199 Jennifer Love: Scaling Beyond $1mm+

Jennifer Love is a Shark Tank conquering, 5X serial entrepreneur, $100mm raising success whose chocolate company NibMor was named a top food and beverage company in the U.S. Now her mission is about advancing women: CEO of One More Woman, she’s focused on helping women entrepreneurs attain financial freedom and scale their business beyond $1mm+ with healthy profits – a mission she shares with Wings.

Melinda Wittstock:         Jennifer, welcome to Wings.

Jennifer Love:                   Hey, Melinda. It’s so good to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:         I am excited to talk to you today and I’m really curious when it was in your life that you had the ‘aha’ moment that you were going to be an entrepreneur?

Jennifer Love:                   You know, I had a really interesting start. I’m a career entrepreneur, 20 plus years now. The funny story, I had an interesting start in that I thought I was going to be a strategist for the FBI or the CIA. I started my career getting seven years of behavioral psychology training. Then, was asked to write a business plan in, I was starting out in a PhD Forensic Psychology Program. It was really pretty dark. I realized early on in that program that I didn’t want to focus on the darkness of humanity. Instead, I wanted to move positivity forward. I was asked to write a business plan, because of course, all grad students know how to write a business plan. I mean, that just makes sense.

Being the person that I am I was like sure. It ended up being a successfully funded casino. That’s really what ended up sparking my career the first 10 years. I went on to advise executives of Fortune 200 companies like Roche, which is the pharmaceutical company. Celebrities like Ron Perelman on how to grow divisions of their businesses or projects within their businesses and how to fund them. Even getting Cardinale Automotive Group, which is a big automotive group in California. To get Mazda North America to fully fund one of their dealerships, or Mazda dealership, and how to expand and create consistency, la, la, la.

That was the first 10 years. I was really supporting men and here I was in my 20’s telling white dudes how to grow their companies and what to do, which I look back at now [crosstalk 00:22:44]

Melinda Wittstock:         Okay, now how did you, okay, so I’m just going to back up here. You write this business plan because you’re going to be the CIA analyst. Okay, and so you know, the connective string for me I think that’s emerging is the behavioral psychology. If you understand that, you can be an amazing entrepreneur. Not only that, but an amazing salesperson. You can build great teams, you understand consumers, I mean, there’s so many aspects of the entrepreneurial journey that requires that sort of a discipline. That makes sense to me in a big way. Wait, wait, and so it’s kind of like back up. Casino? What was the casino?

Jennifer Love:                   Random connection with the casino. Someone that I knew who knew them asked me to do this project and it was just this one off weird thing and it ended up going down. I know, it’s bizarre. It’s super bizarre. That’s really what ended up sparking this 10 year career advising executives and celebrities. Then, by the time that I was 29, I had become the CEO of a mortgage bank in New York, which moved me from San Diego to New York. This mortgage bank was a client, and so they wanted me to come take over for a period of time. It was really at the height at the mortgage decline in the US. From there, I went on and founded a wellness center with a natural doctor. I had been bulimic for 10 years, so all through my 20’s. All through advising all of these amazing executives. Inside I was a hot mess. A hot freaking mess.

I got to the point in my late 20’s where I knew I had to do something about it. I was very quiet, I was very private about it. I was very shameful. We all carry so much fear, shame, guilt, blame, you know, and marginally it’s because we don’t have the right tools in the toolbox or we haven’t actually really processed the pain or traumas from the past. It’s going to come out in some way.

Traumas from the past, and so it’s going to come out in some way, whether that’s a heart attack, a stroke, cancer, eating disorder, some kind of addiction, it’s going to come out if we don’t fully process it, and that’s what happened for me. I picked up this tool from the tool box because I was under-resourced, and hadn’t dealt with childhood traumas. And so, I knew that I needed to do something, and part of that path forward was starting a wellness center with a natural doctor, because I was really good at the business thing, even though, my personal life was a hot freaking mess. And so, I used, and leveraged what I was good at, to help support what needed help the most.

And so, this wellness center went on to support autistic children, and helping them improve on the autistic scale. And then, from there, went onto to co-found NibMor. Co-found NibMor Chocolate back in 2009. So, we were literally two chicks in a kitchen, making chocolate, and turning that into about, six and a half years in, into an international company. In 2016, it was listed as one of the top food and beverage companies in the candy category, for the future, in the United States. You know, huge, amazing success. And NibMor is still going amazing today.

And I’ll never forget, I think it was the first year and a half in, and I walk into, we were making it by hand, still, that first year, year and a half, and walking into our commercial kitchen, looking at my business partner, and I had just sold into our first big chain account. And the chocolate bars that she had made were all lumpy. And I look at it and I’m like, “We have to redo this. We have to redo it.” And she’s like, “Okay.” And we found our way forward with that. But we got to the point where we were scaling so fast, that I had to find the discipline within the sales person that I am, and say, “We can’t continue to take on any new accounts. We actually have to stop all new sales.”

