Feel and Grow Rich with Rochelle Carrington

Feel and Grow Rich with Rochelle Carrington

Rochelle Carrington: When that pressure builds up so much in your nervous system that's when your nervous system is out there looking for threat. That's all it cares about. It doesn't care whether you're successful, whether you make money, whether you're happy, none of the positive things it cares about. It is only looking at.

What is, is there something that's going to kill you?

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the Business Development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

And broadcasting to the world, you'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business,

brought to you by Capital Business Development CapitalBD.ca

Let's do it.

Welcome to the The Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host. Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello. Welcome to episode 335 of the Business Development Podcast, and today it is my absolute pleasure to welcome Rochelle Carrington to our stage. Rochelle is an expert in emotional mastery leadership performance, and the hidden patterns that quietly interfere with our success.

After building a seven figure sales and leadership training company as a top performing Sandler franchisee and award-winning sales leader, she began to notice a major gap. Even highly capable founders, CEOs, and executives with the right strategy. A strong skillset and disciplined mindsets were still running into stress, burnout, hesitation, and self-sabotage.

That realization led her to develop emotional blueprinting, a methodology designed to remove the deeper emotional patterns that limit clarity. Energy and performance today, Rochelle helps leaders eliminate what she calls performance drag. The invisible pressure that clouds decision making, slows execution, and makes growth feel heavier than it should.

Her work goes beyond surface level mindset advice and gets into the emotional and neurological root of why so many high performers feel stuck. Like you are doing everything right, but still not moving the way you know you should. This conversation is going to be powerful because the things slowing you down may be far deeper than strategy alone.

Rochelle, it's an honor and a privilege to have you on our stage today.

Rochelle Carrington: Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me in. I appreciate that.

Kelly Kennedy: When we first had our conversation, some like light bulbs were going off in my head because we've all been taught to think and grow rich, haven't we, Rochelle? Yes.

Rochelle Carrington: Yes, absolutely.

Myself included.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. But it's, uh, it, it just simply isn't always working the way we were told. Is it?

Rochelle Carrington: Correct.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, we're gonna dive deep into that today, and I'm very excited to have this conversation. I've enjoyed every chat we've had up till now. And, uh, like I said, you're doing so much and so I'm excited to kind of explore your journey, how you ended up on this path and what is next.

But before we do that, Rochelle, how the heck did you end up on this entrepreneurial journey? Take us way back. How did you end up on this path to leadership and entrepreneurship that you're on today?

Rochelle Carrington: Probably by accident, like most people who end up on this path, I started out in, um, magazines working for fashion magazines like Glamor and Marie Claire, and that was what I had decided at 12 years old I was going to do, I was going to go work for Glamor Magazine and you know, that was going to be my lifelong world path.

And, uh, I did end up doing that. I spent about 16 years in that business in New York City and it was a great fun business to be in. And then I started, uh, having a family. And, uh, I was doing a commute that was about an hour, uh, you know, one way into New York City from one of the suburbs. And it just started to kind of wear on me where it was just so much and I just, uh, I felt like there was something else that I was intended to do.

Yeah, I didn't know what it was. I had no idea what it was, but I knew that I needed to get out of the corporate world. I knew that it was just sort of like eating away at my soul as I think a lot of people who've been in corporate for a long time. Nothing bad about it, but. It just, you know, I spent my time, I had paid my dues and I was ready to do something else.

Yeah. And that's when I started looking for other opportunities. And it's interesting that when you start to look at other things and you start to look beyond what you're doing, things pop up that you never would've thought of.

Yes,

and that's really how it came to me. I was online trying to find a business to buy, and I was looking in the tech world, even though my kids were like, you're terrible at tech, you shouldn't do that.

And they kept saying, you know, you know, and, and my family husband, everybody was like, you know, sales and management, why don't you stay in that? And I was like, ah, I'm sick of that. I'm sick of

Kelly Kennedy: that.

Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: And, but however, that is what I ended up doing, uh, as a, as a result of all of that. So it wasn't something that I had planned long term, but once I got into that mindset of I'm gonna start my own thing, that's, I knew what was gonna happen at some point.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Yeah, it, I love that 'cause it parallels my journey actually when I ended up in business development running as far and fast as I could away from sales and just like fell right back into it, which is always funny. Um. You know, I went to college to, to take business in men to get out of the sales world.

'cause you know, I mean, as a young guy, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I just knew I wanted to go do business. But in my mind, I'd been working sales for many years by that point. Right? And I was just like, I was like, I just want like an easy nine to five operations job. I had no idea that operations was hard at that time, by the way.

But yeah, I, uh, I, I basically did that, got through college, got the operations job, and then was pulled into an office and said like, why are you doing this? You should be doing business development. And I remember going back to my computer and Googling What is business development? Because nobody taught me what this was.

And here we are. So it's funny how. You can end up dragged right back into something. 'cause it's your purpose, isn't it?

Rochelle Carrington: Yes, yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: I love that. Talk to me a little bit about that jump though, because I think, you know, it sounds like you had a pretty cushy corporate job. It sounds like you were probably making good money, you probably had a great career trajectory.

Talk to me about that jump. That must have been pretty scary.

Rochelle Carrington: It was, I mean, at the time I just felt like I needed to do it. However, I was, um, the only income producer in the family and I did have a very good, large salary. I had a car allowance. I had, you know, yeah. All the trappings, the golden handcuffs.

Yeah. Um,

that sometimes make it difficult to walk away from, making that six figures and then you're like, now I'm going down to nothing and I've gotta do it on my own. So it was scary, but I had. A lot of faith in myself, and I had a lot of people around me that said, look, if anyone can do it, you can do it.

