Episode 106 – Heather Breedlove

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Heather Breedlove 0:00
So my superpower is I love making events and plans for people to step outside of their normalcy and really do things that they never would have done in the past. And it first started presenting itself in that. My family by birth has a lot of men and all the women have married in and for 20 years I have planned a weekend every year, the weekend after Mother’s Day and taken these eight women to go explore and experience something that they wouldn’t normally do. And we’ve done – not cliff diving. I’m not sure they would go with that. We’ve done whitewater rafting. We’ve done like, gone to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in a limousine. We’ve done parasailing, taken cruises, and that energizes me because I love watching them be just happy for that weekend and nothing else matters. And that’s why it was so easy I think to take Shine Your Bright and move that into where this year we’re hosting our first conference and really just opening that same concept up to anybody who wants to come, join. And I so that’s it for me, seeing people just laugh out loud until they cry.

Richard Matthews 1:29
…3-2-1

Hello and welcome back to The HERO Show. My name is Richard Matthews and I am live on the line today with Heather Breedlove. Heather, are you there?

Heather Breedlove 2:31
I’m here, Richard. Good to see you today.

Richard Matthews 2:34
Awesome. Glad to have you. For those of you’ve been following along. We are still stuck in Kissimmee in our in our travels in Florida waiting for the Coronavirus stuff to sort of wear off. Heather, you’re coming in from Atlanta, Georgia. Is that right?

Heather Breedlove 2:46
That’s right. That’s right. A little bigger than Kissimmee, Florida.

Richard Matthews 2:51
Has has the the summer weather started hit you out there or is it still cold?

Heather Breedlove 2:54
Shockingly, it was 65 degrees today and I was ready to break out a sweater but here we’re in the 90s coming up this weekend.

Richard Matthews 3:03
Almost you’re almost get the summer weather. It started to get really warm in the last couple of weeks. So I’m kind of excited for summer to get here. So let me real quick for those of you who don’t know who Heather is. Heather is the creator of a journal called Shine Your Bright and you also are a speaker and a teacher for, if I’m understanding correctly, women who want to sort of confidently move into a new direction in their life, is that right?

Heather Breedlove 3:26
Absolutely, very much and I’d love to share a little about how we got there.

Richard Matthews 3:32
Awesome. So start off with, why don’t you tell us a little about what you’re known for now, right? You know, who you are, what your business is like who you serve and what it is that you do for them?

Heather Breedlove 3:42
So right now I am the founder of Shine Your Bright and what I love about that is very much around. It’s so easy to get caught up in the rat race finding your shine again, and it kind of fits in with that comic book lifestyle because I I can envision feeling almost like you’re in a pressure cooker and how do you start to feel like you’re yourself and you’re happy and you have joy. Rather than just trying to keep it all together and Shine Your Bright, we have a tagline: A Reintroduction to Yourself, and really working around how to start to confidently take small steps to figure out who you are again.

Richard Matthews 4:28
Awesome. So is that sort of coming from a place of like you’ve gotten you’ve gotten to like a point in your life where you’re like, I did all the right things and made all the right decisions. And yet I’m still like, I don’t feel like I’m in a good place.

Heather Breedlove 4:38
Absolutely. So I call that the checklist. And I don’t know if if you had a checklist growing up, I grew up small town, white picket fences. Just imagine probably the perfect lifestyle and I was very fortunate to have parents that were incredibly supportive. You can be everything you want to be. And I was also I knew what I wanted. I wanted to go off to college. I wanted to be married by 25 I wanted my career. I wanted children by 32. Right. That’s the checklist. And as things started to unfold, life throws you curveballs and you can’t really go down the list you might have expected for yourself and how can I still have a life that’s full without some of those things?

Richard Matthews 5:33
Yeah, it reminds me of one of my wife’s favorite country songs by Reba McEntire. Is the Is There Life Out There. It’s about her family and her home.

Heather Breedlove 5:41
Every time I hear that while I’m on the road, I just it’s very much that and that song is so old. It’s amazing that we’re still in the same place right?

Richard Matthews 5:55
It’s funny, my wife always – she likes to sing that song. When we go karaoke places because it’s one of her favorite songs and people always come up to me afterward. Like, they’re like, does she not like her life? And she’s always like, No, no, no, it’s because like I didn’t end up in that place. Right? And it makes her happy to know that she has, you know, she doesn’t have to wonder if there’s life out there that she’s getting to live the life of her dreams now, which is really cool.

Heather Breedlove 6:18
That’s super cool. Sounds like I should meet her.

Richard Matthews 6:22
She’s a great lady. If you ever get a chance to to meet her, it’d be worth it. So So tell me how you got started in this place. We talk all the time on this show about the heroes origin story, right? Every good comic books hero has an origin story and sort of what made them into the hero they are today. Right? You know, Spider Man got bit by a radioactive spider became Spider Man. How did you get started as an entrepreneur?

Heather Breedlove 6:44
So I wish I could say that it was it was easier. It was a choice that I wanted to make. I think it was a little different in that. When I do talk about that checklist. It was I mean, a couple of things that went that went awry with it. I would say we got married and marriage was hard. They didn’t tell us, you know, you’re gonna have to work at it. And I thought my marriage was gonna be like my parents and Tommy, which I think you said has been on on the show before. He thought his marriage –

Richard Matthews 7:21
We could put a link in the in the episode to to your husband’s episode.

Heather Breedlove 7:24
That’d be awesome. And he thought his or our marriage was gonna be like his parents. And we never really talked about what we wanted our marriage to be like, and we had totally different hero journeys up to that point. And so we were struggling with marriage. My father got sick right after we got married, diagnosed with melanoma cancer and he was gone three months later. So we had that on top of a new marriage. And then on to add to it, we found out children weren’t really going to be in our future, too. So all of those things where I’d envisioned, this fairytale life, it was it just wasn’t gonna come true. And as we worked through all of that, we had – Tommy and I had our own stuff we had to deal with and I, from the outside, it looked amazing. We both had amazing careers. We had amazing homes, all the toys, but it was a lot to keep that together. And we started really going through, why is he not happy and I would say listen to his episode because he’s very good at explaining what his path and his life looked like. And me being in that journey with him and having my own journey in alignment with that. We we make the joke or say we’ve been married and divorced five times. We just keep marrying each other, thank goodness. And all of that to say I eventually just got to the point where I was like, I can’t do this anymore. I don’t, all day every day I’m getting up trying to put on the perfect face, be the perfect wife, be the perfect C level executive. And I’m I’m fitting into everyone else’s world. But what is mine? And I think it’s really easy to start to forget, what is your favorite food? Where’s your favorite place to just go if you haven’t been it for yourself? And the longer that goes on and as the years passed, you can get further and further removed from your shine and your joy. And how do you start to get back there again. So to circle that out, I’d say it was tough for me and I was in that place and Tommy was finding his own new path and where did that leave me and I was scared and didn’t really know what I wanted or where to go. So Shine Your Bright was born and started really working towards that.

