Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:00:00]:
Well, welcome back to the Happy Healthy Hustle podcast. I'm your host, Christiane Schroeder, and I'm here today with a very special guest. Marisa, please introduce yourself.

Marisa Shadrick [00:00:11]:
Hello, everyone. And, Christiane, thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I'm truly honored. I'm Marisa Shadrick. I'm an online marketing consultant and certified copywriter, and I help people take their ideas and their knowledge and turn it into a profitable business online. That's about as easy as I can say it sounds.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:00:29]:
Pretty easy. It sounds like a wonderful model and, of course, totally fitting with what we do here at the Happy Healthy Hustle. Marisa, how would you describe your superpower?

Marisa Shadrick [00:00:41]:
You know, that that's a hard one to really think about, because I knew you were going to ask me that. And I default every time to gratitude. I think that is my superpower, because everything really stems from that place of gratitude. And it's probably why empath, empathy, service, and community are my core values for my business. It's all out of gratitude, and I think it's. Some of it is because of the things I had to overcome to even be able to have a business, which we could talk about if you want, but I would say it's gratitude because everything stems from that.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:01:16]:
We're certainly going to talk about this. I always tell my students and also my children, whenever you hint at something that frequently, people then are like, no, now I want to know more about this. Right? It's like on these. On these shows where they give a little foreshadowing, or in the book, and you're like, oh, my gosh, I can't. I now. Now you have to tell me, right? I can't wait.

Marisa Shadrick [00:01:41]:
Yeah. In copyright, it's called open loop.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:01:45]:
What has been your biggest challenge in your life, and how did you overcome it?

Marisa Shadrick [00:01:49]:
Yeah, it was fear. And I think the interesting thing is my husband was laughing at me because I really love disaster movies. And he says, why do you love disaster movies? It just doesn't seem like part of your personality to see all these people suffering in some volcano eruption or an earthquake or something. And I said, but here's why. Because in these disaster movies, there's always people that are fearful, but there's always people that rise up and show this amazing bravery and courage in the midst of all the fear to help themselves and other people. And that's what I love about it, because there's always somebody that rises up. And so for me, I was just so much in fear, I didn't really realize it Because I wasn't testing myself or putting myself out there to really challenge the fear. So I would stay very comfortable.

Marisa Shadrick [00:02:44]:
And I was, of course, married and I was raising my kids and love that. And when I started really thinking about what I wanted to do, you know, as my kids were getting older and I was getting more time to think about career, did I want to go back to corporate? Did I want to do something different? I realized that I had a lot of fears. I really worried about what people thought about me. I was afraid of public speaking. I wanted to write, but I was afraid of people reading my writing and think I was like, crazy or an idiot or dumb or stupid, whatever it might be. I was very much afraid. I sat with that for a while, and then something hit me. I realized one day while I was journaling that I had no free will.

Marisa Shadrick [00:03:30]:
I had no free will to make decisions or choices because they were already made by fear. And that woke me up. And I realized I'm a prisoner in my own body. I'm not living at all. I'm just existing because I'm so afraid of everything that I had to do something to change that.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:03:51]:
What I love is that when you look at children, they don't have the same fears. They climb on playground material and high structures, and you as the mom, you're like, oh my gosh, you could fall down. That's not really what that child is thinking in that very moment. So sometimes I really, when I became a mom, I really appreciated the European attitude. So in my coaching, I always say I have this European flair. In Europe, a lot of the playgrounds are not as guarded as in the United States, because the thinking really is you have to experience things yourself without immediately seeing that there might be a fear or a danger about it. So even in our life, if we are constantly afraid of doing certain things, it might actually be just fine. But being afraid of it also means that we are so limited in what we can do and what we want to do that we are maybe even scared to take that very first step.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:04:56]:
So what got you out of that fear? When did you start taking that first step? Because obviously now you are highly accomplished. So who or what helped you?

