Samantha Skelly on Emotional Eating, 7-Figure Business Lessons and Working on Your Stuff

Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and we're here to interview the game changers, the future makers, the co collaborators and creators who are here to collaborate with one another towards a better future for all of us. Enjoy the show. We've got a great guest coming up for you right now. Jumping it. Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and today I am freaking stoked to have Sammy Skelly scale dog Samwise Sandwich. What's up, Sammy?

Sam, if that's not the introduction of the friggin year, I don't know what is.

2018. Gotta kick it off, right? Love it. I am so stoked to have you on the show. Sam runs a community of women called Hungry for Happiness. Hungry for Happiness helps people to just get over their stuff around eating and eat better and feel better about it and their bodies and you're just helping so many wonderful people in the world. And you know, it's not just Sam, but everybody in this community is doing something amazing in the world where we live in Carta, Encinitas, that kind of area, it's just, it attracts this, this level of superhero that's never been seen before in my life. And I kind of look at it as like, all right, we have all these superheroes running around doing their superhero stuff and they've all got really cool journeys and they've all got really cool superpowers, but nobody's like, come in like Nick Fury and be like, listen all listen up everybody. You're Avengers now. What's up? So I want to be the, the Nick Fury of Encinitas or Cardiff, wherever the hell I live and start bringing people together under one roof to be like, okay, this is our mission out in the world. Even though it might not look, you know, the same in everyone's business. I think that's a really important thing because we can affect so many more people with, together than we, than we could just working on our own little stuff, which would be fine, it will all be successful, but we could do so much more.

It's so interesting. It's like when people ask me the question of like, why did you move to Encinitas specifically? And the end, like it's not. There was, there was nothing logical. Like it wasn't like, oh, because of this on the other. It was like, there's this energy, there's this pole, there's this reason why I'm here. And I truly feel like over the last year I've been in an incubator in the sense of like, everything in my life has up leveled because of being here, because of being in this community. My business, my personal life, my financial life, like, literally everything. I've just been like. It's like giving it, like a serious upgrade. And. And I credit this community, I credit this land, I credit the energy in this space of like, we're all in this, doing this epic. All of these epic missions together individually, but so collectively as well. So.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. It's like you get here and this place triggers the crap out of you for about six months. It brings up all your stuff, right? All your stuff, all your demons, and you can't. You can't escape it because everybody's everywhere, knows everybody. So it all just. You got to deal with it.

So, yo, you just put words to what I was feeling. I definitely felt there was like. Yeah, you just put words to it. It's like when it just felt. It felt like a wedgie. The whole. The first little while, I'm like, why is everyone in my shit? And why does everyone want to cuddle with me? And then I was. After that, I was like, this is amazing. I'm totally enrolled, right?

Yeah, it takes a minute. It's a long sales pitch, but it gets you or you leave. And that's okay too. Sales pitch, but okay. So, Sam, let's talk about practical and tactical. We can geek out about Encinitas all day long. I really love it here. But what are some of the things, like, kind of give people a journey so far. Your heroine's journey, if you will, of the Samwise Skell Witch. Skell Dog.

Samwise Skelled. Everyone's like, what's your actual name? And why do people call you Sandwich? And I'm like, that's a story for another time. But anyway, it's a story for right now.

It's on the podcast.

Okay, fine, I'll tell her. Right? It's so the reason why everyone on their dog calls me Sandwich is because my mom's maiden name was Wedge, so if she didn't get married, my name would be Sandwich, which is. I think this is really cool. And we didn't really figure that out until, like, years and years and years. And so this one time, we were all up in Joshua Tree, and I, like, told this story, but I told the story like, you know, I just told it with, like, every ounce of energy in me. And, like, everyone died laughing. And from then on in, my name has been Sandwich. And so. So now it's like a Sandwich Skull dog. You know, it Just extended, but going back to, like, who I am and why I'm here and what I'm doing with this mission is it's really birthed out of, like, like, many things that we pursue in our lives and many things that we're deeply passionate about. It's really pursued and motivated by this, by my story and by my struggle. And so when I was younger, I was a child actress. So I was either on a stage, I was either in front of the camera auditioning. I was constantly, constantly being, like, judged. But I didn't, like, perceive it as that when I was younger because I was like, this is just what I do. I'm just dancing. I just act and people judge me and yada, yada, yada. And when I stopped acting and dancing, I felt like my significance was ripped away from me. I'm like, I no longer am known as an actress, a dancer, all that kind of stuff. So then I developed a super unhealthy relationship to food in the sense of I could not eat like a normal person. I was on and off diets like crazy, always trying to find my significance in my body type rather than finding it in my soul, which I had no idea at the time. And so that went on for years and years and years. At the same time, I started my first company, which was a personal training company. And I was living in England and just felt completely out of alignment on one end. I was like, hey, this is how you be healthy. And then behind the scenes, I was just, like, super unhealthy and in a total fight with myself and my body. Yeah, totally. It's like, I was never anorexic or bulimic, but I was in that, like, diet, binge, diet, binge diet, binge cycle in the sense of, like, I would diet like a mofo for, like, weeks and weeks and weeks. And then when I couldn't handle it anymore, I would binge. And then I would eat everything that I felt deprived from. And that went on for four years. And so I finally. I had this, like, moment of like, I need to make a change. I need to make something needs to give, because this is just not healthy. And so I ended up getting deported from England because I overstayed my visa, moved back to Vancouver, spent the next three and a half years working on my relationship to food and to my body. And then I was like, you know what? The weight loss industry is really messed up. There's a lot of people putting band aids on bullet wounds, and it's truly about the emotionality not about the diet and exercise and pills and shakes and all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, I'm going to lead a mission to where people think weight loss. They think hungry for happiness, emotions versus what diet can I go on? And so now we're here. Started from the bottom, now we're here. Is that how that goes?

