Starting from Nothing – The Foundation Podcast

Guest Name Interview – Mary Shenouda

Introduction: Welcome to Starting from Nothing – The Foundation Podcast, the place where incredible entrepreneur show you how they built their businesses entirely from scratch before they knew what the heck they were doing.

Dane: How do you become one of the top paleo chefs in the world cooking for some of the world’s top celebrities, famous authors, famous golfers, famous musicians, and famous movie stars? And how do you actually make the leap from an employee for eight or nine years into finally doing your own thing in the world? Well, join as Winny and I explore the conversation with the paleo chef known as Mary.

Welcome everyone to another edition of Starting from Nothing, a place where we slow down the conversation of what it’s like to see people start stuff when they don’t have stuff.

What we love about talking about this kind of thing is that we don’t see it talked about in many places. We see established entrepreneurs talking about how they’re running their enterprises. But very often do we hear about the early stages of startup, the emotional turmoils of early stage of startups and the magical process of getting that first sale.

I have a very, very unique guest on the show with us today and I was lucky enough to meet her through a friend of a friend and I had no idea who I was sitting across from the table from at that point. As she spoke and as I learned more about her, I thought she has to be on this podcast.

I’d like to introduce Mary to the show. Hey Mary.

Mary: Hi.

Dane: I got a nice little bio here I want to read about you so people know more about you before we get in. It starts like this. While most are still in college, Mary was a top performing sales executive alongside peers 15 years her senior performing above her objectives effortlessly. Within two years, she made a pivot and became a public relations agent for a top Hollywood photographer where she worked closely with A-list celebrities and managed high-profile events.

It was during this time her visionary and early use of social media contributed to a 700% increase in revenue for her client – that’s awesome. Over the last decade, Mary has developed and executed successful strategic sales and marketing plans and consistently closed business with Fortune 500 companies. Always crushing goals that were thought to be unattainable, Mary is consistently able to identify, win, retain, expand business and individuals. Who wrote this? Did you write this?

Mary: No, PR got all that.

Dane: This is good. It keeps going.

Because of her impressive record and precise execution, her sniper-like talents have her regularly handpicked by executive board members and CEOs to coach teams and one-on-one at every level within organizations. There’s no surprise that she has chosen to forge out on her own and become an all encompassing advocate and coach for you.

Dang! What’s like an example Fortune 500 company that you worked with and how did you help them?

Mary: Almost any major brand or consumer or B2B. If you’re new in the company it’s been a client of some sort through all the companies I’ve worked before. Primarily, Lyris is a company I worked at and it was online marketing, and it was email, content management, social media. Social media only became a thing when I started working there, and they didn’t really believe in social media at the time or think it was going anywhere. I decided to sell a service package for a lot of money and then like we need to offer social media now and built up that team.

Then I worked at a company called Gigya which was games occasion in social media. Gigya dominates that market. Earliest they did, I haven’t been in Corporate America in two years now. This is Mina.

Dane: Mina, welcome to the show. The thing that’s not in the bio is Mina. Can you give an introduction for Mina, the cat?

Mary: Mina is my client’s cat. I’m actually at my client’s house right now. Mina is a aggressively affectionate creature. I’m actually allergic to cats …

Dane: Are you?

Mary: … so this will be fun. Yeah.

Dane: Well, thank you for doing this interview at your client’s house.

Mary: I’m thanking him for letting me have the space in between our sessions. Look at this, this is dope. This is The Grateful Dead in San Francisco in 1967.

Dane: That’s pretty cool.

Mary: Makes me miss home a little bit.

Dane: Were you a Grateful Dead fan?

Mary: I wouldn’t say I was a fan like listening hardcore, but I just was more nostalgic for the stupid San Francisco. I just know a lot of really dope things come out of this city or have been in the city.

Dane: Yeah. What I know about Grateful Dead is they have a cult-like following.

Mary: And they have a final tour in Chicago, I think.

Dane: You're at a client’s house, what are you doing for this particular client?

Mary: He’s been a client of mine for a year and a half. He’s a professional golfer. In the beginning it was private cheffing. I only cook for clients for a certain period of time and then I tell him our time’s come to an end. And so it’s transitioning more into a coaching capacity now.

Dane: Nowhere in your bio did I ever read anything about cooking. What does that mean?

Mary: I’m known as Mary the Paleo Chef. Did you check out paleochef.com?

Dane: I did, but people listening have not.

Mary: You did at the table, or I think you did that right when you met me.

Dane: Yeah. Yeah.

Mary: I operate as Mary the Paleo chef. I run paleochef.com. Founder of Eat Play Crush, which is my motto; eat clean, play often, crush life. I left Corporate America to be a private chef for a few notable people in Silicon Valley. I would still get asked to do a lot of coaching type things for folks, but I won’t go into leveling up or facing demons or anything emotional until I can fix your diet and get you into a healthy routine.

I subscribe, obviously, as the paleo chef to a paleo type diet. I refer to it as paleo because that’s a different template for each body. You’ll notice profound – not just physical changes but emotional and psychological changes when you start to eat clean and feed yourself the way you should be fed. When you incorporate meditation and play into that, now you're ready to go into the coaching. I don’t leave anything separate from each other.

Dane: Wow! It sounds like painstakingly integrative comprehensive approach.

Mary: It’s fun.

Dane: A fun-staking integrative comprehensive approach.

There’s a number of routes we could go on this interview. We can talk about what is that healthy route you go down, but I want to get into how you started. You mentioned how you left Corporate America to become a chef for notable people in Silicon Valley. I want to slow down that moment in time and – How long were you thinking about doing this before you made the decision to leave?

Mary: Three months, maybe? Really sick my whole life, it is coming back. By sick I’ve had migraines since 2nd Grade. I was told I have cancer twice, Lupus, really bad hives. I would be having a physical anxious reaction even though my mind would tell me everything’s okay. Doctors were taking blood and giving me all these medications that were only really making me a lot sicker.

I decided to do my own detective work. Stumbled upon Ted Talk by Dr. Terry Wahls around the mitochondria which had a light bulb go off because I had done a report on mitochondria in high school which everyone seems to like the fact that I rewrote the words to Beastie Boys song about the mitochondrial function which I got an A on. It made sense because I had that background in that.

