Trust Your Intuition

Sandy Vo

Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey
Podcast for Entrepreneurs

1/25/2021

Sponsored by findcourses.com and findcourses.co.uk

Also sponsored by Cereal Entrepreneur

The Inventive Journey

Starting and growing a business is a journey. On The Inventive Journey, your host, Devin Miller walks with startups along their different journeys startups take to success (or failure). You also get to hear from featured guests, such as venture firms and angel investors, that provide insight on the paths to a successful inventive journey.

ai generated transcription

ot of noise in in the world there's a lot of different coaches and and books and self-development things telling you what you should do or shouldn't do and while some of that might be helpful sometimes what it does is it just brings your mind into multiple different directions and there's so much conflicting information that you don't know what to trust or believe and then you try one thing and then it brings you down one path and then you're kind of going back so it's it's creating more space to trust your own intuition and um know that you know your intuition science might call it you know quantum physics spirit we'll call it you know trusting your soul or what your soul messages are but it's that inner voice trust that to guide you along the way you feel it in in the lower part of your belly it's that gut feeling right like trust that and that's what's gonna lead you to your greatest inventions [Music] hey everyone this is devin miller here with another episode of the inventive journey i'm your host devon miller serial entrepreneur that has grown several businesses in the seven and eight figure companies as well as the founder and ceo of miller ip law where we help startups and small businesses with their patents and trademarks and if you ever need help just go to strategymeeting.com and grab some time to chat with me now today we have another great guest on the podcast sandy vogt and uh sandy i think if i remember right and she could correct me if i'm wrong i think has heritage and um is vietnamese indian uh african-american i think i hit all of them all right there we go um but beyond you know beyond uh heritage um wanted to or she always wanted to do her own business so she started uh going down the college trap as well graduated got a communications and marketing degree um and then went over to work for some startups i think it was with meditation startups um started to get a bit burned out with doing some of that so she did her own meditation and now um lives in the or lived in two worlds for a bit of time and she'll get into that as far as doing a salesperson on the one hand and being a relaxed person teaching meditation on the other hand and then had some um things go on with the sales trip that she'll dive into and decided to go over to be a meditation teacher more full-time as well as to grow businesses and do podcasts and all sorts of things and even doing better than uh what she ever did with sales so i probably killed the introduction but that was my best attempt and uh shandy will correct all of the places where i messed up but with that welcome on to the podcast sandy that's a great attempt thank you thank you i appreciate it so let's dive into it a bit so give you a chance to correct all the things that i slaughtered or hopefully at least gave or had some of the details right um but give us a little bit of background so you went to you started out college always wanted to do your uh own business but then got caught in a bit of the college trap so maybe picking up from there yeah you definitely you definitely hit a lot of the spots and the one part though is that meditation actually helped me to change the programming that that i had experienced so i think today on this this podcast i love to talk a lot about external programming and doing things that we think we should be doing so college was one of those things for me so growing up as a daughter to two hard-working immigrants i always felt like i had something to prove and i think we all feel that in some sense right we have something to prove to society or to our parents who want us to do really well and so uh for me i i went to college because it's a thing that i thought i should be doing and um i did all of that but you know i experienced this sense of feeling so lost while i was in college i was like here i am embarking on this path to define myself like i'm i'm about to get this degree and i'm i'm discovering who i am i'm parting a time drinking a ton and doing all the things that college students are doing and and the more that i study and the more that i explore the more lost i become and i'm like is this is this what life is supposed to amount to um and that journey of burnout eventually led me to meditation where i started to rewire all of what i call external programming and external programming is just doing things the way that society has taught you to do versus listening to your own authentic truth and what is coming through for you so meditation kind of helped me to to come back home to that and you alluded to a lot other things that kind of happened throughout that journey too but i'm sure we'll uncover that later on as well so you did that so no and i think that was great so you went to college you kind of went to trap you did finish the degree i think if we talked right you did still even if you were trying to figure out whether it was for you you figured hey i'm already in this i might as well finish it up and have that as at least for lack of a better word a fallbacker to have something that you can point to if needs be type of a thing but then he graduated and he went i think was to sales first is that right you kind of went into a sales job kind of having those two things in parallel yeah so when i when i graduated i you know it wasn't like i had a job waiting for me i think we we think that we believe that if you go to