Rosie Aiello staged an international escape after 25 years of violent domestic abuse – and reinvented herself within 4 years as an award-winning entrepreneur and best-selling author. Listen to her inspiring story, learn how to turn adversity into a powerful mission, and what it takes to overcome limiting beliefs and succeed in business.
MMelinda Wittstock: Rosie, it’s so great to have you on WINGS.
Rosie Aiello: I am so thrilled to be with you Melinda; I can’t wait.
Melinda Wittstock: Well, likewise, because I know that your journey has been a difficult one, and so many entrepreneurs get their inspiration from when things go wrong, and you are turning that, quite like an alchemist, into your experiences to helping other women. Let’s start there, what is the big mission?
Rosie Aiello: My mission, Melinda, and this is true; it’s like how things happen, but my mission, really now, is a global mission to help a million women and their children from domestic violence. And to help women, whether they are entrepreneurs, or professionals, wherever they are, to really reclaim their voice, their confidence, their own truths, so they can show up fully, and be empowered in this precious life that they have.
Melinda Wittstock: It’s so profound, because when you think of the chorus of the #MeToo’s and women that you didn’t even know had had these experiences, or lived through, you know all of us, really, I think have endured sexual harassment, but in many cases, you know much worse. Also in relationships, being, I don’t know, pushed down by the people who ostensibly love us.
Rosie Aiello: Yes.
Melinda Wittstock: What kind of impact does that have on us, not only as women but as women in business?
Rosie Aiello: You know, to me… Everyone talks about limiting beliefs. I think when you have been in an abusive situation, where you were dismissed, where you were discredited, where you were put down, where you were insulted, where you were belittled, you have limiting beliefs on steroids. Trying to dig yourself up and out of “Am I good enough, do I have anything of value to share?” You’re constantly questioning yourself.
Even to this day, I keep saying to myself “Well gee, does it really matter what I have to say?”
And people say “Oh yeah Rosie, you got a lot.” But I have to remind myself, because for almost 25 years I was told to shut up, and stop arguing, and stop saying this, and stop this, and stop that, so you lose your voice.
Melinda Wittstock: Yeah. You know you do. I mean, I had a very similar experience in my marriage, and when you’re in it, it’s hard to know that you’re in it. Did it happen gradually for you, that you found yourself in this situation?
Rosie Aiello: You know, like what you said in the beginning, it’s like, when you get married, you expect that person to love you, to respect you, to treat you with kindness. I lived in the Middle East, so I lived under political terrorism, and you don’t expect, if you’ve been captured by the enemy, you really don’t expect that person, or that camp to really treat you kindly. You don’t have that expectation, but you do when you’re married.
I kept thinking “Oh my gosh.”
You know, he kept saying, “You know, if you only did this better, if you only did this,” and I had worked in corporate.
“Okay, well I can charge up this, I’m a good performer, you know I’m going to be a great wife, I’m going to be a better wife.” And that’s, no matter what I did, it was never enough, it was never right enough, and I couldn’t figure it out. Before you know it, you’re under his spell, and his web, and your mind is totally spaghetti.
Melinda Wittstock: So, what you’re describing to me, personally, is very real and very raw having come out of a marriage that was quite like what you describe. You know, it starts out great, but yes, it was exactly the same. It’s like “Oh if you could only do this better, or if you could only do that, or if you could only… and worse.”
I recently ran into some people who knew me, you know I’m divorced now, and I’d like to think recovered from a lot of this, but I remember running into somebody who said “Wow, you know, Melinda, you’re like your old self again.”
Rosie Aiello: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Melinda Wittstock: I said, “What do you mean?” It was really interesting to see the other people who hadn’t seen you for a while had seen the impact of that, kind of, non-stop verbal denigration when you didn’t necessarily know the impact, at least at first, yourself.