And that, was a really hard decision, as a CEO, to make, because what you really want to do is just keep growing, growing, growing, selling, selling, selling. And if we had done that, we would’ve put ourselves out of business, because we wouldn’t have been able to continue to service our existing client base. And ultimately, I am so grateful for that company. It was this beautiful part of my own healing journey. You think, “Well, you’re a bulimic in your 20s, and all in your 30s, you’re running a chocolate company? Really?” For some people, that just doesn’t seem to make sense. And yet, it was one of the greatest gifts that I gave myself, in rebuilding a relationship with food. And I think, when we go into business, I actually, this morning, somebody was asking me, “Jennifer, how do I really know what my purpose is? How do I really tap into that for myself?” And I said, “You know, I think, one, being in survival mode is really tough to hear what your heart intelligence is saying to you. You’ve got to create that spaciousness enough that you can quiet down, and being in survival mode is really hard to do that. But secondly, we all have different phases in our life, where business or people show up to support us for where we are, and what we need, in terms of our own evolution, if we pause enough to listen and pay attention.”

And for me, NibMor was part of that healing journey. Now, with One More Woman, I’m really stepping into, and have embraced what I’m put on this planet to do, which is serve incredible women, to make the impact in that way, which is what I’m up to now. To help women create financial freedom in their lives, in their businesses, to make an impact on the world, using the genius and gifts of women, so that we can redistribute wealth in the world.

Melinda Wittstock:         So Jennifer, just listening to your story, it resonates so deeply with me, because I see little parts of myself in your journey, you know? Like a difficult childhood. Stuff that manifests later, like in your 20s and 30s, how you have figure out how to step into who you really are, and accept yourself. And then, get aligned with a big mission and purpose. And then now, all these years later, arriving at this point where both of us serve women. We’re the same … really empowering women. And in my case, too, creating this ecosystem where we all show up to help each other, throw business to each other, invest in each other. And so how beautiful to be talking today about exactly this.

And so, I have so many questions, obviously, about your journey alone the way, and maybe we can dip in and out of that. What I want to get into, where was the moment where you said, “Right, okay. I’ve been through this as a woman, and now I want to help other women.”

Jennifer Love:                   You know, that was about four years ago, where I really stopped … I was running NibMor as CEO and Chairwoman, and I felt like a slave to the business. And I know on some of your other episodes, you’ve talked to some women who had similar experiences, right? So, there’s so many of us, quote-unquote, successful women, who come from all measures of success on the outside, investments, beautiful home, thriving company, la, la, la, la, la. It looks like we’ve made it, right?

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, right.

Jennifer Love:                   But we feel like a slave to our business. And we’re miserable on the inside. And that’s not success. A few months ago, someone asked me, “Jennifer, how do you define success?” And I laughed. I said, “It’s about internal freedom. Emotional freedom. It’s about the joy you wake up to every morning, and feel fulfilled within yourself, to have the epic life that you’ve intentionally designed. That, to me, is success. Whatever that looks like for you. It’s not 10 million dollars in your business bank account, or your personal bank account. Because you can have that money, and feel like a slave to it. And that’s not success to me. To me.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, if money is a destination, it never brings happiness. You know, when we change our relationship with money, and realize that it’s actually a tool, it’s leverage. It gives you freedom, and choice to actually be who you are, but also to help other people. And so, just changing that relationship, much like you change your relationship with food, right?

Jennifer Love:                   Yeah, yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         We change our relationship with money. And so, I think it’s really interesting, actually, when women and men are thinking of launching businesses, and they have some number that they want to grow the business to, but it’s very theoretical, because the role that you play as an entrepreneur, at these different parts of the journey, it’s so different. It’s so different running a six figure coaching business, as opposed to a scalable technology business that’s taking venture capital, in which case, you’re really not really, entirely, anymore, in the driver’s seat. And it’s a completely different role, at completely different times of a business. And so, it’s so easy to end up … like you think, “Oh, I’m going to build a 100 million dollar business,” which sounds awesome, but without realizing, without knowing what that actually means. And not being happy in it.

