On Purpose: Episode 001 with Isha Cogborn – Transcript 

Isha Cogborn:

Welcome to the very first episode of On Purpose with Isha Cogborn. As you probably guessed, I’m your host, Isha Cogborn. I’m so excited about the launch of this show because it marks the end of literally years of procrastination. It’s not that I was dreading doing a show, I absolutely love media. It’s what I know I was put on this earth to do, but one of the things that I’ve learned is when something means so much to you, or maybe … I’m just speaking for myself, when it means so much to me, these perfectionistic tendencies can creep in and actually keep you from moving forward on something that you’re excited about, something that you want to do. That has been what’s been going on with me for the past few years, but that ends today. Thank you for being here with me enjoying this ride, going along this journey with us, but this show is not about me. It’s about you.

Isha Cogborn:

It’s about your hopes and your dreams. It’s about your purpose and it’s about providing a platform for regular people who do awesome work to be able to share their stories with you so that you can learn, you can grow, and you can be inspired. Now, I know so many of us have gotten comfortable in our day-to-day routines. Our lives are pretty good, but they’re not as purposeful as we’d like them to be. Maybe in that day in and day out routine we’ve gotten comfortable to the point that we’ve forgotten who we are and what we really want. Maybe it isn’t that you’ve forgotten, you just don’t know where to start. I know they’re other people who are listening right now, you are knee deep in the grind. You are working on it, you are making it happen, but you’re tired and you’re starting to question if the sacrifices and the struggles are even worth it.

Isha Cogborn:

Wherever you are on your journey to creating your most purposeful life, this show is for you. Now, since we’re going to spending a lot of time together each week, I want to tell you a little bit about me. I’ve been an entrepreneur since 2009 when I launched my first company, Epiphany Institute, a personal development company. I’m a certified life and business coach, author of the book Five Rules to Win Being You, and I am blessed with the opportunity to speak and to train at companies, conferences and colleges across the country. Now, when I started my business, it was one of the most exciting times in my life, because it was literally a dream come true.

Isha Cogborn:

I mean, I can think back to being in fourth grade at Washington Elementary School in Mount Clemens Michigan and hearing Les Brown speak.  Clearly, he’s speaking at an elementary school, so you know I’m aging myself a bit. You know that had to be in the early stages of his career if he was speaking at an elementary school and the school could actually afford to have him there, right? I remember hearing him speak and thinking to myself, “Wow, I feel like I can go and do anything right now. I like the way that he made me feel and I want to make other people feel that way.” In that moment, I knew that I wanted to be a professional speaker, but then I went to lunch and I forgot. That didn’t come back up for me until years later. I remember walking into libraries, and bookstores, and seeing shelves, and shelves of work, and wisdom, and knowledge, and inspiration on the shelves, and thinking that regular people were able to pour out, and put this into the pages of a book so that someone else could learn and grow from it, and I wanted to do that for people.

Isha Cogborn:

I remember going to conferences, and corporate trainings even, and seeing that person up in the front of the room facilitating this process of education, and collaboration, and wanting to be able to do that. I remember even just going to conferences and you know how you see the table? You see this a lot particularly at women’s events, and things like that, and they’ll have the table, where that’s where the speakers sit. I remember being at the table with the “normal” people and looking at the table of the speakers and thinking, “Wow, they’re so accomplished and they’ve got so much to share. I want to be at that table one day.” In 2009, when I started Epiphany Institute, that was the realization of all of these dreams that I’d held onto for so many years. I was speaking, I was writing, I was coaching, I was doing media. All these things that I wanted to do, not for me, but to be able to contribute meaning into someone else’s lives, to be able to help them be a better version of themselves.

Isha Cogborn:

I was getting to do that, so it should’ve been happy, right? Well, it was, but I’ll tell you, this entrepreneurship thing is no joke and I did not know that when I started my business in 2009. All I knew was, “Okay, I’m free,” because I had been dealing with … I was in corporate America, worked for one of the largest companies in the world. Great company, great people, made a lot of money, to me at that time, and although I should have been happy, I wasn’t because I knew that there was something more that I was supposed to be doing. I just didn’t feel complete and being out of alignment with who I am and what I was created to do, actually began to manifest itself into physical illness. I developed an autoimmune disease that was triggered most often by stress. It wasn’t even so much that, “Oh, this job is just killing me.” It was that the fact that I was doing a job that I wasn’t supposed to be doing, was killing me.

Isha Cogborn:

Now, I’m not telling anybody, “Go out and quit your job,” if your job is making you sick, but what I do recommend is that if you find yourself in that position, that you begin to plan for your future, that you begin to think about, “Okay. Well, what is my way out of this? What is my exit strategy?” Instead of just accepting that, “This is all my life has to offer me.” Because it isn’t. You have the ability to create your most purposeful life, but you can’t act like a victim. You have to take ownership of your life and get the education, get the wisdom, get the resources, put yourself in the right environment with the right people to be able to have what you need to go and create what it is that you want. Too many of us just take what life throws at us and think that that’s it for us. It’s not. You can have what you want if you are willing to create, willing to put in the work to create it.

