Freedom After 40: Learning the Art of Surrender with @Lehostbeauty​

Ever wonder why some people seem to thrive in chaos and others tend to crumble? I wonder that a lot because I see a big divide, especially in midlife. It seems to compound on how some people just chaos happens and they don't know how to handle it. They're crumbling, they feel crazy, they make people around them crazy, and it can even sometimes paralyze them into not taking action. And some people just seem to thrive and come better out on top. Today on Midlife Conversations, I want to introduce you to my friend Kahith Johnson. Now, I met her, she's actually a celebrity hairstylist by trade and she co founded a company. She founded a company called Lahos where she helps with wigs. She does it, runs this with her husband. Now she's super successful. And I met her in a very unrelated way through our mutual friend and hates coach, Allison Maslin. Alison's one of my best friends and I got to know Haith and I watched something crazy happen to her in her life, which we're going to get into, which is somewhat business related. It is business related.

But.

But I could feel it at my core as this was happening to Haith, as she was sharing it, thinking like, how would I handle this? What would happen if I was walking through this thinking of my friends, what would happen? And I just was so amazed at how she handled the situation, how she stayed a light through it all, how she grew from it, how she came out stronger on top. And I asked her, I said, can we have you on the show because I need to understand who raised you to be this way, where did you learn these skills and, and how do we do some of this in our lives? Because this is something we struggle with. So thank you for being here today.

Hey, thank you, first of all, so much for having me. I love your page. I love your brand. I've been following you. Now, actually, you were my coach as well for a while, my social media coaching. So thank you for having me.

You're welcome. You're welcome. So let's start back a little. Let's tell everyone kind of what happened and then what I want to. And I'm going to. I got a lot of questions for you. Like I want to know how you even were able to surrender through this. So if you could sort of share the journey of what happened and what was going on through your mind when this happened. And anyone that runs a business, you're going to be especially interested in leaning into this.

This is so incredible. You know, again, thank you for having me and I pray that this really does inspire and push people past that pain point that we all experience in business. But imagine this I had during COVID I thought I was actually going to shut my business down, okay? Because we ran a salon slash retail store. And sadly, I kept seeing myself in front of my. I as I'm thinking I'm going to close down, I'm also envisioning and saying, what can I do to pivot? What can I do to take the business to another level? So what I started doing is I started a four hour wig show. I started a four hour wig show because, like, every time I would go to sleep, I would see myself in front of my camera or in front of my phone and I was taking my wig on and off. When we built this company, Lahoster and Wigs, we're a national beauty brand. We supply hair care products to Walmart. We are enlisted in eight hospitals, VA hospitals across the country. So we supply medical cranial prosthetics. I always wanted to live my life beyond the chair and I wanted to do the business of beauty. So during COVID I built this show up. It's called Big Wig Show. And because I had so many following the women who had alopecia, midlife women that was thinning and whatever the situation was, or they had cancer, was going through chemo, I felt a need that I still needed to be there and show up for them. And I always believe that it's big, bigger than you. You have a business, you have a company, you have products. You got to know that, you know that you're bringing value, right? So I had an obligation to still show up for them. I didn't know how, but I'm like a wig show. And then I started seeing myself taking wig. I'm like, I'm taking my wig on and off, not doing that. But I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I had to continue to teach women because that was my niche. That's what I became known for, teaching women how to wear wigs and look natural in a male. Or if you're going through chemo, if you lost all your hair, how to get back to a sense of normalcy. I'm doing this show, I build up, oh, my God, close to over 30,000 people. Covid's over. We make it through. I continue this show for four years.

It became where were you putting the show? Where was the show going?

We had grown it to a place that it was on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram a little bit.

But I really amazing the 30,000 engaged people that wanted to learn from you that you were serving.

Absolutely. And so we had up to a thousand people that will watch sometime. But then I kind of lived at about four or five hundred people. We did amazing in sales. If, I mean, I can just jump on and bam. Great sales, right? So one day here in Las Vegas, now I move here. I continue the show. I stay dedicated to it because I know the consistency of it is very important. It became a thing I. We actually built a tribe, a community of women who really just love the show. So imagine this one day you come home from work and it's about 3 o' clock in the morning and all of a sudden your phone's going bananas. And I'm like, okay. Now I'm used to getting sales in the middle of the night or online. So I'm just like, okay. So I'm like, maybe I need to mute my phone. So I looked down and then it just started going even more crazy and faster. Like notifications 25. But I'm like, wait a minute, these are not sales. This is someone taking money out of my account. Whoa. So it goes $25, $50, and as fast as I can kind of go through to see, to read what this is, then it goes $100, $500, $2,000, three.