Richard Matthews 10:13
So it was really it was a personal journey for you to sort of help work through that. And sort of once you got there, you started to realize you could help other people along that same journey.

Heather Breedlove 10:21
Absolutely. I’ve got a couple of things come to mind there. Tommy went to a program in Tennessee. And it was really a living centered program and he got so much from that he wanted me to go and I went and I was still really close. And I was like, well, this is what he is going through. I’m fine. But I learned so much about myself there. And I’d say the one pivotal point in the story that I remember is one afternoon they did horse therapy. And growing up in a small town, I’d been around horses, I loved horses. But as I was watching everyone that was there, integrate with their horse. It was amazing because I started to see some people would try to bully their horse into getting it to do what they wanted. Some people were scared and timid, and they couldn’t get a horse to do what they wanted. Then, for me, I finally got to a point where I felt like I was in a balanced relationship for the first time in a really long time. And it was just that horse and I. And we were communicating, it was equal, it It really made this just lights come up in me. And it was the first time I’d felt that joy and happy that I hadn’t felt in so long and it planted the seed I was like, that’s what I want to feel like all the time rather than part of the time, and how did I not recognize happy? And then coming home off of that one of my best girlfriends, we were at dinner one night, and she’s so upset and starts crying and she’s like, how do you guys do such a great marriage? And she’s like, mine’s crumbling, and everyone else seems to be just rocking the marriage thing. And I was like, Well, first of all, if you think we have that great of a marriage. That’s a failure on me because we haven’t had real conversations about what we’ve had to work at. So all of this just kind of magically presented itself to me. And the people just kept coming and once we started having those real and honest conversations about having your own life and and it’s okay to be happy. That’s kind of how the journey started.

Richard Matthews 13:00
Yeah, that’s really fascinating too. And like, I think one of the things you said that that really struck with me is not recognizing happy, right, not recognizing what it looks like. So and I assume that’s a pretty pretty common with lots of people. They don’t – they’ve not – either they haven’t had it in the lifetime or they just don’t even know what it looks like. They don’t know that they’re missing it. Right. So how do you like what are some of your recommendations for people if they’re like, no, what are some of the red flags? I guess if someone’s sitting there going, maybe I don’t know what happy is. Maybe I could actually make make a difference or make a change.

Heather Breedlove 13:32
So I I always say start small because it can be intimidating and you might not even know right you like I like to think that my family does make me incredibly happy. My career does make me incredibly happy. But there’s that overwhelming sense of excitement too. It’s amazing where you can find it. I would say even taking a different route home from work one day and seeing what you drive by, or what you could stop by, even going back to some of the fun things you did as a kid from a playground to cannonballing into a pool, those are things that we as adults don’t necessarily do. But it’s the small things. To start to step outside of that that normalcy.

Richard Matthews 14:25
That’s one of the things that, you know, you know, we travel full time, one of the things that, that has really been fascinating to me is, is over the last couple of years really making you know, I call it connecting with life. Right? connecting with life is like a regular part of our life instead of like, you know, it’s something we do on Saturday afternoons and the rest of the time we have our schedule, right? But you know, everything from, you know, rollerblading around the neighborhood with the kids to you know, hey, there’s a waterfall we can go slide off of while we’re here. Like that kind of stuff where you’re like, let’s, you know, do something crazy and go you know, you know, go go see the alligators at the there was a place – at one of the places we stopped, we got to pet and hold baby alligators and it’s like just little things on a regular basis where you’re you’re just experiencing life if that makes sense.

Heather Breedlove 15:10
Absolutely. And we we got a puppy recently she’s being quiet beside me, which is very impressive. But even with that, like I knew I wanted a puppy but it’s so easy to say it’s too much work. It’s It’s too much to deal with. But to see it we call it puppy Olympics to see her doing her Olympics every afternoon where you’ve got to throw the toy across the house 72 times again, it makes me laugh so hard. And if I have a bad throw, she’ll take it to Tommy, she’s like you failed, but that’s fine. Just to watch her.

Richard Matthews 15:47
Yeah, so one of one of the things that one of like the core concepts that I’m sort of like developing in my life is something I’m calling I’m calling contented ambition. I think it leads a lot directly to to where you’re going with this whole idea of happiness and recognizing happiness in your own life. And it’s this idea that that you have to you have to have contentment with where you are and what you’re doing. But you also need to have like a destination, like a journey you’re going towards, right? If you don’t have any place you’re moving towards, then you’re not going to be happy. We’re like, we’re designed to be in motion. So I like I like the idea of being like, hey, how can I be content with where I am and grateful for what I’ve got, but still be striving for something more, whether that’s the destination, better relationships, wherever it is, I’m going I’ve got something I’m striving to make in my life better. That make sense?

Heather Breedlove 16:35
It totally makes sense. And one thing that’s always resonated with me is fear. And I’ve been very conscious about saying if I’m afraid of something, I asked myself why I’m afraid and then I I almost do it anyway because I’m I’m also fearful that the first time I let fear win, my world is going to get smaller and I’m not gonna step outside of my containment bubble I put myself in so it makes total sense and that’s kind of my my checkpoint for myself is if I’m afraid I’m gonna do that.

Richard Matthews 17:15
Yeah, I call it you know love where you are, know where you’re going. right and really helps helps create an environment where you can have happiness and on the point of fear that’s actually something that I something I’ve been working on teaching my children how to get over those kind of things like where fear where that decision that fear stops you. And one of my favorite examples is something that I did as a kid and something that I just recently did this last year with my my two oldest children is cliff diving. Right and I don’t know if you’ve ever done cliff diving, but like you climb up like you like if you ever if you ever do it, it’s worth doing if only for this experience, right? Cause you’re at the bottom, you’re looking up you’re like it’s 20 maybe 30 feet up to where it is and you’re like you see people doing it. You’re like, Okay, this is safe people are doing it, it’s happening all the time. And you’re like, I could totally do that. You go up there to the edge and you stand on the edge of it. And all of a sudden, you’re like, you know, five or six feet higher, because your heads higher than your feet, you’re looking down going. I don’t know about that. And like I remember, as a kid, it’s that that step where you’re like this is this is really scary. And that it’s that mental hurdle is the biggest part of the whole process. And I remember this last year, we did it with my children, my two oldest sons, we were up in Yosemite, and they had this cool waterfall and it was about 30 feet up and we could jump off the waterfall. And I remember sitting there with my son, I’m like, okay, we’re at the back. And it’s like 10 feet back from where we were going to drop off. I was like, here’s what I want you to do, is I want you to go up to the edge. And I want you to not even think about I just want you to just walk up and then jump off because if you stop and think about it, you’ll freak yourself out. And you’ll you’ll have you let that fear take take a hold. And it was really cool because he was like, Okay dad, and he’s just, he’s just at that age where he just listens and he just does what I asked him to do instead of thinking about it too much. So he got up and he took like three or four steps were right to the edge. He looked down once and then he just jumped off. Right off the thing and he had like a life jacket on and went on. He’s a good swimmer. So it was it was totally fine, but he jumped off the thing and like I went after him. I remember I stopped at the edge and looked down. I was like, man, I can’t believe he did that with as much ease as he did because it freaked me out. Right and I’ve done it before. And so like I don’t have that for him and he was so excited. He was like, that was the coolest thing I’ve ever done and he wanted to do it and we did it like 15 more times that afternoon right did the same thing with my daughter. Yeah, but it’s that it’s that idea of like learning to look fear in the face and act anyways.