Isha Cogborn:

That’s what I decided to do. If what I wanted to do didn’t exist as a job I could go and find in my job board searches and go find this new career. “Okay, if that doesn’t exist, well, I guess you got to go build it, Isha.” That’s how I became an entrepreneur. But, in doing that, I didn’t know what to expect. I was just running on passion, running on excitement, and thank God I had a nice severance package sitting in my bank account so that, that bought me a little bit of time to begin to figure things out. I’ll tell you, it was hard, and I didn’t have people around me who got it, so when I was having those low moments, when I was struggling in ways that I had never experienced before, because I was used to being good at stuff.

Isha Cogborn:

I was good in school, I was a top performer at work, and all of a sudden now I’m doing something, and even though I was good at my craft, I was finding after a few years that the things that I was doing that used to be able to allow me to reach certain goals … If the goal was, “Okay Isha, you need to make $4,000 this month,” go make it. I used to be able to do that pretty easily, and then all of a sudden I couldn’t, and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. “Why isn’t it working anymore?” I didn’t have people in my life that got it that I could talk to that could say, “Okay, yep. I went through that a couple years ago too, this is how I got out of it.” As a few years past, and I ended up moving, and surrounding myself with, really, the majority of the people in my life are entrepreneurs now. Now I’ve got all types of people in my circle who get it, who understand me, who understand my life, who understand the struggle, who also will celebrate the wins with me too without jealously, or bitterness, or any of that.

Isha Cogborn:

What I realize is that so many other people who are starting businesses or have aspirations to start businesses, they don’t have that circle around them. That’s one of the reasons that I wanted to start this podcast, because if you don’t have those people in your life, let me connect you with those people who are in my life. It’s kind of like being that … I feel like a virtual dinner party host. I’ve got all these wonderful, talented, accomplished friends, who are by the way regular people, and that’s one of the things that I love so much, because sometimes you can look at somebody and they’re successful and you think to yourself, “Well, they had all things going for them, and so that’s why it worked out for them.” That’s not the case, because when you look at people, you don’t always know their story. You don’t know what they’ve been through, you don’t know what they had to overcome to get where they are.

Isha Cogborn:

In this podcast, you’re going to get to hear some of those stories so you realize the success that you’re seeing and looking at as the finished product, there was a whole process that went into that, that you didn’t see. When you find yourself in those struggles, you will realize, “Oh, this is normal, because that person that I listened to on Isha’s podcast last week, they went through it too and they got through it. Although I may struggle today, if I don’t give up, this is not the end of it for me. I want you to know that that thing that you are pursuing, when it gets hard, you don’t have to quit. You may have to recalibrate. You may need a little bit of a different strategy. You may even have to step away from it for awhile, because I’ll tell you what, I love corporate America, I started my business and was in it full-time for five years, but when it got to the point that things weren’t working anymore, I went back to work.

Isha Cogborn:

It wasn’t my first choice. I would have loved to have not had to do that, but it was what I had to do. Understand too that, if you find yourself in a position where you got to make some tough choices, it’s okay. It doesn’t mean that you failed. It doesn’t mean that you won’t get another shot to do that thing that you want to do. I want you to hear those stories, to be inspired by those stories, and that’s why I’m here. I’ll tell you, in the past, a couple of years or so in that business, because, again, as I’ve seen the power, the benefit of having community around you when you’re going through the struggles of entrepreneurship. Not even just the struggles, just going through it period. I mean, because it’s just, it’s life, but it’s a different kind of life.

Isha Cogborn:

If you’re in corporate America, most people understand what that life looks like, but a lot of times people don’t understand what entrepreneurial life is like, particularly in the early stages, the sacrifices that you have to make, the challenges. Just the lack of clarity sometimes, because you have an idea, but you don’t know how to bring this thing into the world, and so you try some stuff. You try it and it might not work. The people on the outside, that may look like failure, but for entrepreneurs that means, “Okay, that didn’t work. I collected data, that didn’t work. Let me move on. Let’s try something else. That doesn’t work, let’s try something else, let’s try something else.” People that don’t get it may look at you and think, “Oh goodness, why doesn’t he just give up? That clearly isn’t working for her, she needs to just go back and focus on her real job.”

Isha Cogborn:

You’re thinking to yourself, “I don’t want a real job. I want to live my dream. I want to bring the thing that’s inside of me into the world.” Everybody doesn’t get that. Sometimes, they will give you well-meaning advice, because they love you, because they care about you, because they don’t want to see you struggle, because they don’t want to see you hurt, but that may not be the best advice for you based on what your goals are. I want you to have another choice when it comes to the voices that you are allowing yourself to hear, allowing to speak into your process in your journey. Here’s the thing, everybody’s journey is different, so just because you hear at work one way for one person, doesn’t mean that that’s the way it has to work for you. Good or bad. Yes, I ended up homeless. That doesn’t mean you have to be, but just understand that … It’s kind of like childbirth.