Jennifer Love:                   That’s right. Well, I think, going back to the question, what’s the moment? The moment, for me, was feeling like a slave to my own thriving company. And even though, I was so incredibly grateful, because of the relation, how it helped me have a different relationship with food. And I’ll never forget, back in undergrad, I remember going to the Hershey Museum, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and reading Milton Hershey’s story. Of course, he built a chocolate empire. Candy empire, really. And standing in front of that plaque, and reading his story about going bankrupt multiple times. And having the tenacity, and the persistence, and the belief in himself, to keep going. And then, from that place, he built an empire. Now, whether you believe in whatever about Hershey, doesn’t really matter. But the tenacity of this man, the persistence and determination that he had, within himself, to move the needle forward, get up in the face of, quote-unquote, failure, which I’m constantly finding myself refrain for some of our members. It’s like, it’s not a failure if you put on the hat of going into the science lab, and it’s like, putting the different concoctions and mixtures into the test tubes, and saying, “Oh, that one didn’t work,” or, “That blew up.” Okay, well, “I’m going to try the next concoction.”

And when you take on that energy of playfulness, going into the science lab with your business, or a business, even if the business didn’t work out, and you’re moving onto the next thing, so freaking what? You know, it’s all part of the learning journey. The marketing, the sales process. “Well, that didn’t quite work. Okay, well, it doesn’t mean we have to throw the entire thing out. Let’s look at what actually is working. Let’s double on that.” When they call it the double down strategy, there’s a process for that. And make the tweaks that are necessarily, in order to have it effectively work. But when we come up against the, “I cant’s,” then of course, you can’t. Because you’re not living in the place of possibility.

If Elon Musk said, “I can’t,” we wouldn’t be able to fly to Mars. Or have the electric car the way we do, with the Tesla’s right? Or Thomas Jefferson. Or not Jefferson. Edison.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh yeah, 10,000 times, “I haven’t failed. I’ve just tried 10,000 times,” I think was the quote, right?

Jennifer Love:                   That’s right. And so, it’s literally taking on the, “Everything is possible,” I mean, the way that I phrase it, my own kind of personal … I happen to love quotes. The way that I phrase this is, it’s not a matter of if, it’s just a matter of how. How am I going to do this? I may need to crawl over that wall. I may need to break it down. I may need to get the water to flow around it. Whatever it is, it’s figure outable. Right? But if we have the mentality of, “It’s possible,” and, “Things are possible,” then we can make it possible. We can make it happen.

And I think so many of us come from that energetic space of, “This is too hard, and I can’t.” When we shift that within ourselves, then it becomes possible. Becomes doable. And we can operate our business from that place. That becomes a whole ‘nother story.

Melinda Wittstock:         You know, even when you’re not conscious of it, there must’ve been something in your 20s, though, where you thought it was possible. That anything was possible.

Jennifer Love:                   I think I always have thought it was possible. And give credit to my mom here, because she grilled into my head, as a young kid, that I could do whatever I put my mind to.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, my mom, too, and my dad. So like, I think this is the interesting thing, where I was driven in my 20s. I was probably driven, maybe by the wrong things, or whatever, but I definitely had that. That kind of, “Oh. Okay, I want to go to London and work on London Times,” and I’m like, 22, and I join the paper. Like, right? Against all odds. And I remember all my friends and stuff saying, “You can’t do that.” I was like, “Why not?” Right? And so, I didn’t have a sense that there was any reason why I couldn’t do anything. Right? Now, whether I was in alignment, or conscious, or had gotten rid of all of my limiting beliefs, well no. So, I couldn’t have articulated any of this, but I sense that there would be little chance that you would’ve been able to do what you were able to do in your 20s, without that kind of attitude somewhere inside you.

Jennifer Love:                   100%. My mom also said, “Jen, you came out with two things. One, you came out running. And two, you came out and never met a stranger.” And so, I love people. I love people, I have a lot of relationships. And I always have. I hear people say, “Oh, I hate people.” I’m like, “Wow.” That’s hard for me to grasp, and understand, because I find humanity fascinating, and I believe in the power of good, and love. My last name is Love, and I believe in very much a Gandhi, Mother Teresa approach that love will always, in the end, win. And that’s really what I’m up to now. And even if it takes me a lifetime, the rest of my life, to help women step into owning their own worth, owning their own value in this world, unwiring the epigenetics, and societal things that have been holding us back, and the crab in the bucket mentality. If it takes me a lifetime, so be it.

Melinda Wittstock:         The crab in the bucket mentality is a curious thing, that women, for so long, rather than helping each other out of a trapped, or scarcity existence, have kept others in it. And I mean, there’s a couple questions here. Do you sense that’s changing? How fast is it changing? And why did we even have that to begin with?

Jennifer Love:                   Well, I think it goes back to survival. Survival of the fittest. The lizard brain, you might say, of keeping us stuck in that survival of the fittest, Darwin kind of mentality, because we weren’t the physically stronger being, and we needed the support of men to help protect us. And so, I mean, without getting into all those details, into what my belief system is there, do I believe that it’s changing? I do. I think there’s a lot of conversation around this. I think as women, it’s what we’re up to. But I don’t think it’s fully integrated. I think many women understand it, intellectually. But there’s a difference between understanding intellectually, and the actual integration of that actually, really happening. Does that make sense to you?

