Grow your Business without Losing Family w/ Joe Pomeroy

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:00:00]:
Well, welcome back to the Happy Healthy Hustle podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Christiane. And as always, I’m here today and share maybe some more insights about how we can keep up our hustle while staying happy and healthy. And I have an amazing guest here today, going to share some really fun insight. But first of all, welcome. Jo, why don’t you introduce yourself real quick to our audience?

Joe Pomeroy [00:00:24]:
Yeah. My name is Joe Pomeroy. I’m a dad and a husband. I’ve got an amazing wife, three little kids, and I focus on helping entrepreneurs to prioritize their family while still having incredible business success. And I do it because of something I had to figure out for myself. So I won entrepreneurial awards, international awards, and I’ve got my own podcast and built an eight figure business and all kinds of other things. But I’m most proud of being a husband and dad and having a thriving family.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:00:54]:
I love that. I know you refer to your audience as family builders. I think that’s such a beautiful description of your audience. Really. I can see this visually because I’m a visual learner and thinker, can see this right in front of me. Let’s maybe talk a little bit about what you build and we can even use the term family builder right there. How would you describe your superpower? Because you’ve done so much, but I want to really pinpoint it to this one thing where you feel, yeah, that’s like my one thing superpower right there. What is it?

Joe Pomeroy [00:01:27]:
Yeah, I love that. So doing all those entrepreneurial things and winning awards and building that eight figure, eight figure business. I just proved something right now. And you’ll see here. I thought my superpower was communication. You know, I still stumble on my words, obviously, but I thought my superpower was communication. And then I got married and then I realized I didn’t know anything about communicating. And what I had to discover was my.

Joe Pomeroy [00:01:57]:
My real superpower. And you also, Christiana, you also talk about how people’s superpowers can change. So. So maybe it was communicating, but I have learned that my true superpower is being able to translate information, not necessarily language, from, you know, English to German, for example, but from what one person can understand to what makes sense to another person. That’s my superpower, translating that information.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:02:26]:
And it also means that you’re appealing to different learning styles, which I’m always all about, because I think that as an educator, we frequently think, well, you have to read this book, read the 30 pages, and we talk about this. There are some questions at the end of the chapter we want to talk about and that will be frequently don’t understand is that we might not all be learning by reading. Maybe some of us learn more by doing the questions at the end because you’re writing it out. And maybe you would even learn more instead of like reading a chapter. It’s like a word search or maybe it’s a work page which is coming back to my discover your superpower book or master your goals book is more. While I appreciate looking at translating information so that we can all enter the learning path together. And it’s this one linear path, but it allows like different viewpoints that kind of like what Imagine you’re in a national park. There’s sometimes that you can take this route or you can take this route.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:03:27]:
There’s so many different ways you can see beauty. It doesn’t just always have to be this one path. Right. And of course, very fittingly speaking about path, your superpower right there. Let’s maybe look at the other side of the superpower. What was maybe challenging in your life when you look back, Joe, that you feel like goodness? That was a dark time in my life.

Joe Pomeroy [00:03:50]:
Absolutely. Well, when you have your superpower. Wrong. I think that can become a type of kryptonite in your journey. And it absolutely was for me because since I thought my superpower is communicating and everybody at work loved me and everybody at work thought I was great, the struggles I was having at home, clearly my wife’s fault, right. If I’m so good over here and this is my superpower over here, then she’s got the problem. And that does not work in relationships, whether they’re business or personal, family. It just doesn’t work when we see the other person as the, as the villain or the problem.

Joe Pomeroy [00:04:30]:
And that all kind of came to a head. I really, I honestly didn’t know how hard I’d been making things on my wife until one night a small argument about something insignificant just escalated and I threw a child sized tantrum. And in my bare feet I kicked in a cupboard door that was upstairs in our house and which ended up stabbing into my foot. And I was bleeding all over her carpet. And my wife had just had enough. I mean, why would you stick around with that kind of tantrum, right? She grabbed some of her things, she headed downstairs. I, I kind of hobbled to the top of the stairs and I sit in there and I realize she’s getting the keys and she’s headed out the front door. And everything kind of froze in that moment.

Joe Pomeroy [00:05:14]:
Christiana, it really just slowed down. And I had to decide what did I really want? And I started to think about when my wife and I were dating. And I started to think about this life that we talked about having together. And I started to think about how much we laughed and the fun we had when we first got married and how things had slowly turned away from that. And I realized what I wanted was that marriage that for me, that I’d prayed so long to find. I wanted to find somebody that loved me like I would love her. And I’d found that, but I’d walked away from it through my own fears, through my own weaknesses and struggles and challenges. And so in that moment, I made a commitment that I would do whatever it took to fix my marriage.

Joe Pomeroy [00:06:08]:
And so then I, being the great communicator I am, I said something really powerful to my wife. No, I actually. It was like choking on it, getting out of my mouth and just stumbling. And I said, wait, please wait. Don’t go, please. There’s nothing else I could do except ask that of my wife. And she stood at the door, and it was already open, and she stood there, and I didn’t know what she was going to do. Thankfully, she closed the door, she turned around, and that started just an incredible journey of healing, of introspection, all kinds of stuff.

