Sacred Business Stories with Jacqueline (Mama J) Hollows

And hey, AJ for anyone joining us, welcome to Sacred Business Stories. This is our weekly substack live where we have an honest conversation with creators about what it looks to create a business that's aligned with their deepest truth. And I'm going to let her introduce herself here in a little bit, but today we are joined by Jacqueline Mama J. Palos, is it okay if we just refer to you as Mama J from this point out for this conversation? Awesome. So for those of you that are not familiar with her work, she helps social entrepreneurs to thrive by creating more impact and income without burnout. And I'll let her tell. We've had an opportunity to connect with her prior to this, and I just found her story fascinating, so I'm really excited to have her share it. She has a book called what is it? It's Wing or Wings of an Angel.

Winger and Angel. Yeah.

And, yeah, a lot of her story that I found really interesting around her work in the prison system for 10 years. And so, yeah, we'll give it a couple minutes here while people join.

Yeah. I'm so excited. Sorry. I'm so excited to have you here, and I'm so excited about, like, you sharing your story. And actually, like, the goal when we started doing those, like, sacred business talk stories is, like, there are, like, so many cool stories behind each business. Right. That we don't know. We, like, we know once the business is there and it's already born and, like, how we call our business and how we, like, we've been treating, like, the sacred business. It is a combination of everything that you are and all your chapters in your life and all your experiences and all your gifts. And when we had the conversation with you, I'm like, holy. Like, that's so, so awesome. That, like, and. And it's just, like, an opportunity for people to feel inspired because often, like, we had, like, oh, I had this chapter in. In your case, like, working at, like, prison system, and then I was teaching here, and then I was doing this here, and then we don't know how to combine it all and bring that forward. And. And I think, like, what you're creating right now, you're kind of like, you know, you. You in a beautiful way, like, being able to, like, yes, this is me, and, like, my business is me.

Right?

Like, this is. This is who I am. So it's. It's just beautiful. And I'm very excited for people to get to know you more.

Oh, a lot of hype there. I hope I live up to it. Good job there's only two people on here, but it is tr.

Hey, Josh. Hey, Diane. Thanks for joining us. Alexander. For those of you just joining again, this is Sacred Business stories. And today we're joined by Mama J, who at this point I would love to open it up to you and just let you share kind of your story, how we got here. Yeah, anything that, that comes to mind that you'd like to share with our audience.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I am ridiculously nervous. Not really, not really know why I'm nervous, but I'm really happy to be here. I loved connecting with you both previously.

So.

Yeah, so I'm Mama J. I'm. I'm also known as Jacqueline Hollows. Mama J was a nickname that was given to me by some of the guys that I worked with in prison. So roughly 10 years ago, I started a social enterprise sharing a, an understanding of how our mind works and how people can experience change from the inside out. And I started in prison and I had no previous work in prison, no experience, no experience in mental health even. And I was, I was in it. I always say that I'm a recovering project manager and I was doing that, you know, for most of my life and most of my education is based in that and career around that. And then, and then all of a sudden I had this, well, a calling, really. A calling. And it just found me. And, and it found me. I'll tell you a little story of how it found me because since I've come into the digital space, by the way, in prison, they're like pre 1950, computer wise. So, so there's nothing, you know, and, and, and since then, in the last couple of years, since I meant Cinem and, and Philip, I've come more into the digital space and looking at what I can create digitally. What I've, what I've noticed is there's a lot of talk about niche and a lot of talk about, you know, your client avatar and things like that. My experience is your niche finds you. You follow the nudges of life and your niche finds you. You don't necessarily know where you're going to end up working or how you're going to end up working. And that's what happened for me. I was volunteering for a recovery organization from a guy I worked with who was recovering drug addict and I was volunteering for him creating a film. And I walked into a park and I was interviewing people about their experience of this event that we were running. And I walked into this park. It was a beautiful September day in the UK and the park was just drenched in sunshine. And there were people in all different stages of recovery and addiction in this park. And at that time, I would say that I had very little knowledge of spiritual stuff. And I had this incredible experience of love. I literally felt drowned in love. And I loved these people. And I thought, I love these people. I have to help them, I have to work with them. I don't know how, I don't know why, I don't know how I'll get paid for that. But it just was so compelling. And that very day, not surprising probably to you guys, I met some poor bloke who was very shy, a real introvert. And I just started telling him, it's amazing, life works like this and pouring out stuff that I really didn't understand myself, but was all almost coming through me. And he was a psychologist and he was working in the recovery, addiction recovery field. And he said, I don't understand what you're talking about, but you need to come and talk to my group. And he actually died during COVID But for the next few years, I helped him in his group. I. I went and talked about this thing that I didn't even understand what I was saying. And. And honestly, honestly, I had. I didn't even know what an insight was to me. I wasn't a person who has insights. You know, I didn't know what a sort of spiritual awakening was. I didn't know. I didn't know any of that stuff. I've been in it the whole of my life behind a computer. And it just hit me. Whatever this was just hit me. And I followed that feeling. I followed the feeling of, I want to work with these people. And then I ended up doing volunteering for 18 months, helping people in recovery and thinking, they're amazing. I love them. You know, like, this is true. This thing that says life is created from the inside out.

