Shifting the “Price of Success” Paradigm with Cathy Demers

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markell. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your Conscious Pivot.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm very, very excited to be here today. Why am I excited to be here today? Because it's today, that's why. Because I woke up this morning and I got to imagine that whether you're watching this or you're listening to this, it feels good just to be here. And I know that you've got challenges, I've got challenges. There's challenges in the world all around us. And the only thing I know for certain is that it's a blessing that we can be here. And that makes this moment holy. It makes this day holy. It makes everything we're going to be doing now and going forward, if we're lucky enough to have a go forward, it makes it sacred. And I feel very blessed as well to be here with somebody that I absolutely adore, new friends, somebody that has been introduced to me through somebody else that I adore. So I just love how the universe is continuing to provide access to amazing people and opportunities to collaborate. Just so beautiful. So in a moment, I'm going to turn the mic over figuratively to this amazing lady who will introduce herself. As you guys know, that's the format. No canned introductions here. But before I do that, I just want to once again express my gratitude to all of you for tuning in, for being a part of this podcast. It's about consciousness and how it is that we utilize change in a conscious way in a world where many people are running on default and there's a lot of habitual activity that goes on that is really costly in many ways. And I think rather than being in a state of reaction to those things, we can respond. And that's all about consciousness. And so, in this moment, I am grateful for you being here. I am grateful to be alive, and I love my life, and I hope you love your life right now. And I will remind you, guaranteed, before we are done today of how important it is that we wake up every day, raise our consciousness, feel grateful, and love our lives. So with that, I get to introduce and bring to Our podcast, this beautiful, beautiful lady, Kathy Demers. Kathy, so great to have you with us. And would you share a little bit about what is important to you right now, what you are working on? What are you incubating in your own business life? I know you had lots and lots of success along the way. CEO of a publicly traded company and one of the founders and creators of a company that had that incredible result of going from an idea from ideation to being publicly traded. That's a magnitude that most people have never seen. So I'd love to find out more about you. I know our folks are really curious. So, yes, welcome to the podcast.

Well, Adam, thank you. I feel really blessed and really lucky to be invited to be on the podcast today. You started your comments with comment about feeling lucky that you woke up this morning. And Adam, I know that you have lots of what I would call Adam Isms, right? So this is one of. I want to start with one of my Kathy Isms, and that is that, you know, last night I dreamt I won the lottery. This morning I woke up. I guess I did. And I feel that way often. And I want to give you a bit of an introduction about me. And then I just want to sort of fill in a little bit of the gaps with a little bit more of a personal story about me than I usually tell because I think it'll feed into some of what we're going to talk about today. As you mentioned, I was CEO of a publicly traded company. Oh my gosh. It was a huge job. It was a wild, wild ride. And one of the things that I didn't particularly like about it is when you're the CEO of a publicly traded company, there are a lot of conflicting interests. And if you're a person who likes to make people happy, I found myself in a position very quickly where it just was not possible to make everyone happy. And boy, did I have to grow up in a hurry. And I managed to do that. I worked for years for Microsoft and then at IBM, and then I started this publicly traded company. And the personal story that, oh, and now what I'm doing is I have launched a new business. Business success.com awesome domain name. I have big plans for that. And I want to talk about that just a little bit and how it fits into our conversation today. But one of the things that happened to me while I was taking this company and growing it, you know, getting financing in and then eventually taking it public is that, you know, I got sick. I mean, I think a lot of people have these, you know, stories that are inspiring, and I don't like to tell this one. I have this big issue around vulnerability. I say the word vulnerability, Adam, and the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. You know, that's just the truth of it for me. But I think it's important because I want to make some comments about that today. So what happened was I started getting quite sick on a frequent basis. This had started a while before, and it started to get very, very serious. And when I got sick, I ended up with like two hours to get myself into the hospital. And I was hospitalized maybe three, 30 times, many of those times in ICU. And they managed to bring me back from the brink. They didn't know what was wrong with me. I didn't have a diagnosis. And eventually they figured out what it was. And I call it the Kermit the Frog disease. And the reason is because it is the same thing that killed Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets. So I have my own little mascot, and that's Kermit the Frog, but it's called recurring strep toxic shock syndrome. But I've been very lucky because normally in 70 of the cases is diagnosed as it was with Jim Henson post mortem. So it sounds really bad, but, you know, I managed to make it through. So it was interesting, though, because when my time with this company that I took public came to an end, it was really important for me to take a look at how is I going to be successful in business without paying the prices that I was paying, because they were. They were massive. And a lot of it was stress mistress caused by a number of different things. A lot of it was the environment that I'm in, you know, swimming with sharks, you know, there's blood in the water. It can get pretty messy. And I was.