college like you're supposed to walk out like a like a queen and you've got jobs waiting for here and it will rain from the skies and everybody will be collaborating to hire you right right um and that's that's really what i was expecting but i learned very very very quickly that that was not the case and um i started getting into sales because what i found about sales is that i could still be my own boss so it was a self-employment opportunity and i was in environmental sales and um i was knocking doors and the thing that i loved so much about this is that i was doing it for something that i believed in which was you know environmental health but the other thing that i love so much about it is that it really strengthened my character the the times that people would reject me the the times that people you know either wouldn't open their doors or open the doors and say something that you know was because they're skeptical as to as to why you're there and um the way that i was able to work with energy through what i do within my own meditation practice and shift somebody's mindset about something within 30 within 30 seconds sometimes a minute and then be invited into their house and just have a warming conversation with them and connect with them and and help them to see the bigger mission of of getting environmental friendly and installing solar on their home um showed me a lot about that path and so i was like okay i could make this work i can teach meditation and honor the this this vehicle that has really helped me to understand myself more deeply beyond what i thought that i was or the identity that i kind of um thought that i was attached to and so i'm like in this feminine this very um relaxed nature i'm working with i'm i'm teaching classes to other college students and doctors and um you know physicians baseball players and that was one part of my my identity and then my other part was i was this rock star saleswoman who you know i was top charts and sales within the whole um nation and knocking doors and you know climbing up to the charts and then i started noticing the friction that was happening from living in those two worlds and i thought that in order for me to be successful i had to either only do the only do the sales job and make money that way but i couldn't live in my purpose and make money which for me my purpose felt like teaching meditation and and helping others to reconnect back to their sense of purpose and um as i started exploring those two realms you know i don't know about you or you know where where your belief system falls when it comes to the universe or energy or religion or anything like that but i think we often feel like it has to be carparamentalized that you can't embody all all of that which you are and so uh i i started to i started to realize through being stubborn and not listening to what my intuition was telling me through obstacles um and and eventually something you know kind of traumatic that happened to me one day was i i felt this this calling this this inner voice you know sometimes you just hear that voice deep deep within when you have those quiet moments of solitude and you kind of hear things a lot more clearly it was that subtle inner voice i was telling me it was time for me to start teaching meditation and honor that as my path but i wouldn't listen to it and i would seek for permission from the outside world and it wasn't until one day before you dive in not to cut you off by means but so what what was it you know because you kind of mentioned you have these two worlds right and i always look at salespeople as high energy i don't know aggressive maybe aggressive but you know certainly self-confident high energy go get them you know the things and then on the other hand i always think of and maybe it's completely wrong but meditation is relaxed and you know you peaceful and you listen to your surroundings and so you know kind of conflicting and so what was it that was you you know you talked about you know you didn't want to i don't know leave the cells you know you felt like you shouldn't or you you know you kind of tried to ignore that inner voice what was it that was kind of holding you back was it more of as you mentioned kind of feeling like you needed to be in the box you were told or is it more of hey this is a stable job and i don't want to leave it and you know i don't know if i didn't do sales i wouldn't know what to do was it you know this i don't you know i don't want others to perceive me as you know something else or kind of what was that that held you back that's such a great question for me what it was was you know income like i had this opportunity as a young girl making you know six figures at 22 years old um i had this incredible opportunity and i think to leave that to the outside world would seem dumb and like stupid and illogical like to be doing that you know um and so for me what held me there was that it was it was bringing in money and this is another thing sometimes when you're on your entrepreneurial path uh there's a very big difference between cost and worth right like when you look at money and you look at what's truly behind it which is energy it it it might cost me what what it's worth for me in that in that moment of taking that job is that i get to make money like i get to pay my bills i get to have money coming in to um take care of my cell phone bills and the food in my fridge and all of that right that's that's what it's worth but then what it's costing me in that moment is not living in my purpose feeling like i'm waking up and not fully fully being authentic to myself feeling like i need to compartmentalize my life and be you know one one type of energy here but then be a completely different energy here and you can't hide that because there i can't tell you how many times i went into homes where people would be like is there something else that you do and or somehow they would just pour their life story and they