And.

The teaching that I do is called the three principles. I didn't believe in the three principles until I met them. They. These people taught me because I kept thinking, they're so amazing, but they don't know. And, yeah, I can see the stigma in the world, but they're. They're doing their stigma as well. They're holding themselves back. And one day I thought, well, if they're all amazing, maybe I'm amazing too. So they actually taught me, right? So I didn't come into this thinking, yeah, I'm great and I'm good to go. I just came in very naively and Very innocently, just following a passion and following a feeling. I later found out that it was an insight that I had in the park. I didn't know that, but I later found out that that was a shift and an insight and a sort of awakening, if you like. But pretty much I've been following that ever since. That led me to prison and to work with prisoners up and down all over the uk. Actually, also in South Africa, I worked in a. I did one day workshop in a prison and it led me to speaking on stages around the world. Like, I've been literally all over the world, even Singapore, to speak about the work that I'm doing. And I was someone who was petrified of public speaking. So I really feel like the inspiration to me is just do what comes to your mind and you sort of find your way and you stumble and it's difficult and nobody knows what they're doing to start off with, but you, you just find your way through it and then you get better at it and then you discover. You discover things that you don't even know. A good friend of mine talks about, instead of smart goals, have learning goals, you know, because when we follow smart goals, smart goals tell us, help us to operate with what we already know. We try and create something with what we already know. Whereas learning goals mean that we learn what we don't know yet and we move through life like that. I've probably gone on a little bit there. Sorry.

