In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Lynda Sunshine West, a best‑selling author, motivational speaker, and founder of Living Live Inc. Lynda shares her personal journey from an abusive, alcoholic household to discovering her own value at age 51, sparked by a life‑coach‑guided breakthrough in a workshop where she raised her hand for the first time. She describes a year‑long practice of confronting a daily fear in 2015, emphasizing that growth lies on the other side of fear. The conversation explores mindset shifts in public speaking, citing advice from Les Brown to focus on the audience’s needs rather than self‑criticism. Lynda offers business counsel: seek counsel, not opinion, and surround yourself with successful peers. She outlines a practical self‑discovery exercise—listing activities she loves and dedicating incremental daily time to them—to identify passions and align work accordingly, recommending delegation of tasks that don’t bring joy. The discussion highlights two influential books, Three Feet from Gold (the key lesson: keep moving forward when you’re close to success) and Think and Grow Rich for Women. Lynda shares a personal quote she created: “Be brave and share your weaknesses, for in your weaknesses others see your strengths.” The episode concludes with her online presence at livingliveinc.com and Facebook. Throughout, Lynda’s narrative blends personal anecdotes, actionable advice, and motivational insights aimed at women entrepreneurs seeking purpose, confidence, and authentic expression.
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Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today, Linda Sunshine West with us. She is a best-selling author, motivational speaker, and founder of Living Live Inc., where she helps women entrepreneurs discover their value and share their voice with the world. So welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Of course, grateful to have you on. So the first one we ask on this show, Linda, is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
Well, I would say that that was the moment that I actually discovered that I had value because it was that moment that I discovered that I had value that I knew that I needed to start speaking. So I grew up in a very alcoholic, abusive alcoholic household. And so it kind of stifled my voice and, you know, kids are better seen than heard, like a lot of us have heard that kind of stuff. So I actually was stifled until I was about 50. 51 years old when I met a life coach who helped me kind of unlock some things in my mind to realize that I wasn't as stupid as I thought I was. I wasn't as ignorant as I was told I was and all these things. And so I like the story is, I was sitting in a conference room. There were about 14 women in this conference room. It was a workshop this woman was putting on. And she asked a question and I raised my hand, which I had never done in my life, you know. So I'm 51, I raised my hand and I said whatever it was I said. And I sat down, and the two women sitting next to me, both of them said, "That was brilliant. Can you repeat it? I wanna write it down." And it was the exact moment that I actually, I repeated it to them. I don't even know what it was. I don't remember that. But then I looked up at the lighting fixtures that were up in the room, and I looked up there, and I just said to myself, "I have value." And I'm actually getting chills right now remembering that moment. I have value. It's time for me to start sharing my voice as often as possible. And I started right in that moment. Like, that's when I started doing interviews and stuff like this. And so it's been amazing, you know.
Yeah. No, it's great to hear that. And also, not to make a joke out of any of this, but I think maybe our audience would want to know about your anti-aging stuff. You do not look over 51 at all.
I was like, I don't sell anti-aging. Well, thank you.
Yeah, I don't know what—
when you're gonna be 56, I'll be 56 next month, so in March. So whatever you're doing, keep doing it.
Thank you. So next one I got for you, and thanks for sharing this story with us, is what is the most valuable piece of information that we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
I would say facing fears and overcoming them. It was, you know, after I hired my life coach, I started on this journey of, of like self-discovery. Who am I? And all this stuff. It was 2015, January 1st. I woke up that morning and I said, I gotta do something different with my life. I don't know what it is, but let me see if I can figure it out. Well, I realized that I had so many fears and that's why I had been stifled for decades, decades, 5 decades, right? And so I had so many fears and I decided I was gonna face a fear every single day of that year of 2015. And so I did. And I love to invite people to try this, not for a whole year, but maybe you do once a week or once a month or or do it for 7 days, just to challenge yourself to ask yourself this question, what scares me? And whatever is the very first thing that came up for me was the thing I committed myself to doing that particular day. I had to do it no matter what. And I didn't jump out of any planes, I didn't eat any bugs or anything like that, you know, but mine was more, it was, there was so much in here in my heart, like I just had to learn how to grow and express myself and not be so scared of so many things. And so the growth that I went through was, It was immense. On a weekly basis, people were saying, what are you doing? Like, you're a totally different person than you were last week. And so it gave me so much confidence to do the things that I had previously been, you know, like absolutely terrified to do. So my advice would be, you know, face those fears and realize that the growth is on the other side. You can stifle and you can keep letting yourself be pushed down, or you can grow. It's up to you.
