Helping People Find Truth to Build a Vibrant & Healthy Life

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Jennifer Kelly  0:00  

I think I have a few. One of my superpowers is listening, really listening to what people need, where people are at, and how I can meet people where they’re at. And that was very important in my film career and also in the fostering and in wellness space. I’m very stubborn, which wasn’t a good thing when I was younger. But I think that that stubbornness really helps me stay the course and stay with it and see things through. I’m interested in longevity, not just these fly by the night, quick solutions. And, frankly, when people are in the process of healing, it takes time. It’s not a four week program. It’s not a six week program. One of my daughters I have fostered nine kids and adopted two. But we’ve been on this journey for almost 30 years and 25 years, and it’s taken all that time for our relationship to be what it is today. So I think that stubbornness is actually a superpower. Although I know we often think of it as a negative.

 

Richard Matthews  1:21  

Heroes are an inspiring group of people, every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell, the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers, and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what I can fix that I can help people I can make a difference. And they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world, others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers their success and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money, and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3…2…1…

 

 

Richard Matthews  2:17  

Welcome back to the Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews And today I have the pleasure of having on the line, Jennifer Kelly. Jennifer, are you there?

 

Jennifer Kelly  2:23  

I’m here.

 

Richard Matthews  2:25  

Awesome. So glad to have you here. Where are you calling in from for the show today?

 

Jennifer Kelly  2:31  

I’m in Los Angeles, California. Where are you guys stuck to these days?

 

Richard Matthews  2:36  

We are in Central Florida for the next month. And just taking a brief respite from our jaunt all the way around the East Coast, which was super fun. And getting some interviews recorded and whatnot.

 

Jennifer Kelly  2:48  

Nice. 

 

Richard Matthews  2:49  

What I want to do, before we get too far into this, is introduce you to my audience who may not know you. I know we’re good friends. But you are the founder of INlighten Community, which is a yoga and community driven service that you offer in LA you’re actually in that studio now. Right? 

 

Jennifer Kelly  2:49  

Yeah, we offer a lot of wellness services in addition to yoga.

 

Richard Matthews  3:19  

Awesome. Including diet. I know you do several other programs as well, which I’m sure we’ll talk about. But I also want to make sure we bring up your newest project, which is you’re the founder and president of a company called Ford Land & Health a nonprofit Is that right?

 

Jennifer Kelly  3:34  

It’s For Land & People. Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews  3:36  

For Land & People. I was close, For Land & People. So what I want to start off with is, let’s talk a little bit about those businesses who they serve and what they do?

 

Jennifer Kelly  3:49  

Okay, well, at INlighten Community. For the last 12 years, we’ve served people from ages zero to I think our oldest student was 83. And yoga, meditation, health, wellness, community connection, life coaching, support, things like that. So we work all the way from prenatal to any age, and we’ve been here for 12 years with INlighten Community, this last year and a half have been a really interesting landscape, moving everything virtual. But we offer a lot of complimentary services and comprehensive services. It’s not just a yoga space. So we are a little different from other yoga communities in that regard.

 

Richard Matthews  4:49  

And that yoga for you guys is a tool in your toolbox for better health?

 

Jennifer Kelly  4:54  

Yes. And it’s also a vehicle for promoting a more conscious way of living, an active way of living, and a more comprehensive understanding of yourself and your inner landscape.

 

Richard Matthews  5:15  

Yeah, absolutely. And then, why don’t you share with us a little about the nonprofit, what that business has been started for, and what the goal is for that business?

 

Jennifer Kelly  5:25  

Sure. So over the past year, obviously a lot of things have changed. And we’ve been doing a lot of reevaluating, we were actually planning to move INlighten Community into a much larger space to be more inclusive and more comprehensive than we already are. And it’s funny, I couldn’t really quite find the right space. And so I was feeling a little frustrated. And then something just kept telling me to wait. And so I did. And we basically gave the studio a facelift and we thought, okay, we’ll be here a little bit longer, and did a grand reopening and two weeks later got shut down from COVID. So we got, okay, I’m really glad I didn’t move. I would have been bankrupt by now. Thank you guides and inner self for helping me make the decision to not move. But what happened is in the shutdown, I started really contemplating. Okay, well, what’s the next step? And I started to realize that this vision was bigger than being in a building in a city. And I actually went and volunteered at Molly Angle Hearts Farm. So a heart farm in Fillmore, California, it’s a regenerative farm, she’s part of the kiss the ground movement. And I was pulling peppers in her field, and I just stood up and I was like, this is supposed to be on the land, we need to have people reconnecting to the land, we need to heal with the land, because what’s happening in our physical and societal space is mirroring in our ecological space, and vice versa. So I realized, to really make it that comprehensive, complete wellness experience that I’ve been incubating. It needs to be on the land and not in a building in the city. People are losing access to green space due to development, busy schedules, and, hustle bustle busy minds, social media. So that kind of birth For Land & People. And I’ve been working with a network of people for the last 10 months on this project. And we’re finally getting to the place of bringing it into fruition, which is really exciting.

 

Richard Matthews  8:05  

It sounds like it’s a really natural outgrowth of INlighten Community and what your vision is for that company, to grow it into a bigger message. I’m really excited to see what you guys do with that farm. As it grows, and what you guys accomplish, there.