That'S so cool. And I don't know if you ever heard a saying, and sometimes I do some notes in relationship to that, because we often say, and you will understand why I'm bringing that up because you just explained that concept in such a beautiful way that the business chooses you and not you choosing the business. And it's like, just. And I don't know, like. And sometimes I'm like, I don't know if people understand when I say that. And I don't know, like, you know, but the description you had, it was just so perfect. And I don't think it's like the same with everyone that you're gonna have like the one moment that, like, oh, I, you know, that that's what I'm gonna feel. But every single business, when you decide to share your gifts, when you decide to like, follow that feeling and like, oh, I have this in here and, and now. And I had this idea and I had this thought, like, and this is what I call. We call like sacred business is this thing of like, hey, that energy was already there. Just waiting for a human being in a way to get all the experiences, all the certifications and all, you know, all was that was required to become the perfect vessel to bring that into life. And the way you described the way your transformation and you, like, oh, I had no idea. Like, I never really thought of, like, working with these people or, you know, like, it's just so beautiful. And I just hold this pace for more and more and I think that's why we are doing this, because I would love people to be watching this and sometimes we don't share this with anyone. We just keep for ourselves because we can't really explain because it doesn't make any sense, but if they could watch this and like, oh, I had this feeling too, and I had this experience too, and I had this desire to just using those sacred business stories to give other people permission to do what you did, you know, and just follow that for me is like a huge, huge win. So, yeah, thank you so much for, like, sharing this way. It was so beautiful, the description and then how you keep following it and it's how it's leading you to a place that maybe you don't fully know where you're going. Right. And we. I don't. I don't know where I'm going, but it's. I'm being led to the same energy in a way. So.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's. That's exactly. It's what's happening now. And we get. You know, I got caught in the idea that I was the prison lady, that people used to know me as the prison lady. And, And I got, I. I got caught in that Persona and did a lot of good work and, and pioneered research. And there's so many things that sort of Jacqueline Hollows, if you like, and you get lost in that and you think that's the thing. And so. But actually, you know, humility always finds you again. And humility found me. And, you know, in the last couple of years, that isn't what I'm meant to be doing. And eventually I, I woke up to that again and, and eventually, like the new business, the impact activator, which is helping the social entrepreneurs that you mentioned at the be that came through and as I started listening again, then that was. It's so alive. And I love what you said, Carolina, because people ask me, like, oh, where will this go? And, you know, I'm a big thinker. Like, I have a big vision. I'm a big thinker, and I, I can imagine all sorts of amazing things. For this product. But the truth is, I don't know it. This may be alive for the next five years. This may be alive for the rest of my life. This may be leading me to something else, but you have to just embrace what comes fully and wholeheartedly and. And. And go with it. And then that leads you to wherever next. And you really never know, which is why you can. I don't. I don't have attachment, you know, like people say, oh, you know, what will. What will a good job look like? You know? Well, I. I don't know, because I just got to do what's in front of me and what makes sense and what's alive. And then by following that, people will come along in that. In that energy. Somebody said it really well yesterday is that when you're vibrating at that sort of level, the resources and things that you need come along, and then when you notice that you are struggling or hitting a wall or that's the time to stop and walk away and just go, okay, where am I now? And, you know, don't you. You get the feeling of, no, okay, I just need time out or, no, there's something that that's missing here. I don't know, something. Or I haven't met somebody yet, or whatever it is. And so you get to know by tuning into that wisdom and tuning into that guide, which never puts you wrong.

Absolutely, yes.

Yeah. I just loved what you said there a second ago because it really resonated. One of my teachers that I admire the most in this world is Michael Singer, who wrote the Surrender Experiment. There's a quote. You may be familiar with it, but it's just reminded me of what you said where he said. What did he say? My formula for success was simple. Do whatever is put in front of me. Put it in front of you with all of your heart and soul, without regard for personal results. And, yeah, do the work as it was given to you by the universe itself, because it was. And that's like. Yeah, that's one of my favorite quotes of his of all time. And what you said. Yeah. Totally reminded me of that. And so, yeah, it's very, very well said. I love that. Yeah.

Yeah. And also, like, for me, like, I wasn't always like that, but this thing of, like, just doing what is put in front of you and just taking the next step. I feel that it's when we think before, like, and going back, thinking about myself, like, I was someone, like, very well, like, I could plan my whole year. I could, like, I'm Gonna manifest this. And I had like, you know, and, and at one point, like when you choose those things, when you choose this feeling, this is, it doesn't work this way. You can't just like. And it's a very, it's very challenging for the mind to like, well, like, I, I don't know what's going to happen in, I don't know, one year, five years, like, or next month. And, and we almost feel that we are like wrong until you like, hey, there's nothing better than just to be dealing with what is in here. And of course having the vision and you know, and, and planning to a certain extent. But it's a, it's a challenging transition for the mind. But once you do it, there's no way you can go back and like, like how boring it is. If I could predict like the next 10 years of my life and before I was very happy that I could predict the 10 years of my life. But it's, it's so much life that comes when you just like, yeah, this is what it is. This is what it is. And yes. So, so beautiful.

