Celebrating 100 Episodes of Empathy Rising

It’s time to celebrate 100 episodes of Empathy Rising!

For our 100th episode, I’m in the hot seat, interviewed by my good friend & fellow Master Coach Lee Chaix McDonough. As a podcaster herself, she throws some pretty hard-hitting questions my way. Don’t miss it!

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ML: Hey, Risers! As you guys know, this is a little bit of a different episode this week, where I am going to be the one interviewed. And of course, I couldn't think of anyone better to do this than my really good friend Lee Chaix McDonough. Not only is she just a master coach and a former clinician, she has a podcast of her own.

And so to have somebody in this seat, I couldn't think of anybody better. And I was just so thrilled that she agreed to do it. I thought it would be fun for you guys to hear me answer the questions. So we're going to just some normal interview questions, and then we decided to brainstorm some hot seat questions and some out-of-the-box questions as well.

So it should be fun.

So without further ado, here's Lee, and she is going to take the reins from here.

LCM: Hello. Hello, Marissa. Thank you so much for having me, not just on your show, but allowing me to interview you for your 100th podcast episode. This is so huge, and it's a real honor for me to be here. So thank you.

ML: Oh, thank you. I'm just... I couldn't, like I said, I couldn't think of anybody better that I would be able to be more vulnerable with and be able to have fun with and stuff. So I'm just excited to see where this goes. I don't know what you're asking or what order you're asking it in. So I'm just ready to show up.

LCM: Excellent. And so this will be like a conversation, and I'm excited because you have accomplished so much in your business, and you have supported countless numbers of clinicians in terms of expanding their impact, their revenue, and so forth.

So we're definitely going to dive into that, but before we get there, I want to start way back at the beginning. I want the origin story of Marissa Lawton. And so when I was thinking about that, the question that kept coming up for me was: "What was Marissa like as a kid? What was six-year-old Marissa like?"

ML: Goodness. So six is an interesting age for me because my parents divorced and separated. So I was in a lot of trouble at six. Like, I remember going to detention at six, and I don't think... like, Sawyer is six right now. So it just... it's interesting to watch a kid, hopefully who's securely attached, to having a better time than I am. Well, what would I have been like if I had some stability?

But yeah, for me, at six. "Negative attention was better than no attention" is really what it was. So I would act out in school. I would act out at the babysitter, just trying to, like, have some sense of, like, eyes on me during a time when, my parents, they were going through their own thing. And it was an ugly divorce too.

So I think that had a big, profound impact on why I was acting out. That makes a lot of sense. And at that age, we're not necessarily at the point where we can understand everything that's going on around us. Why are my parents getting divorced? Why are my teachers angry with me?

Why am I going to detention at age six? Which is the question I have as an adult, but that's an entirely different topic.

LCM: So yeah, it makes sense that you'd be seeking out attention, however you could get it. So where do you feel like things shifted for you in your development?

ML: Yeah, so I feel like that's an interesting question. I feel like that negative attention-seeking is something that was with me for a really long time. And I feel like I'm bragging, but I also was, like, academically inclined. Like, I was an honor student and everything like that. I think a big shift happened actually in eighth grade. Because before that, the eighth grade was where I had, like, my first set of honors classes, honors math, honors, English, or whatever. And the curriculum was actually engaging. And I think part of the reason I acted out in school was this negative attention-seeking. But also my classes were just way, way too easy.

LCM: Yeah. You were bored.

ML: Yeah. And so I think it was the combination of both. But I remember distinctly in eighth grade, two things happened. I got into honors classes, and so school was engaging and fun and challenging. And also we had an assembly before high school, and it was, like, basically about college scholarships and how high school changes and things start to matter more in high school.

And I was standing there. My mom... I remember it like clear as day. My mom was on my left side. We were, like, watching the stage and I had this epiphany, realization, whatever, that Okay. School is my way out. If I do good in school, I'll get a scholarship. I'll get out. I'll be able to go to college and define what I want.

And I didn't have a bad childhood per se. Single income, single mom. So it wasn't like there was like a ton of money or anything, but there weren't addictions, there wasn't violence. So there were people who had kids, even in my school, who had it much worse than I did, but so when I say get out, it wasn't like getting out of an abusive situation, but it was, like, forging my own path. It was the first time I realized I have control over that.

LCM: Yeah. That you were seeing what was possible in general, but also what was possible specifically for you, and seeing these are the steps I need to take to make that happen.

ML: My first sense of agency. And you saying steps is really key because that's exactly what it was. It was the first time my systemic brain, my, my Type A linear brain saw a path. And those are the things I teach: existing steps of path. So that's fascinating. That just dawned on me. Yeah.

LCM: It makes a lot of sense that you will have created this approach during your formative years. It served you then, and now it's serving you now, and it's serving your clients now, too.

ML: Yeah. And that's something that we, you and I, talk about privately is, like, masculine energy and being a daughter of divorce. And I didn't have an absent father, per se. Like I had an... every other weekend there, like, I had visitation. I grew up. He was still in my life per se, but like a daughter of divorce seeks out masculine energy in lots of different ways.

But I think for me being that do-er, that force or that accomplisher, that step-by-step person... that was very much me in my masculine. And I think it all stemmed from having a dad, not in the home. And so it was a coping mechanism for sure. It was a strategy that got me through those times. And then it's something that still shows up in my business today.

LCM: Yeah. Yeah. And now you're able to leverage that, not merely as a coping strategy, but as a superpower that you can then allow to inform your work and support your people.

ML: Yeah. That feels better. All right, we'll go with that. Then the mechanism of survival superpowers sounds a lot better.

LCM: So it sounds like you were always a bright, high-achieving young woman. And I'm curious from a career path... let's start with what your first job was. Where did you get started?

ML: Yeah. So I obviously knew I was going to need a job. I wasn't supporting myself, but, like, I had friends whose parents paid their car insurance or paid their gas or paid their cell phone. This was, like, the Nokia brick phones. Paid their cell phone and stuff like that. And I didn't. If I wanted anything, I paid for it in high school.

And then, in college, I fully supported myself and I had friends in college who their parents pay their rent or their parents pay their tuition or whatever. And that wasn't my case. So my first job, I knew it at 14, I was going to need a job at 16 if I wanted anything. My first job was at a movie theater. A chain called Harkins, which is local to Arizona. I think it's... I think it's spread it a little bit of the Southwest region, but it's headquartered in Arizona, and Josh was my manager.