Oh my gosh. Like they're testing like a small amount and then going, this is working. Let's go bigger.

Exactly. I immediately turn to my husband and shake him awake. And I said, henry, I think we just been hacked. I think it was coming through PayPal. But our PayPal is connected to our main business account, which is connected to our payroll and all the other things that we do on a day to day basis to conduct business.

So somebody's draining PayPal and you're, you're watching and you're hearing this in the middle of the night, these.

And you feel so powerless in this moment of what the heck? But then you go into survival mode of I don't have time to feel, think, I just gotta stop the bleeding right now. I touch my husband, I wake him up. I don't touch my husband. I literally shook him out the bed. Like, get up out the bed. He jumps out the bed. It was like he leaped across the room, he grabbed his computer and he just went at it and he said, okay. I just disconnected, connected everything from Facebook and from PayPal. You know, we get up in the morning, I'll just start calling everyone and meaning our bank and PayPal and letting everyone know this is the situation. And this is what happened. Then you start thinking, well, what else do I do? Do I call the FBI? Do I call Homeland Security? Do I call Facebook? I didn't know it was as serious as it was. And what the person had done, they had worked on this. You can tell strategically, for a while. It wasn't an overnight thing. What they did first is they got into our Facebook page. They remove me and my husband as the administrators. Then they kicked us off the page. Then they completely took control over the page, and then that way they could then begin to post. And I was no longer able to not only not post, I couldn't even find my page. It disappeared.

So not only are you watching your PayPal being drained, you're now your Facebook's hacked, like, your main income, your main thing that you. The 30,000 people, it's not being run by you now. And like, you're watching, like, two massive things happen in your business at the same time.

So, long story short, I still. My husband says, hey, this is really going to affect us. It didn't click. It did not dawn on me. I'm like, oh, we'll be okay, or we'll get the page back and, you know, whatever. So, long story short, PayPal refunded all the money because we could prove that that wasn't us. Then we started going through the process of Facebook, hey, what page was hacked? Thinking that they'll just flick a button and here's your page back and you'll go on. What the person did is they posted child pornography.

Oh, my gosh. So this story gets even worse. You all. So this is. This is like. This is crazy.

When. Then the plot thickens. Then once I found out it was child pornography, then what happened? Then I started understanding how serious it was. Yes. Now some time go on maybe about three weeks, we hired an IT person. He really could not help us. Facebook really was not as involved as I wish they would have been.

Could you even get to a live person there?

Or were you never, never, ever, never. And so that became a little frustrating. And now I'm like, okay, now feel like I'm out of control. But I still have the store. I still have products in Walmart. I still have other means of income. So I didn't completely panic. However, then this happened. Imagine coming home from church and your husband and you are preparing for dinner, and the phone rings. You say, hello, is. Hi, this is Detective Larry. Okay, hi, how can I help you? Yes, I'm just calling to inform you that you and your husband are no longer under investigation. Excuse me, what did you say? I'm. And who's under investigation? You and your husband have been under investigation investigation for the last 30 to 60 days because whoever posted on your page Homeland Security got involved because it was child pornography. Wow. So you automatically became. It got turned over to us at Nevada. You know, our. My department, we began to investigate you and your husband. We see that that absolutely was not you. And matter of fact, thank God they.

Saw that because what in the heck.

Because we were fighting so hard to get the page back. We were sending letters. So there was proof even in our emails that hey, this is not us. You can see our pattern. You can see our day to day post that it wasn't us. So they said whoever had to they lived in Indonesia. And it was just now you feel like out of control. So my husband goes, well hey, we can just build back. I'm like, okay, no problem, we'll build back. So I tried to do a couple of more shows. Natalie. This is when it then now start getting real. Bills began to pile up because the warehouse Facebook supported our warehouse where we distribute for our e commerce store, Amazon, Walmart. All of our stuff came out of Walmart. But a big hunk of the money that was supporting the the warehouse was the Facebook page. Then it started feeling like, oh my God, we're behind in our. We were only one month behind the. But I'd never been behind. Yeah. Now I'm starting to feel like did this person just take something from me? And I remember trying to do two shows and the first show I had maybe about 75 people watching. I'm like, you know we're used to 250-300. The next show I did it was three people watching and one of them was my phone just so I can stay in.

