Megan discusses the difficulties of having her job eliminated and her courageous choice to start over as a podcaster and full time coach.

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Megan Conner is the mother of 6 spectacular humans and a breaker of generational trauma cycles. She has spent the last 10 years overcoming the effects of child SA and other abusive relationships and cycles. She is the author of I Walked Through Fire to Get Here, which was written to give support and hope to other survivors. Megan is passionate about helping people make small changes that make their lives better every day.  

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Hello, beautiful humans.

Welcome to the Midlife Revolution.

I'm your host, Megan Conner.

Thank you so much for being here tonight.

I'm so glad to be back with you again.

Thank you so much for being

patient with me.

we're going to talk

about a big announcement

that I have for going forward.

But first, I have a story to tell you.

I

We're going to get in our

magic time machine and

we're going to go back to,

Let's go back to 2006.

In 2006,

I started my master's degree at

Texas State University in

vocal performance with the

goal of singing opera as a career.

And when I first started at Texas state,

there were people in the area who were

looking for voice teachers.

And I don't know how many of

you know about how things are in Texas,

but in Texas,

we do everything more than anybody else.

For some reason,

everything's bigger in Texas.

everything's a

competition anyway.

so in 2006,

I was getting my master's

degree at Texas state

university and people in the area,

high school teachers in the

area were looking for voice

teachers to help their

students prepare for competitions.

And I decided to call up the

high school that was just

very close to my house and

find out if they needed a voice teacher.

Now the high school that's

close to my house was built in 1978.

And for almost 30 years,

they had one choir director

the entire time.

And I called this gentleman

and asked him if they were

looking for a voice teacher

to help their students

prepare for competition.

And he said, yes, they were.

And so he interviewed me and

I decided to come in and

start teaching voice

lessons to high school students.

And I really enjoyed it.

I loved it so much.

When I graduated from Texas

State with my master's degree,

I taught voice lessons all

the way through those couple of years.

And I also taught voice

lessons at the middle

school where the middle

school students would leave

that middle school and go

to the high school.

And so I was teaching sixth,

seventh and eighth graders

that were then gonna go to

the high school that I was

teaching nine through 12.

And so a lot of those students

came to me in sixth grade

and stayed with me all the

way through high school,

and it was really wonderful.

It was one of my favorite jobs ever.

I really loved connecting

individually with students

and teaching voice lessons,

and that was such a fun part of my life.

After I graduated with my master's degree,

I went on to a couple of

opera apprenticeship programs,

and I sang professionally

for a couple of years.

And when I started doing

auditions for opera

companies that were a

little farther away from home,

things started to get more

and more tense between me

and my spouse at the time

who didn't want me to be

away from home because we

had at the time five young

children and managing them

was really difficult, understandably.

He wanted me to be home all the time,

but if I wanted to further

my opera career,

I needed to be away from home sometimes.

Three or four times a year,

I would need to be away for

a week or two or three

weekends while I did performing.

But it wasn't super

conducive to my home life

and to my marriage.

end,

after the end of a couple of seasons,

I made the difficult

decision to stop performing

professionally and get my

teaching certification instead.

and I went to teach high school choir.

So in 2009,

I went to one of the inner city

schools here in San Antonio

and I taught choir for the first time.

And it was wonderful and

also kind of terrible

because it was an inner

city Title I school and the

students there had a lot of struggles

that were not related to school.

And I didn't really feel

comfortable teaching kids

to sing when they were

worried about whether or

not they were going to have

dinner when they got home

or when they were worried

about the family dynamics

being abusive or when they

were worried about having a

relationship with a

boyfriend that was abusive.

So what I like to say about

that time is that I taught

life skills and then

occasionally we also got to sing.

It was a really interesting time,

but I really enjoyed

connecting with the students.

And that was one of the

things that I loved and cherish the most.

Fast forward a little while,

and

I went to a different school.

And then I decided to go

back to the original high

school that I was at and

teach voice lessons.

And while I was there,

they had hired another voice teacher,

whose name was Samuel.

And

I asked him if he would be

willing to teach voice lessons to my son,

who is a freshman at the

school at the time.

So that was the first time

that I met my partner, Samuel.

We were both married at the time.

but what I loved about

him was that he was a really,

really excellent influence

on my oldest son.

He connected so well with the students.

And I really loved and

agreed with all of the ways

that he taught students.

singing because he taught it

as a comprehensive thing.