Heather Breedlove 19:35
So I did go bridge jumping recently. We have a little lake cottage and there’s a bridge people jump off up into the lake and I’m like I want to do it. I popped up there. I paused, boy did I pause. And I was like what am I doing here.

Richard Matthews 19:49
It takes awhile.

Heather Breedlove 19:51
But I had – my mother in law was on the boat below. She was silently judging me thinking I’d lost my mind but I had this This retired military Colonel was jumping off with me. He’s in his 60s and he was funny, like, come on, girl, you just got to do it. And I was like, okay, so it was it was awesome.

Richard Matthews 20:15
Yeah, and I think personally, I think the cliff diving experience or jumping off something like that, it’s it’s a more an exercise in learning how to look at fear and act anyways than it is in learning how to jump off of a cliff, if that makes sense.

Heather Breedlove 20:28
Oh, absolutely. And that deep breath and I I absolutely believe in mentors and coaches and finding people to help us make those transitions one of mine one time. She was like, think about fear versus excitement. And think of the time you’ve been really excited, think of a time you’ve been really fearful, and it was my first big stage presentation where I was speaking and it was in in front of my hometown and those people know me a little Little more intimately and differently than a lot of my current network. And she’s like, Can you really tell a difference between fear and excitement? Like how it feels in your body? And I was like, that’s so eye opening. And then once I was – I could tell myself, you know, this is exciting and be glad you’ve got the opportunity rather than saying, I’m scared to death to do this. That’s one of my go to’s, still to this day.

Richard Matthews 21:31
Yeah. And it reminds me of Mark Twain’s quote that, you know, 20 years from now, you’ll regret more of the things you didn’t do them, the ones who did, right. And that’s so accurate.

Heather Breedlove 21:40
I had that, that quote went through my mind this morning. It absolutely did. And the reason it went through my mind this morning is I’ve somehow gotten myself into climbing doing an extreme physical challenge with Tommy in October and on the inspirational training video yesterday. They said, just settle in and do your training. And this morning, I get up, I go, hit the trail to run and I was going to be late for work. And I was like, Okay, if I’m late going into the office, am I going to remember that? Or am I going to remember, I took the time for myself to train for this obstacle that we’ve got coming in October. It’s amazing how you can just shift your mindset that quickly from remembering a quote like that.

Richard Matthews 22:34
Yeah, absolutely. And it changes sort of your perspective on like, hey, what what is it that’s going to be important to me later? That’s one of the things that I’ve really loved about sort of understanding how we work as human beings. And one of one of my foundational understanding of human beings is that we’re storyborn creatures, right? And our relationships are built on stories and the more of our stories we’ve shared with each other, the more intimate relationships become right. Like at this point, the only way you and Tommy get closer together is by going out and creating new stories together. Right? You’ve heard all of each other’s stories in the past.

Heather Breedlove 23:09
Once or twice for sure.

Richard Matthews 23:11
And like you can tell when he changes, changes a detail in one of the stories he’s told, you know, because you’ve heard him so many times. Right. And, and that’s sort of like, we judge we judge the depth of our relationship with each other, based on how much of each other story we know. And so I like to look at a lot of the experiences that are in front of me through that lens of like, what’s the story I want to be telling later, right? Do I want to tell the story of like, Hey, I gave up in this so I can make it to work on time? Or do I want to tell the story that hey, you know what, I put work on pause for a few minutes so I could go do something really cool that I knew was going to be an adventure like that kind of stuff. Because that’s that’s that’s how our life grows is through our stories. And I think it’s really helpful for me at least to think of like Hey, what’s the story I want to tell my grandchildren?

Heather Breedlove 23:56
Absolutely and I it is having that bigger picture of of how much space you could have in this world versus shrinking it and just doing your standard status quo. This is my day which you don’t seem to have that issue.

Richard Matthews 24:16
It sounds to me like that’s the core message of learning to Shine Your Bright though, is learning how to to to nail that for your own, like learning how to write to the story the way you want it.

Heather Breedlove 24:26
Absolutely. One of the things I’d love to talk about is how to get from here where you are right now to your bucket list. And it’s not as far away as you think.

Richard Matthews 24:37
It’s amazing Amazing Because I remember, before we started traveling, it was something that was on both my wife and I’s bucket list, and we had all these things that were on there and thinking to ourselves, I don’t know how we’re going to make this happen and blah, blah, blah. You know, it took us years to get the point where we’re like, we finally got one we can do it. And like we started and all these things sort of fell in place. Now the business started working better and like we got onto the road. And we’ve checked off all these cool things on our bucket list and we got so many more that we’re going to do. But it’s, it’s amazing that once you start down that path, it just becomes easier and easier and easier to continue building a life that you’re proud of.

Heather Breedlove 25:14
Absolutely. That does – do you know where you’re going when you get out of Florida? Or do you just take the open road?

Richard Matthews 25:21
So we pretty much – we we didn’t really have a three month plan of like, Hey, we have a direction we’re going but all the details aren’t generally worked out. However, that’s been thoroughly messed up by the Coronavirus. And now you know, nationwide rioting. So we’re currently just sort of staying safe here. But we’ll we’ll sort of see what what goes it goes down. Our plan was to go up the East Coast this summer. But currently the East Coast is not a great place to be going up and down. So we might go somewhere else. We’re not sure yet.

Heather Breedlove 25:50
Nice. Well, it’ll be fun to figure out where you go.

