Steve:  00:03    Welcome to the Awesomers.com podcast. If you love to learn and if you're motivated to expand your mind and heck, if you desire to break through those traditional paradigms and find your own version of success, you are in the right place. Awesomers around the world are on a journey to improve their lives and the lives of those around them. We believe in paying it forward and we fundamentally try to live up to the Great Zig Ziglar quote where he said, you can have everything in your life you want if you'll help enough other people, get what they want. It doesn't matter where you came from. It only matters where you're going. My name is Steve Simonson, and I hope you will join me on this Awesomer journey.

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Steve:  01:16    You are listening to episode number 97 in the Awesomers.com podcast series, and our tradition has become pretty well known at this stage. All you have to do is go over to Awesomers.com/97 to find the show notes and relevant the tales about today's show. We often include links, will include special bonuses, transcripts, summaries, et Cetera, and I think you'll really enjoy. Find a quick way to search about today's episode. And by the way, today's episode as my very special guest, Mary Shores, and this is part one of a three part series with Mary. And Mary, by the way, is a best selling author. I'm in the personal development space are published by Hay House, which is very prestigious organization and as the owner and CEO of what's been called one of the most unique collection agencies in the country, and you're going to hear more about that.

Steve:  02:09    It really is remarkably unique. Her philosophy of maintaining a positive approach to life and the debt collection has reframed her entire organization and the lives of those she's trained. And this is one of the most fascinating parts of this equation is you know, Mary's very, very successful building an eight figure business and overcoming significant adversity in her life. And she's somebody that I really appreciate because she will share all those details with you in today's episode. We talk about real life and in fact death impact. And that is something that not everybody's willing to talk about. But I appreciate her being vulnerable and being able to share with us so we can all learn. Because to be honest with you, a lot of those unwelcomed lightening bolts have all of us at one time or another. And it's really inspiring to see somebody who's been able to push through that and, kind of carry on. And so I think you're gonna really love today's episode with Mary Shores.

Steve:  03:14    Hey everybody. Steve Simonson, and I'm back again with another Awesomers.com Podcast in our long running series now. And I wanted to share with you my special guest, Mary Shores. Do I get the pronunciation right, Mary? Absolutely. Perfect. Whew, that's uh, Well I'm running about 50 slash 50 for the day. I'm not gonna lie to Ya. Uh, so thank you for having a relatively easy name for me to pronounce. Mary, I've already read in your bio and some of the background from that 30,000 foot view. So the awesomers out there can get a taste of what you're all about from the high level. But can you just tell us where you live right now, what you do day to day?

Mary:   03:47    Yeah, I live in Champagne, Illinois, which is central Illinois. I'm nowhere near Chicago. So literally think about cows and cornfields and a really big university, which is the University of Illinois. Big Ten school, we're really proud to have that. I have two children that are 17 and 18, single mom and I'm currently a enjoying a career filled with lots of travel and I'm a CEO, bestselling author and public speaker.

Steve:  04:19    Oh Wow, that's good. That's gonna take a little bit of time there. So we got author and their CEO, speaker, Mom. Uh, what did I miss in there? Is, there is a lot.

Mary:   04:30    Let's see. I think you got it.

Steve:  04:32    That's it. That's the high level. So I, I love all of that and Oh, the single mom bit, that's pretty important. Um, you know, uh, there's a lot of moms out there and they find that, you know, at some point whether they were single moms to begin with it, they got a divorce, they find it very difficult to kind of get out there on their own. Did you ever find it to be a challenge to be up there on your own regardless of the time or the reasoning?

Mary:   04:56    Oh yes. As a matter of fact, I'm the first two years after my divorce with, which was in 2008. I had been married for 10 years and completely blindsided about the fact that I was going to get divorced. It was very unexpected, but for about two years after that I felt completely like a functioning catatonic. I, I just, you know, life was anything but joyous. I remember feeling often like I would just be walking. Like I felt like I was walking down a set of stairs and someone was just kicking each one of them out in front of me. Every time I tried to step in and so I had ridiculous visions that I was going to lose everything and you know, including my business that I had worked for my entire adult life. But that lasted about two years in the fog began to clear and actually everything came back. I like to say like my power and my structure came back even more powerful than it had ever been before.