Yeah.

Oh, well, the next question we'd love to ask you about, and I'm curious, maybe, maybe you could connect it with what we shared about the public speaking. Because that's actually something that I've struggled with for most of my career. But you mentioned that you were kind of deathly afraid of it or something. Something like that. And something that we talk about with our audience a lot is this idea that it's perfectly normal fear and resistance to doing the things that, you know are going to kind of carry you forward with your meaningful work. Like maybe even being on a substack life like something like this. But I would love to ask you, like, where. Yeah, maybe you could share a little bit about what that journey was like and how that shifted, but also like bringing it to the present. Like, are there areas right now that fear and resistance are showing up for you as you take this work forward? And how do you, how do you work with that on a, on a day to day basis? That would be great to hear.

Yeah. So there's a, there's a book where they say and death came third. It's called so people. They, they measured what people are afraid of and they're. The third thing on the list was death and the first thing was public speaking. So people are more afraid of public speaking than death itself. And I'd read that book and I was truly, truly, truly afraid. And not just afraid, completely paralyzed. So in the, in the examples that I had pre, I literally would shake. I lost a job opportunity. I couldn't speak very loudly, you know, it was, I was just completely useless. I couldn't do it. It was absolutely awful. I would rather die. And one day, and I wasn't even doing the prison work. I didn't even know the prison work existed. It wasn't in my consciousness at this point. But I was doing the recovery work. And I drove home and I parked on my drive and I had this thought, you're going to be speaking in front of thousands of people. And by, by this time I was aware that you get, you get these thoughts, you know, their insights or whatever. Anyway, I said, oh, you've got the wrong person. No, it's not me. And I was like, well, how would that even happen? Like, who would these thousands of people be? You know, like, I have no idea. You've clearly got the wrong person. Anyway, it kept occurring to me as a thing and I thought, well, and that's what I do say to people. Insight isn't necessarily like this. Sometimes it can be horrible. You think, no, I don't want to do that. But anyway, it kept occurring to me and I know by now, oh, this must be a thing. So I'm just going to have to like, you know, do something about this. And at that time I thought, well I, I better get a bit of training then. So I, I did a, a day's workshop and I was going to business networking events. So I started like offering to do a little five minute talk and things like this. Now I have to say all of the, I hated all of them. It was, it was really horrible. But what happened was. And I, this is how I deal with fear and resistance. Now heart led entrepreneurs often think that resistance is. Means you shouldn't do it. But resistance is just the growth. I think I've heard you talking about this, Carolina. Yeah, Resistance is just showing you there's an area for growth here. It's not, it's not a sign. Don't do that. That's, that's a clean, there's a cleaner cut. The signs, aren't they, They're a bit cleaner than just resistance. So what I did was I thought, well, sorry, so those workshops, those, those five minute talks and everything, they helped me clear away a bit of the clutter. Like what was I really scared about what was going to happen to me really? And I had nothing on them. You know, I just thought, yeah, like, I'm just not very good at this. And then one day I went to a women's network event and I thought, I'm just going to tell them a story. And it's the first time. So previously I'd go with all my notes, you know, and I'd be reading from my notes and be trying to learn things and whatever. And that day I told a story about learning the piano. And it was about a 20 minute talk or no, 10 minutes. And at the end I had a queue of people wanting to talk to me. And I knew then, oh, people just want to hear stories. I can do that. And it was, it was a complete game changer. Now, I still, I mentioned it to you before. I still get nervous, I still have fear, still have anxiety. I did something called the Wisdom Entrepreneurs for about five years monthly zoom. And before each one, for at least a year, I would go, why am I doing this? It's going to be terrible. No one's going to come. What am I talking about? But I've learned that these things come up to me. I would say they're just ego. They're just ego trying to protect me. That's trying to stop me from growing. It's trying to keep me small because it doesn't want me to be hurt. So it's doing its best. It's not a bad thing. It's just doing its best to look after me. But I don't have to listen to it. And if I can, if I can say, okay, I got you, I hear you, I hear you, ego. Thank you, that's, that's helpful. Let me just try this and let's just see what will happen. Then I, I find a way through. And it can be as simple as I was thinking about this earlier. It can be as simple as there was. There's an email that's been sat in my inbox for about two weeks at least that I haven't answered yet. And this is a bit of a habit, It's a bit of a hold habit of mine that I've actually, I'm actually better at now. And this morning I thought, just answer the email. Just, just do it. Just answer the email. Because I'm getting more angst about the fact that it's in my inbox than I will if I just answered it. So, you know, like, just get through the resistance and answer it in the same way that when I go out walking, I do power walking. And then she goes, right, now it's time to speed up. And I think, oh, I'm already going past. It's just that resistance. And then you move through the resistance, and then you find this inner strength in all of those examples that carries you. And I don't believe you're ever given anything that you can't do and that you can't learn from. And. And then when you just move through the resistance, actually, the other side is. Is beautiful. And. And I've, as I say, I've spoken all around the world, so, you know, like, what a. What an opportunity that was. If I hadn't gone over that, I wouldn't have been to all these beautiful countries and experienced all these things.

