921 Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

All those years I was in tech, I would hire an athlete if I had an option to, because they were coachable. They didn’t crumble when you told them that something wasn’t right.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

They’d spent their whole, you know, childhoods getting coaching. You know, do this more, do this less, lift your arm, pick up your chest, run faster, whatever sport you were in, you know, throw the ball differently. So, they were coachable. So that ability to be coachable is part of resilience, too, because, you know, resilience is the adapt in a positive way to whatever happens in your life that learn, grow stronger, adapt.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And by the time I was the vice president in this tech company, and we were getting ready to do our IPO, and I’m on a little private jet, you know, flying into New York to meet with Goldman Sachs for our roadshow, I was just not afraid. I mean, I knew if I could fall, I could get back up.

Melinda Wittstock:

We all fall, we all falter, and when we do, we all have a choice of whether to endure or adapt and thrive because when we fail or life throws us a curve ball, it’s always an opportunity for learning and growth. Nina Sossamon-Pogue was an elite gymnast on Team USA, her Olympic promise cut short by an injury—the first of many personal and business challenges and setbacks she has overcome. Today we talk about the nature of resilience, and why it’s not just about enduring: It’s about adapting, learning and leveraging these difficult moments to thrive.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, 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.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and two-time bestselling author whose resilience and success overcoming daunting challenges is nothing short of inspirational.  Today Nina Sossamon-Pogue shares her extraordinary journey through elite athletics, television news, and corporate America from startup to IPO, overcoming immense personal and professional adversity.

Melinda Wittstock:

For anyone facing their “now what” moment, often a regular occurrence for most entrepreneurs, Nina’s book “This Is Not the End: Strategies to Get You Through the Worst Chapters of Your Life” is must-read. And if you’re looking for help on your journey, Nina has also built the innovative online courses known as the Now What Workshop. Today our conversation spans everything from why it’s ideal to hire former athletes and how to grow your business brand with public speaking to the nature of building resilience in all areas of your life.

Melinda Wittstock:

Nina will be here in a moment, and first:

[PROMO CREDIT]

Helping women build wealth and make their purpose driven impact on the world through entrepreneurship has always been a mission close to my heart. That’s why eight years ago, I started this podcast to help women succeed as entrepreneurs. Over the years, I’ve driven more than $10 million in sales to the women I’ve featured on this show, and this year I’m taking my investment in female founders to a whole new level as a venture partner of the new firm Zero Limits Capital, where we’re dedicated to investing in highly scalable seed stage startups founded by women and diverse teams – a mission more important than ever as the Trump administration cracks down on anything and everything DEI. We’re looking for innovators with exciting new applications of AI, Blockchain and other emerging technologies that make a social and sustainable impact to change the world. Is this you? If it is, take a moment and tell us about your opportunity at bit.ly/ZLCintake – that’s bit.dot.ly/ZLCintake – capital ZLC lowercase intake. And coming soon, because I know from 20-plus years of experience raising venture capital, I’m going to be opening up my schedule to help female founders nail their investment strategies and pitch decks at the earliest stages of their companies. So, stay tuned!

Melinda Wittstock:

When I was just 4 years old, I started figure skating and won my first trophy by age six. I loved the feeling of freedom and flow as I learned to “become” the music in my routines. I loved the accomplishment of learning difficult spins and jumps. What I didn’t love all that much was that I fell on hard ice over and over again for about 5 hours every day through my competitive career, cut short at national senior level by a debilitating knee injury, Olympic dreams dashed.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, when Nina Sossamon-Pogue shared her journey as an elite gymnast competing with Mary Lou Retton, I was, I admit, a little jealous of the large padding the gymnasts had to break their falls. Turns out both of us have a lot in common – athletic career busting knee injuries, and careers as television news anchors and entrepreneurs. Today we talk about those essential entrepreneurial skills learned in the gym and the rink – persistence, discipline, and the ability to get up after a fall and turn adversity of all kinds into stepping stones for success.