Rosie Aiello: Exactly. I had friends who said the same thing to me, but you know, when you’re in the marriage you want to keep it together. Right? Then you have the outside pressures of saying, “Well you’re married for life, you have to compromise, you have to do this.” It’s hard at least it was for me, to discern what’s a healthy relationship, what’s not healthy? Shouldn’t I just keep working on the relationship? It must be me.
Melinda Wittstock: Right, it’s this “It must be me.” So all too often, I think we as women, we take this onboard and, you were talking about in corporate, being a performer. Like “I can do it, I’m really good, I can do anything.” You get on this, kind of, track of “Yeah, I can do it, I can do it better.” You’re running faster and faster and faster and faster, and still no result.
I wonder to what extent we end up replicating some of those relationships in business? If we’re not valuing ourselves, all that has to happen, is someone has to say “Hey Rosie, hey Melinda, do it better.” And we’ll jump up and we’ll say “How fast?” Without really questioning or without really understanding that we’re already awesome.
Rosie Aiello: Exactly, and I’ve worked with a lot of women in business, and even though I would be doing, sort of, per se, business coaching with them, there was still a huge chunk of “Yes, you are good enough, you are smart enough, by the way, you’re the managing partner of your law firm.”
Melinda Wittstock: Right. Exactly.
Rosie Aiello: [crosstalk 00:16:57]
Melinda Wittstock: Even at that level.
Rosie Aiello: Yeah.
Melinda Wittstock: Okay, so in my case it’s quite funny, because I think, to someone looking at me from the outside, most people, other than people who know that I went through this, would have no idea. What’s interesting is that you can be incredibly successful, you can have all these awards, on a serial entrepreneurial show, all these great accomplishments, but still inside feel that you’re not enough if you’ve had that constant refrain, I guess, in your ear.
Tell me, how did you get out of it yourself? When was the ah-ha moment where you said “Right, this is enough, I can’t take this anymore, I’m going to go leave, remake myself?”
Rosie Aiello: Oh this is quite a story, and sort of the topic of our memoir that I’m writing with my daughter. I lived in the Middle East, as I was mentioning before, and I started to… I was just really unhappy, I just couldn’t do anything right, but I have a daughter and I was never going to leave without my daughter, especially in the Middle-East where custody automatically goes to the father, before they turn major. My daughter finally came to me, because I had told her “When you’re ready, just let me know.” She was a junior at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, and she told me “Mom, get me away from my abusive father.”
Melinda Wittstock: Oh.
Rosie Aiello: Those were words I had been waiting for a long time. So, within four months, I planned the escape of our lives.
Melinda Wittstock: Wow. So this was more, this was not just verbal abuse it sounds like. This was-
Rosie Aiello: This was, it was primarily, it was verbal, it was psychological, emotional, it was financial. I mean, I have an MBA in finance, I did financial planning for corporate, but I wasn’t allowed to have… I could manage all the money. I talked to the Swiss bankers, and the German bankers. I could analyze the money, but nothing was in my name.
Melinda Wittstock: Oh my goodness.
Rosie Aiello: Yeah.
Melinda Wittstock: Oh, I’m so sorry that you endured all of that. I’ve got my hand on my heart right now, just feeling for that, how difficult it is, and at the same time feeling so grateful that you and your daughter found your way out of that. Not only did you find your way out of it, but how you’ve turned it around to help other women who are in your shoes now.
Rosie Aiello: Yeah, there’s not a day, Melinda, that goes by, I don’t look out the window and I just say “Thank God for my freedom.” It’s really a conscious feeling all the time, I don’t ever take it for granted. I’m a woman of action. I just plowed through my PTSD and my depression and just kept moving forward and how I could help women. Now moving even further into really empowering women, it’s like this huge passion now. That you are valuable, you deserve a good life, you don’t deserve to be a martyr, you have a life that is worth living, you are brilliant, you are smart, you don’t have to give anything up.
I just want to add one more thing, because we have the #MeToo movement, and what I’m talking about is a new hashtag called #IBelieveYou and #IBelieveHer as hashtags.