And it kind of mirrors a lot of conversations we have around sales and marketing. Really, that's leadership and helping people make great decisions for them and knowing that people make emotional decisions first before any logic comes into play. So really, what you just described is very much like that. It's like, okay, we know we should eat well. We know. We know how to eat well, and we know how to exercise. Most people can find that information really easily. Where the trick is, how can you emotionally get to a point of mastery where you can actually have those habits consistently that will consistently allow you to make great choices, even when the entire world is trying to pump in and out down your throat, which is delicious, by the way. And I always eat it when I first get back to the country. That's my little habit, my little rule, my little dirty secret, my precious. Give me in and out. But knowing that you can do that every once in a while, provided you have the habits that allow you to take care of your body at all other times in a way that allows you to make good emotional decisions in the moment when you're tired or hungry or depressed or not feeling well, and ideally, gain enough momentum through those habits where you feel, hey, okay, cool, I got a pretty good handle on this. And I can color inside the lines for the most part. And I have a why that's bigger than just my eating stuff, you know?

Yeah, that's it. That's it. I think when we get into behavioral change in any realm, without actually the emotionality behind it and the why behind it, it's a very quick fix. It's not sustainable, right? Like, I can stop drinking coffee for, you know, whatever, a couple weeks, but unless I have a deeper why as to why I'm doing that, it's going to be, you know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna start drinking coffee the next week, right? So it's like, with my life right now, the decisions that I make and the shifts that I make, I make sure that they're very intentional and they have a deep emotional connection as to why I'm doing that. Because then it just becomes easy. Then it just becomes, life's a game. But when we're. When we're white knuckling. And we're trying to make change based on behavioral change or based on like when I get there then kind of thing, then it's like you're already shooting yourself in the it.

Yeah. So just understanding this life cycle of how people make decisions, how people make habits, why their habits or access to information might be faulty and what to change and where to go, that's where you really live. It's like understanding, I've been there, I get it. And I can help you from B2B. I've been there myself. And that's why people resonate with you. Also, you're a giant bundle of energy who loves talking.

Am I energetic? Am I just a wee bit.

And I love the coffee analogy because I struggle. I have given up so many things in life. I gave up smoking when I was 18. I gave up drinking when I was 26.

You gave up drinking? I didn't know you didn't drink.

Yeah, I don't drink. I started drinking when I was 11. I got really heavy when I was 12. Yeah. And then I gave it up when I was 26 for about a year and a half. It started as like a 30 day challenge, and then I did 18 months, went back to it for two weeks. Destroyed my life again very quickly. I was like, no, you're not supposed to be drinking. Okay, got it. And then I was off like another two years. And I've been back on it, like in little bits like, oh, I think I can have a glass of wine. No, I can't. You know, and just now owning the fact that I'm not a drinker and it's okay. Yeah, My dad died from it. My grandfather was an alcoholic. Grandma was an alcoholic until she died in 97. College. Yeah, a lot of, lot of trauma around alcohol. So I had to really just get clear with myself that it's not for everybody. And I'm one of those, you know, I'm not everybody. So, you know, I have a similar story. And funny, crazy thing is I made a video with Frank, my head of sales, about three years ago now. I was living in Santa Monica about our journeys because he also quit and he struggled in the past. And we just kind of talked about it in a very reasonable way, like, we don't think you're bad or broken or wrong, but here's what our experience has been. And that video went crazy. It got viewed, you know, tens of thousands of times, maybe a couple hundred thousand times. I don't even know. I've looked in a Long time. But the emails and the comments that just kept coming in, like thousands of people ended up quitting drinking. And that's not even what I was looking to do in the world. Really exciting.

That's beautiful.

Yeah. So if I had never had that conversation with myself, if I had never had that coach say, hey, you should reestablish a relationship with alcohol, take 30 days off. If I had never, you know, had all these traumatic experience in my life and talked about it in that way, I would have never made that impact on the world. That wasn't even really like, setting out to do that.