Yeah, it's so powerful. Like, I. It's similar the way I. I deal with fear. And for me, kind of what you said, like, fear and resistance is just an invitation to know more of who I am, but I haven't had the opportunity to be in touch with before. And that's why you're like, oh, you know. But then for me, like, the. The number one thing is curiosity. You didn't use this word, but that's exactly what you said. Right? Like. And I have this. That I'm like, who am I, this other side of whatever, you know, who am I the other side? Like, I want to know who I am. If I just go through that direction and just do it. Right? Just like, yeah, just do it. Yeah, yeah. It's very powerful. And you are absolutely right. Like, the amount of energy that we waste thinking about it, it's not even close. I would dare to say that, like, I don't know, it's like that if you're just doing it would be like 1% of all the waste of you thinking about how we should be creating the scenarios or avoiding the pain or not wanting to feel the resistance. It's so much energy that could be just then used for, like, do it and moving forward.

Yeah, exactly. I'll tell you a quick story on the prison front is. So I'd had this insight that I wanted to work in prison when I was sat in the reception of a prison. And I thought, I want to work here. I have no idea why I want to work here, but I do. And anyway, there was a story about that and I ended up working there. And it takes a few months. And we were actually trained to have keys so we could go in and we could draw keys, which meant that I was more autonomous with my team, so I didn't have to wait for someone to escort me. So it's a massive training and you get. You get taught all about how people can create, like, A knife, they call them shanks out of a pen and a toothbrush and how people will use Blu Tack to copy keys. And there's so much. But also you get told about how they. What to do if they take you hostage and what to do if you find someone. This comes with a bit of a warning, everybody, but what to do if you find somebody who's tried to hang themselves in their cell. And so you literally, you start work and you're petrified. And I was there on my first day in prison and I had my little clipboard and I was, I was absolutely petrified because during that weekend, this was obviously pre covered. Oh, they'd all been locked up. There was a funny noise. Then they'd all been locked up longer than usual. And so everybody was banging their plastic cups against the, the railings and. And then they let them out and then there were all these men half dressed, jumping over the railings, running around, all a bit feral. And I thought, it's like the tv. I mean, it was wild. It was literally wild. And you have your clipboard and you're not allowed to let anyone in on your clip who's not on your clipboard. Is this okay? Shall I carry on with this story?

Yes, please. This is like.