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Nina Sossamon-Pogue and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Nina, welcome to Wings.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Melinda, thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

You and I have a lot in common. We were just talking before we started this interview. You know, we were both athletes. We both had big injuries. We both became TV anchors. I mean, I don’t know, like a parallel…

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Yeah. My sister from another mister. We’re kind of living in parallel universes here.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. Well, we’re going to take in your whole, you know, backstory, through this interview, because it really is a guide to triumphing over adversity, which, like, we all have in our lives. But right now, you’re a top public speaker. Tell me about that life and how you got that going, because I think there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that can grow their businesses that way, and that’s something that is very, very helpful to know just kind of how to do. So how did you get started doing that?

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Yeah, so it was a bit of a journey. I left my corporate gig after television that you and I had in common. I was working in a tech company, SaaS company, software as a service. And I left that gig to start writing a book and speaking. And I knew I had something I wanted to say, but I had to set up a business around doing it. And I had, you know, been a news anchor like you. And I knew I had hired a lot of speakers, you know, because I ran. I was the vice president of marketing and comms at this big company and ran the events teams.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

I had hired a bunch of speakers, but I really didn’t know the business, so I had to stand up my own LLC and get it going and learn what that business looked like. And I did like so many people do when they start something new. I found a mentor. I found someone who had done it before. It was actually a speaker that I had hired who I very much admired, the way he ran his business. And I said, hey, will you mentor me? Will you show me the ropes? What does this look like? How do you do contracting, pricing? How do you even imagine what your revenue is going to be? Or how. How do I figure out, you know, how to find clients, contract clients, deliver what they really want, and then invoice them and collect money? I mean, just a business like any others. I had a very good mentor in that and set up the business, and I launched it in full in January of 2020.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, my goodness. You go out, right before the pandemic as a public speaker. So, what did you do?

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Well, it was really strange because I had, I, I didn’t know the business as, like I said, as much as I probably should have to launch into it something new. Your entrepreneurs get that. We try to do hard things and sometimes we don’t, we don’t know. We don’t know. I had booked a year. I mean, I, I, my, my speaking is, I’m at a point where I was contracting. I had eight gigs on the books. And so, they pay you half up front and they pay you half once you deliver.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And that’s how I had my business set up. I had eight gigs on the books, and I had all of their money holding those dates. And then I delivered three of them. I was in Chicago when they started shutting down the airports because of COVID and I came home from that event, it was for GE, a GE Young Leadership Summit. And I got home from that event and then had to figure out what I was going to do because I was an in-person speaker. And I didn’t realize, this is the rub of all this. I didn’t realize if you don’t do that for my contracts, I had to give that money back. And like anybody, I’d already spent it on the next thing, you know.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

I had events canceling left and right in the months to come and I had to figure out what had to give them their money back. And two, I had to figure out where I was going to, you know, pivot or change like everybody else did. And for me, like you, Melinda, probably going back on TV seemed like a step back, like going back on a little screen. I was finally on a stage, and I had legs and could do things. But to go back on that little screen felt like it was taking a step back. So, I fought it. I kept waiting for the world to wake up and I mean the world start moving again and get going so I could jump back into that speaker space. But all the conferences that year shut down and I had to really change when I did.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

I stood up an online class where I taught other people who’d written books how to craft a keynote speech. And I also did some virtual work that I didn’t love as much. But I was really good at the virtual work because I can sit and talk into a camera all day long. I’ve done three shows a day for 20 years. So yeah, it was a really big change for me. And it was a… It was a fail. I mean, the business failed that year.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

I wasn’t planning to make a ton of money my first year anyway. I was reinvesting it. But I had one person who I brought on with me. I had to let that person go. After about six months, I was like, this is not coming back fast enough for me to afford you. And just had to rethink it. It took me about 18 months to kind of get my feet under me and relaunch.