Yeah, and it's really all in your head, I think. Like, we can, like, in our mind, we tend to make something like way worse than it actually is, like, because we let our mind run. So like public speaking, for instance, that's something that I had to overcome. Um, like getting in front of a crowd, like you overthink it, you almost have like a panic attack, right? At least I would. And then after I did it a few times, though, those first few times were like really scary. And now it's almost like a, it's a momentum thing. Like I almost enjoy the rush. Like it's more of like a game, like it's fun. So either way, just I'm bringing it up because it seems to me it's always in the beginning before you do something when it's in your head, you play out all the possible failures.
Yes.
It gets so big and you're so scared. And then when you actually do it and then afterward you sit down after that talk in front of 100 people and you're like That wasn't that bad. Like, that was nothing. Like, so I don't know, I think our mind makes things worse than it really is.
Yeah. And that's actually, I got a great, great piece of advice from Mr. Les Brown. You know, he's an international motivational speaker. And he was like, Linda, don't let what you want to say get in the way of what the audience needs to hear. And I was like, oh my God, I was so in my head thinking about what are they going to think of me? What if I don't say this right? Instead of thinking about there's somebody out there who needs to hear my message and that there's somebody out there that today I'm going to say something that's going to change their life. And that totally put me into their seat instead of my seat. And it changed the way when I speak on stage, it totally changed the way I speak.
Yep, absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, we need to get out of our own way.
Yeah.
To do it. So next one I got for you. What is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
Yeah, this would be— these are great questions, by the way. And I love these because, you know, my, my advice is, as my mentor tells me, seek counsel, not opinion. Because oftentimes we'll ask people things in our life and they don't have any idea what we're doing, especially as entrepreneurs. You know, we're surrounded by people who don't understand what we're doing, you know, in our families, our friends, and what have you. So to be surrounded by other entrepreneurs is key, but really it's key to be surrounded by those who are doing successfully what you wanna do so that you're here, they're here, and you're like, hey, can you help me get here? And then they're gonna shoot you straight up instead of you going like this, you know. So seek counsel, not opinion. Opinions, there's a ton of them out there, and a lot of them are wrong. So wasting your time. I've spent a lot of time wasting my time asking opinions rather than seeking counsel.
I love that. That's huge. Um, so the next one I got, if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Well, Yeah. Okay, when I was 5 years old, I ran away, like a lot of kids run away. I was gone for an entire week. And—
Wow, 5?
Yeah, 5 years old. I, you know, I look back, I was like, why did I run away? Actually, Les Brown asked me, why did you run away that day? And I was like, it was just so bad, I decided I didn't want to live there ever again. And so I ran away. I was only at the neighbor's, but for 5, like I was gone for a whole week. So, My advice would be to have stayed away. I came back because my mom made me.
Where, now for that week, where did you go?
Yeah, I was just at the neighbor's house.
Okay, that's good. I was like, how did she feed herself?
Yeah, no, they took care of me. I had a blast. It was fun.
Yeah, yeah, it was like a little lake.
Yeah, exactly. I would have moved with them. You know, they moved like a couple years later. I totally would have just gone with them and started a whole new life.
No, no, absolutely. I got you. So, I think that it probably leads into our next one. So, you know, this podcast is about business and things of that nature, but I think like life and business are intertwined. So, I like to ask, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
To discover who you are and live your life as that person. Took me a while to actually discover who I was because, you know, when, you know, growing up in that abusive household, then I unfortunately, my first marriage was someone just like my dad. And so, I was a people pleaser. I became a people pleaser and I call myself a chameleon because I would just adjust to whoever I was with and so if they liked it, I liked it, if they hated it, I hated it, if they liked it, I liked it, if they hated it, I just became this like puppet, you know, for other people and so once my life coach helped me to unlock that and discover who is Linda, what does Linda actually like and then I started living my life doing those things, it's like pure bliss. There's nothing like living your life on purpose the way you want. There's nothing like it.
No, absolutely. So to dive a little deeper there, how do you think you discover who you are? Do you have any like tips for that? Yes, my heart for a lot of people.