And if you want this to happen, you're gonna somehow figure out how to make it happen. And so that support system as well as just, you know, I. The self-belief, I'm, I'm an optimistic person, so for me it's always like, well, of course it'll turn out fine. Yeah.

Like there is

no, I'm not thinking alternative, you know, I'm not looking at the stats that 50% of businesses fail in their first year.

I mean, I'm not gonna be in that, so it doesn't matter to me. So that was sort of, you know, maybe a little bit of naivete Yeah. Of what it really took and how hard it was gonna be, because it was definitely harder than I thought. But. The, I guess, you know, when the pain of staying is greater than the risk, you're willing to do it and that was the situation I wanted to be in control Yeah.

Of my own destiny and in control of my own calendar and, uh, I worked more than I did when I was in corporate.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

Rochelle Carrington: It's different when you're working for yourself versus working for somebody else.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh my gosh. I work so much harder for myself than I ever did for someone else. I'll admit that.

Rochelle Carrington: You have to, you have no choice.

Kelly Kennedy: I, I also love your glass half full philosophy as well, and I, I think that a lot of people in sales business development, we tend to skew. And I think it actually tends to make us more successful because we don't really ever look at the fact that we could quit.

Rochelle Carrington: Right?

Right.

Kelly Kennedy: We're like, oh no, we'll figure out. We'll just figure out how to keep this train rolling.

Rochelle Carrington: Failure, as they say, failure wasn't an option and quitting wasn't an option. And I did have people who, it was kind of interesting where I would go and have lunch with a couple of friends still in the publishing industry later and they said, well, Rochelle, you know when this fails you can always come back 'cause you've got a really good reputation.

And I went. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Like,

no, that's not, I didn't go do this to just like, play around for a little while and come back I'm gone. I'm out.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: And so that also, that still that rang in my head for such a long period of time and really helped me to go, I've gotta make this work. 'cause I'm not going back there again.

Kelly Kennedy: That's powerful actually. It's like the screw you is a very powerful motivation.

Okay so take us into that. You're in the mindset, you're out there shopping. What happened?

Rochelle Carrington: So I was online, and this is many, many years ago. So, uh, you know, buying a business or looking for a business was a little bit different back then than it is now. Uh, but I was online looking for things and I had somebody contact me that was a franchise.

I didn't know what they were, but they sold franchises and so they said, we can help you find a business. And I thought, well, I don't want a franchise because I don't want someone telling me what to do. Yeah, and I was thinking a franchise was going to be very, you know, kind of rigid and that just does not fit my personality.

My personality is more of the rules aren't for me. If other people wanna follow them, great. But I get to do what I want. So a franchise was like, no.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: But you know, she said, let's do an assessment and um, you know, we'll kind of see where your skillset is. And I negotiated that to be done for free. And so I was like, well, if you're gonna do it for free, then you know.

Fine. I've got nothing to lose. I'm not gonna buy anything, but, you know, totally fine. And so she did that, and then she came and the, the assessment was really revealing to me on some of the things that skill sets that I have and, and things I needed to work on. So that was really helpful. And then she came back and she showed me, she, uh, a few franchises and I was like you know, I guess I'll just talk to a couple of them because again, nothing to lose.

And then I ended up actually, uh, working with the Sandler Training franchise. And that really came about by going to one of their what they call Discovery Days. And they showed me the methodology of their sales platform and I went, oh my gosh. Like if I had my salespeople when I was in magazine publishing doing this, yeah, that would've changed everything.

So at that point I was like, show me how you make this into a business. And I'm in, 'cause I, I get the methodology I bought into that. I thought it was really helpful. And so that was that. Started cold calling right outta my house,

Kelly Kennedy: And here we are today, right? Uh, obviously you did that for 12 years.

You were highly successful. You turned that into a seven figure business. Congratulations. Thank, thank you. Like, that's pretty incredible for, for a training franchise.

Rochelle Carrington: Yeah. Yeah. It was, that was the goal. That was my goal. One of them was to turn it, um, over seven figures.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: Yeah. And so it was just gonna be a matter of time how quickly I could do it, and, you know, what did I, what levers did I need to pull in order to make that happen?

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. And so you did that from what, 2007 to 2019? And then from there, what happened? Obviously COVID came outta nowhere. Yes. Uh, that was shocking. Right. Did that kind of contribute to your pivot?

Rochelle Carrington: Now the pivot was really, I was considering it a little bit earlier than that because again, I had specific goals for that business and I met them.

And then I thought, well, now what? Now what am I gonna do? What is the next thing? And as I was training and working with all different levels of entrepreneurs and corporations, business owners, the I, I kept seeing one thing, and you alluded to it in, you know, the intro. And that was that you could train the exact same, you know, train two people in the exact same methodology, whether it's management, leadership, or sales.

And one would do really well and one wouldn't. And it wasn't the training. And so, you know, I thought, why is that? Why do I see this over and over again? That some people do really well with it and some don't. When you've got people that are somewhat equal in terms of their skill level, ability.

Intellect, et cetera. And that really bothered me trying to figure out what that was. And so that kind of led me down the, you know, let me try to figure out that solution because when you see something again and again and again. There's gotta be some solution for it. And, uh, the standard solutions that I had been taught, which was that it was a mindset issue, just were not it was not clear that that's what it was, because I did a lot of training on mindset.

Mm-hmm. And positive thinking and all of those sorts of things. And it just didn't move the needle in the way that it should have if that were the solution. And then I also felt some things, you know, in my own life where I felt like all of a sudden I had hit a little bit of a plateau and it was like, well, what's going on with me?

