What does it take to turn unimaginable adversity into a life of impact, purpose, and abundance? In this episode of the Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Michelle J. Lamont, podcaster, leading manifestation guru, and master mindset coach. Michelle shares her extraordinary journey from losing her mother as a child, surviving abuse and multiple suicide attempts, to building successful businesses and helping others transform their lives through mindset and manifestation.

This conversation is a testament to the power of believing in your vision, refusing to accept limitations, and choosing transformation over surrender.

What You Will Learn

How self-leadership can help you overcome even the most difficult life circumstances.

Why healing unresolved trauma is essential for personal and professional growth.

How limiting beliefs can prevent entrepreneurs from taking action on their vision.

Why resourcefulness is often more important than having financial resources.

How persistence and creativity helped build a million-dollar business from almost nothing.

The importance of finding people who believe in your vision when you need support.

How spiritual experiences can influence personal growth and decision-making.

Why rejection is not the end of the road for visionary leaders.

How mindset shifts can create new opportunities and possibilities.

Why impact ultimately creates a deeper legacy than income alone.

FAQ:

What is self-leadership and why is it important?

Self-leadership is the ability to guide your own thoughts, behaviors, and decisions toward meaningful goals. It is important because it helps individuals navigate challenges, overcome setbacks, and stay aligned with their vision even during difficult circumstances.

How can entrepreneurs overcome limiting beliefs?

Entrepreneurs can overcome limiting beliefs by identifying negative thought patterns, challenging assumptions, developing new empowering beliefs, and taking consistent action despite uncertainty.

What role does mindset play in business success?

Mindset influences how people respond to challenges, opportunities, risk, and failure. A growth-oriented mindset helps entrepreneurs stay resilient, adaptable, and focused on solutions rather than obstacles.

Resources:

Michelle J. Lamont

Website

Podcast: Manifesting Miracles

Leading Visionaries Podcast

Join the Leading Visionaries Community

Make a Donation to Support the Show

Creative Age Consulting Group

LVP 137 Michelle 1

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Now, here's your host, Anjel B. Hartwell

Anjel: Welcome to another episode of the Leading Visionaries podcast, where we celebrate the ingenious, insightful, innovative, and inspired leading visionaries of our time, and provide our listeners with world-class examples of the kind of courage, clarity, and confidence it takes to bring visions into reality.

Michelle's been featured in interviews with icons like Oprah and Kim Kardashian, and her podcast, Manifesting Miracles, debuted in the top 100 spirituality charts, reaching over 700,000 downloads so far. So thank you so much for being with me today. Welcome to the show, Michelle.

Michelle: I am so honored to be here and so excited to, for this experience.

So I'd love to have you speak a little bit about your own self-leadership and maybe where that originated from.

Michelle: Well, thank you for the question. And, you know, I was born in a very unique family, privileged, and, uh, my mother was from Colombia. I'm the very first child in my family, um, on my mother's side born in America, and on my father's side, we're like the original Americans, so I'm on the DAR.

One of my scholarships for college was Daughters of the American Revolution. And at the age of 10, my mother died of undifferentiated lymphomic cancer, and before my 11th birthday, my biological father would give me away, and I would grow up in an orphanage in America, and he kept my brothers and my younger sister.

I wanted to kill myself when I was 10, and when I was going to jump off a building, I saw my mom. And she was like, "You have so much to do. Go back inside." And I went back inside, and I was like, "Okay, I had a hallucination. This is gonna... I'll get over this." Went to college, met the next person who would abuse me, my husband, and I started my first business there in a very abusive marriage, uh, with $250 and a car that went in first, third, and reverse.

And I got 30 under 30 three times before I was 30 for that business. But when you are homeless at the age of 10 and you don't have food and all you have is abuse and hate and a lot of anger at you and you don't understand it, you either crumble or- Yeah ... you adapt, and I became an adapter. So I would just mirror everybody.

You know, if they liked something, I liked something. If they hated something, I hated something. If somebody was gonna hurt me, I would tell them they didn't have to hurt me. I would go along willingly. They didn't have to- Hmm ... physically hurt me. And once I realized that you could control situations, it kind of just led to like, "Well, maybe I can control my reality in some way."

And so I went down to one location, and then I was like, "Well, what am I gonna do?" And I went to my girlfriend, and I didn't know what she did. I knew she worked in the NFL, but I didn't know what she did. And she said, "You have grown this little bitty dinky dog biscuit company to this mega thing where you're on the cover of magazines here in Dallas, Michelle.