Melinda Wittstock:

Any new business takes a while. Like, lots of stops and starts and pivots and little, you know, failures large and small. So just kind of goes with the territory. I’m curious how you find found the transition, though, of moving from TV talking into a camera, you know, with a prompter and all of that, and to speaking in front of a crowd of people. Was that an easy or a difficult transition? Like, easier for me to talk to a camera than to talk to actual people.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Oh, and please give me a teleprompter for life. I mean, it was so much easier with some. With the words. Someone had time to think about those words and put them in front of me. My brain didn’t have to work that piece. I would spend a lot of time rewriting stuff before I did news. But then it was in front of me. I didn’t have to memorize it.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

It was difficult. I was fortunate because I had the time in tech between the television time and the on camera, I mean, on stage speaking time. And when I was in that industry, I started speaking on behalf of the company at conferences, whether I was talking about our product roadmap or a new release we were going to have. We were an admin system for a lot of, like, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, United, Aetna. We were in the SHRM Space Society of Human Resource Management. So, I spoke at SHRM conferences on the Affordable Care Act and different things. I’d gotten my feet wet enough in that industry over the years, talking about our technology and products and the future of the industry at conferences.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

So, it was a bit of a transition. I knew by the time I had to step out and do this full time as me with my own message, I was very ready. I was very ready to do it. It was easier to talk about my own story than it was to talk about some product roadmap or the Affordable Care Act, obviously, just to tell my own stories and craft some meaningful Information.

Melinda Wittstock:

What’s really important for entrepreneurs is to be able to tell your story and weave your story into the company story because you’ve got to be an evangelist for your brand as you’re growing a business.

Melinda Wittstock:

And sometimes I think women especially, we get so into the doing and into the competence into like just getting stuff done, that we can forget how critical it is to just be your, the best evangelist, you know, for your business, for your story, for your mission. So where do you think a lot of entrepreneurs kind of go wrong or what should they be doing at that earlier stages? And, and, and how, what should they be doing at that earlier stage? And you know how to get going and set up and grow your business by being a great speaker.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Yeah, and I agree with you 100%. It is very hard to one, tell your own story. I think because I took the time to write a book, it made me, it forced me to think about my life differently, think about what I wanted to put into the world differently. I stepped away and wrote a book before I became a speaker. And that’s when I knew exactly what my mission was, what I wanted to put in the world, what my product was going to be. But to take the time to write it all down and think about it. We, sometimes we jump from something and think, I’m going to be an entrepreneur and start this thing. And we don’t stop and really spend the time to think it all through, to write it all down.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

What are my values? What do I believe in, what are the conflicts going to be as I step into this? And so that was really helpful for me. I did a thing when I left tech and I went to do this, one of the things I did as far as this, like how do, how do you jump forward without, you know, without a net and knowing what that’s going to catch you? What could you do to advance your knowledge? There what, you don’t know one, I wrote the book, and that made me understand what. What I wanted to put in the world. But the other thing I did is I sat down and this is somebody else’s advice. They said, hey, take your calendar. Because I was in a corporate setting, so my calendar was out there. Every minute of my day was scheduled.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And they said, print out your calendar for the last few months, and then look at it and look at the things you really like doing. Circle it in one color, look at the things you hated doing, circle that in another color, and then look at the things where you felt like you were really making a difference, like that filled you up, that filled your bucket, and put that in another color. And some of them could have been, you know, an overlap in that first one. And I did that exercise, and that’s where I saw what I really enjoyed doing was helping others, helping other people through big projects or managing problems they were having, or jumping into a situation and helping resolve it and get people all moving in the same direction. I like that piece of it. So that helped me know that my. I was going to be going into something that I not only was good at, proven that I’d done it a bunch, but I also really enjoyed. So that exercise helped me a lot as I jumped in.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And then, you know, you don’t know all the answers. And I think women need to get better at this. I think men have this, like, I don’t know, they’re born with it or something. Just the confidence that you’re going to figure it out, like, jump in and go, I’m smart enough to figure this out. I totally. I can do this. There’s nothing that’s going to come out there that’s too hard for me to learn.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

I think men weirdly come out of the womb thinking they can do anything. And then we come out thinking we’ve got to have all the answers before we do it. So, there’s a boldness. And you were an athlete. Now, as an athlete, I think you learned some of that. If you’re not an athlete and you’re an entrepreneur out there, you have to take a chance on yourself and be willing to learn and grow and get it wrong and then get back up and keep going. I always joke. I was a gymnast. I literally fell on my face. People and I got up and kept dancing and going.

