Laurie Wintonick is the current CEO of JI Elite Coaching. Laurie has extensive experience in strategic planning and event planning. Throughout her life, she has had a passion for helping and supporting others and is now helping individuals find balance in all aspects of their lives. Laurie discusses what it means to her to be ‘boringly consistent’ in her journey to making herself a priority.
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Brett Gilliland: Welcome to The Circuit of Success. I am your host, Brett Gilliland. Today I’ve got Laurie Wintonick with me. Laurie, how you doing?
Laurie Wintonick: I’m doing great, Brett. How are you?
Brett Gilliland: I’m doing great. You’re in New Jersey. What part of New Jersey? I didn’t ask that part.
Laurie Wintonick: Yeah, I’m actually, you know, central, northern New Jersey. It’s really northern New Jersey cuz you know, there’s the argument whether Central Jersey, central Jersey exists or not.
But I am in, um, the northern part of central Jersey in Colonia, um, about half hour, 45 minutes from New York City, half an hour from the beach, an hour from the mountains and yes.
Brett Gilliland: Beautiful. You got anybody in the uh, Super Bowl we may be rooting for this weekend?
Laurie Wintonick: Not really. Not really. I was kind of, I mean, I’m a Giants fan.
I, I Jersey, I’m a Giants fan, uh, sorry Jets. But, um, I was really hoping that the, the Chargers were gonna make it in this year. Um, yes, Kyle Vannoy is a, is a, um, a. Someone that I’ve worked with and I was really hoping for him and his team to get in. So I was kind of bummed when that didn’t happen.
Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Yep.
They had a good season but didn’t, didn’t get, uh, quite far enough. So you are the CEO of JI Elite Coaching, uh, which is Jesse Itzler. Uh, which for those of you that are on social media, Jesse is a phenomenal follow and, uh, but you run his coaching program. Uh, which we’ll talk about. And, uh, but you’ve been an executive before and, and you, what’d you, what I see you called yourself a, an avid uh, no, a serial volunteer. Uh, loving to do all that stuff, but, uh, but really helping tons of people with the coaching that you all do out of the JI uh, Elite Coaching program. But before we dive into that, Laurie, if you could just kind of give us a lay of the land on what’s made you, the woman you are today.
Laurie Wintonick: Really strong foundation of family really is what is, is where I’m gonna start. So I grew up, um, in a decent sized Italian family, you know, one of four children. Family dinners were super important to us. We were always very close. I could have been anything I wanted to, my mother always said growing up and all I wanted to do was be a mom.
That was my major focus. Went through, um, high school, basically doing everything I could from, you know, cheerleading, the student council, and, um, all the programs. I was on the, you know, debate team, science club, all of it. And, went to college, was gonna be a chemistry major in college to be a high school chemistry teacher.
And cuz I wanted to have the summers off cuz I wanted to be a mom and you know, got outta college and kind of was trying to figure out what to do. Started working and, um, Just always loved helping people. It was really in my kind of DNA, um, that, you know, “Mama Bear” they call me and, and I like to just always be around helping people get whatever they need and, and do whatever they need and just better themselves.
I took that through college into afterwards. I started working. I got married. I’ve been married, it’ll be 23 years this year. I have two beautiful children, um, who are both in college now and are amazing, amazing young women. And you know, all through that. Every time, you know, serial volunteer, every time somebody needs something done, they call me or I’m in a room.
My mother used to say, used to get that, you really need to get that spring broken. And I’m like, what’s spring? She’s like the one in your arm that just keeps going up, like, yeah, I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’ll do it, but I figure if I can help, I want to. And that’s really what’s always driven me and it’s just that service mentality that I have.
And, and it’s really, it’s been great, but it also takes a toll when it’s, um, when you’re doing way too much. And I kind of lost myself over the years of trying to be a mom, trying to work full-time, trying to do all of the things, volunteering everywhere. And the only thing that suffered through all of that was me.
And, um, I met Jesse five years ago, and once I met him, I realized that I could do all of those things. I just needed to do them differently to make it work, and I needed to make myself the most important person to help in all of it. And once I shifted and did that, everything changed and I’ve just really become a better Laurie.