I was a lawyer for 20 years.

Yeah. So, you know, I mean, I love the lawyers that I had with me. You know, one of the expressions was, when you're swimming with sharks, you bring a shark with you. It's a good idea. But so. So I really needed to step back and take a look at, you know, how I was living my life. And there's this expression that has been really important to me over the last several years. And it goes like this. It's like, it's so important to live your life as if you're going to die tomorrow.

Yes.

Because you might. And, boy, did I have that in front of my face, you know, I really did. But one of my bucket list Things that I. That I did recently cross off my bucket list was to visit the Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona, Spain. One of the reasons it was so important to me was because that cathedral was started in 19, sorry, 1882, and it is still under construction. And go D. That's where the term gaudy comes from. It looks really gaudy. Right. He was. He was the one that term is named after. He had a vision much bigger than him, much bigger than even his lifetime. He knew it would never be completed in his lifetime. And there was a fellow I read about not too long ago who lived to 114 and he was in a Nazi concentration camp. He weighed 80 pounds at one time and he still managed to recover from all that and lived to 114. So to live your life as if you're going to die tomorrow, but it's as if you might live to 114 or even beyond that. And so it was a real struggle for me for quite a while after I left this company to find that balance, to find that place of creative tension between. I want to build something really big and fantastic and live this exciting business life. Business is so exciting. I love it. And yet to realize that, you know, I need to be enjoying the process every single day along the way because I might not wake up tomorrow or I might get sick again and end up in ICU and not come out. And that's a reality that I live with. But it is so true for all of us. We just don't literally have it in our faces quite so much as we do. So I wanted to sort of give that overview of where I've been sort of professionally and business wise, but also, you know, the pivot that I've gone through since leaving that pressure cooker that I was in. And I still love business. Business is one of the most wonderful games we play as people. I love it.

So it is a delicate harmony. I, some, more often than not, would say the word balance, but I don't of late really want to perpetuate this sort of myth about balance that we're seeking balance. So, yeah, that, that those two things to live for, those things to live sidelong, having great desires and goals, even dreams, and at the same time not being attached to the point of it being creating suffering. Right. I mean, that's really kind of what we're talking about. And I was a lawyer for 18 years and I suffered a great deal in the sense that I was out, you know, I was out of alignment, not doing work that was really purposeful or it felt, didn't feel fulfilling. And so the stress really sat on me much in a deeper way. And it sounds like in your corporate role, even though it was exciting and you did something, many people, as I said at the outset, most people never, never see that side of things. And yet it wasn't quite all it was cracked up to be. It sounds.

No, like I said, it was a wild ride, but the prices were pretty high that I paid on a personal and health level, quite high. And you know, maybe there are people who do that, they take public, they run large organizations and they don't stress over it. You know, they find some way to, you know, enjoy that process. But that was not for me.

Did you, have you ever read Steve Jobs biography?

No, I haven't.

Yeah, it's really a great book. And, and it's like a business course, it's a tome, it's like this thick. But Isaacson, the book that he, he wrote about Jobs, I came away from that book thinking to myself, yeah, I mean, this man, change has changed the world.

Yes.

And his legacy will live on for many, many, many years. And both good and not so good as well in certain areas. But he paid a big price for it. And so that's part of what you're talking about is I truly believe that he paid the price of his life to hold the vision he held so intensely and with such intractability, like just relentless pursuit.