Yeah. For anybody who doesn't know. So I got Josh fired for fraternization and then, so he, this was in the press, get heart, get cross-cut Valley Park kids. And so then he ended up having to go get a job at the Sedona Harkins because that he was going to go to, like, film school and all this stuff. Ended up joining the army. Totally different career paths. But that was my first job. And when you talk about achieving and stuff, they wanted to promote me. It scared the crap out of me. And so I quit.

LCM: Really?

ML: Yeah. So it was, like, either up or out. Went out. I went out. Yeah, because it hurricanes, and I don't know if it's still this way, but there was the entry-level, which is the people who served your popcorn, took your tickets, and then there were supervisors and then there were managers.

And they wanted to make me a supervisor and it meant, like, more commitment, more hours. I got a raise and it freaked me out. I left. Yeah. So I don't know why I wish I... I need to explore why that freaked me out.

LCM: But... and how old were you?

ML: 16. Yeah, 16. When I got that job and then I don't think I was there quite a year. I think I left before I was 17 and that would be a lot of commitment and a lot of responsibility for a 16-year-old who's still figuring out who she is and who she wants to be in the world. So that would make sense.

LCM: Tell me about your path into the world of college. And then I know that you were studying some other topics before you wound up into therapy, so I'd love to hear about that journey as well.

ML: Yeah. And I was thinking about this in the car if this stuff was going to come up today. So again, my dad was out of the home, so my dad was a serial entrepreneur. But a couple of different jobs he had, it was, like, it's hard to explain, but it was, like, he was, like, a bit basically, an independent contractor. So, like, entrepreneurial, but, like, under the umbrella of a company. Does that makes sense?

So when I was real young, that was... I guess financial advisor. So he was under mutual of Omaha, but he had his own branch in Prescott, Arizona. So he was the fund manager of that branch. So doing a new city's investments, college funds, all of that stuff. And that was what his job was when I was little. And then he, again, serial entrepreneur.

But so that's where I studied finance. I studied finance because I wanted my dad to I wanted to impress my dad, basically, but also, there was a clear career path. Again, step by step by step. I study this, I get a job in this. And my first year of undergrad was 2005. Market was booming. My professors and my business schools were telling us we were going to make 100K as undergraduate graduates. And then my junior year was 2008, like, Oh, long leaving brothers out of business. You know, Merrill Lynch. God, like anywhere that any of these finance majors were going to work, they were gone.

LCM: It disappeared.

ML: Yeah. So 20% of my graduating class in 2009 got jobs and I got a job in print marketing per advertising.

LCM: Really? Yeah, so it wasn't really the financial crash of 2008, but it was my junior year. Actually, in my freshman year, in an econ class, a professor said something about the poverty line, and, like, the poverty line being, like, $40,000 or something. I don't remember the exact figure, but I was, like, My mom never made that much money ever.

And I think by the time she retired and she did, but when her first job, after she divorced, my dad was at $24,000 a year. And she's raising my oldest sister, went to live with my dad, but me and my middle sister stayed with my mom.

So she's raising two kids on 24 grand. It's still... they bought a house on that salary.

LCM: Wow.

ML: It was hard, but I never considered us in poverty when I was thinking about what poverty in my mind meant. But then, like, he was pointing out something about the poverty line and how you don't ever want these people to be your clients under the poverty line.

And that was my... yeah, that was my freshman year. And I was like, Oh, this is not right. So I was like, Oh, I'll ignore it. I'll keep getting my business degree, keep going, keep studying, finance, whatever. And then junior year, I really wanted to start making some changes, but if I was on scholarship, so my money was, like, finite. My scholarship was finite.

And so junior year I started looking outside the business school, but it was going to add on another year. And I was, like, how could I pay for that year? Very black-and-white thinking, very black-and-white thinking around money, which is something I still deal with to this day.

So then I started looking, Okay, can I switch majors inside of the business school? And that was going out on a semester and I still didn't want to pay out of pocket or get loans for a semester that my scholarship wasn't going to cover. So instead of changing my major, I started taking every elective I could and every internship I could.

So I got all my electives in marketing and I interned at a pretty prominent advertising agency in Phoenix. So a lot of clients out in LA that didn't want to pay LA advertising prices, they would advertise with us. They would use this Phoenix agency. And so that's where I interned. So my first job out of college was actually in print advertising, which was a dying industry, as we can see. They've had one graphic designer on staff who is just starting to like tinker around with, like, Illustrator, these, like, very basic things. But now that company has gone. They're out of business.

LCM: It's interesting because if someone were to maybe just look from the outside or look at your transcript, it would seem like you had a very, probably, predictable path through finance and yes, some electives, but really, it sounds like the seed for your passion for helping others and so forth was planted early in that economics class when you were freshmen, but it took a few years for that to take root and bloom. When did that happen?

ML: Yeah. So again, this is something you and I talk about, is I've always had a strong intuition that I ignored out of, like, survival, probably. And there are key times when I have had dreams. It comes to me in dreams that I can distinctly remember that were, like, markers on this is what you're supposed to do.

And one was about that print advertising job. Actually, I had a dream about being on a printing press and putting ink into a printing press which is... they're these big paint. And it's like really viscous, thick, thick paint. And you would spread it on these rollers. And it was like CYMK. Pink, yellow, blue. Anyway, I had that dream way before I was ever climbing on a printing press. So I had no idea what that was. It was just this weird ass thing I was dreaming about. And then six months later at that job, I was doing the exact thing that was in my dream.

I've had dreams about having two blonde girls, even when I was going through fertility treatment. I had these dreams about these two blonde girls. And now I have two blonde, very blonde girls, which I don't know where that comes from, but I dye my hair to match them. So then I look like I belong with my children, but so one of these dreams was about helping people. It was about, like, being somehow in this helping profession.

So we moved. Got married to Josh. Josh got orders to Alaska and we had been doing he had been stationed in Texas before, so Arizona to Texas I'd fly there twice a month. It was like a cheap ass ticket on Southwest, gets ordered to Alaska. And we can't do long-distance anymore. So we decided to get married, which is very cool.

The military community, and people who are listening, probably... but so I find myself with a finance degree in the Middle of Nowhere, Alaska that has one credit union. So I'm this, like, teller at a credit union. 'Cause it's the only job. And I'm talking to these managers like, and they're like, "We know you're way overqualified for this. We don't have any loan officer positions. We don't have anything because it's one bank and all the jobs are full." They're like, "We can't really help you." So I just was working as teller job.