Joe Pomeroy [00:06:45]:
But, yeah, that was just a dark, dark night. But it’s like they say, night gets darkest before the sun rise, right?

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:06:56]:
Beautiful. I have to tell you two things. First of all, you’re an incredible storyteller. Just listening to this, I nearly, like, envision the tantrum, the accident, your wife. I could see her standing in the doorway with a suitcase. It was a little movie playing in my head right there. So that’s what I really want to say. First of all, incredible how you just described that to me.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:07:24]:
Secondly, I think you’re bringing up a point that many of us struggle with, which is always looking in other people for their flaws and therefore their mistakes. And at the end of the day, you can’t control other people, but you can control yourself and how you are really acting and how you show up every day. And I always tell my children, too, and my clients that the harder you push somebody, the more they are resisting change. So if you feel like you are seeking flaws and you are pointing out flaws, eventually it sounds like your wife was like, you know what? I’ve had it up. I’ve listened to this for such a long time, and now I am just fed up with this. Right? And I love that you were used to word tantrum even, because it’s really something to wear. Seeking for the flaws and others is sometimes just our inadequacy to see that there’s something wrong with us, and it’s maybe even our insecurity and really understanding who we are. So you’re criticizing others where in reality, it’s actually that you are yourself not showing up the way that you would like to, and you’re frustrated about it, because you’re frustrated about it.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:08:43]:
You’re letting it out on others. So I see this all the time happen and. Oh, it’s beautiful. You described this. Let me ask you. That was the second thing I want to talk about. So first of all, beautiful storyline, sort of my head. I want to tie this in, you know, with seeking flaws and others.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:09:00]:
But the one thing that I thought about, you know, the movie Jerry Maguire.

Joe Pomeroy [00:09:05]:
Uhhuh. And how he show me the money.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:09:11]:
One storyline that I frequently, I. I’m. I’m an educator, and frequently when I explain something, I pull in things from movies, and they’re defining storylines from classic movies. Specifically, when he comes back, she’s kind of like this person that’s just hassling for money and going for the job and totally disregards his wife. And eventually, you know, he’s just coming back. He realizes this is. My life is slipping away and I’m losing all this. And so he’s coming back, and his wife is in the middle of a game night with a whole bunch of her girlfriends, and he walks into the room and he says, where’s my wife? Do you remember that, too? And she’s like, oh, my gosh, yes, it’s beautiful.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:09:56]:
Like, all of a sudden realizing actually, we. I didn’t just marry you just like that. This is something we committed on doing. So we have to move forward and we have to maybe make them some things work. And that includes me and working on myself right now.

Joe Pomeroy [00:10:11]:
Yeah, I love that. And to the. To that story, the thing that. Because there is a famous line at the end part, right? He says, where’s my wife? And then he goes on this big spiel about all the things he’s like, And I realized this, and I realized this, and da, da, da, da. And she goes, you had me at hello. You know, and it’s. It didn’t matter what he said or like. What mattered was that he had put in the effort to show up and to show that commitment and whether it’s in our personal lives and our businesses, with our families, whatever it is putting in that Effort showing up, showing that we care through our actions makes a world of difference.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:10:52]:
Beautiful. That was exactly that part in the movie that I loved so much. Yep, yep, yep. So now Jerry Maguire comes back and turns things around. What made you overcome that particularly dark point in your life? Who or what in that moment, when you kicked the door, you were bleeding. Why? About to walk out of the house, what happened in your mind? Because it could have gone the other way, but it didn’t. So what happened there? Was that, like, some kind of magic?

Joe Pomeroy [00:11:29]:
Instantly, I was perfect and everything was better? No, not at all. In that moment, it was deciding what I wanted, not what somebody else wanted for me, not what I thought would be best for me, not what I felt like I needed, not what definitely not what I thought I deserved. I mean, oh, my goodness, if I. Well, at the time, in my arrogance, I probably thought I deserved a lot more than I did. But wasn’t any of those things in that moment? It was, what did I want? What did I actually want? And deciding that and committing to that, that was the catalyst that started the change. And then what moved it from there was leaning into what was uncomfortable, right? And started with, I called up a friend of mine and I admitted this embarrassing thing that I’d done. I mean, it’s been almost. It’s been like, what? It’s been over a decade since that happened, and I still feel these little like, oh, do I tell them that I threw a tantrum, or do I hide that part? No.

Joe Pomeroy [00:12:37]:
Like, it’s like, yeah, it sucks. I did it. It happened. But I. That was the first thing, is I had to reach out. I reached out to a friend, and he pointed me in another direction. And it was this marriage group workshop thing. And I’m like, I hope I don’t see anybody I know in there.