And this is why I mentioned Godi and the Sagrada Familia. I'd encourage people to look it up. It's an amazing, amazing accomplishment. But you know, right from the beginning he thought, I'm not building a church, I'm building a cathedral. And that's what I want my business to be about. I want it to be a cathedral. And so it means taking a longer term approach to it and enjoying the process. So Go knew it wasn't going to be finished. He knew his cathedral would not be complete when he died. He knew and that was okay. And I think there's that part of relaxing into it that as business owners I think we're really challenged to do. We feel a lot of pressure and it's pressure from within.

Absolutely. So share, if you could, some of that pivot, the sort of any aspect of either the pivot that you're talking about out of corporate CEO of a public company into an entrepreneur, somebody that I'm, I mean, I know a bit about your story, but I would, I would love it if you'd share just how it is that you made that transition to a more harmonious life where you've got it, you're helping people and you're doing business you love and you're successful and. And you're not at that level of sort of overdoing it or overstressing to the point where it's actually impacting your health and your well being.

Well, part of it structural. I will tell you that part of it is quite structural. When I started this company that I eventually took public, my partner and I, we started it with a $10,000 investment. It's just a classic startup. And my partner took it and purchased one computer. They were a lot more expensive back then. And then we were broke. So it was a very classic bootstrap to start with. But we started. I was working on my living room table. He was working in a small bedroom in his attic. And at that time, we didn't tell people that we didn't have an office, right? That we didn't have an office and a big staff. We didn't want people to know. And when people started finding out, we thought it would really hurt the business. And we had a lot of people who are jealous. And now, I mean, look at us. This technology, I bless it every day because it has changed the structure of how I do business. I am not in a crazy commute. I get out much, actually. I love to travel, but, you know, I don't like the hectic travel that I used to have to go through. I don't have a crazy commute. Usually my work uniform, my husband tells me all the time I should take my bathrobe and get my name put on the front cover and my logo on the back. That's my work uniform. And it's unusual for me to dress this time of day, but it is structurally a much more relaxed lifestyle. And I actually am far more productive. So that's part of it. And I think it's just fabulous that the technology allows us to do that and that social norms about what it's like to be successful and run a successful business have changed. I have an amazing team and they love this lifestyle as well. So I'm really grateful for the technology and the attitude towards telecommuting, as we used to call it, we don't even call it that anymore, has become. But I think the other thing was to really step back and think really hard about how I managed to get myself into the pickle I was in in the first place and what it was that wasn't working for me because Success, it can be very addictive. And it's kind of one of those things where if you're not really careful about how you go about acquiring that success, then it becomes a poison pill, if you will. It becomes the thing that actually brings you down. And I wasn't willing to give up success. I love it, love it. But I had to really redefine what it meant so that I could structure a business and structure a life that supported my definition of success and that required me to do some really, some internal work about what was really important to me. And it wasn't about the money. Money is important, right? People tell you I don't need much money. Most people would like more money if they're not doing the things that they can do. People have accused me of being rather down to earth. I drive a 10 year old car mostly because it hauls the dog. You know, I don't feel like buying anything really expensive, but I do like to travel in that. So money is important, but for me it's about prosperity. I mean, one of my mission is to enhance the prosperity of small business owners around the world. And prosperity is about more than money. But it's really hard to feel prosperous without an adequate amount of money. So stepping back and going, okay, well, what is success mean to me? To really design my life instead of having my circumstances define how I was going to live. Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense. That's the essence of the pivot. So it's great to hear it reflected back in different language. It's beautiful. Yeah.

So it took some soul searching and took getting some help, actually. I will tell you from some coaches who were skilled in helping me really figure out what my core values were, really figure out, you know, what, what was attractive to me about business success so that I could structure things differently and still have that incredibly juicy success. I didn't want to give that up.