I was... see, it's so funny because you are ICF accredited. I was seeing ICF ads on Facebook. I... yeah, I wanted to go into coaching.

I was like, "I'll just be a life coach," but I'm like, "Who is going to hire a 23-year-old life coach who has no life experience?" And I love Alaska, and all the stuff that says that's not an option. What is like that? And then that's how I found therapy.

So I feel sometimes ashamed to say that because a lot of people who are clinicians, like... they're called to be therapists. They knew they wanted to be therapists from a young age. Maybe they had a therapist and it, like, changed them profoundly. I had therapists after I got my master's and stuff like that. So it wasn't, like, I had that big calling that a lot of people do.

LCM: I think that's okay, though, because what you do have is a very finely honed intuition, and one of your strengths is your ability to make space for both that logical, rational step-by-step, what do I need to do to get stuff done? But you can pair that with this intuitive side, that's telling you, this is what you need to explore. This is what you need to look into. And so that may look different than a traditional calling, but I don't think that makes it any less important.

ML: That's really validating to hear you say, because I don't share that with an audience of therapists very often, because I'm like... I feel like that calling to serve, that it's noble, it's honorable, especially because clinicians are paid shit most of the time. So it's honorable and I don't feel like I did it in that way. I was just like, Okay. I don't think coaching their work for me right now. What's like that, that I could own my own business?

I always knew I'd be an entrepreneur. But I could own my own business. I was like, Oh, therapists have private practices. I've seen that on movies. I've seen that on TV. Like, these were my references. It wasn't, like, this honorable thing that I'm talking about. And I was like, "Let's do that." And that's why I did it.

Yeah. It's so easy to compare our path with someone else's and to think, Oh, they, theirs is more pure. They're coming from a place of, I've always known I've wanted to be a therapist, or I've always had that drive.

And what I'm hearing you say is that wasn't necessarily the case for me.

LCM: I know you, Marissa, so I know that you've always had a big heart for people, and you've always felt called to serve, but it sounds like the way that you've gotten to where you are today just looks a little different than someone else's, but that doesn't make it any less honorable.

And in fact, the work you're doing now to support therapists who maybe do have that calling that's important too. We need people like you to support people like that.

ML: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, again, because of my upbringing, it was always about stability. It was to be really honest. It wasn't about... how can I help people with my profession? It was, how can I make enough money with this profession and live a lifestyle that I want? Again, goes back to a conversation with my mom that I could remember exactly where I was. It was in the living room of this tiny row house that we lived in Alaska. And being in the living room and saying, "I think I'm going to do this because it'll give me a job where I can work certain hours and I can be home with my kids like that." And I was 23. I didn't have kids or anything like that at the time, but that's what I was thinking.

Then little did I know two years I'd be in the middle of this huge fertility thing. So it was like, I always was trying to design a career around something that would pay me enough money and that I could have a family.

LCM: Yep.

ML: And I think what's interesting when we talk about money, it's, it is really easy to look at the bottom line, but money also represents what's important to us, what we value and, my whole thing is really doing values-oriented work.

LCM: And so when we look at the money for you, it's much more than that. It's about stability on some level. It's about safety and the beautiful work that we do around values means that values don't get to be right or wrong. That is your value. And it is okay because it is your value and someone else may hold a different value.

That's fine. That works for them. But for you, this has been your path and it's been in honor and in alignment with what really matters most to you. And look, you've been able to create a life with Josh, and you've got two beautiful daughters, and you've got this home environment for them that is supportive and loving. And it's all because you've honored that value.

ML: Yeah. I feel like it's a hindsight moment. It's almost... I not that I don't know how to explain this. This is going to get a little woo. But if I come out of my body, like if I can come up objectively, I guess is the better word to say that if I can objectively look at the scenario, that's what I see.

It's everything's full circle. I see where everything fits. I also have done a lot of this insight work and I've always been insightful. When I, when I did sit down with my first therapist, I would talk. And they were like, the first thing she said to me, it was like, "You are very insightful."

Like, she didn't have to ask any probing questions or bring anything out of me. I just sat down and I was like, "It's this and this." And it's because of this and this.

LCM: Like, you're like the dream client, but, like, that insight. And I can see where the pieces have fallen in. And even if this piece felt disjointed at first, like I now see where it fits.

ML: Yeah.

LCM: And again, I think that speaks a lot to you following your intuition, trusting the process, but also having a really clear strategic plan that you follow.

ML: And I think that's what I trust the strategy. I don't really, I think trusting a process is something that's was way I never would have entertained that in my teens and twenties. There's no process out there. It's me. And it's my brute force that's going to make this happen. I think "trust the process" is a phase that's newer to me.

LCM: And how is that showing up in your business today? I don't know if it is. I think it's something I have to be very aware of and I have to proactively practice because it's so natural and ingrained in me to fall back on the forced thing to fall back on the "make it happen."

ML: We were talking before we hit record about how I'm trying to, like, work on these evergreen quote-unquote passive income tunnels, and it brings up stuff for me. Every time I make money from the funnel, I don't feel like I've earned it, which is because I'm not actively doing anything.

So that's... that is one thing. And I also feel like it's not going fast enough. So I'm like, what can I do in the meantime until this starts going faster? So I don't know if it's showing up in my business as something that I'm probably not doing as well as.

LCM: See, and for me looking at it from the outside, it feels like the opposite, knowing you and senior development from working as a therapist and then moving into supporting therapists through the work that you do. It's very much... this is the next step. This is what I'm doing. And yes, there's some variables I can't control. There's some things that I'm not sure of. And yet I'm still going to be taking one step forward and another step forward and another step forward.

ML: And to me, that's the process. I think that's called high-functioning anxiety. As long as me, I think one of my students, because this is one of her ideal customers sent this meme and boxer to the whole side hustle community. And it was like on the outside, it looks like this put together whatever, whatever, and then on the inside, it feels like this like constant judgment, blah, blah, blah. So that's exactly, I think what's going on within the inside. I don't feel that way at all, but on the outside it looks that way.

LCM: Yeah, and that resonates with me too. I feel that way in my business as well. I suspect those who are listening to your podcast and those who work with you, they feel that too. And I think what you're doing actually is normalizing that experience that on some level, when we go into business for ourselves, that's what we're signing up for.