Richard Matthews 25:52
Yeah, it’ll be fun to figure out. And it’s kind of you know, it’s nice to have that kind of freedom where we can just say, Hey, this is what we’re doing now. This is what we’re doing next and we can We can adjust based on you know, on the happenings in our world. But it’s sort of, you know, I want to I want to move on a little bit in the conversation and talk a little bit about your superpower. Right? And so, you know, every iconic hero has their superpower, whether that’s, you know, a fancy flying suit like Iron Man, or, you know, the something like the ability to call down Thunder like Thor, right? In the real world. I have, I think heroes have something that I call the genius zone, right? It’s a skill or set of skills that you either you were born with, or you developed over time that sort of energize all the rest of your skills. Right. So this superpower is what sets you apart and allows you to really help people slay their villains, and come out on top in their own journeys. So you have a superpower. And I’m curious with that sort of framing, what do you think it is?

Heather Breedlove 26:45
So my superpower is I love making events and plans for people to step outside of their normalcy and really do things that they never would have done in the past and it first started presenting itself in that my family by birth has a lot of men and all the women have married in. And for 20 years I have planned a weekend every year, the weekend after Mother’s Day and taking these eight women to go explore and experience something that they wouldn’t normally do and we’ve done. Not cliff diving. I’m not sure they would go with that. We’ve done whitewater rafting, we’ve done like gone to the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in a limousine. We’ve done parasailing, taken cruises, and that energizes me because I love watching them be just happy for that weekend and nothing else matters. And that’s why it was so easy, I think to take Shine Your Bright and move that into where this year we’re hosting our first conference. And really just opening that same concept up to anybody who wants to come, join. And so that’s it for me seeing people just laugh out loud until they cry.

Richard Matthews 28:13
Would would it be to forward to say your superpower is helping make people come alive?

Heather Breedlove 28:18
I love that. Yeah. I do.

Richard Matthews 28:22
You know what one of my other favorite quotes, I can’t remember the guy who said it, but he said, The world needs more people, you know who who are alive, right who come alive. So find find something that makes it come alive and go do that. And it’s a great great thing. Because when you when you light people up and you get them to a point where they’re actually excited about what it is they can do, and where they can go, they start operating at a higher level and it’s the value they can bring to the world is something that we need. That’s what that’s what solves our world’s problems is when people have come alive, and they’re using their strengths and their gifts and their perspective to go out and, you know, share their value with the world.

Heather Breedlove 29:03
And like you said, once you found what you want to do, and you guys hopped on the road, how things magically started falling into place. I firmly believe every time I’ve gone for something new or started to live out loud, my biggest potential, it’s like, it just unfolds for you. And the world is there to support you. And it it gives me chill bumps with excitement, because it’s just so fun to see.

Richard Matthews 29:31
Yeah, and it’s really amazing too, because it was like the traveling was just a dream. Like, let’s see if we can do that. And it’s interesting that once we started really taking action on that, the business opportunities to grow our business and do the things that we do there, opened up with it. Right. And our business has grown probably four or five times since we got on the road, which is crazy, right? Because you wouldn’t think that like they’re not connected. But I run my business and when I’m alive, my business is alive, right?

Heather Breedlove 30:00
That’s a great that’s a great analogy. Talking about story is Tommy and I have, we knew and he was in a big corporate accounting job. And we knew he was shrinking in that role. And it was time for him to get out. But we had planned for an October exit. He called me on Valentine’s Day. So that’s, that’s a little before October and I’m driving to work. And he goes, not Happy Valentine’s Day. Well, what do we want to do for dinner? It was, I think, today is the day. And I was like, Oh, you’re gonna quit today. He’s like, I’m gonna quit today. And this was that – I was 36 at the time, and I was like, I’m about to start life over at this age. I never thought I would do that. But it was amazing to watch him grow and start to flourish and start to really live his life. And that was so inspiring to me. And again, I mean, we cut out two thirds of our salary that day. But it was like so many other opportunities opened up, and just watching where he is and where I am and it’s it’s an amazing life and it is so much more than I ever thought it would be. But it was that it stabbed me in the gut there for a second.

Richard Matthews 31:30
Yeah, and it’s that scary moment. You’re like, oh, are we actually doing this? My my phrase for that because I have we’ve done it a number of times my wife and I in our relationship, everything from like we we got married on a whim, we thought it would be a good idea. We talked about it ahead of time, but we got married on a whim and we moved our whole family from Missouri to California one day and that was like an afternoon decision’s like let’s just pack everything up, clos our business, move to California, and we moved into the RV at one point, 28 days after we decided we were going to do it. We had sold everything we had, we were in an RV and traveling right so we’ve done that a lot. It’s sort of like a practiced skill we have now. And the skill I’ve named it parachute parachute building. Where you you jump off the cliff and you learn to build the parachute on the way down.

Heather Breedlove 32:12
That’s better than if you build it, they will come the parachute.

Richard Matthews 32:17
So so you take a step into something that you know you want to do. And you realize that, hey, now that we’ve done this, we have to actually make it work, right, we have to figure out how to you know how to make this function for our life. That’s a good skill to have. And it also like, it’s one of those things like if you’ve never done it before, you don’t have a lot of confidence. But like if you’re, you know, my point in life, we’ve done it, you know, four or five times now and every time we’ve done it, you realize, hey, I’ve got the skills right? I know how to make things happen. It becomes easier the further you get into your life to make big decisions that are life changing and things like that, because you know, like, Hey, I can handle this, I can handle whatever is thrown at me.

Heather Breedlove 32:51
One of my I always ask myself, I’m like, Am I going to regret not having done this and I think that was probably engrained because when my father did pass away, he was 52. And my mom was widowed at 48. And that was one of those things where I was like, you know, if I follow in his footsteps and if my life is half of what it could be, I don’t want to ever question: Did I not live my life to the fullest? And that’s the same thing with just go when it’ll, you’ll figure it out. It’ll work itself out the world will support ya.

Richard Matthews 33:35
Yeah, right. So, my, my next question for you is the flip side of your superpower. Right? So if your superpower is helping make people come alive, the flip side of that coin is your fatal flaw. Right? Every superhero has their Kryptonite, like Wonder Woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad. You probably have a flaw that’s held you back in your business, something you’ve struggled with. Maybe it’s perfectionism like me or it keeps you from shipping, you know, or lack of self care, meaning you let your clients walk all over you or something like that. And you know, but more important than sort of what the flaw is, is how have you worked to overcome that flaw? So people who are listening might learn a bit from your experience.

Heather Breedlove 34:14
So my flaw is my to do list, or my grocery list, or my list, right? I manage my life through marking things off of a list and it’s never small, it will. If I add three, I only check off one and that is my that is my Kryptonite, because if I’m tethered to that list, I am never going to be able to go out and live the life that you and I have been talking about and explore and find the joy and the happy because if I put on the list, go have fun with spontaneity. That’s probably going to be the last thing I grab. So I have to make a conscious effort to at least leave the list at home, two days a week.