So I'm standing there, I've got all my kit on and I've got my clipboard and I'm literally petrified. I'm thinking, I don't know what I'm doing here. Why am I even here? This doesn't make sense. And this big man comes up, had a tattoo on his neck, shaved head, very scary to me. And he said, can I come in? And I said, oh, you know, what's your name? And he told me his name and he wasn't on the list. So the rule is you don't let anyone in who's not on your list. And I looked at him and I looked at my list. I said, yeah, because I didn't want to say no. And he said, I just want to see the chicks. And chicks in the UK is slang for women. It's a slang word for women. And what happens is all the prison officers line up outside when the men are moving around to make sure that no one escapes. And I thought, oh, he wants to look out the window so that he can see the parade ground where all the female prison officers are. I said, oh, okay. Because I didn't know what else to say. And he went to the window and he. And I had my flip chart in front of it and he Moved my flip chart. And the bars on the window are, like, this far apart from each other, really. Like, you could barely see out, but what you can see is barbed wire and junk. You know, it's not very pleasant. And on the window ledge was a nest with dove eggs. And the doves had been coming and nesting, and he wanted to see if the eggs had hatched. He wanted to see the chicks. And he was getting out in a week, and he said, I just wanted to see if, you know, I'm really hoping that they hatch before I get out. I've been. He'd been trying to feed the. The doves through the window with his bread from his dinner. And I don't even remember this man's name, but what I always say to people is, he saved me. He saved the projects because I saw how much invisible thinking I had about the very people I wanted to work with, how much judgment I had, how much I had been influenced by the media, et cetera. I had a ton of invisible judgment and insecurity that I hadn't been aware of. And he completely broke that. So, you know, earlier when I said, your humility always finds you, you know, immediately then I was like, okay, I know nothing. I'm here to learn. I'm not here to teach.

Wow. I have. Yeah.

You just gave me chills as well. Beautiful, beautiful story. Yeah.

And if we don't. I'm not suggesting that people go and work in prison, but if we don't allow ourselves to go there and to experience that, we can't come out the other side. And out of the other side is. Is just so amazing. We talk about. My book, Wing of an angel, follows the arc of the hero's journey. I'm the hero, and they're the hero because I experienced as much transformation as they did.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just, like, we don't realize until we do how many preconceptions we have, and then that guides us. Like, it affects our physiology. Then you're operating entire flight. You're not even your creative mold, and then you don't even know. Right. Like, you're still not aware of those things. And just taking, like, such a beautiful situation to, like, it makes me, like, think about, like, what are those simple opportunities on our daily life? Because, as I said, like, you don't need to go to prison. But how many preconceptions we have that we don't even realize? And we just rock, like, feeling proud and I've got this or whatever it is that maybe, like, you know, simple things could just like sending signals. Signals for us. We're like, yay. It could be different, you know, like, look this to this thing again, like a fresh eyes. And thank you for that.

And yeah, before we continue, how are you on time, Mama J? We have like one other area we'd love to explore with you, but we're a little over, so. Are you still good?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cool. Awesome. Well, the last thing that we had on our list that we like to ask people is about connection. Right. And so being here on Substack, obviously this has been a huge opportunity and a very rich, rewarding experience for us, but I feel like it's something many people struggle with that come into our community asking, how do you create these meaningful connections as you're trying to share what you do, share your voice in the world. So I'd love to hear how you approach connection. And yeah, like, what advice would you give? Maybe one tip. Maybe it's just a general theme, like something that you might offer to someone who is trying to put themselves out there more and share from an authentic place more consistently.