Melinda Wittstock:

As a figure skater at you know, national level by the time I was 15, just learning all the triple jumps, falling on hard ice over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, and getting up and doing it again and like doing it at 5 o’clock in the morning when there was rink time and all that kind of stuff, balancing that with everything else. And when I wrecked my knee, and I couldn’t continue to go through that experience at age 15 is an interesting one. I mean, it certainly teaches you resilience and it teaches you. You have not only a second act, but a third act or, like, there’s a million things that you can be doing. But tell me specifically about how that ties to entrepreneurial resilience. You know, that, that sport, the athleticism, what it meant for you. Tell me more about your story with that and what you took away from that experience.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Yeah, I think it carries into everything. Like, I’m sure you see it in your own life. And I, like, I’m so glad I had a crash mat, and I did not have hard ice. So.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, my God. They do it differently now. Like, it’s all like, you learn the jumps on harnesses and things now more humane, you know. But, like, I was doing it… It was all trial and error.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

I know, I know. Now they have these pits that they put the bars in so you’re not so high up in the air. It’s all. They’ve gotten better at making it all less scary and painful. That’s true. I moved away from home when I was 13 and I moved into the Olympic training center and I was on the COVID of magazines as an Olympic hopeful. I made the US Team, which Japan, Hungary, Germany, Australia.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

I’m going all over the world. And this was Mary Lou Retton era. It’s so you guys can figure out how old I am and where I was. So, Mary Lou Retton won the first year she won USAs, I won miss Congeniality. I wasn’t the best one out there, but nobody liked me. I was nice. And my maiden name is Rofi, so we were Rofi and Retton. We got to room together a few times, and it was a cool time to be in the sport.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And then I don’t make the Olympic team. Crushing blow. I think my life is over at the ripe old age. At 16, I was just turning 17 for the 84 games and I didn’t make the team. And, and I just bombed a meet. I mean, I bombed a qualifier. And that happens, you know, back then.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

They have a different system in place to choose the team. But back then you bombed a qualifier and you just… That’s it. That’s the end. I thought my life was over at the ripe old age of 16, that I had wasted my whole life. And then I did what you did. I blew out my knee.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

I mean, I got myself up after that and faced the halls of my high school and stuff. So, after, after not making the Olympic team, I decided, yes, I would do college. And I was a D1 athlete. I went to LSU and its powerhouse gymnastics program my freshman year. I’m competing there and there’s no nil back then, no Livy Dunn, but I was kind of a big deal. And so, I’m competing. And then I blew out my knee and lost my sport altogether.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And I had to figure out who I was without the sport. Just another. Like I thought my whole. I’d wasted my whole life, you know. And then I found journalism and loved love this first time I stepped into the newsroom. Very competitive atmosphere. You go out every day, it’s new challenge.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

You don’t even know, you know, what you’re going to be covering. It’s difficult. You sort of get graded, you know, kind of like a score in gymnastics. I guess I could, I could go back and look at it and see whether I’d done a good job or a bad job each day and keep trying to get better. So that became a big part of my world. And I was a journalist for 20 years, like between being a reporter and then being a news anchor and that same spirit of being able to, you know, fall down and get back up again. I would bomb a live shot. I would do, you know, cover a story and miss the piece that the other, you know, news station got or, you know, you don’t always win when you do news.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

No one really notices your losses except for you and the little ones. But then your big ones when you screw up live on live television, everybody sees it. You can’t just like crawl in the corner and cry. You just like, like a Jimmy she’s get up and smile and keep going. So that resilience piece carried through. And then when I was in tech years later, you know, again, I found myself one, having to learn really fast and being very coachable. Like, like an athlete is, I always say, when all those years I was in tech, when I was actually the one doing the hiring and firing, but more so the hiring, I would hire an athlete if that was, if I had an option to, because they were coachable. They didn’t crumble when you told them that something wasn’t right.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

