Sarah Moody is a mentor specializing in helping high-achieving women find their ideal partners within 90 days, leveraging her extensive experience from two decades of dating and her personal success in finding her soulmate. Her approach combines one-on-one mentoring with cutting-edge mindset courses, aiming to assist her clients in creating an iconic life. In addition to her mentoring services, Sarah is known for her keynote speeches and her podcast, where she shares transformation stories and mindset strategies.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Sarah Moody shares her origin story, being fired from a startup in 2001 and starting over again
- How Sarah managed to start and grow a business in a post-9/11 economy
- The role of mindset in overcoming personal and professional challenges
- Strategies for cultivating a positive mindset for personal growth
- The journey of finding love through self-improvement and mindset shifts
- Sarah‘s approach to mentoring and personal development
- The impact of mindset on relationship success and finding the “fuck yeah” guy
- Practical tips from Sarah on embracing change and pursuing passio
In this episode…
Have you ever wondered what truly unlocks success in love and personal growth? It’s a journey that many people embark on, but what’s the secret ingredient to making it all come together?
Sarah Moody, a seasoned mentor specializing in personal development and relationships, believes the answer lies within the power of mindset. She highlights the transformative potential of adopting a positive outlook and actively working towards self-improvement. This approach, Sarah argues, is crucial in overcoming obstacles and realizing one’s aspirations in both personal growth and romantic endeavors. Her experience underscores that with the right mindset, individuals can navigate the complexities of life and love more effectively, paving the way for fulfillment and genuine connections.
In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, John Corcoran and Sarah Moody explore the transformative role of mindset in personal development and finding love. They discuss Sarah’s pivotal career change, the importance of mindset in overcoming life’s challenges, and actionable advice for those looking to enhance their personal and romantic lives.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- EO San Francisco
- EO Accelerator
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Sarah Moody: Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | X | Podcast
- “Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy” on the American Psychological Association (APA) website
- Dr. Joe Dispenza
- Brooke Castillo on LinkedIn
Sponsor for this episode…
At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.
What do you need to start a podcast?
When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.
The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.
We make distribution easy.
We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Co-founders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, FreshBooks, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
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Contact us now at support@rise25.com or book a call at rise25.com/bookcall.
Rise25 Co-founders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran 0:13
Alright, welcome everyone, John Corcoran here, the co host of this show. And you know, check out our archives got some great episodes there. And we’ve got all kinds of interesting entrepreneurs and founders and executives that have been on this show. And of course, I’ll introduce our guests in a second. But first before we get to that this episode brought to you by EO San Francisco, which is the local chapter of Entrepreneurs Organization, which is a global peer to peer network of more than 18,000 influential business owners of 200 some chapters all over the globe. And if you’re a founder, co founder or owner or controlling shareholder of a company that generates over a million dollars a year in revenue, and you want to connect with other like minded successful entrepreneurs, then EO is for you. In the EO San Francisco chapter navels leading entrepreneurs in the Bay Area to learn grow and achieve greater success and to learn how it works or to come to a test drive. You can join us at eonetwork.org/sanfrancisco. And this episode also brought to you by my company, Rise25, where we help b2b businesses to get and connect with their dream 200 relationships and partnerships, helping them to run a podcast that generates ROI. And if you have questions about that, you can go to our website at rise25.com. All right, I’m excited to hear today. Our guest is Sarah Moody. She’s a newer member of Entrepreneurs Organization San Francisco, but she’s been an entrepreneur for a long time. And she recently pivoted her business. So we’re gonna talk about pivoting a business from something she’d been doing for a long time, but 20 years shifting into something new. But Sarah, such a pleasure to have you here, here. And here. And I always love to ask people about kind of their origin story, how they got into entrepreneurship. And for you, it was a, we’ve heard this story before. 2001 was a bit of a year for many people. And you got fired from a startup. And we’re find yourself kind of dusting yourself off and starting over again. So tell us about what that experience was like.