Melinda Wittstock: Oh nice.
Rosie Aiello: Because so much-
Melinda Wittstock: Well, I mean, we see just right now, in the news, it takes so much bravery for women to stand up. There’s not really much to win here in standing up, other than the one thing to win is to reclaim your voice.
Rosie Aiello: Yes.
Melinda Wittstock: But it does require a lot of bravery, because I think a lot of women fear retaliation, or in the case of very public cases, being denigrated all across the media. I mean, it’s not easy. So those are beautiful hashtags, say them one more time?
[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]Get somebody that can be your mentor, that you believe in and who shares the same values as you. #WingsPodcast #WomeninBusiness @RosieClearVista[/tweet_box]
Rosie Aiello: #IBelieveYou and #IBelieveHer.
Melinda Wittstock: #IBelieveYou and #IBelieveHer. Lovely. So Rosie, on this podcast obviously, it’s about female entrepreneurship, and I wanted to have you on because when women go into business, we take everything with us. We don’t necessarily compartmentalize. So if we don’t have this personal part of our lives, kind of, in order, it can really, obviously, spill over into our businesses. Because, after all, if you don’t value yourself, it’s very hard to create value for anybody else, which is really what entrepreneurship is all about.
When you work with women who are either climbing up the corporate ladder, or working as entrepreneurs, women who are starting their own businesses, or running consultancies, coaching, or all the different aspects… the types of businesses that women run, how much of the work you do goes really into this really personal thing, that you can almost solve a business issue by solving the personal issue?
Rosie Aiello: Oh My Gosh, Melinda, you just like, you hit the nail on the head. Right? That’s exactly what I’ve found. It’s like, the majority, the majority really is getting at these personal issues. Because they’re smart, they know this stuff, but it’s all these limiting beliefs, it’s all these doubts, and how it impacts you is like making decisions. Sometimes you have a fear of trusting others; you have a fear of trusting yourself. How does that show up? Not making decisions, not making the right decisions, not making decisions fast enough, being afraid of everything, not taking reasonable risks when you’re getting out there, creating content, making phone calls, all of that is impacted by their view of themselves and the value that they hold for themselves, and their worth, their confidence. It eats at them.
Melinda Wittstock: Yes.
Rosie Aiello: I hear it all the time.
Melinda Wittstock: You know it’s true, and what’s even worse though is the self-recrimination that goes on, especially, I don’t know if you’ve had this, but I have this a little bit, because I look back at myself and I think “How on earth could I have allowed myself, me, Melinda, to get into this…” I’m a strong woman, everyone tells me that I am, I mean, I am. How could I have allowed this; that I allowed myself to even be in that situation? So then you end up in that cycle of beating yourself up all over again.
Rosie Aiello: Yeah, this is a really good point that you make, and this is one that we’re really going to address in the memoir “11 Hours to Freedom”. The key to understanding this, “Why did I allow myself…”, well you didn’t really allow yourself. What happened is just like the metaphor of the frog. I don’t know if you… if you put a frog into hot boiling water, he’ll jump out. If you put a frog into cold water, and just slowly turn up the heat and slowly turn up the heat, then it slowly just simmers and then before it’s just mush.
What happens, when you’re in that situation, your brain, literally, your brain, the neurons and synapses in your brain changes. The frontal lobe, where you have your executive processing, changes by the stress, by the neglect and dehumanization that you’re receiving. You have, really, a lot of physical, physiological changes that are going on, and you are not that same person. So it’s easy now that you’re outside of it, or for other people to say “Oh why did you stay in?” But you don’t have the same brain as they do when you’re in it. People don’t realize that, and it’s easy to beat yourself up, but you were in your own way of survival mode. I was in my own way of survival mode, until I got out and got healing and everything else.
Yet, having gone through that and knowing that, when we get out, here we were abused and now we’re continuing some of the stuff, abuse of putting ourselves down still.
