The Customer Who Changed Her Business Forever

If a client changes his purpose, it may disrupt your work and schedule. This is especially true in the private sector, where you are dealing with deadlines and profitability; This can be a challenge that is not always easy to navigate. You, as a leader, must deal with it; therefore, see it as an exciting situation, as one of learning a new way that sets new expectations, and new ways of delivering value. Welcome that shift because leaders succeed no matter how difficult a path may be.

The first year of my new bakery we got hit by the wild fires raging in Southern California. I had to shut down for several days and I was terrified for our survival. I donated cakes to a local high school shelter and, a few days after our bakery reopened, a firefighter sat quietly at the door as I attended to the line. He approached and asked if I was the owner. When I said yes he began to tear up and told me that an elderly woman who lost her home in the fires would not eat, drink, or sleep. She sat in the corner, despondent. He said someone brought in one of our cakes and it was the first food, and smile, he had witnessed from her. In that moment, I realized that I was not in the food business, but the people business.

While living in Los Angeles, California, in my early twenties I almost gave up on writing. I sought elementary school teacher opportunities. This is when my father said, "You were born to be a writer. Do not give up." I listened and never looked back. He was right. I feel fresh and new whenever I write and happy. Now, I have a repertoire of many, many stories. They have built upon the years and each one is special. I almost lost faith but thanks to my father, I am still writing twenty years later and I feel in my heart that creative writing is what I want to do all my life.

One conversation with a reader changed the way I understood the reach of bibliotherapy. She told me that for the first time, a book hadn't just helped her escape her life, it had helped her return to it with more compassion. Since then, I've stopped thinking of books as an intervention and started treating them as a relationship, building every offering around reflection instead of recommendation.

The most influential feedback I ever received came on my first day of working for the WWE after graduating college when my boss simply said, 'Never sacrifice your integrity.' Those five words have stayed with me throughout my career and became the foundation of both my leadership style and the values on which I built Spotless Organization.

The experiences that have shaped me most weren't always the ones that went according to plan. They taught me to listen, adapt, and never be afraid to rethink the way I'm doing something.

When I first started working on my publishing business in February, I had 5 logos on 5 different social media platforms, none of them even remotely connected. I was running around in circles trying to start a kids publishing online website, a Youtube religious channel, a business marketing company and several others. My creative advisor was trying to help me blend all 5 companies into 5 merging, blended companies, although some were too unrelated. Finally we both realized this was ridiculous and too overwhelming. So I threw away all but one niche, narrowed it down and created a beautiful brand with a narrow positive focus. Straight ahead instead of in circles and everywhere. I can think and breathe and focus. Thank goodness!

One client changed the way I viewed remote work forever. During a challenging time in their life, they reached out for support and guidance. Through virtual communication, I realized that meaningful connections and positive impact are not limited by distance. Their trust and appreciation reminded me that great service is about listening, understanding, and being present when people need you most. That experience strengthened my commitment to helping others with compassion, professionalism, and dedication every day.

Early in my private clinical practice, a client made remarkable progress after nearly ten months of weekly sessions. During one particularly poignant meeting, he became emotional, sharing that he had never envisioned a life unburdened by chronic anxiety and depression. It was during this conversation that he disclosed something profound: Prior to initiating treatment, he had been actively contemplating suicide and had denied these active ideations on his intake assessments. Over eighteen months of dedicated therapeutic work, he achieved transformative gains and was eventually able to transition out of care successfully. While I recognized his clinical needs, hearing him articulate the depth of his pain and the life-changing impact of our work together profoundly reshaped my perspective. This experience served as a powerful reminder of the hidden weight many clients carry, reinforcing my dedication to my purpose as a clinician and the sacred trust placed upon me within the therapeutic relationship.

Like many writers, I was inspired by Julia Cameron's book, "The Artist's Way". Writing three pages of journal notes every morning in what she calls, "morning pages" really changed the way I processed information and organized my day. Just being able to get thoughts, any thoughts whatsoever, out of my mind and onto the page, allowed me to move into the day with a lighter, more even keeled approach to the tasks ahead and my feelings about it. I gained confidence and clarity this way.

One of the most influential people in my work was not a client, colleague, or mentor in the traditional sense. She was the first person I ever met who also had Dissociative Identity Disorder, while attending a survivor retreat in 2008. What struck me first was how plainly she spoke about her diagnosis. There was no apology in it. No attempt to make it smaller or more comfortable for anyone else. Then the next day, she stood in front of an entire group of strangers and talked openly about living with DID. She shared that she does this for mental health professionals so she can reduce the stigma a diagnosis like this carries. It completely changed something in me. At the time, I could not imagine doing what she had just done. Standing in front of professionals and talking about DID felt impossibly vulnerable. I could not picture myself speaking publicly about something I had worked so hard to keep private. But she showed me that it was possible. Ten years later, as my friendship with that survivor grew and through her encouragement, I found myself doing the very thing I once believed I never could: standing in front of professionals, students, and other survivors and speaking openly about DID, lived experience, stigma, and what the mental health field can learn when it listens to the people it serves. She did not convince me to become a speaker that day. She encouraged me for many years pointing out the things I can do well. She simply expanded my idea of what was possible. That experience shaped the work I do now because it taught me something I still believe deeply: sometimes representation is not about seeing someone exactly like you. Sometimes it is seeing someone do something you never thought you were allowed to do and realizing, for the first time, that maybe you

