hi my name is todd lawyers a long time producer at the belmont media center for time out for sports talk and happy to have to get up involved with the media center you have a tashan if there's something you'd really like to see on this channel on any of the channels here at the belmont media center  welcome to daring to dream i'm susie and i want to dare you to dream big for your life as a life coach an inspirational speaker i help people believe in their dreams and take action to make them happen do you have a dream for your life could use some inspiration or we're going to be talking to a woman today who beat the odds and overcame obstacles that many of us would never have to face from a single welfare mom to the publisher of a magazine and if she can do it so can you all it takes is a little dreaming i'm not saying it's going to be easy but the first thing you have to do is take action one small step at a time and before you know it you could be living the life of your dreams to joining us today is linda joy publisher of aspire magazine and founder of aspire media a woman who's living her passions through her magazine and events london joy helps other women to follow their hearts listen to their soul honor their body and the world around them london knows firsthand about overcoming obstacles to following your dreams and now she's helping other women to follow their dreams welcome linda thank you so much for joining us well thank you for having me wendy you're such an inspiration you're going into the third year of publication with aspire magazine and coming up on the second year of your wonderful event love light and laughter for women and this is actually not the first successful business you've started you actually started as successful consignment shop in one thousand nine hundred two i believe and won an award for entrepreneur of the hundred nine but times weren't always so good for you why don't you take us back to when things weren't so but so great and tell us what your life was like at the age of twenty one all suzy at twenty one like a lot of young women i was a single mom i had a beautiful daughter and she was a catalyst that made me want a better life being a high school dropout i had further my education got my ged and was taking college courses through that and through watching her grow up i just knew i wanted something more she gave me the strength and courage and i was a welfare mom back and forth on and off welfare for  first five years of her life and i'm very grateful that it was there through the times that i knew it but i always knew i wanted more and then when she was five years old i found out that the state offered a job training program for one and i took advantage and it was the turning point of my whole life wow so what gave you that motivation i mean there are so many people so many women who are struggling single moms on welfare and  don't know how to take a step to change their lives well i thought that you there i think sometimes all of us not just woman but women in particular we look at the big picture and then we get overwhelmed and we freeze for me i always just said let me just do one little thing to the you know just let me get out of my own way and make one little step with it was a phone call or following up on looking into the job training i always noticed that it was those little steps that opened up the doors but if you had asked me to take giant steps i may not have been able to exactly that so important for everyone to hear you have to take small baby steps to get to where you want to go so when she went through the job training program tell us what happened then well the amazing part in as i say all a lot of things in my life have lined up and it's now that i look back i can see where they all are connected while we were in the job training program one of the things that you had to do was dress as if you were already in an office because it was eight to while we were all welfare moms we didn't have a budget to go shopping so our in the consignment shop i had always shopped out for my daughter a children's consignment shop suddenly start to take a woman's office clothes and it changed our lives you had a bunch of woman in this class was the deal that for the twenty six weeks of the program you had to dress as if you were in the workforce already so that when the twenty six weeks were up you already had your wardrobe to start a job so all of us would go all different towns and go consumer shopping on saturdays so it changed our lives while i go on get a great paint job stay there three years further my education through job to ensure reimbursement and when i decide to open a business it was a consignment shop because it had changed so many woman might classes life that i said this is amazing and i opened with six hundred square feet no business knowledge and now how did you out how would you even get to that point i mean there are so many people who you know have a dream of starting a business but they have no experience they have no idea how to do it how did you know how to do it what did you do i fell down a lot basically because it wasn't to be honest  wasn't started like i'm going to go into business it was wild this is what i believe in and this is what i want to do so see i've always been very intuitive and followed my passions i never tried to create a business that was a business i  created and follow my passion which became a business so we do say that's what drove you all one hundred percent in i've been blessed since one thousand nine hundred two to always have been allowed to follow my passions which as i said became a business so for me not one day is ever felt like work since one thousand nine hundred two wow that's a blessing i still have the same stresses as everyone else but to truly be no when you live in your souls purpose is an amazing journey that's wonderful and how would you  your passion my passion really is for one i'm a connector of people and i really connect with women and children and i just believe that i was giving now i look back i know everything i went through through from being a single mom all the way up and even parts of my childhood was so that other woman who were in those places right now can look at me and say oh my god if she overcame that i can and that my passion is that in whatever i do all the women be inspired by it so that they don't give up on their dreams that's wonderful so you