Melinda Wittstock: Yeah. That’s true, although what’s terrible is when we become our own abusers in that way.
Rosie Aiello: Yes.
Melinda Wittstock: It’s a terrible thing, because the more we’re self-critical of ourselves, in a way, it’s almost like inviting the universe “Hey, come join the party.” Right? So how we think, and what I’ve come to understand so profoundly, and this is true, and I see it with increasing power in my life… that you get what you think.
Rosie Aiello: And that’s why it’s so important for these women to really rewrite those stories. They weren’t true stories about themselves, they were stories that were fed into them so they literally got brainwashed. Right? Literally got brainwashed into believing and it takes time. You need to keep stocking more positive thoughts, positive stories, positive experiences, so that the other ones, the trauma and the bad stories don’t disappear, but they don’t become as prominent as they were before. So they’re not leading their lives that way.
Melinda Wittstock: Yeah, it’s so true. It’s interesting, on this podcast, with all the women I’ve interviewed, and also for my book, which comes out next year, hundreds of interviews with women and successful female entrepreneurs, and there are a number of things that the most successful have in common, and one of them is a very supportive partner. Someone who truly has their back, truly does want them to fly, genuinely, really supports them, increases their confidence. In addition to that a really powerful network, or series of networks, of friends and family that also have their back and don’t bring them down.
This is so crucial to women’s success, and so how does one either who’s been through this, variations of what you and I have been through, and recovered, or recovering from, and women who, fortunately have not had that experience, but still, to succeed in business really need to build these powerful positive relationships. What’s your advice for how women can best go accomplish that?
Rosie Aiello: Well, first of all, I agree with you a million percent of that, and to get out of this concept of doing it alone. “I can do it alone, I can do it by myself.” That’s such a detrimental strategy. You can do it in so many ways, you can get into a mastermind, you can go to networking events and start to meet women who think like you, and to really search those out, because you’ll find there are other women who don’t.
To be aware that not everyone thinks the way you do. To seek out… “I want somebody who’s supportive, I want somebody who’s a go getter, I want somebody who really wants a different… who wants to make a big impact in the world.” People who have these kinds of values and qualities, look for them, and then just say “Hey, how about we have lunch, how bout we start meeting a couple times over the phone and start supporting each other?” Seek out ways to be with those… I’m going to mastermind, I’m mini mastermind, I can’t tell you how many people I surround myself with, my support team is huge, is really huge.
Melinda Wittstock: Yeah, mine is now too, and I remember just going through, actually a really big part of my healing was one of my early entrepreneurial network groups. It was called NETCITO, and we would meet in a mastermind type scenario once a month, same people, kind of 8-10 people. We would all come with a business issue that we were working on, and the rest of the group would, in your twenty minutes, would question you on what the issue was, and help you come to the conclusion yourself about what it was in your business that you had to change, or improve, or whatever. It could be a hiring issue, it could’ve been like a culture thing, it might’ve been like “God, my sales isn’t going so well.” It could be many of those things.
What was fascinating is that every single person, the business issue was always a personal issue. Through that entrepreneurial group was where my, kind of, whole ah-ha moment came, of like the situation I was actually in, what it was actually doing to me and my business. And these other entrepreneurs were able to really help me start on my journey to heal and really get myself back. So it’s amazing when you have that support around yourself, like what it can do for you.
Rosie Aiello: It does. I think the other thing that’s really important is that they challenge the reality that you thought was. When I was married, I thought I didn’t have any other reality than the one he was presenting to me. So I just thought I was the wrong person. It wasn’t till I got out, and same thing with your business, when you think you’re alone “Oh my gosh I don’t know how to make a sales call I don’t know how to convert… whatever it could be.” You think you’re the only one that’s having the problem, then when you present it’s like, well everyone’s got the same problem.