Richard Matthews 35:01
That’s awesome. My my wife would probably feel you there. she is She’s one of those bullet journaling people. And she’s got this fancy journal and she makes lists for all the things. We’ve got a, you know, a list for our meal planning and we’ve got lists for each of the kids schoolwork and we got four kids. So there’s a lot of lists involved in that and we got lists for keeping keeping care of the house now don’t get me wrong, I love her lists. Her lists make my life what it is. Right. But I think she would probably feel you there. It’s like, but there’s also if I understand correctly, list people get a lot of joy out of checking the lists off.

Heather Breedlove 35:34
I think I would get a lot of joy out of checking everything on the list off. I never get there. And I think that’s why I’m – it’s my never ending to do list so I don’t have a great relationship with it.

Richard Matthews 35:51
So so maybe it’s just one of those things. You just got to get better at figuring out what you want to put on the list.

Heather Breedlove 35:57
Yes, yeah, there for a while. I would, I’d have to list for Monday, and I ended up carrying 70% over to Tuesday, and then another 70% over that Wednesday. So I, I think I can do a lot more than I can.

Richard Matthews 36:13
So, so sort of the discussion, I want to I want to take this somewhere because I think it’s really interesting. I don’t I’m not a list person, per se. But one of the things that I did a lot in my early entrepreneur career, which I think you might, you might relate with is, I was of the opinion, that play was earned from work done, right. So if I if I had got to a certain point in my life, like, I needed to, like I hadn’t got to whatever my goal was, I needed to work more. And I was doing this whole thing, where I was like, I would get up at, you know, six o’clock in the morning, and I would work until 6-7-8 o’clock at night. And like, I would work all day, and I would do the same thing the next day because I was like I’d never – I hadn’t hit my goal yet. Right. Like I didn’t – I had this goal. I was trying to hit it and I would work all the time. And so we’re constantly like you’re saying it was similar to like, I could always have another thing on my list I could do, or there’s always another thing I could add. And another thing I could work on today, and that, for me was something that was really detracting from my life. And I realized that I was just living to work. And I realized it’s something we talked about on the show all the time is that you have to give yourself permission to play and that play is not something that you reward yourself with for work well done. It’s a requirement to do good work.

Heather Breedlove 37:31
Absolutely, and if you – so I’d love leaving time for the magic, is kind of how I refer to it because if it were so structured, and we’re just going from task to task task to task to task are you going to take the time to have a conversation with someone in line at the coffee shop and maybe meet your next business partner or are you gonna take the time to go slide down the waterfall. Those are the things that – and I had this conversation actually with someone last week about – and the question they asked me was as well, who do you most want to meet? And for me, my answer was I want to meet whoever just happens to be there in that minute that like, I want to be open and present enough with people that you just don’t know who you’re standing beside. You don’t know their story. And there could be a reason that they’re there. For me, that’s kind of the magic of the spontaneity in the play.

Richard Matthews 38:43
And that’s one of the things that I’ve really been blown away by sort of making that shift in my life to realizing that, hey, it’s not about the to do list. It’s about it’s about like learning to play and learning how to be a part of part of your life. There’s there’s a couple of like, really important things that came out of that. One of them is I learned that creativity really, is it’s in – it’s brought to life with restrictions, right? So if I do things like say, hey, I’ve only got Monday through Thursday to get my work done, I’m not working on Fridays anymore. Now suddenly, you have to be creative about what you’re going to get done because you have less time to get the same amount of things done. Or if you say things like, Hey, you know what, instead of working eight hour days, I’m only going to work seven hour days, right? And I have over the course of the last four or five years, consistently whittled down the amount of time that I was willing to put into work. And what that did is it created a sort of like a creative, it opened up a lot of creativity stuff. And now my current work schedule. I generally I work four days a week, four hours a day, and I have a business that’s five times larger than it was when I was working 12 to 15 hours a day. Right?

Heather Breedlove 39:50
That’s incredible. And do you feel like it’s not to put forward in your mouth but you probably feel like it’s a much more valuable business to you and your family.

Richard Matthews 40:00
It is because it leaves a lot more to to have the experiences in life and to tell the stories and do those things because like, I was just thinking about it while you were talking. I was like, looking back over those five or six years of beginning of my business. I don’t have many stories. I can tell you I worked for five years. And that’s the whole story. And but the last three years of my life, we could spend the next two years talking about all the cool things that we’ve done, both in our business and our relationships and on the adventures we’ve had and everything. Because more of our time is dedicated to actually living and enjoying life and the business stuff. We’re only getting the important things done. And because we’re getting the important things done, we’re doing cool things for our clients and getting cool things accomplished. So our business has fun stories. Right? And that’s like that’s a cool place to be.

Heather Breedlove 40:47
That’s a totally cool place to be. And we, Tommy and I, had a conversation. We just had our 19th year of marriage. So we had a lot of conversation on anniversary day, yey. But we talked about what has, like, what do I appreciate most about him? And I think for me is that we don’t tell each other No, like, no matter how big the dream is, or no matter how small the dream is, if if he were to tell me, No, I don’t think you should do that, or no, you can’t do that. That would be hard for me. Because, again, that’s restriction and not living as big as you can. And I think that resonated with what you were just saying. And that if we keep saying yes, the next thing and just yes, it’s a way bigger life.

Richard Matthews 41:47
Yeah, yeah. And it’s a one of the things that like, my my wife, and I work on this a lot, too. It’s the idea that like, hey, how like my goal for my wife is like, how do I support her and everything that she wants to do? And we don’t ever say we can’t do that, or no, that’s not possibility, right? Even if we can’t afford it right now, or it’s not something we can do right this moment. It’s like how can we because if you say no, no is a shutdown, it’s a shutdown, right? Or I can’t is a shutdown, or we can’t is a shutdown. But if you ask yourself, how can we then you can start building plans and creating things. And the journey to get somewhere, right where we can get to a place where we can do something is part of that fun and that joy.

Heather Breedlove 42:25
Well, it’s the same with anything in life. How can we do this? How can, it is the how rather than the no, and And how can be part of the fun and it’s definitely part of the story.

Richard Matthews 42:40
Yeah, that’s like one of our one of our further down bucket list items that we haven’t figured out how to do yet. My wife, bless her heart wants to hold a baby panda before she dies. We haven’t figured that out yet. But at some point, we’re gonna figure out how she can get to hold a baby panda.

Heather Breedlove 42:54
All right, you just put it out there. So next week when somebody says they have a baby and I’m gonna give you a call.

