Judy McCutcheon 0:02

When you don’t deal with certain things, you don’t deal with certain fears, when you don’t believe in yourself, when you don’t believe in your abilities. And let me tell you, we are some of the smartest people in the room, but that self belief, if we don’t have it, we never gonna raise our hands. We won’t voice our opinions because we are afraid of being shut down. T minus

Jamila Souffrant 0:30

10 seconds. Welcome to the journey. To launch podcast with your host, Jamila Souffrant as a money expert who walks her talk, she helps brave journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest and build real wealth. Join her on the journey to launch to financial freedom, 54321,

if you want the episode show notes for this episode, go to journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you’re listening to this episode in the show notes, you’ll get the transcribed version of the conversation, the links that we mentioned, and so much more also, whether you are an OG journeyer or brand new to the podcast, I’ve created a free jump Start guide to help you on your financial freedom journey. It includes the top episodes to listen to, stages to go through. Okay, let’s hop into the episode. Versus and so much more you can go to journey to launch.com/jump start to get your guide right now. Okay, let’s hop into the episode. Hey, hey, hey, journeyers, welcome to the journey. To launch Podcast. I’m really excited to be speaking to today’s guest. Her name is Judy McCutcheon. She’s a vibrant and passionate advocate for Caribbean leadership, deeply rooted in her love for the region. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, and she had a short stint in Belize, it looks like and now residing in Grenada, okay, living all across the Caribbean, I love that you really have diverse interactions and a background with citizens from across the region, and so you can appreciate, and she appreciates, the characteristics that make us all unique, and she has dedicated her career and supporting Caribbean development through human resources. She is a human resource expert. She has really forged a path within the space. She has a conference that she’s going to talk about later, a destructive Leadership Conference, and so many things that I can’t wait to get into. So welcome to the podcast.

Judy McCutcheon 2:38

Judy, thank you very much. Thank you. I’m excited to be here. Jamila, thank you so

Jamila Souffrant 2:44

Judy, just I want to kind of go back a little bit, because as I read, you know, kind of in the introduction, it was a summary of, like, where you were born, all the places you lived. I jumped over a lot. And I know you are someone who has lived life. So I want to go back a bit because my audience, who I call journeyers, they are on the path to wanting to achieve financial independence and living their best lives, whatever that looks like for them. And we all have different starting points and different advantages disadvantages that help us or that we need to work through. So I want to kind of go back to your origin story of how you started, and go through the points of what eventually led you to where you are today. So can we kind of go back to your beginnings in Trinidad and Tobago?