You know,

when you teach somebody to play

the piano or the bassoon or

the flute or the violin or

something like that,

you have an instrument

that's separate from you.

But when you are teaching voice lessons,

your body is your instrument.

And so it's really important

to connect with the

students in a way that

makes them feel comfortable

enough to be vulnerable enough

to use their body as an instrument.

And it's a really

interesting thing to do

that on the high school

level when kids are just

learning to understand how

to manage all of those things.

So I met Samuel that year.

We were both teaching voice lessons.

And then the next year,

the choir director at that high school,

which was the original high

school from 1978,

where there was only one choir director.

They got a new choir

director the first year

that I taught voice lessons there.

And then at this time,

the school decided to add

an assistant director position.

And I got hired to be the

assistant director.

So it was the head director and then me,

And then Samuel was teaching

voice lessons with us there.

And so I was the assistant

director for about three years.

And then the head director

got promoted to the central

office and I got promoted

to be the head director and

they asked me to hire an

assistant director.

And when I had that opportunity,

there was only one person that I wanted.

It was Samuel.

I loved how he connected

with the students.

I loved the way that he

taught voice lessons and he

and I had an excellent

synergy where when I was having a bad day,

he would show up with extra

energy and vice versa.

And we did really well in

the classroom together.

during this time,

when I was the head

director and Samuel was my

assistant director,

we had a booster club.

It was a group of parents

who just wanted to donate

their time and energy to

the choir program because

their children were part of

the program and they loved

the program,

they wanted to do everything

they could to support it.

So once a month I would meet

with this group of parents.

And they would basically

just ask me what I needed

and I would tell them what

I needed and they would get it for me,

whether it was volunteers

or fundraising or

chaperones or whatever it was,

they were totally committed

to making sure that I had

everything that I needed to

be successful in the program.

And I loved it so much.

I became really close with

that group of booster moms.

And it just so happened that

all of their students were

seniors the year that

Samuel and I were teaching together.

And we just sort of bonded

over the course of that year.

Every time we had a concert,

the booster parents and Samuel and I,

we would meet for dinner

afterwards and the students

would also meet for dinner,

but it would be the parents

on one side of the pizza restaurant,

the students on the other side,

and we would just get

together and hang out.

So that was, you know,

several times a year,

every time there was a

concert or a competition

and we got to be really,

really good friends.

And at the end of that year, actually,

we went to the choir

competition that year and

Samuel and I collaborated

so well and the students

were so receptive to what

we were doing that we

brought home more trophies

than the school had ever

seen at that competition.

And it was like this amazing high.

We had worked so hard to get

all of that done and the

students were so excited.

And the very next day,

the principal told us that

Samuel's position was being eliminated,

that I was no longer going

to have an assistant director.

And it was so hard to go

from that euphoric high of

all of that hard work being

rewarded to going to the

extreme low of knowing that

Samuel would not be part of

the team the coming year.

And not only that,

but I wouldn't have an

assistant director anymore.

So all of the responsibility

of the entire program was

now going to fall to me.

you know,

that's just the way it goes

in education when they

eliminate a position and

someone else takes over the

responsibilities,

there's no pay increase.

you have to give more hours

and more time to keep the

program the same for the students.

I could have cut.

programs, social activities,

competitions, and things like that.

But I just didn't feel like

that was fair to the students.

And at the time I was still

very much in people pleaser mode.

And so I said, sure,

I'll take on that extra

responsibility because it's

what's best for the students.

Nevermind me.

Don't worry about me.

I'll figure it out.

I would do things very

differently now if it was

the same situation.

But I digress.

Anyway, Samuel was excellent.

And he decided instead of

taking a position somewhere

else in the district as a choir teacher,

he decided to stay on as a voice teacher.

And because he loved those

kids and he wanted to

continue to stay with them.

That was a really excellent

decision that he made.

And by this time,

I had six children.

also that was the year

that my husband and I separated.

So it was a difficult time for everybody.

there was a lot going on and to have

that blow of having the

assistant director taken away, um, at,

at such a critical time in my life when,

I separated from my husband in

February of that year.

And almost immediately after

our separation,

Samuel and I took the

students on a trip to New

York city was planned way in advance.

And my former spouse had

already planned to come.

His ticket was bought, all of that stuff.

So he came on that trip with us,

weeks separated.

And so that was super awkward.

But it was just part of life.