ML: I didn't realize I was signing up for that when I did, but that's a part of it and learning how to navigate that anxiety and that uncertainty and coming back to trusting yourself and trusting that process.

Do you listen to strategy hour? The bus project girl? I do. Cause I know you buy Emily's earrings. Their episode today is really good. It is... for anybody who's listening... sorry, side conversation. Ad there's podcasts called strategy hour that I followed for years, they got into business. They used to be called Creative Collective. They got into the business around the same time. I did six years ago. They're now called Boss Project. They have an episode that just came out on the day of recording about separating your work from your business. And I was listening to that right before we hopped on. And that is something that I think is exactly what I'm going through.

And they've been, like they said, they've been in business for six years. They had a much more straight path than I did. I took a break when I got pregnant with Logan and all of this stuff. But they were talking about how the first couple years of their business, they were doing some of these things like being defensive when people ask them what they worked on and all of the things that we're talking about are things I see in me.

And I think that's exactly it like this business absolutely has a tendency to define. If the business is successful, I'm successful. The business is struggling, I'm struggling. Yeah, and those are two different things. They should be two different things, but I am working on making them feel like two different things.

And I think this is the shadow side of being a high achiever. And I say that as someone who herself is a high achiever, that it becomes very easy to connect our accomplishments with how good we are and our self worth. But the flip side of that is that when things aren't going as well, or when people are doubting us or so forth, then we still make that same connection, and, Oh, I must not be a good person. And then it affects my self-esteem and my self-worth.

So as high achievers, we do have to be mindful of how strong we make that connection between what we do and who we are and what it looks like to diffuse that. Yeah. And we, you and I have had a lot of Enneagram conversations, and I know you're a 2 and strong 3 wing.

I used to not be able to tell if I was a 3 or an 8, but then like even our discussion a couple of minutes ago where I'm like, Oh, it looks good on the outside. Okay. I'm cool with that. I'm a solid 3. I am a solid 3. Like, as long as it looks good, that's cool with me, but it's really not, but I'll say it is well, and that's part of our journey, right?

That's I think on some level each one of us is here because there's something we're meant to learn something we're meant to master and to do that, we're gonna have challenges and struggles, and we're going to be given all of these opportunities to live at our growth edge. And there's nothing wrong with that. And that's where we're at right now. And you know what yours is?

LCM: Yeah.

ML: Yeah. And I that's, it's funny, like my listeners know I'm a little on the woo side, and I bought this really extensive horoscope that I really enjoy. It's from moonomens.com and you can follow them on Instagram as well, but they released a Gemini 2021 horoscope, and it was like 75 pages.

And I read it, and then they release a monthly one. Then those are usually around 30 or 40 pages. And it said 2021 was going to be my spiritual growth year, and to get real comfortable with your shadow because that's what you're going to just spend all year with basically. And I was like, Oh, yay.

LCM: This is going to be a year of growth for you. And I'm a Gemini too. So maybe me.

ML: Yeah. And that is, it's proven true so far. I feel like even on those podcast, sometimes I'm like, Man, I had to put a little dark. I didn't mean it to supposed to be uplifting, but it's like talking a little bit more about the downsides of things.

LCM: And so for this, I think it's not dark so much as it is deep. And we're definitely going deep today. And I want to thank you for your willingness to go there, to be vulnerable and to share this side of yourself. At the same time, I want to make sure we balance some of this depth. And tell me about your childhood with what you're doing now, because you are creating some extraordinary things in your business.

And I'd love to know more about that and but maybe actually we can still stay in the past a little bit, because I would love to know about, like, your initial foray into the world of online entrepreneurship, what that looked like, what your first offer was.

ML: Okay. So my first offer, so the very first thing I had was a blow.

I was like, "I'm just going to do a blog." It is 2014. And so I have an episode, a very early episode on the podcast. It's like episode three or something like that. If anybody is ever gone back that far, but it was like how online income streams came to be. And it started with bloggers. There were bloggers who were getting hundreds of thousands of visitors to their websites.

And then they would have these ads, like food bloggers would have ads for Manet's or whatever, and if you bought the Manet's from their ad, they'd get a couple of cents per click. And so the name of the game was traffic to your blog. And then it became about rather than selling other people's stuff through my blog, I'm going to sell my own stuff.

So it started with things like eBooks and things like that. And so I was like, Maybe I'll just start a blog. It was called Mama and Mini Mes. The psychology behind all things mom and baby.

LCM: Oh boy.

ML: Yeah. I had a six-month-old. And so that's what I was like. That was my life.

LCM: Yeah. And also Sawyer was born with health concerns, which we all know. And I've talked about it a little bit. And so navigating that, that talk about a dark time navigating that and blogging almost gave me like a little place to journal, but I wasn't treating it like that. I was treating it like education.

So I was talking about sleep regressions from, like, an attachment point of view. Cry it out from an attachment point of view. So I wasn't, like, I didn't have any certifications in this, but I was just relying on, my life since then, my... my master's for that. And that's what I did at first.

And I tried and then I moved into... I think now this is still in the Georgia house. I have to... I don't know if you do this with, where was I living? What PCF is that? Where were we stationed? Yes. So this is still the Georgia house Sawyer was a baby. We didn't leave. We left that house when she was two and a half.

I had that and then quickly I found Jacqueline who... Jacqueline has been my coach off and on for five years now. She had a program, a membership site geared towards mom entrepreneurs called chasing dreams and littles. And I was a member, an early member in her membership site. And through that, I really came to understand what an offer was.

And I was like, I'm just going to be a mom coach. I'm just going to coach moms. And so that's what I did. I would show up. And this was, like, anybody has heard of Boss Mom by Dana Malstaff since when her group was the group. And it was like the Wild West. You could just post in Facebook groups. There were no promo rules or promo threads or anything like that.

So I'd just be like, "Hi, I'm Marissa, I'm a mom coach." And I got maybe one client that way. It was just like... I had no problem I was helping people with, I had no promise I was making, I had no, like, package I was leading them through. I would just it'd be, like, introduce yourself, and what do you do?

And I would just say, "I'm a mom coach." And people would be like, "What can you coach me with?" And I was like, "Anything. Like, I saw everything in therapy. I can coach you on anything." And let me tell you, I think I made like $200. It was not like it was not an offer that's sold. It wasn't even an offer.