Because I'm experiencing these things that I haven't before where things are harder than they should be. I know what to do and it's not moving the way it should anymore.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: And so I was also looking internally and externally at the same time, trying to figure out what's the answer here?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I can actually resonate with that really well.

Uh, if I look at the podcast journey, right? And I think I like to use the podcast journey 'cause it's something that I have a lot of experience in now, and it's not, it's funny because I think somebody would look at a podcaster. And say, well, it gets easier over time. Right? Creating content just gets easier because you know what you're doing.

You have experience with it. I would argue the opposite. I have found that, especially with my thought leadership episodes, they've actually gotten more challenging over time. Not easier, which was surprising to me. Yeah. And I think is surprising to a lot of people. I know that for myself, my expectation of what I put out what is good enough for me has constantly raised the bar.

Right. So you hit a point at which it actually becomes more challenging today than it was around episode 30, 40, 50.

Rochelle Carrington: Mm-hmm.

Kelly Kennedy: Is that something that you found with, with some of your high performers as well?

Rochelle Carrington: Yeah, absolutely. And that's really where I get into, uh, you know, the concept of performance drag.

Because what happens with high performers is you are used to just continuing to push through and push through and do more and work harder. And yeah, we get told in the, you know, by all the gurus out there, you gotta have grit and resilience and push through the pain and that will work up until a certain point.

And then what happens is people hit performance drag, which is basically accumulated stress that builds up in your nervous system, and it starts to slow everything down. It starts to make your decisions just, you don't make them as quickly. You're not sleeping like you used to everything. The mental noise gets louder and louder.

Your ability to focus just kind of goes away. You find yourself reading emails, you know, three times and you're like, what did I just read? I don't even know what I did. Yeah. Get frustrated and, and just annoyed a little bit more easily, um, than what you did before. And it does impact revenue over the long term.

So a lot of high performers will, push. You can do that. And I did that myself for a very long time. And then you're gonna hit a point where your nervous system is so overloaded that it cannot do it anymore. Yeah. And that's where you hit performance drag, and that's where things start to feel harder, even when you know all the things to do, even when you've got the skillset to do it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: So performance drag just sort of, I call it the hidden tax on high performers and business owners. So you don't really know what's happening until it hits you and you're like, what's wrong with me? Why am I why is this so hard all of a sudden?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think what's been surprising too, and at this point, I've interviewed hundreds of people.

Is that burnout is very, very, very common. I like, I would say, I think, I think everybody that I've talked to at some point, um, has experienced burnout and, um, it almost seems inevitable.

Rochelle Carrington: It can be if you're not, uh, really, if you don't understand how the nervous system works and how it runs about 95% of what you do.

So, and burnout a lot of times is something that it's. Oftentimes a misdiagnosis for that pressure and that stress. And the problem with everything being labeled as burnout is people feel like, well, if I just go take the vacation, yeah. If I just cut my hours, if I just go, you know, meditate every day, then it will fix the burnout.

The problem is, it doesn't. It still is held in your nervous system. Yes. And your nervous system holds all of your emotions for every human on the planet. And as long as it feels like there is a threat, it's going to make things feel a lot harder for you.

Kelly Kennedy: I feel like burnout is a catchall term. I feel like it's when you go to the doctor and they don't know what's wrong with you.

Right. And so they give you this like, oh, it's just this thing you know, everybody seems to be experiencing it. Go home and drink water or something. Right? Right. It's like.

Rochelle Carrington: That's what I mean.

Kelly Kennedy: There's no, there's no real solution. I I, I love what you're saying here. 'cause you're like, well, you're told to go on vacation.

You're told to take a break. You're told to tone it back and find a new pace. Right. But you're right. It's like once you've gotten there, you have this residual anxiety, let's call it a residual anxiety, that those things don't really seem to fix. And I know you've dived into the neuroscience of it all.

What is actually happening to us, Rochelle, like behind the scenes in our nervous system? What is happening to us?

Rochelle Carrington: Yeah. It's really interesting because, you know, we've all been taught for so many years, decades, that mindset is the thing that whatever you're thinking causes your emotion. You think then you feel.

Then you act in some way, take an action, and then you get a result.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: And so what people have focused on is what are your thoughts, positive thoughts, affirmations, journaling, et cetera. Okay, so that's all fine. However, in the 1990s, there's two neuroscientists that did a lot of work. Um, LeDoux and Damasio did a lot of work really studying the impact of emotions.

And what they found is that emotions fire first. So it's emotion. Then 350 milliseconds later is a thought. The thought makes sense of how you're feeling. Then you take an action, then you get a result. We've known this for 35 years.

Wow.

Yet no one's been talking about it. And it's one of the things that's sort of our mission is to help people understand that the reason the mindset stuff isn't helping you is not because there's something wrong with you.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: Is because you're using the wrong tool for the job. So if emotions are the things that actually get us results, then we have to go back to the source of emotion. Now, it doesn't mean that you have to you don't have to relive and tell a story about what you did and or what happened to you and all those sorts of things, because awareness also doesn't fix it.

Mindset things and awareness. Work on your cognitive mind. Your conscious mind. Yeah. But what is running you is your nervous system, your and your subconscious, your emotions.

Yeah.

And so you've gotta have two different tools. I always say you can't use a logical tool to fix an emotional issue, so you've gotta have a different tool.

When that pressure builds up so much in your nervous system that's when your nervous system is out there looking for threats. That's all it cares about. It doesn't care whether you're successful, whether you make money. Yeah. Whether you're happy. None of the positive things it cares about. It is only looking at what is, is there something that's going to kill you?

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Save us from the saber-tooth tiger.

Rochelle Carrington: Yeah, exactly. And the interesting thing is when performance drag gets high enough, all your nervous system does is it goes threat. Threat. Threat. Why do you not go build more business? Because the threat can seem like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to do even more work.