Richard Matthews 43:04
So so I have I want to move on a little bit and start talking about your common enemy, right. So every superhero has their arch nemesis, the thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world. In the world of business this takes on many forms. But generally speaking, we put it in the context of your clients, right? The people that you work with, whether that’s your audience, or the people who buy your journals or the people that you work with one on one, and it’s generally a mindset or a flaw that you’re constantly have to fight to overcome, so you can help them, get them better results, cheaper results, faster results, higher degree results, whatever, it’s something that you’re constantly like, man, if I had a magic wand and I could just bop them on the head and make that better. What is that thing you’re constantly having to fight against, your common enemy?

Heather Breedlove 43:45
That children, career, and husbands come before you. It’s that one and I don’t know if it’s just like generational, I don’t know if it’s a sense of – I think it comes from a lot of different places but and I I was there where I would put myself last but we had been talking if I don’t continue to experience and do things outside of my comfort zone. Tommy and I aren’t going to have new stories to talk about, I’m not gonna have – it almost feels more like a death cycle to me, but that’s the that’s the common enemy is: I’ll spend less on myself because they need things. My husband’s job is more important. It’s kind of that whole that whole conversation and a lot of times that can be just an easy an easy excuse not to step into your fears.

Richard Matthews 45:00
And it’s interesting too, because it’s a particular problem with the female half of our species. And I know this from data actually, we have a supplement company that we’ve run for a number of years. And you know, so one of the things that we offer is we offer men’s multivitamins, women’s multivitamins, prenatal vitamins, kids, and children, and teens vitamins, like we have all those vitamins things, right. I bet you could guess what our worst seller is? The women’s multi-vitamin.

Heather Breedlove 45:28
Now, is it the same price point? I’m curious.

Richard Matthews 45:30
Yeah, it’s it’s the same price point. You know what one of our bestsellers is? The prenatal vitamin. Because because because suddenly they’re not taking care of themselves. They’re taking care of someone else. Right. And so it’s it’s women are wired to take care of the people that are around them and to think about themselves last, right. And there’s no there’s not necessarily that’s a wrong thing. It’s part of how you were wired. But you also have to figure out like, you can’t take care of someone else unless you take care of yourself, right. They always tell you in the airplane you got to put the mask over your own face first before you can put over your children.

Heather Breedlove 46:03
Absolutely. Nurture Nurture is a very big piece of life. But I also think through a lot of those things that women are jealous about, right? When you look at other women, and they’re beautiful, or they have just this home, like the nurturing that you love to go sit in, or the person that just speaks her mind, there’s so many things you can be jealous about with other people. And I have some really close friends that are nurturers, and that I feel like take care of me when I need it. But I also have made a conscious effort to fill out my circle with other types of women too, like the one that’s going to just stop the car and dance on the side of the road or the one that knows all the beauty products. So I certainly don’t want to undersell the momhood and the nurturing your family and your your community. But I would make a pitch to round out the the life of some of those other … people.

Richard Matthews 47:12
One of the rules that we have in our household that we’ve had for a number of years, my wife and I have discussed this a lot. It’s something that, you know, she struggled with a lot growing up is like having her own voice and her own identity, and having her own opinions and things like that. And some of that just comes from relationships that she had in her past. But one of our rules is, you know, because we have four children. And there’s a tendency for mothers to – and even fathers a lot – to like, try to live vicariously through their children. Right? And like, hey, you’re gonna, you know, do these things or do the other things. And one of our rules is that is that we do the things that my wife and I want to do, and our children get to come along for the journey, right? So we’re not sacrificing our life, to put it all into, you know, as an example in my kids into baseball. I like it. Unless we have a savant in some area, which none of our kids have turned out to be savant yet, but we’ll see, we might, you know, we might really set them up for success or something like that. But we feel that showing them what it looks like to see someone who’s really actively living and grabbing life by the horns and doing what they want to do. And showing them what that looks like is more important than making sure that they, you know, make every baseball game or make it to every gymnastics class or whatever. And so, the way that that works out is like, hey, when my wife has ideas and things that she wants to do, is we work towards making sure she’s doing that and coming up with those things. And like, you know, one of my my latest things I mentioned, the bullet journaling, she was like, I want to get into this bullet turning journaling thing. So the next month I added like $300 to our budget to go and like I bought all the supplies for her, I was like, go at it Have fun, right? Like Like, like learn how to do it and do all the things and like the brush lettering and all the things it’s one of the things that she wanted to do. And we did the same thing with like watercolor she’s like, I think I want to learn how to water color, because she had a friend who is learning to watercolor. So we went and got her a whole kit for the watercolor stuff. And you know, then we got like a miniature one for her daughter so she could do it with her. Right? And that those kind of things and it’s it’s more about like, hey, let’s learn how to live your life. And then those experiences you can help transfer to your children. Instead of trying to live your children’s life that makes sense.

It makes total sense and I will. It’s in – the front of the Shine Your Bright journal has a little about our story, but the same line but a different perspective is when I realized Tommy and I weren’t going to have children, I had to really ask myself why that was important to me in the first place to have children and that’s what I realized is I wanted to experience life through them because there is no fear. They’ll try to flip the swing over the swing set and they just lived to the fullest and once I realized that that’s probably why I wanted the children, it wasn’t about nurturing and growing a human being to be the best person they could be. It was selfish. And I was like that I can go do all of that on my own. Right. So it’s the exact same story. Just a different perspective.

Heather Breedlove 49:28
Yeah, a different perspective. So anyways, I think that for at least our family, it’s been really helpful because like, our goal is to raise up the next generation to be better than the current one, right? Like, that’s the best the best gift we can give the world is raise our children up right. And so I think part of that is teaching them what it looks like to live live a great life, to live a life that you’re in charge of. That you’re actually delivering value in every aspect of what you do. Right. So anyways, that’s a fun discussion, I think.

Absolutely. And never stop exploring and you’re giving them the confidence. The more things you explore, the more confidence you’ll have to go into the future with.

Richard Matthews 50:59
Absolutely. So my next question for you then is your driving force, right? And this is the flip side of your common enemy, right? So just like Spider Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. What is it that you are fighting for, your mission so to speak, what is that?

Heather Breedlove 51:16
It is finishing life without regret, knowing that you did things for yourself, and they they made your life better. I think it’s that that simple.

Richard Matthews 51:32
So living life without regret. And so for people who are listening to sort of this, this whole episode in the cool discussions that we’ve had so far, do you have like, like, you know, something that you recommend everyone like does, like an inventory or something like how do you know whether or not you’re at that place?

Heather Breedlove 51:53
I I would say when’s the last time you felt like you did something exclusively for yourself, whether it be five minutes or whether it was a weekend trip, when was the last time you were able to do that? And understanding what regret feels like and how to recognize it in the moment when you’re making a decision and say, Do I need to sit with this and and work through it? Or am I comfortable enough to know that I can make this decision right now and it’d be the right one for myself.

