980 Annie Yatch:

Wings of Inspired Business Podcast EP980—Host Melinda Wittstock Interviews Annie Yatch

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Annie Yatch:

If we close our eyes and think back to when we were 7 years old, some 7-year-olds watch their parents fight a lot, right? And if they watch their parents fight, or if they watch their parents go through a divorce, sometimes a little kid might think, oh my gosh, if I could be the peacekeeper, everything will be okay. And what that starts in that little kid’s brain is, I have to behave a certain way to get what I want. And almost always for an entrepreneur, the problem they’re solving goes back to what they experienced as a kid that built a superpower in them. And that superpower is an incredible skill that they’ve built then from that trauma patterning that they experienced as a kid. So almost all entrepreneurs that I’ve ever worked with, what they’re doing in their business is almost directly related to what they experienced as a child that was unstable or that they couldn’t control.

Melinda Wittstock:

When you look at the world around you, it starts to make sense when you realize the world is pretty much run by toddlers. Seriously. The traumas large and small imprinted on us from birth to age 7 are subconscious drivers that power what we do, how we react, and even, as entrepreneurs, the types of businesses we create. Annie Yatch is a counterterrorism expert turned executive coach who helps entrepreneurs break through all those blocks and limiting patterns so we can achieve what we really want.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m your host Melinda Wittstock and I hope all is well with you today—your business is humming, you’re feeling great, and you’re taking time to appreciate all your gifts, learnings, and successes. Entrepreneurship is a journey, and it pays to take a moment and just enjoy the present moment. Today on the show we’re talking about all the subconscious blocks formed in our childhood, and how they drive your entrepreneurial journey—for good and bad. If you’re new here, this is the place where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb. If you’ve been listening to any of the past 978 episodes, please help us get the word out about the show. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode. Tell your friends and colleagues, share the episode and leave a quick 5-star rating and review on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We really appreciate it. Thank you! 

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur and coach who began her career as a counterterrorism expert. Annie Yatch learned a lot about human behavior analyzing global threats, and there’s a fascinating overlap with the hidden patterns that block CEOs and founders from reaching new heights. Annie is the founder and CEO of ReinventionXO, and today she shares how the subconscious beliefs formed in childhood—especially for those who grew up in unstable environments—can both power our entrepreneurial drive and secretly cap our success, happiness, and even revenue ceilings.

Melinda Wittstock:

We get into how these invisible scripts shape our teams and cultures, and why overcoming them requires more than just logic—it requires deep emotional and subconscious work. She unpacks her unique approach, blending counterintelligence skills with practices like Huna and Ho’oponopono, to help leaders unravel old trauma and step into true authority, creating healthier businesses and relationships along the way.

Melinda Wittstock: 

Annie works with founders, CEOs and high-performing leaders who have mastered strategy and execution but still feel capped, exhausted, or disconnected. Whether you’re hitting a plateau, stuck in people-pleasing or burnout, or just curious how elite Navy SEAL mindsets can apply to your business, listen on. 

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Annie Yatch.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Annie, welcome to Wings.

Annie Yatch:

Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

I am so intrigued with your counterterrorism background and what counterterrorism tells you about the blind spots and roadblocks that CEOs and founders have.

Annie Yatch:

Well, it’s so wild. I really wanted to, you know, protect the country, make the world a safer place, make sure that, you know, families everywhere could feel like they had stability. And so, I originally went to Georgetown because I wanted to learn about international law and about counterinsurgency, counterterrorism. And, you know, back then it was around the time of you know, the Pentagon being hit, 9/11. And it really, because I lived in the DC area, I had so many friends who had lost, you know, family members or had gone through so much because of that, that it really just honed my desire to make the world a better place. So, if you look at it that way, counterterrorism isn’t that far from transformation, but it definitely seems like a big leap or a big jump. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so specifically in analyzing threats. That’s something that a CEO, certainly a paranoid entrepreneur founder, needs to be doing, I guess, all the time. I guess in a competitive landscape, I mean, there’s that, like what’s external to us, but there’s also kind of internal threats like our own mindset. All the time.

Annie Yatch:

All the time. Yes, that is so true. It’s so interesting to find that we became entrepreneurial or we became CEOs because we had a great ability to solve and fix problems. And we were really good usually at putting out fires in businesses. But what that actually told me was that there is a way of thinking that was developed from when we were younger that caused us to want to do those things. And often, you know, I always tell people, I’m like, it’s not really you running the business; it’s not your adult self. It’s actually the little 7-year-old self that decided something was true that got stuck in a pattern that it repeats over and over again.

Annie Yatch:

So, it sounds like it wouldn’t be something that would fit, you know, counterintelligence or counterterrorism. Assessing behavior and assessing the patterns, that’s really what got me even more intrigued on how I could assess the behavior pattern and the thought pattern of CEOs to get them out of their own way and to show them what they can’t see. And that’s sort of where I ended up going in business.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think it’s so true that a bunch of toddlers are running the world generally, right?