 

Jennifer  8:21  

It is. It’s actually going to be a three prong approach. We’re purchasing land in a land trust that will serve the community and land that we can restore, we’re looking at about 44 acres right now. And the INlighten Community for profit services, a lot of them will function on that land. And then we started the For Land & People nonprofit so that we could really start to support and service at risk and aging out foster youth because LA County has more foster youth than any other state in the United States combined. So we have more foster youth in LA County than the whole state of Texas has. And so, we have a really kind of growing epidemic here, of displaced young adults and so one of our main focuses will be serving that population.

 

Richard Matthews  9:30  

It’s really cool. So what I want to talk about then, is how you got to this place. We talked on this show about your origin story. Were you born a hero, or were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to get into health and human services and really helping move the community forward? Or did you start the job and eventually sort of move your way over to this life as an entrepreneur? What was your story? How did you get here?

 

Jennifer  9:58  

Well, you know It’s interesting. I had really young parents, my mom was a very functioning alcoholic. And I think that I really learned the natural art of caretaking and listening. And that sort of moved into my teen years of always people on the doorstep like wanting to talk. And I’d be up all hours of the night listening to people talking to people. When I moved to LA, I grew up in New Jersey. So when I moved to LA, I was working in film, and I was introduced to a foster and adoption agency called Holly Grove, and they were looking for volunteers to work on their entertainment committee. And I thought, okay, well, I have all this free time, and I’m working in entertainment. And so I started volunteering and doing silent auctions and fundraisers and things like that. And in the course of doing that, they would invite you to events that they were hosting, they had a group home for kids. And so I would go to the events and go to the dinners and stuff. And they had a mentorship program. I joined that mentorship program, having no idea where that would take me, and I met my daughter, Joanna. And it was an interesting program because you meet the kids, and they get to decide if they want you to be their mentor or not. So I was extremely nervous. Like, what if this kid doesn’t like me? What if this kid doesn’t want me to be there? Her special friend was the name of the program. And I was like, that’s a really weird name. We need to change that name. 

 

Richard Matthews  11:38  

You might not be that special. 

 

Jennifer Kelly  11:40  

Yeah. So anyway, I met Joanna and she was a feisty nine year old, very spirited. And we got along really well. And so I mentored her for four years, and she was aging out of the group home and her family was not ready to take her. So they awarded long-term foster care. And I became certified as a foster parent to help her just thinking that was kind of my radioactive spider bite. Because that opened up Pandora’s box of this whole world of children that really needed good support and stable mentorship in their life. So Joanna was nine at the time, she just turned 33. And I’m really excited to say that she is being trained by Mr. Erik Cutter of Alegría farms to be our farm manager on this farm project. So the mentoring really brought me into fostering. And then I was introduced to yoga and meditation. I was introduced to that when I was pregnant with my oldest son who’s 22 now. And just that combination of things really changed my whole life. And I made my long escape out of the film into the wellness world, and I’m now looking to expand that because fostering one child at a time is really beautiful. But when you look at the need, it’s just not fast enough.

 

Richard Matthews  11:53  

And so what you’re doing now is you’re taking your wellness business and expanding it so it can support that community at large at scale. 

 

Jennifer Kelly  13:26  

Yes.

 

Richard Matthews  13:27  

That’s really cool. And also correct me if I’m wrong, but you guys are also doing a Kickstarter or an Indiegogo campaign to help sort of crowdfunded that project. Is that true?

 

Jennifer  13:42  

Yeah, so we have a small GoFundMe to kick off our community garden project. And that’s an outreach project. We’re going to be working with Mar Diego, of Dough Girl Pizza, who works with at risk youth in Pacoima, she grew up in Pacoima, and was a drug dealer was incarcerated for 10 years, learned how to cook, and then came back to help the community. And she’s amazing. And we’re also working with St. Joseph’s Center, they have four new permanent supportive housing projects that are required to have green space. So those are kind of our community outreach projects that will help us promote opportunities and services and education on the farm because one of the biggest challenges with trauma populations is trust. And so these are some of the ways that we can start to build trust with communities and start to build trust with the foster youth so that we can offer opportunities and access to them.

 

Richard Matthews  14:52  

Yeah, absolutely. And is that something that we can get the links for to put in for the description of this show? 

 

Jennifer Kelly  14:58  

Absolutely. 

 

Richard Matthews  14:59  

Yeah, we’ll make sure we have those for you. We can get those later. But what I want to talk about then is your superpowers that you bring to bear on these projects you’re working on. We talked on this show, every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by genius intellect, or, super strength or the ability to call down thunder, you probably have a skill or a set of skills that you were either born with, or you have developed over your career, that really help you help other people, you help them come on top of their journeys. And the way I like to frame it is if you look at all the skills you’ve developed in building your business, there’s probably a common thread that ties all those skills together. And that common thread is where you find your superpower. So with that sort of framing, what do you think your superpower is?