Melinda Wittstock:         Yes, yes. Yes, it does. I think the more conscious we get … I mean, so at the root of all of this, of course, is yeah, fear. And fear leads to scarcity, because you think, “Oh god, there’s not enough,” … if you think there’s not enough to go around, then, you’re going to be in fear, and then that’s going to dictate the rest of your actions. Whereas, if you believe that there’s this tremendous abundance, which I happen to believe, that anything is possible, and there’s enough for everybody. And in fact, you create more by helping other people up. And that by helping other people, you’re really helping yourself.

Jennifer Love:                   That’s right.

Melinda Wittstock:         I believe is true. And I think that’s at the core of entrepreneurial success. If you don’t value yourself, it’s very difficult to create value for others. And if you don’t create value of meaningful proportions, you don’t really have a business.

Jennifer Love:                   Well, and absofreakinglutely. I mean, going back to this point, you’re asking me, do I think that this is really happening right now. I think it’s evolving, and I think it will continue to. And that’s why, for myself, I’m so up to supporting women in their confidence, because we have a confidence epidemic happening for women. We can look at books like Confidence Code. I’ve been doing research on this for many years, that had over 500 conversations with women entrepreneurs about their relationship with money, about their relationship with their own self. Right? And I’m finding all kinds of things in this research that I’ve been doing. I’ve been analyzing it, aggregating it, and spitting out information and tools to support them in it. But we have a confidence epidemic. And until we, as women, fully own our side of the street, and really do something about what’s going on for us, individually and personally, which is why I say, one of the main things that we need, and if we allow entrepreneurship to really become a tool to accelerate our personal and spiritual growth forward, we can really blow this out of the water. This is why I really believe we can do this, which is what I’m up to here, with One More Woman. We’ve got to own our side of the street, as ladies.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s so true.

Jennifer Love:                   And find our way forward in owning our own stuff, internally, whether that’s changing the epigenetics, changing societal beliefs, but we’ve got to step into this pay it forward, deep, “have your back,” mentality. Which is our slogan, at One More Woman. We’ve got your back. And shift from the perspective of competition, into how can I make the competitor a collaborator.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yes.

Jennifer Love:                   How can I be so good at what I do? Like, at One More Woman, we’re constantly called, “The real deal. I’m the real deal. We’re the real deal over here.” And, Holy shit, they care,” company. Right? And so, if we’re looking at, “Fantastic, we’re going to own that. That’s part of our differentiating factor here,” and I blue ocean that, right? With what we’re up to over here, because we care so deeply, we’re integrating, we’re integrating, and we’re using our purpose as a decision making filter for everything, then I’m not worried about competitors, because we’re so far out in front of what competitors could do with our deep care and love for women, and moving that needle forward for them, that they look at us and say, “Gosh, we’re not going to be able to do it like that, how about we actually get onboard with their mission, ’cause their mission is that important.”

That, to me, is the shift off competition to collaboration. And how can we do that with everything in our business?

Melinda Wittstock:         I couldn’t agree more. I mean, the whole idea of WINGS, which by the way, stands for Women Innovating Networking Growing Scaling, but the whole concept, really, is that when we fly together, we soar higher-

Jennifer Love:                   We’re so much better, and it’s so much more fun.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s so much more fun, and it’s so much better. And there’s so much room. There’s plenty of oxygen at the top of this summit mountain or whatever, where people are climbing. And what I find really interesting is that women often … wait, I’m just going to back up there for a second. One of the things that really interesting, when people get into … oh wait. No, I know what I’m going to say. Sorry! Tape, tape, thank God for tape! Yes, no, it was, the interesting thing you said, Jennifer, about competition, which I find fascinating, is if you are being uniquely you, and living into your true purpose, or your soul purpose, I sometimes call it. S-O-U-L. Right? And you’re aligned with your true talents, and you’re living the life, and doubling down on the things that only you can do. Right? And you’re genuinely doing that. It’s very difficult to have competition, because nobody else is like you.

Jennifer Love:                   That’s right.

Melinda Wittstock:         So, where we think about, as ourselves, in our own lives, but also the businesses that we create around those lives. Right? What is the differentiated value? And when we’re very aligned in that, there’s room for all of us to support all of us. I think it’s when women are thinking, “Oh god, I should do this, or I should do that, or I should do this,” and they’re really modeling themselves after somebody else that they think they should be, that’s when a lot of this kind of scarcity trap happens. And it’s really, again, it’s all based on fear.