During the first day of my Educational Technology program, one of my professors shared a quote that has stayed with me ever since: "The purpose of education is peace." Over time, I've found so much meaning in those words, and I've embedded that belief into the way I approach my work. Peace can look like finally having that aha moment after struggling to understand a concept. It can be gaining the confidence to speak up in a room where you once felt unsure. It can be learning how to strengthen your résumé and realizing that the career you've been working toward is actually within reach. Sometimes, peace is simply having greater clarity about what you know, what you're capable of, and where you can go next. I've realized that this has become the foundation of my career. Through Learning & Development, I get to create spaces where people can learn, question, reflect, and grow. I bring peace by starting conversations that need to be had, bringing forward perspectives that may not have been considered, and helping people make sense of what once felt unclear or out of reach. That is the kind of influence I want to have not simply being the loudest voice in the room, but helping people leave the room with greater understanding, confidence, and possibility than they had when they entered. For me, education has always been about more than knowledge. It is about what becomes possible when understanding brings peace.

The customer who changed my business forever was me. For a long time, I assumed coaching was the natural direction for my work. Build a program. Create a cohort. Guide people through a process. Support them as they work toward a different outcome. Then I had to admit something to myself: I didn't want to build a traditional coaching business. It wasn't because I didn't care about the people I worked with. It was because so much of the outcome depended on what happened after our conversations. I could identify what I was seeing, ask the questions, provide a framework and point to what needed attention, but I couldn't execute for someone else. And I realized that wasn't the kind of work I found most satisfying. I wanted to find the problem. I wanted to examine what was happening beneath what someone could already see, identify what might be contributing to the outcome, and provide something they could actually use to address it. That realization changed the direction of my business. Instead of building around traditional coaching, I began building around analysis, interruption and application. It eventually influenced how I approached my work with individuals and how I began developing my work for leaders and organizations. The corporate side made the distinction even stronger for me. Organizations make business decisions. There is a problem affecting the business. Something isn't working as expected. Before another solution is added, I want to know whether we're looking at the right problem in the first place. That is where I do my best work. Sometimes the customer who changes your business isn't the person who complains, asks for something different or gives you unexpected feedback. Sometimes it's you. And sometimes the most important feedback you receive about your business is finally admitting what kind of business you don't want to build.

The person who influenced and changed my mind, more than anyone else, is my mother. My mother worked as a recruiter and as a result, was constantly in contact with others. Phone conversations are a lost art; I fear it's becoming extinct. Most of my childhood memories were of my mother on the phone, claiming that you could never get more personable than her. That moment, that snapshot of my mother, more than anything else, taught me how to be me in front of a stranger, which, more than anything else, is business.

In 1995, PaineWebber (Now UBS) acquired Kitter Peabody, which was the asset management arm under GE. It was a huge industry shake up and PaineWebber was showing its prowess. The New York Post captured the acquisition perfectly on its daily page 6 cartoon of the day. It depicted Kmart buying Tiffany's as Kitter Peabody was seen as superlative as Goldman Sachs, if not more so. During the onboarding process, I made a technical error for Kitter Peabody's single largest Financial Advisor partnership. It would require a minimum of a 24 hour hold while millions of dollars sat uninvested. It had the potential to cause a six figure loss for our single largest advisors in our firm's largest acquisition of assets in history. Word on the street was that these advisors, Mark and Tom, were ruthless and cutthroat. My coworkers advised me to do the "blame the tech" approach. But that left me and my scruples uncomfortable. Therefore, I picked up my landline, where I couldn't even run and hide!, and I explained my error and apologized to Mark. We both sat in silence after I explained the situation and he proceeded to thank me for my honesty and told me to never carry debt. From that moment on, we were fast friends and they were my Financial Advisors for years. Integrity, honesty, respect, and kindness will open as many doors and build as many relationships as any college degree you can acquire and the former are free.

I did a book reading of "My New Home and Me" at my adopted daughter's elementary school. When the guidance counselor saw the book she said, "I want a copy. I could have used this book yesterday to talk to a child about diversity acceptance." I was overjoyed. "My New Home and Me" is about children moving to a new home that is very different from their own with new family members. It highlights families that are multiracial and multicultural. It encourages foster kids, adopted kids, kids in blended families, and kids in multiracial and multicultural families to accept change plus promotes empathy in their peers. I want children in any family configuration to know that they are valued. In addition, I want to encourage children to show compassion and embrace diversity when a new child joins their family. "My New Home and Me" shows children that learning about new cultures, accepting new friends, and showing kindness is a wonderful way to live. In "My New Home and Me," children learn that "the thing that makes us friends is what we have inside."

Being able to share my story and use my experiences to help others is deeply important to me. I learned that personal experiences of loss can create a deeper capacity for compassion and connection. When I returned to counseling work three months after experiencing a personal loss, I connected with a client who was grieving the loss of her husband. Our shared experience of grief helped both of us heal in meaningful ways. That experience made me a more compassionate and effective counselor because I could genuinely relate to clients experiencing grief and major life changes, whether from divorce, the loss of a loved one, business difficulties, or other significant transitions. I value authenticity, compassion, healing, personal growth, and using my own experiences to make a positive difference in the lives of others.