 

Jennifer  15:48  

I think I have a few, one of my superpowers is listening, really listening to what people need, where people are at, and how I can meet people where they’re at. And that was very important in my film career and also in the fostering and in wellness space. I’m very stubborn, which wasn’t a good thing when I was younger. But I think that that stubbornness really helps me stay the course and stay with it and see things through. I’m interested in longevity, not just these fly by the night, quick solutions. And, frankly, when people are in the process of healing, it takes time. It’s not a four week program. It’s not a six week program. One of my daughters I have fostered nine kids and adopted two but we’ve been on this journey for almost 30 years and 25 years, and it’s taken all that time for our relationship to be what it is today. So I think that stubbornness is actually a superpower, although I know we often think of it as a negative. And I think my thirst for learning too, I didn’t know what I was doing when I opened this studio, I kind of learned on the job, but I love to learn, I have a hunger for information. I feel stagnant if I’m not learning. And I think that’s really important and it’s one of the reasons why I’m certified or trained in so many different skills. Because I would hit a roadblock with one of my clients or with kiddo and be like, I don’t know how to help them, I’ve got to learn a new tool. So I gotta learn a new tool so that I could support them. But I think those three are the main superpowers.

 

Richard Matthews  17:58  

Yeah, so the ability to listen is probably one of the most powerful ones. Just listening to those things. It’s such a difficult thing, to listen to someone and actually hear them. And so often we listen so that we can formulate responses. And it’s really difficult to train yourself to shut that off and learn to just listen to listen, I know, from personal experience that you’re very good at that.

 

Jennifer  18:34  

Well, I think it also goes hand in hand with learning, when you actually stop and listen, you learn so much. Things that you would never ordinarily notice or pick up on. You can only learn through active listening like you were talking about, so that is really huge learning that art of listening.

 

Richard Matthews  19:00  

Absolutely and the tenacity to keep going with projects allows you to go from I’m mentoring one child to we’re building a nonprofit organization that works with the whole of wellness and works with the community and conserves the community at large. That’s what tenacity allows you to do. And it’s one of the things that I talk about all the time is that, we vastly overestimate what we can accomplish in a year, we vastly underestimate what we can accomplish in 10. And so we very rarely are willing to give ourselves the 10 years it’s going to take to really make something worthwhile and beautiful.

 

Jennifer  19:42  

Right. And to me, this is like sowing into the future. Because frankly, our climate is not doing well, our ecological functions are not doing well. Society is not doing great, our health and healthcare are not doing great. So the idea is that this is sort of formulating a way forward, a model and a way forward.

 

Richard Matthews  20:13  

Yeah. And it has the potential to be the kind of thing that’s replicated all over the world. Especially if it’s starting to work in that phase.

 

Jennifer  20:19  

That’s sort of our long-term vision.

 

Richard Matthews  20:24  

Absolutely. So I want to talk about the flipside of your superpowers. So if your superpowers are that listening, and tenacity, and the desire to learn. The fatal flaw is something you’ve struggled with. Just like Superman has his kryptonite, or Wonder Woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad, you probably have something that you struggled with. For me, it’s a couple of things, I struggled with perfectionism forever, which means I never actually release things to the market, which means I was holding myself to no standard at all. I also struggled with self-care for a long time, which means I didn’t have boundaries for my clients, I didn’t have boundaries for my time. So I worked all the time, I got nothing done. And I stress myself out and had problems with those things. I learned to fix that. So I think more important than what the flaw is, is how have you worked to overcome it so you can continue to grow and continue to push forward with your long-term visions?

 

Jennifer  21:19  

I think there are two flaws. One is patience and one is self-care. I am definitely sort of a visionary type of person. Like, I can see how amazing things can be. I picture these big projects, like the one we’re working on right now. And I get a lot of people around me going, how are you going to do that? That’s so much, that’s so big. And I’m like, can you see it, it’s just gonna happen. I don’t know, sometimes I struggle with the patience of helping myself learn how to articulate it so that people can understand what the vision is. And then the patience to allow people their process and timing, to see how big and beautiful things can be right. And self-care, being a mom of four boys, having a husband, businesses, that’s always been a little tricky, but I figured out some hacks to make sure that I get my self-care in. One, I get up at 5 am every morning, while the house is quiet. So I can do some breathing and breathwork or journaling. I scheduled a free daily morning meditation that anyone can join, by the way, I’ll give you those links as well. So that I make sure that I’m meditating every day, and preparing for my meditation every day, I’m reading something positive, something uplifting, something spiritual, something insightful. So it’s helping to keep me balanced. I have very active boys, so I get to exercise with them a lot, and I teach yoga. So that part is good, and then I figured out some hacks for making sure that I get to eat regularly and get to eat healthy foods. So my husband helps me with some of my food. And then I have a meal service that helps me with the rest so that I can stay consistent. I can keep my energy high and I can bring all these things into fruition.

 

Richard Matthews  23:27  

I need to find some hacks for the food because I still find myself. Like even though I’ve been working on this for more than a year, forgetting to eat not because I don’t like food or because I have any negative relationships with food. It’s just that I’m so freaking busy that I’m like, Oh, it’s already twelve in the afternoon and I haven’t eaten breakfast or lunch.

 

Jennifer  23:49  

I know that was me. And then I’m like, why am I crashing and I still have four clients to go. So those are kind of non negotiable for me now, but I will tell you that I really love shameless plug the Daily Harvest. I’m not affiliated with them, by the way, so don’t get any bonus on this, but I love the daily Harvest Food delivery service. And that one really works for me but I have a list of services that I’ve also introduced to other clients too.

 

Richard Matthews  24:25  

They are useful for those of us who are busy and struggling with the self care aspects. And one of the things that I just wanted to point out is as a mom, I know that it’s more difficult I think for moms in self care than it is for dads and men. Just as a general rule and one of the reasons is like we ran a supplement company for a number of years. And the thing that always struck me is our women’s multivitamin, we have men’s women’s teens, kids prenatal, we had a whole line. The women’s multivitamin sold the worst but our best selling one was the prenatal vitamin. And so it just shows that women are pre wired to take care of everyone else. And as soon as they got a baby inside, then they’re going to take care of themselves.

