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Guest: Rhonda Britten Company: Fearless Living Institute Website: www.FearlessLiving.org  AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE: https://www.amazon.com/Rhonda-Britten/e/B001IU0NHQ%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/master-coach-mindset-with-rhonda-britten/id1228959479 LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhondabritten/ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rhondabritten/ INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/rhondabritten/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/RhondaBritten YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/RhondaBritten   Hey there, welcome to the show. I'm Nicole Holland, your host and I am thrilled to bring you the fascinating founders Podcast, where we dive in and uncover the stories that came before the success of some of the world's most fascinating founders. hailing from a multitude of industries and socio economic starts, you're going to learn what's made these fascinating men and women realize their dreams from an inspired idea to millions in revenue, disrupting, innovating and impacting humanity for the better. You never know what's going to come up in our casual conversations. So get your notebook ready, cozy up with a great Cup of Joe and join us as I dive in to learn how these inspiring individuals have figured out how to thrive in a time where most people give up on their dreams. Now, before we get into it, let me ask you this. Have you ever wondered how you can get featured on popular podcasts that your ideal clients and customers are already listening to. In addition to being a highly rated podcaster myself, I'm also the creator of interviews that convert, and I've got a brand new course I'd love to give to you. It's my way of thanking you for being an engaged listener, and to help you achieve your Podcast Guesting goals too. If you want to have more leads, more opportunities, and more recognition for the work that you do. This easy to implement course is designed especially for you. It's completely free. There's no strings attached. Simply visit I want interviews, calm to register, you do the work, book, your interviews, and then let's celebrate your success together. By the way, when you register for the course you're also going to get instant access to my bonus playbook that reveals why dozens of popular podcasters will outright ignore or reject your pitch. And thwart all future opportunities to guest on their shows, you will not find this level of insider information anywhere else. So if being a featured podcast guest is something that you want to do enroll for free at I want interviews.com now and grab your bonus playbook to. My guest today is someone who claims that fear is the number one reason anyone is stopped from doing anything. She says that you can't eliminate fear but you can learn to master it. We'll be talking about the differences between intuition and fear why facing your fear is the best way to live your life to its fullest and how listening to your gut can be the most valuable move you make both as a business owner and as a human being. You'll be shocked to hear the horrific circumstances that she endured in her early years and be inspired by how she overcame her addictions and multiple suicides. Attempts that followed. Please be aware that we are talking about some pretty heavy stuff in this episode, and I highly recommend that you only listen outside of the earshot of children or especially sensitive individuals. On this episode of fascinating founders. I'm joined by Rhonda Britain, founder of the fearless living Institute, Emmy Award winner repeat Oprah guest and master coach who has changed countless lives for the better in over 600 episodes of reality TV and beyond. She's authored four bestsellers, including fearless living and is affectionately known as America's favorite life coach. I'm honored and pleased to have her here. Rhonda, welcome to fascinating founders. Thank you, Nicole, and I love affectionately known I'm going to have to pick that baby up. I like that. Well, I've always affectionately known you that way off. What I would love to get into today is coming from a television background. How did you record Nice, the importance of building your own company and what was your first entrepreneurial venture? Well, my first entrepreneurial venture was when I was in, you know, junior high school and I sold Easter baskets, right. I sold Easter baskets as well as then I donated Easter baskets to the nursing home around the corner. So I've been you know, as you know, I'm the girl that sold lemonade right on the side of the street. I'm the one that you know, went around to people's houses and, you know, sold tickets to whatever. So I've been supporting and helping people since I can remember. My first business was when my first official business as a business owner, was actually when right before I became a life coach. It was the job before that, and I own my own public relations company. And I worked for a PR company and the PR company owner came to me and asked me to be her partner. And I thought if she's asking me to be your partner, it means that I can own my own company. So I started focusing on founders that, you