[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]Just by knowing you’re not alone, just that fact alone, you relax and you’re ready to receive, and it’s like, you feel instantly better, just knowing you’re not alone. Even before you know what the answer is, it’s like it doesn’t even matter. “I’m not alone anymore.” #WingsPodcast #WomeninBusiness[/tweet_box]
Melinda Wittstock: Exactly. So that, therein lies the main reason that my mission for this podcast is for women to really hear each other’s stories and voices. It’s amazing how much we do have in common, and through that to really foster a way that we really do step up and help each other with all of these issues.
Rosie Aiello: Absolutely.
Melinda Wittstock: So how do some of these issues around confidence, say for instance, we’ve talked about husbands, wives, partners, that kind of thing, but where women are lacking in confidence for whatever reason, what are some of the ways, we’ve talked about networks and helping them, but what are some of the internal ways that you got your confidence back?
Rosie Aiello: It really was by, just taking one wobbly step. I can’t say it was… just one wobbly step in front of the other. It was really challenging for me, because I was going through pretty severe PTSD and depression, but it’s like “Dammit I got into this country for my freedom, I’m sure going to have it.”
Melinda Wittstock: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Rosie Aiello: I just kept trying and working at it and doing something and learning. Working with different mentors and seeing what worked for me, and what didn’t work for me. Stumbling, falling, and getting up and then thinking, “Oh, well, I’m not so bad after all.”
Melinda Wittstock: Right.
Rosie Aiello: Yeah, and just starting to feel better about myself, but it really is just… You can’t just say, “I want confidence.” Confidence is not something you want, you can only get confidence by doing something.
Melinda Wittstock: Exactly. Thank you for saying that, because I think it comes from being willing to fail and not taking failure as a failure. Taking failure as feedback, because, I mean… this is my entrepreneurial lens, and I joke often that if you want therapy, become an entrepreneur. Because the only way you can really succeed is to get these things in alignment, not only know your own true purpose, and who you are, but really develop that earned confidence and you’re an innovator, so you’re going to be failing all the time, because it’s a hypothesis until it’s not.
When you build a business, especially if you’re building a new product, or you’re creating a new market for something, or you’re disrupting a whole industry, or you’re doing a whole bunch of things like this. Right? You’re going to be failing, so you can’t take it personally, you’ve got to take it as feedback. You know what, when you overcome those things, that, I believe, is where really true-confidence comes from, but you got to start and you got to keep going.
Rosie Aiello: Yeah, and you have to just keep practicing. My own take on this word, failing, especially since I came back and started my business, is like, I really think this comes back to when we were school children, and the teacher would write “F” for fail. That’s when I think it got ingrained into our brains, because when you talk about the inventors and the entrepreneurs, no one in our industry really thinks of failing. They just think, “I’m just doing my thing,” you know? It worked or it didn’t work.
Melinda Wittstock: Exactly yeah. It either worked or it didn’t, like there’s no attachment to the outcome in that sense right?
Rosie Aiello: Right.
Melinda Wittstock: You have a mission, and you’re working on your mission… I like the sailing metaphor, because it’s impossible, for anyone who sails who’s listening, you know this, that it’s impossible to sail in a straight line because the wind keeps… You can’t control the wind, but you can control where your sail is. What that means is that you’re zigzagging back and forth, and back and forth, but you can still get to the destination.
Rosie Aiello: Exactly, because, you know, it doesn’t work, redirect. You go again. The only thing I would say failure is, is that if you give up.
Melinda Wittstock: Yes.
Rosie Aiello: That’s the only time there’s failure, otherwise you can just keep adjusting, and fixing, and monitoring, and tweaking, and everything else until it’s right. You do that forever, because there’s always something to improve and to tweak.
Melinda Wittstock: Right. So I think where a lot of people, and women in particular, have an issue, and in the corporate world we talk about the glass ceiling. One of my guests came on the podcast, she was talking in her entrepreneurship there isn’t a glass ceiling because it’s limitless what you can do, but there is a sticky floor.