LCM: So $200 in revenue, but a lot of good business lessons that you could then apply moving forward.

ML: Oh, maybe I need to be a little more specific about who I'm working with and what I'm offering. Yes, because this is again, another full-circle moment for me. What I started to do and some of this was what I was learning and chasing dreams and littles.

And also just like what I was seeing out there is, like I said, Okay, who do I... who will actually pay me? Stay-at-home moms were not paying me at that time. Not that's not a market that you can't monetize. You can absolutely knowing what I know now, but it wasn't working for me now. But I was like, What about other mom entrepreneurs who are doing the thing I'm trying to do?

And so that became my who, my person. And then my problem became, they don't feel like they have enough time. And so I developed a coaching package around building a values-based schedule. We did it over four calls. I charged $497. So not even $500. So it wasn't even making like $125 for the hour which is like, what, clinical hour is usually $125 or higher.

So I wasn't even bringing in that. But what we did was we defined their non-negotiables. We figured out what their obligations were. We found out exactly mathematically how much time they have in their day to build a business. And then we built the schedule around it, which if anybody is, "That sounds familiar," I just released this as Side Hustle Schedule. So it's something that I was doing four and a half, five years ago with moms, but it was an actual offer. And that I could sell and that people would buy. So this values-based like the tie between entrepreneurship and a values based lifestyle has always been there.

I don't know why I buried it for awhile. I buried it for awhile. And now it's like coming back again. Yeah.

LCM: That is a real full-circle moment. Yeah. So tell me how we moved from mom blogger.

ML: So we moved from mom blogger into, Okay, I'm going to serve entrepreneurial-oriented moms. And then we moved into serving therapists and helping them bring in additional revenue streams into their business.

LCM: Tell me about the link between that. Yeah. So I got pregnant with Logan and got real sick. Yeah, the doctors will say I had HG. I wasn't like Kate Middleton sick. Like, I never went to the hospital or anything, but I was sick. And so I just was like this is bringing me, like, a thousand dollars every three months, I can let this go.

It wasn't like we were living off that money or anything like that. It was really the episode I just released was called, "Is it a Hobby, a Jobby or a Business?" It was a jobby. Like, I made a little bit of money, but it was really more like a hobby. And so I let it go. And in that time we moved to Texas. So we PCS'd. Logan was born.

We moved when I was nine months pregnant, Logan was born in Texas. And then by the time she was like... I'd gone back to school and I was, like, I'm going to get a marriage and family therapy, like, certificate. I wasn't going to go get a full degree, but I was like, I'm going to get a certificate. For marriage and family therapy.

And so we did that while she was, like, a little baby. And then by the time she was five months old, I was like, I want a business again. And it's funny when we PCs, I was like, "I'm just going to be a housewife this time." And Josh was like, "Okay." And in the back of his mind, he was probably like, "Yeah." But I was like, "I'm just going to stay at home and do the army wife thing."

And it lasted five months. Six, 'cause we moved when I was nine months pregnant. So it lasted six months. I missed therapy. I missed my therapist. I obviously missed therapy because that's why I went back and got that extra service that post-grad certificate or whatever. And so I missed therapy. I missed my therapist.

The link, you might know her, is Ellie Walters. She runs Refreshed Therapists Network. She was in Chasing Dreams and Littles with me, with Jacqueline. So I reached out to her because her audience was clinicians and was a therapist. And I said, "Is there a market here? What do you think they need? What do you think is happening?"

She said, "There's absolutely a market here. Clinicians have no idea how to market themselves. They have no idea how to, like, do any of the marketing. And I was like, "I can teach that." I didn't have a double major marketing, but I studied marketing. I worked in marketing and advertising. I was like... I could teach that. That's it. Problem.

And so in her membership site refresh their post. I did a presentation. I was like a guest expert and I kicked it off. I got 30 emails, subscribers, and I was like, Okay, I'm off to the races. That was August of 2017.

And in November of 2017, I had a holiday happy hour.

LCM: All right. I want to talk about holiday happy hour because I feel like if we were to pick one defining event that really launched things for you, it would be that. Tell me more about that experience.

ML: So I'm reluctant to talk about summits because the past two rounds of Side Hustle we've had people try summits and they haven't been successful. So I don't know if summits are dead, if summits are dormant. But in 2017 and 2018, and even in 2019, we had a student do a summit and hers was super successful. 2020 I feel like killed the summit. Like I said, I don't know if it's dead all the way, but I had seen other people in the mom space do a summit.

And I knew what happened in the sense of thousands of people's subscribed to them. So it's a public relations strategy in the sense that you're having multiple people promote one event and everybody's driving traffic to the event. So if you have 10 people and everybody brings 50 people, then you have very, in a very short amount of time, an audience of 500.

So I knew Illy and I knew Amber Lyda at this point, 'cause I had connected with her on Facebook. So Illy introduced me to Daniel Fava of Private Practice Elevation. So I connected with him. And from there, I was just like, "Who els do you know? Who else? Do you know who else?" That's how I got connected with Joe Sanok. That's how I got connected with Allison Puryear. I had never met these people.

I was trying not to cold email people. So I was using warm connections. Hey, I got your name from Daniel Faba. He said you might be interested in this event. That's how I got to John Clark. That's how I got to Katie keeps me like all the names.

And so I just sent out a bunch of warm pitches and said, "I'm hosting this event." And I feel like divine timing. I don't know. There had not been a summit in the therapist space. I don't want to say ever, but for a long time, people hadn't seen one in a while. I was organizing the whole damn thing myself.

These bigger names didn't have to do anything. They just had to show up, give me their headshot, their bio, and show up at a certain time. That's all they had to do. So I made it super duper easy. We ended up getting an email list of 2100 people and a a Facebook group of 1800 people. Holy cow. I got the idea on October 2nd and our first day was the day after Thanksgiving.

So in six weeks I just did the thing. I didn't have a job like this. Wasn't a side hustle. I didn't have a job. So that summit, they came like I did it full time. I wrote it was 30 days of of interviews. I wrote 30 different tweets. I made 30 different pins on Pinterest. I made 30 different posts on Instagram. Like, I did all of this for everybody.

That's the swipe copy folder, which is like a jargony term, but it was like, there were tweets, there were emails. There were... I just did everything I could. And it had this little cult following because people were signing up. They signed up for the start, but people signed up on day 29.