I back door into paleo after sending out my own lab work to find out that I’m a Coeliac which means I cannot eat gluten and I’m also intolerant to Casein which is a protein found in dairy as well as soy.

I was stoked to find this out because now I had answers as to what was making me sick essentially my whole life, and changed the way that I ate. Everything that bothered me within a few months went away. Folks were starting to notice differences in my health and asking me questions.

A particular person in San Francisco had asked me to come to their house and talk to them about paleo and what I was doing differently and asked me if I would – “I don’t have time to cook for myself, will you just cook for me?” And my response is I don't cook for people. I’m an Account Executive in a tech company.

He wrote me a check as to how much he would pay for this and I was like this is [comparable 00:08:53] and this is a lot of fun, and this integrates everything I’ve done to date with my life.

I tried to do both for a couple months. I was commuting up and down the 101 and my body went into adrenal fatigue and shut down on me. I pulled over on 101. My pants were just soaked in sweat because I was super stressed out. I knew I had to make a choice. So I just went home that night and chose paleo chef and bought personalpaleochef.com and then went in the next day and resigned and said I would figure it out. Here I am a couple years later.

Dane: Let me just see if I tracked all that correctly.

You thought about it for about three months before you made the decision. You’ve been told that you had things like Lupus, and cancer, and a bunch of other confusing words. And then you found out that you had some severe allergies, one being Casein and also mitochondria.

Mary: No, mitochondria is part of our cells. It’s the cell energy that we all have. We have tons of mitochondria throughout our system. The way I was eating was not helping facilitate healthy mitochondrial function. When I was doing research on what actually causes a migraine, what causes behind that, what could actually be connected to, that’s when I found that Ted Talk by Dr. Terry Wahls where she called the Ted Talk – I recommend anybody to watch it—called Minding your mitochondria.

What she did by following a particular way of eating – I’m not going to call it diet or paleo – she reversed her MS. She was in a wheelchair, decided to mind her mitochondria, moved particular things from her diet, and went from wheelchair to walking, talking, riding a bike, which is pretty profound. I’d done hospice work when I was 16 and a few of my patients at the time had MS, so I know what it looks like when it’s bad. To be able to think that she went from there to there was amazing.

That was the rabbit hole that got me into researching about other types of food, and that’s when I found the word paleo which was a lot easier to say. I just follow a paleo protocol instead of saying all the things I prefer not to eat and going into why. That then led me into that opportunity to be a private chef, but not just a private chef. I actually tell my clients what to eat, they don’t necessarily have a choice in the matter if they want to work with me, and then being able to also coach with them. It’s that typical story of, “Everything happens for a reason. It all makes sense now.”

Dane: There’s a number of things that I’m tracking in this story that I’m really interested in. It seems like I had a gateway drug of listening to some audio from some internet marketer. I think his name was Willy Crawford back when I was 21. I was like oh my gos! And then that guy mentioned a name and a name and I just got further down the rabbit hole. Your window into this gear gateway drug was this from the wheelchair to walking, minding your mitochondria. That’s what really cracked you open.

Mary: Yeah. It made sense and it wasn’t – She was a doctor and she was talking about it from a scientific perspective, and she wasn’t pushing any particular agenda, and she’s very clear to understand. What she does is profound. That made sense to me. When people want to explore paleo, I actually tell them to go watch that video first before they go and read any into the paleo books or read about the paleo lifestyle.

Dane: Then the next thing that I tracked, which I loved hearing, was that you started living this way yourself and you radiated more. I don’t know if that actually feels accurate to say radiated more, but you became –

Mary: I radiate quite a bit.

Dane: Yeah. You radiate quite a bit. You just amplified the radiation of – not radiation, but radiating, and people started taking notice.

Mary: It removed the fog. I’m relentlessly optimistic and will push through pain. Former athlete, you just push through pain. I would be at work with a migraine still cracking jokes in there until I’d be vomiting because I just wanted to be there. They notice that I didn’t have those hurdles to deal with anymore.

I remember the first day I woke up without a headache and I was very confused because it’s like, “Oh, this is what clarity feels like. I’m going to take over the world,” because I was pushing through these challenges before and now those blocks no longer exist.

Dane: Do you find that – were you ignoring pain? Did you find that that handicapped your emotional awareness at all?

Mary: You don’t know why you're in pain and you're constantly in pain. I don’t want to say when you – for me, doctors couldn't tell me what was wrong, I couldn’t rationalize it, so I just told myself a story that I was in pain because it meant that somebody else somewhere in the world was suffering less. That’s the way that I dealt with it.

I wasn’t ignoring it. I was just pushing through it until I couldn’t push through it anymore because you missed out on a lot of things when you're sick, and you're in a lot of pain. So my choices were don’t go to these birthday parties, don’t go to work, don’t go to the park, I’m going to miss out my whole life. So I'm going to go even though I'm in pain and I'm going to just push through it until my body tells me it can’t anymore.

Dane: What was your experience? Before I even ask that, just setting context for this interview and how we’re tracking this. I just want to get a proper origin for where you came from because I think it paints a really clear picture for how you got to where you are now. I really want to just be here for another second. While we’re here, I would love to hear –

Mary: You would love to hear?

Dane: I would love to hear as your earplugs get pulled out and ripped out of your ears by Mina, the cat. Every once in a while Mina’s head turns towards the camera and I see her fangs. She has permanent fangs showing. When you're in that phase, what feel –what feelings do you remember moving through day-to-day life? Were you hopeless, helpless, or was it just permanent fog?

Mary: No, you just – physically, you have a headache. I had migraines multiple times a week, a headache every day, joint pain. That whole – when people talk

about crashing at 2 PM after lunch and not being able to keep their head up, that was a constant. Anxiousness.

Dane: What happens for you now at 2 PM?

Mary: I feel the same way I feel when I wake up and when I go to bed. Just pretty clear, energized, focused. I can take a nap if I want. Sometimes I’ll go to the beach if it’s 80 degrees and take a nap.

Dane: So you're saying anxiousness?

Mary: Yeah, anxiousness and it was – you just push through it. I default to gratitude so it’s really hard to feel miserable. Sometimes physically it was miserable and I have to go to the hospital a lot for morphine drips and Phenergan and a whole bunch of other stuff they put in me just to put me out.

Dane: Is it really possible – as I interrupt you here. It’s really possible that switching your diet shifted this?

Mary: Is it or it is.