Literally starting over. So you're having. So wait, I have so many questions before you keep going because there's so many things that you just that happened that as I'm listening to you, I don't think I'm as surrendered as you. Even though I have surrender on my arm, it's like literally tops it on my arm. Any one of those things would have put me in a frenzy. Like yeah. Would have felt urgent. I wouldn't have been able to focus on other things. How were you able to like even sleep at night with these things happening? Like I don't like that even that first thing when you're woken waking your husband up, obviously you're reacting then. But how were you getting through your day? How Are you, like, knowing this stuff is happening? How are you still dealing with your employees? How are you still showing up for the calls?

I was a great question.

What was the conversation in your brain? How do you do that?

So let me say this to you, and this is how I live my life, okay? This is the core thing of who I am. I'm a strong woman of faith. I gave my life to God when I was a 16 year old. I come from a real bad situation. My father was murdered. The dynamics of my home changed. All I know, as a little girl, my mom was very, very sad all the time. And so with that, I became resentful to her because I felt like I was rejected or abandoned by her. So now I lose my mom emotionally, and I lose my dad emotionally and physically. Long story short, you just.

You just said something there really quick, though, about your dad, because I guess because you experienced, like a real tragedy, a real life or death trauma, real emergency trauma. Maybe you don't have the extreme, like thinking everything's trauma because you literally lived a real trauma.

I didn't even get to the part of where my faith kicks in, okay. In this journey of where I'm at now. As a teenage girl, I began at first. First is just resentment. Then I began to understand that it was hate, that I hated my mom, and I hated her because I felt abandoned. Well, all of this, what I was doing, Natalie, is it was manifesting as grief, but it was showing. No, it was grief manifesting as rebellion or anger or fight or, you know, combative or argumentative, but really, I was just grieving. No one taught me how to grieve through that. So I remember me and my mom got into a horrible argument one night and she kicked me out. I was years old. Long story short, I went from friend to friend for a long time. As long as a mom would allow me to stay on the couch or sleep on the floor, my friend. Long story short, I ended up homeless.

Oh, my gosh. At 16.

Yeah. And I ended up in this abandoned situation. And this is my life. And I always tell people, never be ashamed, never be scared to tell your story, because you never know where people are and how your story can help encourage them through the most traumatic thing in their life. So here I am in this abandoned house, and I remember crying out to God and crying like, how did I end up here? What in the world? How did my life end up in this abandoned house here in Detroit, Michigan. Yeah. 16 years old. Yeah. But by that time, again, I'm showing up Angry, rebellious. But really, I'm a sad little girl.

I'm thinking of my own daughter who's 17.

Could you imagine? Yeah.

No, I can't. That's why I go to quickly.

I began to pray. And I remember hearing God's voice to me in my heart. I heard him say, you must forgive. And you must accept that I put a gift in your hand. And if you accept the gift that I given you, you won't only get yourself out of this situation, but you'll begin to impact the lives of many as you grow older. And so I understood in that moment what I was supposed to do. I knew I was born to do hair. My mom did hair. My dad did hair. I have four. It's four girls. I am the only one that does that. Really do. Ha. There. And I embraced it. But in that moment, I not only embraced it, I embodied it. I played full out. Because I knew that was my answer. I have a gift. So if I have a gift, I must embrace it. But then I heard God say to me, but you have the key. And the only key that'll let you out of this. It wasn't just the abandoned house, out of this state of your life, is forgiveness. In that moment, I understood the power of forgiveness. Wow. And not only the power of forgiveness, but I also understood hope. And if you lose your hope, that's when everything really begins to crumble, one thing at a time. And so why was goodness the key? Because God began to teach me from that point. Not all in that night, but over time. Because forgiveness is like an onion. But all in that moment, I didn't get it. But as I began to go on the journey and had the willingness to forgive my mom for the abandonment or forsaking us or whatever the case was, the understanding and the revelation came to me. You've always cried, you've always prayed. Hate about your father being murdered, about you being left alone, about you being this victim. Had you ever considered one time that your mother lost the love of her life, that your mother lost her husband? And I never considered my mother's journey. See, when my father was murdered, we all, my sisters, my mom, we all experienced a loss differently.