I don’t, I hate when people say they reinvent themselves cuz you don’t reinvent yourself. You, you’re always the same person at your core. But I’ve upgraded myself and I’ve become this better version, an older, wiser, more learned version of Laurie from, you know, my early teens and twenties.
Brett Gilliland: Yeah. So what did you learn when you say you, you, you met Jesse five years ago and it changed your perspective.
I mean, for those of us that know Jesse, it is amazing what all he does, but how important his family is. But for you, if we could peel that onion layer back a little bit. What, what changed for you? Like what, what were the, the changes that happened and then how did you implement those changes?
Laurie Wintonick: So as a mom or a parent nowadays, um, we tend to think. You know, there’s this buzz, this buzz going around about self-care and we tend to think that that’s selfish and everything we do needs to be for the kids. I wanted to make sure that my children always had what they needed and we don’t really pay attention to all of the things that matter in our life.
We’re so uber focused on, you know, for me it was work kids, work kids, work kids, and all the volunteer work I did was around my kids. And the reality of that was I had no fulfillment for myself personally, I had no hobbies. I had friends, but like I wasn’t intentional about seeing them. I wasn’t healthy, I wasn’t exercising.
I wasn’t eating right. All of the things. And when I met Jesse and he talked about his principles and how basically he ran his life, it was like, wait a minute. , there’s four main buckets of your life. There’s your professional, there’s your personal, your health and wellness and your relationships. And to really have an optimized life, you have to find balance in all of those areas.
And it’s not gonna happen just organically. You really have to be intentional, intentional about what you do in those areas. You have to have goals. You have to have, you know, habits that you create to make sure you’re touching on those four buckets, all the time. And learning that from Jesse, I started to do that.
I started to make sure that yes, my job was my job, and yes, my, you know, my, my relationship with my family was, was important, but my relationship with myself was more important, my health and wellness from a mind, body and soul perspective. I needed to really focus on that. And then I needed to have some personal goals outside of being, you know, the, the boss at a company or Angelina and Sophia’s mom or Chris’s wife or whatever.
Like I needed to be Laurie again. And without personal goals and, and areas that I would learn from myself, I was really feeling empty and hollow. So I shifted and started to put some real focus on that intentionally, and that’s when I started to notice everything really started to change and I became a much more happy person. Really. That’s as simple, you know, as simple as it gets.
Brett Gilliland: Yeah. And that’s a big deal, isn’t it? The happiness. But I, I think too is, I would love to learn more about how you implemented it, because it’s easy to learn that and know that, you know, my personal life, my professional life, my health and wellness, and then my relationships, it’s, it’s one thing to hear that, right?
And it’s another thing to then take steps and do something about it. But, but how did you implement it to where I’m, cause I’m, maybe I’m wrong, but I’m assuming that there was, it was easy, then it was hard again, maybe you fell back in your traps and then, oh, I’m gonna do this again and set these goals and fall back and go forward.
And it just kind of teeters, toters for a while. And, and I, I think there’s something about just showing up every day. Like for me it’s this journal and it’s, it’s showing up every day and, and being boring and, and making it happen. And so when you hear that, like, what, what, what comes to mind with all that?
Laurie Wintonick: So you just said a word that is basically my motto. You said, you know, it’s kind of boring. I, on Instagram will always post it. Um, hashtag boringly consistent. I had to build that muscle where I got boringly consistent in the things that I knew I wanted to do. So for my health and wellness, you know, years ago I was extremely overweight for my size.
I never realized it. I was always healthy and, and active and, and small. I’m, I’m, you know, very short and I, you know, never was a big girl. And I had kids and I just stopped paying attention and I had put on a lot of weight and the first thing I did was realize that, I was getting really unhealthy and longevity is something that’s important to me.
I wanna be around for my kids and their kids, and I wanna be healthy with that. So the first thing I did was I sought out somebody who could help me do it, right? And I went and saw a weight and wellness counselor and she put me on the right path. But with that, there was an accountability where, you know, I would go see her every two weeks.