Judy McCutcheon 3:27

Yes, certainly we can. So I grew up in the smaller of the two islands, which is Tobago. So I grew up in a little village we had, like about maybe less than 500 people in her village, a single mother, eight out of 10. And just this past weekend, I was talking to my mom, and she was telling me that when she was working, when we were growing up, she worked for $3.45 a month, and so that is what she had to use to raise us. So I didn’t grow up well. I didn’t think that I was poor. What I felt is that we didn’t have material stuff, but I didn’t feel that we were poor. But one of the things that was really hitting for me is it was food. And I’m saying food because I want to tell you a story about that. So food was always an issue. I mean, like all these children, 345, a month, single parent. So there were days when we had no food. There were days when, you know we have we came home from school, eat some mango, went back to school, that kind of thing. And I remember as an as a young adult, I moved to Trinidad, and I started working. And when I started working, I remember I used to. Go into the supermarket, because nobody can afford to do things. I can go into the supermarket and I would go to every single aisle and buy stuff. My card was always overloaded with stuff, and, you know, stuff that I wanted or not, because it was that scarcity and lack feeling from not having so that was one of the things that I did try and, you know, fill that void. Kind of thing my mom couldn’t pay for university, but I eventually put myself through University. I was the first one. I am, the first one in my family to have a university degree. And that’s the next thing, is that what my mom always used to say is education is your way out of poverty. And I really educated myself. And sometimes I think that we go overboard, because I have, I don’t know, about four different things. And I was, I’m signed up to do my PhD, and decided not. I’m not, I’m not, I’m not going to, I’m not going to do that. So from there, putting myself through school in between those times, it was really rough. I have to, I really have to tell you, it was rough. It was, I say that I was on path to moral self destruction because you grew up one way and you are in a particular mindset. You think a particular way about yourself, and so when good things start happening to you, you sabotage it because, not because you intentionally want to sabotage it, but simply because you have that feeling inside that this can’t be real. This is not for me, and so I’ve had a real journey of struggle with myself, with crazy partying, crazy drinking. I mean, just doing a bunch of crazy stuff. But I think it was uh searching, a searching kind of thing, because I went to church, I stopped, I did so many different things, trying to find who I am in everything that was happening to me. So from then, I lived in Trinidad for a while, and then I moved to Belize. I got married so well my first marriage. So let me, let me tell you, I got married twice. So this is my second marriage. By my first marriage, I met this guy, and we were, I think we were on the same self destructive path, and I think we bonded based on about traumas. And so he fed something in me, I fed something in him, and so we had that relationship, and we live together without we will we. We weren’t married at first, and then we got married. You know, pressure everybody you get, you’re living together. So we got married. But the funny thing is, and I want women, but women and men to pay attention to this when your intuition tells you something, listen, because my intuition accepted because I remember saying, I don’t want to get married again. I remember him saying to me, Well, we already sent out the invitation, and so he cannot convince me to go along with it. But would you know when I got to the church I was later than no bride, but when I got to the church, the priest had left,

Jamila Souffrant 9:07

that’s how late you were.

Judy McCutcheon 9:11

No, I wasn’t late. I wasn’t later than any other bride. I wasn’t. I really wasn’t. I may have probably been maybe 20 minutes 30 minutes late, right? And so the priest had gone. And I think when I look back, I’m thinking, like, this was the universe. This was God saying no, but no, I still went ahead, got married, and of course, I’m on my second marriage, so we know how that ended. But all of that is simply because I didn’t see myself, you know, like I truly didn’t see me, I didn’t feel. That all these good things, this good job, making this amount of money, I didn’t think that I was worthy of it, so I did all this stuff that to kind of just throw it away, you know.

Jamila Souffrant 10:14

So it sounds like self a bit of self sabotage,

Judy McCutcheon 10:17

plenty of it, a lot of it.

Jamila Souffrant 10:20

So so much of who we are today as adults. Mostly, you know, the adults are listening to this, like who we are are shaped by so many things in our past. Even, you know, all the decisions that we make, the opportunities we see or don’t see, the self sabotage, the way we handle money. You talked about finally getting money and then, you know, wanting to spend it, because now you have the liberty to spend the money that you didn’t have before. So going a bit overboard. And I know so many people can relate to that mindset and working through that, but recognizing it. So what age were you around this time? Like, when you got married, like married, and what was your career? What were you doing to make money for yourself at that point,

Judy McCutcheon 10:59

when I think I was like 25 when I got married and I was working with a consulting firm. The lady who owned the firm was a US franchise, and I’d met her when, like, when I was like, about 20 and she took me under her wings, and really taught me a lot. So I was, I worked with her as one of her consultants, and I traveled a lot that job. I just, I traveled plenty for that job, and so I got to see new things. And when you travel as a consultant, you obviously made more money. And I was senior, so I was making pretty good money. No kids, nothing. So I was just making my money. I always wore the best clothes. I went to the hairdresser like the hairdresser would comb my hair every morning for me to go to work. That’s how extra it was, you know, but it’s, it’s it’s certainly always finding a way to get rid of the money based on our mindset and based on our belief system, the things that we believe about money will dictate what we do with that money, you know? And so if we grew up in a household where there is always some kind of contention around money, we tend to not want to hold on to money when we talk about money being evil, when we talk about rich people being evil, when we look at and we see rich people had to take advantage of the poor people to get rich. So when we have that particular type of mindset, we tend to really just, we get the money, but we don’t keep the money. We find a way to get rid of the money. And that’s not, that’s, I mean, that’s at every single level, every level the person who make 500,000 a year to the ones who make 30,000 a year, and it’s