Jennifer Love:                   It is based on fear. And there’s so much compassion that I have in that, from where all of this stems from. And I really get it. And you know, mama Oprah, miss Oprah, one of her odyssey’s, she says, “When your personality is aligned with what your soul is here to do, nobody can beat you at it.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Exactly.

Jennifer Love:                   And I love that, because it’s true. Because when we step into Brené Brown-ing it, right? And be vulnerable, and show up, and stop worrying about pretending that I’ve got my shit all together, because you’re never going to have it all together. And hiding, by playing smaller than you know that you’re meant to be showing up to play on this planet, by not really, fully stepping into your life’s work. I feel like, we were talking about having a journey, and my bio might say here, I feel like all of that was boot camp training to get me to what I’m really here to do.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, that’s so beautiful. I love that.

Jennifer Love:                   And I think all of us have that. If we allow ourselves to go there. And here’s the misnomer, I think, about the world of transformation and personal development. So many people think that it’s supposed to be this warm, fuzzy, have a cup of warm tea, chocolatey yumminess, and that’s just bullshit, Melinda. Personal transformation can be gnarly. Really gnarly.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, it’s painful, because you’ve got to-

Jennifer Love:                   It’s peeling-

Melinda Wittstock:         You’ve got to face stuff. And you’ve got to be willing to do the work, yeah.

Jennifer Love:                   Yeah. That’s right. You’ve got to face yourself. Anthony de Mello, in his book, Awareness, says it so well. He says, “The chances that you are going to become aware, is in direct proportion to the amount of truth that you can actually take, without running away. What you’ve held dear, and precariously held onto your whole life, how much of that are you actually willing to have shattered? From that place, is where transformation really happens.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Interesting. I think, what’s your perspective on this? I remember a really pivotal moment for me was understanding, I guess, two things really: whenever I felt victimized, getting outta that, accepting responsibility-

Jennifer Love:                   Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         … for that, right?

Jennifer Love:                   Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         Which was hard because on one hand, you think, “Well, wait a minute. I didn’t do that crappy thing to me. This other person did.” So, it’s easy to externalize and blame the other person. But the funny thing is when you think about it, whenever you’re having a problem, you’re always there. There’s always a part of you.

The biggest hurdle for me to overcome, which I feel that I really have, is just accepting what was it about me, and I don’t mean the essence of me, I mean my limiting beliefs or just subconscious, whatever, that need it or that sought somehow, only out of familiarity, not consciously, but subconsciously, a bad situation.

And so, when you step into that and you think, “Okay, obviously, I don’t want this, and so let’s just clear out that belief whatever it is. Let it go. Surrender it. You don’t need it anymore.” I think, actually, it took a while to reach that level of understanding. I feel like when I say it now, it sounds to simple to me, but it was not a simple process getting there.

Jennifer Love:                   No, it’s not, and here’s why: With any kind of belief, and especially when we talk about our relationship with money, our brain becomes addicted to not making money. Our brain becomes addicted, and I talk a lot about this, I do a lot a workshops and a lot a work around this, but our brains neurologically are designed to become addicted to what we make meaning around stories, events, and emotionally-charged experiences in our life, and then it creates it over and over and over again. And it keeps us stuck in this cycle that I call The Donut Cycle.

So, it’s like you’re saying you don’t want to eat that donut. You don’t want to get back into that relationship with the person who cheats on you or who is emotionally unavailable. You don’t want to be on that feast-and-famine cycle with money; and yet, you keep finding yourself [inaudible 00:52:25] there over and over and over again. And there’s a reason why, because our brain is literally addicted to not making money. And the first step in turning that around is awareness and unearthing what’s actually happening based on the programming. Because really, you’re kind of like a robot. You’re kind of like a robot being controlled by the belief systems that you haven’t even intentionally chosen.

And you can stop, become aware, by unearthing those things that’ve happened. And once you do, you begin to understand them. And the next process is finding compassion. And from compassion, you find acceptance. And from acceptance, you step into a place of discipline. And from that place, it’s kind of like training your brain like training a puppy. Our brains are kind of like puppies. They’re … in fact, our brains aren’t really our primary brain. Our heart is really our primary brain. Our hearts is really where infinite intelligence is housed and where we tap into it. Our brain is more like Google.

Jennifer Love:                   It’s the search engine. Our brain is like a search engine, right? That’s literally … we type in a belief. We type in a search term, and it analyzes that and finds what we’re actually looking for. Right? Then it creates that, and it brings it up.

And our brain is the same thing. So, we have a belief that we’ve put into our brain, and then it processes that. And so let me ask you, Melinda, have you ever had an emotionally charged moment where you were so moved by something, whether it was looking at a baby or maybe the Grand Canyon or a piece of music that just moved you, that all the hairs on your arms raised up? Have you ever had that happen?