Yes.

But for the first time, I could consider other people. And so it gave me the compassion that I need to really make the decision to not only forgive my mother, but live a life of forgiveness immediately. Now, this is the key to this. The quicker you do it, the better you get at it. It. The longer it takes, the harder it'll be.

So. So Much awareness from what you just shared. Number one, I. What I just connected the dots on is when you asked that question is when I was 22 and my dad died. Now, my dad was not murdered, but he died at 22. I didn't consider my mom's grief. Just like you said, you're so in your. I think everyone experiences grief so personally, they're thinking of their own grief. I, I get that. So that's an actually interesting question. But I'm also starting to understand you a lot more that you. Because you experience actual real life or death things like. Real life or death things like your dad.

Yeah.

Being homeless at 16. Like, these are real things. So if you situation on a spectrum of like, what's really urgent, what's not, we tend to make. More often than not, we, especially in midlife, like, we tend to make things an issue that necessarily are not an issue. We can see this in our teenage kids too. Like, teenage kids, they. They're learning. If your child has their life really good, they start creating their own problems. Problems. You know, we all, we all know that they start creating their own problems. I don't have the shirt that I want or I don't, you know, whatever. But if they have real problems, they're focused on their real problems. So it's almost like you had these real problems. So you have a very different gauge of what's actually urgent and what's not.

What's. Yeah, what's urgent? What's a priority? And where do you need to give your energy to? Because what I did make a decision was, now I'm not going to say it was always easy. I'm going to just be very off there, authentic and very transparent because I had one good, hard, ugly face, fall in the floor breakdown when I thought I was going to lose not only this business, this E Commerce, this Facebook business that we had built, but I thought, now I'm losing my warehouse. Yeah. One hack and I lose all of this. And it was like, no. And I screamed at the top of my voice and I sat there in the middle of my warehouse and I said, you will not take this from me.

Okay.

I have the gift in my hand.

Yes. Actually, two things just came up for me when you said that. Number one, you did. You shared your emotions like you got them out of you. Because I think a lot of times when we're feeling something, I'm definitely guilty. That's. You, like, hold it in. I gotta be tough. I gotta be strong. I can't. You have to release that or it's going to create breakdown. So you release that. That's number one and two. I also heard you basically decided. You're like, no, this is the way it's going to. You decided the destiny, you decided the future. You said, you could have said, I'm done.

I give up.

This was a Covid thing. I'm over it. Moving on. You could have done that, but you decided, no, this will not take me down. I'm going to fix it. So I think it's both those things. It's that emotional release and it's making that decision that you're going to pivot.

Yeah, absolutely. And can I be very honest too? The seasons of people being positioned in your life, you know, they're the same. They say, when the student's ready, the teacher will come.

Yes.

I started wanting more. I started wanting more for my business. This is before the hack, but I knew that I wanted to go to another level. Then I meet Allison and I learned about Skellett. And then she has this event and we find out about you. You graciously came and shared what you do so very well. You made an offer and said, hey, if you need a little bit more one on one coaching, I'm here, I'm available. I'm like, oh, I'm. I'm doing this. So it was almost like a preparation. And that's what I've learned. I've surrendered my life, life to God. I've surrendered my life to a higher being who is God, who is Jesus for me, for me, if this works for my life. And so he has been such a. A light of. When it does get dark for me, my faith has to say, it's not always going to be like this. Yeah, things change. This is not a permanent place that you'll live in sometimes. And I learned this at the red light. Sometimes I would get so, so frustrated out of real life. I'm like, oh, my God, I gotta go. I don't have time to sit at this light. I would say to myself, hey, you don't have to live at the light. You don't have to sleep here at the light. Any second the light is going to change. Just allow yourself to sit here and enjoy what you can see. And I started training my. I'm serious. I would get bonkers at a red light. It was like, I can't live my life like this because it'll manifest other places.

That's right.