Jamila Souffrant 13:23

so important to be self reflective and to sit and to do that work, that inner work, to even just acknowledge if that’s what’s happening for you and why you’re doing the things, I think the biggest inquiry and progress you want to see externally is that inner like, You know, I have a problem with discipline, but it’s not because I can’t do it. It’s because there are these things within me that are guiding or clouding, you know, the glasses I have on when I look at and I view the world and my money caused me to do these things. So you’re taking responsibility, but you are acknowledging perhaps, why you’re doing some of the things you’re doing, or you’re trying to figure that out. It’s such a big step. Out. It’s such a big step. So talk about you now. You’re making a lot of money and you’re so are you living in Trinidad or Belize, at this point,

Judy McCutcheon 14:10

as a consultant, I was living in Trinidad, and I didn’t really start to become self aware. The thing is, is that we we use something external, like buying shoes and clothes. I love shoes, buying shoes and clothes to fill an internal void. So I didn’t become, I really didn’t start to become self aware, and then I divorced and so on. And then I got married again and moved to Belize. And this time, I was still making a lot of money, but this time, you know, I didn’t have to I didn’t have to worry about bills being paid. And so my money was really just my money. I. And so again, it wasn’t I wasn’t thinking along the lines of saving, investing. I wasn’t thinking along those lines. I was just thinking along the lines of spending and getting more and getting more and getting more. But I’ll tell you what, though I have two girls, and my kids kind of change a little bit of things for me, it really, really did, but it wasn’t until I got really sick in 2010 that kind of put a little bit thing, not a little bit, but it put things into perspective for me. And I really started my reflection around that time, I really started thinking about me. Why am I here? What am I doing with myself? Because when it’s time for us to get to that point, we begin to get very restless on the inside, and some people call the feeling stuck. But it’s not stuck, it’s just you’re just restless. Your soul knows that there is just so much more for you, and the bigger you wants to express itself, right? And so I started feeling like that, really not knowing what to do, where to turn. And by that time, we moved to Grenada. And so I was unemployed because we will move to Grenada just as the 2010 just, you know, the height of the financial crisis. And so there was no work here. This, of course, obviously, this is a small island. And so I thought, What am I going to do? So I did another degree, because, like, what else am I going to do? I did another degree, but I still felt restless. And so one day I was on the internet, and I was just reading, and I came upon the secret that book, and I went on to Amazon, and I bought the book, I bought the journal, I bought the CD, I bought the whole thing. And that started my journey of self reflection and awareness. I really had to do some deep, serious work around my belief system, not just around money, but my belief system around myself in general. How did I see me? What did I think about me? What are the things that I’m telling myself about me? It was dark, and I know for sure why a lot of people don’t do this inner work. Because it is not easy work. It is hard work, but at the end of it is beautiful. Let me just jump back a little bit. When I lived in Belize, right? I worked for an insurance company. So first I worked as a financial accountant, and then I started working in insurance and as an insurance advisor, I have seen somebody. I mean, I’ve really seen some stuff. And so I had a friend who took some insurance with me, and then she called and canceled. It said, All right, no problem. And then her husband got sick and died, and he had some insurance, but his insurance and lapsed. But the good thing about that is that he kept paying, and the company kept taking his money. And so when he died, they had said to her, well, the only thing I could do is give you back what he had paid. And I said, No, that’s not fair. The fact that he kept paying meant that he had an expectation, right? And I really fought for it, and she got it. And what I realized that without that safety net, she and her daughter would have been out, you know? And so it, it really changed my mind a lot around insurance, the use of insurance, and why we need insurance, because for us, and I’m talking, I’m talking specifically now about people that look like me, we don’t believe in insurance. You. Talk to somebody who look like me, and they will tell you, insurance is a scam, and this and that and the other, and they always have somebody else’s story to tell you this person who whatever, whatever. But it is an essential path, part, sorry, of our wealth building process. It really is an essential part of that, and working in insurance really made me see that. And so when I moved to Grenada and there was nothing to do, I really started getting more and more into finances. I did a couple finance courses. I became a financial educational instructor. I did a behavioral finance course at Duke University because I really wanted to help, to really help people realize that, yes, you can make money, yes, you can keep spending, yes, you can save but let us look at how we can build true wealth,