Marisa Shadrick [00:05:07]:
I had to kind of look back and figure out where that even came from. I did a lot of writing and journaling on my own to figure out what is it. And I could tell when it was fear based because the minute I would think about something that would be challenging to me or something that I've never done before, immediately the emotions Stir. And the emotions would influence my choice in a split of a second without me even realizing it was a choice. And typically it would be, don't do it. And then it would lead to the action. And I had read a book that talked about that, that it all starts with what you're thinking, and it triggers the emotions. So when I decided I wanted to tackle this, I looked back in my life and I realized there was some brokenness there.

Marisa Shadrick [00:05:55]:
And a lot of people don't have the perfect childhood, you know, and mine was a bit broken, and there was a lot of insecurities that came from that. And as I grew, there were other things that had happened. Like, even when I had my own place, my own apartment, and I was living on my own, I lived in the city, in la. And back then, there was the Hillside Strangler, and I was watching the news and one of my classmates had been murdered, and I had more fear piled up. There was just all these things that were just piling up, fear upon fear. My parents divorced. I figured nothing is safe, you know, because the family unit was all broken. And so there were a lot of things I had to overcome and think where it was rooted.

Marisa Shadrick [00:06:35]:
Then I just simply started. Every time I had any kind of emotion that was anxious, it was. It was my trigger to stop and think. What are you thinking, Marisa? What are you thinking right now? Is it true or is it false? Is it real or is it not? So I would let my emotions tell me when it was time to stop, pause and look at the thoughts, or at least assess the thoughts I was having and reframe them. And I would do that over and over again. Then I decided to compete. I went to Toastmasters, which is a international group where you can learn how to do public speaking. I wanted to overcome that because I wanted to write.

Marisa Shadrick [00:07:15]:
And I knew that if I wrote, I would probably need to also add in the communication skills, public speaking. So I went to Toastmasters, and it took me forever to do the first icebreaker speech. I think it took me six months, and all you're doing is talking about yourself for about five minutes. It's not much, but when I finally started, you should compete, and I said, no, that's not what I came here for. I don't want to compete. They said, compete. It'll be fun. It'd just be something you do, and, you know, you just do the club level, and if you don't move on, that's great.

Marisa Shadrick [00:07:46]:
Then you're done. Well, I competed, and I ended up winning in that it was a humorous. And I did some others, and they said, you should do the international. So I said, oh, my gosh. And so to get them off my back, I said, okay, I'm gonna prepare something now, mind you, I was writing. So I thought, let me write something that would really inspire an audience, and then I'll turn it into a speech and go with that. At least the people that will listen to it will be inspired. Right.

Marisa Shadrick [00:08:15]:
Regardless, you know where I go with this. And this competition was about six months, and I kept winning at every level, and I couldn't figure out why I was winning at every level. And then I ended up speaking in the semifinals at Caesar's palace in Las Vegas and becoming one of the top hundred speakers in the world that year. All I was doing was trying to overcome my fear. But what I did was prepare something that would inspire others. So every time I got on the stage, I knew I wasn't doing this just for myself. I was doing it for the people that were going to hear what I had to say, because I really wanted to encourage people. I'm an encourager at heart.

Marisa Shadrick [00:08:56]:
And so that was the beginning of a lot of things changing, Being able to just tackle other things that I was afraid of. And then I ended up publishing articles and other things. So, yeah, that was the beginning.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:09:10]:
Sometimes when we struggle with something ourselves, that we can use that struggle and help others. So sometimes we should look at struggles as something that you have a choice. What do you want to do with that struggle? Do you look at it as an experience that you can share, especially when you overcame it? Or do you look at something that's a burden that you have been dealt with? So think more that the struggle is also something that you can use to share and inspire others, because you are probably not by yourself in that struggle. You can share with others who are experiencing that as well.