They’d spent their whole, you know, childhoods getting coaching. You know, do this more, do this less, lift your arm, pick up your chest, run faster, whatever sport you were in, you know, throw the ball differently. So, they were coachable. So that ability to be coachable is part of resilience, too, because, you know, resilience is the adapt in a positive way to whatever happens in your life that learn, grow stronger, adapt, pace. So that resilience at a young age as an athlete carried over into my television years. I kept learning, growing stronger, getting better at it. And then when I was in tech, I kept learning, growing stronger, and getting better at it.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And by the time I was high up and the vice president in this tech company that was on a fast track to growth, and we were getting ready to do our IPO, and I’m on a little private jet, you know, flying into New York to meet with Goldman Sachs for our roadshow. I was just not afraid. I mean, I knew if I could fall, I could get back up. So that resilience carried through throughout my life. And even, like, I can picture being on that jet sometimes with, you know, other grown men in most cases who were very nervous and falling apart and having, you know, because we’d have a whole team of people on there and there was always a handful of folks that maybe weren’t the very top, but that were, you know, in there with me doing the work, who were very nervous and crumbling under the pressure. And there’s something about being an athlete and being resilient that just carries through because I was able to be calm and one get myself through it, but also help all those people around me go, hey, we’ve got this. What are you worried about? Let’s figure it out. What if we do it this way? If it all goes wrong, here’s plan B.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

You know, I just always had that confidence that comes from being an athlete that’s carried over and now into my entrepreneur years.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I found the same thing. Failure is just part of the entrepreneurial process. Like you’re creating something that hasn’t been done before or like a completely different approach.

Melinda Wittstock:

You’re bringing something to market that hasn’t been done before, there’s going to be all kinds of things like that along the way. So, you wrote about, with your book a lot of these experiences, This Is Not the End: Strategies to Get You Through the Worst Chapters of Your Life

and, and you’ve had a few of those, some ups and downs. Tell me what made you want to write about it and tell me… I, I know you’ve got a, a story that was incredibly, incredibly hard to overcome.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Yeah. So the, the wanting to write about it. As I was leaving tech, and I went through that exercise and knew I wanted to help others and put something into the world at the same time. My father had Alzheimer’s and so watching him and decline very quickly and wishing that I’d asked him a million things and wanted to know so many things that he could no longer share with me, I thought, wow, I could be next one. So, my, my aunt Nina, who I’m named after, also had Alzheimer’ father was dying of Alzheimer’s. He has since passed. And I was like, what if I’m not here to tell my kids all the things they need to know and how to get through a tough time or all the people I mentor, all these people who I truly love and I’m caring about, what if I’m not here? What if something happens and my brain is not intact enough to help them through their tough times? And I thought I should write it all down. And then I got into this book program.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

As you know, I went and looked for a program, someone who had done this before and was good at it. And I jumped into this book program and, and they really challenged me to write about that and the more difficult things. So, I had had an experience at that point, probably about 15 years before now it’s been about 20. And I had had an experience that was very traumatic, and I had suicidal ideation, and I truly just didn’t want to go on for a moment in My life. And they said, you need to dig into that. And when you’re talking about resilience and these other things. Not making the Olympic team, I was let go from a TV station. They went younger and blonder at one point.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Like all the failures in my life, I was, I divorced. I have lots of other things I could talk about. This was part of the story. I couldn’t not tell. And so, I spent the time, it was very cathartic to put it all together and wrote about my most difficult experience. And I don’t always share it because I truly don’t want to trauma dump on your listeners. But we had talked about it beforehand, and your audience maybe could benefit from hearing about it. That’s why I wrote about it too, because, you know, getting divorced is one thing or, you know, losing your job or something, but there are other things in life that just stop you in your tracks and you’re like, I’m not sure I can go on. And I had one of those moments. So, I was a news anchor like you, Melinda, and I was very close with my co-anchor and his wife and was a good friend of mine too. And I had taken the day off to go pick my kids up at the bus stop. I wanted to be like the normal moms, you know, I work two to midnights and I always felt like I was missing out on everything with my children. So, I went and picked my kids up at the bus stop and you know, big crowded suburban bus stop. And the bus happened to come to my co-anchors home. That’s where the bus dropped off.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And I drove over and parked over there and waited and we hung out. And she had a new baby. And there are lots of other, you know, parents and siblings and stuff hanging out in this yard. And you can picture it, you know, kind of popular bus stop on a fall afternoon in Charleston, South Carolina. It was a beautiful day and the bus comes, kids all get off and everybody’s running around and playing and stuff. And it was time to go. And I popped my kids in the car and said, hey, how are you? How was your day? Here’s your, you know, here’s your snack. We’re going to run some errands.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And then as I went to leave, you know, in that commotion, no one had noticed that her baby had crawled up under my car. And I backed up. So fast forward to today. He is in college. He lived, he’s okay. But there were days and weeks and months. He had horrible head injuries. There were days and weeks and months.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