Two people were still signing up. I think people even signed up after we were done. I remember one girl, she was with her, went home, traveled to her family's for Thanksgiving, and was watching like day one or two, and then went back home for Christmas and was watching day like 28 or 29. And her family was like, "You're still doing that thing?"

But the audio, everybody showed up. It was just like this magical thing. We didn't have a drop-in participants. We, everybody, like it was study all throughout and it just. I don't know. I just think it was strategy and it was something else. It was something magical.

LCM: I think you also were so smart and how you built relationships with people. And so the idea of making connections and really valuing those relationships and that came through. So then people like Alison Puryear, like Daniel Fava, they wanted to show up and support you. And that, that came through and because you treated it like a full-time job and you gave it your all and did all the work, it's not surprising to me that you had this extraordinary event that really catapulted your business into the next level.

So what happened next? What happened after holiday happy?

ML: I would say I made two mistakes with that event. I made one flat-out mistake. One thing that in hindsight I would change maybe. But at that time I was doing not only one-on-one, but I was doing done for you. I was writing people's websites. I was writing people's blogs.

And so from holiday happy hour, the thing that I wish that I may have done differently is I didn't launch right off of it. I solely used it for an audience builder. Like I didn't honestly... launching wasn't even really in my mind at that point. I did have somebody say, "Why aren't you launching something off this? And I was like, "Oh, it's just not my intention. My intention is just to get an email list. That's all I want to do." This was lead generation.

LCM: Yeah.

ML: Purely. And so I didn't launch Cathartic Marketing until March of that year, March of 2018. So there was a three-month gap there, but what people don't know, or I've said, but people weren't seeing is behind the scenes.

I was getting... I was full for one-on-one until June. Like people were like, "I want to work with you. I want to work with you. Can you write my website? Can you write?" My website was literally charging $50 a webpage. Okay. 2018. I made 68 grand off of booked out one-on-one for six months, two launches that no three launches of Cathartic Marketing and a launch of Side Hustle.

So it was like... if I hadn't been priced appropriately, I probably would have way more than broke six figures that year.

LCM: Yeah.

ML: But the mistake I did make this a flat-out mistake is that 1800 people in that Facebook group, I closed it. I should have rebranded the Facebook group and kept all of those 1800 people in my audience.

And instead I closed it, and then I started the Empathy Rising group from scratch, like six months later. Was this... it was either six months later or a year and a half later. 'Cause it was May of a year. I just don't know which one it was. No, it was May of '19 because I launched the first round of site has a, without a Facebook group.

So a year and a half later I opened another group from scratch rather than going on leveraging assets, kept it the whole time or you could have archived it and just rebranded it none. But I didn't, I don't know why. I just thought like that audience has done it was for something else and I had to start over.

So I would have probably had another 2000 people in my audience if I hadn't done that. So that was the mistake I made, but I quickly realized I couldn't be in one-on-one anymore or not even one-on-one I couldn't do done for you anymore. And so that's what Cathartic Marketing was with everything I'd been doing for people turned into a program.

LCM: So do you feel like that was your first seminal program then in this new business?

ML: Yeah. And it was a six-week program that grew to a ten-week program. There's things I liked about it. There's things I didn't like about it. I like working longer term with people. I like working more in-depth with people.

I think you get in the online income space. You get criticized for that because it's like, what? You can't get results. You need that much time to get someone a result. And maybe that's a little bit of a confidence thing for me, but it's also a relationship thing for me. I like feeling connected with the people that I work with because that's a value for you. That relationship, that connection.

And I think, you and I both know that people out there who are talking about, get it done in four weeks, get it done in eight weeks. And that is an approach and that's gonna serve maybe a particular audience, but you're coming at it from a completely different perspective, which is: let's really create, let's invest the time to create that strong foundation and let's do it together.

And I'm with you every step of the way. And that approach is longer, but really is deeper too. And is gonna facilitate those connections with your people. Yeah. And so back, even when I was talking with Illy, so taking it back to 2017, and I said, "Is that our market out there? What do therapists need?" I wanted to teach them how to do online income. I wanted to teach them what I had done and transitioned to coaching because of, the... the mobility of it, the things that I was facing with having to get a new license, every time he moved and all this stuff.

This was really before online therapy was really a thing. I remember at my agency job before I had Sawyer, I wrote an article for marriage and family therapy magazine or whatever, because my supervisor had been published by them. So we co-wrote it because his name's on it, but it was, like, basically all of the research in online therapy, what any state had on it, like records. There were several states that I said had nothing on their regulations, like when I was writing this article. So this was only two years after that.

So it didn't really seem like an option for me to continue to do online therapy. And that's why, which coaching, I think that is a legit option for a lot of people now who don't necessarily want to make the transition, but that's really what I wanted to help people with. But when Illy said, "This is the market I see every day."

It was going back to the Boss Project girls. It was an MVP and most viable product at the moment. It was a thing. It was low-hanging fruit. I was like, "I can do that." And so, had I started teaching clinicians about online income from the beginning, like I'd wanted to, I don't think I'd have the business I have today.

Yeah. Cathartic marketing is really what allowed you then to grow into this work of helping therapists create online income. Yeah. I needed confidence. I needed to know I could take money, invoice people, get paid. Like, I needed to know that I could do this. I needed to know that I could launch something to this audience and sell it.

I needed to know that I could deliver a program. But once that happened, so within 2018, I launched Cathartic Marketing and then Side Hustle, right? Side Hustle came in November, December of 2018. So I made that pivot quickly.

LCM: Yes. And now Side Hustle is really your flagship offer. That is what you are known for. Tell me a little bit about the evolution of that program in your business.

ML: Oh, goodness. Sold it the first time, November, December of 2018, which meant, and he has it opened for it started January 2019. I was building it week by week. So lessons opened on Monday and sometimes on Sunday I was hitting publish at 11:30 at night.

So it was like... it's a six, it was a six-month program. So this is a six-month process of me doing that. And it was a busy time and my kids were Logan was with me then too. So she wasn't even in any daycare, Sawyer was in like three-day preschool three days, three hours a week or three days a week, three hours a day.

And so I was doing all of this on naps and I was doing all of this when the kids were in bed. And so that program that the six-month version had 280 hours in it. By the time I built all the slideshows, build all the workbooks, build all the trainings, everything like that. And so I promised myself, I was like, I will do this a month at a time. I'll take a whole weekend and I'll build out four lessons.