Sarah Moody 2:04
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s such a pleasure being on your show, John, and thanks to everyone who’s tuning in today. I’m excited to be here. So yeah, I grew up in a family of corporate bankers. And so the idea of being an entrepreneur was not really close in my mind, and not really something that I saw as a role model. But I started my career in retail. And in my late 20s, I moved into tech, and I was with a big tech startup. And then I got learn in the.com era to a pure startup. And to make a long story short, in 2001, on a Friday morning at 10am, I was fired, I got a call from my boss. And he said, Sarah, the company’s imploding, and you’re getting fired. And I’ve never been fired in my entire life. And my stomach just fell to the floor. And I immediately panicked and immediately was like, Oh, my god, how am I going to pay my rent? I live in San Francisco, how am I going to pay my car payment, like it was a gut wrenching Friday morning. And what I feel so grateful for is I had these two incredible friends in my life. One was an entrepreneur. And then the other was a new orange bird. Like one was an older entrepreneur. The other was like a newer entrepreneur. And they both gave me advice that got me on this path. One was, Hey, Sarah, you love to raise vintage cars in Europe, in these car rallies, think of this as a pebble in the road of life and drive over it. And I was like, Okay, I got that visual. And then the other entrepreneur was like, Hey, listen, you have such amazing expertise and network, like I was really, really good in Product Marketing. Like, why don’t you just you know, I’ll help you find your first gig. And within three weeks, I had my first client, and that was 2001. And it was, it was incredible. But also to like, just a quick kind of side note. I did think long and hard about going back into corporate America. But what I love, one of the many things I love about being an entrepreneur, is this idea of flexibility and freedom. I wanted to be able to work with amazing clients in tech, doing product marketing, and then get on a plane and go and do one of my passions, which is driving vintage cars and rallies in Europe. So I love the freedom that we have as entrepreneurs.
John Corcoran 4:33
Yeah. And you also had this is kind of crazy time you you said you were laid off. It was a Friday morning and you had prearranged plans to go to Park City, Utah to the Sundance Film Festival, which you love film. What was that like? Like getting laid off and then having to like get back on your game and write it go and enjoy yourself for the weekend.
Sarah Moody 4:54
I worked from that pit in my stomach of like, oh my god, how am I gonna pay my rent? Because I think I got like one month severance because the company was literally imploding. It’s called commerce one. And we got on a plane at four o’clock that afternoon, or maybe it was two o’clock to go to Park City. And because it was with one of my oldest best friends, it was just this like blanket of war. And she was such a big cheerleader of mine. So it was like, cheerleading blanket of warm, and then I could get lost and forget all about it. And like the world of movies and celebrities and stars for like three days in Park City. So it was it was that kind of experience, John.
John Corcoran 5:37
Reight, helpful to get on a plane and get out of town and be able to enjoy something else. Yeah. 100% Yeah, interesting timing, because I think they say that March of 2001 was kind of like the peak of the.com, boom, and the beginning of the bubble. And this was January 2000. Once it was right, as things were, were just, you know, companies were imploding.
Sarah Moody 5:56
Yeah. And I was reading, I remember reading, I think, 2 million people were laid off at that time in the just in the US. So think everyone in Houston loses their job. So that was another thing that I thought in my mind is well, like, okay, there are, you know, so many people are getting laid off in the Bay Area, do I want to go like compete for this job? Or I’m probably gonna have to work eight days a week again? Or do I want the flexibility and I really got connected to my values and my why and what’s important to me. And so that really helped me with the fear and the anxiety of not being able to pay my rent and just taking a leap of faith that I could do this.
John Corcoran 6:34
Yeah. So let’s talk about kind of those early years, especially that year, because later that year, September 2001, was 9/11. And then the economy got even worse after that. What was it like for you? You know, getting clients in this time period when it was so chaotic economically?
Sarah Moody 6:53
Yeah, what was really interesting back then was there, it’s probably about like two or three years, maybe even a little bit longer where companies were so gun shy about hiring FTE is that, ironically enough, we had so much demand, we had a lot of fun for our services. And what I did for about 23 years was I worked with the C suite of some of the largest tech companies on the planet. And I helped them build like, customer advisory boards, and executive engagement programs, everything around building loyalty and driving revenue using their customers. So for those few years, I was really blessed. And I had good clients paid well, you know, I still had a lot of like, internal, you know, fear and anxiety, like, is this gonna, you know, like, is this gonna stay? Or is this gonna, you know, implode again, there was still some of that. And so I still had to do some internal work around working around my mindset and my belief that, yeah, I can be really successful doing this. And so that took a couple of years, and some more kind of proof points of more and more big tech companies hiring me to really solidify my place as like, yeah, I am an entrepreneur.
John Corcoran 8:08
Yeah. And then I imagine at some point, you thought, well, you know, it’s just me, I need to bring in some other people to meet this demand. So talk a little about hiring people bringing other team members.