would share with me more beyond that and i was more attracted to that to begin with and so there's a difference between cost and worth so in that moment i really had to reevaluate and ask myself okay well well what is the true meaning behind this money and what is it really doing for me what what is it worth right like is it is the money worth um is it only is it worth lied in just paying the bills or is it more than that like can i be a vehicle for more than that and then at the same time what is it costing me so once i started looking at that i was able to make easier decisions and one i think because i think building on that because i think that regardless of you know what is the pull between because i think even an entrepreneur or startups and small businesses people generally it is difficult if you have a good job a good income and you're saying hey i'm making good money i'm able to live the lifestyle i want but i really want to do this over here and this is really what i'm drawn to you know you always have a bit of that tug and pull and for everybody that's different some people you want to be your own boss some people want to have their do it their own way sometimes they think they can do better but whatever it is it is always that kind of that leap or that you know jump across the chasm because you don't know if you go do the thing that you're passionate about and that you want to do whether or not it's going to work out you know what you're doing right now is going to work out or at least you'll have the income but you don't know if the other thing will but what is interesting and chatting you know i think we're on episode 145 or so i can't remember which one we're on but most of the time when people do make that jump they're more successful they make more they're happier than when they were doing their other job and so they make the jump and then they're always i wish i'd done it earlier because i make more and i'm happier and there's a better circumstance so maybe diving now back into your journey which is so you were kind of having this tug and pull trying to figure out what you should do which or which path you should take having living in two worlds and then you started to build up and then i interrupted my apologies the uh the catalyst kind of for what maybe pushed you in that direction or decided to finally make the jump or kind of or go to towards meditation and leave the sales world yeah i'm so glad you interrupted because that was a really great question um yeah i think sometimes and i'm sure you've had a lot of guests share this on your podcast as well where it's that moment of pain it's like the lowest of lows and lows it just strikes you with a bat and where sometimes you need that in order to wake up to your reality and to listen and so for me unfortunately um that happened in a way that uh it finally whacked me in the face and really woke me up uh one day i knocked on the door of one of my referral clients and the result of that was sexual molestation and it was something that i just had no idea that was coming it was in a very wealthy affluent neighborhood broad daylight and it's just you you just it's just like how did this even happen um i just got into the space of almost shock and i ended up booking trips and and traveling for two months um didn't work because it was just it was a very a traumatic experience for me and through the two months of being in more quietude and not you know deepening the wound by forcing myself to go back on the doors i realized that this was this was god's way or the universe's way of speaking to me because i wasn't listening and um if anything it taught me uh that the intuition that i have within my my body there's so much wisdom and knowledge there and sometimes like when you don't listen to it these experiences happen to really wake you up and i woke up all right and i remember towards the end of december of i believe 2016 when i sat down with my district manager and i gave him my notice um you know to to leave my leave my job and then i started my business from there and like you said that was a really hard decision to make because i was walking away from huge growth opportunities i was you know i was i was also i had this opportunity where they would relocate me um you know for twenty thousand dollars right and it goes back to that same thing that we talked about before of okay like cost and worth what is this costing me if i if i choose this and what what is this worth to me right um because that's going to look different and money isn't always it isn't always the the catalyst it's just the um it's the energy behind it and so when i finally made that leap and transitioned into starting my own business first of all the the prize i guess that i received from that or the gift the gift i should say that i received from that was the sense of just inner peace just knowing that like that it's like this you know when you've made the right decision when you not not only it's not a wave of relief that you're feeling because sometimes the relief that comes in is really just your ego um making a decision because it's afraid it's that peace that you feel in your heart and your mind and your body and everything just feels aligned and you're like okay this is exactly where i'm meant to be the second gift that i received from that where that people just started gravitating towards me that are people that i would want to be working with without me even going out there and promoting my services which i found really interesting to to kind of observe and then the third thing was now i have a vehicle where i can express my my meditation practices and put it as my business and so let me dive in just one question to that and first of all you know sorry to hear on the the sexual harassment stuff that is certainly never a fun experience and i wouldn't wish on anyone so you know but it sounds not to say that it's a positive i mean at least it gave you the catalyst to