 

Jennifer  25:13  

Right because you’re taking care of someone else.

 

Richard Matthews  25:16  

Yeah, taking care of someone else.

 

Jennifer  25:19  

It’s fascinating that way. And also, growing up, pretty codependent, that was something I really had to learn was that if I really wanted to do this work with the kids, if I really wanted to serve trauma populations, at risk populations, I also work in addiction recovery. For wanting to be able to do that stuff, my self care has to be non negotiable. So there are things that I’ll schedule in, like a doctor’s appointment that I can’t miss. And it’s just non negotiable, because without it, I cannot have the reserves, the energy, the attention span, the compassionate space, that I need to really be present with people.

 

Richard Matthews  26:02  

Yeah, absolutely. So it helps you stay at your highest and best. And I find that interesting because you’re in interpersonal space, like working with people one on one, or in smaller groups, stuff like that, where if you’re not there, it’s really obvious. And a lot of entrepreneurs struggle because it’s just on their computer. And so if they’re not showing up and being present, they may not see, or it’s hard to see. But the same thing happens for every one of us where if we don’t get our self care in line, we don’t show up all the way to the game.

 

Jennifer Kelly  26:37  

It’s true. And it’s interesting. I studied Kundalini Yoga, and in that space, there’s a phenomenon, not a phenomenon, they said it would be like the epidemic of the 21st century. It’s called the cold depression. It’s not the kind of depression where you’re sad, you can’t get out of bed, you can’t get up. It’s this sort of low grade depression, that causes almost numbness. And I see this in a lot of entrepreneurs, I actually do a couple corporate yoga classes a month. Where it’s like, yeah, they’re making money and business is going fine. But there’s an emptiness, there’s almost like a missing vibrancy, you know what I mean? And it’s kind of like, a loose of in a sense because it seems like everything’s fine. But there’s just sort of something missing. And I think that a lot of times, sitting on a computer all day, working in tech, or sending lots of emails and everything. Yes, it’s productive. Yes, you get a lot done. Yes, it is the wave of the future in business. And it’s also kind of alienating and isolating, you know, what I mean? And so I think we’re really missing that interpersonal connection, especially in this COVID space, where people have been sequestering or what have you, and most businesses have moved online. I think people are feeling the effects of it more and more. And so one of the ways to really breakthrough that is to create a mindfulness practice, and to really create a self-care practice.

 

Richard Matthews  28:23  

And I think one of the things that ties right into it is one of the things that you’re talking about with getting connected back with our ecology and with the world that we live in. And for lack of a better phrase to get the dirt between your toes. Because we live in such clean plastic wrapped spaces where it’s always air-conditioned, and it’s always nice and the temperature never variates from 72 degrees plus or minus a few because we can control everything in our environments nowadays, we do. And sometimes we’re not just connected anymore with this home we live on that we call Earth.

 

Jennifer Kelly  29:04  

Remember too, all these machines that we use, which are valuable and amazing, have an electromagnetic frequency that is fractionating to our body frequency, our body has a natural megahertz frequency that it likes to operate on. And all this technology fractures that. So the antidote to that is being in nature each day, like walking with your bare feet in the grass, rubbing your feet in the grass for two to five minutes a day to replenish the electromagnetic field of your body and to ground you and to feel more connected. And nature needs us too, nature will survive without us, actually. But if we want to survive on this planet, we have to start supporting nature. We have to start thinking about the earth and all the decisions we’re making. So I guess it’s wrong to say that nature needs us, we need nature. If we want to befriend nature, we can live a longer, more friendly period of time here on this planet, you know?

 

Richard Matthews  30:15  

Yeah, one of the things that I always really liked about that discussion of whether or not nature needs us, this is like, really deep for the show. So I don’t know if we’ll get too far into this. But the whole eternal duality between order and chaos, the divine feminine, the divine masculine, and nature is sort of that divine feminine, and humanity brings sort of that divine masculine order to the chaos. And that’s why we really appreciate green spaces that are well taken care of. Because it’s when those two things work out, when we actually work together with nature, we can create really beautiful spaces and help people and do a lot of what you’re talking about.

 

Jennifer Kelly  31:01  

Yeah, well, we feel so much better. And although the focal point of this project is at risk, and aging out foster youth, this space is really for everyone and anyone. And the vision that I have is that we can sit at a beautiful farm to table dinner, and one person might pay $200 for the dinner, because they can, and another person might be a scholarship to the dinner. And you may have a businessman, an artist, a homeless person, a foster youth, a politician, different colors, different ethnicities, different religious backgrounds, and that we can break bread together and start to really look at what we’re facing as a human race, and how together with everyone’s voice being heard, we might start to construct a way forward, that doesn’t leave some people out, that doesn’t put some people on a pedestal. But that really honors the fact that we are all humans, and that if our ecology falls, if we can’t grow food, if we’re all going mental and insane. I mean, money won’t buy your way out of it, education will buy your way out of it. We’re all in this together. So I think it’s really important that we just start working on a WE collective mentality, and start to shift some of the paradigms that aren’t working.