Marisa Shadrick [00:09:53]:
Yes, very true. When you think of maybe celebrities, people have written biographies, you find that many people, that's what started their careers or their success was from the brokenness, from the ashes, from the broken pieces, they were able to overcome that. And many coaches that are out there really want to share how they've overcome something and they become a coach, whether it's a financial coach, because they were in debt themselves or whatever it might be. A lot of times it comes from that place that they've been able to find a way to overcome that, and now they want to share that with others. I understand where you're coming from. I understand, in a way, what you're feeling because I've gone through a similar path. We can't understand 100%, but we have an idea because we had a similar parallel path.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:10:43]:
Yes. It's so true. And I totally resonate with that myself. And I think that you can compare your struggle, if you're struggling with it currently with, and you mentioned celebrities that are doing really well and you think, oh, they had an easy life because sometimes go through those profiles of celebrities and read about it or look at the biographies or even go to their social media accounts and scroll all the way down because they started at some point with zero. Or they might have come from very different backgrounds. And so you can Compare your day one with their year 10. They might have actually come from similar circumstances where you came from. And I think that's why it's so inspiring to share our stories because we want to always feel that we can uplift those people that are maybe undergoing similar experiences right now and we can help them and reach their dreams as well.

Marisa Shadrick [00:11:47]:
And I don't want to oversimplify it either because when I was in that six month competition, it was difficult. I did that speech I don't know how many times, maybe 50 times in that six month period. So I had these bracelets. It was a set of bracelets and I think there was like 12 of them that all matched to make the whole set of bracelets. And what I did was every day when I would get anxious about the competition, my emotions were going crazy. I'd stop, I'd reframe my thinking. I said, you're preparing, you're practicing. You know what you're going to say.

Marisa Shadrick [00:12:21]:
You're there to serve other people. I would take one of the bracelets and put it on the other arm. And every moment of the day, if I had anxiety, I would stop, pull another bracelet, reframe my thought, and put it on the other arm so I could physically see every time I was renewing my thinking by moving the bracelet from one arm to the other. And that helped because a lot of times, you know, especially in business, we're thinking that we've got to build, build, build, build a lot of things. But really in business, I discovered, and maybe because of my background, maybe this is just me, but I discovered it's more about tearing down, tearing down the fears, tearing down the insecurities, tearing down even pride, tearing down a lot of these things so that we can build. And so I found myself purging a lot of things that I was carrying that there was no reason I Should carry, you know, there's no reason I should carry all that. And that was freedom, and I loved it. That felt so different to me.

Marisa Shadrick [00:13:25]:
And I guess you would align with this, with freedom, there's happiness. So for sure, for sure. And I did not want to be in bondage to fear anymore. So that just started a whole new life of accepting things and knowing that, because I know I will do my best no matter what it is that I'm doing. And even in copywriting, you know, that was the last thing, the furthest thing by, from my thought, even writing or copywriting. Because when I was in school, for some reason, my parents are immigrants from South America, and I was very shy. They put me in remedial English from, like, grade one or two, and that carried all the way through high school. So I thought I was dumb because I was in remedial English, and I thought the last thing that I should ever do is write because I was in the dum dum class for English.

Marisa Shadrick [00:14:16]:
Right. And here is the very thing that I do as part of my career in my business is copywriting. It's amazing the things that can get in the way of something that is really part of our destiny.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:14:31]:
Yeah. It's so true. And I appreciate that you're actually bringing this up with regard to your upbringing, because we frequently look back and like, was that actually something I had control over, or is that some decision that somebody else made for me? But we frequently then can change the path of how that decision turns out. And it doesn't mean that what you've been dealt with is stagnant. You maybe need to think a little bit and, like, how can I make the best out of this with what I have right now? And we don't need to buy expensive equipment to start a podcast or hire a publishing house to write a book. I love that you brought up your writing in your diary or that you joined Toastmasters. All these are like simple tools. I call them petite practices that you could pick up and really own your skill and kind of building from there.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:15:29]:
And it does not necessarily mean that you're launching your book tomorrow, but step by step, because you're taking action. You're going to see that the pages will grow, that you're going to become more confident with your speaking, that maybe your podcast is reaching consistency, it's reaching more audiences, and that's really where the power is, is in that consistency. We all play the long game, and those overnight successes are far more rare than building where you want to go. And just Keep going for it.