That's when things really catch on, is like, when we don't. When we're not like, this is going to be this. But it's just we're naturally sharing from a place of authenticity and our story, like, this world is starving for stories. And for them to listen to your story and go, I see myself in Brad. I'm going to make a change. Like, that's huge, dude. Good for you, man. That's awesome. That's so cool.

So thank you. Yeah. And I didn't say that to brag and impress, but to impress upon people listening that your story matters. Matters. What you've gone through matters. And there are tons of people out there crying and begging for leadership. Leadership isn't about creating more followers. It's about creating more leaders. So how can you give people the tools to lead and then doing so leaders, as opposed to a leader world of, you know, everybody's a victim and everything's horrible. Something's in the wrong. You look at the world and say, hey, somebody should do something about that. You got to look in the mirror and say, well, aren't you somebody? Are you somebody? Are you somebody? Sammy. Sam.

Yeah. Sammy, Sam. Sammy, Sam. I love how you're in my old room right now. It makes me feel like at home.

So Sam used to live. This is my office now, and I have a bedroom next door. But Sam used to live in this house, and it was in this room. Depending on who you ask, it was either like a day or a month or a year. I don't know. It was an amount of time.

I can't remember how long it was. It wasn't for very long, but it was it. I had some good times in that bedroom.

Right on. So have I. So have I. I'll give you a tour. I'll just move the camera. We got, like, Buddha reminds me to chill out. That's the most of what I need. That's why it's the biggest one. Casey Neistat reminds me to work harder. And then I got a little tiny giraffe up there that says, hey, have more fun.

That's so cool. That's so cool. Is that a massage table?

Oh, yeah. You know how I roll. I got a futin for shooting. I got a futin for shooting. Futin for shooting. Sure, shooting. Futin'.

You mean a futon, right?

Yes. Maybe in Canada they call it a futon, but here in America.

That's not true. That's not true. You guys are always trying to screw me over.

We have a game in our friend circle where we try to get Sam to believe that we have a specific way to say it's entirely not true.

That's just how we say it here. It's like you guys are just trying to make me sound like, get out of here.

I love it. All right, so we could talk about inside jokes all day long, but let's get clear and practical and tactile for people who may be struggling with some of the things we're talking about. Like, we had Cam Adair on the show, for example. He gave some really great tips and just understandings around frameworks around addiction, whether it be video game addiction or alcohol addiction or any type of addiction. For example, unhealthy patterns with food. What are your top maybe three to five things that if you had a microphone that you could whisper in the ear of everybody in the world, what would you want them to know?

Yeah, so the biggest thing that I. That I talk about all the time is this whole concept of, like, acceptance and honesty. And I put out a video a few weeks ago called the Negative side of Body Positivity, and it was basically talking about how the body positivity movement to some extent, is flawed. Now, that's not to say the whole thing should not exist. I think the intentionality behind it should very much exist, but the consumption of it is a little bit distorted in the fact of we can't go from hating our bodies for 30 years and then seeing a meme on Instagram going, okay, I'm gonna love my body. Like, that's just not possible without the tools. And so we have to actually accept the fact that we hate our bodies where we're at. We have to accept and love the part of us, furthermore, that hates our body. We have to love the part of us that isn't a fight with food and fully accept where we're. Because the only way we're going to create traction to have transformation is when we Step out of denial and we get real with what is, and I think anything, anything, anything, anything at all. If we want transformation with anything, we have to be clear on where we're at and fully accept and love the position that we're in. That can be a journey, but we cannot bypass all of that work in order to achieve transformation. So I think that for a lot of people is we love to lie to ourselves, we love to be in denial, right? We love to look at things like, especially, right? And you and I are both marketers, right? And so there's, we see this a lot. It's like we want, we want to polish herds, we want to make things look a little bit shiny that's more shiny than they are, right? Like my Instagram feed by any is no indication of like what my life's like on a day to day basis, right? But it's like marketing and saying we all do this and so what we need to be like is like, get the screens away, get everything away and let's just have a come to Jesus moment with ourselves and go, where am I at right now? Am I truly happy with my relationship to food? Am I truly happy with my relationship to my body or my relationship or my financial situation? Like, can I just look at it with like clear eyes and just look at where I'm at? And until we get to that place, transformation is incredibly difficult. And this is why as well, dieting is such a flawed way of creating. Transformation is because, number one, we're taking action from a place of fear. We don't want to admit where we're at. We don't want to admit what it took to get there. We don't want to admit how we feel in our body, in that place. So we take action out of fear. We deny where we're at. We sever the part of us that is trying to have a voice and we just run into a direction that is that we don't even know either. Like we don't actually know where we want and how we want to feel when we get there. And so with that whole world of like dieting and exercising and hating our bodies, it's like we have to have complete acceptance of where we're at. Step out of a place of denial and get incredibly clear. I'm like, alright, so it's not that I want to lose 20 pounds. It's like, what is the feeling that I think that it's going to give me? And furthermore, what is the benefit of that feeling of me totally embodying that feeling, how is my life going to change? And so when we're just dieting or wanting to lose weight, it's like that's a very surface level thing. And in order to create sustainable transformation, we need to go into these deeper layers.