Yeah, nice. Nice question. So what comes to mind is to talk about. Keep keeping things simple. So. So, you know, simply reaching out, simply talking about one thing that you're very passionate about, simply engaging in posts that appeal to you, keeping it as close to who you really are and. And. And what you want. And if you don't know who you really are and what you want and it's a feeling. So when you see a note or a post or a group of people that you think, oh, yeah, I get that. I get that. Which is what happened for me with you guys. I was like, I want to be in their gang. Like, I understand them. I know exactly what they're talking about. And there's a lot of people that I don't get that I don't understand that don't make sense. Well, you don't have to hang out. That's the great thing about Substack in particular, is that you don't have to hang out with those people. And I found that the more I can be just very clear, the more I reach the people that I need to reach. So I've been on Substack since September. I've been a little bit higgledy piggledy, talking about all sorts of different things and so on. I wasn't sure, and I've only just recently become sure of what I'm doing and I'm finding my way of talking about that. And I think you just have to experiment, see who connects with you and, and have those meaningful conversations. This is, this platform, in my experience, and I've been on a lot of platforms, is the most honest in terms of you can connect real with real people and you can say real things. You can say when you're struggling, you can say when you've had a win, you know, it's, it's all good. And I think if you just talk about that in, in a simple way. Not insider, insider language. One of the things I teach on our program is that we. How to talk about what you do without scaring people off. Because we all have our insider language, don't we, that we use and that nobody else really understands what it is. So if you are connected, if you have a thing that you do you want to share or writing that you want to share or whatever it is, just do it in the simplest language as if you were talking to someone in a coffee shop. And engage as much as possible with the people that you like engaging with. And then you'll find. And even if I see a lot of posts about not going, you know, not being able to go viral, not being able to have this many subscribers or whatever, like that doesn't matter, that's, that's not how we're measured. Don't worry about that. I love the heart. Like the hearts are all coming. I love the hearts, but I'm not going to measure my worth by the hearts. If I talk to one person and one person walks away feeling more inspired, better about their life, whatever, that's it, job done, you know, purpose, purpose complete. I can just go and hang out in coffee shops for the rest of the day. Today I went to a supermarket and in this supermarket, when you shop, you can get a coffee at the end. And we were queuing up for the coffee, then needed to replace the beans, etc, and there was a little queue, wasn't very big, and I put my sweatshirt on and on the back of my sweatshirt it says to the person behind me, the world is a better place with you in it from the person in front of you. And as I put it on, I was aware of this very fidgety woman who was like completely agitated that she had to wait for the beans. And I put it on because I was cold. But as I was aware of her and I heard like I felt her and I heard her sort of go, oh. And without even turning around, I just did this and I said, I put this on for you. And she said, thank you so much. I so needed that today. And then we had this lovely, beautiful connection and conversation. That's how easy it is. Just being present and sharing where you're at with somebody can be enough. And just don't worry about all the rest of it, the metrics and the posting once a week and all of that. Do that. If you find that useful and fun and interesting and you want to go there, that's great. But the true, meaningful present connections is what counts.

Yeah, I love that. And it can be so easy to kind of get swept away and all that thinking and when you're busy and you have all these other things going on and people are being like, you must post this many times and this time of day and all of this. And like, for me, I find it's very important. And I, and I catch myself sometimes when I'm going into that automatic mode and like just to kind of sit down and just like breathe for a second and remember, like, hey, like the whole point here is we're trying to connect, as you said, on a one on one basis with people. And like, if we can't express in a way that creates that real connection, then why are we, why are we here in the, in the first place? Like, especially in this age of AI and all this, like, you know, a machine can just spit out all this content. So like just trying to. And to me that's like an energy thing really, like just really trying to center the energy around the meaning behind this and why we're here. And I love something, I think you might know Landon, but Landon was one of our guests a couple, couple weeks ago. And I love part of the conversation we had and he was talking about especially like in this space of change, work or transformation, there's a lot of topics that people aren't so willing to share publicly. And so like, that was one of the things we were talking about is like if you're doing anything that's kind of in this space that people have any sort of awkwardness or apprehension about being public with, oftentimes either you don't even know how much your impact is being felt by people, or these conversations that are the most, for me, the most rewarding are the ones that are showing up kind of behind the scenes, like in a private message or something like that. So, yeah, that's advice that I often share too, which is like trying to really separate, you know, separate yourself from that, thinking around, like, how many people are watching, how many people are liking all that sort of stuff. So, so yeah, thank you for.

