271 Ruby Fremon: No B.S. Breakthrough

Ruby Fremon is a “breakthrough” coach helping thought leaders step into the light, and align with their true authentic purpose. Creator of the 3-day leadership training intensive Amplified Soul Live® and named an “Inspirational Woman” by the Huffington Post, Ruby shares her personal story of how she broke through, let go of limiting beliefs, why “hitting rock bottom” was what she needed to see and connect with her true soul purpose.

Melinda Wittstock:         Ruby, welcome to Wings.

Ruby Fremon:                   I am so excited to be here, Melinda. Thank you so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:         I am excited to talk to you too, because I suspect that a lot of our listeners will have some breakthroughs listening to you because you are in fact a breakthrough coach and we share so much in common. Both of us share a passion for authenticity and like fearless living. What was it, do you think that made you crave that kind of just being authentic, you know, stepping into your truth. Was there a moment in your life where you’re just like, right, that’s it, that’s enough. I’m just going to be all in me come, what may?

Ruby Fremon:                   There wasn’t a moment for me, the truth telling came out from a series of moments almost like it had been bubbling up. My entire life up until about 2012 I had spent it really being passive and meek and I know for people who know me, that’s really hard to believe, but I really was. I never spoke my truth, I never spoke my mind. I didn’t dare to and I was raised in a culture that didn’t necessarily invite women to speak their mind or invite anyone really. It was always about pleasing other people and keeping face and um, oh no, what are other people going to think and so I got really good at wearing masks, you know, and 2012 was a really big year for me in terms of hitting rock bottom. I had been hovering at rock bottom for years and then the bottom collapsed in 2012 and that really sparked my journey to getting to know myself for the first time and through that connection that I was building with myself, I began to see all the ways in which I was holding myself back in terms of my truth.

All the things I wanted to say but never said and how that biting my tongue and holding back how all of that just blew the top off my life and in terms of the things that I was experiencing, like I was making everything worse by not communicating how I felt and I was creating my own suffering. So finding my voice really kind of was a byproduct of all the personal development work that I’ve been doing and it was like as if I was dusting off my throat Chakra and learning how to use it and the more I used it, the more I loved the feeling I would get from using it, the freedom, the joy that the weightlessness, you know, feeling like I didn’t have to carry these weights anymore and it’s just been this practice that I’ve been embodying and I haven’t perfected it.

I don’t think there’s a way to perfect this, I think it’s simply a practice and it’s a practice that I’m committed to in my life and it’s one that I really help my clients with as well because when we start to own our voice, when we start to use it in a way that allows us to express ourselves fully, we can achieve so much more and not just, you know, uh, outside successes, but internally. That freedom that we’ve been craving, you can get it from speaking your truth, that feeling of joy that you’ve been craving, you can get it from speaking your truth. There’s so much that becomes activated in your life when you start to activate your voice.

Melinda Wittstock:         I think we go through lives often living other people’s lives, like literally all the things that we’re told we should be by parents, by our teachers, by the television, by social media, whatever, right?

Ruby Fremon:                   Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s sometimes difficult to peel those away and figure out where all that begins and ends and where you kind of begin. I find one of the things have been helpful for me whenever I find myself in my own language saying something like I should do, it’s like should, why should I?

Ruby Fremon:                   Yeah. I mean, I always say don’t should yourself, don’t should yourself in someone else’s voice that you’re replaying in your mind. That’s not your voice, that’s not your truth, that’s not really what you want to do and if it is what you want to do and then say I will or I am, but if it continues to come out as I should, then that’s a sign that you’re just replaying someone else’s voice.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh Gosh, this is so, so true. I think often we have these experiences, like you talked about your 2012, my 2012 was 2013, where everything that worked before suddenly didn’t work and when we have those kind of breakdowns or double bounces or we fallen on our ‘proverbials’, and we have to … it’s a sign from the universe that we have to change and if we weren’t listening, the universe gets louder and louder and louder telling us, it’s not working, change something, be yourself.