It was what was going on at the time.

And it was just a difficult

time for everybody.

So

What I wanted to come back

to is that the group of

booster parents and Samuel

and his wife and I just all

remained friends.

And we continued to get

together every couple of

months and have dinner

talk about their kids and

their experience in the program.

And we just became really,

really good friends.

We were very close.

Samuel continued to teach voice

lessons until pretty

close to the fall of 2019,

right before the pandemic started.

And I was starting to become

pretty disillusioned with

the way things were going school-wise.

With all of the extra demands on my time,

and not being able to really

show up for my kids the way I wanted to,

and also being a single mom

and recognizing that my

children were going without

because I wasn't getting

paid very much as a teacher.

All of these things sort of

started to mix together in my mind and

add to that school shootings

and add to that additional

training that we had to undergo.

And I was feeling really,

really pressured with all

of this additional time.

And I started the 2019 school year.

One of the very first

meetings that I had when I

came back from summer break

that year

they were implementing a

new tutoring program

that required us as teachers

to flag any students who

are failing our class.

And there was an extra time

period that took a little

bit of time away from lunch

and a little bit of time

away from all of the

afternoon classes so that

if a student was failing

and they got flagged,

they could go to the

teacher who flagged them

and get extra help to try

and make up for the failing.

Now, that seems like a great option.

It seems like a great idea

to help students who are failing.

But what really ended up

happening is that we had to

spend a lot of extra time

monitoring students' grades

and taking the time to go

into the system and flag

them on the appropriate day

because it wasn't just every day.

It was just only on Tuesday

and Thursday and then

sometimes on Friday.

then the teachers who are

having to do interventions

with the students had to

prepare extra material for

those intervention times so

that they could catch up on

whatever was happening with them.

And so it ended up being a

huge extra burden on the

teachers in a drain of time.

And I remember when they

first introduced this program,

there was kind of an open

Q&A where the teachers got

to ask questions.

And I remember one teacher

raised his hand and he said,

so this is going to take

away from my lunchtime.

And also I'm going to have

to do an additional

preparation for tutoring time.

And so I'm just wondering if

there's going to be

additional compensation for

this flex time that we're

going to use to intervene

with students who are failing.

And there was an audible

hush that fell over the

auditorium where all of us

teachers were sitting

together and all of the

administrators were

standing up near the stage

and the principal had the microphone.

And he said,

I don't know what to tell you.

If you're not willing to

make this sacrifice for the students,

then maybe you shouldn't be a teacher.

And to me, it really echoed.

over all of the times that I

had been asked to give and

give and give and give and

sacrifice of my personal

time to give more to the students.

And every time that I got

shamed for not making those

sacrifices and for not

being willing to do more

and more and more and to

just give without question,

without compensation,

without recognition.

And it really just sat very badly with me.

I did not like it.

I thought, you know,

here I am as a teacher who

came into this position as two teachers.

And I sort of referenced this before,

but in Texas, we do everything crazy.

Not better, just bigger and crazy.

So as a choir teacher,

I was also technically the

sponsor of the choir club.

which had competitions and

fundraisers and all those things.

And so we were preparing for

competition almost the

entire fall and a lot of the spring.

And the competition in the

fall was an individual competition.

It was voluntary,

but the administrators

expected us to send kids to

this competition.

They expected us to have

kids do well at this competition because

Our job performance was

based largely on the number

of kids that we got into

the special choir that they

were auditioning for.

So every day after school on

all of the days of the week

that we could during the

entire month of August and September,

we were tutoring kids for a

competition that would happen in October.

And then in October, every single Saturday,

we were judging

competitions and running

competitions and getting

our kids ready for competitions.

And then in November,

the Honor Choir performed.

And so there were two

Saturdays in November that

we were required to be there.

We didn't get any extra

compensation for any of

those Saturdays with the extra time.

It was just assumed that we

were going to do that to

have a good program.

The same thing happened in

the spring when the whole

choir would get together

for a competition.

We would do extra rehearsals afterwards.

My mixed choir, men and women,

didn't get to meet during the school day.

So every single Tuesday

night during the school

year from August until June,

We met every Tuesday night

for two hours to rehearse.

So there was a lot of extra

time that we didn't get compensated for.

In addition, I had to run fundraisers,

which meant that I had to count money,

which meant that I had to

do extra accounting.

I had an account for my sheet music.