Dane: It’s blowing my mind. Literally all you did was switch your diet.

Mary: Yup.

Dane: And then you started radiating even more because the fog, like you said, was removed. Then people started noticing. The people that noticed, could you see that they had fog and they wanted it removed too?

Mary: There were a couple people – One of them had fibromyalgia and wanted to deal better with that, and now no longer takes medication just by switching his diet. Someone else wanted to deal just with losing a few pounds because they were going to be in the public eye more often, they lost 15 pounds within a couple months.

You also have to keep in mind, because I don’t want this to seem like something super magical. It depends on how you're eating now. If you're eating a ton of junk food every single day, you're eating a ton of gluten, a ton of processed foods, you’re going to see profound change pretty quickly.

And then there’s some people who eat pretty healthy, are very active, and svelte, and they don’t think that they’re going to see much of a change. When they go down that route of, again, not just the food but also the meditation, the grounding, the mindset, will just notice things or decisions become clearer and just incremental change. When you're already on top of your game like that and incremental change can be profound.

Dane: As you mentioned, you're outperforming people 15 years beyond your senior while you're still in all this pain. It just occurred to me that this is what’s been happening. How in the world – how did you even exist? Oh my gosh!

Mary: I just did.

Dane: You just did. You didn't’ know any different until now.

Mary: Yeah.

Dane: You had this first client. They actually are like, “No, here’s a check.”

Mary: Yeah.

Dane: That’s never even happened for me. Someone’s like, “No, you’re …” they’ll be like, “No, man, I’ll give you a check.” But no one’s actually written me a check and handed it to me.

Mary: I’m pretty stubborn and I think by default I attract very stubborn people as well. When I went to go resign from my job, my boss told me to go back to my desk. Just sort of that aggressiveness. He’s like, “No, you can go back to your desk.” I’m like, “No, I’m going to resign.” I just think it was that kind of personality. It’s like “No, I want you to work for me.”

Dane: Tell me the process of resigning. I want to hear about the entire day. How you woke up, what you felt, how long you thought about it, if you were rehearsing what you were saying.

Mary: I did it in person. I was planning on sending an email because I didn’t know if my boss was going to be in but he was going to be in so I decided to talk to him in person. Luckily I had a good relationship with my immediate boss. I’ve been working for him for several years over the course of maybe ten at the time, and I just gone in different companies with him. I made the decision on the drive home because my body was like screw you Mary, you got to pick one or the other. Bought personalpaleochef.com through a simple WordPress site, started a Yelp page. I’m like okay, this is my new –

Dane: This is after you got the check, right?

Mary: Yes. I’ve been trying to do both for a few months. I was like, “I can do both. This is just awesome extra income.” When my body shut down, I made the choice.

For me, the active building that site and starting a Yelp was me giving myself an offer letter for my new position. I have a new position in life, I’m going to go resign from my old position. I went in and had a chat with my boss who said no. “I'm letting you know it’s time. I'm going to go ahead and pursue paleo full-time.” Everyone knew. It wasn’t like some news. They knew I was doing something else and they knew that I was following the paleo diet.

He said, “You can go back to your desk.” I’m like, “No, this is for real. This is going to happen.” I think I'm really lucky with the mentors that I’ve had. His response was, “I knew this would happen one day. You’ve always had an

entrepreneurial heart. This is what you're meant to do. Support you. Let me know what we can do to help.” I was lucky where he said, “Go ahead and we’ll promote full time for the next two weeks. Off load as much as your pipeline to me and I’ll handle that transition for you.”

I had a couple of weeks too to also just very easily hand that over to my boss. Because usually in sales when you resign, they cut you off that day, shut down your sales force, walk you out. But I had built that sort of relationship.

Dane: This was at the company Gigya?

Mary: This was at Human Concepts which was later acquired by SAVA Human Capital Management Company. Awful way to put it but that is what they do.

Dane: Zooming back even further, how did you even find yourself in sales before you even found this new paleo thing?

Mary: I worked for a company called VeriSign way back in the day. I had gotten an interview through a recruiter at the company VeriSign. They told me it was a customer service position. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t care. I was a teenager, I moved out when I was 17.

Dane: How did you find VeriSign?

Mary: It was through a recruiter. The recruiter asked me to go in for–

Dane: How did you find the recruiter?

Mary: I went in and talked to recruiters. I think it was AppleOne at the time.

Dane: Were you a high school student?

Mary: Yeah. Well, no. I graduated at 17 and I moved out at 17. I was living on my own. I had my Hallmark Money, and I worked at a company called MB which was Homeowners Association Management Company managing properties. I wanted to do something that made more than $15 an hour.

Found out people get jobs through recruiters, contacted a recruiter. She got me this interview. I had no idea what I was actually interviewing for. I just thought it was customer service. I’m like cool. I didn’t realize that VeriSign was a really great company. I was just some teenager just out and about.

I went in for three interviews, role playing, typical interview process. They had mentioned that I was 18 and I didn’t correct them because I wasn’t. I’m like, “Oh, whatever.” I started doing sales there for their payment systems. So they had what is now PayPal Pro and PayPal Lite I think is what it ended up being labeled as when eBay acquired them.

Within a month and a half, I got a whole bunch of pings. I was still contract basis so I don’t get corporate emails. I was getting all these pings telling me

“Good job rookie. You’re crushing it rookie.” All these really awesome things. I don’t know what you guys are talking about. Can you forward me the corporate emails? It had everybody’s stats that was on the regular sales team, and there was me and a few other contractors who were not receiving these emails.

It said so and so 30%, so and so 40%, so and so 25%, Mary Shenouda/contractor – so they can identify who I am – 156% of quota. I was like “That’s cool. What does that mean?” I literally didn’t understand what was happening. That means you’re crushing it. You’re closing deals and you're doing a really good job.

Then they had a corporate meeting around the numbers and they thought it was odd that I was so much higher with all the regular being not nowhere near 100%. I remember the VP came in and said, “Where’s this contractor?” I raised my hand and he said, “She’s taking one of your guy’s jobs.” I was like, “Don’t say that. I still have to make friends.”

That’s when I started to learn what sales meant when I was given an actual offer letter. I could understand how much sales reps make, what the percentage of commission is, what that looks like. Then I realized that I was actually in a sales role and then when I took a step back and looked around, I’m like everybody here is college grad, 15 years my senior. I’m running around with braces and bringing in donuts and pizza for everybody. That was my first sales job. It was fun.