know, PR is a heck of a lot of money for most people. And so I basically created a niche for myself for solo entrepreneurs. And I did that until this thing called fearless living was birthed. And that was I birthed fearless living in 1995. Amazing. And so fearless living in the concept to mean Oh, yeah, birthing it through your own life experiences and helping save yourself and save others from that. Absolutely. Yeah. So in 1995, I basically realized that the life journey that I was on was not just meant for me. So what Nicole is referring to is that and I'll just tell the story really briefly is that when I was 14 years old, I had the horrific experience of on Father's Day watching my father murder my mother and commit suicide in front of me. And so from the age of 14 on, you know, I live to lives one was I'm okay, I'm all right, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm fine. And you know, did great in school, got a scholarship to college, but inside was lost, confused, basically didn't like myself and didn't believe I earned happiness didn't get to be happy. Because when you watch your mom die, you don't get to be happy. So that really was a 20 year journey for me to really transform my own life and release my parents and still love my parents, but release them and release the shame of that event, the blame the guilt, etc, etc. Because during those 20 years, I became an alcoholic tried to kill myself three times, got three DUI, spent a little time in jail. And so in order to transform my own life, I did a lot of heavy lifting and, you know, workshops and all those things were wonderful, but it really wasn't until I started creating my own exercises that my life changed. And when I really started understanding how fear worked, and that was my put my kind of, you know, flag in the ground, so to speak in 1995 and said, fear is it you know, you can do whatever you want with anything else, but if you don't understand fear, forget it. So 1995 I had my very first one on one client, amazing. And then from there, I did that for two years. And then one of my clients asked me to come to her company and teach her employees. And I'm like, What? I don't do that. I'm a private coach. I don't teach what are you talking about? And I really tried to teach her how to teach them. But after three weeks, it became evident, Nicole, that that was going to be a hard thing to do. So I said, Okay, okay. I'm going to go do one, I'll do one event for you. And that's it. And I went and jitter for employees and a little room and I went in there and the minute I got up in front of them and started teaching, I fell in love. Then I realized I'm going to do workshops, and from there I realized, Oh, my gosh, then I have to speak. So then I started speaking, and then we're speaking I was like, people asked me for a book and then I was like, Okay, I'll write a book and back then there were no there was no Amazon, no ebooks anything. So did the wrote have a publisher and got published by Penguin Putnam back then. But now it's Penguin Random House. All four books are with Penguin Random House. So it just was really a stepping stone. And I think that's one of the problems that exists today. For so many founders is there's it's kind of like, everything's out there. And there's so many options, where for me it was one step at a time. And I think when founders get overwhelmed, it's because they're trying to pick up every shiny Penny, right? They're trying to grab every strategy out there and that really doesn't build your skill set and it doesn't build your expertise. Yeah, amazing. And, and so it sounds like your business really developed very organically posed to you saying, Okay, this is what I'm building now. I'm going to head down, get it done, sort of like you, you allowed for it to be inspired and dig into what you enjoyed most Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I had no intention of if you I've told me when I first opened my business that I'd be speaking, or I'd be on TV or be writing a book, I'd be like, what are you crazy? And it really was people coming towards me and saying, I want a book, you know, I want you know, I want to hear, I want you to come and teach my clients. So it was really people requesting things from me, and they wanting more of Mammon, even my first book, my classes because I went had workshops. And then again, I spoke and then spoke, speaking, felt filled my workshops, I created a couple of little books that I published myself and I had, you know, CDs and all those types of things that people could buy my packages when I went and spoke, but it really was that people wanted something from me and I, I wouldn't jump up and do it, but it was a seed planted inside of me. And then from there, everything just unfolded. So in 2000, I wrote my first book in 2001. It was published and I started on TV because I happen to be in England, where reality TV started and And they were casting for a life coach therapist for a the first life coach show in the world. And they had been casting for nine months and couldn't find anybody. And so my publicist over there was like, would Rhonda Would you like to do a screen test for this, this new series of trying to get off the ground, but they can't find anyone to do it? And I was like, Sure, why