I had an account for my piano tuners.

I had an account for my accompanists.

I had an account for uniforms.

And I had to keep track of

all those extra accounts.

And that's not something

that falls within the job

description of a regular teacher.

It was something that I also

had to do on the side.

All of that to say that I

spent a lot of time doing a

lot of tasks for which I

was not compensated.

And I did it because I loved the job.

I loved connecting with the students.

I loved being a positive

influence in students' lives.

I paid attention when our

school counselors did

training at the beginning of the year,

and they told us that LGBTQ

students who had even one

adult in their lives who

was validating and

supportive reduced the

suicide rate by 50%.

I paid attention.

when those same counselors

said that children who are

abused in their homes,

if they have one supportive

adult outside of their home,

they are more successful

80% of the time over the

students who don't have a

supportive adult outside of the home.

So I knew that sometimes I

was the only adult in those

students' lives who treated

them with kindness and respect.

And I took that very, very seriously.

I made my classroom a safe

place for my students and I

invested in them and I

taught them not just about singing,

but about the poetry that

went with the songs and

about the history of the

Bible verses and the

slavery movement where the

only hope that they had to

hang on to was those gospel

songs that they sang.

And I taught them that the

gospel songs were not just about Jesus,

they were about

leaving their master.

They were about hope for a

better world after slavery ended.

I taught them a lot that had

nothing to do with choir.

And I took that job very seriously.

And I think very fondly

about the time that I had

to connect with those

students and to be a

positive influence in their lives.

I loved it so much.

But it became harder and

harder to weigh that love

of students against what I

was experiencing on the

administrative side.

and on the side where I was

being asked to sacrifice my

time with my children

because I had jobs to do

and I was a single mom at the time.

So I started becoming

disillusioned with the

teaching profession in

general and I started

looking around for other solutions.

Now,

going back to our Booster Club parents,

That group of parents became

known as the Rhinos.

And it's kind of a silly story-wise,

so I won't get into it right now.

But I'll just say that the

booster moms whose students

were all seniors in that

year that Samuel and I

taught together and their husbands,

we all got together every

couple of months and had dinner.

And we talked and we

commiserated and we just

supported each other.

One of those booster parents

happened to own a business.

And at one point when I was

sort of commiserating about

the teaching experience, he said,

you know,

I might have some consulting

that you could do.

And I said, sign me up.

I'd be happy to do it.

When I was an undergraduate,

I did a lot of marketing.

I actually took

60 hours of business courses

as part of my undergraduate degree.

I've always been

entrepreneurial and I have

a lot of skills in that area.

And so I thought that it

would be a great fit for me

when he said that he had a

software program that he

wanted to market.

And so he owned a property tax business.

And so he hired me as a

consultant in the spring of COVID year,

when we were spending a lot

less time with competitions and things,

because we couldn't be in person.

And so I had a lot of hours

that normally were taken up

with school business,

which I can now use for other things.

And so I did some consulting for him.

I really enjoyed it.

He was very generous with paying me.

And at the end of that assignment, I said,

if you ever have something open up,

I would be open to leaving

teaching and coming to work with you.

And he sort of hedged and

hemmed and hawed.

And he said,

I'm not really sure if I have

something permanent,

but I'll let you know if I do.

And he had some hangups about it.

So COVID happened.

Choir was terrible during COVID.

We couldn't sing.

We couldn't meet in person.

It was a really terrible

situation for everybody involved.

In addition,

my administrators were telling

us that when we come back in the fall,

there's no guarantee that

you'll be able to get a

waiver if you care for

people who are in a risk category.

Now,

this is rewinding a lot to COVID stuff

that we have learned a lot

since then about COVID,

about what it is and what it isn't.

But at the time,

we did not know what we didn't know.

And I had two kids at home

who were in risk categories,

one type one diabetic and

one with asthma.

And I was being asked to go

into the classroom with not

very much protection, with no vaccine,

not knowing if I was going

to get exposed in the

classroom and then bring

COVID home to my two at risk children.

And I finally just made the

decision that my kids were

more important than

anything that I was going

to do in the school.

And I decided to jump.

I decided to quit teaching.

It was one of the hardest

decisions I've ever made.

I hated leaving my students.

There were lots of tears on

both sides and it was just

really difficult.

And I did this crazy thing

that I've advised all of my

children never to do.

I quit my job at teaching

before I had another place to land.