And we would meet and we would go through what I was eating, what I was doing, where my weight was going up and down. And she really helped me overcome my relationship with food. And I think it’s a really important, um, point to make is that yes, we can do a lot of things on our own, but sometimes you need a coach, you need a mentor, you need a accountability partner, you need somebody. And, that was the first thing I had done that made a huge difference in my life.
There were areas where, you know, I, I started to make changes. Where is the community around the Build Your Life Resume program that Jesse had launched? We all were holding each other accountable. We were all cheering each other on supporting each other, but also pushing like, why aren’t you doing what you said you were gonna do? Like, come on, Laurie. Sometimes you need somebody really to like, when you start to fall, to kind of push you back up and remind you of why you started in the first place. It’s hard to do these things alone. It really is. And we lose that when we’re growing up and we join a sports team. We’re not just a bunch of kids running around the field.
There’s coaches, there’s trainers, there’s people involved to help us learn and do it the right way. And then to stand on the sidelines and coach us through the actual act of, you know, of competing. It’s the same thing as we get older, but we forget that. And I think inviting Jesse into my life really opened that up again to me that there are people out there that you can lean on that know more than you know. And I started to learn and I started to think about, okay, what else can I do? So putting somebody in your corner that will help you stay on track until you make those new habits actually become just things that you do instinctively and you get boringly consistent with it.
You know, a, a few months ago I knew I wanted to work out differently. I knew I wanted to change my exercise habits. I hired a trainer. And it was financially hard to do that. It wasn’t like I had all this extra money laying around. I’m like, oh, lemme do, no. Like, I have two kids in college. I have a mortgage.
I, you know. Yeah. Um, but it was important, so I made myself a priority, worked it out where I could put some money aside and I hired a trainer so that I could learn the right way to lift the weights that I wanted to lift, to work with someone who could show me. And now, yeah, I’m in the gym doing it myself, but that’s after eight months of working with somebody. And learning the right way to do things.
Brett Gilliland: It’s huge. I mean, I think about, you know, Michael Phelps or Tiger Woods or Tom Brady, I mean, whoever I pick your favorite, the the goat, whatever. They all have coaches. You know, I’m a big golf guy and I, I watch these guys, they have their, their kind of their entourage with ’em every week on tour.
It’s their mental person, it’s their strength person, it’s their nutritionist. Right. Sometimes their chef, uh, their swing coach. I mean, it’s all these people. And I, I wrote down earlier here when you said you hired a counselor and I put, you know, believe in yourself enough to hire a coach. And, and yes, you own a coaching or, or CEO of a coaching business, but I mean, how important is that to invest in ourselves? Even though you said it may be tough financially, for those listeners right now that aren’t investing in themselves by hiring a coach, what, what, what advice would you give them?
Laurie Wintonick: Find, you know, you don’t always have to, hi, have the most expensive what there. There are things available if you join a gym and they have personal training and they give you those sessions, take advantage of them. If there’s a community that you can be a part of. So, yes, I, I am the CEO and I run Jesse’s coaching program, but we also have an online coaching program, which is a very different price point, and it’s amazing material and there’s a great community of people who will help you.
So make that investment, find something, you know, there’s, there’s something for everyone out there, and some people may, may get it from communities at church, some people may get it from a running community, if that’s something they wanna do. Um, you know, are you gonna hire, you know, like the top of the line running coach if you’re just getting into it?
Maybe not. Maybe you can’t afford that, but like, find the running club in, in town. And start there. Um, you know, if, if you are interested in something, Research, the people who are good at what you do, listen to as many podcasts, read the books. There’s so much free information out there to start and, and just get started.
The hardest part, I think, for anything is getting started, but once you start to read up and get educated on it, then you can make the decisions of what fits best for you and then decide and maybe save up to eventually hire that coach if, if it’s something that’s important to you…
Brett Gilliland: Yeah…
Laurie Wintonick: …there’s a lot of free resources. Resources. Mm-hmm.
