Surviving the Side Hustle

E103 - From Cancer Survivor to Seven-Figure Success: Elizabeth Gould's Journey to Mental Mastery

• Coach Rob • Season 1 • Episode 103

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Ever wondered why positive thinking alone doesn't transform your business? Elizabeth Gould, transformational expert for entrepreneurs and best-selling author, reveals the missing piece of the success puzzle - your feelings.

Starting with her own remarkable journey from aspiring mystery novelist to cancer survivor to seven-figure business owner, Elizabeth shares how life's toughest challenges became her greatest teachers. "Whatever you choose to focus on will cure you or kill you," she explains, drawing from her experience overcoming aggressive breast cancer and rebuilding her life from scratch.

What makes this conversation particularly valuable is Elizabeth's neuroscience-backed approach to entrepreneurial mindset. She explains why 70% of our brain is devoted to fear and doubt, how stress physically shuts down our creativity, and why imagination might be our "most neglected superpower." You'll discover why elite athletes like Tom Brady don't think their way to success - they feel like champions first, then take the actions to match.

The most practical takeaway comes when Elizabeth reveals why the strategies that got you to six figures will actually prevent you from reaching seven figures. "So many entrepreneurs think if I can just work that extra hour, if I can just get a little bit more done, I'm going to have that breakthrough. And it doesn't work like that," she explains before offering a completely different approach to scaling.

Whether you're stuck at a business plateau or just beginning your entrepreneurial journey, this episode provides both the mindset shifts and practical techniques to transform exhaustion into empowerment. As Elizabeth puts it simply in her closing advice: "Back yourself. Anything is possible."

Speaker 1:

What's going on, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Surviving the Side Hustle. I'm super excited because I've got Elizabeth Gould on today and she is the transformational expert for entrepreneurs. She guides them from exhaustion to empowerment. She's also a best-selling author, certified master, neuroplastician, renowned speaker, corporate advisor and high performance coach. Elizabeth has dedicated her career to unlocking the full potential of the entrepreneurial mind. Elizabeth, thank you so much. I'm excited to have you on today.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I've been looking forward to this, rob, it's great to be here.

Speaker 1:

Me as well. I'm glad we were finally able to kind of get it on our calendars and we're here to kind of dive in and learn a little bit about you, a little bit more. So why don't we just take it from wherever you want to go? Let's hear a little bit about your story.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's a great place to start. I mean, I like to start with talking about really what I always wanted to do. That didn't work out, but did work out in the end, because I think that almost summarizes every entrepreneurial journey. So throughout my childhood and my early corporate life, I really wanted to be the next Agatha Christie and Rob in my spare time, even when I was a lawyer. If I'd finished work a little early, I'd stay back and write something that I was working on. I had bodies in the library, I had bodies on cruise ships, I had bodies everywhere. And I wrote all these manuscripts for a number of years and I sent them off to publishing houses and they always came back with a note. But I remained undaunted. I just kept writing, and throughout I was a lawyer, then I had a corporate career and then I became a serial entrepreneur.

Speaker 2:

And then the world came crashing down when I got diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, which pretty much came on the heels of being the victim of a home invasion and getting very badly injured.

Speaker 2:

So it was not going well and I had to walk away from a career in a seven-figure business I'd built up and really start over.

Speaker 2:

But what that gave me that journey of failure, if you like, or trying it before it actually worked, was I was in a bookshop because that was always my go-to place and I noticed that no one had ever written a book about how cancer survivors think. There were lots of books about raw carrots and meditation or single journey stories, but I thought, what if I could unlock the mind of cancer survivors? I knew what it pulled me through, but what about other people? So I wrote a book called the Secrets of Cancer Survivors and I had that lovely experience of being an overnight success because it was published in eight countries and did very, very well and that really started me on. I abandoned all my bodies in the library I that window was closed, not necessarily a door and then I devoted myself to really my career, took on a new path where I started another seven-figure business, but I started writing books about how people think and how you can think and feel to overcome any challenge that you have.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was looking through a little bit on you and I had found that you seem to focus more on emotions instead of positive thinking. Can you explain a little bit on you? And I had found that you seem to focus more on emotions instead of positive thinking. Can you explain a little bit more about that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Another one of my favorite questions I really started on the thinking path. You know, the secrets of cancer survivors was very much. I asked them how they thought, but their feelings kept popping out as being as important, if not more important, how they felt about themselves. And then I wrote a book called Happy Children and their Secrets, and they were very much I'll never forget. I interviewed eight children.