Steve:  05:54    Wow. I think that's important. And I know a lot of us out there who've either gone through divorce, especially moms who, you know, find themselves in that role of, you know, how do I kind cope with all of these things? It's a very important and enlightening thing to see people end up working through that. So thank you for sharing that now. As the awesomers out there know when we do an origin story, which is what we're doing today, I like to get right back to the very beginning. And that starts out with where were you born?

Mary:   06:24    I was born in San Diego, California.

Steve:  06:28    Aha. Now I'm just doing the San Diego, California, the Champagne, Illinois math. And there's definitely some pieces in there that were probably covered here in a minute. How long did you live in San Diego?

Mary:   06:41    Not Very Long. My, my father was in the navy and so there was a base there and he, uh, was a nuclear engineer in the navy. So I just happened to be born in San Diego because that's where he was stationed at the time.

Steve:  06:56    Yeah. I also have a military father, he was in the army and although I was, uh, I was born before he joined the army, all of my siblings were born in different states in different, uh, in some cases, different countries because that's the nature of the military. So, uh, so you mentioned that your father was in the navy. Did your mom work, uh, what, what, if anything did she do?

Mary:   07:17    Not at that time and they've been divorced when I was very young, so I don't know my father and um, my mother probably back in those days, didn't do a whole lot, but eventually she opened a business and got remarried and just kind of, I think I always looked at her as an entrepreneur for sure.

Steve:  07:36    Yeah. So it is interesting that she was a entrepreneurial. Did she like opening a business or did she see it as like, this is my only way to kind of preserve the family, um, continuity and the, you know, get into a job or getting control of what, what was her reasoning if you knew it?

Mary:   07:53    You know, I really don't. Um, gosh, it's been, that was in 1986, so I really just don't know.

Steve:  08:00    Oh, I can tell you that a lot of great movies that came out in 1986. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm an eighties kid myself, so it, uh, there's definitely. I do like ghostbusters, you know, I just, uh, I rewatched that just this past week and as I find myself here in Vegas, the Awesomers know that I'm on the road right now. They have big giant ghostbusters casino slot machines. Oh, that's fun. Those are really fun. Yeah. You get to play and you got all the little clips. And then yesterday I noticed, uh, for those uh, seventies babies, uh, at which kind of includes me, uh, they have brady bunch. Oh yeah. We have literally a Brady Bunch, casino slot machine, which is mind numbing to me because you know, the, the actors that got paid for their brady bunch experience 30 years ago, 40 years ago, they don't get a dime for any of that stuff. So it's, it's amazing to see the nostalgia, but also know that it was a different time back then. So anyway, I digress. So let me ask you this, did you have any siblings?

Mary:   09:00    I have a brother and a sister. One of each. They're both younger. Are they entrepreneurial on anyway?

Mary:   09:07    You know, they were all very different. So my sister is a nurse and my brother is a very political. He works for the governor of the state of Texas.

Steve:  09:18    Oh, fascinating. Yeah, I would say very different than entrepreneurial.

Mary:   09:23    But he does have, you know, and he still is entrepreneurial though. I mean he's always a very innovative and in such, he's worked for me in my business and I found him to be, have that very entrepreneurial mindset.

Steve:  09:37    Nice. Yeah. It's, that's a good combination to, to get that, that mindset in the government. I think often there's a disconnect between, you know, kind of the, that entrepreneur, although Texas is probably, um, more entrepreneurial friendly than some other states that I could name.

Steve:  09:55    A special thank you to our sponsors out there who are keeping the lights on over here to the awesomers.com podcast. Let's take a listen and have a commercial break right now.

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Steve:  10:30    Now, how about a university? Did you go to any university?

Mary:   10:33    I didn't. Um, I went to community college for a short while. I probably took enough classes to get degrees but not in the right formula I suppose to didn't really take the required classes. Yeah.

Steve:  10:46    Now, did you like that experience? It sounds like it was a maybe starting and stopping along the way. How did that go?