Yeah. If I get more business, it creates more work. That creates more stress. So guess what? I don't prospect. I don't find new business. I don't go do anything. Mm-hmm. Why do I not, you know, go get on the stage somewhere or make a lot more money? Because people might be looking at me and I don't want that judgment, or I don't want to be in the eye because then like I gotta be on all the time.

Yeah, that stress and pressure. And so your nervous system is looking for those threats and as it does, it will pull you back. And so it's doing its job, it's there to protect you. But the problem is it's working on old data because all this stress has just added up over years. This doesn't happen in days, this happens over years.

And so the, you know, you gotta remove all of that pressure.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: And once you do, you get a nervous system reset. And now you can go do all the things you need to do and, and it's easy again.

Kelly Kennedy: I think the scary thing about what you're saying is the flip takes something from we feel in control to something that, holy shit, we're not in control.

Or like, at least like we haven't been in control. Right. Because, you know, I mean I've, I've had a lot of experts on here talk about the subconscious and how it's, we're operating on about a 95%, if not higher. Yes. Automatic program. Right. And I, I love the idea of that. It's like, great, I if the automatic program is working for you, and I think that's ultimately what you're saying is that when you were looking at some of the leaders you're working with and some are getting highly successful results from your training and some are, are, are struggling and you're like, what is going on here?

You're basically saying the underlying programming is either working for them or working against them.

Rochelle Carrington: Correct. You can also think of it like it's outdated programming. So as your subconscious is sort of like your, uh, your hardware where it just, it stores all of your emotional patterns and we all have emotional patterns.

Somebody says something to me, I feel this way, I act this way. And we've been doing that for years and years and years. Yeah. So it stores your emotional patterns. Your nervous system is the executor of those patterns. So all it does is it goes what looks familiar. Boom. This is exactly how I will act in that moment.

Yeah.

And so for many years those emotional patterns do great for you. Right? You do great and it's fantastic. But as they get older, um, because they've been around for a long time and as you grow and change, they're not growing and changing with you. And so it's sort of like, you know, you're trying to wear the same outfit from 1980.

That, uh, or, you know, think of when you were 10 years old, you're trying to put that outfit on and you're 40 or 50, it's not gonna fit.

It's not gonna look good.

Yeah.

And so the great thing about it is that you can update it, you can update your nervous system. It's easy to do, it's very fast and it's permanent.

It's not like something you have to redo all the time. Once it's updated. Kind of like taking a virus out of a computer. Yeah. Your body goes back online, your nervous system goes back online, and, uh, you know, you get to create from the place that, that you should be creating from, creating your business, your life, whatever it is.

Kelly Kennedy: I love that. I think the problem that I've always had with these stupid automated programs as somebody who has struggled with them myself, is that it does feel like something I didn't choose. Um, I think that's the part that really frustrates me about the subconscious is that I am a very performance oriented person.

I love taking action, completing things, moving forward, and yet even I am well aware that there's certain things. That are running behind the program that are slowing me down. And, and it sucks because I've, I've interviewed enough people, I've had enough conversations. I feel like I'm in tune in a way that maybe some are not enough to recognize that it is holding me back in certain ways.

And, and I think one of the hard parts is, I'm not even sure necessarily what those programs are.

Rochelle Carrington: Yeah. Well the cool part is that at least with the work that we do with people, you don't have to be aware of what the programs are. 'cause again, awareness is something that is cognitive and conscious, and so I can be aware of.

What's something that happened and why it happened? That doesn't change the emotional part of it. Yeah. It just makes me have intellectual, uh, you know, ideas about it. So the cool thing is you don't have to know what the programs are. If you know they're there then you can very easily get them removed.

And it's just a matter of, I, becoming aware enough that. There are some programming that is old and that I need to update and I'm willing to, to make that change. Because the interesting thing is that your skillset. Is really driven through your nervous system. Your nervous system is the gatekeeper, and you can have amazing skill.

Let's say you're a great salesperson, but there could be moments where you're like, why is my closing percentage going down? Why am I not, like, why is it not going as well? I'm not closing business like I used to because your nervous system is the gatekeeper and it just stops it. And when you've got performance drag, it will stop your strategy.

It will stop your sales execution. It will stop your business development. When you lift the gate and update that nervous system, then your skills go back online.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: So you have the skill the whole time. You just don't have access to it when you're under a lot of stress and, um, you know, a lot of pressure.

Kelly Kennedy: I wanna spend a little bit of time there because I have found certain points in my life to be incredibly productive where everything's flowing. It feels like things can't go wrong. That's just how great it's all flowing. Yeah. And then you're absolutely right. It's like something will happen and you may not even be conscious of it, and it kind of seems like an up and down rollercoaster.

If I had to like say, if I had to look at like the trajectory of things for the podcast, my business, all that. There are moments when you're just going up and then it's just a gigantic crash and then you're going up again. What is happening? Why is it like, why is it that it feels like sometimes your subconscious is working for you and it for maybe reasons we can't even understand?

It just flips a switch and suddenly we're going down. What's happening to us in the rollercoaster?

Rochelle Carrington: It's just about threat. It's about how much threat does your nervous system perceive is in the world around you and by the world. It's like your immediate world, as well as obviously the bigger world. And the less threat you feel, the more you have access to all of your skills and all of your, you know, cognitive abilities.

When that threat gets higher and higher. Then it eliminates or withholds your ability to, you know, do the skillset that you know, you know how to do. And one of the things to remember is that emotion always overrides logic. And we can have, you know, a million different examples of that. If you ever remember, you know, something maybe back from grade school or junior high or something like that, where somebody just like gave you a zinger.