It never happened. I got ahead. Like, maybe once. Yeah. But other than that, I was literally week-to-week building the program, which was cool because I was able to build it in response to what the students were asking. Yes.

But from round one to round two, I did make changes. I changed the way that month one was ran. Things had to happen in a different order. And it just made the results happen so much. And then round two, three, and four, the core curriculum was the same. There were certain little tweaks that happened, but then now this is round five and nine-month version.

LCM: So that was a big shift, going from six months to nine months.

ML: Yes.

LCM: So in addition to Side Hustle, you also have a complementary, or an intro program almost, is how I think about it, with Space Holder. Tell me where the idea for Space Holder came from and how it connects to science.

ML: Exactly. I would say I really liked space holder to be a prerequisite. Eventually people won't be able to get into side hustle until they've taken space holder. It doesn't function that way right now. Everybody who buys Side Hustle first, they get Space Holder for free. It's that important for me, for them to have that foundational knowledge and where that came from was.

Between round one and round two, I changed up month one. The way it was delivered and then round two, round three it was good, but we were still spending so much time on month. One stuff, even in month, three month, four people were still talking about month, one stuff. And I was like, Okay.

I have become a bit more directive I had, I still do, but I even more so had the meet you where you're at feeling too, it was like, whatever you want to do, like you tell me what you want to do and I'll teach you how to do it. And I have stepped up and been like, "Okay, I like what you're saying here, but here's why it doesn't work. Or here's why it works, but takes two or three years for it to work. If that's still what you want, I will I'll help you."

But let me just point this out. So I have stepped much more into an authority or a directive role. I don't know how to say that better, but what also I've seen is, people need this knowledge before they can hit the ground running. And so I created a course out of it. I created a space holder out of it. I ran Space Holder as a workshop in November of 2019, a) to test the material, and b) mostly because I wanted, whoever came into Side Hustle, I wanted them to have it first. It was that important to me and knew it was going to have that much of a profound effect on on their results in the program.

So I ran that workshop, sold 47 seats. 22 people from the workshop applied to Side Hustle. And I think of those 22, 12 came in and it was... you could tell who had done the workshop. And so I knew, Okay, this is a coure, and this is something that has to pass to be available. So it turned it into a course.

I ran it live spring of 2020, and again, same situation. Some people had come into state to Side Hustle without it. A lot of people had come from the live version of Space Holder. And it was clear who had it, who hadn't. And so then at that point for round four, everybody got it. Whether they bought it first and then came up to Side Hustle or whether they bought Side Hustle and I gave it to them for free.

And then round four was our highest grossing round. People made the most money in round four, then all the rounds before and highest completion, more people finished and completed the entire program in round four than in any other round. So I know that Space Holder it's necessary and it's my truth too, because the Space Holder teaches you to create an offer.

And when I was just, "I'm a mom coach," and I had no offer. I got no traction. And I had made like two sales and it was ridiculous. The second I had an offer that I could describe, that was point size that I could sell, because I knew what I was talking about and people could purchase because they knew what they were buying, everything changed.

LCM: Love so much about this is that you are drawing from your personal experiences, your professional expertise, your training, and you are providing it to your people in such a streamlined way, because you really are helping them achieve these results at the rate they want. They can go as fast or as slow as they want, and you're going to be there for them.

But, and so there's a flexibility in your approach to, okay, so we've got Space Holder, we've got Side Hustle. What's next? What's on the horizon for you?

ML: It always starts... t was like a test. And I don't... I guess that's intentional, but it's also really natural and organic, which is it's new, right?

That, that organic is new compared to the force force force, push, push push, which is actually, I guess, trusting the process is coming up a little bit more in the business is because I met as I think about it, but there's still an intentionality there. There's still a plan there. I got very strong call intuition, whatever you want to call it.

I didn't have a dream about it. But in June of 2020, I think, it has to be pandemic-related. It has to be quarantine-related where everybody was struggling with. Now, my kids are home. My spouse is home. I still have just as much work to do, but I have to do balance it with all these other things.

And it just made me think immediately about, oh gosh, I wish... something about balance. I'm trying to remember what I called that coaching package with the moms. It'll come to me as soon as we stop recording, but it had the word balance in it, which is a controversial word. But it got me thinking about all of that work I had done and I just knew it had to come back.

And so I started talking a lot more about time management. I started talking a lot more about, like, values and unbalanced and all of these things. And so I had the challenge in the fall Side Hustle Schedule Challenge, because I want people to pursue a Side Hustle, but your Side Hustle should never, in my opinion, hijack or compromise your core values, right?

It's the concept of the rocks, the pebbles, and sand, which is attributed to a lot of people. I've really tried to figure out the originator of that. But and the Side Hustle is your sand guys, but, like lots of people, me included, it becomes, so it becomes important and it becomes fascinating because it's new that we treat our Side Hustle, like the rocks. Yeah.

And then we're upset because we're, stealing time from our families to work on it or whatever. And Side Hustle should always be the sand. And so that's the challenge that I ran in the fall was the Side Hustle Schedule Challenge. And just like with Space Holder, it's turned into an offer now.

And I actually see this becoming an even bigger part of the program. Like my business.

I don't know, I'm not ready to say that Side Hustle is not going to be my flagship program. I think it will for a while, a few more years, but eventually I want to move not only into slow business.

LCM: But how the slow business supports a slow lifestyle. And with my slow, I guess really, intentional. Yes. What I love is you're already sensing that this is going to evolve. That Side Hustle will evolve. That Side Hustle schedule will evolve. There is a natural progression in your business. And even if we're not entirely clear on what that's going to look like one, three, five years down the road, it's going to happen. And that, my friend, is trusting the process. Like, knowing it's going to evolve. That's beautiful.

ML: Yeah. And it's hard. Like, I paid for branding around a new concept because I thought it was going to be a separate business at one point. So I paid a pretty penny to have a new logo and new color palettes and new brands built. And I'm not even using it. So I'm, like, trying to trust the process. But at the same time, I'm like, Why isn't this working? And I wish I had spent that money. It's a write-off, I'm sure I'll eventually use the color palette things like I'm holding onto it. It's not scrapped, but I'm not using it as quickly.

So speed is something that's coming up for me, which I think is ironic because here I am leaning into slogans. I've always talked about slow business. Always. I always say, evergreen passive income comes down the road. So I've always talked about slow business, but leading into the slow living, which is something that really came for me and locked down.