Melinda Wittstock:         Of course, yes. Of course. [crosstalk 00:54:32].

Jennifer Love:                   And I ask this question to hundreds of people, and they all say yes. Now, the next question is, do you look down at the hair on your arms and say, “Hairs, I want you to raise up”?

Melinda Wittstock:         See, no. Right.

Jennifer Love:                   No, of course not. So, what actually happened? You made meaning. You’ve made an interpretation about that experience that was emotionally moving and charging to you, and you didn’t have to think about it because in the limbic part of your brain, which is where the automatic responses happen, it sent out neurochemicals, specifically dopamine, into our body that then created our life experience; thus, hair raised. Now, this is happening on such subtle, little ways. But this is also happening in big ways, like the shopaholic or one of our members at … one of our women in our money masters’ program who came in, and she had quote unquote landed a six-figure client and hadn’t sent the invoice in for three months.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, my goodness.

Jennifer Love:                   Why? Why did she not? Because she was literally sitting with this old belief of: She somehow didn’t deserve it. It was somehow bigger than her, and she was actually afraid of it. And that goes back to what I’ve identified as forming money scripts that are running in our brains. As I’ve looked at all this information that I’ve analyzed and aggregated, actually more than 50% women entrepreneurs are avoiders. We say we want more money, and yet we push it away or we look away from it. We’re not tracking our metrics, and we’re literally not sending invoice out.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, my goodness. This is so true. So, it happens … I see it manifest in a number of ways. I see it manifest where we’re planning to make money, we do all the kind of work for the plan, [inaudible 00:56:27] all the stuff that’s going to happen, but we don’t actually make the sales calls. Or, we get to sales calls, and we’re on those sales calls, but we don’t actually ask for the sale.

Jennifer Love:                   Yes, or we don’t follow up. And we somehow expect it [inaudible 00:56:41] magically just happen. And so, coming back to our brain is like a puppy, it’s true. So, it’s literally just this filter system for our beliefs, and it become … it’s like the … Sorry. We’re going to have to cut that part out, too.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s okay.

Jennifer Love:                   So, our brains are our computers controlling our bodies, which are the machines that create the life experience that we have. Now, why I say that our brains are like puppies is because we can train our brain. We can, just like a puppy, train it. So, what’s required, Melinda, to train a puppy successfully? There are two main things that’re required. What are those?

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, well, I would say, because I love dogs, I’ve always had dogs, one of them is positive reinforcement. So, whenever they do something really great, or at least this is my dog training methodology, right, it’s lots of love and positive reinforcement, little biscuit, that kind of stuff. Right? The other one is just very clear instruction, right?

Jennifer Love:                   So, that is part of it, yes. You’re getting to the second half of that. The very first thing, however, is you have to understand what you want to train the puppy to do.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. Well, okay, of course. I was [crosstalk 00:58:05]-

Jennifer Love:                   So, the very first thing is: Do I want to potty train it? Right? Do I want it to sit? Do I want it to lay down? Do I want it to not jump on people when they come to the door? So, what is it that you actually want to train the puppy, or your brain, to actually believe? What is it that you want it to actually do? Once you get that clarity, then the next thing is really about creating that consistency. The having that discipline to choose that over and over and over again. Now, you can do that through positive reinforcement, absolutely. It’s one of the easiest things to do. And, just like the puppy, when you’re consistent, and you have the discipline to continue over and over and over again, show that puppy where to go outside ’cause you want to potty train it, before you know it, the puppy’s telling you that it wants to go outside, and it becomes an automatic thing.

Now, same thing with the brain. Right? You say, “Brain, I want to believe that I don’t have to struggle in order to make a lot of money. Making money can be a joyful, fun experience. It doesn’t have to be so hard. Yeah, I have to work, but it doesn’t have to be a struggle.” Now, when the old belief comes up, you just have to choose the new one over and over and over again, even if that’s a thousand times in a day. And before you know it, you continue to choose that new belief, and just like with the puppy, over time, your brain begins to believe it, and it becomes an automatic thing that is then telling you, “This is easy. This doesn’t have to be a struggle.” And then, it shows up in all of your decision-making and how you’re interacting with other people and how you’re interacting with yourself.

So, our brains are just like puppies. We can train them.

Melinda Wittstock:         I love that. One of the things that I want to pivot our conversation a little bit to, ’cause I find this concept interesting: that one of your missions is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. And a lot of people would think, from the outside, entrepreneurial poverty is a contradiction in terms, but it’s more often the case than not. And why is that? I mean, I know we all have these ups and downs, and we’re always testing hypotheses, and it takes a while to get a product market fit and all those things. There’s lots of ways in which you can lose a lot of money being an entrepreneur. So tell me, I mean, beyond the money belief, ’cause I know that’s a really big part of this, what’re some ways we can eradicate entrepreneurial poverty?