Dane: What was your sales approach that was getting you 156% while others were getting 40%?

Mary: I couldn’t tell you. I don’t – I didn’t use a script or anything like that. I just have conversations with people.

Dane: Was it on the phone or via email?

Mary: On the phone.

Dane: People would call in to VeriSign and they would be wanting to get their sites certified?

Mary: That was the SSL side. I was doing the payment processing side. It was a combination of inbound and outbound and a chat team. Because I was a contractor, I got to dabble in each one of the teams. Those were the different ways those sales would come to close. I just have regular conversations. I would laugh my butt off with some of these people on the phone, and I think it was just because you’d have a human conversation with someone. I think the fact that I didn’t have sales training and was naive played to my advantage.

Dane: What would a typical conversation – If someone would call in, they would be like “I need payment processing,” what would be your first thing that you would say?

Mary: Dude, this is over ten years ago. You want me to remember what I said to someone ten years ago in an industry I’m not even in anymore?

Dane: Yeah.

Mary: I wouldn’t even be able to tell you. If I remember, it was identifying – All you need to know is how many payments they are processing per month and then you would either sell them on the lite which was you check out to purchase your product, and then you get pushed to the VeriSign website. That was the cheap version.

Then you’d want to sell them on having a – what I refer to as the sticky site. You want to have a sticky site. You want them to stay on your website and trust your brand so you want to pay for the pro version, that way you're not pushing them somewhere else and potentially losing the sale.

Dane: Great, what do –

Mary: I would have – Go ahead.

Dane: I was going to say – first you qualify them, see where they’re at, and you match them where they need to go. The other sales people weren’t doing this?

Mary: I think they were just more mechanical. I’d ask someone how their day was or what that sound on the background. Tell me more about your business or how did you start your business.

Dane: It’s –

Mary: Go Giants!

Dane: It’s kind of the – it seems similar to the paleo thing stuff you're doing now where you ultimately want to help people and coach them at their life, but first you need to qualify where they're at and so you qualify where they're at, put them where they're at with the food wise. Once they get healthy then you’re like, alright, this stuff’s on check, let’s go after the big stuff.

Mary: Yeah. Isn’t that anything, any sort of connection whether or not someone has something to try to accomplish. When you meet someone for the first time, whether you like it or not you are qualifying them, you are getting to know them on some level. Usually, you are adapting to make the conversation work because the way I speak to you is probably different than the way I speak to Amanda because Amanda is a dear friend of mine. We have our own little language and we’re kind of weirdos.

Dane: You are weirdos.

What I like about this is you are remarkably, consciously – what is it? Unconscious competence. Do you know the four stages of learning? You're like in the fourth stage of mastery where you don’t even know you're so good that you're like, “Oh, I don’t know. I was just doing stuff like this,” which by the way does not come naturally to people.

The fourth stage of learning just so people – hopefully I don’t butcher this. First there’s unconscious incompetence, you don’t know you suck. Then, there’s conscious incompetence where you're like, “Oh crap, I know I suck.” Then there’s conscious competence where you’re like, “Oh cool. I think about it. I’m good.” And there’s unconscious competence where you don’t have to think about it, you're just a master.

You seem to be in that forth realm here as you're kind of like, “I don’t know. This is just my automatic behavior.” Well, I tell you is not that –

Mary: What makes somebody do that?

Dane: What makes somebody do what?

Mary: What makes somebody unconsciously a master even though I’m obsessed with self mastery?

Dane: It’s a good question. I don’t have an immediate answer, usually it’s practice. But in your case, you aren’t even practicing. You started in 16, 17 right off the bat. You're just connecting with people. You're interested in humans. “Hey, I want payment processing,” and you're like to qualify them, “Hey, what’s your favorite sports teams?”

Mary: The whole always be closing line of always said always be curious, I don’t know. I’ve always had conversations with strangers since I was a little kid so maybe that’s just generally –

Everybody wants to be seen or heard. And it doesn’t even have to be that deep. People just want to have a conversation. It’s interesting where tech has taken us and what’s lost with the art of doing business where it used to be just a corner store and the corner store was always there, and it was Bob that ran the store, and you know everything about Bob and Bob knows everything about you. You guys could have real conversations. There’s something in that that’s lost now with the way that we do business.

Dane: Absolutely.

Mary: Even the way that we have our friendships. Someone’s like, “Oh, I haven’t seen you post in Facebook in a while. Everything okay?” And I’m like, “Yeah, everything’s great. I’m outside.”

Dane: Let’s jump to – We kind of got to see a little bit of your behavior. You start at 16 or 17, you got braces, you had donuts, you had pizza, you're just being yourself, you’re in your heart is what I imagine. Does that fit so far?

Mary: Yeah, just having fun.

Dane: Just having fun. You're like, “Oh, 156%. What does this mean?” “Oh, it means I’m taking your job” is what it means. Then you keep moving on and moving on, and then you go from one business to the next doing some form of sales. Did you ever get formally trained in sales?

Mary: No.

Dane: Fascinating. Has anybody ever asked you to put together a sales training program?

Mary: Yeah.

Dane: What do you usually say when they ask for that?

Mary: No, thank you.

Dane: What’s the idea – how does the idea of making that feel in your body?

Mary: Can you repeat the question?

Dane: If I said, “Hey Mary, I’d love for you to make me a sales training program.” How does that feel when I ask?

Mary: Manufactured.

Dane: The idea of you doing it.

Mary: Oh. I don’t know. I understand when people are like, “Can you run the sales team or teach people how to close business” or anything like that. I don’t …

Dane: Let me pause for a second. Just setting a little context, a little reveal. Why I’m asking this is because you have an internal compass that guides you on how you decide to do things. There could’ve been a tremendous amount of money and – depending on how you look at it – impact in making a sales training program that could improve organization’s results exponentially, quarter over quarter, year over year. That could’ve been an amazing career path for you but you chose not to do that. Instead, you went over here and you're now paleo chef which is ultimately your gateway for people to see you can actually coach them in their life.

What I’m getting at is what’s the feeling when you think about how you make decisions. You think about sales training and you're like “Eh,” you think about paleo your like, “Oh, this feels right.” How does that work for you?

