Episode 404: Navigating Personal Growth and Healing (Unscripted)

How do you navigate personal growth? Do you feel isolated or unsupported on your journey? Are you constantly searching for real, unfiltered insights on life and business? Join Bella Vasta on a deeply personal road trip from Phoenix to Tucson, Arizona, in this unique podcast episode. As Bella navigates the open road, she reflects on her partnership with Liz Illg, co-founder of Pet Care Team Training, sharing the importance of having supportive and complementary relationships in both business and life. Recorded live and unedited, this episode offers an authentic glimpse into Bella's thoughts and feelings, making you feel like you're right there in the car with her. Bella discusses the transformative power of community and friendships, drawing from her own journey through trauma and healing after her daughter's premature birth. She opens up about the significance of inner courage, personal growth, and the necessity of having a support system. Whether she's passing cows or crossing border checkpoints, Bella's raw and unfiltered storytelling invites you to reflect on your own life, encouraging you to find and cherish the people who help you thrive. Don't miss this engaging and inspirational episode that blends business insights with heartfelt personal experiences. Timestamps: [02:16] Bella and Liz's business partnership and friendship [06:44] Bella's experience of isolation and survival mode after her daughter's health challenges [09:40] Bella's journey of inner child healing and personal growth [13:29] Advice on reflecting on why certain things trigger strong reactions, and the importance of self-awareness [23:44] Importance of building a supportive community and not trying to do everything alone [26:33] The value of having close friends who can support and challenge you Notable Quotes: "It takes courage to constantly grow. It takes courage to put your ego aside and think about, well, why does it hurt me? Where does it come from?" "Sometimes you just need a witness to be like, 'Damn girl, you've come so far, because six months ago, you would have handled this a completely different way.'" "Asking for help is really difficult for a lot of people, because we were told not to ask for help. We were told to be seen and not heard." "You have to have a reciprocal energy flow. I'm going to put it that way, right? Like you pour into someone, they pour into you, and it has to be circular." "I feel like all these Facebook groups, they're really great. However, there's a bunch of keyboard warriors on there. How great are the Facebook groups really? How much of an intimate connection are you actually able to make?" Did you love this episode? Make sure you never miss an episode! Head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify to subscribe to Bella In Your Business. Transcript: Hello. This is going to be a little bit of a different episode if I actually post it. Hi, this is Bella Vasta from Jump Consulting. I'm currently going about 80 miles an hour on the I ten, heading from Phoenix down south of Tucson to a small little town where there's wine country. It is where my co founder of pet care team Training, Liz Ilig, resides and on her farm. And going down there because we are planning for the fourth quarter of the year and then just doing some projects and filming some stuff. It's actually been a year since I've been down there and you know, I'm not really sure exactly where this podcast is going, but we're going to download it and get you show notes from AI when I am done. But I thought I would just talk to you. Is that all right? And this is also kind of like russian roulette because you have no idea what could come out of my mouth. There is no editing. There is no let's stop and re record this. So if I publish this, I'm going to publish it in its entirety. It's just like it's me talking to you as I'm driving. It's currently 09:00 in the morning. It is about 100 degrees, which is actually very cool for Arizona. As I drive south, it's actually close to the border to the point that I get these messages on my phone that says, now entering Mexico and not really, and there is a couple of border checkpoints that I go through. If you guys have never been through that stuff, I go through it quite frequently. When I do actually drive to the beach in Mexico, it just gets down to like one lane and you go slowly through, you roll down your windows, you say hi to the guy and just kind of roll on through. But anyways, hi. I was reflecting on some stuff, something that you may or may not know. First of all, Liz is not just my business partner for pet care team training, where we certify pet sitters and dog walkers to be pet sitters and dog walkers and give them CPR first aid certifications. So two certifications. But we also are very good friends. We have this app called Voxer V, like Victor O X E R. For any of you guys who are verbal processors who like to talk a lot, I really highly recommend it. They call it a walkie talkie app. Basically you can leave up to 15 minutes voice messages. And the difference between using that on, say, an iPhone, because that's the only thing I have that I know, is that you just press it and then you can take your hand off the button, and you can just talk. Talk. So, usually what happens, believe it or not, I'm getting really personal, is that every morning, we both get up and we take our walks. I do, like, two laps around my block. She does, like, a three mile with her dogs. She's in, like, a rural area. She does a weighted vest. She's such a badass. I hope that's okay to say that. And we talk. And we talk about our intentions for the day. Like, she leaves me a message, I leave her a message. We talk about, like, things that we're getting done. We hold each other accountable. Loosely, right. And we're kind of like. We're both single, so we're both kind of like each other's person, and we've been doing this for a long time. And it's just. I just. I go on these love affairs with her sometimes, and I just tell her how much I appreciate her, because I think there's something to be said when you have someone in your life that you can completely be yourself with, when you can literally just go on a mind journey, a verbal diarrhea of the mouth, if you will, and you're not judged and you're supported, or you're reminded of who you are, or you're giving questions that really make you ponder and think. And I guess this episode is going to be about her and I and the place that she is in my life in hopes that I inspire you to think about who is in your life. I did an episode on who are your CEO's or all my CEO's, and I talked to you about my CEO's. Those are, like, the really close people in my life that I can go to with anything at any time. And they're all very, very different. And that's the point I wanted to make about Liz and I, and it's why we make great business partners, because everything she's good at, I'm not. And everything I'm good at, she. I don't want to say she's not, but she doesn't prefer to do right. Like, we are a left and a right brain. Together make one brain. I am an organized chaos. She has everything written down. She actually did a presentation to my community, and she was talking about how she even has, like, she has sop for her household, and she needs to. I hope she doesn't mind me saying so much, but because she has chickens and goats and dogs, inside dogs and outside dogs and cats, and I don't know if I'm missing anything, but she's a lot of souls. She's got, like, 36 souls on her property, and she was talking to my community just about workflows, and, like, what happens if something happens to you? And she has it all the way down to how to work lawnmower for her home sops. Okay. I throw away the instruction books. My dad laughs at me all the time for it, and I'm like, why do I need to keep this instruction book in this cabinet somewhere for, like, one time that I'm gonna need it? Like, all of these instruction books are in a PDF online. And I also, you know, I'm not like, oh, I live on a farm with 36 souls to take care of what happens if something happens to me? So it's a little different, right? And when we talk about things, you know, our life couldn't be any more different. We often joke around about doing an anonymous podcast about her life and my life, because it's just so unique. But I'm telling you all of this, like, as if we're just friends and you're in the car with me driving right now. Because there was a time in my life where I didn't have a community before I got married, before I was. I was in 2014, and I was doing my business. I had my friends. A lot of them were actually from networking. I did a lot, like, four times a week networking, and I made a lot of friends that way. They were all my same age. We kind of got married, had kids the same time ish. However, when I went through everything with my daughter, and if this is one of your first times listening or you just joined us. Hi. I've had birthed one of the smallest surviving female babies on the planet. At 12oz, she was born ten years ago July. We spent 182 days in baby icu Nicu, fighting for her life. She was on a vent in a trach. We took her home after six months. She was on a 50 foot oxygen concentrator. She was on oxygen and a feeding tube that went down her nose into her belly that I had to shove in her and stick to her face. It was horrifying. It was traumatic. I was wrecked. I pushed everyone out of my life, including my own parents. And so when I say that, you know, I had friends, and then I didn't have friends, I was in survival mode. I don't even know what it was. I didn't know what survival mode was. I just knew that I literally. It was like I was a tree and I had to cut off every single branch just to maintain the stump and keep the stump alive. And, you know, sometimes that's what you got to do.