We weren’t sure he was going to make it. And during that time, I. There were prayer vigils all over town. I was very popular news anchor, and so my co-anchor was a very popular news anchor. So, this was a very public. A public pain for both of us, but we got through it. We got through it together. We went back on the air together.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

He got out of the hospital, we got back, we went back on the air together. His wife and I, you know, held hands and said we would get through this together. It was one of those moments in my life that during those days and weeks and months, I just could never imagine that anyone would ever see me as that USA gymnast or that popular news anchor again. I was just going to be this. This woman who was involved in this horribly sad, tragic event that had happened to our community, that happened in our community. And I couldn’t get myself past that. And I was in a really dark place. And I’m very pro therapy.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Thank goodness I had a wonderful therapist who helped me get past that. And I did a lot of things right during that time. And I, through this process, could go back and, you know, through process of writing this book, I went back and looked at how did I get through that, you know, because I went back on the air and the news cycle moved on to other stories, and people went back to just seeing me as Nina. And he went back to school and grew up, and our boys went on to play baseball together, and like, the world kept going, but I was so close to letting my world end that it frightened me. And that’s how I knew other people feel like that, and they don’t make it to the other side. What did I do right in those moments? How did I, you know, how did I get through those moments and get to the other side of it when it was so public, and it was so painful, and I was in such a bad space and…

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I can just only imagine, like, just the guilt that you’re feeling. I mean, it’s just a crazy accident. Like, how could you have known? Like, it’s not your fault, and yet just the. The guilt and then other people’s judgment. Like, I don’t know when this happened, whether social media was a thing at the time.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Yeah, thank goodness it wasn’t. Like, it was early stages of Facebook. Not everybody was on. This was 2005. 2005 and 6. 2006. No, it was 2005 when this happened.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And so, it was emails. I got emails and people would say mostly nice things, but, you know, all it took is one or two negative things. And that’s all you remember. You know, you just remember the bad stuff and why I felt it was so important to tell it. I didn’t write the book till 15 years later and even tell the story. And there was no fault out of this.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

You know, the police reports, I mean, it was a big, big to do. There was no fault in it. We got through it together, all those things, and he was okay, but my head couldn’t get past my piece of this. And all the things that could have. I should have done differently or better or whatever. When I wrote the book and I spent the time doing it, I really felt it was important to share not so much the story of exactly what happened, but how I got out of that space and how I managed to very, in a very public environment do that. Because nowadays, I mean, Melinda, think about it.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Nowadays, everybody’s pain is public. Everybody knows it’s all on social media. Everybody knows everybody’s everything. You know, I mean, it’s on Facebook, it’s on your Twitter account. People catch what your failures or your accidents. You know, back then, probably 10 people would have pulled out iPhone and videotaped it. Like, horrible.

Melinda Wittstock:

I’m just trying to imagine how like just the trolling, all the stuff you would. It would have been like exponentially worse.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Correct. In a way, I had the public pain before everybody had because it was on the news within hours. There were news trucks on my front yard. I mean, it was, it was very public. But nowadays, I think everybody’s pain is public. And so that’s one of the reasons it was so important for me to write the book, is so I could share with people, hey, here are some specific strategic things you can do to. To make sure you make it through something like this.

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Nina Sossamon-Pogue, author, coach, speaker, entrepreneur, and a former Olympic gymnast and TV anchor.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And it was the book that I was looking for at the time. And there were lots of books on PTSD or cognitive behavior therapy or the science of stuff. I didn’t want any of that. I didn’t want to hear about somebody else’s problems. Like I had. I couldn’t even think. I just remember standing in the Barnes Noble back in the day, going, in the self-help section going, somebody tell me what to do. So, I don’t, you know, jump off the bridge.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

I mean, give me something. And so that’s the book I wrote. Like, in this moment, Let me get you through to the other side. And here are some specific strategic seven things you can do right now to help you get yourself through this.