turn it into something positive to really pursue what you wanted to do now give me an idea when you decided okay you know i'm this is my catalyst this is what i'm going to pursue what i want to pursue i'm not going to live in the two worlds and be pulled you know feel like you're pulled apart was that you know one day you know i decided i'm going to leave sales and i'm going to go meditation full-time was it over a period of time did you set it up over six months or a year kind of how did you make that transition to say hey i'm gonna go do what i want i'm not gonna live in the world where first of all people aren't respecting me and then second of all you know i feel like i'm kind of too different or getting pulled apart how did you make that transition yeah great question it definitely is not a transition where it's like it's a moment that comes up and suddenly you take action right away and um if for me it probably took me a whole year you know to like literally wake up and go to work every day not enjoying what i was doing or not feeling like i was living in alignment with what what i was meant to be doing and you know if you're in a full-time job right now and you want to transition to having your own business you probably know what i'm talking about like you probably have that letter written already that two weeks to kind of leave your job and it's just been sitting there and you're thinking about it and you're like making up how you're gonna have the conversation with your boss in your head but you're not taking the action yet and so that was pretty much what i was doing for the entire year and of course i was holding on to it until all these these events started unfolding to kind of lead me in that direction and so you have a choice you can either choose to honor that calling right now and take the action to back it up and and and do the hard thing have the hard conversation or you can just wait but when you wait just know that there will be something that unfolds in your life to wake you up and shift you out so that you can honor you know that path that's unfolding for you and really that's how a lot of the world's greatest inventors and millionaires were born no and i agree and i you know for me it was so i worked at you know some large law firms i got burned out in the sense a little bit different story but you know it's always interesting the commonalities everybody has a different journey but they all there's some you know keys that are the same i was working for a large law firm making good money working tons of hours getting burned out didn't want to do that and i also thought hey i want to do my own thing i think i can do i think every entrepreneur thinks they can do it better than everybody else otherwise you would never do it right if you thought somebody else could do it better then you say they should do it and so i'm saying hey i think i can run my own firm better and it was kind of the catalyst of you know how many how long how many conversations i had with my wife how many times i think about doing it before i actually jumped in and decided hey you know i've got enough of it in place it's not a for sure thing but i i'm gonna make the leap and then you're a lot happier a lot more successful and it goes a lot better so it's always interesting to your point i think there's always catalysts that people are saying i'm going you know wake up i'm going to do it and yes i've been thinking or planning this for a long time or just going to make that transition and that shift to what we really want to do so now you take that maybe a question for you take that oh go ahead i want to speak to that a little bit um what really helped me in that time was realizing that everything was a means to an end and everything is temporary so when i went back to that i realized this job that i have right now is a means to an end so if i know that my ultimate purpose is to teach meditation to high performers then right now i can go to work and i can make the money put in my savings account right so i saved a good amount of money as a runway for me to start my business and that helped me to keep going until i couldn't go anymore so i think that always helps to go back to that thought of everything is temporary this is just a means to an end it's not forever and i think even to your point is also you have a plan of hey i'm going to set this much money aside and when i get here i'm going to just pull the trigger and so you kind of now that way it's not quite as scary of hey i'm just going to quit my job one day and i don't know what i'm going to do or how it's going to work out we say here's how i'm going to do it but then you stick to the plan you save the money you put it aside and you say okay i'm here i promised myself i was going to do it let's go so now you make that so you put that money aside you keep going for you know about a year and then you get to the end of that you know how you make the leap you make the jump and start going to meditation doing you know growing the business doing other you know avenues and whatnot how was that how did that go for you was it everything you dreamed was it perfect did this launch perfectly was it a rocky road was it ups and downs was it pivots or twists or how did it go for you it's such a great question so fun to talk about right um i remember the first time that i put something out there it was a beginner's meditation course and it was literally beginner's meditation that's what it that's the name of the course and i was like so many people are gonna hop on this we're living in a stressful time and and all that stuff and i remember when i launched it crickets were chirping and i had one person that was my friend that enrolled into the program and you know what i started learning about business is that i was like holy crap my business is my spiritual practice my business is the vehicle for me to know myself a little bit more because it pushes your it you get to meet the