Richard Matthews 52:27
So so sort of like a follow on question, because I know that people struggle with this because I know I struggled with it personally. Why is doing something for yourself and putting yourself first not a selfish thing?

Heather Breedlove 52:41
So we’re all – is it wrong to be selfish to some degree?

Richard Matthews 52:50
I don’t think so.

Heather Breedlove 52:52
I think it’s I think it’s acceptable to be selfish and the other side of that is boundaries and people taking, right if I don’t set boundaries around a life and a career, my boss might always say, well, you need to be here an extra hour, you need to be here from seven to seven at night. Same with a husband, you know, it’s very easy to get stuck in. Well, I get home from work, I’ve got to make dinner at night, and then I’m so exhausted. After I’ve done all of these chores to keep our family running. There’s nothing left for you to do anything for yourself. So I’m not saying blow off your your community, your family with reckless abandonment. But I think we’re all entitled to have the same amount of excitement in life and and know ourselves and if we take the time to do things we love and want to enjoy, we’ll know who we are more intimately and we can go into our relationships with others in a healthier perspective.

Richard Matthews 54:13
That’s sort of my whole take on that is that the more we learn to understand that in order for us to give our value to the world, we have to know who we are right? We have to know what that value is, we have to know we have to know ourselves so we have to experience life a little bit. You have to you have to know what you want to spend your time on and how you want to do it and where you want to go with life and those kind of things. You have to know who you are. And when you when you understand that you have to be a little bit selfish, right? You have to love yourself, you have to take care of yourself, you have to take care of this, you know, to put it in Christian terms, your body is the temple right and you take care of the temple. You keep it healthy and you keep it alive and energized. And then it can you you can then turn around and you can get your value to the world, right? Like my, my business does a lot of really cool things for really cool people. And it’s in a lot of huge ripple effects in the world. And none of that would happen. But it wasn’t happening years ago when all I was doing was working out doing anything for myself. Right. And so, when I started to learn to be a little bit selfish, I started to have a lot more to give to other people.

Heather Breedlove 55:21
And I feel like with your confidence and the joy that surrounds you, because you are filling your cup, people feel that. They feel it, they want to be around you and it just, it creates it creates this this happy place where like, I know if I’m having a bad day and I’m grumpy, I can eat because I feel people want to steer away from you. Whereas if you’re in a great space and you’re smiling at the cashier or the person beside you at the car, it’s it just it flows through and out of you and it makes the world a happier place.

Richard Matthews 56:01
It absolutely does. So I want to talk a little bit about some practical tools, maybe the things that you could use for for for making that that happy choices, but I call this the Hero’s Toolbelt, right? So just you know, just like every superhero has their tool belt with awesome gadgets like batarangs, or web slingers, or laser eyes or big magical hammer, right? … talk about one or two tools in your business that you couldn’t live without, that sort of make your business what it is. This could be your notepad, your calendar, your marketing tools, your product delivery, sort of any, one or two things that are like absolutely essential to the job that you do for people.

Heather Breedlove 56:37
Well, I’ve tried Asana, that didn’t work. I like my paper list. The the things that I go back to is when I do go back to the published journal, and I make sure I I spend time with that every day to just to to have that interview with myself so that when I’m going in and having conversations with others in coaching that I’ve explored myself through a different lens and I’m ready and open to have those more intimate conversations.

Richard Matthews 57:13
And this is your journal the – I can’t remember the name of it.

Heather Breedlove 57:17
Shine Your Bright

Richard Matthews 57:19
Shine Your Bright, and so tell me tell me a little bit about it. Like what what does it do and how does it sort of help you and help your clients?

Heather Breedlove 57:24
So really, when I wanted – and I kind of just got like a page here and I just opened it up to a tent, but it was really important for me to have a visual so that I could see like with the tent if I’m an REI and I see a tent I could relate back to these questions but the prompts are insects, smores, Wi Fi. And then some of the questions I have like what is your definition of roughing it? Roughing it to some people depending on where you are, could be just going home at night, it could be going to your job. And if you could admit what roughing it is and start to put all that out on paper, it helps you admit it to yourself. And once you admit it to yourself, and you know, you got to deal with it, not then but you know, it’s time. And some of the other questions are what makes you a happy camper? I mean, they could be a little cheeky, right? And when’s the last time you slept under the stars? So, you know, camping as a kid might have been a normal but when’s the last time you went outside at night looked up at the stars. But for you guys it might have been last night. So just those interview questions really helped me continue to learn more about myself and where my head is at the time and I’ll also date it so a year from now or when I Flip to a different page. I can see where I was at that time, and how much I’ve grown or changed.

Richard Matthews 59:07
Yeah, it’s sort of like it’s connecting with your own story, right and sort of having it out there. So you can you can see where you are and where you’re going. Awesome.

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So next question for you then is your own personal heroes, right so every hero has their mentors just like Frodo head Gandalf or Luke had Obi Wan Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad, or Spider Man had his Uncle Ben . Who were some of your heroes, were they real life mentors, speakers authors who were a couple years ahead of you, and how important were they what you’ve accomplished so far in your entrepreneurial journey?

Heather Breedlove 1:01:17
So I would say my number one hero is certainly Tommy. And if you’d asked me that 15 years ago, I would have said he was my number one nemesis. That’s how far we’ve come. But watching the courage and the way he’s been with people has been just it’s been a really an inspiration to watch his journey and it encourages me to step outside of my comfort zone and really go after the life I want. I mean, I’ve had some amazing people in my life. Like when I talked about fear versus excitement that was Nancy Veto. And she was a life coach that I’ll still go back to with questions. And she really has just some amazing tools to help me transition through whatever I’m going with at the at the time. Those are the two … of the top.

Richard Matthews 1:02:22
Awesome. One of the things that has really surprised me about doing this show is asking that question. And realizing that everyone has a hero. They don’t always call him a hero. Sometimes they call them mentor sometimes they call them something else. But it’s like, it’s someone that they’ve looked up to or has helped them. And the other thing that’s amazing to me is how often the other person, the one you name doesn’t even know. Right? And so that’s always strikes me is like just a thought in the back of my head. Right? Like you talked about, you know, just being the kind of person who walks up to the grocery store and smiles, right like that’s the kind of thing Like if you realize that if you’re living your life, in like the way that we’ve been talking about through this whole episode, you you have that opportunity to be heroes for other people, because you’re living the kind of life that everyone wants to be living when you realize that, hey, like, I’ve got it, you know, you need to shine your bright, when you’re shining your bright that’s the kind of thing that other people that makes you a hero to other people.