Annie Yatch:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so, the person who is a natural founder, entrepreneur, you create a business because you see a problem, you want to solve it. So, there was something going on in your life as a child that wired you that way.

Annie Yatch:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, tell me a little bit more about that. What are some of the things, what are some of the patterns that you’ve seen?

Annie Yatch:

So, you know, it could be something so simple as, you know, if we close our eyes and think back to when we were 7 years old, Some 7-year-olds watch their parents fight a lot, right? And if they watch their parents fight, or if they watch their parents go through a divorce, sometimes a little kid might think, oh my gosh, if I could be the peacekeeper, everything will be okay. If I act really happy in this scenario, everything will be okay. If I can just be this way, I can manage the conflict of my parents. And what that starts in that little kid’s brain is, I have to behave a certain way to get what I want. And almost always for an entrepreneur, the problem they’re solving goes back to what they experienced as a kid that built a superpower in them. And that superpower is an incredible skill that they’ve built then from that trauma patterning that they experienced as a kid. So almost all entrepreneurs that I’ve ever worked with, what they’re doing in their business is almost directly related to what they experienced as a child that was unstable or that they couldn’t control.

Melinda Wittstock:

Ah, so people who grew up in unstable environments are more likely to become entrepreneurs? 

Annie Yatch:

100%, yes. Unstable emotionally or physically environments. Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Okay. So that gives so much proof to the joke I make on this podcast a lot, that if you want therapy, just become an entrepreneur because it’s going to confront you with all the stuff that you, you haven’t healed in your own life.

Annie Yatch:

Um, I 100% agree with that. That is so refreshing to hear you say it because it’s 100% true. Like if, if you want to go through some of the biggest crucible acts of growth, it is entrepreneurship or your relationships.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s so true. My whole entrepreneurial journey as a serial entrepreneur completely bears this out. Like what you just described, if I think of my life as a child with two parents who, oh my God, I mean, they’re like opera characters in terms of their inability to understand each other or communicate. And one of the first things it did was turn me into a journalist, but also an entrepreneur around media and technology and around connecting people and around solving things like the fake news problem.

Annie Yatch:

Like, it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it, when you reflect now? Because it’s like, if you couldn’t— if you were around parents that literally could not understand, could not communicate, then you become a journalist because you’re like, I have to make sure the world communicates more effectively. I have to make sure that people can understand what’s going on. It makes perfect sense.

Melinda Wittstock:

That is so interesting. And so, when you’re taking founders through this, so you’re working with founders and CEOs and everybody gets to these plateaus in their business, or they have sometimes repeating patterns. Yeah. What we call these, these, these roadblocks, say, when you can’t, you, you, you progress as far as you can, but then something’s blocking you. Tell me a little bit about your process. And how you help them identify that. And also, but the thing that the problem is what made them an entrepreneur to begin with. So, like part of that, I guess, is good, right?

Annie Yatch:

Yep.

Melinda Wittstock:

But part of it’s not. So yeah.

Annie Yatch:

So, there’s definitely a part of it that is good, right? Which is the skillset that’s been developed over time, right? So, whenever an entrepreneur has something that happens when they’re young, and I say that trauma, people don’t like the word trauma, but I basically say that trauma is a perceived loss of control. If at any point in our lives, we have a perceived loss of control, it’s gonna cause a new pattern to form in our brain. We’re gonna create some truth that we think is real, that we’re then gonna live by, even if it’s not necessarily real and accurate. So, the process that I walk people through, typically the first time I meet someone or the first time they sign up to work with me, we will look at the lowest point of their life and then the highest point of their life. So that I can start to see the patterns that happen between the two. Now, most people will be like, well, there are no patterns. My low point was like one extreme; my high point was the other extreme. But there’s a pattern in the language of what they speak and what they say between those two points that show me the root cause of what has been holding them back.

Annie Yatch:

And for most entrepreneurs, right, they’ll drive towards a revenue number, and they’ll be like, okay, I’m gonna drive towards $2 million. They get to $2 million and for some reason they can’t get over $2 million or to $5 million or $10 million or $60 million, whatever that number is. And they’ll get stuck and they almost always get stuck because of the pattern that they cannot see. So, it’s my job to make sure that they see the pattern that’s been holding them back their whole lives in the very first hour of working with me. And then we work to unravel that and disconnect it from all the stories that they’ve built, sort of like that scaffold in their brain that makes that one root pattern or one root story true. So, we have to work on what is the root pattern and then how do we disable that root pattern from driving them all the time. We don’t want it to be something that drives them. We want it to be a skill that they’ve developed that they can pick and choose when they use for competitive advantage, but not to be something that’s driving 97% of their subconscious thought pattern, if that makes sense.

Annie Yatch:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, is the conscious realization of the pattern enough? Because you can have these patterns, you can be really aware of them, but you can still sort of be stuck in them. Like, like, what’s your process and how you actually do that? It’s easier said than done.