Mary: It’s as simple as if I don’t want to do it I’m not going to do it. I’m a flight hazard. The day I wake up not liking something I'm doing, I'm just not going to do it. So if someone asks –

Dane: Hold on. You say – Thank you for [unclear 00:32:41] for these interruptions. You're saying that you –

Mary: You're so rude.

Dane: I know. I want to know some stuff, man. You’ve got this thing where you say I just do what I want, but do you know how hard it is for people to do what they want? Not everyone but do you know what I'm talking about? Do you know anyone that you know that you can think of where it’s actually a little bit hard for them to do what they want?

Mary: I do. I do. Now I’m probing why do you think it’s hard for somebody to do what they want?

Dane: Fear.

Mary: Of?

Dane: If they’re at the top they could be attacked. If they become successful, they’ll lose their friends. The fear could be personalized individual to individual. That’s my first.

Mary: People don’t do what they want because they’re scared is what you're saying.

Dane: Yeah. In some cases terrified.

Mary: And I’m terrified of not doing what I want.

Dane: Great. This goes back to – When we work with our students in The Foundation, which by the way, pausing for a sponsorship for The Foundation.

The Foundation podcast is sponsored by The Foundation. If you’d like to learn more about our program, you should go to thefoundation.com, and if you like what you have to hear here, maybe you can apply for one of our entrepreneurial school classes things. Back to this.

What I wanted to say was I have no idea. I lost my train of thought with that stupid sponsorship. What were we just talking about before that?

Mary: Why people don’t do what they want, because you said it’s incredibly hard for people to do what they want. And I said why, and you said because they're scared or terrified, and I’m terrified of not doing what I want.

Dane: Yes. Thank you so much. This goes back to one of the ways we work with students in The Foundation, or sometimes I work with myself personally. I

don’t do it as often anymore, I don’t think, but it’s like the only thing that one … this is a generalization so I use it with caution. The only thing that can conquer fear is a greater fear, and it sounds like that’s what you were doing.

Mary: Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Life is too short and too long to not do what you want. I have a kin sense of mortality.

Dane: No, you make it too simple. You’re making it way too simple. Why is it so simple for you?

Mary: Why is it so difficult for other people? I don’t know.

Dane: Because their emotional belief gets in the way.

Mary: But shouldn’t that drive you?

Dane: Oh, Mary, you're unconscious competence is so beautiful.

Mary: That kind of stuff can be practiced and taught. You just have to unlearn what you’ve been taught. You have to condition yourself to appreciate uncertainty. I say often that the uncertainty life is the most generous form of opportunity. The other thing that I get quoted on a lot is if you're going to make an assumption about the outcome of your risk, assume it’ll be brilliant. Because whatever it is you do, the outcome is going to be impacted by how you approach something. I have no doubt that I could be knitting socks on the side of the road and make it something that would be successful because I’d be showing up with passion in what I’m doing and that is very contagious.

Dane: The first thing you said was this really clever quote on uncertainty is the greatest opportunity?

Mary: The uncertainty life is the most generous source of opportunity.

Dane: What’s that mean?

Mary: Everyone wants to know what the outcome is or know what the next step is. When you just embrace things as they come, you find out what the opportunities are by just going about your day. I didn’t know that I would be here today. I was uncertain of the outcome of leaving Corporate America, but it presented multiple opportunities the second I decided to do it. I was cooking and working with incredible people, I was offered a book deal which I declined, I was offered a gig to be on some YouTube cooking channel. I was able to cook for some pro baseball players – I'm a baseball fanatic. But I had to be open to uncertainty for those opportunities to come my way.

Dane: Damn! You're also cooking for a number of well known Hollywood celebrities which we’re unable to name here, and I actually don’t know either. I did ask when we were hanging out that one time. I was like who do you cook for? You're like “I can’t say.”

Mary: Well, I don’t want to say, not can’t say. I said I prefer my clients to talk about me.

Dane: I didn’t want to say, you're right. I was just kind of angry so I remember you saying I can’t say. I want to be able to think like you in the last 20-ish maybe 30 max minutes we have. I want to be able to think like you, I want to know … So when you're sitting down or standing up and you're looking at this thing that you're going to do, you're assuming that it’s going to be brilliant, one, and then you're embracing the uncertainty knowing that that could be the greatest opportunity. When you have those couple perspectives on and you're more empowered to go after that action whatever it may be, am I tracking that correctly?

Mary: Yeah. If I'm going to do – The whole paleo passion, I find to be a little bit misguided advice and I really think that whatever it is you're doing, show up passionate and that will uncover whatever the purpose it is that you want to look for. Everything I’ve done, even if I – Oh, this cat is not making me passionate.

Dane: It’s passionately troubling you.

Mary: Anything I do, I show up with a lot of enthusiasm. Just by doing that, a lot of opportunities present themselves.

If I’m looking at something that I'm going to approach, one, I'm going to show up with the can do attitude. This is stuff we’ve heard in grade school. Show up with a can do attitude, follow through, believe in yourself, and be open to change because not everything is going to happen the way that you expect it to. I don’t avoid any emotions. There’s a line in a poem by David Whyte, “A too well felt pain is just as generous as a too well felt joy.” So I embrace the full spectrum because to me happiness is the full spectrum of emotions.

That helps me make decisions. I know it sounds a little woo-wooey but I do think I sit right in the center between being really back and white in business but as well as being very spiritual. I think that if you fuse the two of them, it can be really powerful. I have, which I think we talked about, my five bases to power and self mastery, and kind of the steps it takes to get there in your mind. Just have fun goes a long way with whatever it is you're doing.

Dane: One of the things you said is you show up with enthusiasm for what you're doing. What if you're like doing something that’s awful?

Mary: What? Can you give me an example?

Dane: Birthing horse’s babies.

Mary: I’m giving birth to a horse’s baby?

Dane: You're helping a horse birth a baby. This is the first thing that came off my head.

Mary: Some people think that’s beautiful and awesome.

Dane: Yeah, you're right.

Mary: That’s an awful example.

Dane: That could be really crazy cool.

Say you are – I can’t think of anything because everything in my life is pretty awesome. I'm trying to think of something from dirty jobs. Tell me – actually …

Mary: People that have those jobs and they're still just so happy to have a job, to be doing something with their hands that’s respected.

Dane: Mary, here’s what I want to know. Have you ever struggled to show up with enthusiasm for a job?