Melinda Wittstock:

You know, my heart goes out to you because I’m just imagining like just how, how hard that would be. And you mentioned there’s all kinds of other things that you, you’ve gone through too. So, let’s talk about your startup to IPO journey as well. Because there’s not a lot of women that, that whole journey from startup to IPO, all the things that can happen to a company, all the different roles, who you’re being at each stage of that growth.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, what were some of the big challenges in that, in that startup to IPO phase that were kind of heart palpitating and how did you deal with.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Those lots of heart palpitating? Well, let me level said I was not the CEO. This was not my startup. I jumped into a friend’s startup. By the time I jumped in they’d gone through rounds of funding, and they had about 200 or so employees. So I was, it was still startup, but it wasn’t a big global company yet. Google had just bought YouTube, and he needed to understand video and how to put information out in video and he do explain a lot of really confusing things in health care.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And I was really good at explaining complex things. So, it became a really cool opportunity for me. But I jumped into this tech startup and there’s already 200 plus people in it when I came on board. But it was in hyper growth. The angel investors were just being bought out and there was, it was the next phase of this company. So that’s where I jump in and I jump in just to stand up a media department, just come up with some videos, stand up a media department, do what’s needed in that moment. Because we had to go back. It’s a software as a service platform and they wanted to go back and put in like hooks to put videos throughout the platform and they didn’t know how big a video file was, how they were going to play that.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

It was you know, 2007, it was the beginning of all of that. I and jump into that phase and I think the most important thing for anybody jumping onto a moving Train, or jumping into the startup space, which is a constant moving train, is to not get caught up in your title, not get caught up in exactly what your job is. You do whatever needed, wherever it’s needed, whenever it’s needed, and you’re fully committed. I worked really crazy long hours. I tried to learn as fast as I was doing. I asked everybody. I never thought of any of my questions as dumb questions. I asked so many questions to so many people.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

I had to always be comfortable not being the smartest person in the room because I didn’t know so much. So being able to jump in, not know everything, do whatever’s needed, do all the things that are needed, even if they’re not in your wheelhouse, and not get hung up on your title. And in a very short span of a few years then I was the vice president of communications. And then when they, you know, as we were rolling into this IPO, they said, hey, we want you to run marketing comms and events. And like, so they put a lot of things under me. And I never got hung up on exactly, you know, what the title was or that. I just did what was needed and learned really fast and hired people smarter than me. And so, to be able to put yourself in a position where you are leading and leading with an open mind and open heart and wanting to lift everybody else, I mean, high tide raises all ships, and I believe in that.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

I think that’s the best thought process. If you’re going to jump in and be an entrepreneur and, and do this or jump on, and especially in the software space, when you are going through those rounds of funding and, and you have to be able to move quickly and adjust and adapt quickly. It’s really, really important. And you know, Melinda, you said it earlier, your story and who you are, whether you’re an entrepreneur or whether you’re in tech or in any kind of startup, your story is so, so important. So, one of the things that I was very good at and helped this company with was telling our story, our CEO story, our founder story, that rolled into our technology story, that rolled into the opportunity ahead of us in the green pasture. We could see, you know, as we looked ahead through the IPO process, but you, you have to craft that story and spend time on it, and then you have to get everybody on the same page. Your chief technology officer, your CTO, your chief financial officer. Everybody has to be saying the same story with the same love and passion for the success of this thing.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And that storytelling, for me, I think, became one of my strengths to be able to offer in that space. Whatever department I was in or whatever my title was, whatever I was managing for them was part of what I was there for. But I was also there to be resilient, to tell a story, you know, to get everybody on the same page to tell the story. And I’ll work with, I’ll work with companies now and help them in their, you know, creating their decks when they’re going in front of investors, whether they’re in a, in s round of funding or they’re going into some big meeting. Because I think the story is so, so important. But my storytelling is what carried me through that and being resilient and continuing to change and adapt and grow.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, Nina, in with all the speaking and the books that you’ve authored, you also do a now what workshop? Tell us a little bit about that. Who, who, who you help in that case and what are some of the things that they’re grappling with?