Marisa Shadrick [00:16:00]:
Absolutely. And I think too, as I continued to grow and understand who I was, where these things came from, untangle all that mess, I really protected what would go into my mind. I don't have to accept what culture says about certain things and I don't think anybody has to. We can determine how we're going to interpret that. Like the idea of success. I was thinking about that a lot. What is success? Right. It's not to me, it's not a destination and it's not your identity because look how many successful people that are very successful just have broken lives.

Marisa Shadrick [00:16:39]:
So what is success? And so for me, I had to really define it and sit down and say it's not a destination because I don't want to think I can't have success today because it's somewhere in the future, somewhere five years, ten years from now. So it's not a destination. It's not my identity either. And so I realized that every day when I make those moment by moment decisions to be courageous and do the things that maybe I don't feel like doing or to do things that are selfless, those little moments when I make those decisions, that's success to me. So we can have those multiple points during our day when we're practicing success and at the end of the day we can feel good and we can feel satisfied that we had a successful day. So that's what I love. And I think that we need to protect our minds from what everybody says in culture, what this is and what that is. I don't need somebody to define what certain things are for me anymore.

Marisa Shadrick [00:17:38]:
That was huge growth for me because I just accepted what everybody said. Right. And I try to live up to everybody else's standards, but I think especially if you have a business of your own, you've got to make a lot of decisions. So I think it's good to question things. You don't have to be a right rebel, but you can question things. Why do I believe this or why am I doing this or do I believe something differently? So I don't know if that's happened to you, but it definitely has happened to me.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:18:03]:
I think the more you start feeling comfortable with just being right, the more you become in tune in saying what your opinion is or you become curious about learning other things, the more others will align with you and people that don't, they will just not right. I mean, that's the beautiful thing, that you're actually more attracting your tribe, so to speak, and they will come to you because they appreciate who you are and others that don't resonate it. And that's totally fine. But you will have to be okay with the fact that that will be fine. And I think that we frequently just worry too much about what others think where in reality really it that should not really matter to you at all.

Marisa Shadrick [00:18:51]:
It gives other people the encouragement to have a voice.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:18:55]:
Exactly.

Marisa Shadrick [00:18:55]:
We need everybody's voice, not just a few, but everyone has opinions and a voice. And I hope it encourages them to use their voice, to use their opinions. Because a lot of times when people are starting a business, it's really taking their knowledge and their skills, the experiences they've had that are unique, that somehow they want to take all of this and create this online business. All of that is unique to them. So they need to be able to feel comfortable sharing and having a voice. And I think it's beautiful because it creates such diversity and it also differentiates them from other businesses.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:19:33]:
Couldn't agree more than innovation and entrepreneurship professor. So where can the audience get in touch with you? What's the best way of reaching Marisa?

Marisa Shadrick [00:19:42]:
They can simply go to my website, Marisashadrick.com and I've got free resources there if they'd like and they can find out more about me or connect with me and they can just go to Marisa and it's 1 r 1 s m a r I s a Shadrick s h a d r I c k dot com and I'm always on LinkedIn so if they want to reach that way as well, that's a good way to get in touch.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:20:08]:
Well, thank you Marisa for being here today to the audience. Maybe share a little bit about what your fears are. If you want to pop those in the comments below or reach out to me if you listen to this episode and there was something that particularly resonated with you or maybe empower you and keep going. I look forward to connecting more and of course, as always, stay happy, healthy and keep hustling along. Thank you.

Marisa Shadrick [00:20:34]:
Bye bye everyone.