So. So when you showed up and Allison showed up, showed up for me in my place of Need. I could glean the wisdom because you all had something that I needed, and that's my true belief, that everyone has a gift that they've been given by God. A talent, a skill, whatever. You'll meet the right person at the right time. But then you have to yield yourself to the process of the lessons. I didn't say it was easy. Yes, because you were a tough coach, and I. And, and, and good. I love Touch. Who wants a fat health trainer who's going to say, listen, while they're eating the candy bar, trying to tell you how to live your life and your best life and show up as the best version? It's like, ma', am, you're eating a snicker. You cannot coach me right now. So you came with the good, and I knew that if I listened to you, if I did what you said, that I would get different results.

Okay, so here's something else. And you're doing it right now. This is so funny. The other thing I noticed about. I could write a book about hate now. Like, how to be like. So the other thing I noticed that you do that I think helps you with circumstances and not getting in the fuzz of it and being able to stay on top is you live your life with a tremendous amount of gratitude constantly. I have never had an interaction with you, never, not once where you didn't tell me something amazing I've done. You didn't tell Allison something amazing. You're just. You're always looking for the gratefulness and things. Tell us a little bit about your practice with that and that something you had to, like. Do you even know? Are you even aware you do it? Is it something you worked on?

I did not know I did it as much as I did it until it started backfiring in my face.

What do you mean backfiring in your face?

Because sometimes people thought I was not being sincere, and I really was being sincere. Wow. I. For some reason, I don't. I think. But I'm going to tell you the truth. Like, Whitney Houston can sing. I think there's something inside of me that was gifted to me to encourage other people. Okay. Oh, you know what just came to me as I'm saying, I remember being such a sad little girl. Oh, wow. I remember being 8 and 9 and just not being. Just being a sad little girl. And I remember one day being at church and I was around all these other kids and they in church, and they were so mean to me, and I was like, in my mind, I thought I would never Treat anybody like that. I always want people to feel good and feel better about whatever. You know, kids are crazy. We're all crazy.

You have that gift. You are so good at that.

It started just coming from this place of I never want anyone to feel like I felt. And I wanted people to know. I believe life is a gift. I really do. And I believe that God, once I understood that we all have gifts, talents and abilities, and I can hone in and see what a person's superpower is, even though they may not know. I like to kind of. And I'm not doing it conscious, like, oh, yeah, I'm going to tell Natalie how gorgeous she is and how is just naturally you walk in and you say, you know, Natalie, your hair looks amazing today.

You're just. I think it's just this. You have a lens. So people look at life through a different lens. I'll tell you, in my fat loss, in my fat loss programs, I see this all the time with women because women come in, they're not happy with their bodies. They're running. And I see them in this, like, divide. Either they're like, ready. I've decided I'm looking for the good in this. I'm going to figure this out. I'm happy, I'm taking the. Or they come in like. Like challenging. Like, nothing I say is going to work for them. This and that, nothing. It's like they see it through two different lenses. Same program, same coach, same everything, but they're seeing it through totally different lenses. So I watch you go through life and why you've been successful and why you've overcome these things. And you are always looking for that rainbow. You're looking for that. Where's the sun in here? Where's. So you don't go to what's the bad. I'm thinking this is something to do with how you showed up through all that stuff that happened too, is you literally. And you said that to me on one of the calls you told. What was the good that you shared? You told me me some good things that came from. Will you share those?

Oh, my God, I'm so freaking excited. And you see, because life is. Don't make a permanent decision over a temporary situation you may be going through in your life. And I knew that that was temporary. I knew that I did not have to live in that state for the rest of my life. So what me and my husband did, we deep dive. We listened to what you said. We listened to some of the advice that some of the other communities Business communities that I'm connected to, like. Like, through Allison and Skellett. So what we started doing is finding out the power of AI and what it did is it cut us across the field a lot faster. We are such a better company because this got. Because this happened to us. And I never thought I would be able to say this, and it's not like we're all the way out the weeds now, but we have such a sense of hope that we are so much better. Then to the point. Then I started seeing it as, God, you allowed this to happen because you knew the state of where the world was going in business. And if I would have got lax and if I would have got complacent here, life would have flew right by me, and my business would have became irrelevant very fast. So I then began to see it as a blessing.

Now, you shared with me something that happened that brought back exactly 30,000 followers, 30,000 new people. What was that? Because this was crazy, because you had lost 30,000. So think about. She. She had built up this community of 30,000, lost it overnight. Gone, disappeared.