I love that, Sam. And you can tell you've thought many, many years and cycles about this. And the mastery comes from understanding not just the things to do, but the frameworks around what people believe and think that allow them to subtly shift their perception about what needs to happen. Right? And that's leadership. What you just described right now is leadership is understanding. I know where you're at. I get it. I was there. Now, here are the things that you most likely believe in order to have this reality that you currently occupy, right? Because our value shape our beliefs, shape our thoughts, shape our words, shape our actions, become the habits that shape our reality. So if you don't like your reality, you got to go back to the what you're valuing kind of thing. And then based on those values, all right, now we know where to look. We know or to dig. What are the things that we're valuing that are moving us further, closer, away. Closer or further away from our desired reality? Back. And look at that from a real, you know, compassionate, empathetic perspective in your own life. And then to transmute that to ultimately your clients and your community, it just takes another level of distinction and service. So I want to just say how grateful I am that you shared that. But additionally, I think I want to drill into a few things that I'm just, I'm just, I guess people that, you know, if I'm assuming what my audience is wanting, going to hear, how does this relate to them? Let's say, okay, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm an investor, I'm a philanthropist, I'm somebody who wants to generate, grow, give money, whatever it is in this, make more marvels, community, want to do that through collaboration. How is getting out of my own way in the realm of eating allow me to do that further, better, faster, stronger, the six Million Dollar man, you know, the whole deal.

So I love this question so much. And I think as I mentor a lot of entrepreneurs, I mentor a lot of specifically social impact entrepreneurs who have ideas and things like that. And they always want the tangible. They always want the, Sam, teach me how you built a million dollar company. Sam, teach me how you have this funnel. Teach me how you have this marketing strategy. What's your best sales strategy? And I always bring it back to like, what needs to emerge through you and what is real for you right now and what's really going on in the mental, emotional. I too wanted to bypass this place and just make money and make impact and go, go, go, go, go. But everything that we do is if we really want it to create traction in our lives, we have to get real about the place that it's coming from and we have to get into our bodies. And so the reason I'm, the reason why this is so important is because when we are in a fight with food, when we're in a fight with our body, if there's something that we hate about ourselves, if we're judging ourselves for this, that the other we are going against the self, we're being self violent. Right. And this whole practice of being self violent is only going to like the threads of self sabotage are going to come up. So you're going to get to a certain point of success and because you haven't dealt with that demon that you chose to ignore right out of the gate, it's going to sabotage, gonna be back before you, before you started. So it's so important to just before we do anything, to just get really, really clear on like what is it that I need to work on internally first before I do anything. And because I know when I've taken action out of fear, I take an action out of a place of like just trying to get ahead or trying to get something done, it's always crumbled. When I'm so clear about like my alignment, I'm like, is this coming from a place of alignment? Is this coming from my highest self? Is this in the best, is what I do going to serve the most amount of people? And it's coming from a super genuine place. That's when everything's created, given traction. And so it's so important for people when they are starting their businesses, they all they do want to uplevel their life, always bring it back to the self. Everything comes down to you. There's crazy stats. I don't know what the stats are now, but what is it like 90% of businesses fail in the first year? Something like that.

The longer you play, the more likely you are to die.

Right, right. And it's like I firmly believe that is not a strategy issue. That is not a, oh, this person doesn't know what to sell. That is not a product issue. That comes down to the entrepreneur, to the leader of that mission, not being integrated, not being grad and not knowing themselves and trying to skip steps and not Learn the personal spiritual development side of it. That is my belief, because I've seen that happen so many times. And I tell entrepreneurs, go back to the drawing board. Go back to yourself. Like, let's get back into your body. And they do that. Then they start to see traction.

Yeah. I actually had a great conversation with an Uber driver yesterday. He was like, hey, do you hear somebody won 600 billion or million dollars in the, in the Powerball? I'm like, that sounds awful for them. What do you mean? He's like, well, you're presuming that all problems are money problems, because guess what? Having all your money sorted out is just the beginning. Now you're going to have a whole nother class of problems. The people that you know, the things that you don't know. And very quickly, you're going to be on a path to ruin. So that's actually probably the worst thing that could happen to somebody, is having that much wealth come into their life that they didn't earn because now they have so many tools to harm themselves and others, and they don't have the capacity to really generate or grow or give wealth and know how to do that in an effective way. Like, that could be the worst thing that ever happened to that person.

Absolutely.