Jamila Souffrant 21:09

right? It’s not about just earning money and having it cycle out of your household, but how do you preserve wealth? How do you build wealth? How do you have something so that your future self, and this is that to be so many decades later, but even just next year or two years has like, you know, you’re thinking ahead. You’re being proactive with your finances. Now I just, I want to you talked about having this shift about what you felt about yourself after you got the secret and you started doing some the real work. And I think that’s the second time in this story, or in our conversation so far that you said you started you had to self reflect. The first want time seemed like you got sick, and it forced you to self reflect. And the second time in this story so far is you moving to Grenada and kind of being so restless. And I feel like that feeling of restlessness or being sick in an external event, like there’s these things that we can no longer ignore that happen to us, where most of us can, like, chug along and be uncomfortable for, you know, and just ignore. Push it to the side. It’s almost like my closet upstairs. It’s a hot mess, you know, I’m gonna keep pushing it to this, you know, close the closet. I don’t gotta think about it. I can move on, but at some point it’s going to bother me enough, where it’s going to be get unwieldy and out of control, where I have to do something about it. And I think so for so many people, those events, these events, have to happen first before we make significant or the change we want to see. But what did you begin to change about yourself and think? How did you start to think differently? So that puts you on the path to the next step that you took that maybe put you where you are today. So what was that switch from I thought about this, I did this, versus now, I think like this, and I do this

Judy McCutcheon 22:49

right? So it started with the secret. But what really, really helped me through is within the secret, and if people really read it. She gave other resources, and one of the resources in that book is a book called the masterpiece system. And the Master Key System was written in like 1939 or 1930 or something like that. And it’s 24 lessons that really talks about your thought process, you know, and how your thoughts create your reality. And that really resonated with me, because, you know, if I were to look at my life at that time, I would think the life I had then and the thoughts that I had, they were in perfect sync with each other, and so that really resonated with me. And so I did those lessons, and it’s amazing. One of the lessons is I had to sit down and just watch the thoughts, not interact with my thoughts, not do anything with it. I think like, how what am I supposed to do? Like, how do I not interact? First of all, I was thinking like, What do you mean interact with my thoughts? I don’t know. I don’t interact with my thoughts, but we do. And it was amazing sitting there for 30 minutes and noticing the things that I was thinking, the things that I thought about myself, you know, I couldn’t do things like I couldn’t stand in the mirror and say, I love you, because I really didn’t, you know, I found every single fault with myself, every every single thing was wrong with me, everything I was fat, I was short, I was ugly, I was I mean, every single thing was wrong with me, and that is because deep. Within, I really had zero love for myself. But one of the things in all my reflection, one of the things I remember, is that when I was growing up, right, I’ve never heard anybody say to me, I love you. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, and so that was just like a foreign concept. You know, you get married, you think you love the person, but you really don’t. Because, do you really know what love is like? Do you truly, truly know? Because if you don’t love you, and this, I have come to this conclusion, I don’t think there’s anything right now that could change my mind if I don’t love me, I do not have the capacity to love you. I have to love me first. I have to see me first before I could truly see you. And so that book really helped me. And then I had a coach, and that coach took me up to a point, and then I did next degree. But this time I did a degree in psychology, because by the time I’m realizing, okay, I really do need to get into this whole people thing to understand, because now I’m getting excited about people and why people think and behave the way they do, and is there something that I can do to help? And so I did a degree in psychology, and then I did some trauma, informed coaching. I became certified, and then so the more I found out about myself, the more I started feeling really, really good about myself, the more I started loving who I am. There’s nobody in this world right now who could tell me I’m not the prettiest person in the world. Nobody. I truly love me with everything that I have, I love me. But getting here being able to stand in front of the mirror and say, I love you so much. Has not been easy, simply because we I did not have an example when I was growing up, and then I had serious daddy issues. My daddy issues were a lot because I know who my father was. You know, he would come to the house. We would go to his house, but that was it. He was, he was so unavailable, like now, I know what it is right now. I know that he was emotionally unavailable. And then as I talked more and more with one of my sisters, you know, we were saying, I was saying to her that I feel so sorry for my dad, because I could just imagine things that he didn’t have and he wasn’t able to reflect and become aware so that he could become better. And so I didn’t speak to my father for like, about 15 years. I was one angry chick. Oh, I was, I was, I was a terrible I was angry, really angry. And so I didn’t speak to my father for, like, about 15 years. And then a friend said to me one day, he said, Judy, you know, like, how long are you going to carry this on for how long are you going to just do this thing? I mean, like, don’t you want to make some peace at some point with your dad? And I thought, Well, maybe not. Maybe I can. I didn’t even have his number. I had to call my sister. So I called my sister, and I said, Can I have daddy’s number? And I called him, and we chatted some conversations you still don’t have, and now I was in the particular place where I know that he is not in that particular place to have certain conversations, so I wasn’t going to have those conversations, because it will end nowhere. So we chatted, and then, you know, when I would go back home, I would go and look for him, you know, go and look for then he got sick, and then I would keep going to look for him, until he passed, for me, I’ve had to do a lot of forgiving plenty. I had to forgive myself. I had to forgive all the people that I thought real or imagine who you know, is. Some way or the other would have hurt me. And one of the things, and I’m going to bring this back to Money and abundance, right, one of the things that really helps us in whether we looking to move up in our whatever we’re looking to do in life. One of the things that I this is this is a belief that I have, is that we have to learn to let go. We cannot hold on to all the hood, all the pain, all the hatred and expect that abundance will find us. It will not, it won’t