You are a, you are a phenomenon." And I was like, "What?" And she goes, "But you're a publicist." And I goes, "What's a publicist?" And I had to, like, go into the internet and Ask Jeeves, 'cause Google wasn't around, and it said the person that did what I did. And so from that point forward, I realized that everything I was doing was leading me out of the worst situation possible.

Mm-hmm. So as you listen to my story or as you listen to this interview, remember, each and every one of us came from the same cloth and we all have the same 24 hours in a day. Mm. And what we do with it is dependent on what our... how much we've healed and how much we perceive ourselves to be of that reality.

Anjel: Mm, beautiful. Well, I wanna, um, spiral back to your mom telling you to go back inside. So, uh, it sounds to me like that was a vision, right? Yes. And so this is- Well, I attempted

Michelle: suicide, uh, in my adult life as well. Yeah.

So was that the first time you really experienced a spiritual intervention or had vision, or were you vision- No, um, when I was- ... visionary before that? Yeah ... when

Michelle: I was about six years old, I was riding my bicycle down the street, and all of a sudden my doll flew out of the basket, okay? It had a little, you know, petal flower basket.

My brothers had bikes with, like, snake diamond or diamond snake or rattlesnake diamond something, you know. Copperhead bikes, whatever. Mine's like the daisy. But now the doll flies out, I hear, "You will never be a mother." It was so loud. It was like all the cars and everything stopped, and I was like, "What?"

Anjel: Mm.

Michelle: And so I knew in that moment it was something that was coming and, and I didn't really understand it 'cause you're a little kid.

Mm. And then the night that my mom died at the hospital at MD Anderson, we were at the connecting hospital. And I woke up straight up, and it was like 3:00 in the morning, and all the kids were in that room, and my dad was in the other room. And I s- woke up and I go, "Mom died." And my brother... I wake up my brother William, he's my twin brother.

We're 11 months apart, and I go, "Mom died." He goes, "I know." And then the phone rang, and then... And we can hear it in my dad's room, and we can just hear him go, "No, no, no." And then he opens up the little connecting door and he said, "Get dressed. We gotta go get your brother," because my brother was at the hospital with my mom.

Anjel: Wow.

Michelle: Um-

Anjel: Okay. Well, it sounds to me like you, you know... We talk about vision here, but I wanna just, for our listening audience to, to hear how it's been received by you.

I've heard clairvoyance, which is you saw your mom. I've heard clairaudience, which is you heard you're never going to be a mother, and then claircognizance, which is where you woke up just knowing- Yeah ... that your mom had passed away. So these are all, you know, much deeper- Yes ... spiritual senses that we all have.

And you're also a visionary in terms of being able to start and manifest and grow businesses. Yes. So for our listeners here, many of whom might be innovators or f- people thinking about founding something, I'd love to have you speak a little bit about your journey of receiving a vision for a business- Okay

Michelle: So, I had got a recruitment... You know after, after school they put you with a recruiter to get you to get a job, right? And so this guy had put me with this medical copier company, and I had been in Europe for three weeks going all over before starting real life.

And, um, my dog Nixon was being babysat by my husband's sister, then husband's sister. And, um- All over Europe, this yellow lab just kept showing up and showing up, and I go, "It's like Nixon's on vacation with us. Nixon's everywhere." Well, Nixon had died on the first day of our trip, and they didn't wanna tell us.

And Nixon, I think, suffered. And, uh, s- whoever hit him, picked him up and took him to the vet and tried to save his life. He didn't live. The day that we got the phone call in Europe, it was the same thing. I woke up and I just had this knowing that something had happened to my dog, and we, we see this e- email or, or he's like, "Let's go call my mom if you're so sure," and we run down to the phone booth, and we call the United States, and Nixon had died 18 days ago.

Like, I have to do something to honor this dog. And he was like, "Absolutely not. We- you need health insurance, you need this, you need that." And I was like, "Why? I'm not sick. Why do I need anything? I'm not sick." And I had a dream that Nixon was a waiter in a restaurant, and he was bringing everybody food. So the first idea was to have a restaurant that was dog-friendly, and there wasn't anything in Dallas that would allow that.

There was no restaurant rules. There was no dog-friendly restaurant rules. So I was like, "Well, what about a restaurant for dogs, like a dog bakery?" And we didn't have dog bakeries at the time. Three Dog Bakery wasn't a thing. And, um, I just came up with this idea, and, um, I didn't have any money. Like I said, I had $250 and a very angry husband.