Speaker 2:

The premise of the book was my children were obviously quite traumatized through what had happened to their mother and I once again went to the bookstore. But then I noticed all the parenting books were written by psychologists and I thought, okay, who takes a happy child to a psychologist? You take a child who's not coping. So what about the kids that do cope and how do they think? So I wrote that book and what these children told me one in particular I'll never forget. It gave me goosebumps. She looked at me and said well, I choose how I feel, and I thought, oh, that's so interesting.

Speaker 2:

And then I dived a little further, because there was a 10-year gap, while I was building this other business with my husband, before my second and my third book, Feeling Forwards, and it seemed to me that feelings had almost become the poor cousin, the neglected child, compared with positive thinking.

Speaker 2:

I can say from experience, through coaching thousands of people as a neuroplastician, positive thinking doesn't work and there's a misconception that our thoughts drive our feelings, whereas in reality in our brain you have a thought, a feeling and a choice at exactly the same time. So if we can choose how we feel about something, it changes our thoughts and, as I say, you can't actually think hope and confidence, and you would know with your sports background what I love. I do a lot of work about how elite athletes approach their success and how much entrepreneurs can learn from that. A successful athlete and Tom Brady is a great example he was picked number 199. He believed, he felt as though he was a champion, way before anyone else saw it. He didn't think his way to that success, he felt it and then he took all the actions to make that possible.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so I see what you're saying there and so how do you help? Or how do people move from that? What if they're not in that or they don't have that championship mindset or they don't quite think that, but they want to be there? Can they still achieve that? Or are you just kind of doomed from the start if you don't have that mindset?

Speaker 2:

No one is doomed, rob. No one on my watch is doomed. Anyway, it's really unwinding a couple of complete fallacies that we have. First is that I know I get too technical because it's not very interesting, but 70% of our brain is devoted to fear and doubt. And it makes sense, right? We don't want to walk in front of a train or jump off a cliff or all those things. There's always our brain saying, oh, I'm not sure that's a good idea, particularly when we try something new. The brain doesn't like new. If you spent yesterday sitting on the couch eating Twinkies or Cheetos or whatever it is and binging on Netflix, the brain thinks that was a really good day. Nothing bad happened.

Speaker 2:

So once you understand that it's perfectly normal and I teach my coaching clients it's okay that are stressed in any way. The part of your brain that is devoted to hope and confidence and imagination and starting that trillion dollar business, that actually part of the brain closes down Because if you have too much cortisol in your brain, the brain kind of compartmentalizes because cortisol actually damages brain tissue, so it actually shuts what's called the executive function down. So the first thing we do is have this explanation, but also understand the triggers. So how and when something is going to happen is your enemy. We can never figure out how and when exactly something's going to happen. So once you learn to focus on what you want and why you want it and then let everything else go because everything other than that is super stressful then you can really live in that imagination. Part of your brain. And our imagination is our most neglected superpower. It is absolutely outstanding and you would have seen that in your work as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I agree with you. I feel like the imagination is like creativity and imagination is so important and I think we as like a society get robbed of that nowadays, especially with like so much social media and things, and we don't get to sit with that boredom, because I feel like that boredom is where the creativity kind of kicks on and it's hard because we have so much like things at our disposal so quickly and it's crazy to just think that like yeah, you can like a lot of positivity can come from just being a little bit more creative and open minded and trying new things and I see that a lot with my clients too and introducing small amounts of challenge and discomfort, because then they're kind of adapting their selves and their bodies with a little bit of challenge that then they can start to build up from there to getting more and more discomfort and using that as a segue into new things.