 

Richard Matthews  32:32  

It reminds me of my favorite word, which is a Greek word, fellowship. We talked about this on our last podcast episode for people who are listening. But fellowship is one of my favorite words. And it’s only because I took Greek in college, and learned a little bit of how they originally used that word, and what it was meant to describe. And it was used to describe the people who rode the oars on slave ships, or on merchant ships. And they’re all sitting together with three or four people on each oar, and every time they would row together and pull the oar, that action was called fellowship, because they were all working together towards a common goal, to move the ship forward. I always like that picture. And it sounds very similar to what you’re talking about. Because we’re all sort of in the same boat together. And we all sort of have to grow together towards that common goal. And so you’re trying to build that type of large-scale fellowship.

 

Jennifer Kelly  33:33  

100%. And I think, there’s really a call to action right now, for entrepreneurs, for business owners, for politicians to really start thinking a little more consciously, about what we’re doing and starting to think more longevity, rather than short term, quick-fix solutions, and we need to stack problems. We’re not going to solve homelessness by handing out meals, we’ve been handing out meals for a long time, it hasn’t changed homelessness, it’s gotten worse. We’re not going to solve social inequality, by doing the same thing we’ve been doing, we have to start to create new paradigms. And we need to do it together as stakeholders as a human race, wanting to survive and thrive on this planet together.

 

Richard Matthews  34:22  

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to shift gears and talk a little bit about your common enemy. Every superhero has their arch-nemesis, it’s the thing they’re always fighting against in their world. And so what I like to do is to put this in context of your clients, the people that come to you to get help to make their lives better and make healthier decisions and get back to where they want to be. It’s a mindset or it’s a flaw that you constantly have to sort of do battle against so that you can actually help them get the result they come to you for. So what do you think your common enemy is in this health and wellness world that you work in?

 

Jennifer Kelly  35:01  

Comfort.

 

Richard Matthews  35:03  

Comfort?

 

Jennifer Kelly  35:04  

No one likes to make a change when they’re comfortable. Change happens when things are uncomfortable when we’re under pressure. When people are comfortable, they’re like, no I’m feeling great, but it’s not so bad yet, they don’t really have a diagnosis, they would like to feel better, maybe lose five pounds, or would like to be more present and let go of some anxiety, but it’s not so bad yet, then they’ll kind of come and go through the motions, but not really take ownership of the changes that they need to make to achieve their goals. But the moment that it gets a little too uncomfortable, or things spin a little too much out of control, suddenly it changes, the desire to make lifestyle changes that can create lasting change. So to me, comfort is the biggest.

 

Richard Matthews  36:02  

I think the thing that’s most interesting about that, too, is that comfort is like if you made the decisions, that would be easier to make if it was uncomfortable before you got uncomfortable, it would be easier to work it out.

 

Jennifer Kelly  36:18  

You could avoid so much stress and pain and you know, worry, but I don’t know, for some reason, we’re just hardwired differently like we’re hardwired to just want to stay in a comfort zone much longer than we should. Yeah, so that’s one of the most challenging obstacles.

 

Richard Matthews  36:39  

Yeah, I was listening to a book the other day on businesses and making offers, and they’re like, there’s a reason why liposuction is $25,000. But a gym membership is $25 a month. And it’s because, in order to go to the gym, you have to do that, while you’re comfortable. You have to decide if I’m going to go and do things that are uncomfortable, or that I don’t like to make my life better before it’s a problem. And liposuction or other surgeries, like surgeries or whatever, those kinds of things that like, oh, it hurts, so I can just go get it taken care of. And cut their prices.

 

Jennifer Kelly  37:31  

I was just gonna say that the challenge with that mentality is that we’re applying that in all areas of our life, like with our environment, for example. Like, we’re just waiting for some magic bullet to come and fix the air and fix the rain issue here in Southern California and the fire issue and the flooding issues. And there is no magic bullet, we have to change. And so how uncomfortable does it have to get before we realize like, you know?

 

Richard Matthews  38:00  

We need to do something different.

 

Jennifer Kelly  38:03  

Yeah, we need to do something different. Because coal doesn’t last forever. Oil doesn’t last forever, the ice caps, it’s gonna be hard to recoup them. You know what I mean? Like? I don’t know, we’ll see. But I will say the younger generation is much more aware and much more concerned about it.

 

Richard Matthews  38:28  

Yeah, it’s been really interesting studying Generation Z, and looking at where they’re falling on the political spectrum, and where they’re falling on a lot of social issues. They tend to be social justice conservatives, which is very different from any of the generations before them. So anyway, I personally think our kids are gonna change the world, hopefully, for the better. I don’t know how it’s gonna happen, or what it’s gonna look like, but I look forward to seeing my son, and your kids get to a point where they’re running the world.

 

Jennifer Kelly  39:12  

I know. But I think that also starts with the input we’re giving them right now, and that input is really important. Some families are doing that. But there are a lot of kids with no access to good information or alternatives or access to being inspired to believe that life can be different than it is or that life can expand beyond what they thought it could be.

 

Richard Matthews  39:50  

Yeah. And learning things, I know one of the things that you’ve talked to me about is things like having a battle ready immune system and knowing that, that takes effort. And so less worried about things like global pandemics than people who are unhealthy. And we’ve seen in this pandemic that the people who are not healthy, who don’t have battle ready immune systems are the ones that are affected the most harshly by these diseases. It’s learning how to teach more people how to do that.