Um, I racked up about $31,000 in debt trying to make it happen. In year three he was like, "You need to give up." I said, "I don't know what give up is. I'm a Latina."

Ad: Yes.

Um, you know, everybody can find a reason that it won't work, and people want their belief to be that reason. And you have to understand that your belief is tied to a thought, and that thought was given to you. You didn't create it.

Anjel: Mm-hmm. And so

Michelle: when you're in a belief that you need more money, or you need more research, or you need more followers, or you need more information, then you're right.

You are not- Mm-hmm ... going to be an entrepreneur, and it's not gonna work out for you, and you should just stay where you are, because you're committed to your resolve that it won't work, and you're absolutely right.

Anjel: Mm-hmm. But

Michelle: for everybody else who is listening today and says, "I... Well, how did you do that?

Anjel: Yeah. And we're gonna stop right there, and we'll come back and let our listeners know how you actually did that.

But right now, listeners, are you a leading visionary or in the role of leading other visionaries? If you're interested in finding out more about how you can receive support for getting your vision out of the air and onto the ground in a way that's both impact and income producing, the best support is found in collaboration with other leading visionaries, which is why we've created the Creative Age Leader Lab.

Discover more about this opportunity at leadingvisionariespodcast.com/creativeageleaderlab. Consider joining our community and sharing your feedback and takeaways from each episode. Be sure to share this show in your own spirals of influence with the people who you think might benefit from our content.

matrilineage there. Her people. Little shout out to the people in Colombia the people in Cambodia, and the people in Czechia. We'll do all the Cs today.

Michelle: Ooh, okay. And we will

Anjel: be right back with Michelle J. Lamont.

Ad: The Leading Visionaries podcast is brought to you by the Creative Age Consulting Group. Are you the one who thinks differently? Who is called to create a significant conscious change in the world? Who is seeing and dreaming of a better way for your industry, your community, humanity? Creative Age Consulting Group is hired to guide leading visionaries just like you, who want to break through the static in order to clearly express and confidently enroll support for their vision in a way that makes it inevitable that it will come to pass.

The book is yours by visiting gift.leadingvisionariespodcast.com.

Anjel: And we are back with Michelle J. Lamont. You can actually find out more about Michelle at michellejlamont.com or follow her on any of the social platforms using that same name, Michelle J. Lamont. You will find her everywhere. So before we went to the break, we were talking about your first business with the bakery situation.

Michelle: Okay. So for those of you who are thinking, "Well, it was a different time," no, it wasn't.

No, it wasn't. So what happened was one of the things with growth is you have to get bigger equipment. You can't make it out of your kitchen, whatever it is. And so I was just, I was running, and I was like, "Well, you know, who has bakery equipment?" You know? And as I was running, I passed this donut store, and it's like 6:00 in the morning, they're always up.

I didn't say for dog, I just said, "Here's all the ingredients." I didn't want them to pre-judge it. And I said, "What do you guys do when this bakery is closed?" And they were like, "Nothing." And I was like, "You wanna rent it to me?" And they were like, "Well, we don't bake on Saturday and Sunday, so you can be in the back while we're working, or, you know, you can be here and you can rent it for $400 and you can have it for eight hours each day."

So $200 a day, $400 for the week, and I could make $10,000 worth of product. And I was like, "Done." And I went back home and I told my very angry husband that I found another solution. Um, and he was like, "See? You can't get a mixer. You gotta get a mixer, a Hobart mixer. It's $27,000." I was like, "Oh, I got one for 100 bucks."

Everything in my first store I had found at garage sales, uh, and dumpsters, and we just painted everything the same color so you couldn't tell. And we had to spend money on the sign, and I had to spend money on other things. But let me tell you this. I went to 13 banks, and all 13 banks turned me down, including five female vice presidents.

I went back to the first bank. I took him all of my ideas and all of my things, 'cause I saw a picture on his desk of a girl that looked just like me, and I was like, "I must be his daughter's age."

Anjel: Mm-hmm. And I sat

Michelle: down in, in Ram- in Mr. Ramsey's office in Dallas, Texas, in Garland, Texas, and it was like a community bank.

Anjel: I am not leaving without money. Okay. Yep. So I just wanna pause you because- Yeah ... I, I, there's so much richness here that I want our listeners to hear. Okay. Okay? All right. Number one, Michelle was not afraid of debt, not afraid of putting herself and her business into debt.