So being a part of this amazing community with Allison and Pinnacle Global Network, there's this pin that we just. My mentor was like, hey. And it was months before this happened. She says, hey, you got to meet this lady named Vivian from Houndstooth. I'm like, oh, absolutely. We talked. We clicked. She told me what she could do. She told me some brutal honesty about my website. And I'm like, I love anybody that tell me the truth like that. Let's sit down and have coffee. So anyway, long story short, she says, what I want to do, I want to do two things for you. I want to do an audit for your website. She said, don't even worry about the Facebook page anymore. I'm like, how can you say that? She says, hey, I'm going to teach you how to grow organically now. I'm like, okay. But like, Allison, when I had this deal from Walmart to franchise my store, I'm like, I can't do this. And Allison was like, like, oh, you got it. You can do it. Vivian was the same way. Oh, you got it. We can do. So I trust that they knew something that I didn't know. So what she did is she did the audit of my website. She told me where all the broken P pieces were, what the links were broken. And then she said, the next thing what I want to do is I want to run an SEO search for you. I'm like, well, what does that mean? She Says, for your industry, there are already people looking for all over the world case they're looking for rather a wig, hair care products, whatever this situation is, what they're looking for, what causes them to get on the website, they're organically already looking for companies like yours. You have to find them. And I'm like, okay, well, tell me more about this. She did the audit, she did the SEO analysis. She gives me back this list, and I'm like, are you kidding? She says, yes, I'm going to give you one example. Hey. She says, you lost, lost 30,000 followers. Did you know that there were 30,000 people every month go on the website and look for a pink wig. Do you sell pink wigs? I said, I absolutely sell several pink wigs. She says, now do you see it? I said, I absolutely see it. Even though I had 30,000 followers. Don't mean all of them were purchasing.

That's right.

But 30,000 people who are looking for one pink wig, cultivate that as a relationship, as a transition, and get them to see how our company could service them and give them value by the products that we offer. Oh, yeah. Then she taught me, if you put a picture that. That lives on your website, you have to name the photo. I never knew any of this. She says, the reason why you haven't been really doing big business is because you just post, you just upload a photo. She said, darling, with AI and the way the world works now, you have to name the photo. I said, what do you mean, she? So it's a pretty woman, pink wig, midlife.

It makes sense because then they're searching and they're going to find that. So what I love about this is all of these are great little tactics, but you would have never heard them had this other stuff not happen. So that's what I want people to hear. Like, usually in the chaos and in the mess, if we stay stuck in that and we let that take us down, there's no growth. But if you can walk through it, you will have your eyes open to other opportunities, other possibilities. So what you learned, what you found, what you discovered came out of that place of chaos. Because you would have been too busy dealing with that to even have seen this or had that conversation.

And having your focus on it's bigger than you. This is not about you. This is not ultimately everything you do, everything you offer. This is not yours. This is a gift that you give to others.

Okay?

And I'm gonna tell you my top secret. This was my good stuff. Now, Natalie, I'm going into my goodie box. This is how I really, really stay where I'm at now. And again, not every day is a rainbow day. Not every day I get to do and get what I want. But every day is a day of hope. Because you know what? I truly believe in this. I'm a woman of faith. I'm a woman of prayer. I definitely believe in sitting in silence and being quiet. I believe in keeping toxic people out of your life, whether they're blood or not. Not. I believe that there are some people that just don't know how to want good for you. And it's not my obligation to keep that in my spirit, to keep that in my world. So once I got over the fact that I was not being rejected by people who didn't get me or didn't like me, I was being redirected. And so I accept that journey that I sometimes have to walk alone. And so I had to become at peace with myself. At 55 years old, even though I look like I'm 21, at 55 years old that I am not too old to get on social. I was told by my brand manager, you're too old to get on social media. You look old. Get a younger people. This is what I was.

Do we still have the same brand manager?

No. They was gonna say, and this is the thing when, when if I'm sitting in a meeting with you and stress you and I identify you as a stressor, you're not good for my company. So even not, not just a business deal or transaction, if I identify you as a stressor or something else in me instead of inspiration is inspired, that means you're not my people, you're not my tribe. So good. So good you belong to someone else.

This is critical. Even if it's your own family, I'm just going to throw that out there. I'm not saying you can love them. You don't have to let them in your. Your spear though, every day.