And part of that was I had a

little bit of money set

aside and in my particular

school district, they paid us

They only paid us for the 10

months that we taught,

but they broke that 10

months of pay into 12 payments,

if that makes sense.

So we got paid the same

amount every month.

I guess they didn't want

teachers claiming

unemployment over the

summer or budgeting poorly

and running into trouble.

And so I knew that I had a

couple of months of pay left.

I didn't want to leave my

position at the end of the summer

Because by the end of the summer,

all the good teachers have

chosen jobs already.

And I sort of had somebody

in mind that would be great

for taking over.

And I wanted to leave my

program in the best

possible place that I could.

So I contacted my friend who

I thought would want to take over.

And then I contacted the

principal who was a brand

new principal coming into

the fall of 2020.

And I'd never met him before.

And I just sent him an email and I said,

I'm really sorry that we've never met,

but I'm resigning my position.

I think this person would be

great to take over if you'd

like to interview them.

I wanted to give you enough

time to get somebody

wonderful into this program

before the fall started and

all the good teachers were taken.

So I made that tough decision to leave,

not knowing what I was going to do.

I just completely jumped out

into the unknown.

And I remember my daughter

sent me a tweet and I'm not

on Twitter or X. I wasn't

at the time either.

But my one of my daughters

sent me a tweet that said, hey, teachers,

go form a pod school and

charge X amount of dollars.

You just tripled your income.

You're welcome.

And I thought that was a

really intriguing idea because I thought,

you know,

if there's a group of families

who are together,

they're sort of sheltering together.

They're not going out into public.

They're still distancing.

They're just around each other.

Wouldn't it be great if

those few kids could do

school together while the

parents go to work?

And if I could be a pod school teacher,

I could help those kids get

onto their devices and make

sure that they were doing

their assignments and all of that.

I don't know if you guys

remember how challenging it

was to try and work from

home and also help your

kids do online school at the same time.

It was a crazy, crazy time.

I hope we never have to

repeat anything like that again.

But I thought it was an interesting idea.

And so I started putting out

onto my personal social media, hey,

I'm interested in doing a

pod school in the fall.

If there are any families

who are interested in sort

of sheltering together and

doing a pod school,

I would love to help you.

Well,

one of the coaches at my CrossFit gym

got back to me and she said, you know,

I don't know of any families,

but this guy that you

already know at the gym who

you already work out with,

he's the president of a

corporation and he wants

his employees back in the

workplace in the fall.

But he knows they all have

kids who are doing remote school.

And so he wants somebody to

come in and run a remote

school in his office so his

office workers can be there

and the kids can still do online school.

So I met with this guy, his name is Leo.

He's a wonderful guy.

He's somebody that I worked

out with at the gym for a

couple of years and had no

idea what he did for a living, but he's,

he was the president of this corporation.

it's,

it's kind of funny to note

when I was working as a teacher,

I had two lunch periods

right in a row because I

did a class that was before school.

So in order to make up for

me having that extra class before school,

they gave me two lunch

periods right next to each other.

which was perfect because it

meant that I could leave, go to the gym,

work out, throw on some other clothes,

put my hair in a ponytail

and come back and teach my

afternoon classes.

So Leo was at that noon

class for a year and a half.

I knew this guy, we worked out together,

but I had no idea what he

did for a living.

Found out that he was the

president of a corporation.

And so I got all dressed up

and went to make this

proposal for the pod school.

Like I figured out all the

financials and all of the

logistics of how this was going to work.

And I came up with this big,

huge proposal that I was

going to show to him.

And I got to his office and

he showed up exactly as I

had always seen him at the gym.

He was wearing shorts and a

t-shirt and flip-flops,

president of the company, right?

And he said, well,

I see you got all dressed up.

I mean, I was wearing my nicest clothes.

I, you know, had jewelry on.

I was like wearing pearls and whatever.

I was trying to put on a good impression.

Turned out I could have just

shown up in gym clothes.

I would have been fine.

So I went and made this

proposal to him and we

agreed this is what was going to happen.

And he kept saying to me,

I don't know if they're going to, you know,

they being like the board

of directors of his company

was going to be mad at him

for spending money on a pod school.

But he was like, I don't care.

I want my employees in the office.

This is what we're going to do.

So I found a couple of rooms

in the corporate

headquarters that were going to work.

I ordered all this furniture,

all this technology.

I set up this huge spreadsheet.