Jennifer Love:                   Well, one of the main ways is to actually stop avoiding and start tracking and looking at our metrics and using them as decision-making tools and filters. Right? So, when you’re not tracking metrics and looking at this information on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual basis in that order, then it’s kind of like driving a car with a blindfold on. Melinda, what happens when you drive a car with a blindfold on?

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, gosh. Right? You crash it, right?

Jennifer Love:                   You crash it. [crosstalk 01:01:17]

Melinda Wittstock:         I’m assuming, unless you’re incredibly lucky.

Jennifer Love:                   Yeah, you’re going to eventually crash it. And you’re going to either die, or you’re going to have a serious fender-bender that’s going to cost you thousands of dollars; or you’re going to be seriously injured, which is also going to cost you a lot of money and set you back in a major way. Right?

So, driving your car with a blindfold on is just like driving your business car without looking at the metrics, ’cause you have no idea when something on the dashboard is blinking red that says, “Hey, this isn’t working in the business right now. We’ve got to pull over, take a lot at this, make a tweak, and do it a little different.” We got to service the business just like we got to service the car. Right?

Or, if you’ve got a blindfold on driving your business, you have no idea what area of your business to double down on, because that pathway forward is just like a straight road that you can just put the foot … to the metal to the pedal, right? Or the pedal to the metal, I should say, and just go. Or, if there’s a little curve coming up in the road, if you’re wearing a blindfold, you have no idea, and you’re either going to go off the cliff into the canyon and die, or you’re going to have a serious crash on the side and go into the ditch. But if you take off that blindfold and use those metrics and that information, you know to turn the wheel just a little bit, make that tweak, which we call a pivot in business, right? Could be a big pivot, could be a small pivot. But when we begin to start really using this information, numbers, metrics, and neural-link that with: This is what helps me get to my heart’s desires, to the destination of where I want to drive to, right, then we can actually start to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. That’s one big way in which I’m seeing … of course, there’s many others, but that’s one big way.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s a really big one. I mean, know your numbers. But this is so important. I think maybe a lot of people avoid them ’cause they’re fearful of what they’re going to see. Right? Or they’re-

Jennifer Love:                   Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         … going to look at something, and they don’t really know how to course-correct, right? Or they think it’s going to mean something bad about themselves if they’re not … I mean, there’s all these sort of really interesting avoidance tactics, but it would seem just so logical … I mean, you’re in a business. You want the business to succeed. It takes a while to get everything working, whether you’re an online internet marketer, and you have a funnel you got to test, and you got to A, B, a multivariate test, you’ve got to try all sorts of different things, different copy, different images, right? Different everything and everything and everything until it works. It can take a while.

Or, if you’re building an app, you’ve got to go through lots of different testing and user-testing and beta-testing until that one’s right, as well, rapid prototyping, hopefully, at the early stages. So, all of these things are hypotheses, and even as you grow, what’re people valuing in the business? And so, who’s paying for what and when … So many of these things, just to be on top of. It’s such good advice. Absolutely. My goodness.

And so, do you look back on what you’ve learned and your journey and, at any time, think, “Gosh, I wish I’d known that then”?

Jennifer Love:                   Yeah, it’s easy to do that, and I don’t. Because … I’m going to go back to the … what I said a little bit earlier, which was: Everything that’s been up to … happened in my career, happened in my life, has been part of my boot camp training to get to where I am right now. And I really believe that. I’m so grateful for all of those learnings along the way that I needed in order to be where I am today, to be able to really, deeply support not only my life and my freedom, but also that of others. To really help move the needle forward for the state of women, for the state of this planet. And so, without those, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t have the ability to serve in the way that I do. So, I’m grateful for them.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is wonderful. And so, what’s the three percent club?

Jennifer Love:                   So, there’s this … I laugh, and it’s really not that funny, but only three percent of women entrepreneurs are actually getting above a million in revenue in their business. And I’m not okay with this. I call it the three percent club because I want to actually get more women into the three percent club where we actually shift it where it becomes the 10% club, and then the 40% club, and then the 50% club. And so, I’m really helping women step up into what I call this three percent club.

Melinda Wittstock:         I love this. I mean, hence, the S on [wings scaling 01:06:18] and why … I mean, just very briefly, why is it, do you think, that women have such a hard time getting to that number, getting to a million?