started this business in one thousand nine hundred two and you have no business knowledge  but you you managed to make it a success i was blessed in the way that i'm an avid learn and though i'm not school taught i book taught so when i want to know that's very impressed but it was all you know we had seven employees by the time we got to that point and we would work with a lot of woman and shelters so i believe it's following your passion and understanding that you're not meant to know what all that this people who have come before you and read the books take the classes do whatever it is but the info is already there don't try to do it by yourself so with that scary i mean were you afraid when i found the location and sign the lease i had no idea what i was even going to open the guy still laughs to this day i just knew i was meant to do something there and within forty eight hours realize it was going to be that consignment shop wow and when you sign on the dotted line and go this isn't just in your dreams anymore this is real of course all the ego based fears come in say in what i do when i'm just a high school dropout when the welfare mom or i you know how did you get beyond that one step at a time one step at a time every day like i said i happened to be doing something i loved so at least the work i enjoyed going in every day i you know having the learning process right when i had fear based thoughts i would just focus on what i wanted and not what i was afraid of right and that's a something i still tell my daughter who's now twenty three lal wow what an inspiration you are for her particularly well i've been blessed because  and she's grown up in my businesses so a lot of people other than being physically beautiful they tell me why what a personality she has what a spark for life she has and though would be different in a lot of ways i know that all those experiences ha added to her she would work in come to the shelters with me when i spoke she would be there to donate the clothing i always wanted to see that part of life was giving back and even at my lowest point i always give back and i hope to always be able to do that and believe we all should so my understanding is that the success of that business actually led you into speaking career of sorts well what happened was i was nominated for the small business associations welfare to work entrepreneur of the year in ninety nine now just to get the nomination was was beyond my wildest dreams you have to be nominated by someone in the community and each state and each community receives nominations so to make it into the nominations that was enough for me i was like oh my god when i won it brought newspapers from my whole area out of the woodwork while i was getting stuff to get a lot of press a lot of publicity small town girl welfare mom makes good on trumpet you know as helping others while from them a few months later a freelance author from a free lance writer from arkansas found  and asked if she could do an interview because she thought was a great life story we did never heard from her again for months later i am opening my store on super bowl sunday which i think was the year two thousand and the people next door owned a magazine store and they opened up the door and said you're in the national enquirer oh my gosh and i thought they were joking and they just put the magazine against the glass of my store and said oh you haven't the next match or your enquirer now that could be a number information and i had calls within hours from all over the country i and there are relatives and i'm sure the media were calling me like all those same media who had hounded me when i won the entrepreneur of the  now were amazed that i made a national publication so write all combat and it was an overwhelming seventy two hours when the phone rings at my house and i thought it was a family joke and they said hi it's an d c studios and basically i thought it was a joke and hung up on them but i did call them back when i realized this may not be a joke and they flew me out to beverly hills a few days later and we taped mina from oz woman from venus right the t v show you were on the show why and the whole purpose i was a nervous wreck because i didn't understand all the publicity that was happening at the time show r and someone i met on that flight out this said to me when you're on the show just speak to one woman  ignore everyone else that is there but if one woman hears your story and doesn't give up the new mission is to lily and one i'll can be honest when i walked out onto the stage and saw the live audience i was in a peaceful place yeah it was like ok all this is happening for a reason and then of course it brought all the local media are all back again right so because of all that publicity the colleges started calling training schools i had already been speaking far but woman shell to start a call in the colleges in i started speaking and i love doing it i've pulled back from it but i'm about to enter back in two thousand and eight that's so exciting so well i do believe and just from the phone calls and e mails i have from the publicity that hit is it gave so many women whole you know that well like i thought that i couldn't achieve anything because i had this going against me this this this and if anything my life will say it doesn't about her second successful business that she created aspire magazine could you dedicate yourself to a worthy cause could you go the distance to keep the child healthy did you travel to the other some of the world to help eliminate polio can you tell which of these children was not born free can you tell which of these children does not deserve to be treated with dignity welcome back to daring to dream we're talking today with linda joy publisher of aspire magazine and founder of aspire media so linda we got through your first successful business of the consignment shop and now tell us how you made the transition or what led you to founding a magazine of all things at the end of the eleven years of having my business i was going through my own journey and physical illness etc and began looking into holistic health as one of my options which was completely new to me and begin my journey and i closed my soul to become a massage therapist wow that's a huge transit was a big transition my family was shocked in i just felt like that's what i was drawn to do and that had really helped me at the