This YouTube interview (Capability Amplifier) features host Mike Koenigs and guest Sheri Salata discussing Salata’s non-linear career path—from working at 7-Eleven to joining the Oprah Winfrey Show at age 35 and later becoming an executive producer—and her reinvention as an author and podcast host. Major themes: the difference between producing/transmitting transformational content and being personally transformed; the pitfalls of grand, unsustainable goals versus daily small practices (walks, hydration, mindfulness); observations about authenticity in the personal-development industry and the desire to cultivate self-love as a foundation for stable well-being.
Chapters
There is no question that the fastest way to transformation in your own life, to how you feel about yourself, to how you feel about your partner, how you feel about your friends and family, to how you feel about your life, your home, your everything, is to slip on a pair of magical glasses and lead with what is working, what's positive, what's sparkly and what's shiny. And here's why. That ignites the transformation of how you view something. And once you start igniting that transformation of how you view something, your actual experience of that person, of that thing, changes. It is the simple practice, though not so simple. You have to really focus to do it. That creates outcomes.
Welcome to the Capability Amplifier, the show for business owners and entrepreneurs who want high performance upgrades for their brains, bodies and bank accounts. Thursday morning, 100 pounds overweight, no man in sight. And rounding the bend, 57 years old, a full blown catastrophe. Today's guest on Capability Amplifier is Sherry Salata. She did a 20 year stint at the Oprah Winfrey Show, Harpo Studios and the own network as a producer and she's dedicated decades to her dream job and loved almost every minute of it. But she's also author of the Beautiful no and Other Tales of Trial, Transcendence and Transformation. Thank you for being here, Sherry. And nice to see you. Hi. Hi.
I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
It's my pleasure. So I think the way and I want to continue sort of the momentum just from the intro because I love the story and how you open this up. But you went from working at 7:11 to becoming an executive producer at Oprah, working behind the camera to leaving the show to reinvent yourself, write this best selling book and become the host of your podcast show. Tell us a little bit about your journey. I think that's a good place to start.
Oh, my goodness. Well, it was not a straight shot by any means. And I think that when people Hear about a 20 year career with Oprah Winfrey, it sounds like I just left college and sailed on right into Harvard Studios and started climbing up the ladder. But the truth is I did not start at the Oprah Winfrey show until I was 35 years old in an entry level position. So that should give hope to lots of people.
It does. And that was one of my big takeaways because I actually sat down and I burned through the book and I read it. And what you've really done is first of all encapsulated your own life in a super genuine, authentic way. But it certainly is Representative of anyone who hits their 40s or 50s, men and women included, definitely. This feels like a woman's book in a lot of ways. I love the way it's framed, although I think it's important that men read it to really understand their spouses, their mates and women they work with. Because psychologically, what you went through and experienced is intense. But to get really focused and to drive to a question, you've spent your life in a lot of ways focused on makeovers, reinventions, and then here you are reinventing yourself. And you know, it's not like you had to do it from a business perspective. You had to do it for you. So talk a little bit about just that authentic journey that you went on as a result of this.
Well, Mike, it's the great paradox that I had a seat to some of the world's foremost wisdom keepers of our time. There was no dearth of information. I had all the information. I had information coming out my ears. I had notebooks. I'm an A student man. I had notebooks filled with the latest information and advice and tips and all the best living kinds of things. But like so many people in the transformational world, it's one thing to produce transformation, another thing to write about transformation, another thing to market transformation and then to be transformed. They're very, very different things. And it isn't about a lack of authenticity. What it is is that turn that must be made where you take that information and let it root in your bones and you kind of simplify what transformation really is. Like, you know, now I see that some of my grandiosity, like I'm going to summit the mountain and then I do it for six months and then I do nothing. I'm go run half marathons and I trained for eight months and then nothing. And what I realized in all of those big grand plans and schemes and programs and all of that, there inherently was kind of a self sabotage thing going on that, you know, when you make it so high and so difficult that oftentimes you really are setting yourself up for failure. And I think it wasn't until I could clear my calendar and clear my mind and really take a very honest, tender look at what I'd created in my life where I could see that, oh, Sherry, Sheri, Sherry. It is those little things. It's a glass of water, it's a walk around the block. It's five minutes of mindfulness. And I would just always dismiss those things because I was making big things happen.
That is so consistent. And you And I know a lot of the same people. And you talked about them in the book. Deepak was always a regular. One person that we had in common was Debbie Ford. She had cancer while I had cancer. She was my guide while I went through that experience. We both know Jack Canfield. And one thing that Jack has been very, very open about and very transparent is the fact that most people in personal development, their personal lives are usually a wreck. If it's not them, it's their friends, marriage, it's their children. Jack and had an amazing journey with his own son. And again, he's been very. I don't feel like I'm betraying him at all by talking about this, but. And like you say, it's the start, stop, start, stop, which is always looking for the quick fix. There seems to be a high degree of addiction that runs inside the personal development space, no matter what it is, whether it's food or whatever. But, you know, when you as a producer, you got to see behind the scenes. And I'm curious what your experience was. Just observing what was real in front of the camera versus what wasn't real behind the camera. How did that affect you?
Well, my observances, you know, weren't super detailed. So, you know, there were times when I. When I would notice some behavior and I'd be like, hmm, that seems inconsistent. And then there were times, like, for instance, you mentioned Deepak, who I love and adore. And mostly I love and adore him because he is who he is. Who he is. Who he is. Whether he and I are having a chat, you know, somewhere in a forest, or whether he is on stage speaking to thousands and thousands of people. He's Deepak. And I like that so much about him, and I respect that so much. You know, I think. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why it's so hard for us to take care of ourselves. I mean, that. That really is. Like, do we need to excavate to get to that. That love place where we understand that there's nobody on this earth that should be loving us more than us? Nobody. Because all of a sudden, when we're in that place and we've made that decision and we select and inhabit the practices in our daily lives that juice that up, that love of self. When we do that, everybody else in our lives is off the hook. Nobody has to make us happy, Nobody has to behave a certain way for us to feel that all is right with the world, we're in alignment with ourselves. And that is my current dream right now, is to be in that place 80% of the time.
I hear you on that. And that's something that you and I were talking about before we started rolling today, is as we go through life and we accomplish professionally what we accomplish, and so often there's the wreckage, as I like to say. Someone said something like, you know, when someone big with a big personality goes through the forest, there's always a lot of timber left behind. There's bodies lying in the street, and it's sort of like your own soul is one of those bodies and what you give up to accomplish and succeed. I'm curious for you, which I didn't see in the book specifically, but you talk a lot about in the book about how you. You were just a big driver and you did everything right, but you weren't rewarded as one of the pretty girls, for example.
Right.
I'm curious from a psychological perspective right now, what your observation again of working with so many big personalities, and now you're. You're really reaching.