Brett Gilliland: Yeah. And sometimes you just gotta take steps to do it. Right. I’m, I’m working with a guy right now that I coach and, you know, he’s doing well in all his areas of his life. And for me, it’s f to the six power. It’s your faith, your family, your fitness, your fun, you know, your, your firm, what I call firm for workout, and then your finances.
And so his fitness isn’t going as well. And I said, do me a favor today. So literally, this is, this morning, I said, I want you to do 10 pushups and 25 jumping jacks, right? Because I know well enough about people that if you just did the easy thing, that 10 and that 25, that’s not difficult at all right to do, right?
But guess what? My guess is he’s probably gonna do another 10 pushups and maybe do something else over here and do something else. And next thing you know, he is gonna work out for, even if it’s 10, 15, 20 minutes, it’s something is better than nothing. And I think that accountability is a huge piece of that, don’t you think?
Laurie Wintonick: Absolutely. And having to tell somebody you did it, um, you know, a lot of people do Andy Frisella’s 75 Hard, right?
Brett Gilliland: Yeah yep.
Laurie Wintonick: And why, why that is so effective. And it’s more than just the workouts and everything. It’s the accountability of having to show up at the end of the day and click that button that you finished it. and, and knowing that you have to, you know, you actually have to report in that you did it. And I think people miss the point of 75 hard. It’s not about getting the two workouts in. It’s not, it’s about building that muscle where the consistency happens day in and day out. And it’s proving to yourself that you can, there’s no reason that you can’t, you just have to want to bad enough.
And to your point, you wanna work out, you wanna do something new. Jumping jacks, pushups, sit-ups, go for a walk. All of this is free. And, and you know, luckily for you, he has, you know, he has you and you’re gonna push him and, but set the goals, but make sure having that accountability piece is huge because having to let somebody know, yeah, I did it.
Or, or realize not just yourself, like, I didn’t do it. We can talk ourselves out of anything.
Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Easy to do that isn’t it?
Laurie Wintonick: Yeah. Yeah. But it’s a lot harder to hold yourself accountable and that’s also something that you have to learn. Like to me it’s more important to get it done than to make excuses.
Brett Gilliland: Yep. I would agree. So what, um, can you share, not to ask you to get into details, but any difficult parts of your life, but the, the difficult things you’ve had in your life? Cuz it’s easy to talk about all the success and all the things that go well. Right. Well, we all have things that don’t go as planned and so, Share as much as you want, but any, any learning that has come from that and how did you get out of that tough point. Uh, if there is any in your life and get out of it. Pull yourself up, put your work boots back on and get back after it.
Laurie Wintonick: So there’s um, two or three things that jump out, you know, pretty quickly. Um, when I, you know, everybody laughs when you turn 30. It’s supposed to be like this big milestone. I’m like, oh my God, I’m 30.
But I turned 30 and was like, life is amazing. I was married, uh, you know, growing up again, wanted to be a mom, always wanted to have my kids. By the time I was 30, I had it all planned out. I’m a planner, as if, you know, you couldn’t tell, and I was like, Okay, so here I am now. I’m married. I have a house. I have two beautiful children.
I mean, my, my youngest daughter was four months old. When I turned 30. I was like, yes, I had a good job. I had everything that I ever thought I wanted because, you know, you’re growing up, you’re in your twenties, you have all these dreams. Now I’m 30, I have it all. And then 35 hit. And I was like, oh, same house, same husband, same two kids, same job.
What changed? And it felt like I had wasted five years of my life. Like there was no movement, there was no growth, there was no anything. And it was a really bad, um, really bad time of almost like, you know, I would hate to say depression, but sort of that like this, just this feeling of like, sure, how did I get here?
And that was really, really hard. And, um, I was overweight. All of those things were in play and I was just not a happy person. And I found myself, um, you know, coming home from work. opening that bottle of wine and just drinking away, like all every day, you know, a bottle of wine, a bottle of wine, a bottle.
And I was like, how did I get here? You know? So I decided that I was gonna try to figure out some ways to change things so that by the time I was 40, I made myself a promise by the time I was 40, that I wouldn’t be the same person, that I wasn’t 35. So again, what people are like, oh my God, you’re turning 40.