Mary:   10:54    You know? Well, when I was, when I was young, I mean I was actually on my own since the time I was 16 and had a child at a very young age who passed away from a very traumatic brain damage at birth. And so while while my peers were really doing things like going to college, it was, it was really out of the question for me. And so while it did take some time to go to community college, I was very focused on philosophy, ethics, world religions, just like I really took things that were of interest to me, not really things to add up to a degree. And I did, I did like it, I did enjoy it, but I certainly didn't enjoy those core kind of classes at school. School wasn't necessarily for me in that respect, but um, I definitely turned it around very quickly when I became a business owner super young, at 24.

Steve:  11:47    Yeah. So it's, it's, I find that interesting because, um, perhaps like you, I find being a constant learner, I love to learn. That's something I have great joy in. But if somebody tells me, go learn this specifically to get this little check mark or this little certificate and it's not something of interest to me, it's like that is the worst torture you could do to me is trying to make me do, you know, forgive me a French poetry is your favorite thing. But for me, like if somebody told me I had to study French poetry for the next two years to get a certificate, I'll be like, I don't think so. I'm far more interested in these other subjects regardless of what they are. And, and I think a lot of people resonate with this idea that, you know, going to university, it can be great if you're actually learning things that can be impactful and meaningful to you, but it can be a burden or a pain if they are kind of all stuck around this core subject. So give me a core subject you didn't like. For example, if you remember.

Mary:   12:48    Well I certainly didn't like our appreciate math and English. Oh good. You don't need those, that's for sure. They tell you that you do.

Steve:  12:58    Obviously the education system has their own way of looking at things and they're their own kind of talking points. Uh, I do think in large part, for example, somebody who goes and they spend and they get a doctorate or a master's degree, and I'll just say French poetry, I don't have anything against French poetry, but if somebody spends 80 or $90,000 becoming an expert on French poetry, that universities should probably get sued because they just wasted a bunch of money and unless that person could figure out how to make a business out of that or make a career out of that, that is meaningful and lasting, it's a tough thing to, to rationalize. For me, that's just me. So their talking points are there minor over here. That doesn't mean I don't want people to be educated. Doesn't mean I don't want it to be learning constantly. But man, just learn what you like to learn. So what are your favorite subjects out of curiosity?

Mary:   13:52    Well, you know, I was thinking when you were talking about this, when you said you're a learner. I feel the same way like I'm a sponge, so you're probably a lot like me and watch a lot of youtube. I do. I love it. I think I, when I was a kid I had this secret sort of desire to be an archeologist, so like the female Indiana Jones, so to speak. So I love learning about ancient civilizations and I also been. I love, love, love neuroscience and I love to bridge the gap between like what the ancient people knew about our minds and consciousness versus like what we in modern day times know about consciousness because so many people talk about space being the final frontier or the next big frontier and, and I think that it's true, but like simultaneously I think that the study of consciousness is really a fascinating, fascinating thing. You know, we know so much about the body, but the truth is we know, we know so very little about human brain.

Steve:  14:52    Well, I think that's actually a interesting observation and quite astute to say, you know, as much as space is exciting and there's plenty of to be done there. We don't know much about the brain even to this day more or certainly perhaps then, you know, the days of Freud and Young where they made all kinds of crazy, uh, proclamations about human behavior that may or may not be based in modern day neuroscience. I'm mostly not, but my, I suppose, how did you get this neural line of thinking or what exposed you to that, uh, to know that you were attracted to it?

Mary:   15:27    Well, I think that, um, I've always been sort of a seeker, so just always a curious had that curious kind of mind. My curious mind has led me in all kinds of adventures in life. Also, just a very open minded person, but definitely say that my daughter, you know, this, this brain injury that she had when I was 19 years old. That was in 1992. So this was before Al Gore invented the Internet and stuff. But, um, now I would go to the library because I wanted to understand her brain injury and this was, this was a devastating injury. I mean, we're talking, she had over five minutes, lack of oxygen to the brain and she was resuscitated at birth. Well, she was blind. She was deaf. She was unable to suck a bottle. She didn't have a swallow reflex. She was on life support, like full life support for the beginning stages of her life.