Jamila Souffrant 30:50

I. Jamila here, host of this podcast and author of the book, your journey to financial freedom, a step by step guide to achieving wealth and happiness. Just a few years ago, I was in a job I didn’t like, with a long commute, feeling stuck. I knew there had to be a different, better way. Then I found the pathway to financial freedom and financial independence. Today, I have more money options and freedom than I ever thought was possible. And in my book, Your journey to financial freedom, I’ll show you how you can achieve that too. You’ll learn how to spend and save responsibly, all while enjoying that spicy Margarita and exercise of guacamole, determine where you are on the journey and evaluate your spending and saving goals accordingly, quit your job, retire early or reach financial independence. My Book your journey to financial freedom, a step by step guide to achieving wealth and happiness is out now and available on Amazon bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble and more. You can leave and listen to the audiobook, narrated by me. Go to your journey to financial freedom.com. To get a free bonus when you order the book and see all the places to buy it once again, go to your journey to financial freedom.com. I’m sitting here and loving this, like, this vulnerability, this talk, because it’s, there’s so much of what you’re saying that I can relate to also, and see and sometimes it’s, you know, when I talk, tell people about like, journey to launch and the platform, and why I started this, and why what I want for other people is what they want for themselves too, is just to reach this idea of having an abundant life, not only in like whatever that money looks like for you, but in your time and your energy, like having options and being happy with wherever you are and making things work for yourself, right? And then realizing that there’s so much of that starts like from within, and starts from a place of our relationships with whether it’s our fathers, the lack of relationships, our siblings, our mother, just there’s so many relationships and feelings. And like you talked about, never heard that someone loved you. And so it was hard to really understand what love was, and how, on the surface someone could be like, well, you know, what does that have to do with career and money and, like, living like a good life? And I think for some people, they can kind of power through and just put a band aid on something and ignore it and kind of still make it. You know, from the outside it might look like, look like they’re doing well, just like for you, like you were still making money, still doing well. There are people who I know, who still managed to make it work, but when you can really reach in and what I call like tethers, so like letting go of maybe the feelings and the hurt and pain, or accepting certain things about yourself and coming to terms with all the things you need to come to terms with. You feel lighter and you it’s a difference in how you show up in the world. And it’s not always, you know, something that can be measured, but it’s like just something in you. And then, I’m not saying that it happens all the time or right away, but things begin to happen more for you. You begin to show up differently. Your life begins to change you. You know you’re you’re able to have the confidence to raise your hand in that meeting, or to go ask for the raise, or, you know you have an interest in something like maybe getting a certificate outside of your job to say, okay, maybe I can start this business on the side, but you have the confidence to try and so there’s all these intangible things that we need to do to make the tangible happen. And so I love, like, this arc of your story, talking about you realizing this, because I know, and you know, I do want you to share what happens next for you, and eventually you now creating the company and brand that you have, because none of that would have been possible without going through all of this and to you know the personal things you gotta do in your life to attain the success, whatever career wise or financially that you have now,