Mary: My corporate jobs, yes.

Dane: What would you do on those days?

Mary: I would go into my boss’s office and I would shut the door, and I'm like I’m having a bad day, can I vent? He’s like, “Yup, whatever you want.” I’d be like “This job effin … da, da, da.” I would just scream it out with him and he goes, “Okay, are you done?” “Yes.” “Sit down, now let’s talk through it.” I talk through and find out “Is it something that could be fixed? What are the solutions I bring to the table and that’s something that I set with my team. You're not allowed to bitch at me unless you come followed up with a potential solution.” I would do that with my boss. “This is why I'm upset today, and this is what I think I can do about it. What do you think?” He would talk me through it.

By the end of the conversation, it was either me having an emotional day for reasons who knows and I’ve gotten over it, or there was actually an issue that needed to be fixed. If you're having a bad day like that, unless you face it, you're not going to know the root of it which then just brings you back to showing up passionate even though I was passionately angry that day.

Dane: I think a key ingredient showing up with enthusiasm that I'm hearing you say is that it’s really rooted in the truth. If there’s an elephant in the room, you're not like, “Oh, I’m so enthusiastic.” Then there’s this elephant over here, you're like, “No, you turn and face the elephant.”

Mary: Yeah. That’s a big, big deal to me is you need to turn into unpleasant emotions or things that you think you need to avoid because you're uncomfortable because that’s where your truth is, that’s where the magic is,

that’s where whatever thousand quotes that are always been said about that.

Dane: I love when you say, “It’s the stuff we learn in high school. It’s the can do attitude.” Look, I’ve told you about 1200 students go through The Foundation – After having 1200 students through The Foundation Mary, what I have learned is that people are geniuses at getting in the wrong way.

Mary: Oh, yeah.

Dane: I’d love to hear your five phases of mastery.

Mary: I’ll actually say how it can be used.

Dane: Okay.

Mary: You can use the five phases over the course of a year for some crazy transformation, or you can use the five phases with a particular problem, or you can space them out for the week, however you want. But that’s just five steps that you go through in your head before you get to power and self mastery.

Number one is balance. You want to figure out what balance looks like, what balance feels like, whether it’s particular issue or on compassing your life. I think I wrote something funny like you never want to take a step when you're off balance because you're going to step in a pile of poop and nobody wants to step in a pile of poop. That’s why you need to be balanced before you take your next step.

When you take your next step, you move into a place of intention. When you get to intention –

Dane: Is intention step two?

Mary: Yeah.

Dane: Before you go there, what does your life look like when it’s in balance?

Mary: I think it’s what it feels like.

Dane: Sure, however you want to answer.

Mary: I have a sense of calm and happiness. I am following through. My actions match my intentions. I feel really connected. I feel alive. It just feels good.

Dane: Ladies and gentlemen, the unconsciously competent Mary.

Mary: Don’t know what that means. You're making fun of me.

Dane: I’m making fun of you in a very, very complementary way.

What does the balance in terms of – look like in terms of like is there a time of day you wake up, go to bed. Will you not see anymore the four clients in a day? Do you have rules in place that are hard and fast for you on that?

Mary: Not really to balance. I have boundaries that I set up for myself. I’m unapologetically selfish and I do unapologetically love myself. The only way I can serve people is if I take care of myself first.

There are things I do in the morning like I get up when the sun rises, and I don’t pop out of bed. I sit there and appreciate the fact that I don’t have to go anywhere if I don’t want to. That’s something I do every morning. It’s a little “Hihihi” to the many years of getting up and having to go into an office. I take my dog for a walk. There’s nothing that radiates pure joy than a really happy dog in the morning on the beach.

Dane: What kind of dog do you have?

Mary: Berger Picard, it’s a French shepherd. Look like a mutt. He’s a rescue. His name’s Charlie.

Dane: He sounds awesome.

Mary: He’s a great dog. Very happy. If dogs can have a sense of humor, he’s got a great sense of humor.

After I take my dog for a walk, I drink unicorn fuel which is my bulletproof 2.0. Got certain spices that I need to function physically and mentally. Then I go into grounding or meditation outside. After that’s done, that’s when I will begin things.

It could look like I’ll go to the gym that morning, or if I had tennis later that day I’ll just dive into work. I only coach clients three days a week, and all the other days I spend working on my business and future ventures. Sundays, everyone knows is a personal day. You're welcome to reach out to me, but I’ll likely be drinking Scotch at a bar and those are just the days that I have for myself to have fun.

Dane: I remember somebody said, they were like, “Is Scotch Paleo?” What did you have to say to that? Just in case we have any naysayers on this podcast?

Mary: The internet’s not paleo either so they should probably get off the internet.

I’m a big Scotch drinker. The whole thing with paleo is – Paleo is no gluten, grains, dairy, soy, sugar, legumes, processed foods. I think that’s a really great template but it’s not ideal for everyone, it’s very hard to stick to 100%. You just want to find out what makes you feel good.

Wine is paleo. I'm a Coeliac and I can’t drink wine because sometimes it cross contaminates and makes me awfully sick. High top shelf Scotch. The way

Scotch and hard liquors are distilled is very different than the [unclear 00:47:13] process and it actually removes those proteins. I respond really well to Scotch. It also happens to make me look like a badass so I’ll go ahead and just accept it even though I drink it because it doesn’t make me sick.

Dane: Scotch makes you look like a badass. When you're drinking it you feel cool?

Mary: It feels super cool. When I’m out with a few of my guy friends and I’ll order drinks for everyone, they always put the Vodka in front of me and the Scotch in front of my friend and I reach over and grab the Scotch. Thanks.

Dane: One thing that you said that really stood out to me – I'm just becoming so obsessed with The Foundation again and I find myself off balanced some days. This has been a test and tweak process for me. I'm like, “Oh. Okay, you know what? I'm going to do this different this day, this differently this day.” I'm kind of exploring my area of balance. Do you feel like that’s an okay thing for me to do, balance can be iterative in that way as long as I'm committed to it or?

Mary: Yeah. And as long as you’re – Are you tracking it to see what works and what doesn’t work?

Dane: What does that mean?