Ruby Fremon:                   I mean some of us need more than one fall, some of us need more than one rock bottom and you’re right, it amplifies each and every time it presents itself in your life until you actually learn that lesson and see it for what it is.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’m old enough now where I can see patterns, I can see where it whispered and then it spoke a little louder and then it kind of veered a little louder and then it was just like cataclysmic, man, I must have been the most stubborn person ever. And I’m reminded of the Einstein quote, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. And so how often do we unconsciously do the same thing because we’re being driven by unconscious things, we’re not even aware that we’re doing the same thing over and over again?

Ruby Fremon:                   Yeah, and that’s why we repeat it, because we’re not seeing it, we’re not aware of it and I think that this is one of the reasons why, um, many us and probably many of your listeners feel as though they’ve kind of repeated the same experiences over and over again. It’s because you’re not really fully aware, like you’re not in a place where you can actually see what is happening and I’ll give the example of relationships because I think this one’s really relatable. You know, you date the same type of person over and over and over again and you know it’s like super unhealthy, this is a toxic relationship that you keep ending up in what feels like the same relationship and all your friends are telling you, this person is not good for you, this is unhealthy and you’re just saying, oh yeah, this is good, my partner does this better than the last one, like come on.

Then all of a sudden you break that pattern somehow and you look back and you’re like, Holy Shit, look at all the ways in which I was playing into this pattern of mine. It’s like one day you just remove the blinders and you see your life for what it truly is and a lot of the things that hold us back from being so connected to our truth is that we get caught up in what we feel we need to be perceived as, or we get caught up in other people’s expectations of us or we get caught up in how we think we need to show up. All of these things disconnect you from your truth, and create a … It creates a distance between who you truly are at the core of your being and how you’re showing up.

Melinda Wittstock:         Isn’t it the human condition though, because we’re here in our ‘earth suits’ and we’re here to kind of learn all this stuff and it’s sort of like shedding skins; It’s like getting back to where we were as babies when we were true to our true essence and we took all this stuff on, tried it on for size. And then through your 20s you’re trying your teens you’re trying on these different things in your 30s and your 40s. I’m kind of old enough now where it’s just like less is more, it’s like literally shedding stuff doesn’t like letting go. In fact, my 2018 word, looking back on last year, my 2018 word was surrender because I felt like I had to release a lot of stuff. It was like, okay, let’s just get rid of all the stuff that’s not truly me.

Ruby Fremon:                   Yeah, I love that because I always say get naked. What we have to understand in this experience is that we have chosen to put on these different outfits and to try them on and a lot of times, again, it’s because we’re trying to please or be in charge of how people perceive us all the while avoiding really connecting to who we truly are and the way that society’s evolving and the way that social media for example, is evolving it makes it really tough for people to dive in words because you’re constantly scrolling, you’re constantly comparing, you’re constantly seeing, observing witnessing and all of that creates an impact on your unconscious mind whether you’re aware of it or not.

As you’re scrolling, your mind is picking up a little notes here and there and that is going to come out of your unconscious and into your actions is going to bleed into your actions. It’s going to bleed into how you show up, it’s going to bleed into your copy. I have clients that complain whenever I work with someone, I feel like I start to write like that or I start to speak like that and it’s because you’re not consciously choosing to die inwards. You’re taking in a ton of information, but you’re not letting that go in order to dive in, we’re constantly inputting stuff rather than moving inwards and that’s why it creates … we create a bigger disconnect between who we are.

Melinda Wittstock:         As women though, we tend to be … This is a generalization, but we tend to be very relationship focused. Like we really do care about the collective whole, not just ourselves so this is kind of a challenge because we can be so easily influenced by others and want to make everybody happy so there’s a fear that sets in there that by making everybody else happy, our clients happy, our team members, happy, our kids, our partners, all of that we can get spread so thin that there’s nothing left of us. I see women in particular falling into that trap.