Judy McCutcheon 34:49

you know success, however it looks for you, is an inside job. It really is, because it has to you. It must come from the in. Side for you to realize it on the outside, right? And so when you look at, when you look at, I know some of the richest people, they just simply believe in themselves, right? And I’m not talking about the ones who were born into that. I’m talking about the ones who would have had to build it right, they would have had to have done some inner work, because it’s a scary thing. It’s a scary thing. And so healing is my I want to say it has been my nirvana. It really has helped me to push past because when you don’t deal with certain things, you don’t deal with certain fears, when you don’t believe in yourself, when you don’t believe in your abilities. And let me tell you, we are some of the smartest people in the room, but that self belief. If we don’t have it, we never gonna raise our hands, we won’t voice our opinions, because we are afraid of being shut down. So it’s really about to get from point A to D. There’s B and C in between, and that B and C really is where you spend a lot of your time, healing, becoming self aware. And I say to people, become curious about who you are. Just become curious about you. So one of the things that I do a lot is if I’m in traffic and somebody cut me off or do something and I get angry, I ask myself, why are you angry? Because that person really, truly did not do you anything. But so what is the underlying reason for that anger or that anxiousness, or whatever feeling that you’re feeling, become curious, and then you would realize that it’s some of the things that you need to unravel, right? So we have to start a dismantle and unravel the some of our belief systems, the the beliefs that we grew up with that many of us have not questioned. And I mean, like, if you grew up in the Caribbean, you grew up in church period analytics, that’s it, that’s That’s it, one church or the other, you grew up in church. And we have these beliefs, and we never question them. And so we live our lives, I believe limited in some ways, because we don’t question is this really right? Our money believes a form by the time we age 10, right? So if we keep the that 10 year old money beliefs, and we’re now 40, you see what’s happening. So we need to start to question those beliefs. Why? Why is this? Why do I think like this? Why do I do things like this is is there a different way to do it? Is insurance really that bad? What can I do to create wealth in my family? What can I do so that my children can have a better life than I did? How can I help to create a legacy all the way down for my lineage. How can I do that? We don’t we don’t question a lot of us. We wake up, we go to work, we come back home, we do the same thing every day, every day, every day, every day. It becomes routine and monotonous. We don’t really use our real thought capacity to affect our reality. And if a lot of us were to really think about the type of life that we want to create and really become curious and do some inner work, some some of us may have to go to therapy, some of us may have to have a coach. A lot of it, I started doing myself, because at that time I was unemployed, I started doing a lot of reading. I read a lot of books. I implemented some of the things in the book, and realized, okay, this works. What can I What more can I do? And so, because what I implemented worked, I kept going further and further and further. You know, you get to the point where you feel okay. What now? What is my purpose? How can I then? Know, impact humanity. How can I do my part to help people? And so I was working. I was working. I was actually a general, the general manager for a insurance company. And I realized that our values were a little bit different, my values and theirs. And that’s our next thing, right? I have boundaries. I have I have serious boundaries and values. I am guided by my values. And so that’s the next thing that we need to understand, that you need to have boundaries. A lot of us, oh, boundaries are so porous that they’re non existent. I have very serious boundaries. My values are not compromising at all. And so when I realized that we were off, I came home on Friday night, eight o’clock and sending my resignation. I’m like, I had no job. I had no more I didn’t have anything lined up. I just knew that this wouldn’t work for me anymore. And then I thought, when I looked at the amount of growth I helped that company to achieve, I thought, I’m not going to work for anybody else. I’m not going to look for another job. I’m going to try to do my own thing. And so I formed the consulting company. Had zero clients, zero but every day, I would get up and do work. What