As women, how do we get off that floor? Does it manifest sometimes as perfectionism? Where it has to be so good that we never really release the product, or whatever, it’s never finished? Or we procrastinate “but first I got to do that, but first I have to get this degree.” A lot of entrepreneurs, really successful ones, have no degree, or have no MBA, or they have no… Right? They’ve just seen an opportunity and found a way, or made one, and gotten there. All those different ways that I believe fear manifests. What are some of the ways that you see women get in their own way, and let’s break it down, your advice, for how they can get out of their own way?
Rosie Aiello: Well there are several of them. One, is like, the perfectionism that you talked about. This is a key one, because they don’t even realize that’s what they’re doing. They’re working on something, but they’re not getting any output on it. Then when you start digging down deep, it’s because “Oh, it has to be better.” They keep going into a vicious circle. So they hide behind perfectionism as an excuse not to go forward, because when they do that, that means it’s pushing them outside their comfort zone. So it’s that bump against the comfort zone that is keeping them in perfectionism.
Melinda Wittstock: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Rosie Aiello: So then it’s just a matter of, do you want to continue being where you are? Why did you choose this? To stop looking at yourself, and to start focusing on the people who need your help.
Melinda Wittstock: Yeah. Oh that’s… See that’s a lovely way of saying it, because if you’re thinking about yourself, it’s easy to be self-critical, but if you get out of your own way and just start giving and creating from a place of love, because you care about other people. Magic and value follows that every time. I’ve had a couple people say, whenever their sales have sort of dried up, they just go out and start doing good things, donating, giving, serving. Go to a soup kitchen. I’m really not kidding, entrepreneurs who do this… It’s amazing, the abundance that comes, when you’re willing to give in that way from a real position of love.
Rosie Aiello: Yeah. I feel pretty strongly about that, because when I start getting overwhelmed, and it’s all about my ego, it’s like, I go “Just stop it Rosie, this is not about you.” I give myself a little lecture, it’s not about you; its about them.
Melinda Wittstock: It’s about all the people, I mean, entrepreneurship, in so many ways, really, is about helping other people. Every now and again I’ll do a talk, or I mentor a lot of entrepreneurs, but in some of my talks to entrepreneurs I’ll usually ask “So how many people here are entrepreneurs?” Some people put their hands up. “How many people want to?” A lot of people put their hands up. And I’ll say, “Well why?”
“How many of you are doing it because you want to make a lot of money?” This is about a third of the people, invariably, and I’m like “Okay, that’s interesting.”
“How many people are doing it because you’re going to be your own boss? You’re not going to have a boss.” About a third of them put up their hands.
“How many people are doing it because they have a powerful mission?” They want to do something for the world, or they see a problem that they just want to fix, because they’re inherently helping people. I find the folks with the ladder have the highest likelihood of success, because on the roller coaster, which there is one, there’s always stuff beyond your control, and there’s setbacks, or those moments where like, “Oh man am I going to make payroll,” all those heart stopping things that every single entrepreneur goes through, they’re all different for different people, but there’s a whole series of them, right-
Rosie Aiello: Yes.
Melinda Wittstock: If you don’t have that mission, it’s pretty hard to keep going. But if you’re creating value, the money follows, and by the way everybody, you have a zillion bosses. They’re your customers, you know. Right?
Rosie Aiello: Absolutely, and that’s why it’s so important to keep the focus on that and to shut up your inner critic. Calm it down, and tell your inner self that you’re in charge. Because part of your inner self, too, is the little girl who was hurt, who was afraid, who was this, and you need to really talk to it and say “You know what, you helped me back then, but mature Melinda is in charge today, and I’ll take care of you, but I’m in charge and I’m going to move forward to help these other people.”
Melinda Wittstock: Oh my goodness, you’ve given me Goosebumps, because for a while, I did this meditation where I went back as my adult self and would hug the six year old girl, whose parents were divorcing and all that kind of stuff. Because the root, I think, of what we experience later in life is often in our childhood, where we get some of those beliefs that limit us later. We can’t work them out as kids, so life has a funny way of giving you the thing that you’ve got to work out later in life when you can.