Like, I was like, Nope, this is great. Make these changes. So I literally had decided, you know, I was in a, I was in a toxic relationship with my boss at my old job. She was, she was a wonderful person. She was a horrible boss. Like, hmm. And I always said, I felt like, you know, I would be told daily how stupid I was.
And then the next day I’d get like a $50,000 bonus to make it better. Like it was just bad. And I knew I had to get out of there, but I was close enough to being, you know, I was eight minutes from home so I could get home anytime I needed to. I could be at all the stuff for the girls, I could volunteer for everything.
So it served the purpose and you, you know, basically, Excuse it away, right?
Brett Gilliland: Sure.
Laurie Wintonick: So, um, I kind of had to find a way to get out of that relationship, take my life back and find this new job, which I did at the financial planning firm. And, um, once I started there, things definitely started to change. I remember I came home, it was, I was at about a week into working at the financial planning firm, which was scary. I took a pay cut, like I didn’t, you know, it was not, it was not a great move on paper at all. But I came home and I was sitting at the dinner table. We always do family dinners, and, uh, my husband Chris looked at me and he was just like, um, you look 10 years younger.
Brett Gilliland: Hmm. Wow.
Laurie Wintonick: I was like, what do you mean? He’s like, he’s like your face, like all those stress li like all of its gone . And I was like, okay, well this was the best decision that I, that I made. And um, and then I turned 40 at that job and was like, all right, this is great. New job, new exciting things. And, and then, you know, a few years later I meet Jesse and I’m like, oh my God, this is not good.
You know? Um, so I think it’s, you know, it’s been a struggle for me. So that was like one big thing to overcome. The second area that was really hard for me was at my old job in the finance, you know, in the financial world.
Women just are, you know, the old traditional world of banking, finance, insurance. All of that. Women are the admins, we’re the clerical, we’re the, you know, we should go get you coffee. Um, we’re not executives. And while my boss, who was a wonderful man and you know, told me constantly you’re, you know, you’re an executive in this firm and you’re on the executive team and there’s seven of us, and you know, you’re the same as us.
I wasn’t treated the same. I mean, I, I didn’t get a raise for four years. The guys around me, people who were underneath me actually in the hierarchy on the, on the org chart were making more money than me, um, because they were considered a profit center where I was a cost center. And I understood that. I oversaw the admin and all the operations of the firm, but I always felt like, and I say it a lot, I’m, I was the skirt in a room full of suits and, um, I’m not, The type of person to yell, like, you know, glass ceilings, feminism, like, I don’t do all of that.
I believe that you, you know, we’re all equal. We’re all people no matter what. And we need to, we need to fight for ourselves and we need to assert ourselves. And I didn’t, and I, I really shrank into this like, Thought process of, well, I can’t change it, but it’s good for my family, so I’m gonna, I’m gonna accept it and I’m gonna, I’m gonna stay here.
And, um, it did a lot of damage to me, like it really did. And I didn’t realize how much until I got out of it, but it was really hard day in and day out to sit there and be like, no matter what I did, no matter what amazing things I would do for the company, it just didn’t change anything. And, you know, um, I think it hit me really hard.
The, um, the gentleman that was the owner of the company retired, and when I was hired, I was hired as, as his assistant cuz I was gonna, like I said, I took a huge pay cut, I needed to get out of the other job, got hired as his executive assistant, which lasted about a month. And then I was the office manager within a few weeks.
I was, um, director of op administration and then executive VP of operations shortly after that. But I always did, even as being, as being the vp, I still did his personal assistant stuff. I took care of everything for him. His wife passed while, while I was working there. I mean, I helped with her funeral arrangements, like I did all was at his house, like food shopping for him, all of these things.
And after 10 years when he decided he was gonna retire and, and sold off, um, the firm to a gentleman that I had worked with, great guy. He walked in my office for Christmas and, and was like, you know, I can’t believe this is our last Christmas together and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I know. And he handed me this basket of lotion and it was a very nice gift.