Jamila Souffrant 41:44

was a consulting company doing? What was the purpose of it? It’s

Judy McCutcheon 41:48

a it’s a management consulting we do, which I still have it. So we do a lot of strategic plans, a lot of training and development for organizations. So I would get up every day and I would write all these programs. I create my own courses. I had no client zero, but I got up every day, and I sat at my computer and I worked until I got my first client right, and I kept going. And then I thought, what else can I do? Because I realized that learning and development in our region, it was just everybody doing the same thing over and over, and I’m thinking like, No, we could do we could do better. Because I know that we’re brilliant people. I know that we have brilliant people doing amazing things. There’s a gap. How can I bridge that gap? And so I attended a conference one me and I thought, This is ridiculous. This is how they see us. This is how they see this is ridiculous. And so the idea for the disruptive Leadership Conference was born, and that was 2019, and within a couple of months, I put that conference together reach out to a couple people to facilitate. Like I say, we really have amazing we have amazing people. So the model I use is I use CEOs, Managing Director, CEOs, as the facilitators, people who are doing amazing in their space, and who we can learn from. So I wasn’t looking for theorist, because if you’re not a practitioner, you could only give me theory, right? I want to know that you failed and what you’ve done to make it again. And so that’s the model that we use. And I was, you know, and the first one was right here in Grenada. It was well attended. I had people from Belize, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica attending, as well as, of course, people from Grenada. And then when COVID hit. We went online. Last year. We went to Trinidad and, well, this year we decided, you know, to get people from across the region to come. Miami is an easier hub, a much easier hub for us. And I’m going

Jamila Souffrant 44:38

to have you just like, talk a bit about who was your conference, and if anyone’s listening that wants to attend, but I want to bring up some points that kind of connect here. So you said you started to work without any clients, and you so that’s one, but you worked. But that work, you would not have done that work or kept going until you got a client if there was, if not for that belief in yourself. So that’s where. Now it all comes back to the confidence where that’s what that’s what’s so important, because it’s and in my opinion, you can believe in yourself and still have doubts. You can believe in you can have self doubt moments and lack confidence in certain areas, but still, no matter what, know that stuff, it’s going to work out for you. But that’s why this inner work is so important, because without that, you wouldn’t have sat at the computer to do any work, because, you know, you would have wanted to see the proof and the clients first, before just believing in yourself, the thing you could control, and doing the work, and then getting clients. And the same thing with the conference, having the just confidence to go to somewhere else and say, You know what, that they’re not doing it the way. I think it can be done. I think this can be done better, and I think I can do it like that. That to me, that boldness, that reclaiming of the power, is like something anyone can do. It’s what I did when I was listening to podcasts, reading blogs about people on their financial journey, and I said to myself, I can do what they’re doing. I could do my own version. That’s better, because it’s coming from me and my voice, than expand it to what it is now. And so I’m just encouraging you people listening, journeyers, that there’s an idea or thought like believe that you can also do it too, that belief, though, is the most important, because without that, you won’t start. I want to talk though. I want you to be able to explain a little bit about the conference itself, like who should attend and when it’s coming up, and where people can find more about it. The

Judy McCutcheon 46:28

conference is going to be in Miami, and we’re going to make Miami’s home. Now, that’s some next thing. I don’t know anybody in Miami. I don’t know it’s only Miami, but I just know that I want people from across the region. I want Caribbean, people who live in the diaspora to experience this. And so I just say, Okay, let’s do Miami. And so it’s in March of 2025 it’s March 12 to 14th, and it’s going to be at the Sheraton Miami Airport Hotel and Executive Meeting Center. Our website is disruptive Leadership Conference, com, and all the information is on that website. You know, we have corporate rates. We even have a bestie rate so you and your best friend could come. We even have payment plans because we’re trying to make it as accommodating as you know, for as many people to come as possible.