time that i needed it well through that journey of two years in massage school i realised that i still loved my connecting with people and as massage it's more of a one on one years in business and we're receiving so much national attention and national connections because i think her message and i always say her because i believe she has a role in energy i believe there is a need for a woman are waking up this souls a screaming in the a looking to find their passions their love they want to find their place in the world i more than be in a house wife you know c e o of a company this is something a little deeper and more personal and from that what we're hearing from women all over the world is wow we've never had a magazine that talked was on that level and that's what we are aiming to do between that and the events that's wonderful but let's just take one little step back here ok so you go from being a massage therapist to saying oh gee i think i should start a magazine for women how did that come about how did you figure figure out how to how  always told people or sometimes if you look at so much into the house you will get overwhelmed and not follow through i just receive that that's what i was supposed to do and i just said if that's what i'm supposed to do it will be done and i took the small steps now a lot of people said oh so you research publishing you did this never writing to printers i said none of the above i kind of like to do things a little backwards so i just formulated my ideas contact ergo it's crazy but if someone had told me it was unheard of at that time i probably would have been a nervous wreck right because i didn't listen to the world i listen to my intuition i move forward anyway now the a little joke in town where i live is it's a small town post office so everyone knows each other right and the magazine was about three or four issues old and i ordered some books from amazon so when they got to the post office they were just wrapped in clear plastic see i'm guy that i've known for i had and you hadn't yeah because it would have the real world would have scared me by staying true to my intuition and passion every decision i make every writer that's drawn to me every advertiser is all intuition my marketing collaboration s i may not make every decision true to the business world or i but it works for me and it works for the people who support her who are advertisers and that's what i want to give to women don't go in the world and say what can i make a lot of money because it would be chasing the dollar instead say what do i spend my day doing that when i'm doing it i lose all track of time because there's your passion exotic could be baking because maybe i'm meant to bake cookies and sell them away whatever it is it's going to be that one thing that i like to say floats your boat on the tiller tatter and you just lose track of time because if you create a business around that now a lot of people that it just is a different name for what i'm doing right but as long as my values in my mission stay the same and i can stay true to who i am and my values and passion then who knows after the magazine there could be something else it will still have that underlying value so if you asked me five years ago if i'd be publishing a magazine i'd say no if you asked me if i would be a massage therapist this was never in my life plan right so it was by following intuition follow in my guidance and staying true to what those underlying values and passions are which i know i am put here to reach out to a woman tell us about some of the challenges work is no one no one has a level of and i am not going to say that it's been an easy journey yeah but i've always been one that looks for lessons in the obstacles and i'm a joyful person at heart anyway  i'm so for me i think having that positive attitude and that's who i am down to the core has been a big help have i got knocked down a lot financially got wiped out i've gone through all r but through it all i just stayed focused on what i'm meant to do yeah and i look at it know like like most of us i've looked back and said oh my god what did i do but i don't look back now and beat myself up on those mistakes like i used to maybe age brings wisdom but now i look back and go well you just learned another way not to do things right and i take those experiences and move forward with them but i think i spent part of my thirty's beating myself up for the things that didn't go the way i thought they would go exactly but here i am now when i'm you know when i still fall down i swear i get up where i we're meant to do that right it's when you have the expectations that all is going to be perfect and flow when you're follow passions it's not true this is still life and in general women are so hard on themselves very clearly men are too but particularly women and you know i know i've done the same thing you know your start in yourself and you beat yourself up for it or not doing this or not making the right decision and if we could just step back and look at every step that we take as a as a learning opportunity and that whether it goes right or wrong there's a growth there and there's something to there when you look at those things the good in the bad in the mistakes and the experiences is when you look at them and say ok what kind of take from this then you going to continue to grow and so when you can except i the one right for me personally it was i was more beat myself up because i felt like i had let others down or i one of those that i can let myself down but to let others down and i'm learning to say it's human y can't be perfect all that absolutely but if i can wake up at the every morning and say i'm ready for this day and i'm i'm still looking at joy i still have the same financial difficulties health difficulties whatever it may be as the rest of the world but it's how so we've heard it straight from the horse's mouth from a woman who has changed her life and lives her passion the key piece of advice here is to follow your passion because when you do something that you're passionate about it won't feel like work so i encourage all of you out there to explore your passions and see what you can do with it if you or anyone that you know has a story that could inspire others police let us now feel free to contact me at susie at susie spidey dot com or contact the belmont media center at six one seven four eight four t