edges of yourself that you don't get to meet if you are comfortable and getting paid a nine-to-five job or knowing where your income is going to come from and so i started learning more about um first of all myself but then i started learning more about marketing in general and this is when my degree really came into place so i started to kind of um understand where people's minds were at and the levels of consciousness that we all are at right so there's three different levels of consciousness there's the unconscious mind the conscious mind and the super conscious mind i realized that most of the people that i was talking to were in an unconscious they were mainly performing from an unconscious state and so when they hear things like beginners meditation it's like what's that it kind of turns them off they don't know they don't know what it means there's a lot of kind of negative mainstream connotations around meditation and so i realized okay if i change my my wording if i said if i called it gifted from chaos to clarity now how will people respond to it and when i changed it gifted from chaos to clarity i started attracting mental health counselors and business owners and high achievers that were looking that were living in a place of chaos that were trying to find clarity in their lives now they don't know that the underlying thing is meditation that's going to be the tool to help them right and so it took me kind of going through that it was it's probably about six months where i was going through that that whole process until i launched the program and then i filled it um and it was sold out with my first round of my course so that took me about six seven months to kind of eventually get there no i think that's interesting because in the sense that you know first of all you had the runway so you could figure it out you know you built that in for yourself but then you know as with almost all businesses yeah initially when you're going to launch you have kind of in your mind's eye how it's going to work out what it's going to look like and then you meet reality and very seldom is reality the same as what you have pictured in your mind and so even as simple as you know how you brand it or how you approach it such that people are saying you know meditation is where you just sit there do you go home i don't know what it is but that's always what it's picture on for tv for me but you know getting the better message across of how this is beneficial this is why you do it and as simple as calling it something different such that people remove the or the connotations or the things that they have pictured or what they've been taught on television so and then i think it's awesome what we talked a little bit about before is that you know you take that six months you start to fill up classes you start to build in and by the end or by today i guess not the end but by today you know you're doing better or making more money and being more successful than you were in your sales job yeah not only that but i think success is something that is defined differently by each and every person it's unique to you and your path right and i've learned for me that the ultimate um peak of success is is peace having that inner peace and i've said multiple times that i'm a successful woman because i have so much peace in my heart and it's actually that piece that allows me to even observe the the income that comes in and what it does for me and the ripple effects that it does for my team that i have now that i built right um and how that changes their life and so you know for me it's become so much more than just the money that comes in but it's it's this this road to kind of knowing who you are on the path and that's what i find so um powerful about this of being innovative and inventive and like you know being being willing to go against the grain is you learn so much more about yourself and when you learn those things about yourself and you um define what success means to you that's your greatest gift to the world right and and that's really what it gets to be you know and i'm i certainly agree with all that and you kind of hit on one note but it kind of brought to mind as you know my mantra is always you know money has diminishing returns in the sense that you know i always laugh at people say you know you can't you know money doesn't buy happiness but if you never have any money and you're always eking out a living living hand to mouth or don't know where the next dollar is coming from you're not it's going to be hard to have a happy life but by the same time once you hit enough you know you can do or get here to provide for yourself you can have your living as you need then money starts to become a less of a having a less return and doesn't have the same return in in happiness and joy and that's where i think it pushes a lot of entrepreneurs a lot of people saying okay i've got enough money i can do the things i want to do money is no isn't the object it's the other things in life and that can be in the forms of you know following your passion having time for family raising kids traveling whatever it is but it allows you to do the things you want to do because you you find out that money is no longer the thing that you focus on because it doesn't have that same return yes but then it's what's so fascinating is because you're not focusing on it more of it just comes in right because you're focusing on the energy that's behind it and i love what you talked about because it's just like a relationship just like the relationship devon that you have with your wife or the relationship that i have with my fiance it evolves over time and you know speaking back to the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey i was charging 50 an hour and i remember the first client that i had i remember her coming back to me like a week or two weeks and two weeks later and just saying how much her life has changed how she's been able to sleep better and how she's been able to mend the relationship with her partner and then make more money in her business and i was like wow here i am i don't even have enough money to pay my telephone bill not to mention buy toilet paper like you know and that's when i realized the scarcity that was in that and and and how i was diminishing my own value by not charging enough right so that's when that's when you really start to create a new foundation around money and what that means to you because if i for me growing up with immigrant parents there was this hardwired belief that you had to work hard in order to make more money and then there was a ceiling that was kind of there as well because you can only work so hard um so i really had to uh i felt afraid of success because of that and the fear of success is very subtle a lot of people starting their own businesses there's a fear of failure that's probably like the main most prominent and obvious fear but most of us don't even realize the fear of success in that oh what if i make more money than my family has ever made what does that mean how are people going to treat me how are my relationships going to change and that's a very subtle one and i learned that through the relationship that i have with money and how it evolved over time right and now as we wrap up and not to cut you off as we wrap up towards the end of the podcast there are always so many things that i wish we had time to talk about there's always so many fun conversations and rabbit holes that everything i'd love to chase down but given that we try and keep it at 30 minutes i'll jump to the last two questions i always have at the end of the podcast because those are always fun as well so the first question i always ask is along your journey what was your worst business decision and what did you learn from it my worst business decision i would say not believing in myself you know just just charging very low and operating from a scarcity mindset and what i learned from that is that you are worth so much more and you get to define what that looks like and money is an energy exchange so the more that i work to prioritize my energy which probably doesn't make sense for a lot of people to rest more you know and do more of what lights you up the more that i do that the more that my desires will come into my life so that's really what i learned about you know charging more no and i think that that that certainly at least makes sense to me so yeah now the second question i'll jump to that we i always ask is if you're talking now to somebody that's just getting into a startup or a small business what would be the one piece of advice you'd give them create enough space so that you can listen to yourself your own intuition because there's a lot of noise in in the world there's a lot of different coaches and and books and self-development things telling you what you should do or shouldn't do and while some of that might be helpful sometimes what it does is it just brings your mind into multiple different directions and there's so much conflicting information that you don't know what to trust or believe and then you try one thing and then it brings you down one path and then you're kind of going back so it's it's creating more space to trust your own intuition and know that you know your intuition science might call it you know quantum physics spirit will call it you know trusting your soul or what your soul messages are but it's that inner voice trust that to guide you along the way you feel it in in the lower part of your belly it's that gut feeling right like trust that and that's what's gonna lead you to your greatest inventions no i think that that that's some great words of wisdom and certainly people should take to heart well as we wrap up people want to find out more they want to use your class they want to or participate in the in the meditation or what was the name of it from chaos to clarity is that right nope it's prosperous school self-realization okay sorry and sorry i messed up about the name there that was the old that was my first program yeah okay at least i did completely miss it but people want to find out more about the classes you teach they want to be a client they want to reach out to they want to find out more they want to be your next best friend any or all of the above what is the best way to reach out to you connect up and find out more yes well we actually just created a whole new online experience we wanted a sanctuary for people to kind of retreat to because the online space can feel very overly stimulating so you can find all of this information on sandyvo.com that's where you'll get to kind of experience um the online space and really everything that i teach uh and graphs the program join the program or listen to my podcast prosperous the podcast if you want to dive in more on your journey all right and i think that sandy s-a-n-d-y and then last name vo was for bo right all right well i definitely encourage everybody to check out sandyvo.com find out more about the course about how to get clarity in your life how to be more prosperous via the prospero prosperity your prosperous school and everything else you have going on now thank you for coming on it's been a blast it's been a pleasure for the other listeners on the podcast if you ever want to share your journey we'd love to have you on tell your story just go to inventiveguest.com and apply to be on the podcast if you're a listener make sure to click subscribe so you get a notifications all the new awesome episodes come out and also make sure to give us a rating so that other people can find out about the podcast but last but certainly not least if you ever need help with patents or trademarks reach out to us at millerip law go to strategymeeting.com we're here to help thank you again sandy and wish the next leg of your journey even better than the last thank you so much devon thank you for having me English (auto-generated)