You know, they said something to you that was kind of mean. Mm-hmm. And in the moment you were like, uh uh uh, you can't think of anything to say back. Yeah. 'cause you got surprised, you got hurt, you got angry. That's the emotion rising up. Then what happens? You go home later on from school and you're sitting in your room and you're replaying that thing over and over in your head.

You're like, I should have said this and I should have said that, and I shoulda have said this. All these retorts come up. Why did they come up after the fact? Because your emotion went down, logic came back online and you're able to access it. So in the moment, you still had all those thoughts in your head, but you couldn't access it because the emotion overrode the logic.

Yeah.

Then when the emotions you know, secedes. Now both the logic can come back online and that's why you can think of a million things. You're like, now I need to get in front of that one.

I should, I shoulda said this,

what couldn't I think of it? So,

Kelly Kennedy: wow.

Rochelle Carrington: That's why. So when the emotion gets high. And we could, you know, it's like when you say something that you're like, I know I shouldn't say this.

I know I shouldn't say this. You know, you're in a little, maybe disagreement with a loved one and you say it anyway. Mm-hmm. And then you're like, oh, I definitely should not have said that.

Kelly Kennedy: Gonna be apologizing for that later.

Rochelle Carrington: I'll be paying for this one. But in the moment, you're like, I. So that's why we have these, you know, these ups and downs a lot of times is, it just literally is what is the threat that your nervous system is out there looking for?

And some people have a higher ability to deal with threat. They don't see threat in as many places as others. And some of that also depends on. How you were raised and what happened earlier in your life as to whether you were under a lot of threat then or not. Um, and so, you know, we all have these different lenses that we see the world through.

Yeah. But if you, if you see threat, it's gonna make it hard. And it is just, that's where the performance drag starts to come in.

Kelly Kennedy: I think what's so interesting about this conversation is that the level of threat that you might be talking about here, I think is. Maybe even so small that it isn't perceived as a threat.

Rochelle Carrington: Yes.

Kelly Kennedy: But yet at least not consciously perceived as a threat.

Rochelle Carrington: Yes.

Kelly Kennedy: But what you're saying is subconsciously your programming is saying you are in trouble. It's not necessarily ringing the alarm bells for you to notice, but it is making decisions for you.

Without you being conscious of them, that is terrifying.

Rochelle Carrington: Well, and that's where you really wanna feel. Your body tells you everything. Your body is your GPS. So a lot of people will say, you know, I wanna make a lot of money. I wanna, I know that I'm worth millions of dollars and I should be a millionaire. Yet they work and they work and they work, and it seems like they've got the skill level.

They should be able to do it well, why are they not doing it?

Yeah. '

cause they've created a money ceiling at some point where that level of money, whatever it is, is different for everyone. Yeah. Is threatening. It could be that, you know, if I make that much money, everyone is gonna want something from me.

They're gonna expect me to pay for everything. It could be that my family is like, who do you think you are? It could be that that suddenly makes me more vulnerable to people that might wanna take something from me. It's different for everybody, but those are just examples of where people go, I believe cognitively that I'm worth more yet, why haven't I gotten there?

I have the skillset to get there. I have the belief to get there. But your nervous system is going. No you don't. Okay. No you don't.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. So basically what you're saying is that, and, and correct me if I'm wrong here. Sure. You need to have alignment like the Think and Grow rich works if you are emotionally in alignment with it.

When there is a disconnect emotionally, the thoughts alone can't fix the problem.

Rochelle Carrington: Absolutely. That is a great way. Yeah. Mic drop right there.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. It, it makes so much sense, right? If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. I think one of the things that I've struggled with as a guy, and I do wanna talk to you, is this, is there a little bit more success, uh, for women? Because I think many women are more emotionally in tune. And I can tell you that from my, my, my fiance, she will tell me when I am out of alignment here.

But I know that like historically, and I've tried to do better since the start of this show, but I grew up in the generation as a guy where it was like, don't worry about it, push it down. If you just forget about it and move forward, you'll do fine. Look to the next thing. And so I know for me, there's a lot of things emotionally I haven't dealt with even to this day where it's just like it's easier to just put 'em in the background and keep moving, right?

Yes. But I'm aware. I am aware that there are things that I probably need to deal with at some point, i'm wondering if you're seeing more women find this alignment and find more success now than men. Do you find that you're, you're working with a lot of men who are struggling with this alignment?

Rochelle Carrington: Yes. I'd say the majority of our clients are men.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: And there's a couple of reasons, uh, I think, anyway, I mean, one is that. As you're building, men typically build bigger businesses than women in general. And they have been taught and as society in general, if you're a high performer, male or female.

You get taught, push resilience, grit, keep going. There's books written about it, there's podcasts about it, and it all sounds great. And you can go on Twitter and everyone's gonna tell you, you know, if you're not getting what you want, is that you're not willing to go through the pain. That's actually not.

True. Unfortunately that's kind of the old school, uh, philosophy, but we get taught that, you know, you gotta keep pushing through. Something bad happens, you gotta bounce back from it. It happens a lot more with business owners as well, because as a business owner, you know, you can't, you don't have time to sit there and be like, lemme process through my emotion of losing.

Yeah. Biggest deal of my business and then you know, go do something else. What you do is you go, okay, I lost that. I gotta move on to the next thing. Yeah. And as we do that, that accumulation of performance drag just builds up and up and up because anything that you don't resolve emotionally, um, gets stored in your nervous system.

You can think of it kind of like a filing cabinet where your nervous system has files for fear and guilt and sadness. Judgment and anger, and they're different sizes of filing cabinets for everyone, but when something doesn't fully resolve, you don't work your way through it. Then it gets put into an open file.