Annie Yatch:

It is. You know, most people, they always say that awareness is the first piece, right? So, if you can’t see the pattern, you can’t change it, which is 100% accurate. A lot of people, if they do their first call with me, they’ll have this massive awareness, huge breakthrough, and they’ll be like, oh my God, I’ve never seen that before. But then that’s where the work kicks in, right? Because when I always record that first call, because when a person leaves that call, they will forget 50% of what we talk about because their subconscious brain does not want them to remember. Because if you remember, you would immediately and forever change your life. And so, what then we have to start doing is looking at what are all the thought patterns and the emotions attached to that root trauma pattern, and how do we release those one after another, so your subconscious is not running 11 million data points every second on those thoughts and those emotions. So that’s really where my methodology starts, is we’ve got to identify the root. Once we identify the root, we’re going to start releasing all the negative emotions and all the negative thought patterns.

Annie Yatch:

And we have to search for those thought patterns, right? Because they’re not— it’s not something that you would naturally think, right? It’s much deeper than what you’ve been telling yourself, right?

Melinda Wittstock:

So how do you release them?

Annie Yatch:

Well, uh, thankfully I was introduced to this really incredible process. And, you know, I have a lot of methodologies that I developed on my own, but there is a process that is the fastest thing I’ve ever found to release these negative thought patterns and negative emotions out of the system. It goes back to an ancient Hawaiian practice that has 189 years of generational lineage, and that’s something that I’ve been trained in over the past 4 years.

Melinda Wittstock:

Is that Ho’oponopono?

Annie Yatch:

No, Ho’oponopono is a part of it, but it’s called Huna, H-U-N-A, and I’ve been training in that. In addition to, you know, as a, uh, somebody who coaches, I always like to be learning the next and greatest, quickest methodology to move people because as entrepreneurs we just don’t have time, um, for a lot of this unless it’s fast, focused, and very streamlined. This is the thing that I found about 7 years ago that really changed the game for a lot of my clients.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so, tell me about Huna. How does it work? 

Annie Yatch:

So, the basics of Huna, a lot of it, I mean, it sounds like Harry Potter’s school of wizardry, right? Like it basically is. Using the elements and the energy of the elements to move energy out and through the body. And it can be anything from light energy that you’re moving it through to air, fire, water, earth. And so, they use all the elements to basically help the body release things at a very deep subconscious level. So just like NLP or some of the timeline therapy processes that are out there, this works. I just find it works a lot quicker than when you try to logic someone through something, because as you know, emotion in the body isn’t something that you can logic out. And most entrepreneurs are very deep logic thinkers. And so, they’re like, well, I’ve thought about this for hours, and I thought about this for years.

[PROMO CREDIT]

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Annie Yatch, executive coach and founder of ReinventionXO.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Annie Yatch:

But you can’t logic or algorithm a way to release emotion from the body. And the emotional component is one of the most important pieces in releasing a trauma pattern. So, when you’re looking at the trauma pattern, you want to release it emotionally, you want to release it in and out of the body. You want to release it neurochemically, which is you want to change the way the brain produces dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin in order to uplevel the thinking to a new neural pathway. And then you also want to make sure that you address it intellectually. The intellectual piece is only one aspect of a four-pronged approach to releasing trauma. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

So that makes sense because we, you know, the, there’s something where our subconscious is tricking us into thinking that winning, or we have some sort of psychological safety in repeating these old patterns. So, we get attached to them even if we don’t want to be.

Annie Yatch:

Like, there’s exactly—

Melinda Wittstock:

There’s sort of a familiarity. So, this is all really deep rewiring.

Annie Yatch:

It is deep rewiring, yes. And I thankfully, I can see patterns so quickly in people that typically, you know, in a 30-minute session we can dial in, you know, what’s really going on. And most people have never had the chance to have that be reflected. You could be stuck in a process from when you were 7 years old, replaying it out in different contexts for 30 years. And suddenly you have one interaction where you can finally see it, we release it, and people will tell me, they’re like, the next day I woke up and I, my behavior was different. I didn’t naturally go to the same behavior that I used to repeat over and over again. So, the deep subconscious pattern is really what we’re targeting with the work that I do with Huna.

Melinda Wittstock:

And that’s so interesting. So, so how long does this process usually take and what, what are some of the before and after’s? 