Our social circle, it's going to kill their whole family life. It's going to. I know it happened to me on a very small scale. When I was 24, my dad died and left me a bunch of money. And it was totally unexpected. And my family, you know, we didn't get along after that. Just didn't glue that was holding everything together. And I didn't know that until he passed away. Suddenly I inherited a lot of money and I wasn't equipped to handle it. And it wasn't a lot like a half a billion dollars, but it was like a million bucks worth of stuff, you know, and that was a lot to me because I was, you know, building my wealth and doing my thing on my own, my own track, and based on what I believed I should be able to have and my worthiness to re the time. And I made some good decisions, mostly made a lot of horrible, terrible decisions, was I had nobody to go to that I trusted well enough to really say, hey, this is what's up. So that inner work is so important because even if you do come into a lot of money, even if you do come into accidentally finding the right strategy, the right mindset is what produces the right strategy. But the right strategy with the wrong mindset, I can give you the best strategy from Apple, Google, Sam's company, my company. If you don't have the mindset, the consistency, and the habits to implement it and the leadership skills to get leverage to help other people come and align with that mission, you might as well have not had it at all. It's never going to work, for sure.

And I think people listening to this right now, they're like, okay, cool, Sam. That's really great. And how the heck do I figure that out? And I think it becomes this question of, like, are you questioning everything that you believe? Are you really getting clear on, like. Like, I'm ruthless with, like, how? Like, I'm, like, almost, like, obsessive in the sense of, like, if I do something, I'm like, is that. Do I truly believe that? Is that my mom's belief? Is that my dad's belief? Is that society's belief, or is that my belief? And the way I figure that out is, like, when I think about that belief, do I feel expansive in my body or is it contracted right? That is like. That is my cue for everything. It's like, I bring it back to the body. When I'm trying to figure out my truth, I bring it back to the body. So there's a business decision that I'm working on, and I'm like, got my pros and cons list. I've overanalyzed the out of the thing, and I still can't figure it out. Bring it back to my body. What does that feel like in my body? Is that a yes or a no? And I stopped giving reasons as to why it's a yes or a no. If it's a no, I'm just like, hey, that's not for me. Yeah, for me, I don't need to, because half the time, I don't even know why my body's telling me no. It's just a no, right?

You don't know until later why.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like finding out down the road, like, oh, that's why it wasn't for me. Got it.

Oh, that's why I shouldn't have.

That's why I was encountering so much resistance, is because the universe wanted to give me this instead, totally allowing myself to hurt myself. It's like, you're running around scissors. And the universe is like, hey, stop running around scissors. And you're like, but I want to run around scissors.

What's the problem?

It's like, you're gonna fall and hurt yourself, but you don't know any of that until you trust your gut. There's actually science behind this, guys. We've proven that your gut, your body, or whatever you want to call it, this. This physical being that you have has so many more senses than the things that we think or understand or think we know subconsciously, consciously. And it makes 10,000 calculations in that. Mom. Give you the gut answer of this. Feels weird, bro. You should probably check in with that. If you Ignore all that, 250,000 years of evolution and DNA figuring it out so it could survive. If you ignore all that, do it at your own peril.

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Like, I trust my body and my intuition more than I do my mind, because there's some crazy. Like, my mind is so busy all the time, and it's. It's giving me a million different narratives, and it's like, if I was to figure it out on the logic level, I would be spinning my wheels all day long. But I'm like, let me drop into my body. Let me take a minute, and, like, really feel this out. And then I'll get. I'll get the answer, and I'll just go with it. And then I'm like, let's figure out why this was a good answer. Let's figure out why, you know, I made this decision. And the evidence of that good decision may not come until months, weeks, years later.

Yeah. And it's another layer to think about is Barry Goldstein wrote this great book called the Paradox of Choice. It's not about making the right decision at any given time. We're never gonna have all the answers. We're never gonna have all the information. In fact, the more we consider, the more upset we're gonna be ultimately with the choice that we ultimately make. Right? So he says, you know, don't consider a million decisions. Consider three options at any given time. Choose your best option. Right. Because one is not an option or one is not a choice. It's a. It's a mandate. Two is a dilemma. Should I, shouldn't I? Three is like, okay, I'm gonna pick the best of these three and no more. Ideally, get some recommendations on those three. If it's something complex, you don't have the skillset, and just make the decision to move on and then make the next decision. Next decision, next decision. You're trying to make enough decisions so that enough of them work out over time.

Yeah.

Where you win more than you lose. That's it. That's all it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just a valuable. Is as valuable a tool as any yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's. And I think when we separate the. How can I phrase this in the Right. When we separate, when we sever the connection between our worth and our output, then we set ourselves free. And what I mean by that. I'll break that down. Is like, my worth was so tied to my accomplishments on my accolades and how well my business did and yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, that I was so afraid to make mistakes because I thought it was a direct reflection on my worth. Now, when I severed that and I realized there are two completely different things. And, like, what I do or not do is not dependent or contingent upon how worthy I am or not am. And I completely separated them. I was like, wow, I can exist in this world and I can. I can totally make mistakes. And it's. It does not mean that I'm a fundamentally flawed person. And I think as early entrepreneurs, it's like, it's so important. It's like, it's everything. If I fail, then what's gonna happen? It's gonna mean something about me. It only means what we make it mean.

That's beautiful. And really, we're just meaning making machines.

Meaning making machines.