This is, this is a, maybe a point of vulnerability for other people. I don't know if it's still a vulnerable point for you, but coming, coming out of a business that was successful but that, let's say, nearly killed you. And I got to say the same thing. I mean, 18 years and in a practice of law and highly successful on the scale that I would have judged it by at the time and what other people would judge success by, which was the money, possessions, power, you know, prestige, title, all that kind of stuff. I had all that but miserable and every day angry and waking up with anxiety and dread and really not. I could get Ticked off really, really quickly and all that kind of stuff that's a symptom of something else that's going on, which was I was just unfulfilled and not. And just inside going, what? You know, like, what are you doing? What are you doing? And at that point I needed help. And it sounds to me. And I had a near death experience, which was kind of a wake up call for me of sorts. And you had a wake up call that almost cost you your life. And even though you'd been successful at that moment, probably the only thing you could have done based on what you knew was something very similar to what you'd already done. I mean, that everything we've gotten is the result of our best thinking at that time. So to do something differently and have a different result, you needed to get some other thinking involved.

Yes, it's true.

And that means you have to be vulnerable, be humble. Even as the CEO of a publicly traded company, you have to go out and ask for some assistance. And you mentioned coaching. So did you go out and get a coach? What did you do to kind of bring about some new perspective?

Yeah, there were two things. One was I did get a coach. And the other was that I saw a psychologist. You know, I mean, I'm not afraid to say it. I don't think I had a. What I would call a. I don't know how to phrase it, sort of. So it's acceptable. But I mean, I don't think I was having, you know, particular depression problems or anything like that. I mean, everybody gets the blues now and then. Some people suffer from depression and I really feel for them, but that was not the case. But I just knew that I did not want to repeat that pattern. And the pattern was to basically have the circumstances carry me away. And, you know, part of it was the excitement of the prestige and the position and the money and, you know, people thinking I was, you know, doing really well, being a woman of this CEO of a publicly traded company and all of that. And I really felt that I really had to understand how I was making my decisions such that that happened so I could put a different process in place. So both of those two things were really instrumental in helping me really get underneath that, because it was clear there had to be a way. But if I was left to my own devices with the same thinking that I had, I would make the same decisions again.

Yeah.

And I'm still in the position where, you know, I could end up back in the hospital this evening. I don't know Right. That problem is not resolved. It may never be resolved. But again, it's true for most of us. We don't know if we're gonna wake up in the morning, just don't know.

We don't. And to live, like you said that the being able to entertain, simultaneously entertain conflicting thoughts such as I want to do things, I've got great big grand plans, etc, etc, and at the same time to recognize that there's sort of a figurative guillotine that's hanging by a thread over, you know, over your head. And how is it that you harmonize those two conflicting thoughts?

And it's entirely doable. That's the good news, right? It's entirely doable. I didn't think so for the longest time. I thought, oh, it's an either or kind of thing. And it does take some introspection, some thoughts, some planning, and a really strong sense of self. It really does. Because, well, I mean, the world is full of temptations and opinions and ought tos and shoulds and could haves and all of that. So yeah, but it definitely can be done.

So the rituals, the practices that you have in your life that help you to be more aware of those, those two things simultaneously and work with them both. Again, I'm going to resist the word balance. I don't want to even use that to try to balance them because it's the fact that they can coexist. Right. These are things that can coexist and be harmonized in your life. I know that's been my experience that it's not an easy trick to pull off at times, but to be simultaneously seeking and also letting go.

Yes, right. That's a good way of putting it. Simultaneously seeking and letting go. And it's more difficult to do when you're under stress. I will tell you that when we're under stress, we tend to default to our old ways of being. It's just sort of a natural defense mechanism, I think. But part of it is, I think for me, the most important part is to be really conscious of how I'm feeling in any given situation. And in particular, if I'm not feeling great, if I'm feeling stressed, if I'm feeling resistance, if I'm feeling resentful, whatever it is, that then as soon as possible to immediately stop and say, okay, this is not what I want my life to be about today, because this may be the last one. Right? Do I really want to live it this way? And then to look at and say, okay, what is it about it that's not working and try and figure out how I can restructure things. So that's not a part of my life. And so it is a matter of, you know, sort of being very conscious about how I'm feeling in the moment. And if it's not working, then, geez, you know, is this the way I want to spend the rest of this next hour, this next day or this next week? Probably not. And so it requires, I think, really being conscious of our ability to choose and our ability to consciously design our lives moment to moment. Because we're very, very smart, very creative people.