not? Because my motto when I first started my business, which is a little dangerous now, but it was a good model for me was I said yes to anything. And because what I discovered is that I said, Yes, probably 80% of the time that people didn't follow up, right. But I was a yes. So again, said yes to the screen test, went and did the screen test. And three weeks later, I was living in London, and you know, the first night catch on TV. So then I did that for two seasons. And then when starting over the first life coach show in America was casting, I was actually the only person in the entire world that had done it. So thank goodness, they saw that and they you know, they hired me for that show. So I really wanted to be the first life coach on TV the world because I wanted to set the bar for coaching. Because right now as we all know, everybody can call themselves a life coach. So the bar the name of coach is very weak and it doesn't have a lot of gravitas. So I wanted to be the one that really set the bar and and to really say, This is what a life coach should be like, this is what you need to demand from your life coach, the black because used to be this good, or don't coach with that coach. And it's amazing. It's a, you know, as somebody who was going to school back in the early 2000s, actually, the school that I went to was a accredited post secondary school. And they were the first in the area to offer life coaching as a curriculum, certificate based curriculum. And I was in the second group, the second cohort of that, and it was like, it was so unheard of at that time, even though you know, you were on TV and stuff like that. It was still people were like What and coaching has been around forever. But it's the I think the terminology and that it was on the cusp of becoming more mainstream and your TV shows obviously, really impacted that the awareness of coaching. And nowadays I feel like yes, it's like everybody's a coach, you know, and it doesn't mean there's no standard, right? There's no standard. There's no standard. Don't get me started on that. Don't get me started, because I will give you I will give you a full year on that. Right. I would love for us to dive a little bit into how you built the fearless living Institute where you now a credit life coaches as well as many other things that you do to help people. Yeah, I think really, if you want to go back to you know, 1995 right, I created my first course. And I have good fortune to have a natural ability to create curriculum. It's just I don't know how I always say God gave it to me because he knew I needed it. So I've just been creating class after class after class, I'm a content, you know, I'm a content slot, you know. And so I can create content at the, you know, at the drop of a hat. And so really, I built the Institute, just like I built, built my reputation and built my platform is one step at a time. Like I said, I did private coaching and then private coaching, I needed to meet more people, right, like private coaching, I needed to have influence over more people. So then that's when I started my group classes. And those group classes then created the kind of request for a book so it really was one step at a time. And then when the internet came, you know, it was like, right, because there's this whole new world because I filled up my workshops, the flyers and what's so fascinating now I just got off the phone with somebody that I consider business mentor, and he said it's going back to old school, right? Like it's like, right you mail things like I used to mail things all the time. I mail postcards, I mail letters, all All the time to potential clients, potential workshop participants, etc, etc. And basically we're going we're actually coming full circle. The internet is bogging down people's hearts and minds, their phones are stealing away their energy, literally. And so we're going back to old school. So it's fascinating because I remember doing a study, like how do I fill my workshops? And how do I get my private clients? It was flyers. It was flyers, you know? And so now it's like, oh, yeah, I gotta start mailing things again. So I think for me, it was really just one thing at a time. And then when I got on TV, obviously, that blew up my coach certification program. And you know, through the years, I've brought in consultants and said, Hey, am I doing this right? And really, it's so fascinating because so many times I bring a consultant in when I'm wanting to make sure that I'm doing a plus work and my intuition and what I think is right, always Trump's what they tell me to do, it just doesn't feel right. I would say that just like you said a few minutes ago is I really use my intuition. I do what I'm told. I always say I'm a god, girl, and God's a neg. So I do what's requested me and do what's needed. And so when I got it on TV, I had my first book published, did two seasons on help me, Rhonda. Then I published my second book, then got starting over then published my third book and my fourth book while I was on starting over, and people would say to me, like, I want to be you and I go, Well, wait a minute, I'm writing books at six in the morning, going on to set by eight, working all day till 810 staying up writing, so be attentive, and make sure you