Stories become us. And if it's an empowering story, we become empowered. And if disempowering. Sorry, we become disempowered. And if you could just check in with yourself and just remove yourself from the story for just a minute just to be able to say, hey, is this serving me? Is this helping anybody? Or am I just in a black hole of despair right now? Whether it be food or business or anything, like, guys, human stuff. It's not that people have food problems. It's not that people have eating problems. It's not that people have business problems. They have life problems that show up in their food and they're eating and their business. So as soon as you can get hip to that and grok that and understand it, you'd be like, oh, okay, well, what do I need to work on in order to make all these other things just effortlessly fall in the line?

Yeah. Yeah. I think I've realized, like, 2017, like I said, was, like, a super intense year for me, and I got in my own way a lot. And 2018, I'm just.

How you failed. It's so fun.

Oh, man. Okay. So a lot of my failures this year, and don't get me wrong, like, one of our values in the company is fail forward. Like, we have meetings where we're like, hey, would. What'd you Fail on because it's like, if my employees are not failing, it means we're not moving forward. But, like, man, I failed hard this year in so many ways. And I celebrate that because I'm learning. So I hired someone who I think maybe would have met them, maybe not, who was exactly like me. We were identical, right? And I'm like, I like this person. She's just like me. I'm gonna hire her. So I took her on as my director of operations, and it totally failed because she wanted to be in the spotlight. She wanted to be the face of the brand. She wanted all these things. And so she was resenting me because deep down, it's what she wanted to do. And I had to get to a point where I was like, yeah, listen, like, I love you. And, like, there's not space for this here. Like, there isn't. Like, in, like, as much as Hungry for Happiness is growing and becoming its own thing, and it is still a personal brand, and it is still very attached to me. And so they're hiring for me was, like, such a. Like, I made some huge, huge mistakes in hiring this year, and that's okay. It was like, it made me realize, like, some of the people that need to be in the seats of my company are not necessarily the people that I'm gonna hang out with on a Friday night because we're just so fundamentally different. Maybe because culturally, it's a fit. Values wise, they're a fit, but they're not similar to me, and that's okay. And so, yeah, in that realm of hiring, I was like, I really had to do a lot of work. Realized as well, I am a fantastic leader and a sh. Tty manager. I can't manage people to save my life. Like, I'm either micromanaging the out of everyone, or I'm completely hands off. Like, I've struggled to find that balance, and I don't want it. Right. So I hired someone to manage the entire team, which has been brilliant, but just. Yeah, so many lessons like that this year.

Welcome back, gang. I had to swap out my headphones, and Sammy was talking about how she's failed this year. And one of the ways which she failed was she was the star of the show, which she's a star, total star. She talks about ideas to people. It's all she really should be doing. And she hired somebody just like her. Oh, I really like this person. She's just like me. It's gonna be great to have her in company. But now this person's the smoldering star. Right. This person's the resentful star, unfortunately wants to be Sam, and there's only one Sam in this show. So unfortunately, it wasn't gonna work, and she had to let that go. And that's okay. They could still hang out and have tacos on Tuesday nights, but they can't be in the same role in the same company at the same time. That's okay. What was the other way you felt that you talked about?

Gosh, well, what was the other example that I gave? Oh, just. Just with. With management. Like, I'm just a tear. I'm like a great leader, a terrible manager. So I've had. And I tried to be a manager when I'm not a manager, and I got myself in the weeds. I got frustrated. I got. I was getting super angry, and I'm like, okay, I got to get out of this. I need to hire a director of operations to be able to, like, help. Help manage, because it's not my strong suit. I want to lead. I want to be the visionary, of course. You know, I want to be out of the weeds.

So you need a really strong integrator to use the rocket fuel methodology.

Yeah, I literally. I read that book not so lingo.

It's really good. And I actually geek out on wealth dynamics and the star personality. That's one of eight types of entrepreneurial types. And the stars need, like, that deal maker agent to kind of, like, manage the flow because they're creating all this ideas, people, all this attention. That's you 100%, I can tell right now. And then they need that deal maker, but they also need that lord type. The person you never hang out with at the party, you never go and get tacos with this person, but they can run your business. And as long as you have the checks and balances in place and allow them to do that. Because where stars go wrong is to get the great deal maker or the great Lord. But the Lord and the deal maker are crooked, and they're not really actually playing fair. Like, Tony Robbins is a great example of that. This Tony Robbins originally had a company where he basically just hired two guys to go and run his business for him. He said, okay, I'm gonna go out and be on the road and I'm gonna do my Tony Robbins thing. It's all gonna be great, and it'll all work out. Unfortunately, came back to $750,000 in debt and thought he'd have to bankrupt the company. Even though he's making millions. It's all Going right back out the door. People were stealing. It wasn't clear. There weren't checks and balances. So there's two things you can never outsource, and this is a great lesson to take away is the marketing. Right. The message that you're putting out in the world and the checkbook. As a business owner, that's the two things you never really completely let go of, even when you have a cfo. Like, you need checks and balances.

Yeah.