Jamila Souffrant 47:30

And these are people who want to attend, who want to become leaders and learn how to navigate the corporate world.

Judy McCutcheon 47:37

Yes, yes, definitely. So it is for current as well as aspiring leaders, because leadership is dynamic. It’s very dynamic. And so it changes every day. There’s something new happening from the leadership space. And if we were to look like this next year’s, next year’s conference, the theme is the future of leadership opportunities, risk, rewards. What are the opportunities that will that will happen in the future? What are the risks that we can look at and what are the rewards that we can hope to reap from doing leadership differently? You know, we have to, we have to think outside of what we know traditionally to make things work. Because for one thing is that we have the generation now is different. They’re different. They’re very different. And so they’re not going to walk into your door and walk out 30 years later. That’s not going to happen. They’re not, they’re not looking for that, especially when

Jamila Souffrant 48:54

they’re listening to this podcast. They’re like, Okay, I’ll try to I want more choices and options. Yes.

Judy McCutcheon 48:59

And so as leaders, we have to learn to meet them where they’re at. We have to learn to adapt. And so this conference is really about helping you to be future forward. So when things come, you’re not taken by surprise. You don’t know what to do. You don’t know so you know if you’re aspiring leader, if you’re a current leader, if you in a position and you want to look for a promotion, you want to try and negotiate a raise, this is the conference to come to, because we talk about all kinds of stuff and the networking, the networking is amazing. Since this conference started, I can tell you, facilitators have gotten loads and loads of jobs. People who attend have been offered positions from different people that they have met. So it really is. Something tangible. I want to create something where you don’t just come to a conference, collect a bunch of business cards, and then you throw them away, and then you come back the next day and you collect some more. That’s not what I’m after. What I’m after is true, real connections and tangible, tangible things for people to go with. So you could meet this one and they could you could get a job. Facilitators. Could get work from different companies. And this year, we’re creating a marketplace so we’d have people small businesses can come and people in the conference goodbye from them and different things. And it really is about creating a space where we can all grow. That is part of the legacy I want to leave right, really helping us to grow, develop from every, every, every possible angle that we can grow and develop from. Oh,

Jamila Souffrant 51:09

it sounds like an amazing opportunity. So we will link all of that in the show notes the conference site. Is there anywhere else you want to direct people to if they want to learn more about you and your work? Before we go?

Judy McCutcheon 51:20

Um, the website, the company’s website is Go Blue consulting.com, and so there you have loads of stuff. I have a This isn’t something that I talk about, because it tell it to sometimes you have to work in silence. But I have a book that’s due out in in 2025 the book has been written by Forbes. And let me tell you, I just really want to see here that opportunities will come that will seem too big and you won’t take it, because in 2021 Forbes reached out to me. And this is after I have been doing plenty work, right? Plenty, plenty inner work. Forbes reach out to me in 2021 and wanted to do a book, and I met with them, and then I said no, because, like Forbes, me no. And then last year they reached out again, but this time, I was in a totally different space, and I was ready so become away and look for those opportunities. And when they come, don’t sell them on the way, because I think opportunities they come and then they come back again, and they will come back again, but if you keep sending them away, they will just eventually go away. You know, it’s like saying, I don’t love money, but I want money. Oh my gosh, yes. You treat money like an enemy, but you expect it to come and stay, you know,

Jamila Souffrant 53:05

yes, oh my gosh. Judy, this was amazing. Congrats on the book. I can’t wait to see that next year also, but I will link all the websites in the show notes for everyone to go check out. But thank you so much again for coming on the show. Thank

Judy McCutcheon 53:16

you so much for having me. I truly enjoy this conversation, because, you know, every time people want to talk about money, but I love talking about money, but from not just dollars and cents, but really from the part of it that that truly affects our money earning ability.

Jamila Souffrant 53:33

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