Ruby Fremon:                   Yeah, to appease.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, or it’s like tall poppy syndrome where we’re actually afraid like this I think is true in business where you see women whose fear is not a failure but is actually of success because to succeed, requires you to be more of you and really take these bold kind of chances and risks and all of that and to do so is to upset the apple cart because it reminds everybody else that they’re not doing it

Ruby Fremon:                   To succeed is also to be visible and I remember when I was younger in my 20s, I was dating someone who had a great job. I also had a really phenomenal job and was making a lot more money than him and it challenged him and he would take it out on me and I just remember him getting … he would get so mad at me anytime I had to answer messages from the office or do anything that had to do with work and I thought to myself, wow, like this is really odd and I feel like as women, we have a tendency to want to play smaller when we ruffle people’s feathers, that was my first experience of that.

To back it up, I was raised by a dad who, you know, very hardworking, very successful and has instilled me with i’s like I’m just his beliefs around work and business and he’s always wanted us to do well for ourselves. So I had this idea that I can be successful straight off the get go, I’ve been very entrepreneurial and so that relationship for me showed me that, oh wait, it might not be safe for me to be successful like if I’m successful, then I might upset some people. That relationship didn’t last, but I noticed that also among women and Melinda, this is something that I think is happening a lot more in the entrepreneurial space where there’s that competitive nature, but also when people you know get successful and instead of being happy for them, you get mad because you’re not as successful and then the person who’s successful feels like, oh, see, I’m losing friends because I’m successful.

So we play that into this game of, into the psychology of it’s not safe to be successful, it’s not safe to be seen as not safe to be visible, it’s not safe for me to go after everything I want and so you self sabotage by showing up in smaller ways, by playing smaller, by giving yourself excuses and by not going after the things you really want to go after. I think the tides are starting to turn, I think now we’re in an era where we, we’ve entered a year where we’re starting to see people embracing the idea, especially women embracing the possibility that they too can have this.

I think because it’s such new territory, especially if we’re talking about the history of mankind and the way that women have been repressed for decades, what’s really happening is we’re all getting together and healing a generational wound. That’s what’s happening and I think that that’s what women are feeling everywhere, women in business, is this idea that I can be successful, I can have this, and breaking free from that generational wounds of like, no, this isn’t for you, this isn’t safe, it’s a man’s world, we’re not supposed to be doing this. I believe the tides are turning and I believe things are shifting.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh Gosh, I really do too. So it’s one of the reasons, Ruby, I started this podcast because you mentioned visibility and I saw so many women succeeding in silence. Either that they were doing these amazing things like curing cancer or just inventing new technologies or like just really game changing disruptive innovations, but they didn’t fit the image of the dude in the Hoodie and eating ramen noodles. You’re doing these amazing things and even if we hadn’t yet achieved that level of success, I saw a lot of women with their heads down just toiling, trying to do everything themselves like consulting, doing it all with like having it all and this lack of visibility.

So teaching women to actually be … to stand out, to speak to be more like take risks and moreover also to invest in each other by helping each other and promoting each other in all of this really allows us. The more we do it, the more of us kind of live into being 100% who we are the more kind of gives permission too and for other women to do the same, because I think we’re so kind of community focused. I don’t know, I don’t think we’re as good as … men will just go out and just do what they’re going to do. But women, I don’t know, we need to kind of bring the group sort of with us, we’re more like that.

Ruby Fremon:                   Yeah. I mean every single woman I know is seeking community, every single woman. That’s one thing we all have in common, especially entrepreneurial women, every entrepreneurial woman is seeking community and as connected as we are with social media and the Internet, we’re actually feeling more disconnected than ever because of that, because we’re always on our screens and on our devices and listening to podcasts but not really connecting to people in real life. Let me tell you, like when women come together and I know you know this, when women come together, magic happens. It’s like the power of one becomes the power of five or the power of 10 or the power of 20, however many women you have in your community, and I’ve seen this time and time again.

I used to run a women’s group and I would put these women together for six months and amazing things would happen in these women would not know each other and they come together and then they launched themselves out into the entrepreneurial space, support each other, become each other’s biggest cheerleaders. I share that because I believe, and you can share your experience too, but I believe in from what I’ve experienced, a lot of women don’t feel safe creating those connections in order to find that support amongst each other so they can rise together. A lot of them don’t feel safe, they feel scorned by other women in their past, they feel like they can’t trust people, they feel jaded from whatever stories that they’re carrying on from experiences that happened years ago and that’s what’s preventing them from really like connecting or if they connect with them and they don’t open up and they’re not using their real voice and they’re not speaking from their authentic truth. And so for people like you need to create spaces where they can come together and they understand that they’re safe.