But I’m, I was like, this was a 10 year relationship where I went so far above and beyond what anybody was expected, what I was paid for, all of, because of who I am at my core. And you’re handing me. $50 bottle of like basket of lotion. And I was like, okay. And in that moment I was like, I can’t do this anymore.
I can’t work in an environment like this anymore. I can’t devalue myself anymore. And I decided for in, for the next year that like my goal for 2021 was to get out of corporate America to figure something out that I had to find something else to do. I couldn’t sit at a desk and run somebody else’s business and make them millions of dollars and be miserable.
I just couldn’t do it anymore. And especially when you’re not, you know, you’re not really valued at that level. They just, you know, there’s an expectation and, and unfortunately some of these companies, they just don’t care. And I wasn’t, I wasn’t about to do it anymore. So that was really hard. And then this past year, um, was probably the hardest year of my life.
So I lost my, I I, my, my daughters were away college. There were some stuff that went on with my younger daughter at school, which was really hard in navigating teenage daughters. Um, you know, 20, my one daughter’s, 21, my other daughter’s 19 and a half. And you know, sitting back as a parent and not jumping in and fixing things for them is really hard because a lot of stuff they now, they have to figure out on their own.
And yeah, and letting her try to do that was really, really tough. In the midst of all of this, my father who had been battling and sick for the last four years after a major stroke finally passed away. Um, I got the call on my birthday. That he had had a massive heart attack that afternoon. They had revived him after 15 minutes and put him on life support.
So I had to go to the hospital on my birthday that evening to remove him from life support. Um, while that was super hard, it was also a blessing because I was able to, he gave me the gift of finally letting go. Um, but, You know, the next three weeks I had stuff for work and I, I know my dad, my dad always called me Larry, and he would, you know, he would’ve said to me like, there’s a time to cry Larry, and this ain’t it, chill up and do it. Go do what you have to do and we’ll figure it out. Um, so I honored him by showing up and, and doing all of those things. Um, that was the end of October into the beginning of November. After this three weeks of craziness, I came back home. Um, we’re all home for Thanksgiving. My dog had gotten sick earlier in the year.
We had found out she had a brain tumor. She went blind. She was the sweetest little thing in the world, and, um, noticed the week of Thanksgiving. She wasn’t eating. She was declining the whole thing. And, um, two days after Thanksgiving, we had to put her down. And I have never, I, I lost my grandmother when I was 20 and that was super hard for me cuz her and I were as close as you could possibly be with another individual.
She was my everything but these two losses back to back just destroyed me. And I had a choice. I could power through like I always do, or I could sink into the grief and let it just, you know, just sit in it and let it happen and, and allow the waves. I have to say, there was probably a good couple weeks where I think my family was really nervous about me, couldn’t get outta bed, couldn’t eat, couldn’t function.
I literally would get up to do the work that I needed to do for the program that I run. Because when I make a commitment, I follow through. And that was all I did. Um, my husband used to be like, okay, you know, um, did you eat today? I’m like, no. He’d be like, all right, let’s go upstairs. You have to eat something.
It got to that point, and this is somebody. Is super conscious of her health, does all of these things. But it just, the grief just hit me super hard and it was a really interesting time there. And then my girls came home before Christmas. Having them in the house helped. Um, and it, it took me a while to crawl out of it, but I was in a hole.
I was in a definite hole for, for a good, a good three weeks of just nothing. I couldn’t, you know, I just didn’t want to. I just didn’t want to. And, now I look back on it and I’m, you know, there’s, there’s moments where I feel like it, I feel like I can feel the grief and I let it come. I don’t fight it, and then I allow it to, you know, I, it, it’s part of life.
So I allow it in, I feel it, and then I release it and I do what needs to be done. And I don’t, I don’t, um, what’s the word I’m looking for? Um, I, I don’t feel bad that I went through that. I’m not upset with myself that I allowed myself that time to just grieve. I think we forget that we’re human and even though we can do all these things and we can power through and show up, like in that moment, for the first time in a very long time, I needed to show up for myself.