One of the biggest things that leading visionaries need to do is be willing to take those risks. So that's number one. Number two, she was super creative. She went to garage sales and trash cans to, to fit up her first store in the mall. Yep. So you, you gotta be resourceful, you've gotta be creative, you've got to think outside the box.

She's an enroller. She's a deal maker. She made the deal with the bakery donut people, and then she went to the bank and said, "I'm not leaving here without money." So, uh, and she wasn't willing to s- to take the nos. 13 rejections, and then she went back to the beginning. So this is another very important point.

When somebody rejects you, you don't need to think that that's, it's the end. So tell us more about how you sat in his office until you got money.

Michelle: Well, Ralph Ramsey, he said to me, "Michelle, you actually need $50,000 to open this store." And he goes, "What do you have?" I said, "A Jeep that goes in first, third, and reverse, and sunroof doesn't close."

And he brought another guy in to convince me, and another person in, and I wasn't gonna take it. I wasn't gonna take it. And so I just went in and I said, "Ralph, let me tell you something. I am not leaving without something. You're the last person that I have on my list. I know that the future version of me and that girl in that photo are counting on you to believe in me right now, and I need somebody to believe in me, and you are that person."

And he gave me 15,000 instead of the 50. And on the first grand opening weekend of the mall, along with that store, I made $37,000.

And I went into the computer, and I pulled up the sales, and I wrote him a check for $10,000. And I said, "I'll have the other five paid off in 30 days," and I've never taken a loan since.

Anjel: Oh, my God. All right. So the other piece here that I think is really important for our listeners to hear is s- as much as you believe in yourself, sometimes you have to have another person that you have enrolled to believe in your vision, who's willing to put money on the table, who's willing to take a risk, and that's exactly what happened here.

So Michelle, we've only got a few minutes left, and in the next few minutes, I'm curious if you'd like to talk a little bit about, you know, where you've gone since. Where have you gone since your bakery days? And what's in your, what's in your big vision now? Like, what are you looking for now?

I made, uh, I was profitable in 40 days. I made my first $45,000 and I- my second client was network television. Um, my third client was the NFL. So I was at a very fast trajectory. The universe really liked that. And through that time, I became a raging alcoholic and because I had not healed from my sexual trauma as a child, I had an addiction to pornography and it was killing me, and I did not have any connection with my husband.

We had lost all five children. He was not the man that he should be and so I had to divorce him. And when I divorced him, I found out that I did not have a 401, I did not have savings, I did not own the house I thought I owned, I did not have any money 'cause he was... I don't know what, but he had a girlfriend now.

This is ridiculous. I should be where my mom is, you know, whatever the situation is. And I had a spiritual awakening. I went back to school to get my graduate, so mindfulness cognitive therapy degree because I was either going to do it again or solve the problem, and I decided to solve the problem. And when I did, I understood what was wrong with my brain, how I hadn't healed, and how I couldn't expand.

And once I worked on that, it was like I gave the universe one day. I gave it 30 days. So I wrote a little list and, like the Jim Carrey list, and I said, "I get to have a one-on-one with Oprah, I get a coaching client that pays me $10,000 a month, and I'm gonna have a TED Talk. And if you can't give me those things in the next 45 days, I'm gonna go back to corporate America."

It's called Manifesting Miracles. I am just like 100,000 shy of a million downloads now. Um-

Anjel: Congratulations.

Michelle: Thank you so much. I've never advertised, I've never marketed and I have a huge contact list and a huge connection. People do put- book me on television shows and stuff like that and, and that's always fun.

But the most important thing that has happened from my podcast is that 14 families, 14 people, 14... And you have to think of that times 1,000 because we impact 1,000 people no matter what we do in our lives. An average person who lives in a very rural town will still impact 1,000 people in one life. 14 different people have decided to not end their lives because I started my podcast

Anjel: Mm-hmm.

Michelle: better than that ...

Anjel: yeah, you can't get better than that. The, the income is great, but the impact is- Yeah ... is really huge. There's no, no value you can put on, on- Money

Michelle: is just energy ...

Anjel: yes, it is. All right. Well-

Michelle: And, and, and if you don't understand that, you'll always be stuck in your problems

Anjel: yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for that- Oh, thank you. Yes ... final sparkling insight, Michelle. We are at the end. So listeners, we do love feedback. Please let us know what you thought of today's show by joining our community, sharing your takeaways, asking questions, or submitting guest suggestions.

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