Joe Pomeroy [00:12:51]:
And I did, in fact, see multiple couples that I knew in there. And. And I live in a large metropolitan area. I live in the Phoenix area. And yet there’s still people that I knew in there. And I’m like, what are the chances? And it was still difficult, but because I had made a decision and committed to that decision of what I wanted, I kept having to come back to that. Look, I chose this amazing woman as my wife for a reason. And for whatever reason, she continues to choose me.

Joe Pomeroy [00:13:20]:
And that continual, intentional, committed choosing made all the difference and eventually led me to realize what my actual superpower is that I mentioned earlier. Translating. Because I wasn’t making the progress that I wanted. I felt stuck. I knew business. I Wanted to retreat to business. I wanted to run away from the personal. But you ever wonder why people get frustrated that marriage is so hard? How many of us go to school to earn a degree in economics or law or whatever? How many of us go to school to earn a degree in how to communicate in marriage, how to get along with your spouse, how to compromise in healthy ways? Like, we don’t do that.

Joe Pomeroy [00:14:07]:
And then we wonder why, you know, the lawyer wonders why he understands law, and it’s so easy to go to trial, court and to argue his case, but he can’t communicate with his spouse. And so putting in that same kind of intentional effort and investment makes a world of difference. But I learned that I could take what I already knew. And so to everybody, you know, all your amazing listeners, what do you already know? What’s a principle? You already understand a principle. You already have proven that you have evidence of works in some other area of your life. And what’s one small way you can translate that to your home life, to your family life? Because that gave me hope, right? So often it felt like, oh, there’s so much to go, there’s so long, I’m so far behind. But wow, if I already have a degree and all I have to do is straight across, translate it like, cool, like, maybe, maybe there’s hope here.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:15:08]:
I think that we tend to put things in little boxes, but we don’t really think of our life actually being all interconnected and things like little roots reaching out to each other and growing into each other. Especially as you grow older, you realize it’s all energy and it’s all connected somehow. And maybe the way that I interact with peers in this setting could be very similar to our interactive peers in this setting. I mean, I do that with my children all the time. Where I’m thinking, I just read about it in this book right here, or this is what I would tell my students, or this is how I would interact with my clients, that we don’t even need to put on different hats at all times. Sometimes when you figure it out one way how it works, you could even use that same hat and just wear it in a different setting. I mean, who says that you always need to change your outfits, right? You could just keep that same outfit, move on, right? I think that is sometimes beautiful that it’s maybe just the same hat and it works well. So just keep wearing it.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:16:16]:
And to our listeners here, I know, Joe, you have an amazing resource that you want to share, so tell us a little bit more about it. And why we need to grab that.

Joe Pomeroy [00:16:25]:
Yeah. So the link is forwardwithjoe.competite so in honor of your petite practice method, which is amazing and I know is helping make a difference for all kinds of people. Forwardwithjoe.com petite and when the listeners go there, probably the best way to explain it is as they’ve been listening and kind of processing what we’ve been talking about. Questions have come up. How do I apply this to myself? What’s the first thing that I should start with? And when they go to that website, they’re going to be able to get a resource that will start them on that journey, that will help them to start getting their questions answered. And really what I want to focus on is helping people to discover how can I find those answers on my own so that I’m not always having to go grab that book and read it real quick like. And so that’s really what they’re going to find. There is the catalyst that’s going to start that change for them.

Joe Pomeroy [00:17:23]:
So great opportunity.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:17:25]:
I love the word catalyst. And to my listeners, I’m going to of course put that URL in the show notes as well. And I want to leave everybody with a beautiful quote that I saw yesterday and I think it will beautifully put the ribbon on top of this episode right here. So the word fear has two meanings. It could be forget everything and run. F E A R. Forget everything and run or face everything and rise. It’s your choice.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:18:04]:
It’s your choice. Face everything and rise or forget everything and run. And I love in your instance it sounds like you basically faced it and you rose. So Joe, thanks so much for sharing your story here, how you overcame that moment of fear in your life, that struggle and really discovered your superpower. To the audience. Yeah, thanks so much for having you here. To the audience, check out the show notes, get in touch with Joe. We have his contact information right there.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:18:44]:
And of course tune into his podcast as well, which going to have right there too. Joe, why don’t you check out a little bit or share with us. How can we get in touch with you? What’s the name of your podcast?

Joe Pomeroy [00:18:58]:
Yeah, on all social channels. I am he Pomeroy. I promise it’s not an arrogance thing. It is the just what I could get as the handle. So the Joe Pomeroy on really any social channel. My podcast is Forward with Joe Pomeroy, which actually y’ all can go check out and hear Dr. Christiana on the podcast. So more of our conversation there.

Joe Pomeroy [00:19:25]:
So that’ll be awesome. But yeah, those are some of the best ways. And if they go to that forwardwithjoe.com petite. That’s really the best way to kind of start their journey in becoming a family builder.

Dr. Christiane Schroeter [00:19:36]:
Awesome. Thanks so much audience for tuning in. As always, this is your host, Dr. Christiane. And stay tuned for the next episode. Thank you.