Brett Gilliland: Yeah.
Laurie Wintonick: And sometimes that meant just sitting on the edge of the bed and not doing anything. That was, you know, that was enough. Like, I got outta bed today. You know, I would, my girlfriend would be like, are you, where are you today? I’m like, I showered. Like, okay. Small wins. You know, um, I changed, I got out of my pajamas into a different pair of pajamas, but I got out of my pajamas.
Like, you know, like that was where I was. And, and it’s funny because people who know me, like they’d never believe it, but it, it, and it was okay. It was, you know, it was fine. And I’m, I’m good and I am grateful that I had the time with my wonderful puppy, Cammy. She was amazing. 12 years of our lives, but it’s like losing a child.
Um, and then, you know, my dad, like I said, it was a gift that, to be able to let him go. But, you know, grief is, somebody said this to me and it really stuck, is that grief is a result of how much you loved that person and how much they loved you and the stronger the grief, the more love there was in that relationship.
And it really hit me cuz it was like she, she was so right in telling me that, like, that it’s a direct correlation. The amount of grief that you’re gonna feel in that loss is a direct correlation, the amount of the love that was in the relationship. So it’s a, it’s a blessing to have to feel that way. That’s right. Because at least I know how much love there was.
Brett Gilliland: I appreciate you sharing all that. I mean, that, that’s a lot there, right? And I’m, I’m sure we could have a whole nother podcast just on, on some of those things. And, um, but I think again, at the end of the day, you, you, there’s this light that you can see right at the end of the tunnel.
It may be super, super tiny right? Like a, like the needle, uh, point. But what, what, what was the catalyst for you? Was it getting this new job with the JI uh, Elite Coaching was, you know, what was it that said, okay, not, am I gonna get outta bed and shower and change my clothes, but I’m gonna take it to the next step and now I’m gonna start thriving.
Because there’s somebody listening to this that may not be in that point. Right. They’re in the point where they don’t want to get outta bed. Yeah. And they need to hear that. Like, what was that catalyst for you?
Laurie Wintonick: I think, um, you know, I got out of the bad job. I took a new job, then I was in this other job and I’m like, I can’t be there, and Jesse came along and offered me this amazing responsibility in 2021, and I started this company and we do just such great things with people and seeing them get through has been incredible. So this year, having my own set of real challenges and, and being in bed and not wanting to get changed, you know, I gave myself the grace of some time and then I got up and said, okay, remind yourself of this like, you’ve survived all of the bad stuff that’s happened to you this far, like all the worst days that you thought you couldn’t get through, you got through.
So this is just another bad day that eventually you’re gonna get through. And I tried to, you know, Jesse has this saying no zero days. And it’s basically like, you know, even in the days where you just don’t have it, you just don’t just do one thing. So, like I said, I, I would, I would shower, I would get up and come down and do some work.
and, you know, I would eat and I would, little by little, I would try to just get through doing something every single day. And eventually that one thing became two things. And then the two things became three things. And I just started to build on it and realize I would get myself back. It was just gonna take some time and it was okay.
But, um, I didn’t, I didn’t feel sorry for myself, if that made sense. Like I, I was feeling grief and I was feeling, but I, like, I wasn’t like, oh, woah it was me. Everybody should feel, feel bad for me. I was like, no, I just, I just feel bad right now and it’s okay. And I had people around me and you know, I do say if you, if you find yourself in a situation like that and you can’t pull yourself out, you can’t physically get out of the bed to get in the shower, then you need to talk to somebody. You need to, you know, I fortunately had people in my life that I could talk to that were checking in on me, um, and that were making sure I was okay.
You know, like I said, my husband making sure I was eating. If he wasn’t here, I probably wouldn’t eaten for three weeks, you know? Um, just making sure people around you, and if you don’t have that immediate like, go speak to somebody because they will help you. And you know, don’t try to do it all at once.
Just little, little wins every day. Get up, make the bed, get up, take a shower, get up. You know, leave the house. Go for a 10 minute walk. Just get outside. Do something every day that you can think. All right, I’m proud of the fact that I did that. And you, nobody else has to know what it is and nobody else has to give you approval.