That’s what I see happening a lot in the personal development industry is just having these containers created for women to come together and learn to teach themselves how to trust again and teach themselves how to lean into each other again and really experienced the power of a strong female community.

Melinda Wittstock:         All of this is so true so when you look at how you most help your clients, what are some of the things that they struggle with most and where do you see the biggest transformations?

Ruby Fremon:                   What they struggle with most is using their voice and standing in their truth so really showing up competently as who they are and taking a stand for what they’re here to do. Now that doesn’t always … that’s not what comes out of their mouth. What comes out of their mouth is I can’t get my message heard. No one’s liking my posts, no one’s buying my products and what most people will tend to go towards is like learning business strategy or applying marketing tactics. They’ve already tried these things and it’s still not working and it’s because they’re not showing up confidently and they don’t trust themselves and they have a fear of being visible because of a fear of judgment, a fear of being seen, whatever it is. The biggest transformations that I see, I mean, for example, I had one client who had literally come to me right after coming out to her entire family and she’s in a very, very conservative religious community.

She came out and about a year later, she’s working as an advocate for the LGBTQ community in her ethnic group and was speaking to a crowd of over 500. To me her story just shows the transformation that we do together that I co-create with my clients. It’s really helping them drop into the essence of who they truly are so that whatever marketing strategy or business strategy you want to apply after that to greater business, then it’ll stick. The reasons why these things don’t stick in the beginning is because you’re too scared to put them into action or you’re not showing up fully or you’re not putting in a thousand percent and that’s because you’re holding yourself back. That’s what I do. And it’s something that I’m deeply, deeply passionate about because one person can make an impact, but if I can help give rise to like an army of voices, then imagine the ripple of impact that comes from them.

Melinda Wittstock:         So Ruby, what are some of the big next steps and big bold things that you’re doing in this New Year of 2019 in your business? I understand that you’re … because I know you do events and you’ve got a lot of big things coming up. Tell us about some of the things that you’re up to.

Ruby Fremon:                   I have an annual event called Amplified Soul Live, which is a three day event and 2019 is my third event and it’s probably the last time I actually do this event this way, which is interesting. But what I’m really … and I have a new collective called the thought leader collective, which is kind of like a mastermind half community where the touch of group coaching, but really my theme for this year is connection and collaboration so I’m bringing intimacy back into my business and I’ll still be doing events but on a much smaller, more intimate scale and collaborating more because I see that as the future of this industry, of leadership, is really demonstrating collaboration. My business is … I look at it like clay and I can change it and at any given time, and I’m going to be honest, 2018 was a really, really tough year for me and my business, but it also gave rise to a new way of thinking and a new way of wanting to approach things for 2019.

My focus this year really is smaller, more intimate events, workshops, really the thought leader collective and launching that and growing that and speaking more, speaking more on stages. At the end of the day, I want to show up as a catalyst for as many people possible since I am a leader for leaders. I see the people who I night as gaining then the power of igniting their audiences and their communities and so on and so forth. So by getting on more stages, by speaking more, and approaching my business in this way, I see that the ripple of impact can grow at a much faster rate while also helping give rise to this army of voices, people who are really going to rise up and move the conscious collective forward.

Melinda Wittstock:         I love this. So Ruby, how can people find you and work with you and I also want to give a shout out to your amazing podcast as well?

Ruby Fremon:                   Thank you. Yeah, my podcast is Today’s Thought Leader, you can listen to it on iTunes, Spotify, all the usual suspects, it’s there, and then you can find me and connect with me on social media, I love to hear from my audience. My handle is @IamRuby and if you’re looking for information on my upcoming events workshops and how you can work with me, either one on one or the Thought Leader collective, please had to rubyfremon.com. Then while you’re there, if you want to get a taste for what I have to offer, download my free training which is rubyfremon.com/cpr.

Melinda Wittstock:         Fantastic, Ruby. Thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Ruby Fremon:                   Thank you so much for having me.