I had 12 students who were

all at different schools.

And they all had different

online school schedules.

And I just kept track of

which classes that they

were going to go to.

And I made sure that they

did their assignments outside.

I hired a PE teacher to come

in three times a week.

I hired an art teacher to

come in twice a week so

that these kids would have

as close to normal a school

experience as they possibly can.

And it ended up being really cool.

In October,

a lot of schools started

opening up to let kids come

back in person.

And so several of my students,

including the president's children,

left the pod school and

went back to school.

So it was pretty clear that

when December came around,

I was not going to have

this pod school job anymore

because most people were

going to just go back to

in-person school.

And so I started contacting, again,

my parents.

booster club parent who had a business.

I had done some consulting

for him and I said, hey,

has anything opened up in your company?

I would really love to come over.

Well,

it turned out that one division of

his company,

which was handling property

taxes for bankrupt businesses,

they were looking for something,

someone to come in and sort of

figure out how their

division could operate more efficiently.

so I interviewed with the person

who was the head of the

bankruptcy property tax division.

And the only experience that

I had was that one little

consulting thing that I had done

But they liked what I had to

bring to the table.

And so they hired me to start in January.

I was supposed to start on January 3rd,

which I believe was a Monday.

I could be wrong with these dates.

It's a little fuzzy.

So I called in and I said, hey,

I'm just making sure that

I'm going to show up on

Monday and that I'm going

to be working with this

bankruptcy division.

And they said, well,

the person who is going to

be over you has COVID and

they're not gonna be in for

at least six weeks.

And there's nobody else who

can really teach you what

your job responsibilities are gonna be.

And so why don't you come in anyway,

we'll get you onboarded and

we'll figure out what you're gonna do.

So I came in that day and

the parent who was the

Booster Club parent was the

head of the whole company.

And he was one office away

from the person I was

supposed to be working for.

And so what they ended up saying is,

you know,

why don't you go sit in with the

president of the company?

Who's your buddy?

You know him.

You guys have hung out forever.

And you can just hang out

with him and help him out

however you can until this

other guy gets back.

Well, long story short,

I never did end up going to

work for the bankruptcy

section of the property tax system.

I sat in the office of my

friend the first day and I

had no idea that besides

the property tax business

and the bankruptcy property tax business,

he was also running a

business shipping fuel to

Mexico via rail car.

And I went into his office

and I sat down and he said,

I'm working on lots of different projects.

You'll get to know about all of them.

For now,

I just want you to listen to every

phone call.

You can sit in on every

meeting and just figure out

if there's something that you want to do.

And so I did.

I sat in on every phone call

and I sat in on every

meeting and I took copious

notes and I Googled

everything that I didn't understand,

which was probably 80% of

what was being said.

I had no idea what it was

like to try and load rail

cars with fuel on the Gulf

Coast and ship them across

the border to Mexico and

track them and get the cars

back and load them again.

It was just this crazy process.

And he often said to me in

those first few days,

It takes 19 things to get a

rail car across the border.

And if you don't have one of them,

it's never going to work.

And I remember after the

first couple of days, I said, OK,

you keep saying this.

What are the 19 things?

I was like, I'm ready.

I'm going to write them down right now.

Number one.

And he was like, well,

I just sort of say that.

it's not really 19 things.

It's probably more like 25 things.

And so he started to explain

to me all of the

difficulties of exporting

fuel into Mexico.

And I learned a lot about

the Mexican government and

how they operate.

And also the fact that

bribery is just a part of

their culture and you have nothing to do

in Mexico if there's not bribery involved.

And also you have nothing to

do in Mexico if the special

club is not involved whose

name I won't say because

the YouTube police.

And so it just was,

it was totally a baptism by fire.

I had no idea what I was doing,

but I learned, I learned very,

very quickly.

it was pretty crazy.

I learned about rail car

logistics and I learned

about what kinds of rail

cars were the right kinds.

And I learned about loading

fuel at Gulf Coast

refineries and I learned

about the pricing and all

of the different places

along the Gulf Coast.

And I learned to track the

prices and I learned to quote the prices.

And eventually I became a

project manager where I was

in charge of making sure

that our customers got in a fuel request.

I would give them a quote

and then they would send us money.

We would send money to the refinery.

We would schedule the

loading of their rail cars.

We would track the rail cars

all the way down to their spur in Mexico.

And then all the way back

where they would load again.