So performance drag is really when you've got a bunch of open files you got here and all these things.

Yeah.

And all you gotta do is just shut the filing drawers and that's when your system goes back online. But one of the important things, um, I want people to understand is resolving, you know, an emotional issue does not mean you have to go talk about it or go relive it or understand why you did it or anything like that, because.

When you go and relive, you know, some sort of situation over and over again, what you're actually doing is your body feels all of those emotions all over it thinks it's happening again. Yeah. And now you're building up even more stress and pressure in your system. So it's between the opposite of what you think it's doing.

Kelly Kennedy: It feels like an anxiety loop at that point.

Rochelle Carrington: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: And those aren't fun. Okay.

Rochelle Carrington: Okay. So sometimes you gotta just, you know, feel your way through it. And if you need to, you know, go and scream and yell to get the emotion out.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: Don't do it in your house with people around, but like sometimes you gotta do that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: But you've gotta limited time period to do it. You don't sit there and re then relive the thing again and again and again.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: At least you wanna cause more problems for yourself in the future.

Kelly Kennedy: I will admit right now I have screamed in my truck. Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: Hey,

Kelly Kennedy: I have screamed in my truck more than once and I always felt better.

Rochelle Carrington: Yes, because you're getting it outta sometimes we just gotta push it outta the system.

Kelly Kennedy: Sometimes you gotta get it out. A little yelling doesn't hurt. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That's amazing. I never thought about it that way. Okay, so help us out. For my guys out there who I know struggle with emotion in general, me being one of them as well.

Rochelle Carrington: Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: What does it mean? So I, let's say that I have a ton of open files and many of us, if not everybody listening, has a ton of open files. I'm sure. How do we finally close things? Close these things up, Rochelle, how do we, how do we make sure that the past is the past and what we're working on is a happy, healthy future?

Rochelle Carrington: Well, you know, when people are working with us and, and then I'll give maybe some ideas on things you can do on your own as well. But when they're working with us, what we're doing is figuring out where those files are located and then we just take people through, uh, verbal protocols that are using really commands that are embedded in the language that allow the nervous system to take the emotion out of it.

Never, you never tell your story. You never relive it. I don't know what happened to any of our clients in in the past. It doesn't matter. We don't need to go there.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: Um, and you can, you can release them those emotions very, very quickly. And then once they're gone, they're gone. And you're like, you feel.

Yeah. I mean, we have people who are like, I felt like I just lost 50 pounds. I didn't even know I had, and that took 20 minutes. Like, what happened?

Kelly Kennedy: Wow.

Rochelle Carrington: Because your system just moved it on out. It doesn't view it as a threat anymore. Yeah. And so that's what we're doing when we're working with clients, you know, one-on-one.

If you're looking at what can I do myself to maybe alleviate some of it? You know, one of the things is people have a tendency to live in two time zones, and by that what I mean is they're living in the present and then they're also living in the future. Or they could also be living in the past.

And what we know is if anybody travels when you go to a different time zone and you don't acclimate immediately.

Yeah.

What do you get? Jet lag. You feel like garbage. Well, that's what happens when you are living in the present. My body's here, but my mind is out here in the future going, oh my gosh, what's gonna happen?

Yeah.

Oh, freaking out about, you know, something. Will I close the deal? Will I get the business? Will I, you know, meet the person I wanna meet? Whatever it is. When you go out there, you're now living in two time zones, and all that's gonna do is create, living in the future, creates stress and anxiety. Living in the past creates regret.

So the one thing that you can do is if you are finding yourself living in the future, which a lot of people do. Yeah, you've got to imagine whatever that event is that you're nervous, anxious about, stressed about. Imagine it 15 minutes after the successful completion of it. Close your eyes. Imagine that whole thing playing out.

And when you do that anxiety will go away. 'cause you cannot imagine something successful and feel stressed about it at the same time. It's not possible.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right. Okay. Interesting. So whenever you're thinking of something that could happen in the future. Don't worry about it, always picture it completed successfully and all as well seen

Rochelle Carrington: minutes after.

And it's gotta be a specific event to use that kind of tactic. It can't just be like life in general. Yeah. But if you're concerned about a meeting, if you're concerned about, you know, the sale of something, imagine that thing going down. You don't have to spend a lot of time there. But imagine if 15 minutes after the successful completion and then you just go, okay, how do I feel now?

I feel great. Yeah. Then you come back to the present. 'cause now your emotions, you know, your nervous system has reregulated that piece anyway. Yeah. And so it's very helpful. And the other thing I'd say is just stay in the present as much as you can. It's challenging. The way to do that is, you know, what does a sweater feel like on my skin?

How does it feel sitting on my chair? You get really minute in how you feel. Yeah, with like the weirdest, you know, how much am I blinking? It will keep you in the present, and once your, your nervous system goes back into the present, then go do whatever it is that you need to do. Go do the task.

Go make the phone call.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. I think so many entrepreneurs, and I know, I know you know this, we don't live in the present. Yeah. We're always three steps ahead.

Rochelle Carrington: Yes.

Kelly Kennedy: Because that's just the way that our brains work. Right. One of the problems that I've seen with a lot of entrepreneurs on the show is that we suck at celebrating anything.

Ah. Yes. 'cause celebration requires us to be in the present and we don't live there.

Rochelle Carrington: Right. And we're told just move to the next thing.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Especially. I'm horrible. Yeah. I, we won a signal award last year. I was excited for about 15 minutes and was right back to, to making shows and doing things right.

Like there was, yeah, and I hate to admit that a little bit 'cause it's like, yes, we should celebrate those things, but to me it's like, okay, that's great. Let's keep going.