Heather Breedlove 1:03:23
And one thing it’s kind of sad to me is that eye contact is not normal and out in the world, and the amount of people that don’t make eye contact with others. It’s almost like I don’t want to be seen. I don’t want you to see me. I don’t want to see you. And it’s sad when you realize that so if you could just sprinkle a little bit of magic on someone’s day in any manner. I think it goes a long way.

Richard Matthews 1:03:57
It’s one of my my earliest mentors in life said leave it better than you found it. Be that a person or a place whatever it is, and it’s you know if you can leave them with a smile you’ve left them better than you found them. And it’s one of those things that like I – particularly smiles they’re they’re such a powerful thing because they’re infectious, right most infectious thing on the planet probably. I have three daughters and I don’t know if you know this about young girls, but they are very prone to very deep emotions. And they feel things much more deeply than anyone else I know. And so like we have breakdowns on a regular basis for various things. And one of my favorite things which drives my wife batty is I’ll sit on the couch with one of my daughters and sit around my lap and just be like, we’ll have a pity party together and then I’ll just look at her and smile and smile for you know, however long it takes and she can’t she can’t – it always works, every single time because they can’t. You can’t just smile at someone and have it not improve their life.

Heather Breedlove 1:05:00
I’ve used that trick a couple of times in a couple of fights in marriage too. You should start smiling and it’ll it’ll break it up pretty quick.

Richard Matthews 1:05:09
Yeah, smiles fix people. I don’t know what it is, but they’re magical.

I want to bring it home for our listeners and talk a little bit about your guiding principles, right? It’s one of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code, right? For instance, Batman never kills his enemies, he brings them to Arkham Asylum. So as we sort of wrap up the interview, let’s talk about top one or two principles that you regularly use in your life. Maybe your principle you wish you had when you first started out that you live by sort of everyday.

Heather Breedlove 1:05:41
That’s funny, Tommy and I, we have our family principles, and we have our own principles, because if you have them, it’s easier to make your decisions, right. It’s your guiding light per se. I would say I show up, that was and it’s okay to say no. So it It’s almost a contra-principle. But what I do mean by, we show up is if we say we’re going to be somewhere or I say I’m going to commit to something, I’m going to commit to it with my whole heart. And I’m going to be there and present. On the flip side of that, if it’s okay to say no, and not do things, and be comfortable with that, because if I really want to say no, and I don’t, I’m going to show up half of myself.

Richard Matthews 1:06:36
Yeah, they they really work well together. And it’s it’s interesting because it’s a it’s a type of integrity, right? Where you say you’re going to show up, you show up and then when you show up, you’re actually there. Right? And and if you put that all together with everything we’ve been talking about, if you’re the kind of person that shows up full of life, right and full of who you are, and you can be 100% present, one of the one of the questions that I was asked by a family member when we we got pregnant with our fourth child was like, Why? Why would you have a fourth child? Right? Like, how are you going to give them all the attention that they need? And that’s that’s a question asked by someone who doesn’t have four children. But But the point is that if you realize that in everything in your life, if you can learn how to be 100% present for whatever it is that you’re doing, right, whether that’s, you know, sitting on the couch and having a pity party with your daughter, to showing up to help clean up the chairs at the end of the, you know, event or something like that, if you’re 100% there that’s the type of – it’s a type of integrity that a lot of people don’t have. Right. And it really shows and really helps impact people in a positive way.

Heather Breedlove 1:07:47
Absolutely. We we have a friend of ours who we had a book launch party for Tommy recently and this gentleman, he is amazing at making you feel like he’s listening to you. And I don’t know how he has these conversations, but he is so into the conversation listening. And one of our other friends that was at this party commented on it. He was like, how is – his name’s Michael List. He’s like, how’s Michael List? Who actually was working in Singapore, but he came over for the party and never made it back. And Chris, the guy telling us the story, he goes, you know, I’ve never felt more listened to then from Michael. And we were like, yes, we know. I mean, we feel the same way. That’s what has attracted us to him way back when. So, he is one that I always try to do the same and be that present.

Richard Matthews 1:08:55
Show up 100% whatever it is, right and to be there and to listen and to You know, to give all of yourself to everything you do. And it’s it’s interesting. So that is basically a wrap on our interview. But I finished every interview with a simple challenge. I call it the Hero’s Challenge. That’s actually how you ended up here. So we do this to help get access to new stories that we might never find on our own. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they first names are fine, and why do you think they should come share their story on our show?

Heather Breedlove 1:09:26
Oh, my goodness.

Richard Matthews 1:09:27
Unfortunately, it can’t be Tommy because Tommy recommended you.

Heather Breedlove 1:09:31
You know what I would call out. My brother of all people. His name’s Justin. He’s 40 years old. He just walked away from everything he knows to start a marketing company, from food sales to marketing, and we have – he moved up to Atlanta to be close to us and watching his struggles and his grind and his happy and the highs and lows of that have just been incredible.

Richard Matthews 1:10:02
Awesome. Yeah. So we’ll reach out later and see if we can get an introduction to him to get him on the show and hear his story. So it’s time for our send off. And in comic books, there’s always a crowd who who you know, says thank you to the hero for their act of heroism and claps and cheers the room for their work. So as we close, I want to know where people can find you if they want your help in the future, where can they light up the bat signal so to speak, and more importantly, who are the best types of people to reach out and ask for your help or to buy your products?

Heather Breedlove 1:10:32
I would love to hear from anyone out there, our website is https://www.shineyourbright.com/ and there’s actually a free sample download of the journal there. And if you’re looking for a place to start to get to know yourself again, you don’t know how to start to get to know yourself. I’d love to hear from you. My email address is heather@shineyourbright.com, and if you’re looking to do a little more for yourself, we’d love to have you at the retreat in September.

Richard Matthews 1:11:04
Awesome, thank you so much for coming on, Heather, really appreciate it. If you’re listening to this, and you’re looking, right, if you want to have the kind of life that Heather and I’ve been talking about this whole episode, definitely take Take a chance, reach out to Heather, pick up the journal, learn a little bit about what it’s like to actually live a full, exciting life, right. And what that is because it will, you know, help you put your value out into the world. And again, Heather, thank you so much for coming on. It’s been a blast having this conversation with you.

Heather Breedlove 1:11:29
This has been amazing. Thank you. And I hope you enjoy Florida as long as you’re there.

Richard Matthews 1:11:35
Awesome. So before I hit this little stop record button, you have any final words of wisdom for our audience?

Heather Breedlove 1:11:40
No, I’d say the happy and the joy is inside of everyone. And it’s worth taking the time to find that if you’ve lost it.

Richard Matthews 1:11:48
Absolutely. Thank you very much, Heather.

Heather Breedlove 1:11:50
Thank you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai