IAM2249 – Entrepreneur Helps Women to Break Through Their Breakups

00:00 - 00:14

Dorthy Johnson: And I came out the other side of that with really deciding that my purpose on this earth for this iteration is really to help women through these pivoting yet painful moments of their life to make it an experience of a lifetime rather than an ending of a journey.

00:15 - 00:40

Intro: Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO podcast.

00:41 - 00:50

Gresham Harkless: Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Dorothy Johnson of Dorothy AB Johnson.com. Dorothy, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:50 - 00:52

Dorthy Johnson: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

00:52 - 01:21

Gresham Harkless: No problem. Excited to have you on. And what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Dorothy so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Dorothy at Dorothy AB Johnson specializes in coaching single women between 25 to 30 who just went through a breakup from a financially stable relationship and now want to find financial stability on their own. She has her master's in industrial organization psychology and a certified life coach with the Life Coach School. Dorothy, are you ready to speak to the I'm CEO community?

01:21 - 01:22

Dorthy Johnson: Yeah, I'm so excited.

01:22 - 01:28

Gresham Harkless: Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was just to hear a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

01:28 - 01:56

Dorthy Johnson: Yeah, awesome. Sounds good. So about 2 years ago, my relationship of almost 7 years ended over a phone call when I was out of town 1 time. And then when I went to go pick up my stuff from the house we had just moved in together, a month later, he was already dating someone else. And so that was a really hard experience for me and very heartbreaking and probably 1 of like the most painful but also pivoting experiences of my life. And I had really kind of, at that point, I had really kind of planned my

01:56 - 02:26

Dorthy Johnson: life around him and our kind of our life together and really built that up. So when that ended, I just felt very kind of like lost, betrayed, and very much heartbroken. And so that experience really catapulted a number of life events that really changed me for the better. I had stopped drinking alcohol, I completely like turned it around in my fitness realm and I started modeling. I started doing all of these things that I wanted to do, like travel around the world, things like that. So I started, I almost kind of like revamped my life and

02:26 - 02:55

Dorthy Johnson: started from scratch. And it was very scary at first, but it turned into 1 of like the most beautiful things that possibly could have happened in my life. And at the same time, I had kind of gone down the road of self-help. And I came out the other side of that with really deciding that my purpose on this earth for this iteration is really to help women through these pivoting yet painful moments of their life to make it an experience of a lifetime rather than an ending of a journey. And I really want to help them

02:55 - 03:01

Dorthy Johnson: make the life of their dreams and empower them to break through their breakup and not just survive it, but really thrive from it.

03:01 - 03:14

Gresham Harkless: That makes perfect sense. And obviously sorry to hear you had to go through all of that. But like you said, it kind of sounds like by you going through that, not only have you been able to empower yourself, but now you're reaching back to also help out and empower others, which is pretty awesome for you being able to

03:14 - 03:17

Dorthy Johnson: do that. Yes, exactly, Exactly. It all

03:17 - 03:17

Gresham Harkless: happened for

03:17 - 03:17

Dorthy Johnson: a reason.

03:18 - 03:27

Gresham Harkless: Yeah, exactly. And so now I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear like how you're helping to support these women that might be going through the breakups and what are some of the things that you're doing to support the clients?

03:27 - 03:59

Dorthy Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. So as a life coach, I really just focus on, you know, helping the women like break through their breakup. I offer one-on-one coaching, typically in the form of a program where we have weekly content and concepts that we cover, as well as I assign them homework to focus on for the week. And then their one-on-one coaching sessions with me are really to get down to their actual specific examples that they're going through and apply it within their life. And so it's typically through those one-on-one coaching sessions where we're able to have major breakthroughs as

03:59 - 04:27

Dorthy Johnson: well as they're able to like ask their questions on the concepts and things like that. I have a weekly vlog as well as a blog on the website where you're able to get all of that content for free. And then I offer a number of free resources. We just actually created something called the Breakup First Aid Kit, which is super fun. And that's kind of like a 7 day email series, kind of just coming from a breakup, what do you do? How are you gonna handle it? And it almost just jump starts you into exactly what

04:27 - 04:36

Dorthy Johnson: I think that you should do based off of my previous experience, as well as my previous clients experiences. So I love doing that. It's almost like I'm a breakup coach.

04:37 - 05:00

Gresham Harkless: Yeah, that's what it sounds like. And I love the name, you said the breakup first aid kit. Yeah. Yeah, because a lot of times, anytime you go through breakups or any type of difficulty in life, sometimes you feel like you're alone and it helps to be able to know that you're not you're not the only 1 that's gone through that, but also that there's other people or things you can read or whatever resources that kind of help you kind of go through. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And

05:00 - 05:06

Gresham Harkless: this could be what you feel kind of distinguishes you or sets you apart. Do you have an example for you or your organization?

05:06 - 05:34

Dorthy Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. So I really teach my clients to self-coach themselves. So even though I'm a coach, I'm teaching my clients to self-coach using a tool called the model. And this model was created by a woman named Brooke Castillo, but so many of us are really raised to believe that our feelings are caused by the circumstances and people around us, such as, you know, I don't know if you've ever heard this when you were growing up, but like, oh, did Sally hurt your feelings? And things like that, really. But the premise of the model is that our

05:34 - 06:05

Dorthy Johnson: feelings are caused by our thoughts and really our interpretation of the words being said to us or the circumstance that we're in. So your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings create your action and your action creates your results. Meaning that no 1 or any circumstance can ever really make you feel a certain way and you're fully responsible for the way that you feel and the results in your life. And when you learn that you can really generate any feeling in the world to generate any result that you want in your life, your opportunities then become limitless.

06:05 - 06:32

Dorthy Johnson: So I teach my clients that model and how to properly use it and effectively self-coach themselves through different experiences throughout their life to really take that responsibility back. And so they learn to treat the root cause, which is our thoughts, rather than just treating symptoms, which often lead to temporary results or no results at all. So for example, if I don't know if you've ever experienced a breakup, but like for myself, and

06:32 - 06:32

Gresham Harkless: I have,

06:33 - 07:00

Dorthy Johnson: right? In previous breakups, we like, I don't know, I used to have friends that being like, oh, let's just go out and have a drink. Let's do this. I know for myself, like I was in so much financial trouble, like understanding how I was going to live on my own and things like that, that I just opened up a credit card and tried to deal with it in a number of ways. And I was constantly changing my action and looking for a solution outside of myself when all I had to do was really turn inside and

07:00 - 07:30

Dorthy Johnson: look at the thoughts that were creating my feelings. And I was personally creating all of that pain, as well as those negative results in my life. And once I understood that and started using the model to adjust that and understand that those thoughts were a choice and I got to choose whatever I wanted to think, then my feelings started being different and it moved away from like betrayal and loss and hurt and pain to being grateful for that experience, which also led to new results in my life, such as building this business and everything like that.

07:30 - 07:39

Dorthy Johnson: So it was so great. And so I really, I think that's my secret sauce is really teaching my clients to self-coach themselves using that model that treats the root cause rather than the symptom.

07:40 - 08:03

Gresham Harkless: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I love, you know, I heard you say it a couple of times the word empowerment, because I think that's 1 of the biggest things. Because like you said, a lot of times, you can't really always control other people's actions or control circumstances, but you can control your thoughts towards those actions or how you react to them and kind of sounds like so. It kind of sounds like that's what you kind of help as you say, the clients coach themselves to some degree so that they understand that, you know, they can

08:03 - 08:09

Gresham Harkless: make that switch or they can cope in a different way when, you know, a breakup happens or anything might happen bad in life.

08:09 - 08:38

Dorthy Johnson: Exactly. And that's exactly it. We 100% can never control what anyone else does or what they say. Like that's totally them. And so being able to self-coach yourself through situations that are hurtful, such as, I don't know, for myself it was like, I had a lot of thoughts around like, oh, how could he do that? How could he date someone so soon? How is that okay? And finally, when I changed that thought that was driving so much pain for me, I changed it to like, who am I to say what he did was wrong? Because clearly

08:38 - 08:52

Dorthy Johnson: it happened for a reason. And clearly it's led to all this amazing travel. It led to me becoming a model. It led to me building this business. Who am I to say that was right or wrong, which creates a feeling of gratefulness versus all the pain that was being caused by my own thoughts.

08:52 - 09:06

Gresham Harkless: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I haven't been through a breakup or 2. It definitely can be something that takes a lot from you. But to be able to understand that that didn't necessarily happen to me, it happened for me. And that helps you to kind of repel yourself towards the parts that you can appreciate in your life.

09:07 - 09:08

Dorthy Johnson: Exactly. 100%.

09:09 - 09:20

Gresham Harkless: Awesome. Awesome. And now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an apple book or a habit that you have, but it's something that you feel makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

09:20 - 09:46

Dorthy Johnson: Yeah, I love this question. And you say 1, but I'm going to give you 2 answers because I have to. So meditation is my first 1. And just because that's become a daily practice for me for over 2 years now and it's 1 of like the most pivoting things that I have done in my life and just building that habit around meditation has been so helpful for me but there's so many resources out there that I wanted to bring something a little bit different here where I want to talk to you about scheduling And I think

09:46 - 10:16

Dorthy Johnson: this is like something that gets overlooked very often and so easily. But I literally schedule everything in my life. So like my downtime, my getting ready time, the time it takes me to tidy around the house, sleeping. And by doing this, you always know when something's going to get done. Like you specifically have a date and a time in which something's going to be completed. And you have the ability to like at the end of the day, you're able to like lay down your head and be like, oh, I worked hard even if I didn't get

10:16 - 10:44

Dorthy Johnson: anything done, I know that I worked hard because it's all mapped out and it's all laid out exactly as like when it's going to get done. And it also helps you like constrain and always keep your values and priorities at the top. So if you have like a new project that comes on board, you are able to easily recognize that you've chosen that and you know when exactly it's going to get done and what might be pushed because of that. But you're actively owning your schedule, which I think is just so important. And so it seems

10:44 - 10:56

Dorthy Johnson: to be overlooked by a lot of people where I'll have people come to me being like, Oh, I don't have any time. I don't have any time. And I'm like, but you do please tell me like exactly what you've done for the past 24 hours. And like, let's discuss that.

10:56 - 11:18

Gresham Harkless: Yeah, it makes sense. And I think a lot of times probably when you put it down on paper or electronically, you probably get an idea of how many hours you have and how you can kind of manage that time. But I love the fact that you talked about too, making sure even not just your work hours, but also your me time or your time that you're going to work out or whatever it might be, you put that into your schedule and then you can, you know, if you want to add in a new project, you just

11:18 - 11:20

Gresham Harkless: have to figure out how to move the time.

11:20 - 11:47

Dorthy Johnson: Yep, exactly. 100%. And it's even like when you schedule your downtime and the other times that like sleeping and things like that, it also helps, at least with my clients, I've seen it helps their mind adjust to, okay, I've scheduled this downtime in so that means I can be present. I don't have to be worrying about all these other things that need to get done. I can sit down and I'm present at the moment and really here with my family or my friends, whatever it is that I'm doing, I can be fully present and I don't

11:47 - 11:51

Dorthy Johnson: have to be like buffering with like worrying and things like that.

11:51 - 11:59

Gresham Harkless: Yeah, that makes sense. Because if you get it out of your mind and you have a dedicated time to take care of it, then you already know that like you said, you can be present in whatever you're doing.

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Dorthy Johnson: Exactly.

12:00 - 12:09

Gresham Harkless: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

12:10 - 12:41

Dorthy Johnson: Taking massive action. For me, I spent so much time in the beginning, just planning and strategizing. And you can do that all you want but until you actually do something you like aren't moving forward. So I think it's very important to take massive action towards what you're looking for and like learning by trial and error And I've also found that if you're not failing, you're not, you're probably not doing it right. Because the more you fail, you know, you're doing a lot more to get to where you want to be because you'll probably fail like 17

12:41 - 12:46

Dorthy Johnson: times before you figure out exactly what works. So I feel like that's probably my best advice.

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Gresham Harkless: Yeah, I love that. It's always like that. I think the parable goes like fall down 7 times, get up 8, as long as you get up and keep getting up, no matter how much those failures happen. If you're taking massive action, you might fail on a higher level, but you're doing so much action that you'll still probably be more successful than the person that's just waiting to take 1 action.

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Dorthy Johnson: Yes, exactly. 100%.

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Gresham Harkless: Awesome, awesome, awesome. And now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition for being a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Dorothy, I wanted to ask you, What does being a CEO mean to

13:16 - 13:30

Dorthy Johnson: you? I would say taking massive action to provide tremendous value to the world, but all at the same time, you're able to maintain like 100% alignment with who you are and who you want to be and how you wanna show up because you're your own boss.

13:30 - 13:44

Gresham Harkless: There you go, Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Just like along the lines what we talked about this whole entire time We just get an opportunity to be empowered to make your life what it is and control what you can control Which are your thoughts that she said that become your actions to become everything that manifests itself in your life.

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Dorthy Johnson: Yes exactly Mm-hmm.

13:46 - 13:57

Gresham Harkless: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well Dorothy I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know and also how best they can get ahold of

13:57 - 14:25

Dorthy Johnson: you. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, first off, I just want to say thank you so much for having me on. I'm super grateful for the opportunity to speak with you today and all of your listeners. And if anyone is going through a breakup or knows of anyone who's just recently gone through a breakup, I do offer free breakthrough sessions and you can get those on my website at www.dorheabjohnson.com. And I also have an Instagram if you'd like to follow that and my handle is Dorothy Johnson and it's 2-0. So it's D-O-R-O-T-H-Y-J-O-H-N-S-O-M.

14:28 - 14:34

Gresham Harkless: Awesome, and we'll have those links in the show notes just so that anybody can follow up with you. But again, I appreciate you Dorothy, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of

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Dorthy Johnson: the day. Awesome, thank you so much.

14:36 - 15:10

Intro: Thank you for listening to the I Am CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at imceo.co. I Am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.CO. Also, check out our IMCEO Facebook group. This has been the IMCEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.