Speaker 2:

Love that Getting uncomfortable is so important. I mean, I've had clients. The other thing with imagination, the other side, the darker side of imagination, is making us negative assumptions. So I had one client who's in a very technical role. He's in a financial services business and he has to write constant reports which have to be compliant, so there's all sorts of very lengthy documents. We broke it down and he was struggling at work because he would imagine how hard something was and how long it would take him. And when we actually understood that, when he started his day, he was imagining himself into a stressful state and he was imagining how long it was going to take him. We broke that down and did a few exercises and it's actually taking him 30% less time to complete these reports because he imagines that it's going to be quite easy, that he's got this, that he's a great advisor, he writes his reports all the time.

Speaker 2:

I find it fascinating, even on my own experiment, but even with myself, if I think about an event or think about something and I make these assumptions oh look, the traffic's going to be busy or this is that. I think, oh okay, you just entered the dark side of imagination. How about? And I'm not saying don't allow enough time to get somewhere, but how about imagining actually it's going to go really well. Traffic, might you know? I'm not sure what the traffic will be. I'll see what the traffic's like when I get there. We imagine ourselves into so many stressful difficult times without even realizing it.

Speaker 1:

So I have a question for you here. I feel like when you can mix both the emotion and the positive thinking though I feel like that would be like a superpower, because I catch myself sometimes, like, for example, this past weekend I was traveling and I had a 6 am flight coming home from Texas. That flight got delayed. It got delayed a second time and then eventually I was going to miss my connection flight. So then they just put me on a whole, totally different flight.

Speaker 1:

I had to wait in the airport for like eight hours and that kind of stinks, but I looked at it as awesome. Like I now have this opportunity where I have eight hours of undistracted time where I can actually work on the things that I needed to work on. And I was sharing that story with a lot of people and they said the same thing as you. They're like ooh, eight hours in the airport. And I was like, well, it was great for me, I got what I wanted to get done, and I feel like that is kind of like a little cheat code for myself.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, and I love that when that happens. Yes, you have the initial, you have the initial ooh, but have the initial. You have the initial ooh, but then it's like, okay, this is, this is extra time. I love I do a lot of work in the states. I haven't been um so traveling so far this year, but of course I'm a day ahead of you, so on, when I fly to the states, I get an extra day and it's like a magical thing. So I I use that day for something like to plan a new book or to do something totally wild I would never normally do, because I think, well, whatever, I can use this day for it's extra time, it's like a magical time warp and I can get something done.

Speaker 2:

I think also, what I love about your example about the plane is having that acceptance. Isn't it Because you are able to move out of your stress brain really really quickly into okay or, my favorite phrase, where's the opportunity? All right, I'm stuck in the airport for eight hours, where's the opportunity? And then, if you play with your imagination, you think, well, just like the extra day I have when I fly to the States, what can I do? That's actually magical that I could look back on in one, two, five years time thinking you know, if I hadn't had that extra eight hours in the airport, I wouldn't have done this.

Speaker 1:

And that's when you could really use your imagination to have fun with that. I really love that Asking the question like where's the opportunity? That's so powerful and I feel like we oftentimes just kind of get wrapped up in that negative or reactionary kind of like oh, this happened, so then everything goes crazy. So I love that idea of asking where's the opportunity. And I want to kind of ask you because I had noticed that your most recent book, feeling Forward, has been endorsed by Tony Robbins. So can you tell me a little bit about that and how did you evolve this connection with Tony Robbins and share a bit about the book?

Speaker 2:

Yes, we'll talk about amazing opportunities. So, always been a Tony Robbins fan and I used to in the olden days Rob, you'll wait, I don't think you were born when this happened, but I'll never forget I bought his cassette tapes and this huge box came to the office because the partner I had at the time was not a believer in any form of development. This huge box arrived it was something like 30 cassette tapes and one of my colleagues looked at me and said that just looks like hard work. But I was so excited so as my initial letter to Tony, I wrote to him I had to drive his partner to work. We shared a car, but between dropping him off and my office there was eight minutes, so I got eight minutes of Tony Robbins every morning. It took me a long time to get through those tapes and every now and again if you listen to his stuff, he'll go stop the tape because he wants you to write something down and I'd be driving going. I can't. I can't, tony, I can't stop the tape. I'll get to it later.