 

Jennifer Kelly  40:31  

And the constant debate about mask, no mask, vaccines, no vaccines, and all these politicized narratives, we’re missing a huge narrative about how important it is to take ownership of your body and your health, how important it is, what you eat, how important it is, your mental state, how important it is that you’re getting enough sleep, how important it is that you’re spending time in nature because all of those things create a battle ready immune system, you create a battle ready immune system, I’m not saying you’re never going to get sick, but your body will be able to handle what comes your way. And it takes a lot of the fear out and the worry, and we make better decisions when we’re not operating in fear.

 

Richard Matthews  41:19  

And that would be another better discussion to be having I think, not enough people are having that discussion, we’re too busy arguing about whether or not we should wear a mask or whether or not we should get the job instead of why aren’t we teaching everyone how to be healthy.

 

Jennifer Kelly  41:29  

100% and the truth about it is that over time if we don’t have that discussion, if people don’t learn how to eat for health and how to live for health, the job will become ineffective, I’m not for or against vaccines, I’m very pro-choice. Because I believe that we’re not cookie cutters. In health especially, there’s no blanket answer. There’s no blanket diet for anyone. There’s no blanket, health care that works for all people, we have all different kinds of things going on in our bodies, and what might be right for one person is not necessarily right for another. But something that is universal, is the way that we feed ourselves makes a big difference in how we look, how we feel, and how our immune system protects us against anything going on around us. So that’s the conversation I’d like to see happening a lot more. It would be cool to do a podcast just on that.

 

Richard Matthews  42:42  

That’s where you’re going with your expansion INlighten Community into this nonprofit farm organization, you’re helping to build that conversation, which is cool, which I think is a great tie-in to the next question I have. So if your common enemy is what you fight against. You said comfort, your driving force is what you fight for. So just like Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information or Batman fights for Gotham, or, Spider Man fights for New York, what is it that you fight for with INlighten Community and now with your nonprofit?

 

Jennifer Kelly  43:18  

I think I would say for people to have access to education, and access to what’s possible, even in the healing and spiritual world. You’ll sometimes walk into a yoga space and they say Yoga is all you need. Or a nutritionist will say nutrition is all you need, or the hypnotherapist says hypnotherapy is all you need, actually, I don’t believe that’s true. I believe that we need access to information, we need to learn to understand what works for us, we need to learn to understand our recipe for success and health, and well-being. And that happens by being exposed to many different things. And that was a blessing for me, being exposed to lots of different modalities being open to learning about new things, and then finding the secret sauce that works for me. And so, my driver is to help people find their secret recipe, their secret sauce that really works for them.

 

Richard Matthews  44:20  

I think my favorite part about just that mentality that you have is it’s not prescriptive, it’s accessible. What I mean is you’re not saying hey, this is what you should be doing and what the community should be doing. You’re saying, let’s give the community access, give people access to the information and let them choose to be their best selves or not. But at least it’s not their lack of access or lack of education that’s ending up with them making poor decisions if they’re making poor decisions after they know.

 

Jennifer Kelly  44:52  

Correct.

 

Richard Matthews  44:53  

So those things like you and I both know that when people know better, they tend to do better. I think that the more knowing we can get, the more knowledge we get out for people, the better that we’re all going to do.

 

Jennifer Kelly  45:10  

Exactly, 100%. 

 

Richard Matthews  45:15  

That’s a good driving force and a good mission to have. So I want to talk about some practical things. I call this the hero’s tool belt. And just like every superhero has their fancy gadgets, like batarangs, or web slinger, or a magical hammer, they can spin around and fly with, you have some tools in your business that helps you do what you do. That makes your job easier. And I want to know what your top one or two tools that you couldn’t live without are could be anything, could be your calendar could be something you use for marketing could be something you use for product delivery, could be something you use for meditation, or something like that, something that helps you get your job done every day, practical tool.

 

Jennifer Kelly  46:00  

I love the superhero analogy, because when my kids were little, and when I taught lots of kids yoga camps and kids yoga and stuff. Star Wars were so big. And I used to tell them, meditation is like your Jedi Mind control. Meditation is one key that I cannot live without. But in terms of technical things, my Google Calendar, I also could not live without. It’s very easy for me to get caught up in serving people and forget what the heck I have to do next. So Google Calendar is a staple. My team uses Asana and it really is helping us improve our workflow and improve communication and communication is so important and valuable for a myriad of reasons. I say those are really key. I hate to say it, but this crazy little iPhone, it keeps me connected throughout the day, it’s a lifeline. I don’t know what I would do about it. But overall, I fought against technology for a long time, I’m not a big fan of it. I really like one on one and personal interaction. But I had to really let go of that and realize that if I want to grow this big dream, if I want to grow the community, I have to really embrace it. And I guess the Zoom, we can’t live without Zoom these days. Zoom is helping us bring worlds together

 

Richard Matthews  47:38  

That is true, Zoom, Zencastr, and other services that are popping up. But I want to talk a little bit about the meditation you mentioned. And the reason is because I think you might have some fascinating thoughts on this. There’s a bunch of stuff that’s been getting declassified for the last 40, 50 years, from our military, and CIA. And one of the things that I found really fascinating is one of the recently released CIA documents was talking a lot about meditation, and then alternate ways to accomplish some of the same things that you can accomplish in meditation. And it’s the beginning of becoming a buzz phrase in the health community is something that the CIA has been studying about humans for, like 50 years. And it’s biofeedback. And biofeedback is this whole idea that you can wire up your brain, essentially, like to monitors, and then help the conscious part of your brain, see the unconscious work that it’s doing things like, when your body’s healing an injury if you can actually watch the temperature change in that area of your body, you can build pathways to the same subconscious areas, which is apparently I didn’t know this, but in reading all the CIA studies, it’s the same kind of thing you can accomplish with meditation. So I’m curious if you’ve heard about any of that, or what you sort of think about some biofeedback and meditation and those kinds of health hacks essentially.