And you never know when you have an impact. I'll just tell you this quick story because I have got a lot of prison stories. So I, I used to train a lot of facilitators and my, I tend to be afraid people in. At the deep end type of a girl. So I threw them in. They were running a group, the Wild. I walked in at the end of the group to, to suggest, you know, that maybe they needed to have a break. And the room's noisy, everybody's shouting and there's a guy on the floor doing press ups. And I thought, well, there's not a lot of impact going on in there, is there? Anyway, you know, that day one of those people in the group ended up on the roof of the prison and the dogs came out. It was, it was, was really, really wild. That was in 2019. In 2020, during COVID we ran weekly zooms for anybody who wanted to connect and just, you know, have the space, have a sacred space. And that guy turned up the, the press up guy and he said, oh, I'm so glad that I found you. That group changed my life. And I was like, what? And he said, yeah. I left prison and I realized I love opera. I love opera. So I got into opera and, and then I wanted. And then I thought, you know what, I need to move away from London and I need to get, get into a different environment and I need to get educated, I need a degree. And he went and he lived in his car in the grounds of a university while he persuaded them to let him do a degree. And that's what he was doing. He was doing a criminology degree and living in his car. And it just made me go, you don't know. You just have to show up and do your thing. You don't know who's being impacted. We don't have eyes on that. And that's why you can just let that go.

Well, at this point, I don't know if we have anyone but Mama J. Here's a wealth of wisdom. So if there's anyone that's been following along with us today or in the comment or sorry, in the replay, we'll make sure you have her contact information. But if anyone has any questions that they would like to propose, please feel free to drop them in the chat and we would love to hear from you. And then from there we'll, we'll make sure you all know where you can find, find her work going forward.

And I don't want to leave, I just want to listen more.

No like, we could just keep going.

We have.

We'll have to wrap this up soon. But yeah, this is like.

Yeah, I actually have many questions and I'm like, oh. And I resonate so much with like, the things that you're sharing and the simplicity about connection and, you know, just the story about this guy. I'm like, I just want to, like.

Listen, I've thought about actually serializing my book on Substack and. Hi, Sue. Yeah, serializing my book Wing of an angel on Substack. Maybe people would enjoy that. So I have thought about doing that.

So in this book, that's where you share and you share a bunch of those stories and. Yeah.

And where. And you can find that book in all the usual places.

Amazon Things like all the usual places. Amazon. My website. Jbhollows.co.uk yeah, all. All sorts of places. And Peter's here too.

Looks like you have some friends with us.

The crews are here. Yeah.

Wonderful. Well, cool. So, yeah, beyond that, obviously if we're all here on Substack, people know they can find you here. But if anyone is wanting to get a deeper introduction to your work or learn more, explore what you're working on with the Impact. Impact Activator.

Correct.

I said that, right? Yeah, yeah. What would you. Any suggestions on where you might. Might point them?

The simplest is my website, www.jbhollows.co.uk but if you, if you Google my name, Jacqueline Hollows, I do come up probably on the first three pages. I've just, I've done a lot of content over time. So yeah, that's the simplest way and obviously here on Substack as well.

Wonderful. Cool. And yeah, we'll make sure that everyone has those links, the links to your book in the show, notes and everything so that they can explore. But yes, thank you so much for joining me. It was, it was an honor to meet you earlier this month. And yeah, really, really nice to have you here on Sacred Business Stories with us. And yeah, we'll be sharing this recording with our list as well. And I think you'll get a link as well if you'd like to share it. And yeah, just really appreciate your time and being here with us today. So thank you.

Oh, likewise. Yeah, thank you so much. Loved it.

All right, have a beautiful rest of your day and thank you for everyone who was able to join us live. Have a great day.

Bye.

Bye, Bye bye.