Speaker 2:

So soon after I finished Secrets of Cancer Survivors, my stepson was we paid my current husband. Yes, it always sounds weird to say that, but we paid for him to go to a Tony Robbins event and I actually wrote a letter to Tony thinking you know the chances of this getting through is so low. But I wrote a letter to him and I described this Stop the Tape experience and said you know, my stepson's coming. We're so excited. And he actually wrote back. I still have the letter. This is in the days of snail mail. He actually wrote back to me and said look, I can't and I've shared some of the challenges I'd been through and how I'd used his work to help me overcome that. And he wrote this beautiful letter and said look, I'm so grateful, said some lovely things, and then he actually his EA reached out to me I believe my email address, reached out to me and said look, tony wants you to shoot a video for him, and this was in 2008. So the global financial crisis was obviously a really big deal in the States. We were slightly protected from it here.

Speaker 2:

So I recorded a video for a website he had I think it was called the Power of Crisis, and then I didn't hear from. Well, I didn't hear from him. He didn't hear from me for many, many years and then, when I was writing, starting to evolve the concept of Feeling Forwards. I saw he was in Sydney for an event, so I'd ended up with his private email one of his private emails because I'd done the video. So I just emailed up with his private email one of his private emails because I'd done the video. So I just emailed him and said hey, I'm in this situation, I'm writing another book.

Speaker 2:

And he actually reached out to me and said can I have a coffee with you in Sydney? I didn't know at that stage that he doesn't drink coffee, but he said come to the event, I'll send you an invitation and we'll catch up for 10 minutes. So, being Tony, he sent me a top level ticket. So when I did the firework I don't know if you've done a Tony event, but when I did the firework he actually took me over the firework himself and I caught up with him for 10 minutes.

Speaker 2:

It was, I think by that time it was 3.45 AM in the morning, because he really likes to party hard at his events with all his work. And I had a chat to him and he said have you been to any of my other events? And I said no. He said right, well, you're coming to all of them. So I had this glorious 18-month experience where I went to all his events and I didn't meet him again, I just had that one quick catch up. And then I reached out when I was finishing, feeling Forwards, and said look, I've actually got a whole chapter devoted to you in this book, explaining how I use your techniques and what it's meant. And he said yep, I'll endorse it for you, beautiful, beautiful human being Wow, that is awesome, Very cool opportunity and experience you have.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for sharing with that. That's really cool and I imagine you using a lot of the stories and experiences in the book Feeling Forward. Can you share a little bit more about what else is in the book itself? Obviously, we have the Tony Robbins in there and there's a chapter about him, but what else can other readers or listeners here expect in that book?

Speaker 2:

The really amazing thing was that in the book I talk a lot about how you can harness the power of your imagination, but I also talk a lot about quantum physics, because there's an element in quantum physics don't make it really simple, but what you choose to observe actually travels backwards and forwards in time and space. And you know, I wrote the book and Tony endorsed it and that was all fantastic. And I was looking for his original letter because I wanted to refer to it in something. And in his original letter that he wrote to me, I think in 2008,. So Failing Forwards came out in 2020. In the original letter, tony had written to me lots of lovely things, but at the end of it he said and I know, through your work or whatever, that you'll be able to take a quantum leap forwards. Now I had no knowledge of quantum when Tony wrote that letter to me. It was not on my radar. I'm not a scientist by background and I didn't even remember he used those words until I went back to it after the book was written. So it's an incredible example of, at any time on a quantum plane, that any possibility exists. The possibility exists for you to have a normal success. The possibility exists for you to be thoroughly miserable and everything in between. And there's a part of our brain and I'm working on this in my doctorate at the moment but there's a part of our brain called the reticular activating system, but let's just call it a RAS and what your RAS does, the best example is, let's say you decide your next car is a red Mustang. You decide wrong, you get all excited about it and then you go out and in that first week you decide you want a red Mustang. You see red Mustang cars everywhere. They're all over the road. You never noticed them before. What you've done is to turn on the part of your brain that screens out 15 million pieces of information you absorb every second and distills it down to what it thinks you want to see. So what Feeling Forwards does really is help you in a very systematic way to turn on that part of your brain to make sure that you really do absorb and focus on what you want to happen rather than what you don't.