Sarah Moody 8:19
Yeah, yeah. So. So what I did, probably about halfway through my 20 year span in this space was, I was working with companies like Hewlett Packard, for example. And they kept wanting to know exactly, I was doing great. I’m definitely an overachiever. And so I was able to bring in some some some subcontractors, I started off with subcontractors, and kind of having them on my team and having them underneath me. So my clients would hire a team of us to come in. And I was, you know, I’m really lucky. I live in San Francisco, I have an incredible network. I know so many people. So I was really, it was easy for me to be able to call some of my peers, get some of their team members who had been laid off, or, you know, wanted to go off and just be contractors and not work full time and tech. And I was able to build a team pretty easily actually, I think it helped that the work we were doing was really helping drive revenue and was, you know, definitely something targeted to the C suite. So my team, you get a lot of visibility with leaders in tech and, and it was fun, like, we would work with the teams that did all the logistics. And so you know, one of the many outings that we did, we built the C suite board for Hewlett Packard was the logistics team, not my team. We did like the content of the strategy, the logistics team organized us going to me staying at the Four Seasons for the board meeting and then go into like Monaco and go into the Grand Prix. And so you know, yes, the incredible were to build a board at the C suite and build out the agenda and drive this drive all the strategy back to the company. But lots of fun too, with the logistics team.
John Corcoran 10:09
Yeah, I could see how it’d be too hard, just sell a new new hire on the possibilities. On the on the flip side, though, you have this relationship with the C suite. And a lot of times what we hear is people struggle with the idea of, you know, we’ve got these critical relationships with the clients, high level clients, and in the struggle is getting people who can replace you and have that stature and be able to manage a relationship of have that level of that caliber. How did you deal with that?
Sarah Moody 10:43
I, I found my phone have I had or I, you know, I changed my entire business model three weeks ago. And I will I know, we’ll talk about that. But I, I hired someone who was my thought partner, my strategic partner, like the same level of experience could, you know, talk to the chief marketing officer and the CEO at Splunk, just like I could. And so I was really blessed to be able to find a complete Rockstar to kind of be in the business with me. Yeah. The business of the CEO, but he was definitely my thought partner.
John Corcoran 11:22
Yeah. Yeah. So finding someone who can kind of serve the same role as you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. What about now is a long period of time, we’re 20 years, but 2007 comes to mind 2008, the whole great recession, you’re about six years into the business at that point. Take us back to that period. Was that a big bump in the road for you?
Sarah Moody 11:45
You know, fortunately, I mean, I’m just gonna have to say that again, like, fortunately, there was still, we have so much innovation out here, so many companies that are just popping up left and right back then. But even though, you know, overall, the economics were challenging for our country. Out here, I really think of the fact that we live in a bubble. And so I started actually working with a lot of startups, a lot of founders, that, you know, were working for Hewlett Packard, and we were working for some of the big companies that went off to go start off, start their own small companies, a lot of them moved to Israel. And so I was working with, with like, a lot of Israeli tech company. So I shifted back then to the big guys, as well as helping the little guys start to build up, you know, customer engagement, customer loyalty, driving their corporate strategy, making sure they have a product market fit by bringing in their most trusted advisors, also known as their customers. So I was able to shift my business model to, you know, address, keeping my company thriving during those times.
John Corcoran 12:56
Yeah, of course, another big inflection point was 2020, when a lot of companies really struggled, march 2020, COVID hits. Sounds like you’re doing a lot of work all over the globe by this point. Take us back to that period in time. What was that? Like for you? What, you know, what was it like for you, as you realize that this, you know, pandemic stay at home order, all that stuff was happening?
Sarah Moody 13:18
Yeah, yeah. You know, my birthday is the day that the world shut down March 13. Yeah, yeah. So I remember like, going out to dinner with my sister on my birthday on March 13, and having this awesome dinner and Pacific Heights, and then exactly finding out that the wall was shutting down. And I had about three or four really big tech clients back then. And so, you know, we had a thriving business and, and something inside of me just went to this place as the roll was shutting down, and we all had to stay at home of like, Hey, Sarah, this could be your opportunity to also just drop in inside of you, and go deep, and start doing some work inside, start doing some more work around your mindset. You know, I definitely noticed that I would have phases of like being burnt out and overworked and super high stress. And I knew that because I was, you know, saw a lot of I saw a lot of other entrepreneurs, I knew that there could be a place where there could be a little bit more ease in my life. So in 2020, I went deep in cognitive behavioral therapy. I went deep in, like just learning a lot about myself. And knowing that if I went deep alert more about myself, I could bring all those learnings and that confidence to, you know, really taking my business to the next level. So I wrote a book. I started a podcast and I started mentoring, high achieving when miniTek was struggling with burnout. So that was what I was doing because we all couldn’t go out. So I started a part of my company that was a mentoring or coaching practice. And it was all about helping women see what was going on in their mind, and how that was creating burnout and anxiety and overwhelm, and keeping them really stuck in their roles and stuck in their life. And, you know, just really helping them like with a big unlock and changing their mindset. So they could really thrive at work.
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