Mary:   16:15    And after that, even when she was released from the hospital, she was still in and out of the children's hospital for the entire time that she was alive. So her brain essentially was not growing it because, because of the damage and she was in this vegetative state, but I just, that was probably my first exposure. She passed away. And then, um, because I own this collection agency and I often say that I own the most unique collection agency on the planet because, um, for me the idea is to create such a connection with the consumer and help them get over the psychological burden of having a debt. Because having a debt is really devastating to people. And it causes this a foundation of shame and unworthiness. And I really do understand. I think because I've done so much study of consciousness, subconscious mind and neuroscience that I really get how people can be disempowered by this and so I've learned like what things trigger a trigger say nervous system reaction such as fight or flight or what things trigger a connecting response. But um, ultimately later on in life when my son was born and when he was about nine, he was diagnosed on the spectrum and so this being on the autism spectrum is a disorder of the nervous system. And so just needing to learn even more because dealing with him, but also seeing that, you know, overstimulation that they get. We're all overstimulated. It's, we're living in this time where we have notifications going off on our phone 24/7 and it's a, it's a very overwhelming state of our culture and environment right now.

Steve:  18:04    It certainly is. I couldn't agree more. And you know, yeah, certainly those experiences are going to drive you to want to learn and to understand. Right? This is one of the things I think is built into humans when we're exposed to something that we can't control. We at least seek to understand it, right, and and that, that maybe provide some level of closure, at least some level of understanding that helps you cope. How did you find that to be the cases the more your skills got, whether it's related to autism or the original brain injury? Did, did you feel, you know better? Not necessarily better about the outcome, but just more enlightened?

Mary:   18:42    I think that when I was young and with Haley, it was different because I was really a child myself and didn't, didn't have the maturity or the intellect to be able to process what was really happening. I mean we're, we're talking about living inside the walls of a children's hospital, sleeping on the emergency room floor and you really can't really be receptive to that deep kind of learning and transformation in your mind when you are in a daily state of life and death every single day. And you know also just being around so much devastation, cancer care, cancer victims, a burn victim's, car crash victims, seeing the parents losing the children. I mean, that's not a good state conducive to learning, but probably the things, you know, there was more of a desperation and also I was in complete denial, you know, I was unable to accept what was happening, but getting a little bit older, you know, I think that the information is still there and so it was accessible to me at the time that I needed it. Now with my son, same thing happened early on. I was super in denial about his situation and um, and took me a while, but my work was already set in stone by this point, like what I was, what I was doing with my communication strategies and the work that I've been doing was already set in stone. So I just feel like my life has led me down a path that both on the personal side and on the professional side was always enhancing my area of expertise.

Steve:  20:15    Let's pause here for a moment and take a quick sponsor break.

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Steve:  20:48    Okay, we're going to take a break here. This is part one of the three series and Mary has been very generous with their time, so we're going to get a lot more great stuff tomorrow. Again, with part two coming up, you won't want to miss it. You know, I really appreciate it. Again, Mary's willingness to share and being vulnerable and helping us understand what she's been through. Origin stories are so important to me because they provide insight and inspiration in many cases and they just help us understand that, you know, there's no such thing as kind of a straight line to success. There's no such thing as just a smooth ride down the river of life, right? There's, there's rapids, there's waterfalls, there's all kinds of unexpected things and it's how you kind of live with this and deal with this that can help help define you as a person. And help you get over it. So again, this is just part one of the three part series.

Steve:  21:40    This has been episode number 97 and the Awesomers.com Podcast series. Just run on over to awesomers.com/97 to find today's show notes, details, and we even have a little bonus that is coming in part three. We may list that on all the parts, but Mary has been generous enough to offer us a free bonus as well. So you're going to want to check that out really soon too. Well, we've done it again everybody. We have another episode of the podcast ready for the world. Thank you for joining us and we hope that you've enjoyed our program today. Now's a good time to take a moment to subscribe, like, and share this podcast. Heck, you could even leave a review if you wanted awesomers around you will appreciate your help. It's only with your participation and sharing that we'll be able to achieve our goals. Our success is literally in your hands. Thank you again for joining us. We are at your service. Find out more about me. Steve Simonson, our guest, team, and all the other awesomers involved at Awesomers.com. Thank you again.