Annie Yatch:

Well, what I try to do with clients is I try to make it a pretty quick process, right? Because I know as entrepreneurs we don’t have a ton of time to do all this personal reflective work. But if I can give a bunch of tools to the person over typically a 6-month to a year-long process, then they leave as almost completely different people who are generating a ton more in revenue. So, what I’ve seen, I’ve seen, you know, people go from, I can’t make more than, you know, $1 million to then launching their company to IPO status, right? I’ve seen people who are making the same $9 million mistake over and over again, stop doing that and generate $15 million in consistent, sustainable revenue. I’ve seen people who even come in at, you know, I’m making $300 grand, I’m just launching my business, and I’m looking to take it over a million, go from $300 grand to $2 million, right? Every person has their own revenue ceiling that is tied to their subconscious pattern. And if I help them resolve the subconscious pattern, they’re almost always gonna be happier, do better in their relationships, and make more money because now they’re able to see things that in the past would’ve been gaps that they would’ve naturally fallen into because they weren’t aware that they were doing the same pattern over and over again.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s so interesting that this often expresses itself in currency, in money, in terms of what your set point is. Is that just tied to how we perceive our own value?

Annie Yatch:

Yes, 100%. Or sometimes it can even be tied to, as strange as this sounds, to the relation you have with your parents and the amount of money your parents created. So sometimes, you know, like one gentleman I worked with, his father had only ever made $2 million. And when his father died when he was 15, it was so shocking to his system that he internalized the concept that he will only ever make the same amount of money his dad made. And so, every time he’d start to almost approach going over the $2 million mark, he would get horribly, horribly ill and would have to be admitted into a hospital. This happened for years and nobody could figure out what was going on. When he came to me, he’s like, I know I can make more than $2 million. I don’t know how to do this.

Annie Yatch:

He’s like, but every time I get close, I get horribly ill. What do you think is happening? So, we started diving into his subconscious and we, we discovered that he, as a 15-year-old boy, he decided not consciously, but subconsciously, that he could never make more money than his dad or he would die.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh my God.

Annie Yatch:

That was the story that had been running him at 11 million data points of his subconscious for 30 years. And the second we unraveled that story and helped him to work on those subconscious programs; he took his company to IPO status. So that’s where I get so excited because it doesn’t matter what your revenue ceiling is. If you do the work, you always make more money because you’re no longer being stuck in the misery of that old program.

Melinda Wittstock:

What’s so interesting about that programming is it doesn’t ever make logical sense. Like the sort of things that your subconscious tells you, like when you, when you hear it out loud, you’re like, that’s, that’s crazy. And like, when you become aware of it, we’re not even logical, right?

Annie Yatch:

When we’re 7 years old, every thought we have isn’t logical yet because the brain hasn’t developed.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, right. So, someone could be going through this pattern and it probably, it could exhibit itself in so many different ways. Like in these subtle self-sabotages, for instance.

Annie Yatch:

100%, yes. Or they’re gonna have a lot of imposter syndrome. They’re gonna have, what I see as well is they’re running the same pattern typically in their relationship and they don’t know it. So—

Melinda Wittstock:

Right, so even the team, even the type of team members that you attract.

Annie Yatch:

Yes, they’re gonna attract. They’re gonna attract team members that run the same, like the same neurochemical, neural pathway, which is the same trauma pattern. It’s wild. Like you get a team and every team I work with, I’ll be able to see in the executive team, oh, this is how they all sync up because they all have one aspect of the owner’s trauma pattern. And the owner will attract team members that have that same, whether it’s negative or positive, aspect or trait. But nobody really recognizes it until you sit down and you show them the patterning and how it all works. And then—

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, that’s so interesting how that goes through—

Annie Yatch:

How they scale. Yep.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. How that goes through an entire team. And we spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about team culture and how to build and motivate a great team and how to Create a diverse team, but align that on a mission and all of that. But like, actually, you could work with an entire team and whoever the founder is has probably exasperated the problem by attracting a lot of mini-me’s. Yes.

Annie Yatch:

And that’s what’s tough, right? I used to go out and do a lot of leadership training for companies based on— I worked with the Navy SEALs for a bit, and I backwards engineered the mindsets, the structures, the systems that help The Navy SEALs be some of the most elite performers in those high-risk environments. Originally, when I started, I started bringing that information out to executive teams. And what I found was you can train the entire team, but if that CEO doesn’t identify the root trauma pattern, he, he or she will consistently jump in, micromanage, throw the team off, create chaos, and it will really stagnate the team’s ability to grow more rapidly. And so that’s where, you know, I wish that only leadership training would have done it, but you really have to pair the leadership development with understanding the trauma pathways because that is the big game changer for all entrepreneurs.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, tell me about this transition that you made then, working in counterterrorism to deciding to, to, to do this for, you know, executives, um, and, and, and entrepreneurs. Well, that would kind of You’re going to laugh.

Annie Yatch:

You’re going to— I mean, it’s so funny to look back at our lives and to watch how the path develops. But I mean, I basically was told, they’re like, you have such a beautiful heart. Like, this is going to crush you if you go into this path more. And so, they’re like, you can’t lie to save your life. Everything in your face is just— it tells us exactly who you are. I was strongly encouraged by quite a different— quite a few different people that were already in the CIA doing a lot of work in that front that they’re like, you just, you need to do something that is for the good of people and at a much higher level. So, I really took that, took that to heart.