Yeah. And so my life coach actually gave me some great exercises to do. And one of them that I think was probably my favorite one that really helped me discover this, she said, She said, make a list of everything that you absolutely love doing. So whether you're thinking about it, whether you're doing it, or after you've already done it and you're like, oh my God, that was so awesome, I loved it. So it could be, you know, like speaking on stage. You might enjoy that, you know, or walking, taking your dog for a walk. Maybe it's riding bikes and you're not doing that. Like the bike is, you know, has cobwebs on it, right? Or you're not taking the dog out for the walk. It's like, Writing that list of all those things you absolutely love doing. And then I took it one step further. I wrote my list and then I said, you know what, for 5 minutes every day, I'm going to do one of these things on my list. And I did that for a week. The next week I said, for 10 minutes every day, I'm going to do at least one of these things on my list. And I increased it week after week after week by 5-minute increments. That way it was easy. It was palatable. So now I would say probably I spend, I want to say, anywhere about 80 to 85% of my life is doing things that I absolutely love doing.
Yeah.
If there are things as business, if there are things that you have to do in business that you don't love doing, delegate it out to somebody who actually loves doing that.
Yeah, and it's strange, like, because other people might like it. Like, for somebody like me, like accounting, I absolutely do not understand how anybody could enjoy that. But my dad is actually an accountant and he enjoys like parts of it. He enjoys crunching numbers, like he actually likes it. So, it's like those people are out there.
Yeah, whether you think they're out there or not, they are out there.
Yeah. So, no, that's a great point. I think just time, some time for like self-reflection. We all get caught up in our routines. We never just like sit back and reflect on like, what do I actually want to be doing? Not what am I like feel like I'm being forced to do. So my next one for you, what is the best book that you've read? And what's the number one thing you learned from it?
By far, well, you've read Think and Grow Rich, which is amazing, which was really actually hard for me to read the original book. But the Think and Grow Rich for Women was a much easier book for me to read. But my number one book is Three Feet from Gold. And that's by Greg Reid and Sharon Lecter. Absolutely amazing book. Like, what's the one thing? Ah, the one thing is like, the point of the whole book is that you could be stopping 3 feet from gold, and that's why you need to keep moving forward. And like, that was the biggest point of the whole book. And I realized there were so many things that I would, like, I'd get all excited and I'm going and going and going, I move forward, and then I get that brick wall, and I would stop and say, oh, this probably isn't right for me, instead of saying, let me figure out how to break through that, or, find counsel who can help me break through that. And so that book really put me on that trajectory of, you know, doing more and challenging myself to keep, just keep going. It's been amazing.
I'll have to check it out. I haven't heard of that one before, so I have to look into that one. Yeah, I'm always down for another book. I love, yeah, love books. So the next one is, what's your favorite quote and why?
My favorite quote is one that I actually made up myself during this last, it's been like 4 and a half years of my personal development journey, and that is to be brave and share your weaknesses, for in your weaknesses others see your strengths. And what that quote means is that, like for me at least, I had so many what I believed were weaknesses, and then once I started sharing, on Facebook, on Facebook Lives, you know, those weaknesses, people are like, oh my God, you're so brave, you're so strong, how can you share that? I would never do that. And I saw that like, whoa, here I am sharing something that to me is a tremendous weakness and they're like, you're so strong. I was like, whoa, I'm gonna start sharing my weaknesses because other people see those as strengths.
Yeah, no, that's really, really good advice. And I think, are you familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk? Yeah, so he kind of talks about like documenting over creating, and that really stuck with me in a way of like not always trying to perfect everything you put out into the world, but rather what people want to see is your true authentic self. So instead, like you're saying, just document. Like if you're going to do a vlog or something, just document everything about your life. Don't just make it a highlight reel. People want to see the journeys, the failures, the story. So, I think that's what you're kind of alluding to. So, yeah, I think that's incredible advice. So, yeah, thank you for coming on. The last one I got for you, where can our listeners best connect with you online and—
Oh, you froze there a second. So, are you back? Okay.
Okay. Sorry. Yeah, there we go. So where can our listeners best find you online?
I'm at livingliveinc.com. And then also on Facebook, you know, facebook.com/livingliveinc.
Okay, perfect. Thank you again for coming on.
Thank you. I really appreciate it. You have a great day.