want what I have. Yeah, and and I think it's the lesson that people need to pull away from this is that you followed your path. And I think when we look externally for the consultants, I mean, I think there's absolutely i mean, as a consultant, I think there's definitely a place for that. So little However, for folks who are feeling, you know, the resistance of they hire someone, and they got that nagging gut thing going this is, this is hard. This is difficult. They don't necessarily agree. It's probably a red flag to say, let's examine if this is the right person or the right path for this particular founder, because just because everybody's doing something doesn't mean it's right for you. So I think what you know, being aware of your own feelings and your gut and your intuition, and trusting yourself, I think that's what I'm hearing from you is really has been your secret to success. Well, I also love the word that you just brought in trust, because that's what I was nodding my head going. I was just about to say it's all about trust. And the challenges is that most founders on some level at some point in their career stopped trusting themselves. And you know, my motto is you got to put your blinders on and not look at what anybody else is doing. Then you've got to trust yourself and trust, you know, is eroded because of fear. And if you are looking externally, ie, oh, I need I didn't hit my benchmark this month. Oh, I didn't get you know, I didn't build my database as big as I wanted it. Oh my god, you know, we actually sometimes believe that we're failing then or that we're doing something wrong, when in fact, it may be a slower build, or it might be a tweak and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So I find that people just switch strategies, instead of saying, Okay, this is my strategy. This works for me and I'm in for the long haul. So I think there's a big difference between short term thinking about your business and long term thinking about your business. You know, this is my life. This is who I am fearless living is Rhonda Britain. Rhonda Britain is fearless living. And I also work my work like I walk the talk, I attempt to be fearless. So what does that mean when I get an intuitive hit and it does feel hard I don't let hard stop me. Right I don't let confusion stop me. I don't let the unknown stop me. I don't let I don't know how to do this stop me. Right so I think most people when they hit up against something hard we've been falsely told that something hard means that we're not you know, oh, it's the doors shut. It's hard life should be easy. It's like no, every single thing I've ever done in my life has some level of effort attached, some level of breaking the mold of who I think I am breaking the identity of what this should be fearless living should be right. So I've had a lot of different incarnations, quote unquote, a fearless living. But as I've grown, it's grown as I've trusted myself, it's gotten deeper. So you know, I even even lately, even just in the last year, I recognize that there's a deeper place for me to go and I've also recognized that, you know, I'm not for the person who wants a quick hit and out right I'm really a way of life like fearless living is a way of life. So I Do deep work? I do deep work. And so what does that mean? Okay, well, I may not be the biggest coaching program out there, because the biggest coaching programs don't do deep work, because that's the hard work. Right? Exactly. So, you know, I have, you know, I've like, Oh, I want to be the biggest coaching certification program in the world. It's like, oh, but that actually goes against your values, not that it can happen. But as long as you're keeping your values Rhonda that you do deep work, period, you do fear. You're the only coaching program in the world that does fear Hello. So you know, you've got to do deep work. Fear is not a light hearted subject. It's not feel the fear and do any way or false evidence appearing real. If those worked always, then it would work right. Again, they're nice day sayings. But those aren't the magic pills. Those are just mantras that you can use to support yourself. But that's not what fear is. That's not how you get over fear. That's not mastering fear. So I think for me to build fearless living, I really had to do my own work and I had to Practice trust. And I think when I talked to owners, and founders, you know, business owners founders, that is one thing they asked me all the time, they asked me, How do you know the difference, Rhonda, between the voice of fear and the voice of your intuition? How do you tell the difference? And you can tell the difference pretty easily. But most people have a hard time distinguishing because they're looking at, well, which voice is going to give me the result I want? Which one, you know which one do I feel seduced by? Not actually, which one is the one that really is that divine center that really is coming from your intuition, your gut again, God, beloved source, whatever you want to call it, that's something that's higher than us. So bigger than us, right? That can see more than us and see beyond us. I always say that, you know, God's source, divine, whatever you wanna call it knew what he was doing with me because I always think about, like, you