Melinda Wittstock:

You didn’t have the CIA poker face.

Annie Yatch:

Not at all. No, no CIA poker face. I just, I love people so much and I just think that it would have crushed my soul to have to lie or manipulate or manage people in a certain way. It just wouldn’t have worked for who I am as a human being. So, it was an easy transition. And the way I jumped is I jumped from working for the Defense Intelligence Agency and with Booz Allen Hamilton as a defense contractor into working with a bunch of Navy SEALs who were basically being sent all across the country to prevent people from cam-cording movies in theaters. There used to be a really big problem with this where people would go and steal the movie from the theater and then on a blockbuster weekend, release it and make millions of dollars overseas. And so, I got to work with 30 to 40 different Navy SEALs who are all retired, and we would send them out on these little mini missions to find the guys that were cam-cording in theaters and then transfer them to the police so that these people could be picked up and arrested.

Annie Yatch:

But because I spent so much time with this wide variety of really unique beings, I started asking a ton of questions and trying to figure out, like, how do they think so differently? And when you just talked about motivating A team in a, in a new way. What I discovered from the SEAL teams is that when they go to plan these elite missions, they aren’t planning an elite mission based on strategy or tactics. They all start with what is the emotionally successful future we all want to feel when this battle or this mission is complete. And then they build from that emotional successful future. And that blew my mind because I’m like, we’re really doing it backwards with our teams. If we could start with the team focus on, okay, we’ve got this huge project. What is the emotional feeling we all want to feel as we go through this process? And then at the end, that emotional feeling of us being successful, if we can use that to guide us, then everybody stays on task, stays focused, stays motivated at a much higher level. So that’s an example of something that I took from the SEAL teams, and I started training and coaching on that made a huge difference in the motivation of the team itself.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s fascinating. I remember reading a book a while back called Stealing Fire, and it talked about how the SEAL teams gave examples of sports teams, business teams, but it actually talked about SEAL Team Six and how they’re able to sort of read each other’s minds in like split seconds. Like, like, you know, because there’s no time on the spot to— like, if you have to think about what you’re doing in a situation like that, it’s like too late. Mm-hmm. Um, uh, so that’s interesting how, how the hive mind, I guess, got wired in a case of, say, an operation or a really risky operation SEAL Team 6 was on, for instance, and how they would, would be able to function at, at that level.

Annie Yatch:

I mean, their SEAL Team 6 is just incredible. I’ve only had the opportunity to meet with a couple of those gentlemen, but the, the ones that I have met are next level in the way that they can sync up their brains, their bodies, their response times. It’s just, it’s a whole different level of elite.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s fascinating. So, Annie, what was it about your life, like say you as a 7-year-old, that led you here, if you don’t mind sharing? Of course.

Annie Yatch:

I’m totally hell— so for me, and this is, you know, obviously I always say this because everyone worries about how their parents might, you know, respond to some of this. I had wonderful parents. But when I was a little kid, my mom had 3 of us. 3 girls under the age of 5 and a dog that she was taking care of. My dad was working. And one of the things that happened was when I was a little kid, my mom would say, hey, you know, help your sisters get their homework done. I’ll be cooking dinner. And we were all in the same room doing this.

Annie Yatch:

But for some reason, as a little 7-year-old kid, I decided that that meant that I had to take care of my sisters before I could have any fun. And my mom would always say, you know, once you guys have your homework done, then we can go have fun before dinner. But before we knew it, it would be dinnertime. And we wouldn’t have finished the homework completely. And so, we wouldn’t be able to have fun. And so, what I designed in my cute little 7-year-old brain was I have to make sure everybody gets their work done first before I can ever have fun. And so what that looked like was me being extremely academically rigorous, helping everyone around me make sure they got great grades. I also got great grades, but it was like, how do we as a team perform at a higher level and get more done together? So, I would not feel okay if somebody around me was struggling.

Annie Yatch:

I’m like, well, I’ve got to help that person get better so that we can all win together and then we can all play together and have more fun together. So that really drove my academic success the way that I, I think my work ethic, how I help other people, how I try to support other people. But if you look at that, that’s got a cap on it, right? You only have so many hours a day to help other people make their lives better. You really have to also focus on how do I make my life better?. And so that, that was a pattern that followed me all the way until I had built 3 businesses with my ex-husband. Now we had 2 little kids. We were bouncing back and forth between Florida and Park City, um, literally trying to do the best we could for all the people we were helping. And I realized I was miserable.

Annie Yatch:

I’m like, why am I so miserable? You know, from the outside, everything looks amazing. Like most people are like, oh my God, you have the most amazing family, the most amazing businesses. But I was miserable because I had hit the ceiling of that pattern. And so, I had to do the work with a coach of my own to figure out what that pattern was. And once I saw it, I could never unsee it. And then it became the journey of how do I make sure that pattern isn’t driving my car? And I am actually, as an adult, driving the car myself with all of the learning and all the wisdom from all of the years. So that’s just a little bit of the background.