Mary: I have all my clients keep a journal and I keep a journal. It’s sleep quality, what did I eat throughout the day, how much physical activity did I get, how much physical touch did I get, and the quality of the stool. If you can track that over the course of a few weeks and at the very end of the day write down what stood out in the day, overall thought, things you're grateful for, and you can go back and say these are really great days, and these are the things I did. We duplicate that for the future. Tracking, it’s really great.

There is this cool concept of flow state that I really like, but I do believe that you can get to flow state and you can maintain flow state and go about your day. Those days are really interesting for me because I’ll have a schedule but I won’t adhere to it as – is militantly a word?

Dane: Yeah, for sure.

Mary: Okay, whatever. I won’t be as strict about it when I'm in a flow state. I’ll kind of do things that bring me joy instead.

Dane: Why did your face just do that at the end?

Mary: Because I prioritize joy and fun over things that would necessarily need to get done for my business. If I have five emails I know I have to send out by noon but I’m just feeling like going to the beach, or I want to be in the sun, or I want to see my friend, life comes before those emails to me.

Dane: I'm just so enjoying getting to spend time with you, Mary, and hear these things. It’s just so wonderful. No, I'm not tracking it. I have my journal here. I have a hard time being consistent with my journal. My journal’s almost past halfway full but doing it every day is pretty hard for me to be consistent. Do you have any ways that I can ground into a greater commitment to consistency with my journal to track that stuff?

Mary: Other than tell you it’s going to make you understand yourself better and make you better, that’s not motivating enough?

Dane: No, that’s actually really helpful. I actually have a little – just putting present to this, I actually have a little resistance to that statement.

Mary: To understanding yourself more or to bettering yourself?

Dane: No, understanding myself more and when it comes to the concept of journaling it’s just –

Mary: What’s the resistance? Is it not wanting to face something? Is it just—

Dane: It’s in my gut. It feels like fear. It feels like scared that I might become too happy with what I'm doing and then be disapproved of by others.

Mary: Why do you care what other people think?

Dane: Because that is how I receive love, comes back as the answer.

Mary: You receive love based on what people think of you, not them loving you for who you are?

Dane: No. When you ask that it kind of flips for me. Of course, I’ve got my mental mind saying of course this isn’t true, but in the body is where it’s coming from.

Mary: That’s interesting. That would have to be a different coaching session. I wouldn’t be able to hack that on this call.

Dane: Yeah. I’m just happy to show up with that. Now that I’m actually aware of that, I can use some of my – We have limiting belief processes in The Foundation, and I’ve got a process I’ve created called Rooting which represents he’s out of the roots. Now that I know that’s an issue, I’ll see what I can do to rip that little bugger out. Because being approved of by others is not what love’s about.

Mary: No, no. I say that the most powerful thing a woman can do is love herself, and that applies to anything. The most powerful thing you can do is love yourself. If you love yourself, you're going to act as if you love yourself, you're going to journal, you're going to eat right, you're going to meditate. You're going do all the things you would do because you love yourself.

Dane: What about dudes? What’s the most powerful thing a dude can do?

Mary: Love themselves.

Dane: Okay.

Mary: I find it interesting – So I work with a lot of influential male figures who are very, very, very successful. I pick up on things that I find that are really interesting. I feel like I'm going to get crucified for this. I feel like men are intensely sensitive, in a good way, and have a lot of – because I view masculinity and femininity on a spectrum. Somewhere in their life, they told them they couldn’t go over here and they’re just blocking all that. Which bums me out because when they’re blocking all of that, they're denying themselves the self and they're not getting to experience the full spectrum of who they are, and they don’t get to really love themselves.

I’m sorry on behalf of society for that kind of stuff, but it’s just interesting to watch someone be able to work backwards and embrace themselves, and then watch them treat themselves better, and then by default treat everyone around them better, and then their business goes really, really well, opportunities are opening up. That wasn’t even their goal. Their goal was just to come to a place of loving themselves.

I’d say that the only place where power and peace can coexist is within compassion. If compassion doesn’t include compassion for yourself then it falls [unclear 00:53:33].

Dane: Going back to your five phases, we got through balance. Next we’re going to start talking about intention and balance for you looks like you're coaching about three days a week, and then you're working on your business the rest of the time. Those three days a week are you - Does that include cooking for people?

Mary: No. The cooking I do now, I do integrative coaching for the cooking where people will rent me for a day. I’ll do cooking with them for that whole day, and then do coaching. Those I do a few times a month because it usually requires travel. I'm lucky, again, to be able to step away from the daily cooking to do the coaching stuff. That’s balance.

I feel like when you're in balance, when you go into intention, you can approach what it is you intend to do with optimism. Intention is identifying what it is that I want to do, what does that look like, what are the steps to get there. When you have those things written out, or in your head, or the game plan, you can move into manifestation which I call, man, I make shit happen, which is all about action and follow through.

When you are in balance and you know what your intentions are, and your actions are matching your intentions, you have this sense of freedom which is the fourth phase: I feel free. I have the freedom to make good decisions. I

also have the freedom to make bad decisions. You want to always make sure that you're making the right choices with that freedom.

Then when that’s in align, you're in the final stage which is power and self mastery. Power is having power over thyself. You're able to take yourself through these steps and nothing here is being triggered by external events, it’s all coming from the source inside of you. I’ve always been obsessed with the concept of power and not in the way people consider power but for people just power over yourself.

Dane: How was that to share?

Mary: You ask questions like that a lot and I don’t know how to answer them. I’m just speaking my mind, my truth. It’s natural for me.

Dane: It’s natural for you to share that.

Mary: Yeah.

Dane: I'm in awe of you and how naturally you are able to speak in that way. It’s very rare. It starts off with balance, then it moves to intention. Through intention you get optimism. Through optimism you get freedom. From freedom you can go after self mastery.

Mary: Yes. And where you said optimism, that was manifestation.

Dane: Oh, manifestation.

Mary: Yeah, balance, intention, manifestation, freedom, and power.

Dane: What does manifestation mean to you?

Mary: Making shit happen. Was I not allowed to curse?

Dane: You are not allowed – yes, it’s totally allowed.

Mary: I did a play on words. I did a quick e-book because my readers wanted me to write five days of eating, playing, and meditation. So, I said now we’re manifestation or man, I make shit happen. I don’t understand when someone says, “Oh, I manifested this.” I’m like no, dude, you went out and made the calls, you did the work, and it happened. Take ownership over the actions it takes to make things happen, that’s what manifestation is to me. It’s not sitting there hoping and being reactive, it’s being proactive and going out, and either building something or taking what you want, or asking the question, or having the tough conversation.