Isha Cogborn:

I think about being pregnant 23 years ago, especially when I got to the point where I was visibly showing, and you could be in a grocery store, and a complete stranger would walk up to you and they want to talk about pregnancy with you. “Oh, when are you due? Is this your first one?” I mean, because there’s a bonding experience there, because a woman who’s had children sees a woman who’s getting ready to have a baby and there’s a bonding experience there. Then she wants to share her experiences with you. “Oh yeah, I remember my first one. Oh, I was in labor for 82 hours.” You’d be like, “Oh my goodness, I do not want to be in labor for 82 hours.” Well, you know what? You might be in labor for three hours, because everybody’s experience is different.

Isha Cogborn:

The beautiful thing about that, is that in hearing all of the different experiences that people have, it gives you a frame of reference so that when you start to see certain things happening in your life, you can kind of go into that memory bank and pull up that thing that you heard from one of our guests and was like, “Oh, I remember such-and-such talking about this.” It allows you to not feel weird, not feel crazy, not feel like a failure. You just realize this is a part of the process, right? That’s what we want to do for you and I’m excited that you’re going to join us every week, because we will be here every single week with a new episode. Typically, it will be an interview with someone talking about their process, talking about their journey.

Isha Cogborn:

One of the things too that’s important for me with entrepreneurship, I believe in living a whole life, being a whole person. Your business is a part of your life. At certain stages, it may be the part of your life that occupies the most time, energy, thought, resources, whatever that is. But again, I believe in being a whole person living a whole life, so guess what? You got to have fun every now and then. You got to have relationships, important relationships in your life. You can’t alienate everybody. You’ve got to take care of yourself, because when you accomplish your goals, if you get there, but you’re all broken, and busted down, and sick, and can’t even enjoy your success, is that really success? In the interviews, we’re not just going to talk about the business side of it. We will also talk about people’s personal lives and how their business has affected their lives, how their life affected their business, things like that too, because that is very important to me.

Isha Cogborn:

I am not a member of #TeamNoSleep. I believe in getting my sleep, I believe in it. I mean, I was talking to somebody the other day, and just kind of running through my schedule, and “I’ve got this going on. I got to do this.” Everybody’s like, “When do you sleep? Oh, trust, I get my rest, because my body needs it. I will shut down and get sick if I don’t get my sleep. Now, there are times, yes, where you’re just in grind mode. It may be for a week, it may be even two, you’re not operating on an ideal schedule, but that cannot be your default. You have got to take care of yourself. It’s important and it affects your work. If you’re not getting enough sleep, if you’re not eating right, if you’re not moving your body, you are not performing optimally, which means that your business is not going to be as successful as it could be because you’re not taking care of yourself. We’re going to talk about that stuff too.

Isha Cogborn:

I mean, it’s just going to be an exciting season, it is, and I’m excited to introduce you to the people in my life, and the people that I meet along the way that I may come across somebody and hear their story, see what they were like, “Ah, I’ve got to have you on the podcast,” because I want you to meet them. I want you to learn and to grow from them too. Again, we will be here every week. You can plug in wherever you listen to your podcasts, iTunes, Stitcher, wherever. You can also access it from our website, but one of the things … Two things. Two things I want to ask you to do, two things. Number one, subscribe, because we’re all busy and I do not pretend to be the most important thing in your life. I know I’m not. I am not delusional about that, so it will be very easy for you to forget about this show. But guess what? If you subscribe, you will get a notification when there’s a new episode, and then you won’t miss it, so subscribe.

Isha Cogborn:

Second thing I’m going to ask you to do is to share it, because there are so many times that the resources that someone needs are out there, but they just don’t know about it. This show may be the resource that someone in your life needs. It may not even be the thing that you need. You may have just stumbled across this podcast, or listened to it just because you know me, or we’re connected on Facebook, Instagram, whatever, and you’re like, “Oh, she’s got a new show. Let me listen.”

Isha Cogborn:

If you’re subscribing, and you’re seeing new episodes, or you see me share about it, make sure you share it. Because again, this thing can be a lonely road and this may be the connection point that somebody needs to keep from quitting. How cool would it be if they got what they needed because of you, because you took two seconds, and pressed share, and you changed somebody’s life? That would just be amazing, wouldn’t it? Subscribe, share, don’t miss an episode. Think about On Purpose with Isha Cogborn as your weekly dose of educational self-care. I’m excited to bring it to you and we will be right back here with you next week. Until next time, get out there and be your amazing self on purpose.