Jennifer Love:                   Oh, my gosh. Melinda, do we have another couple of hours to [crosstalk 01:06:33]-

Melinda Wittstock:         Yes. I know. Clearly you’ll have to come back on this podcast, ’cause I feel like, honestly, I could talk to you for hours, and we’d scratch the surface. There’s so many different topics to dig really, really deep into. But this is one of them. I mean, I had an amazing woman on my podcast. You might know her: Julia Pimsleur, and she runs Million Dollar Women. And her entire business is based around getting women to a million dollars in revenue. And we talked on pretty much the entire podcast [inaudible 01:07:06] the different things [inaudible 01:07:06] shows up as perfectionism, or you start a business doing what you love to do, so you keep doing it, and you do more and more and more of it, but you can’t replicate yourself. And so, if you don’t hire, if you don’t figure out systems … So, there’s a whole series of things. But at the end of the day, is it, just like everything else, a mindset issue?

Jennifer Love:                   I mean, so much of it comes back to both. I think it’s a mindset, for sure, and strategy, which really is deeply tied to mindset. So, I think it’s mindset. I think it’s a lack of support. I think it’s a lot a lack of asking for what we really need, a lack of self-care. There’s so many things. Not charging enough. There’re so many reasons why this is happening for women.

I had started out deeply supporting women in raising money, and then I quickly realized: Women don’t even think that they can get money. They don’t even think that they can get access to it. And so, women aren’t even going out and really even asking for the money that they need to really grow their business, which I find …

I had this interesting conversation, which was probably about two years ago, with a … she’s an influencer in the fitness space. And lots of … millions of followers, really nailing it, and really needing a little funding to help scale part of her business. This was a couple years ago. And she’s like, “Jennifer, I have this whole plan for content marketing, and what I can do to really, really grow the business, but I need some extra cash to do this. But an investor’s not going to fund that.” And I paused, and I was like, “Where did that belief come from?” “Well, what do you mean?” she says. I said, “Well, where did the belief that an investor won’t fund that, because what you just described was a clear use of funds to really scale and grow your business. Investors love that. And you have such a deep network of people who are following you, that within probably a few months, you could be fully funded.” She was like, “Really?” I was like, “Yeah.”

Another company that I deeply supported for a while a couple years ago, they had the opportunity to be incubated by Google for free-

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, wow. That’s awesome.

Jennifer Love:                   I know. And yet, they needed the [ads fund 01:09:37] to support it, which was like 30 grand a month. And they didn’t have that cashflow at the time, so they needed to get a little cash from friends and family. And they didn’t believe, again, that they could do it. And they had such a huge network. And I said, “Oh, ladies, yes you can.” We quickly devised a little funding strategy. Within 60 days, they were fully funded for this.

And so, this is what I mean. Women aren’t going and asking for what they need. They don’t even believe they can get access to it. They don’t have the confidence to powerfully step into it. So, there’s mindset stuff going on, but there’s also belief systems. And then, part of that is true that there isn’t the access to the funding like there is for the guys. Now, that is shifting, that is changing, thankfully. But this is such a deep societal issue. It’s not one thing, Melinda. It’s such a compilation of so many things, that I set out many years ago to figure out: What is it? How can we dig into that one thing? And I was like, wow, this is not just one thing. This is so many things that’re going on. And really, that’s when I came to the place of saying, “You know what? The biggest, greatest thing that I can do for the [inaudible 01:10:55] of the state of women is to help them own their side of the street and to really take a look at themselves.” And from that place of loving and compassion, I believe we can eradicate a lot of this.

Melinda Wittstock:         How beautiful. So Jennifer, how can people find you and work with you?

Jennifer Love:                   Well, one of the greatest ways is to help me spread this message. Rewrite the money story process that I’ve put together. I want to take that out and spread that as a gift to women in the world. So, if you have a community of women that you know would be so valued and benefited by the process of really looking at their relationship with money, reach out to me. I’m happy to come and do this for free, have this conversation, do this as a workshop, a round table, a talk, whatever it is. Reach out, because I’m on this mission to help really shift this relationship so that we can own our side of the street. That’s one way.

Another way: If you think that you are ready to really step into your financial freedom and get the support that you need to do that, to get to that million dollar mark and beyond, that three percent club, then our money masters or money makers program may be a great fit for you. So, reach out. Let’s get onto a millionaire strategy session. Whether we decide we want to work together or not with the team doesn’t matter. We’re going to help you have a breakthrough in your business on that call, figure out what it is that you need to do, design what needs to happen in your business right now to take the next financial step forward in your business. And then we can decide together if this is a good fit.

Melinda Wittstock:         How wonderful. Well, thank you so much for all the work you’re doing and for putting your wings on and flying, especially with such a wonderful mission. Thank you so much.

Jennifer Love:                   Thank you for having me, Melinda.