Rosie Aiello: Exactly
Melinda Wittstock: Right? But that’s power meditation to go back and literally, you know, everyone listening, try it. It’s really interesting, you go back to your little girl self at a time when you were most vulnerable and go back and reassure yourself. “Hey, it’s okay, here’s the older me, I’m good, I got this. You’ll be fine.” It’s powerful.
Rosie Aiello: It is powerful, and I work with my clients on that, and I give them a method how to do that, because as long as that inner child is afraid it wants to take the reins. That’s why it makes it more difficult for you, the inner child is pulling and is afraid and wants to protect and it can’t handle it because it has an immature mind. Until that inner child really feels protected, and it’s okay, and it can release the hold it has, you can’t move forward. So it’s an important element, especially in the work that I do with women who’ve been in either difficult situations or abusive situations. It goes for anybody really.
Melinda Wittstock: So powerful. So I could talk to you for hours… As we wind up, what would be your most important advice? I mean specifically for women who are entrepreneurs, innovators, and folks trying to do big things in the world that have some of these experiences that they’re still recovering from. What would be your top three pieces of advice?
Rosie Aiello: One, truly is, don’t think you have to do anything alone. In fact reframe it to, “Who can I seek, who can I be with,” as far as from coaches, to a community, to whatever, to support me on this mission, because there are going to be ups and downs. You don’t want to let the down bring you down, but that is just a course of the roller coaster of entrepreneurship. Not being alone, I find that’s just so huge.
Secondly is, get somebody that can be your mentor, that you believe in and who shares the same values as you. Sometimes, what I’ve found is it’s not… I would say a lot of people are good coaches, but to really get one that you feel aligned with – you feel it in your gut and in your heart. To really make that investment, because it’s going to save so much of your angst of trying to figure it out by yourself! So one’s, like, the community and then narrowing it down to really having somebody specific to guide you and hold you accountable.
Then the third I will just bring around is, you are enough.
Melinda Wittstock: Mm-hmm (affirmative) That’s so powerful, just know you’re enough.
Rosie Aiello: You’re more than enough.
Melinda Wittstock: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Rosie Aiello: Yeah.
Melinda Wittstock: Beautiful. So, Rosie, people who want to work with you, how can they find you?
Rosie Aiello: A couple ways, they can write to me at rosie@clearvistaconsulting.com, and then I would love to offer them a gift called “Confidently Ask For What You Want” which works whether it’s personal, professional, your colleagues, your friends, it’s really a great little document that walks you through some powerful steps. You can find that at 11hourstofreedom.com/gift.
Melinda Wittstock: Wonderful. 11hourstofreedom.com/gift. You also have a Facebook group around the whole concept that love is kind, tell us a little bit about that.
Rosie Aiello: Thank you, yes! We have a Facebook group called “The Love is Kind Movement.” My daughter, who is the co-author of our memoir, and I are on a mission to save a million women and their children from domestic violence. We strongly believe that when people are treated with kindness, they’re confidence grows, the children now have good role models, you have a kinder family, you have a kinder community, you have a kinder world. That translates into a more profitable environment. The economy flourishes, so when we treat people with kindness, it’s a win-win. We don’t need to mistreat people to get our ways. We can do it with kindness, and everybody grows.
There’s some women who are out there who just are struggling, and I want to help them find their voice, their confidence, their worth, so they too can contribute to the world like many of your listeners.
Melinda Wittstock: How beautiful. Well thank you so much for sharing with such vulnerability and authenticity. When women hear each other’s stories, like you say, we’re not alone and when we fly together, we lift each other up, so thank you so much Rosie for a lovely interview.
Rosie Aiello: Well thank you so much Melinda, for having me, it’s just been a pure pleasure.
