. It's a huge privilege, but it's a big responsibility. So I would say now that when I'm weighing decisions and when I'm looking at options, I don't just consider my family and I. I consider my enlarged family and my enlarged circle. And that does give me a whole different perspective on. On what I say and what I do and where I go. And I don't know if that's even making sense. It's and it's certainly no ego whatsoever.

It's not a oh, hey, look how important I am. It's a holy smokes. Look at this responsibility that's been placed on me. And what am I going to do with that? And am I going to be a good steward of that? So, you know, I don't know. I'm no big guru and no, I don't have all this like extra special wisdom. But I will say that life's pretty darn incredible when you look at it and the opportunities and just the phenomenal people like you guys that that we can connect with nationwide and even internationally because of these great electronics tools and social media. And and there's always a bright. There's always an up. There's always the ray of sunshine.

I'm so extraordinarily sad and grieved when people like Robin Williams or or the guy down. grieved or the young woman that we don't even know that they choose to end their life because they don't see a light because they don't have a hope. And that's a really tragic, horrible thing to me to think that there wasn't just one ray. So if I could be that or if you guys could be that or if just a smile or my kids being encouraging that somebody could be that then wow what better reason for me to stay another day. You have been that and I remember right after I had attempted suicide you without even knowing it lifted me.

You were that ray for me and I forget the exact quote but it was along the lines of you are relevant, you are worthy. And it's something that you have repeated over and over again and at that moment it was during a time when I'm on my knees listening to Matthew West, I'm not strong enough and I'm six foot five, 260 pounds, I'm crying like a baby because I can't do it anymore.

You know God take this from me, I need you, I need hope, I need that ray of sunshine and there's people out there that people like you and in that moment I look up at Facebook and I see someone that says you are worthy, that you are relevant and that is what has spiraled into what is now standing stronger because during those months after that my wife and I kept talking and we said you know what there's people that are just like you, that are struggling, that don't have hope, that think they're all alone but they're not.

And if we can just help that one person, prevent them from doing what you tried to do, to give them that ray of hope just like you and many other people gave me that ray of hope in my darkest times. That's what we're trying to do today and I really have to thank you because I know you did that for someone today. Well and I think this is probably the graphic that you saw or the quote that I say is you are valid, you are valuable, you are miraculous. There it is. Do not let someone else determine your worth. You are right, that's what it was and I have to thank you for that because it helped me in that one moment of need.

So you know and that's one of the reasons why I hold you in such a high regard is because even though you weren't here talking to me, you know having your hand on my shoulder, you were there talking to me with your hand on my shoulder and you know God put you in front of me in that time, that time period, even though you had no clue who I was or that I was even listening, but I was. Love it, thank you for sharing that, I appreciate that. And so we're actually over your time limit so let's go ahead and wrap this up and let's give you a couple minutes to tell the audience you know how to get in contact with you.

If they want to say thank you, if they are looking to start their own business or move in a more positive direction, how can they connect with you Carrie? Oh sure, well you can find me on Facebook at Barefoot Executive, that's the fan page on Facebook, Barefoot Executive, and on Twitter by the same name, Twitter I'm just under my name, Carrie Wilkerson, C-A-R-R-I-E Wilkerson, and my blog is the same name, CarrieWilkerson.com, so you can connect with me in any of those places and reach out.

I'm super accessible as you can tell, and articles there, videos there, you know depending on what your learning style is, and would love to connect with you further there, and you know I used to say I was a business coach and consultant, but the fact is I think I'm morphing a little bit, and my CEO now stands for Chief Encouragement Officer, I'm a paid cheerleader I guess, a paid encourager, and I believe in people until they can believe in themselves, and so this has been great fun for me Shannon, I appreciate you guys inviting me to be a part. Awesome, well we appreciate you taking the time out of your very busy schedule to do this with us.

Carrie, I just want to tell you thank you, I think you're a very wise woman, God has given you more wisdom than I think you're giving yourself credit for, and I think I'm going to send my husband to live with you for a little bit so he can become more aware of, like your kids are with food, we just talked about this this morning, some of the things he's getting ready to accomplish, so, and you know with, this is my first time ever meeting you, just like the listeners that are going to hear this, and I have to say I'm a huge fan, I think you're a remarkable woman just in what you just shared with us, and I thank you for your time today.

Thank you so much, and you guys go love on the baby after she wakes up, do not disturb the sleeping baby, and I look forward to watching her grow along with you guys. Awesome, hey Carrie, one more question, we usually wrap up the podcast with a prayer, do you mind staying on there with us while we do that? Go ahead. Alright, fantastic, like always guys, we just want to let you know that we believe in you, that's right, you are great, how do I know you're great without ever meeting you? Well, it's because you are built in the image of greatness, therefore you're here to do great things, so it's up to you to go out there and do it. I put on the wrong music, so we'll change that.

Alright, so you are great, how do I know you're great? Because you are built in the image of God, so go out there and be great because that's what you are. So, as always, we're going to end with a little prayer, and I just want to take this time to pray with us. Dear Lord, we just thank you for the amazing message that we just heard. We thank you for Carrie and everything that she has done for your kingdom to go out there and help other people. She's doing an amazing job, and we just pray that you continue those blessings on her. We pray that if anyone is out there struggling, that they know they're not alone. They heard a story today, even the people out there doing great things struggle.

We ask you to put your loving arms around them and let them know that they are not alone because you've never left them. We love you, Lord, and it's in your name we pray. Amen. Amen. Alright, thank you, Carrie. It's been a great day. It's been an awesome time. Give me one second because we've got to play the theme song for about 30 seconds here. 1, 2, life, every day is a new beginning. Shine your light, it's your day and the world is waiting. Move along to the song singing in your soul. Feel the beat, clap your hands, let it take control. All you need, all you want, are you ready to find your way?