Melinda Wittstock:

Interesting. So, so you sort of grew up being a people pleaser in a way, right?

Annie Yatch:

People pleaser, helping everybody out, all the things.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes. And that’s a very known pattern for women in particular. And you see that in business. And, the pattern recognition of this podcast and almost 1,000 episodes at this point where almost every successful female entrepreneur has had to overcome that, some version of people pleasing or imposter syndrome, the things that that push us towards perfectionism, which ends up being a block. It can come across in a business like you’re serving your team, which is lovely, but not holding your team accountable, say, or like hiring people to do things but not really being clear about what sort of results they should be delivering, or, or burning out. So many female entrepreneurs burn out. So, do you see certain patterns like that that almost every, like, woman entrepreneur or executive faces? 100%.

Melinda Wittstock:

Are they different?

Annie Yatch:

Are they different than men for the most part, or, you know, are there some— there are some similarities. There are definitely some similarities. But for most of the women that I’ve coached there’s actually, it’s an over-masculinized version of themself that they use in business to drive them forward. And because they push themselves to be more masculine than they naturally or authentically are, the people pleaser, the imposter syndrome, the burnout, the inability to get out of that, I call it survival leadership. Most women are in survival leadership. They’re not in true authority. And so, if you look up like, how do I, get out of being a people pleaser? How do I get out of imposter syndrome? You see a couple of the same things. You’ll see people say, well, you should talk to a therapist, you should be in gratitude, you should not people please, right? But there isn’t a lot that goes into here’s how we reprogram the subconscious, so you don’t do those things.

Annie Yatch:

And that’s why for me it was so important because I went through the people pleaser, I went through the imposter syndrome, I went through the burnout. I had to figure out how do I make sure other women never have to go through this once they identify the pattern. So that’s the, the side for women. For a lot of men, what they end up doing is they end up— it’s sometimes a self-worth issue. You know, specifically for men in real estate, I found that they either grew up with a single mom or a hypercritical father. And what that caused was it caused them to doubt their own value, doubt their own worth, to create sort of a version of this oppressor versus the oppressed. They had to create oppressors in their lives so that they can fight against something to drive them forward. And I call this a negative fuel.

Annie Yatch:

So, for a lot of men, there’s a negative fuel from something in their past. For a lot of women, it goes into thinking they have to become this over-masculinized version to be successful. And that drives them even deeper into people-pleasing, imposter syndrome, and burnout. So, it’s a little bit different. But you know, there is some overlap depending on, you know, the person that I’m working with, but it is very custom.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I mean, there’s so much socialization around this too, where women in business have to fit or feel that they have to fit themselves into these male patterns. Men have been in business for a good deal longer than women. It’s not that long ago that women couldn’t even have their own credit cards, couldn’t even open a business or even buy a house, right? So, we’re relatively new to operating business, and you have all these structural issues like receiving still 30 years on only 2% of the venture capital money. And so, there’s this pressure, or it feels like a pressure, to fit yourself into male structures. And so automatically that’s not authentic. So, I sense that there’s this moment in time right now where a lot of women are beginning to learn they can set the rules for themselves, that they can run a business in, in a different way, or a way that’s more authentic to them. Does that come up a lot for you as you, as you help people through— I love what you called survivor leadership— as you help women, especially through that, does it change the way they even think about business or their business structure? The structure doesn’t have to be as masculine.

Annie Yatch:

It doesn’t have to be as linear. Yes, it 100% changes how women think about business and how women think about themselves. Because if you think about it this way, if we’re not engaging in business as our authentic selves, then we’re not going to attract and magnetize towards us that which we deserve or that which we are available for, right? So, for women who have had to put— it’s almost like they put a shield up of their trauma pattern that prevents them from being in business as their authentic self. And men do the same thing. It’s just a different shield based on if you’re a woman or if you’re a man. And then it’s also a different shield based on, you know, the background of experience you’ve had in your life.

Annie Yatch:

But the more women strive to gain access to that authentic self and to listen to that authentic self, the more revenue they generate in business. The hardest thing, though, for women is we— women fail to invest in themselves to do this deep work. And they all— it’s the hardest thing to watch. Like, men without even a thought will be like, you showed me something that I have a blind spot around. I need to fix this. What do we need to do to fix this? And women will be like, ‘I don’t know if I’m worth that amount of investment in myself’. Right? So, it’s harder sometimes for women to get to their authentic self because of some of those blocks that happen. Somewhat naturally from the experience women have had in business up until this point.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Just, yeah, that willingness to invest in yourself. Yeah. And it becomes kind of recursive, becomes this sort of self-fulfilling thing.