know, like my job like, you know, I think this is my destiny. And so, you know, God's like, oh, Rhonda needs to know how to speak. She need notes needs to know how to run a class. She needs to know how to be on TV. She and again remember, there was no TV back then with life coaches. So God's like she has all these skills. So what can I have her do when she's driven by fear for those 20 years while she's drinking? And, you know, committing suicide and getting DUIs? Oh, well, I was an actress. You know, I was an actress for many years and learned how to use a camera and you know, learn how to speak and did improv and did stand up, etc. So, when that dream died for me, and it was a very hard dream to die, I mean, because I had it I had identified with it, and I thought this was, you know, like, this is going to save me from my pain, like, oh, if I'm an actress, I don't have to go to the DMV anymore. You know, right. If I'm an actress, you know, I'm safe, right? So, when that dream was pulled out from under me, I was devastated. And it wasn't for a few years that fearless living came to me and You know, I always say God knows what he's doing because God for you, for you to live your destiny for you to live your true path for you to really build your business and the way you're called to, you will need every single experience you've ever had in your entire life because it's all informing you. I mean, I was a waitress for 20 years, and I learned to read tables. How do you think I'm a good coach, being a waitress was one of the greatest skills I learned in order to read a table as well as improv and stand up and everything else I did. So, you know, people throw the baby out with the bathwater, people throw out their past experience, and that is the last thing you should be doing. Every experience you've ever had is going to help you build your business and help you get where you're supposed to go. Amazing. And we are over time, I want to be very aware of your schedule, and I think this is a great place to sort of wrap up before we do I just want to remind my listeners that you know if you are a fascinating founder yourself, which means and this is where fear comes in and the little negative Nancy voices say Oh, you're not that special. Bullshit, okay, if you have built a mid market company, if you have that idea and you had that inspiration and you figured out how to do it and get the right people in place and you have hit that success point, I want to talk to you, I want to feature you, I want to share you with others who can be inspired by you and I want to help you get that visibility. So if you are if that's you, stop hiding, go on over to the Nicole Holland calm forward slash guest fill out my application to come on here and chat with me about your founders journey. And, you know, we'll see what we can do and because you deserve to be seen, you deserve to fulfill you deserve to grow. You deserve to have everything you dream of and more. And fear is the only thing stopping you from doing that. So, and there and this is a choice point. I call it a choice point, Nicole, this is a choice right? Unknown Speaker 24:00 So people say, Oh, I can't I'm not fascinating, just like you said, right? And I'm like, well, that's a choice you're making. That's actually not true. But that's a choice you're believing. So I like to look at life as choices, right? And every day, all day long, we're making choices. We're making choices, whether to believe our bad press that we tell ourselves, or we can believe our clients what they're telling us, we can believe our intuition, right? We're constantly making choices. And if you do not believe that you are at choice that makes you a victim driven by fear, and I use the victim word purposely, because I think nobody wants to be called a victim, especially somebody who's attempting to build a big business, somebody who's in that mid size to wanting to grow. And bottom line is if Nicole's words got you at all, like goose, pimply, then it's for you. And if you hear the voice that says, Not me, that's the lie that you're choosing to believe because people is very, very good at lying to you. And it's insidious and it's invisible and it wants to keep you exactly where you are and never grow. So instead of listening to fear, take the choice. And if you got goose pimply when Nicole was talking, get on over there and be a guest, yes, because yes, you deserve it. So come and apply at the Nicole holland.com forward slash guest. And before we roll out of here, Rhonda, this has been amazing. I love you so much. And it's always such a pleasure. How can my listeners connect with you get more support directly from you? And any final words of wisdom you'd like to share with us? I would I want to share one thing and if you take nothing else from our talk today, I want you to hear this. There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not stupid, you're not lazy. You're not weak. You're not selfish. You're not mean you're not whatever you tell yourself. You're not not good enough. Right? That's all lies. You are absolutely enough. any conversation besides that is fear. So you are absolutely have everything you need to succeed to the level that you'd like. And you are living your destiny right now if you're listening