The conscious pivot.

Yeah. And so we can do it. We just need to be aware how important it is for us to stay on top of it and do it.

You know, so we've got two choices really, but the choosing part, as you said.

Yes.

Or the default part. And that's how we look at people that are making change or having change, which is constants. The only, I mean, it's one of the true constants in the universe is that change is constant and yet. And then there's this, you know, there's the changeless, the part of us that is eternal and divine and unchanging, and then there's the part of us that is changeable. And it's not even the part of us, it's really a part of our experience, our experience of life and how we are experiencing life. And there's where we get to choose. We get to choose how we experience life. Just like you made a conscious choice or you get the default. And the default I don't think is really an option. And so I'm so thrilled that we are collaborating. In fact, I would love it if you'd share a little bit about your new company, what you've pivoted into. And I'm excited because I'm actually going to be doing. You and I are going to be doing a training for your community and I'll share now and then at the end too that folks that are listening to this, you'd love to go to business success. Business success.com pivot. You'll be able to be a part of that training that's coming up really, really soon. But please, Kathy, share about business success and how that's getting started. What's your cathedral with that company?

So one of the things that I've been doing for a very long time is an interview series called the Business Success Cafe. It's a 20 minute series where I interview people who, who have got solutions of all Kinds for small business owners. I call it the perfect coffee break for busy business owners. And it's been going great. One of the best things about it has been meeting people like you and other movers and shakers in the small business area. And so that's been going on for quite a long time now. I'm kind of the poster child for what can happen when you find something that works well and systematize it, do it over and over again, get a great team behind you. But now I am putting it under the umbrella of business success.com which is a fantastic domain name. Don't judge the site too harshly. It's relatively new, but like I said, it's the beginning of my cathedral. And the objective of the Business Success Cafe is to really enhance the prosperity of small business owners and to really give them tools and information they need to be more successful. Now, one of the things that I have sort of come to realize in my life is that the one way that I become truly immortal, no matter how long I'm here, is by the influence that I have had on the lives of others. And then they have influence on other people's lives and other people's lives. I mean, that to me is the definition of immortality. And one of the great things about enhancing the prosperity of small business owners is that when small business owners are successful, they contribute to the prosperity of their families, their staff, their community, their state or province or their country and the world. So it is in this arena, the business success.com that I make my biggest contribution. And that is the cathedral that I'm building.

Beautiful, beautiful way cool. So again, businesssuccess.com pivot is where we'll be doing our training and that's coming up very soon. We actually have date the training will take place on the 20th of September, so it's nearing and it's exciting. And I would love it if you would share one either. Habit. And here's the thing. I love the book by Stephen Covey about the seven habits of highly effective people. So I don't want to diminish or dilute the word habit. I just look at habits as being things that we do habitually. Hello. It's like habitually, which means that we do them without thinking. And for the most part they just run kind of like an operation, you know, just happens again, again. And great operations, great systems, they shouldn't have to be rethought every time. I think of rituals as more conscious habits or intentional habits. And I think when we're changing something by design, in our lives, we really need to be very intentional about it. We need to be very conscious. So that's my short definition of a ritual, not a religious one. So what's a ritual that you've got that helps you to be successful or even more successful in your life?

There's two rituals. One is business related, directly business related, and one is on a more personal level. And there's a small part of your brain called the reticular activating system, and it's responsible for a couple of things. And one is to keep you from lapsing into coma. Good thing. And the other is to just filter out all the information that's not important to you. Right. So you're not bombarded with so much data. And so one of the things that I do, one of my rituals is every day, usually in the morning, I have certain business success metrics, if you will, that I measure to. And so I basically track those every day. It only takes me five or 10 minutes. But what that allows me to do is, in kind of a fun way, train my reticular activating system to stay on high alert for information that's important to me and sort of filter out the rest. So the example is, you know, when you buy a new car and you go through the process of purchasing it, you sit in it, you negotiate for it, you take it home, show it to all your friends, you wash it five times in the same day. You know, you do all of that, and then the next day it seems like that car, cars everywhere out there on the street, you notice it. And so what an important ritual for me has been to really get my brain working with me by focusing it on those important things, that new car, if you will, every day. So that's a ritual that has worked for me and many of my clients. The other thing that I do, which is more on a personal level, is gratitude. I mean, I know a lot of successful people do this, and it's true for me. And that is that the end of every day, or if I'm a little tired and I put it off, then I do it in the morning. And that is to really identify at least three things that happened the previous day, small things that I'm grateful for. And that has a tremendous way of sort of resetting my attitude towards what it is I'm doing. And again, stay conscious of what's important to me and make sure that I'm structuring my life and my business to support me. Not that I am working crazy to support it.