 

Jennifer Kelly  49:17  

Well, there are many different kinds of meditation. And we also study this, by the way, in hypnotherapy. But there are many different types of meditation, sorry. What most people think of when they think of meditation is just sitting quietly, or just sitting and chanting a word over and over and over. And those are really powerful meditations for starting to witness where your mind is starting to witness where your thoughts go, starting to witness sensations in your body, all that kind of stuff, also, meditating on a word over and over and over. It can kind of clear your mind, it can bring a calming and ascend very good for anxiety and things like that. But then there’s Yoga Nidra, which is a form of guided meditation that takes you through a body scan, and it reattaches your consciousness to every part of your body. Because we get so disconnected from our bodies, we’re like, go go go this and that, you have a bruise. And you don’t even know where you got the bruise, you don’t remember hitting anything, you don’t remember what happened. So Yoga Nidra, and the body scan, it goes back and reconnects you to all the different parts of your body. And then there’s a practice called opposites. And the opposite is holding sensations or feeling some emotion. And then holding the opposite at the same time, which opens up our consciousness, it expands us, but it also gives us the emotional stability to hold space for duality, to hold space for the yin yang brain and the way our emotions can change on a dime sometimes. And then, of course, there are certain meditations where you can just go to a body area or body part and you can really work on it for healing purposes. And then Reiki also works in alignment with that as well. So there are so many different forms of meditation. There are active meditations, there are silent and still meditations. So it’s a misnomer, people will say, I can’t meditate, I can’t sit still, I say, okay, well then do a walking meditation. And I give them a walking meditation. And they’re like, that’s a game changer, I could do that. But what it does, what meditation does is it repairs the frontal lobe, which gives us more control of our emotions, impulse control. And it does awaken the consciousness and it allows us to start to see the underpinnings of the underlying beliefs, or thoughts, or agreements we’ve made about the way life should be or has to be. It brings those and bubbles them to the surface so that we can now have a choice about the way we want life to be. So it’s a gateway and a door opener. It’s a way to process feelings and emotions. It’s really an invaluable tool.

 

Richard Matthews  52:45  

I think the ironic part about what you just said is the first thing that they have to do is get out of their head what they’ve already decided meditation is so that they can actually experience it for real and my understanding, the more I learned about it is meditation, biofeedback hypnotherapy, a lot of those things are about learning to connect your conscious self with your subconscious self. And building those pathways so you can access more of what you’re capable of.

 

Jennifer Kelly  53:18  

Yeah, exactly. Also, I would say that’s a cornerstone.

 

Richard Matthews  53:27  

That’s a great tool, we get a little deep into that one, too, which is not a problem.

 

Richard Matthews  53:32  

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Richard Matthews  55:03  

My next question for you is about your own personal heroes. Just like every hero has their mentor, like Frodo had Gandalf or Luke had Obi Wan Kenobi or Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad or even Spider Man had his Uncle Ben, I want to know who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors? Were they peers who maybe a couple years ahead of you, speakers or authors? And how important are they to what you’ve accomplished so far?

 

Jennifer Kelly  55:33  

Wow, I think I’ve had so many, I’ve been really fortunate. Mother Teresa has always been a hero of mine. I don’t know her personally, but just the work of the life of service that’s always been really powerful for me. But in terms of real life, mentors, and teachers, my mother has been a big one. My mom’s been in sobriety for 30 something years. And that whole process of her moving into sobriety and me starting to learn and understand about codependency and all that has been a huge transformative experience. I also had an ex fiance whose mother was a phenomenal mentor to me. And she really opened up my eyes to this alternative world of healing and nutrition and all that. And then, of course, when I was birthing, my midwives, and my first yoga teacher, they really changed the trajectory of my life, because they planted seeds that then grew over time as I was raising my son. And I would say that all of my kiddos in different ways have been huge mentors for me, they’ve taught me not only about myself, but about the nature of trauma, and the nature of the human spirit. And have really inspired me to always want to grow and be better.

 

Richard Matthews  57:14  

Yeah, it’s always surprised me how much my kids have an impact on me. Because you think about having kids that your job is to help raise and grow that we don’t realize that they’re doing it to you the whole time. And hopefully, it’s making me a better person.

 

Jennifer Kelly  57:33  

I know, exactly.

 

Richard Matthews  57:36  

It’s a powerful thing. Yeah. I don’t know why it is, but my kids are the only people in the world that can make me mad. And they are also a full stretch of all the emotions I never knew I could feel, they made me feel all of them. To our discussion earlier, and actually getting in touch with things that bring it all back alive, kids do that to you.

 

Jennifer Kelly  58:08  

Oh, they do. I mean, they know how to push your buttons like nobody’s business, but that’s part of their job. They’re here to elevate us and that’s why I keep saying the kids are the future, we need to elevate and expand so they can.