Speaker 2:

And I'm sure you've met people like this, rob, not even necessarily in your work, but you meet people who are thoroughly miserable about everything and that's all they notice. I remember once one house I lived at. There was a grocer's, a food store, quite close on my way home, and I would drop in and pick up a couple of apples or vegetables for dinner or whatever. And whatever I said I'd say, oh, it's been such a lovely day today. Oh, yes, but it's too hot for this. Or oh, have you been busy today? Oh, I've been off my feet. It's been terrible. It actually stopped going to the store because I got this dose of despair every time I walked in. But that was this particular woman. That's what she turned her on to to notice everything that was absolutely not working for her. And one of the gifts that surviving cancer gives you is really understanding that whatever you choose to focus on will cure you or it will kill you. And you get very, very clear on controlling what you put inside your head, and feeling forwards really helps you with that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, I'm a very strong believer in that, because I think even just everything you're saying and things around you down to, like the types of music you're listening to and the other types of content that you're consuming, like really quick. My dad had gotten sick with pancreatic cancer and unfortunately he had passed away back in 2017.

Speaker 2:

Oh sorry.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for that. But as we were kind of going through some of his belongings, his girlfriend was like, oh, you should take this aloe plant. Your dad has had it forever. And I was like, yeah, I think he's had it since I've been born and it was this huge plant and it was really awesome.

Speaker 1:

And I had taken it back to Connecticut and my girlfriend at the time and I were not on the best terms and always constantly bickering and disagreeing about different things, and she was saying how, oh, we'll take care of it, we'll keep it alive, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1:

It just started dying and I couldn't figure out why or how or anything, and it pretty much went down to just one leaf petal left, basically, and her and I had actually broken up and I took that one little like arm of the plant left and I put it in a small little shot glass with some water and it actually sprouted some little roots and then I actually put it into another pot that had a flower in it and it started to grow a little bit more and eventually it grew bigger and I had to put it into its own pot and it just started continuing to grow, grow, grow, grow.

Speaker 1:

And I was like, wow, this is a perfect example of like, just the environment and everything and how, like, what was going on in our house just was killing even just this little aloe plant. And once things had kind of changed, it started to flourish and grow. And if that could happen to the plant just from being around, I can imagine like what's happening to us from the different things that we're watching or reading or listening to on a day-to-day basis.

Speaker 2:

I'm so glad you told me that story because have you heard of the IKEA experiment?

Speaker 1:

No, I have not.

Speaker 2:

It was exactly some. It wasn't disproved, but a lot of people were very skeptical. But what they did was they took two plants and they put them in slightly different areas and they had different, all the same, children. One plant had horrible things said to it and the other plant had lovely things said to it and you can actually Google it and you can see a video of it. And the plant that was basically verbally abused withered and died and the other plant was told you are, you know, you are some hot-looking plant. They got that all day. The plant got that all day that actually flourished and there was a lot of controversy about it.

Speaker 2:

A lot of people did not think that it was possible. I thought it was completely possible. But I think you should really really share that story as widely as you can, because there is no doubt. I mean I don't watch the standard TV news anymore. I mean I get alerts on my phone so I know what's happening in the world, I can keep up to date, but after watching the nightly news it's just so deflating I just don't put myself through it anymore it anymore.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that too, and I feel like a lot more people are kind of tuning out of the news now and choosing to kind of get their sources of information elsewhere, which I think is good. I think everybody should have multiple perspectives and inputs on different sources of information that they're interested in. But I'd love to kind of dive in and ask you a little bit about your coaching and who do you help specifically and what it's kind of like working with you.