You can do anything that, you know in a point, let's say somebody got their family kidnapped or somebody. Even if they had the highest moral integrity, when people are distressed and hurt, they do. They hurt other people and other organizations. That's just what happens. So that's a really important distinction is like, as a star, being that star, allowing yourself to be that star, but then having those checks and balances your business to make sure that, you know, the resources aren't misallocated or the people are not taken care of. And that's your responsibility. It's your name on the door.

So, yeah, dude, that's it. That's it.

So, Sammy, what would you really love to create in this world? Like, let's kind of zoom out a year from now, five years from now. What is it that you're moving towards? What's exciting on the horizon for you?

Oh, So what feels like, really active for me right now is through, like, being in this industry for so many years through my own development, through. I mean, like, I was listening to Tony Robbins tapes at 12 years old with my dad. You know, like, I've been immersed into this world of. For a long, long, long time. And I'm just in the personal development world. I'm seeing a lot of holes in it. I'm seeing a lot of, like, ways the industry is actually disempowering people versus empowering people. And so what I'm so excited about creating. The shift that I'm creating is first and foremost, the amalgamation between, like, weight loss is emotions and not diet. Like, that. That is, like, a huge, huge message that, like, I want to emerge through hunger for happiness. And we're doing a really good job doing it. So it's just taking. It's just like, there. There's more time. Like, you know, it's such an interesting thing because a lot of. A lot of the women that I talk to who come into our funnel through various ways, and we talk about, like, the whole, like, emotional piece of weight, they're like, I don't get it. What do you Mean, what do you mean? My emotions have to do with my weight? And I'm like, yeah, exactly. So it's not amazing conversation. Right. So my whole mission is to, it's two part, revolutionize the weight loss industry by helping people look at the emotional weight that they're carrying, that the physical weight of representing. So that's like a huge, huge piece of it. Like, I want to be like the weight watchers of like the Next Age. And then shifting the personal development industry to get rid of this whole notion of like, that there's a there. Like, when am I going to get there? Hey, Sam, am I there yet? When am I going to get there? And so my next book that's coming out is called Am I There Yet? Why Self Help Isn't Helping. And it's talking about, like, why we're marketing that. Like what people want is outside of themselves, which is not true.

I love that.

It's all like, we're all, we're there. We're all there. We just need to untangle and unblock. All of that is preventing us from fully being who we are at the core. Because at the core, every single one of us are beings of light and love. That's literally all we are. We just are. We're just tangled in these, like, this false beliefs and these stories and all this kind of stuff that is preventing us from truly landing in our souls.

I love that. And the lie of personal development, I've done enough of it to know is that there's always something wrong.

Yeah.

At the core of it, the reason that industry continues to persist and it does help people. It's helped me, it's helped you, but it keeps going. People get addicted to personal development and it's because they always feel like, oh, if I just do this, if I just become an NLP trainer, if I just become this, if I become that instead of just being more who they are and just accepting that this is who I am. Yes, I'm broken, but in these really cool ways that now are my. Also my superpowers, you know, that I can bring to the world. Like, I know I have a huge issue with blogging. I know it. It comes up all the time and it'll probably never go away.

Can we talk about it?

Yeah. And at the same time, I've connected so well with so many people around the world that I've been able to create the communities and do the things and have the impact that I'm doing.

I struggle with that. I struggle with that too.

Yeah, let's jam on belonging for a few minutes. Absolutely. How did your belonging story start? When I was six years old, I went out to play with the older kids and they line me up against the wall and kick me in the nuts as hard as they could for six, you know, until adults came and figured it out. When I was eight years old, I still wasn't great at making friends. So I spent every single day at recess on the swings, praying and hoping and wishing one day I would have friends all over the world. That's now true. So that five year old kid, six year old kid got his wish or eight year old kid or what the heck. It was when I was 16 or.

So.

I got into some crazy thing with the gang in my neighborhood and we beat up somebody and that got back to people at my other school. So it was like a weird kind of dichotomy like, you know, between my home life and my school life, private school versus crazy neighborhood with skinhead gangs and all the nonsense that comes along with that and drugs and alcohol. So getting involved in their stuff to belong kept me from belonging with the people who I really wanted to belong with over here because they associated me with that and it was my fault and I accept responsibility for that. And I'm no longer beating myself up for it took me a long time to admit that I was wrong, but that also created a lot of long issues because guess what? Nobody wanted to be my friend. Mmm.

So interesting. It's like we are just. We just crave connection and belonging so much. I think that's why a lot of us find ourselves in this community, because there is a enhanced, you know, it's like we can feel like we belong here.

Yeah. So how has belonging showed up in your life? Where does that stem from? You. Because you, you strike me as somebody not the same, but similar in your. You're wanting to connect with some people and some people don't get it. Some people are like cats and dogs people. I'm a dog person, you're a dog person.

We're like, yeah, yeah. And cat people, like, right, right, right.

I don't want anything to do with us. And we have to be like, okay, got it.