And it was just this crazy

world that I never thought

I would be a part of.

And I will never forget the

very first day that

helped the accounting team

create an invoice for our first customer.

Now,

rewind just a little bit because my

husband had his own business.

And he was working in the

internet field and he was

doing remote IT and things like that.

And I helped him with the

bookkeeping

And I remember making some

invoices for him that were, you know,

around in the like $1,200

to $1,500 range.

And I remember thinking that

was such a huge amount of

money to bill one person

for their computer expenses.

And the very first invoice

that I created for a

customer in this business

was over $1.5 million.

And it completely blew my

mind in the best way.

in the way that I started to

think about money in a very

different way.

I started to think about

invoicing and financing

literally millions of dollars of fuel,

whereas before I had only

really had a concept of a

few thousand at a time and

it completely changed my mind.

In addition,

my boss was also working with

some other people trying to

let's call it flip crude oil,

Okay.

So let's say that the oil

price right now for crude

oil is $80 a barrel.

They would arrange to buy

the crude oil at $79 a barrel,

and then they wanted to

sell it to somebody for $81 a barrel.

And

they wanted to capture the

arbitrage in between.

So a couple bucks a barrel.

Well,

when you're talking about half a

million barrels of oil,

it's a lot of money.

The problem is that doesn't work.

You can't really stand in the middle.

If you don't have the oil, own the oil,

or you don't have the money,

you can't really stand in

the middle and collect that arbitrage.

But somehow this person that

my boss is working with

thought that that was possible.

Now he turned out to be a fraudster,

which is a story for another time.

I could probably write an

entire book about this

whole experience and it

would just be crazy and wild.

In fact, I might actually do that.

But the problem is that my

boss clung onto that idea

and thought it was a great idea.

He thought,

if I can't use other people's money,

to stand in the middle

somebody else is going to

pay for it and i'm just

going to stand here and be

a pay master and collect

some money sounds like a

great plan the problem is

that never works and you

have to be the one with the

money in order to make it

work and you have to be the

one who owns the fuel to

make it work for lots of

reasons that i won't get

into right now but once we

found out that person was a

fraudster the problem is that we did not

get rid of that business

model we continue to try

and make that business

model work for a long time

afterwards and what i

quickly found is that in

the secondary fuel market

where you're not buying

from a refinery but you're

buying from a reseller and

you're not selling to an

end burner who's actually

using the fuel but you're

reselling to a reseller and

you're trying to capture

that profit in between,

there is a ton of fraud.

Like 90% of the deals that I

saw over the course of

three and a half years were fraudulent.

And I got really good at detecting fraud.

And the reason why there's

so much fraud is because

there's so much money to be made.

One of the typical scams is

someone would come and say,

I've got a million barrels of jet fuel.

All you have to do is use my

tank farm to store the jet fuel.

and then you can sell it.

And you would send money to

this tank farm and they would disappear.

So they would collect tank

fees and they would never

actually own any fuels.

In fact,

most of the time there wasn't even

a tank.

It was just all fake and fraudulent.

And so many people have

caught onto it because it

was so profitable,

but there's always a way to

scam people out of money.

And you're talking about people with

sometimes more money than

cents and they get involved

in these fraudulent deals

because the dollar signs

are so big and so

attractive and all you got

to do is send me some money

and you're going to make 10

million dollars.

So I got really good at

detecting the fraud and I

wanted to make sure that I

protected my boss from

sending out money where he

had gotten scammed many

times before I had even

come on board and I wanted

to make sure he didn't get scammed again.

So by this time,

I should mention Samuel had

also quit teaching and had

also come to work at the same company.

And had also gotten divorced.

And so that's when he and I

started dating is after all

of that happened.

That's kind of an aside,

just a little secret tea for everybody.

But so Samuel and I were

working together with our

friend who was our boss and

trying to protect him from

all this fraud in the industry.

And we had this one

particular deal come across

our desk that was purported to be very,

very lucrative.

And it involved some fuel

from an African country

whose name I won't name

just because I don't want

to get into too many specifics,

if you know what I mean.

And Samuel and I did our very,

very best to vet this deal

and to call all the phone

numbers and talk to all the

people and Google all the

addresses and make a

comprehensive report about

whether or not we felt like

this was a good investment to make.

And it turned out that we

believed that it was fraudulent.

And I wrote up an entire

report about why it was

fraudulent and all of the

different investigations that I had done.