Annie Yatch:

Like, if you can’t ask for and accept the help, then, yeah, most women can’t. Right. Most women have been programmed and conditioned that asking for is weakness. And men have been programmed with the same thing. So, what I tell all the men and women I work with is I say, when you ask for help, you’re actually allowing the other person to be on purpose in their life for you. If you don’t ask for help from someone else, you’re taking away or stealing their purpose. And so, it changed the game for me when I reflected on this, that, you know, we need to ask for help all the time from everyone around us. It’s not about being weak or strong.

Annie Yatch:

It’s about let’s make sure everyone around us is more on purpose, because then we all win.

Melinda Wittstock:

In, right? That’s an interesting thing, actually, because we feel sort of guilty, like we’re taking something. But actually, in allowing someone to help us, we’re, yeah, giving them the chance to fulfill their purpose.

Annie Yatch:

That really reframes it.

Annie Yatch:

Yes. And there are these consistent reframes that, you know, we’ve never heard of before. We’ve never been taught, like, in business We’ve never been taught how to build an incredible business while also maintaining an incredible connected marriage. So that’s one of the other things that I’ve noticed. You know, we aren’t trained to do these things. There’s a lot of learning there. And one of the other things I care most about is when couples are working together in business, they’re striving to create financial freedom and make millions together.

Annie Yatch:

But then the relationship starts to have cracks and issues merely because we’ve never been taught to build business and build relationship at the same time. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

Like this, this idea that, oh, you can’t have it all, right?

Annie Yatch:

Like you’re asking for too much in order to get to that next level of success. That’s not actually accurate, right? You can build an amazing relationship that builds your business because there’s more energy that’s positive coming off of that relationship.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Because there’s a pattern also that you see with people. If they have a big success in business, suddenly they have an argument at home or something’s going well in their relationship, but then their business sort of failed. Like, they, you know, are beginning a great new relationship, but then suddenly their business starts to fail. Like, it’s sort of a preset thing within them that they think they can’t have both.

Annie Yatch:

Correct, correct. And, you know, everything we see out in the world is trying to prove to us that we can’t have both, right? That success requires so much sacrifice. And so, as entrepreneurs, we get in this sort of this lie, a subconscious lie, that We have to suffer, we have to grind, we have to sacrifice in order to get somewhere. That’s not necessarily true, right? But that’s what we’ve been conditioned to believe.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. And the external world, of course, has a lot of influence on us. And I think right now, the anxiety that so many people generally are feeling just sort of about the world generally, I mean, there’s all this structural change with AI, but there’s also like, you know, this war going on and then tariffs and this and this impact. There’s so much fear generally around. And so how to operate at your peak when all that’s going on around you. Does this come up in your work?

Annie Yatch:

All the time. And, uh, that’s why the Huna work that I do is so helpful, right? I have some clients that once a week they all get on a group call and we process out fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, any of these big emotions that they’re experiencing because of how the world is. But what I try to remind people is your subconscious brain, because it processes 11 million data points a second, and your conscious brain only processes 40, we have to be so careful what inputs we put into the brain. So just as a quick hack for anybody listening, if you really want to drop your anxiety level, what you do is you decrease the inputs. So, across all, obviously, social media and things like that, but you decrease the inputs and you allow your brain to wire by watching only comedy. So, we want comedy that you watch and internalize to reduce the impact of the inputs in the subconscious. So, if you ever want to, like, say you’re in a moment of anxiety and you feel like there’s fear coming in, you immediately watch comedy for an hour straight and it completely helps to rewire and uplevel the neural pathways. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

So even if you feel like you should be an informed citizen about what’s going on, just like watch a comedian talk about it.

Annie Yatch:

Watch a comedian right after, right? You can be informed all day long, but you can control how you are informed.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Annie Yatch:

There’s got to be a structure and a process to controlling the inputs because, again, too many fear-based or negative inputs and all of a sudden what you would be making a decision on in business from a place of clarity and groundedness becomes a place of urgency and scarcity and fear. That’s actually the number one problem that I help people within business when they work with me is how do we get you out of this fight-or-flight mode, this urgency, because it’s a false urgency in decision-making, and how do we make your decisions a lot more grounded and calm? Because if you make a decision from a place where you’re grounded and you’re calm, everything that is potential for that to take off works on your behalf. There’s a lot that I do to try to prevent people’s brains from taking them in the wrong direction. And there’s a lot that people can do that isn’t, you know, it’s not a hard lift. It’s not a heavy lift. I mean, if we watch comedy at night instead of something that’s violent or drama-filled, we’re already rewiring the brain in a really beautiful way.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think it’d be so interesting because if you look at the foundation of any, any business and I look back and just really with laser-focused honesty in terms of any mistakes, say, characterize them that way in business. They’ve always been made when I was in a rush or I had that entrepreneurial false urgency, like, oh, I’ve got to get this position filled right away. And then you could make a bad hiring mistake or like this. And, and you’re an entrepreneur, I mean, you’re setting your own pace. Like, there’s nobody else telling you when your app— the day your app has to launch, or you’re right.