Yeah. It's so interesting because when I think back on my childhood, I. There. So there's a few. Yeah. So mine was like in dance. Right. So like I was really wanting to be in one dance class and I couldn't be in that dance class yet because I wasn't good enough to be in that dance class yet. And so I Was like, guys, I want to be in that dance class. I wasn't allowed to be in that, right? So there was that and then, and then like the popular girls at school, I'm like, I wanted to hang out with the popular girls at school. Like, why am I not a popular girl yet? And so it was always this, like. So then I would end up like lone wolfing and just being like, okay, well, I'm just gonna hang out on my own. And it's so funny because so there's like threads of that that still exists. And even though in my reality today it's so not an issue at all. It's like I have an abundance of belonging, community and all that kind of stuff. But it's like the little girl in me still fears that she's not going to belong one day. Right. It's so interesting. And it's, it's a lot of our mutual friends have like, recently gotten into relationships, right? And so it's like, oh, no, what if they leave? What if they go away? Oh my God, what's going to happen? Everyone's going to get.

What if they have babies? I'm never going to see them again. And oh my God, I don't have a relationship. But what's wrong with me?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. Yeah. So really hip to it. Yeah, hip to it. I'm hip to that. Yeah. Dude. So it's, it's. Belonging is such an interesting thing, right? And I think here's, here's a beautiful thing as well. It's like I'm clear and I know, like, the more I feel at home in my own body, the more my external dependency for belonging becomes non existent.

And it's really difficult, I've noticed in this community to take the time to drop in with people. As much as we all say, oh, we're gonna drop in. No, we're not. That doesn't actually happen. We numb ourselves out or cuddle or whatever the hell we do and no actual connection is being made. Which is one of the reasons I love actually interviewing the people. Like, if I just saw you and we hung out and had tacos, we wouldn't have had this conversation. I wouldn't have learned all these things about you. I come away knowing more about you. With this hour just, we're dialed in. This is all we got going on in the world. And we can serve more people in our communities by doing it. It's just leverage on leverage on leverage and it's depth on depth on depth.

Absolutely.

So I'm just grateful for that experience with you, Sam, and thank you for being who you are in the world. I always knew you were rad, but I didn't know why exactly. And now I kind of understand, you know, it's. You have a similar path and journey that I have had. And I just want to acknowledge you, I want to say how grateful I am for you and I want to continue to support you whatever way I can. And one of the ways I can do that right now, here and now, is on the Make More Morals podcast. We believe in collaboration over competition. We believe in connecting people to the resources, the opportunities, the people and systems that they need to move their mission forward faster. So some of the things you talked about were your book upcoming, your bigger journey to be, you know, the Weight loss Weight Watchers next big movement around emotions versus logic and eating. What are some of the ways that you know, because you know your business better than anybody, that we can do that for you? Anybody listening? Myself, Team Anybody?

Yeah. I think the biggest thing is my whole mission again is to like really revolutionize the weightless industry. And so the best way of doing that is through a program called the Society, which is our six month group coaching program. And I've designed it in a way where I'm super clear, like transformation occurs when intimacy, connection and support are like, at its highest. And so I've created an environment where women feel seen, supported, loved and acknowledged for like, the journey that they're on. And so, yeah, we're like, come hang out with us. Come check us out. It's where Hungry for happiness pretty much everywhere on the Internet.

I love it. Hungryforhappiness.com if somebody wants to get in touch with you specifically, how do they do that? Are you open to connections?

I'll give you my phone number. I'm just kidding.

I don't recommend that. Carrier pigeons, smoke signals, pony express riders, People give out emails, people give out social handles.

Yeah. So I'm very active on Instagram. So it's, SamanthaSkelley is my personal Instagram. And I, I love writing poetry and I love sharing my, you know, my thoughts through poetry on the Internet. And so I do that on my, on that Instagram. So I answer all of my direct messages myself. And so if you have any questions about anything, feel free to hit me up on there.

Right on. That's a M A N T H A S K E L L Y. And that's how you get in touch with Sammy. Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. Skull Dog, the Skill Witch. I love it. Awesome. We're have to grab tacos again soon. Thank you so much for being just an incredible firebrand, a bundle of energy supporter and a creator of the ultimate magnitude out there in the world. And I know that even if we have very different missions in the world, that you're out there doing it right and you're one of the Avengers whether you like it or not. You're in the club now.

Woohoo. I'm in. I'm in.

Love it. Marble Makers making marbles.

I so so so appreciate it has been such a fun conversation.

Awesome. Thanks so much for listening to the Make More Marbles podcast. For more tips, hacks and strategies to create an amazing abundant life in your health, wealth and relationships. Whatever that means to you, head on over to makemoremarbles.com check out our cool explainer video about what we're about and join our community of entrepreneurial game changers. We want to help you level up your life in every possible way. And don't forget to subscribe to us on it itunes, Stitcher or Google Play wherever you're listening to your podcast. And please do leave a review. Thank you so much and we'll see you on the next podcast.