I was seeing these... I've always been very passionate about the environment always, and so I was seeing these pictures of LA when no one was driving and you could see the ocean and there was no smog. It was this whole series and there was something in India, a mountain that you could, hadn't been able to see in India for 20 years because of the pollution and people could see it again.

And there is something, another part of the world, and it was this whole series of the good things that are coming from lockdown and the good things for coming from quarantine. And it had a profound effect on me of stepping out of the rat race of slowing down. And I've always talked about building business that way, but I have not talked about living that way.

Yeah. So we're releasing an integration then of how you want to approach your business, how you wanna approach your life, your relationships really. The holistic in the truest sense of the word. Yeah. We're in the middle of quarantine and I, we, had a fortunate experience, and I know a lot of people didn't have, but the army sent Josh home for nine weeks.

And so it was the four of us in my house is a little smaller than 2000 square feet. It's 18 or 1900 square feet. The four of us in this house and we were... it was spring in the south, so it was in the seventies, but it wasn't humid yet. Again, it almost is bringing up the same kind of feeling of holiday happy hour is there's a little bit of magic to it.

There was a little bit of magic to our quarantine and I get really upset again, because this is my experience. I get really upset when I talk about, like, the social impact on the children of quarantine. I'm like, my kids are closer than they've ever been. They've had more time with their parents than they ever had.

And yes, that's... I'm like getting emotional. That's our experience. That's not everybody's experience, but for me, it was like a godsend. It was something we needed as a family. I think it's something that humanity needed. If you're not going to pause, if you're not going to slow down on your own, I'm going to pause for you.

That was the message that I got from the universe for me. And I feel like humanity needed that message as well. I'm not talking about COVID and the impacts of that, 'cause I know you've lost family members and it's... I'm not trying to like negate that part of it cause that's serious and that's real. But the slowdown piece was really profound for me and really magical for me.

LCM: Yeah. And I think even in the midst of grief and loss and sadness and darkness and despair, we can also find the light. We need to find the light. And for you, the light was getting to reconnect with your family to slow down, to recenter yourself and the things that are important to you.

And that's a beautiful silver lining on what's been a dark color.

ML: Yeah. And it was my biggest year in business. Even though it was, like, I was the slowest.

LCM: Yeah. There's a lesson there, isn't there?

ML: Yeah.

LCM: I don't want to lose sight of the fact that we are celebrating today, that we are celebrating your 100th podcast. And so I want to close with two questions. Question number one: what have you learned from the last 100 episodes? Question number two: what's in store for the next 100 episodes?

ML: So from the last hundred episodes, I think what I learned is, so this is a year three of the podcast, but I'm only just now hitting a hundred episodes. That should have happened in year two. But I, we've, moved one, one year. We moved across country from Texas back to what we live in Alabama now, but like the same base in Georgia that we were at before.

And so I took four or five, maybe even six weeks off the podcast. I remember talking to you and being like, "I don't want to come back to my pod." It wasn't that I don't love my guests. One of my favorite things I do in my business, but it was coming back after a break was hard.

Quarantine, like you're just talking about, there were a couple of weeks where the do-er in me wants to say, I couldn't get it together enough to get an episode out. The other part of me was like... it wasn't my priority.

I wasn't putting a podcast out that week. So it's been, it hasn't been week for week all the time. And that's okay. We talk about consistency and marketing, and I still do believe that I still think it's important, but I have had a few breaks and a few times where it's just not happening this week for longer chunks of time off. And it's still a successful part of my business. So I think that's the message that I want, to put out there about the past hundred episodes is it didn't get there. I didn't get to as a hundred as fast as I could have or might have and taking breaks and didn't hurt me or the business.

LCM: No. And in fact, taking breaks, having that period of restoration of replenishment is so necessary because that's what allows us to, nurture the soil and grow new things moving forward.

ML: Yeah. I'm coming up for the next hundred episodes, for those of you guys who are listening. I want your feedback on this in the Facebook group, but lately I've been doing a few more guests than normal.

It's a little bit selfish because guests are easier. I don't have to write the podcast outline or script before. And I don't, like... it just takes about a whole hour and a half out of the process for me when I can sit down with a guest. So that's fun. I want to think about new types of episodes as well, like Q&A episodes, like almost like this, where I don't know what questions are coming and I'm just like shooting at me and then I answer it.

LCM: That's fun.

ML: So bringing on some more guests, different formats of episodes, but also I do want to still keep the core of teaching. Megan and Steph, they had their Bizdom series. I want to do something like that. Like fun. Yeah. Where I have somebody like a regular and maybe a couple regulars.

Tyler McCall does this every month where he has his round table. Yes. Round table. It's like tribunal as though. No, not that. Yeah. A round table of like... where it's regular guests that each have an expertise in something, but they're, like, regular guys. That sounds fun to me.

So bringing on these different formats of episodes sounds is something I'm leaning into a little bit.

LCM: That sounds like a lot of fun and it'll keep things interesting for you, certainly for your audience. Yeah. And I hear that you want to hear from them what they want as well. What's the best way for them to reach out to them?

ML: Inside the Facebook group. So along with this hundredth episode, new format that we're trying out here, me being interviewed, you guys know that there is a giveaway going on. And I've talked a little bit about this already. So you guys have some information and there's always more information inside the Facebook group, but there will be engagement threads.

And of course, the giveaway thread for you to participate on all this week, the giveaway will be closing Friday at five o'clock Eastern and so work hours. We're not going into the weekend here, maintaining those values and those boundaries around our time. But there'll be feedback threads, probably the giveaway thread will be all kinds of things, polls, and a big event inside the Facebook group.

So if you're not already a member, make sure that you've headed over to the Empathy Rising Facebook group, just type that into search because the link is really long. So yeah, just search for Empathy Rising Podcast. You'll find it.

LCM: Marissa, this has been an extraordinary conversation and I feel so honored to have been a part of it. Thank you for inviting me on to interview you for your 100th episode. Thank you to do that. I know we went super deep. I'd like, feel like that's my default. My default right now is the steps. So me too. I think he put the two of us together and it's bound to happen for sure. Thank you for digging your time and spending the time with us and switching seats with me.

ML: It's been really fun. It has been fun. So thank you. I will talk with you soon. Probably in 20 minutes.