 

Richard Matthews  58:28  

Yeah, one of the things I tell people, my goal in life is essentially to raise my kids to be better than I was. And the reason is that my kids will always be a message that I send to someplace I’ll never see. And that’s really what children are, we’re raising the next generation. And the best way I know of to impact the world is to raise up a better generation. Because that’s how we change the world. 

 

Jennifer Kelly  59:09  

Yes, and it’s really important because our children really need strong guidance right now with the climate of the world and the climate of social media, and all that’s going on.

 

Richard Matthews  59:20  

Absolutely. Which sort of brings me to my last point, which is about your guiding principles, and how you live your life. One of the things that make heroes heroic is that they live by a code, right for instance, Batman never kills his enemies, he only ever puts them in Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, I want to talk about the top one, maybe two principles that you live your life by. Maybe something that you wish you knew when you had first started out on your own hero’s journey

 

Jennifer Kelly  59:50  

We can’t do it alone. We need each other more than we ever want to admit or realize. I think we are better together, and a lot of us are like, I’m just gonna make this happen, and I’m gonna do it on my own. And you quickly realize that there are a lot of limits and that. So yeah, we need each other, we don’t do things on our own. And then the other guiding principle is really being a stakeholder in my own life. And in all the people that I serve, I’m not going to ever ask somebody to do something I’m not willing to do myself. I practice what I teach. And I believe that people learn by example. So I have a stakeholder mentality that I go down, and I feed the homeless, I go down, and I cook for people, I do all the things that I think we should all be doing because it’s really easy to tell people what to do. But action speaks much louder than words. And so if I had to say, my two main principles are that and just really, always checking in with my heart and staying in integrity and staying humble, because there’s enough ego going around. And really, the heart space is the healer, not ego and fear.

 

Richard Matthews  1:01:32  

I really like the idea of being a stakeholder, it’s a very nice way to put it for those of us who think in that sort of business owner mentality, that you want to be a stakeholder in every area of your life, whether it’s raising your kids or your health or working with your clients. Taking a stakeholder relationship means that their results matter to you. Because that’s what a stakeholder is, we care about the profitability of that company. The results that they’re getting are getting better or worse. And you want to help them get better, and steer away from the worst stuff. So taking that stakeholder relationship is just sort of making that forefront thinking that hey, I don’t just care about you, but I care about the results that you get in your life.

 

Jennifer Kelly  1:02:24  

Yes, we all win in that mentality. And that’s the idea when we step into a stakeholder position, we step into WE, we have to do this together, we’ll win together, I’ll uplift you, you’ll uplift me, we all win. I think that’s the only way to do things.

 

Richard Matthews  1:02:49  

It’s very poetic, it is beautiful. That’s where we need to get to, I think, and with more and more people like you who are out there pushing their vision forward, I think we’ll get closer and closer to that every day. Which is, that’s sort of the goal. So it’s basically a wrap on our interview. And I do appreciate you coming on and sharing your story with us today, Jennifer. But there’s one final thing I do with all my guests before we end the interview. And that’s basically this. It’s a challenge I call the hero’s challenge. And it’s just for me to get access to stories I might not otherwise find because not everyone is willing to do podcasts or trying to do podcasts. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or your network that you think has a cool story, cool entrepreneurial story, who are they? First names are fine, and why do you think they should come to share their story with our audience? First person that comes to mind for you.

 

Jennifer Kelly  1:03:48  

I have two Mar and Henry. Mar is quite amazing, she’s the one that owns Dough Girl Pizza and she’s working with the at-risk youth in Pacoima. And Henry is a tech entrepreneur who has been walking this journey of the farm with me, he’s a co-founder. He’s been guiding me through this whole process. And he is a beautiful mix of business, and really striving to open his heart and really see the world through that lens. So I think they both would be great.

 

Richard Matthews  1:04:26  

Awesome. Well, we’ll reach out later and see if we can get introductions to them, maybe we get invite them on to the show. But in comic books, there is always the crowd of people at the end who are cheering and clapping for the acts of heroism, Our analogous to that on this show, is where can people find you if they want to learn about the programs you have with INlighten Community or maybe be a part of your nonprofit? Where can they find you? Where can they light up the bat signal so to speak and say, Hey, Jennifer, I’d like to be part of your world.

 

Jennifer Kelly  1:04:58  

Great So INlighten Community, it’s INlightenCommunity.com is where all our health and wellness services are. And then the nonprofit farmwork is at ForLandAndPeople.org. And you can listen to our town hall meeting that we did on this project and also access the GoFundMe link from there.

 

Richard Matthews  1:05:25  

Awesome. We’ll make sure we put the links to that For Land & People that’s FOT and then LAND and then AND spelled out and PEOPLE.

 

Jennifer Kelly  1:05:35  

Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews  1:05:36  

So we’ll make sure we have the link for people who are listening. So it’s For Land & People all spelled out or INlighten Community. That’s INlighten Community and again, Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story today. Do you have any final words of wisdom for my audience before I hit this stop record button?

 

Jennifer Kelly  1:05:55  

I just want to thank you Richard for having me on and for everybody listening, be good to yourself and go walk in the grass.

 

Richard Matthews  1:06:05  

I like it, I think that’s what I need to do after this episode. Go walk in the grass with the girls.

 

Jennifer Kelly  1:06:11  

Barefoot by the way.

 

Richard Matthews  1:06:14  

Yeah, that’s the only way to do it. Thank you, Jennifer.