Yeah. So this is sacred. No, all of this is sacred and you have to keep. This is sacred. You get one of these.

Totally.

You get one of these. And I'm going to tell you, God taught me this, this and this was the security that I was not always just being a victim and people picking on me. God taught me. He says, hey, you have to protect your heart and who you allow to speak to you and what things you allow in and out of your mind and your heart. You only get one heart. The same heart you love people with. You love your husband. With you're loving children with is the same heart you have to love me with. So I'm not just going to let anybody treat you any kind of way. You are important to me. Which then gave me value to say if I'm important to God, then I have to be important to myself. I have to keep my heart and my mind sacred. So this is my secret is before the storm comes, I prepare myself for the weather that's going to change inevitably.

You know what I so much that you said is so just. Oh gosh, I hope I can't wait to hear your TED Talk on this. You need to do a whole TED Talk on this. This is so good because that I would say that same thing about even taking care of our health, about taking care of our finances. Like all those things you, it's things could be good, but you have to set yourself up to win for whatever is going to happen. That's my big argument for health and midlife and why it's so important to be a healthy weight to be, to have your lab markers good. Like it might sound good to have the pizza right now and not worry about it and not be active and sit on the couch. But like you have to weather what's going to come. Like we don't know what's going to come. And I want to be able to be fighting and you're doing that with your business business and you do that with life and you show up so strong. So if I can just unwind, I want to, I want to make sure I'm kind of clear on what happened because I want to, I want to really let people take these practices to heart number one. You have a very, very good grasp on what's actually urgent and what's not. What's actually urgent and not. And I think that comes from life experience. But I hope that people will take something from. I know I certainly did from that lesson. Like my husband will joke, is somebody dying? It's life or death. And it's usually not.

So.

So I, I have to remind myself like this. There's. This is no reason to get worked up. This is not urgent. Two, you look for, maybe not initially, but you looking for the lesson in things like where what am I supposed to learn? You that's a surrender thing. Like where what's the lesson? What's the gift in this? What am I supposed to be learning? What am I not seeing? And you turn to God for that, which is incredible. And you own that and that's amazing. And that faith piece is a big part of things. And I think why you have peace with things, because you. You. You turn to faith and you turn to God. The third thing is you have a strong sense of emotional release. You're. You're great at just getting it out there. Like, I. I had to have my cry, I had to have my scream. I had to get it out. You got that out of you. The fourth thing you do extremely well is you ask for help. You're really good at not in panic mode, but you ask people for help.

You are open unapologetically. Yeah.

You ask for help. And I think that's incredible. And then the fifth thing is you. You stayed in a practice of gratitude the whole time, which is beautiful. And then the most important icing on the cake of all of this with part of the surrender, is you didn't make it about you. You made it about who else needs my help. How am I going to help people? This isn't going to work because I can't help people any longer. So I think if I were to break down the formula. Those are the things that you did.

It is. And you know what? I have such a dependency on God because at 16, 17, 18, 19, I was almost practically raising my. Myself. And I was so scared that I didn't want to make mistakes and I didn't want to end up on drugs or end up in this. That. So there was such a dependency on God that I did truly have because my mom was not in a place that she could raise me. But as I've gotten older, like maybe in my early 50s, I started understanding. Honestly, the more I wanted to grow, the more emotional, intelligent I had to be. And that is the truth, too. You really have to get a grip, Trip. And listen, I'm gonna tell you, and I never told you this now, maybe I did. I used to weigh 300 pounds.

No, I didn't know that. I did not know that.

Yeah, I had. I had. Oh, my God. I was really, really, really big. 300 is my largest. What, 299.

Okay.

As. As my friend tells me you were one French fry away from 300. But I end up 25 years old because I was so big. And I just got married. My husband wanted to have kids. And I'm like, God, if I'm 3, 299, he wants to have kids. Oh, my God. Right? Oh, my God. I'm gonn. I had. I did have gastric bypass 25, 26 years ago. So with that being said, I understood the transformation that a person Genuinely can go through with the change of their health. Not only their health physically, but emotionally as well. So because I remember the first time a gentleman opened up the door for me as a small woman that I never experienced as a heavy set woman. I remember in sitting in Deals as a heavy, heavyset woman and sitting in Deals as a smaller, healthier person. And you have to not do it for them, you're doing it for you. Because what it makes, how it makes you feel the ownership of. I deserve to feel better. I deserve to wear whatever I choose to wear or sit in a plane and not have to ask for an extension. Wow. That was my reality. Gorgeous husband. And people look at him and they look at you and they look at him and go, how'd you do that? And I'm like, oh my God. So I understand. I guess I have been through so much and I'm always feeling like we're in transformation of what lesson is in this? What can I be grateful for? Did I prepare myself before this situation happened? Enough that I have enough emotional intelligence that I don't sabotage my own life?