Dane: What would your advice be for – We find a number of our students happen to be full time employees and they’re pursuing this side income until that side income can replace their current income, and then they can become financially free. What would be – Someone is working maybe eight, maybe

even ten hours a day, and they still need to find energy to devote one or two hours a day to this part-time endeavor. How would you recommend they stay in balance for something like that?

Mary: Is the assumption that they’re eating right and taking care of their bodies and – is that the assumption?

Dane: Up until this interview, I never even considered that.

Mary: Because all that stuff makes it better for you to be able to have those extra two hours of energy, those extra two hours of mental clarity to make those decisions. Treat yourself right.

Dane: If anybody’s listening, if you guys would like to have some of Mary’s expertise in The Foundation, if you would like us to bring her on as an expert to teach a little segment on this kind of stuff, send an email to dane@thefoundation.com. Let me know. If we get enough emails, we’ll see if we can put a deal together that works for everyone, Mary. It would be nice.

In this case, we’ll assume that they’re all eating paleo, they’re not eating any fast food, no one’s eating French fries, they’re eating spinach and carrots.

Mary: Oh God, no bacon, remember, I push bacon.

If you assume everyone is taking care of themselves and they’re in that phase of hustle where they’re having it to both. Every entrepreneur think this way. If you believe in yourself beyond reasonable doubt, you're going to get through those extra two hours a day until you get that relief. There is on shortcut to this kind of stuff, you just got to put in the work. And as long as you have that hoorah about yourself, you don’t see the alternative. I’m a big believer in believe in yourself beyond unreasonable doubt.

Dane: Believe in yourself beyond unreasonable doubt.

As we wind down and start to land the plane, it’s so fun because we’re about 58 minutes into this and I feel like It really started to pick up at about 30 minutes into this when we got to the good stuff. The stuff that felt – Not that the stuff before wasn’t good. In my experience, the stuff after 30 minutes is I was riveted to, and the stuff before I was just kind of lost because you did so much crap before you got to this stuff. It’s the hard part of the things. And maybe that’s good, maybe that’s exactly how it needed to be.

As we’re landing this plane, believe in yourself –

Mary: Isn’t that what it’s like though when you're building anything. In the beginning it’s all crap and then it becomes this beautiful piece of art?

Dane: Never, it’s perfect at the beginning every time. Thus, that crippling belief is what sabotages so many entrepreneurs I see. No, it’s exactly as you say. It is exactly as you say. It starts off messy and then –

I was actually sitting on the couch with my buddy last night and I was showing him one of my first businesses I built which is recruitingninja.com. It’s a site that helps companies recruit agents, real estate agents. He’s asking me all these questions. He’s not as successful as he wants to be in business yet, and it just occurred to me for the first time in my life.

I was like, “Oh dude, the questions that you're asking me about this business, are those the same questions you ask yourself when you go to start a business? He’s like, “Yeah dude. I ask way more than that.” I was like, “Dude, you go to stop that. Stop asking those questions, man. Those paralyze the crap out of you. Those questions are totally sabotaging you.” Did you resonate with this?

Mary: When I'm coaching someone I like to go with their own pace but there’s a certain point where I'm just like, “Dude, get out of your own way.” Everything you want is on the other side of fuck it. If you just say fuck it and jump in, you're going to have the time of your life. I know it sounds a little arbitrary but it’s true.

Dane: It is true. It’s been true for me.

Mary: You can talk yourself out of anything. Someone will hand you a million dollar check and you will find a way to rip it up. What is wrong with you? Cash the check.

Dane: I want to say one last thing on – You said if you believe in yourself beyond reasonable doubt. I remember hanging out with – Well, I was on an airplane next to this guy, he was a marine. I said, “How do you guys do that? Every day, how is it possible to – oh my … That sounds awful.” He’s like, “We just trick ourselves into liking it.” I was like, “What do you mean?” He’s like, “Oh, we just wake up and we’re like, “Hey guys, you want to go run? It’s going to be so much fun.” They’re actually like sarcastic about it, and then they actually end up enjoying the run. It’s like, dude, that’s actually a really great idea. You wake up, “Great, I got to go do …”whatever it is that you don’t want to do.

Mary, for those that would like to learn more about you or maybe reach out to you just to say thank you, how can they find you to do that?

Mary: paleochef.com is the site. @PaleoChef on Instagram is where I spend most of my time playing. They can send me an email at mary@paleochef.com.

Dane: Any final words from the heart or the intuition, or from the face of mastery that you would like to impart? If you are working with a client, do you always start at balance?

Mary: No, some people are already at power and we just move in that direction. Some people are in the phase of making it happen, and they’re a little bit confused as to what actions they’re taking. It depends on the person.

The conversations I have are very – I have clients who are teenagers and battling eating disorders. I have clients who are post-suicidal, and then I have clients who are professional athletes, and New York Times bestselling authors. Those conversations are all different, and I think it’s just my experience with doing counseling and breathing at work, and corporate coaching. I’ve been able to experience a breath of types of people, so that’s the type of coaching I do now which is – It feels right.

Dane: Wow! Just hearing that at the end, some suicidal, some with eating disorders, and then professional golfer’s house that you happen to be in. The heart that you live the world with, Mary, is remarkable. I just want to acknowledge you for that and recognize you here publicly on this podcast. We need you badly in this world. So thank you for existing, and thank you for being on the podcast today.

Mary: Thank you.

Dane: You’re welcome.

For anybody listening, if you’ve enjoyed what you have been listening to, we’d love for you to join our community. You can do so at thefoundation.com where you can learn how to start a business from nothing and hopefully you have learned a little bit about Mary’s life.

What I’m most excited about is for people who might be in their corporate jobs for the five, or eight, or nine – Was it eight or nine years you were in corporate before you left?

Mary: Yeah, nine years, eight years, something.

Dane: Eight, nine years and you broke out. I’m hoping that people that had been in corporate for a period of time are listening to this and they can find that pivot so they can ultimately find freedom.

Mary, thank you.

Mary: Thank you.

Closing: Thank you for joining us. We’ve taken this interview and created a custom action guide so you know exactly what action steps to take to grow your business. Just head over to thefoundationpodcast.com to download it for free. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.