It’s just that you know that you did it for you. Honor yourself enough to do that. And I knew my dad would be super, super mad at me if I didn’t get, if I didn’t eventually get up. But I also know that it’s what I needed. That’s why I allowed it.
Brett Gilliland: Yeah, trust your body, right? Just trust your body. So what. Go ahead.
Laurie Wintonick: No. So, and, and just by building on it every day you get back into the routines that made you feel good, and then you start to thrive again.
Brett Gilliland: That’s right. Um, what would you say, I mean, you learn most from Jesse Itzler, who’s married to Sarah Blakely, who, you know, invented Spanx. I mean, they’re, you know, kind of this powerful duo, uh, of people as Jesse started, you know, the Jet Company, uh, coconut Water Company.
Now his all day running company is coaching is, I mean, all the stuff right, that they’ve both done. What, from the outsider looking in at them along with having four children, w what, what have you, what are your takeaways from that family and from Jesse or Sarah that you could share with us?
Laurie Wintonick: You can absolutely do what you wanna do, and do it well, but not, and not have to do it at the expense of everybody in your life. And you know, Jesse says this all the time, like, you should really spend your, your time doing the things you love to do with the people you love to do them with. Period done on the story.
And that’s how they live. Um, what you see on Instagram and social media, that’s really how they live. If you’re at that house, like exactly what’s happening is what’s happening in person. It’s not for show. It’s not. They’re so authentic. They really are so authentic and that’s one of the things that I really respect most about them is, you know, Sarah is a brilliant businesswoman.
She really is, and she did something because she believed in it and she worked really, really hard and she refused to, to allow any critics in. She just knew that she could, and she, you know, made sure every day she worked towards it. And Jesse, you know, he’s, he’s amaz like, he’s crazy. He’s amazing. He has these great ideas and you know, they both find people to help them with the areas of that they’re not good at. You know, Sarah doesn’t wanna be involved in the operations of things like, so she makes sure she has somebody doing that for her. Jesse has great ideas. He needs, you know, he needs implementers. He needs somebody to be able to come in and implement what his ideas are and also be able to work through the fact that he’s gonna change his mind and he’s wants something different.
And you know, how do we pivot? How do we make it work? And they don’t try to do it all themselves. They get the right people. They hire coaches, they have mentors, they still look for help and., You know, for me, like I said, being a mom was super important. They didn’t have a family for the sake of having a family.
They had a family because they want to be parents and they love their children. And it’s important that they’re present and their children’s lives all the time, and they make it work. They’re very intentional with their time.
Brett Gilliland: Well, hats off to them. They’re doing ’em. It’s, they’re truly amazing people.
And, uh, it’s been awesome, uh, getting to learn from you all the stuff that you have done in your life too. So where would our listeners find more of you? Where, where, uh, where’s the biggest hangout for you?
Laurie Wintonick: So, I, I’m mostly on Instagram these days. Um, So my Instagram handle is l i l l g two three. That’s a little with two Ls, G 23.
Um, I do a lot of posts there. There’s a lot of fitness stuff there because that’s part of my journey now as I’m approaching 50 is to get in the best physical shape of my life. For longevity. Wanna be stronger, I wanna be healthier. You’ll see a lot of my, my daughter’s on there. I like to brag about them and a lot of fitness and a lot of coaching stuff.
So I’m there a lot. I’m on Twitter, but not too much LinkedIn as well. Um, and then we have the coaching program, which is on Jesse’s website.
Brett Gilliland: Okay. So just jesse itzler.com on there. And then you can Jesse j Jesse,
Laurie Wintonick: Yep. Jesse itzler.com. You’ll see there’s a coaching tab and we are the, um, coaching mastermind, mastermind coaching retreat program, I believe is the, the click there.
Brett Gilliland: Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me on the Circuit of Success. It’s been awesome having you and great learning, uh, all the nuggets of wisdom you share with us today.
Laurie Wintonick: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure, Brett.
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