Speaker 2:

That's great. I work with many entrepreneurs. I mean I had the privilege of when I was working with Randy Zuckerberg. She had started a leadership school Randy used to be the head of marketing for Facebook and we really looked at emerging entrepreneurs that were just getting started and very much kind of at that startup phase. So I've really moved away from that now and the entrepreneur I really enjoy working with is someone who's had a level of success but is stuck.

Speaker 2:

And you would know this with your own business, rob, and also in sports you get to a certain level and then to break through to the next level takes almost double the amount of effort it took you to get to a certain level and then to break through to the next level takes almost double the amount of effort it took you to get to that level in the first place. So when an entrepreneur first starts to get profitable because that could often be a hard journey but when they want to move from, say, a six-figure to a seven-figure revenue business or when they want to move from seven to eight, but really that six to seven figure hurdle is quite significant and I work a lot with entrepreneurs at that level because everything they did to get them to that six figure level of success. A lot of it is irrelevant to get to that next stage, because they've got there by doing everything themselves. They've got there by worrying about every little detail. They've got there by working every hour that they could. All of that behavior, and sometimes attitudes as well is actually going to prevent them from getting to seven figures, because they can no longer.

Speaker 2:

So many entrepreneurs it can be heartbreaking they think if I can just work that extra hour, if I can just get a little bit more done, I'm going to have that breakthrough. And it doesn't work like that. They have to hire people, they have to put an infrastructure in place. Working less often will help them more. But the biggest thing they have to change is their mindset, and that's where they've spent so many years worrying about how and when something is going to happen.

Speaker 2:

You can't, once you start to scale, you're going to torment yourself. You can't possibly create how and when everything is going to turn out. You have to be very, very focused about what you want from your business and what you want your business to do, why it is, and then set out to make that happen. So I have a private coaching. And then I have kind of a three-month intensive online and group coaching course called the Founder Success Navigator. Really, what we do in that three-month period is rewire your brain. So, yes, let's build on everything you have achieved, but then let's look at what you actually need to absorb to get you to that next level, and quite often that involves a pivot in the business as well. Wow.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that sounds like pretty powerful stuff and I've noticed that on my own with my own business and coaching and speaking. That mindset is really that key factor to really start to level up and get to that next level. So I imagine you're helping a lot of people unlock new levels and things and new levels, new challenges and so on, and that's awesome. But so if someone's interested in connecting with you or working with you, even how do people get in touch with you?

Speaker 2:

in connecting with you or working with you. Even how do people get in touch with you? Well, they can reach out to me at elizabeth, at elizabethgouldcom, my website. I'm very active on Instagram and also LinkedIn, and I'll give you all the details to pop into the show notes so we can connect.

Speaker 1:

Well, elizabeth, I really appreciate you taking the time today and sharing a lot about your experience and a lot of your tips and different things that you've got going on, and it's really, really cool to connect and really appreciate it. But before I let you go, I want to ask you, if you were to boil everything you've learned down from all your mentors and different coaching curriculums and such, if you were to pick one piece of advice or like recommendation you could give to somebody who's in that position where they're moving from their hobby to now becoming a side hustle and maybe beginning their entrepreneurial journey, what would be the most powerful piece of advice that you could share with them?

Speaker 2:

Yourself. Anything is possible. I mean, if I had, I did not imagine this conversation 25 years ago and I don't, it wasn't even in my radar. But when I look through what I have been through and what I have survived and my odds of survival were pretty low a couple of times I could never have imagined that this would be where I was sitting now. But I do know that I always back myself and if you can just step forward into that power, then you can achieve anything you want.

Speaker 1:

Of that, because I feel like so many people forget that and I think that's powerful to just be reminded and keep that written in front of your face, so you're constantly reminding yourself. So, elizabeth, thank you for sharing that. I find that very helpful.

Speaker 2:

It's been a delight, Rob. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Speaker 1:

Of course I appreciate it. And that's all we've got today, guys. I'll catch you guys next week on Survive and Decide Hustle.