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Well, that became a passion project because I wrote the book, and I’m very proud of this book. This is not the end. And I do corporate speaking and resilience and that’s mergers and acquisitions and people going, you know, putting big targets out in front of their groups or asking people to change your, you know, new products. The change space, they’re very different from the now what Workshop. And what I had to figure out was how I could keep the passion project that I had over there, the beginning passion project that was the book. And how I could still have my corporate space.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

So, I have them separate and with the this is not the end space. The personal me to you. Let me get you through a tough time no matter what. That’s where the now what Workshop comes in. It’s not on my corporate side, but the reason I built it is because I do a lot of corporate speaking. People kept coming up to me afterwards and saying, oh my gosh, do you do any one-to-one work? Can you, you know, or I have a friend that’s going through a tough time. Can I have them get in touch with you? How can they work with you? And so, I didn’t have an offering there and I don’t really have the bandwidth to do it. And more importantly, I’m a big proponent of therapy.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And I always tell people, go get a clinically trained person, find a therapist to get you through a tough time. I’m not trained to do that. I just know I’m helping, but that is not my wheelhouse. So, I didn’t want to do the one to one. So, I stood up the now what workshop last year in 2024 and put it out there. And it is me being me.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

It is my mashup of life experiences and science, neuroscience, cognitive behavior therapy and stoicism and some ancient Chinese philosophy too. It’s my mashup of all of that that will get you through a tough time. And so, it’s offered online, it’s self-guided. I do respond to all the comments and questions that people have on it. But there’s no once a week call that we all chat with each other or anything. It’s very private. When people go through tough times, some people don’t want to call a therapist. They’re not comfortable in that.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And this is just a way to kind of pull off the band aid and go, I need to actually think about this differently. I need help. And this will get people just through those moments of like desperation and despair. And that’s why it’s called now what. So sometimes it’s now what? I just got a divorce. Now what? I just had a death in the family. I just lost a child. Now what? I, I just, I have, you know, somebody was just paralyzed. Like now what? Things that are, I can’t even imagine. But it will get you to the other side of now what. I keep thinking about the LA fires and so many people who are in these now what moments there.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Whatever in life is causing a now what moment. Your, your child has a drug addiction. Now what? I just Lost my job. Now what? And I think it’s. It’s for that now what Moment when you just aren’t sure where to start or what to do. And it’s me on camera talking and helping you think through things.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And it has some worksheets, and I don’t. It’s not heavy. I joke. I think I’m hilarious sometimes. So it’s. I’m funny at times, but it’s just me helping people look at things in a new way and see that, hey, there’s always a way forward. Let’s figure out the way forward. No matter what’s going on in your life, there is always a way forward.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And so, I take them through the steps and the processes and it’s, you know, it’s putting things in perspective. This timeline thinking, this timeline math stuff I do. And then obviously pulling other people in, you know, what are the other humans in your world? Who’s helping, who’s hurting, who’s missing? And then it’s isolating the problem. A little stoicism, like not what happened before, after. Where are we right now? What can we actually deal with? What can we take action on? And then obviously the. One of the big things that we have to work on is the language in our head that comes out of our mouth, that becomes our reality. That self-sabotaging language and how to put a positive spin on the words in our head so we don’t, you know, drive ourselves and make things worse instead of better by our thoughts. And so, it’s a mashup of all of that.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

And I take people through a really simple, elegant process and break it into a lot of little pieces so it’s, you know, consumable chunks and short little videos and helps people get through it.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s amazing. Well, we’ll make sure we have everything and all the links to your, your books. And now what workshop and everything in the show. Notes. Nina, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Nina Sossamon-Pogue:

Melinda, this has been just fantastic. You are super easy to talk to. So, thank you so much for having me on.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Nina Sossamon-Pogue is the founder of

Melinda Wittstock:

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Melinda Wittstock:

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