Rochelle Carrington: It can be that, but your nervous system needs the moment that goes, look what we did.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: Like we created this thing, we got this goal, we accomplished something.

And I'm just gonna bask in it for a little bit. And it's okay. I don't have to do anything else right now because I've worked so hard to get to this point, and I need that celebration so that the pressure comes out. Otherwise, you're just building up pressure, pressure, and you never let the steam outta it.

The

Kelly Kennedy: pressure. Oh, no. I'm starting to feel pressure. Oh, Rochelle, I am horrible. I am horrible at like celebrating the moment and taking my foot off the gas. I have to admit to that right now. I, the moment like my fiance will, will attest to this. On weekends, I start to feel a little bit nuts. Yeah.

'cause in my mind, my thought is I'm wasting time. I'm wasting time. I'm wasting time. I need to get back to doing something.

Rochelle Carrington: Yes. And,

Kelly Kennedy: and, and I'm not alone in that. I know that.

Rochelle Carrington: No. Absolutely not. When we,

Kelly Kennedy: I really struggle, I struggle with downtime.

Rochelle Carrington: Yeah. We look a lot at money ceilings for our clients as well, where, you know, they hit a plateau and it's just like, why am I bouncing around at this revenue or this income?

Yeah. And that idea that. Effort equals money that I always have to be putting in effort and doing, doing, doing is a big signal for a money ceiling because that is, you know, first of all, it's not true and nobody really wants to have to put. Tons of effort in always that you never get a break.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, that's a big one.

We see, oh my gosh, all the time with people where it's like, if I'm not producing, then I have no value. Yeah. Then I'm wasting time. I can't enjoy myself.

Kelly Kennedy: I think for me, I have a belief about momentum where I really believe like inside, when you have it, you have it. So keep going. Don't let it go. Don't let it go anywhere.

And I think for me, that has definitely gotten in the way of enjoying slowing down.

Rochelle Carrington: But the idea of momentum is that it's constantly going and you don't always have to be there pushing it once you get it going.

Kelly Kennedy: Are you sure? Are you sure that's how,

Rochelle Carrington: no, not, no, I'm just, it doesn't mean you're like sitting around doing nothing.

Yeah. But momentum means

Kelly Kennedy: it's going on its own. There should be some level of, you can take a step back. No, in my mind it's like, no, just keep going. Full throttle, foot on the pedal.

Rochelle Carrington: Yeah that's a high, that's why you're a high performer. 'cause that is, that's what we've been taught and there's that fear that's like, if I take my,

Kelly Kennedy: yeah.

Foot

Rochelle Carrington: off the gas, the whole thing's gonna stop. And that it's a, the nervous system,

Kelly Kennedy: it's a real fear. Hundred percent. A hundred percent. And I, like I said, I've talked with enough people that I know I'm not alone in that. That's a real fear for a lot of entrepreneurs. They don't wanna slow down.

Rochelle Carrington: That was one of mine too.

Yeah, I had that. I used to have that. Oh my gosh. I, if I were like sitting on the couch and watching a movie and wasn't on my computer doing something, it was just like, oh my gosh, the world is going to end. You will never make any money again in your life. You must do something even,

Kelly Kennedy: yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: You know, 10 o'clock at night.

Yeah, it's,

Kelly Kennedy: I think one of the things too that scares me a little bit about what you're talking about is that emotion. Emotion to me, so feels like a variable that can be very out of control, right? Like entrepreneurs we're trying to control everything. That's really what we do. We, we we're trying to think three steps ahead and place the chess where it needs to be to win, right?

But if the idea is, is that emotion is the founding. The founding action that is going to control my results, my success long term. Yet, emotion can be like, things can come outta left field. You can lose somebody, you can go through a divorce. Sickness can happen that are all going to screw with your emotions in some pretty serious ways.

You know, I, I guess for me, what I'm, what I'm alluding to here is what about the balance part of it? And I know, like, I, trust me, I don't believe in work-life balance. I believe in finding coherence at this point. I'm a, a huge believer, but I know what I got into this. My thought was, is I wanted to understand work-life balance.

I was a new entrepreneur when I started this show, and I'm like, where is the balance that people keep telling me about? There is no balance because what I learned was. My If things are going bad at work, it is absolutely going to be affecting your home life. Yes, if things are going bad at home, there is no way that that doesn't translate into work.

There is no balance. There's only coherence. But now the scary thing is, is that how do you handle those big emotional moments and not let them destroy your life and your business?

Rochelle Carrington: Here's the good news. The good news is that your emotions are completely under your control, and most people don't.

Understand that because we've been been conditioned that other people or situations make us feel a certain way. And if you look at the fallacy of that, you're the only person. I can't control your emotions. I could say something mean to you, and you can decide whether you laugh it off, whether you go, well, she's just a mean person, or whether you actually get hurt by it.

I cannot make you feel threatened. Fearful, angry. I also can't make you feel happy or anything like that. You decide, and that's one of the thing we work with our clients a lot on, and that's a double-edged sword. The great thing is like, oh wow, I do control it. Yeah. Because if I feel angry, I also could feel just even keeled.

I could choose that if I wanted to. But on the other side, there's also responsibility with that because that means I can't blame the way I feel on. Other people, other situations or anything like that. That means every time I feel something, I'm like, ah, shoot. Why did I choose this? Yeah. And so one of the things that we challenge people to think about is when you feel, especially the negative emotions, why would you be choosing to feel angry?

There is usually something that you're trying to accomplish for yourself through that emotion. And it may not be something positive necessarily, but it may be like, Hey, I wanna feel like the victim because, you know, I don't wanna take responsibility for this. Or I wanna feel like, you know, if I'm in judgment that I'm better than someone 'cause that helps my ego.