Annie Yatch:

But people create a lot of false urgency, and they create a lot of competition, right? And so, it’s always, well, I’m not moving as I’m not as fast as this person, or this person’s doing something different than I’m doing. And now I have to switch. If we can be connected to this authentic voice that is within our heads, which is sometimes hard to find with all the noise in the world, we actually set ourselves up for massively different decision-making, you know, especially if, if we have the right neurotransmitters and the right neurochemicals working in our brain for us. And that’s sort of that last piece of this whole equation is We also have to boost our neurochemistry to give ourselves the best chance at coming at everything from a calm and grounded place. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, Annie, how, how do people work with you and what’s the investment to work with you? Say they’re working you with you for a year, how, how do all your programs work?

Annie Yatch:

Well, typically each program is based on, um, you know, the revenue that their company’s generating, uh, because I like to make sure that it’s something that’s sustainable for them, right? So, we’ll look at a 6-month or a 12-month program. But what I’ve started doing now, because so many people have asked me to open up something at a lower price point, is I have something called the Authority Shift, which is a 90-day live coaching experience that people can come in and we can release all of the emotions, all of the thought patterns, in a 1-hour-a-week group session. It’s a very small group session, so there’s a lot of personalized attention. But that’s a way that I can help more people at a time, and that is a $5,000 point for the 90 days. But as an entrepreneur, that’s, you know, something you can write off in your business as a leadership development expense or a leadership training expense as well.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. And to work on— given that price point, to work on you one-on-one for a year is probably, you know, significant. I imagine you’re working with people who are already, you know, have pretty established business, not a startup founder scraping around for their investment, right?

Annie Yatch:

It’s usually entrepreneurs and, you know, business owners that are making over $1 million a year. My sweet spot tends to be people that are at the $5 million to $20 million mark. Those are people that I’ve helped the most over the years. But, you know, I’m very open. I’ve worked with billionaires as well to reset their mindsets. I’ve worked with, you know, I’m very passionate about working with women who are launching and starting their businesses to prevent a lot of the agony that comes from the first 5 to 10. Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s kind of where I was going. Because I think there’s a whole cadre. I mean, I, you know, somebody who has, you know, been in that whole startup grind from like, you know, like idea for a transformational technology to getting it to market, trying to find money or investment or whatever, that’s been my path. And you can get really stuck there where you— it’s so hard to raise money, especially now. And, and if there was some way of repatterning that at that stage, but those folks don’t have money because every cent that they have has gone into their business.

Annie Yatch:

Right. True. That’s why I do, I do a one call every month. That’s just an open free call where anybody who wants to can jump on it. It’s called the Win, Win the Boardroom, Win the Bedroom call. And anyone who wants to can jump on, it’s free. And I will help 10 people every time, whoever raises their hand first to help. Cause I realize, right? Sometimes you just don’t have the funds.

Annie Yatch:

You don’t have the ability to invest, but the most important investment is in yourself. So that’s why I try to hit it at a couple of different price points for people.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. Well, I think the work you’re doing is so important, and you know, you could maybe just take on the entire U.S. government for us. Oh my goodness, do you mind? 

Annie Yatch:

Yeah, well, I think, I think the reason why I haven’t even remotely gone back to the world of government, right, because that would have been what, counterintelligence, counterterrorism? It’s just the vibrational frequency of that work is so low in that space.

Melinda Wittstock:

And, um, gosh, yeah, it sure is. I mean, you could just see you can just see the results of that, right?

Annie Yatch:

That’s why I get so excited to help the entrepreneurs, because like entrepreneurs, so many of us are trying to make the world a better place. And if I could be part of one entrepreneur making a massive change in their relationship or their business that leads them to impact more people, that is the absolute best work I can do to support someone.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I think entrepreneurs have a lot more chance of actually doing that good work, as long as they don’t go to the dark side. You know, there’s, there’s some that are— there are some that, that aren’t necessarily making the world a better place. But yes, this is amazing. So, what’s the best way, um, Annie, for people to find you and work, you know, and work with you? Like, whether they have the, the cash on hand, right, to, to do the one-on-one, or they just want to get a little bit of your, your work with your, um, Win the Boardroom group or whatever?

Annie Yatch:

What’s the best way? The best way is, you know, you can send me a direct message through Instagram. My Instagram is @reinventionxo.annie. That’s a very easy way. I respond to all of my DMs personally. And, or you can also find me on LinkedIn. I have, you know, I do a lot of LinkedIn free trainings every single week. I typically do one that helps people get out of survival leadership and into more true authority. So, you can find me there as well.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Annie Yatch:

Oh my goodness, this was so beautiful, and I love everything that you do. So, thank you for all the support you give to the community and for everything that, um, you coach and teach. I really am thankful to be a part of it.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Annie Yatch is a transformational leadership and executive coach and the founder of ReinventionXO.

Melinda Wittstock:

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Melinda Wittstock:

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