And I presented this report

to my boss and to the

people who had brought him

the deal in the first place.

And the people who brought

him the deal were furious

because of course they wanted his money.

And unfortunately my boss

had stars in his eyes and

he really wanted to believe

that this was real.

And he really wanted to

believe that this was a real deal.

And so he completely

discounted the report that I made.

And I believe it was a

Friday afternoon when I

submitted that report and

Samuel and I left and went

our separate ways.

And when we came back on Monday morning,

we found out that what had

happened is that my boss

had instructed the CFO to

send the money for the

investment and told him

specifically not to tell

Samuel and I that he had done it.

And that was the beginning of the end.

I'm just going to pause for

a moment to remember that time.

Because I thought that I was

contributing something valuable.

I thought that I was doing

something meaningful.

And in that moment,

I realized that it didn't

matter what I did or said,

that my boss was going to

do whatever he wanted anyway.

And so I sort of reevaluated

and I started thinking about,

is this a good place for me to be?

Now this is all post healing, post EMDR.

I had the full ability to

see his behavior for what it was.

And I looked at it and

realized how toxic it was.

And I decided to stay anyway.

And I did that because I was

earning a decent salary and

I also had a lot of time,

freedom and flexibility.

And I was able to write my

book and get it published

and start my podcast and do

a lot of things while I was

working there that I would

have been able to do if I

had been working a traditional job.

And so I was really grateful

to my boss for the gift of time,

because that made me

It made me free to do some

things that I was

passionate about that I

never would have been able

to do otherwise.

That gift of time freedom

made me see the world in a different way.

And it made me sort of take

a step back from the rat

race of going to work nine

to five and feeling

stressed about scheduling

doctor's appointments for kids and

feeling stressed about

having to spend a day home

with a sick kid.

And you know what?

If it turned into two or three days,

it was not a big deal.

And that was the first time

that I had a release from

that pressure of feeling

like I had to be so

committed to my job that I

had to sacrifice my family

and my interests and all of

my other things.

So I'm really grateful for

the freedom of time that I

had to do a lot of things

for my kids that I wouldn't

have been able to do otherwise.

I was able to help my daughter move twice.

I was able to go up randomly

to visit my grandson when he was born.

I was able to

just take time off when I needed it.

I was able to be with my dad

when he had his heart surgery.

There were so many things I

was able to do with that

time that I couldn't have done before.

So I was really grateful for

that freedom of time and

for a little bit of extra

money that allowed me to

finally have some margin in

my life where I wasn't

living paycheck to paycheck

for the very first time in my life.

And so I made the decision to stay,

knowing that probably my

ideas and my opinions and

my research were not going to be valuable,

but also knowing that I was

doing the right thing for

my family and for my kids at the time.

So I decided to stay.

But what ended up happening

is that after that time,

when I called out that

fraudulent experience,

my boss started sharing

less and less with me.

We started talking less and

less about the things he was working on.

And Samuel and I started

moving into this arena

where we wanted to talk to

the people who were doing

real deals and who actually

did have money and who had

real fuel and real tanks and real things.

And the more we went to the side of real,

the more we separated from

our boss who was not on the side of real,

who was still in this

fantasy land of throwing

money at a deal and getting

a huge payout.

And so the separation became

more and more and more.

And we realized that he was

trusting us less and less and less.

And we used to sit in his

office every single day.

We used to go to lunch with

him every single day.

And gradually we were in our

office more and in his office less.

And gradually we weren't at

lunch every single day,

but every so often when we could.

And the separation just got more and more.

And then a couple months ago,

as many of you know,

the day before payday,

I was told that there was

not enough money to make payroll.

Now, I knew this.

I knew this was coming.

I had seen it months and

months before because in

the position that I was in,

I saw all the money that came in.

And unfortunately,

I also saw all the money

that went out to pay off brokers,

to pay off

people who kind of just were

leeches to send huge sums

of money to consultants who

never really produced

anything and to send tank

fees to tank farms that didn't exist.

So I knew how much money was coming in.

I knew how much money was

going out and I knew it couldn't last.

And when I found out that

they couldn't make payroll, I said, oh,

it's time.

It's time to start building

some safety nets.

that was about around the

same time that my podcast

launched actually had my

podcast had launched maybe

just a month before that.

And it turned out to be kind

of fortuitous timing that I

started this phase when