This is so good. Hey, I can listen to you all day. You're just so motivational, so incredible. Your whole outlook on life. I mean just everything about, about it is just so wildly incredible. I have to ask just kind of two lingering questions that are kind of off topic, but did you make peace with your mom? Do you have a relationship with her?

I did, I did make peace with my mom. So after that I went back and I, I showed up and knocked on the door and I showed up and I said, mom. And when she see me, she just cried and we hugged each other and I explained to her that I understood. Now I was older though I was a lot more mature. I was probably in my 30s when we had that talk.

Yes.

And I told her I truly, truly understood. I just understood. And I was probably felt seen very.

Soon after that too.

And I never considered her hurt. And I get it though.

I. I can say I probably did the same thing. I did the same thing. I totally. I can see that. And then how did you get out of the homeless situation at that age?

It was a miracle. And so God told me, you have a gift in your hands. If you accept it, you will change not only your life, but you'll impact the lives of others. And you have to, to forgive your mom. I took on those two things and then I said, well, God, if you help me, I promise you for the rest of my life I'll reach back and I'll help other people like me, I promise you. And the next day I was doing my girlfriend's mom's hair. And as I was cur I caught two buses to get to this abandoned house that no one knew I was living in. By this time. I'm about 17, somewhere around that age. Anyway, long story short, short, she takes me, she says I do her hair. She says, hey, you're not taking two buses in the middle of Detroit at 10 o' clock at night. What type of mother would I be? I said, no, I'm good. She says, no, I'm taking you home. So I get in the car and I was going to fake her out n and I said, well, I'm going to act like I live there and I'm just going to run when she leaves. And so long story short, she dropped me off, she says, hey, stop playing with me. It's too late. Where do you live? And I said, I live there, ma'. Am. She said, is, no you don't. No one lives there. This is the next day. She says, take me in that house. So she take, I take her in. She looks around. I have three garbage bags of clothes. She says, get your clothes, you're going to stay with me.

Oh, wow, what an angel.

And for six months to eight, six to eight months, she let me live with her and recalibrate my life in the process. I'm doing the hair, I'm doing everything that I need to do. And then I understand that I have to forgive my mom. Mom as well. So now to this day, how I keep my promise because God kept his promise. He got me out that house the next day and I gave him my heart, I gave him my life. And I've served Christ for with I played full out. That's beautiful. But this is the thing. When you purchase our hair care products in Walmart, 10 of those proceed 10 of it goes to a youth home in Detroit still of young girls that's been rescued from human trafficking. I've been doing that for about 18 years.

That's amazing. I didn't know this. That's incredible. So I love your heart.

I do. I guess that's it. I made that promise in that house?

Yes. Okay. So the one thing I didn't add to those six things was your faith. I didn't make that strong enough. But that your faith and your promise and you're surrendering to God and your promises and staying true to that has what served you. This has been so good. I just love this. Where can people find you. Where could. So I understand they can buy your stuff in Walmart. Where else?

Where?

What's your website? Where do you want them following you on social media?

Media?

Where do you want them to go?

Awesome. So for right now you can go to Instagram. LA host Hair. Just the host Hair. Tick Tock. Let's have a lot of fun. I'm gonna start doing some real fun Tick Tock videos. All things either hate Johnson or LA host Hair. The host hair and wigs.

All platforms amazing. Check out her stuff. Check out her. I mean, I just love following you and hearing your energy and just I could hear you talk all day. Thank you so much. For those of you that liked this show, please make sure if you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you hit that subscribe button. I'm going to be adding more and more content on YouTube, so hit subscribe. If you're listening to this on the podcast, make sure you're following the show so you get notified when there's new shows and we will see you next time. Thanks for joining us for Midlife Conversations today.

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