There's always something that we're trying to do, but the bottom line is you do get to choose and your emotional state. Has, a hundred percent impact over every single thing, every action you're gonna take. And so, as my mother said, choose carefully.

Yes,

choose wisely. Yeah. But knowing that is that I don't have to just react.

I can respond. Instead, I can think about why am I angry? And you know what, yeah. Does that serve me If it doesn't? Then let me get myself my emotions to a different place. And we're all able to do that. Sometimes it takes a little practice.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: But we are all able to do that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Okay. So what you're suggesting is that the initial reaction, emotional response isn't the one you have to go with.

Rochelle Carrington: Correct.

Kelly Kennedy: You don't necessarily control that initial response. I wanna maybe start there. I know there's been situations where I've been very angry. You, you know, my kid, my kid breaks something or god knows what. There's a mess. It's like, ah. Right. But you're absolutely right in that moment, you have to tone it back down and you have to make a different choice.

What you're suggesting is that you don't necessarily control the first response, but you do get to control what you switch it to.

Rochelle Carrington: Yes. And generally your first response is going to be from that subconscious, you know, emotional pattern that you just respond without even thinking about it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

Rochelle Carrington: What happens when you get the performance drag out is you don't respond that way anymore.

You'll find situations where you're like, I used to get angry about that. It doesn't bother me at all. Like I, I got no problem, no big deal at all. Without that though, yes, you can get angry about something or get sad about something and you know, the important part is you do need to feel it. It's not about, Hey, let me repress it and I'm just gonna not get angry and I'm gonna suddenly act happy.

Because that would be a little weird.

Kelly Kennedy: That's crazy. Don't do that.

Rochelle Carrington: That's crazy. Don't do that. Don't do that. So get the emotion out. Again, that might be where you need to go. Yell in your truck. Yeah. Get it out. And then decide how do I wanna feel now? And it doesn't have to be like, I go from anger to absolute bliss.

Yeah. It's like maybe I just go to frustration rather than anger that's a little less angry.

Yeah.

And if I go there, then I can make the next jump. Yeah. But it really is up to you. You want different results. Start changing your emotion.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. And I think that's a great place to, to, you know, leave off and, and lead into Bulletproof Management.

Tell us a little bit about your organization. Take us into, you know, how you implement performance. Drag who you work with, who is it for? And I know you do public speaking as well, so please speak to that too.

Rochelle Carrington: Yes. So we are working with, uh, primarily business owners, founders of companies people who already have had a lot of success and they've just hit that moment where they go, things are just a lot harder than they used to be.

I know what I should be doing and I'm just not getting myself to do it anymore. And so there's some recognition internally. That something is off, something's going on. And so, um, those are the types of people that we work with that are successful and wanna get back to that momentum again. 'cause they feel that momentum shift.

And we work with them, you know, one-on-one through our proprietary process, which is called emotional blueprinting. And, um, it's very quick, it's permanent. And, uh, you know, it's, uh, not reliving anything. Not retelling anything. No, no secrets need to be, uh, shared with anyone. And what we see are some amazing results where sales take off.

Uh, we've seen, you know, sales double, we've seen people who haven't slept in a year sleep within two weeks. Wow. And we see decision clarity come back. We see people expanding their business into other areas that they had worked on for years and years and, and just kept. Coming up against a plateau on that and now then suddenly they're able to do it.

So we see some really amazing results very, very quickly.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. And, uh, tell us a little bit about the size of teams. Like is this typically one-on-one or do you actually get a chance to work with organizations?

Rochelle Carrington: We do both. So generally if we're working with the entrepreneur, the business owner, or CEO of a company, we're doing that one-on-one.

And then if they want us to work with their team, we're usually doing a mix of team and one-on-one. There is some one-on-one work that is done with everybody.

Kelly Kennedy: Now, before the show, you were mentioning a scorecard. Tell me a little bit about the performance drag scorecard and where our listeners can find it.

Rochelle Carrington: Yes, so the performance Drag Scorecard card is something that we created that allows people to see how much performance drag do they have. It will take you about one minute, you're gonna answer seven questions, and you get an immediate results on that. That's gonna tell you that you're either low, moderate, or significant.

So it will tell you exactly where you are in performance drag, and then it will give you some options on things that you could do about it if you so choose. So it's a really easy thing to do. And um, I believe we're gonna leave the link in the show notes for

Kelly Kennedy: that. It'll be in the show notes. You bet. And all posts.

So wherever you find this show, there will be a link to the scorecard. Check it out, give it a, uh, give it a try. Rochelle, this has been absolutely amazing. I know you're based in New York. Yes. Do you also service worldwide? We do have a worldwide audience on the show.

Rochelle Carrington: We do. We've got clients everywhere from Dubai to, uh, you know, Denmark, England, all over the place.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. And if people wanna get ahold of you, what is the best way for them to do so?

Rochelle Carrington: The best way is you can email me, it's rochelle@emotionalbp.com, or you could just go onto our website, emotional bp.com and uh, you can find links on there to get ahold of me as well.

Kelly Kennedy: Incredible. Rochelle, this has been amazing.

I know, uh, it flipped the script a little bit. This is, put it this way, in 335 conversations. Nobody has ever said to look at the emotions first, so that's like a first for the show. It's been incredible. It's been a ton of fun. I've enjoyed every minute of it. Thank you so much for your time.

Rochelle Carrington: Absolutely.

It's been fun. Thank you.

Kelly Kennedy: Until next time, you've been listening to the Business Development Podcast and we'll catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in. Sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry, and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your business development specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.