to this message in your founder, you are living your destiny. And your job is to slice fear away from you to let shed that fear so that you can start shining and expanding more and more and more. So there's nothing wrong with you. It's just fear. So now how to find me go to fearless living the.org fearless living that.org and you're going to see options on the classes and workshops. If you can get to a live workshop working with me directly you are going to be in heaven. And if you can't get away from home, great then do it online and you get videos and you get to hear my voice and you get to see me so you get to work with me directly in that way. So go over to fearless living.org and do something don't think about it. Do something make a choice. Thanks again to Rhonda Britain from the fearless living Institute for being my guest on today's show and for sharing her founders journey with us. I loved how she explained to her that the journey for her was very much step by step day by day. And that it was one thing at a time she wasn't overwhelmed like many of us are today with all the different technology and all the different messaging coming in. That's definitely something to appreciate the the simpler times, if you will, there were a lot of things that made that time more challenging for business owners and at the same time, there's a lot of things that made it easier. So what I love to do sometimes is just get away from technology and tune out the world. I definitely miss miss the older times sometimes. But you can do you can you can apply simpler times to your life anytime you want. You don't have to believe that you always have to be hustling and busy and running. And you know, it's a choice. You know, I really like to say, to look at things and if I need a break, say, I'm going to take a break, because that's what I want to do. And that's what would feel good right now and the world will survive without me rushing and running and doing all the things and so I think it's worth taking that away. And anyways, this was a lot of fun. As always, I love talking with Rhonda and I hope you enjoyed it as well. We will have all of the links to connect with her as well as the transcript from this episode and more at fascinating founders.com. Now, how would you like to be featured as the expert guest on popular podcasts that your ideal clients and customers are already listening to? If you're thinking Heck yeah, I would. I'm going to teach you how to do it. Being a featured podcast guest can be your golden ticket to more leads, more opportunities. more recognition on a global scale, getting heard by the people that you want to connect with. And because you're a loyal listener, I'm going to teach you for free. All I want in return is a commitment from you that you're going to go through the course and implement the bite size challenge steps that are designed to take less than 15 minutes a day, you're going to learn my proven system that I've used to book hundreds of interviews for clients, and I've taught to motivated business owners just like you, some of whom have gone on to double, triple and even 10 x their businesses in under three years. If you're ready for those kinds of results. Enroll now over at, I want interviews.com there is no cost, no catch. Plus, as an added bonus, I'm going to throw in my exclusive playbook which exposes exactly why most people who pitch podcasts are instantly rejected or ignored. You'll even get to You see what dozens of my podcast or friends like Jordan Harbinger, Cameron, Harold, Christina Canter's, and many more, think about getting pitched. so fascinating founders is just getting started, and I so appreciate you tuning in and sticking around. You're going to love season one, and we're already recording more incredible interviews for season two as well. These episodes are inspiring and packed with a mindset gold and implementable tactics. I would be absolutely honored if you'd help us spread the word here are three ways that you can really impact the show's growth. First of all, hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast player right now. This lets the powers that be know that our show is worth listening to next, if you're moved by anything in a particular episode, be at a quote, a concept or anything that's noteworthy and that you want to remember please Post it up on social media, using the hashtag fascinating founders so that everybody can benefit from your insights. And if you're on Instagram, be sure to tag me in your stories. My handle is the Nicole Holland, and I will proudly and gratefully reshare them to finally, let's interact. I'd love to know how fascinating founders is personally impacting you. And to learn how we can further support your growth. There's a nifty contact form right on the fascinating founders website. And you could submit your thoughts, stories, questions and feedback there. Your message is going to come straight to me and I can't wait to see what you have to say. One final thought that I'd like to leave you with is this successful people surround themselves with successful people look to see how you can spend more time with the ones who see your greatness and seek to sell Break the whole of who you are. Until next time, my friend this is Nicole Holland signing off