Yeah, There was several years ago, I was doing an event in Japan with Tony Robbins and some other folks, and I was introduced to a very successful business owner, very successful. And he was telling me about one of his mentors who is another Japanese business owner who's a billionaire, multi billionaire. And he said. He shared this with me, spoke quite good English, and he said, well, this other Japanese business owner, executive billionaire, he says thank you a thousand times a day. And he said to me, so do you think this was his question? He goes, do you think that he's a billionaire because he says thank you a thousand times a day, or is he thankful a thousand times a day because he's a billionaire? And I got the point instantly. And to me, you know, you get to see the glass any way you want, right? We get that, yes. So to me, I see the glasses. He's a billionaire because he says thank you a thousand times a day. And gratitude is so important. And it's a perfect segue into our conclusion, which is to say thank you to all of you. Thank you for listening, thank you for being here, watching, being part of this Conscious Pivot podcast, which is a blessing to me and to so many people, I think, which is to meet people like Kathy Demera. And the work that you're doing@successusuccess.com is fantastic. I think it's going to have that impact that you want, that legacy impact, that cathedral impact. So thank you for doing that work in the world. And a reminder to all of you that the goal for all of us tomorrow is to wake up. And if we can wake up just a little bit more tomorrow than we are today, wake up our spirit, wake up our consciousness, be a little bit more in tune tomorrow than today, we're making great progress, and we can be grateful for that. And if you feel like it, you can put your feet on the floor when you wake up in the morning and throw your arms up in the air, put your hand on your heart and say, I love my life. I love my life. I love my life. And that's a ritual that. That you can start at any time tomorrow. I know a lot of you are doing it every day. And I've met people that. I've met people from that talk I did in Japan that are still doing it. I get to hear from them on Facebook. And so 21 days, usually the kind of the base timeframe to create some new habit, and then you keep going and going and going till one day, it becomes an unconscious thing. And that unconscious confidence, the Ability to be in the zone, to be in the flow of life is really what it's about. That's the essence of the pivot. So, Kathy, thank you again for being on the podcast. I'm so excited. I get to share, we get to share you with our community and I'm so thrilled that we'll be able to speak with your community about, you know, what's that, what is the art and science of pivoting? What's the foundational things that you do to do what you did. And I think because of your, who you are and, and how you've been through that roller coaster ride in business and through your personal life, that you learn things, you are doing things that are, you're doing them on a level of competence that is unconscious that we could call the flow state or the zone. And when you're in that zone, man, it's not that you don't have challenges doesn't mean that every day the money is just flex floods into the room or whatever. It just means that those things that you flow with them, you ride them like waves and they don't take, you know, you don't get wiped out by them. And if for some reason you do on a particular day, you know, you get right back on the board and you're in the next, you're in the next one. So, Kathy, thank you again for being with us. What a pleasure. Thank you.

I really appreciate you. Adam, thank you so much.

Awesome. And for everybody out there, if you haven't yet subscribed to the Conscious Pivot podcast, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and subscribe. And of course you can join us@startmypivot.com that takes you right to our Facebook page. You get a Kickstart guide and then you can, you can join the Start my Pivot community on Facebook there as well. So have a beautiful rest of your day. Lots and lots of blessings and ciao for now.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcasts for more tips, strategies and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love. Join our Pivot community on facebook@pivotfb.com Sam.