(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.

Go Unlimited to remove this message.) I had, what, three promotions in one year.

I drove a luxury vehicle.

I was married to an extremely handsome young man, and I had a brand new daughter who was two years old about to turn three.

So on the outside, things looked great.

Phenomenal.

Looked good, smelled good.

Everything was good.

However, on the inside, I felt like walking to death.

I had decided that I wouldn't be living, so I was going to take my life in January 2013.

It helped me to realize what most of us are missing.

Number one is purpose, and number two is clarity of intent.

You have no clue what we actually want.

You can ask somebody, you go on the street and you ask 10 people, what do you want in this life?

And you will get 60% of them incapable of answering that question.

So I created that value to show folks no matter where you are, no matter what you've done, you still got some value.

And if you can tap into that value, you can change not only your life, but the lives of those who you are meant to touch.

What's good, everybody?

It's your guy, JoJo Simmons, and welcome to the For Good Podcast, where we focus on the good, never the bad.

We're measured by what we do, not what we have.

Today, I'm sitting down with Alicia Reese, a transformation coach, international speaker, author, and host of the Trigger AF and Got Value podcast.

From surviving domestic violence to breaking generational cycles and helping executives and entrepreneurs align their success with fulfillment, Alicia's work is all about building lives that not only look good, but feel good.

Let's get into it.

Thank you, Alicia, for coming on to the For Good Podcast.

Hey, thank you for having me.

How are you feeling today, first of all, before we get into these questions?

Listen, life is life, but you know what?

I'm a part of the wake-up list, so I'm not going to complain, although I could.

It's all good.

Life happens for you, not to you.

Always keep that in mind.

So no matter what you're going through, it's all supposed to happen.

Trust me.

Let's get into it.

For those who don't know you yet, how would you introduce yourself today to my follower base, my fan base, my listeners?

Oh, absolutely.

I'm a spark plug.

I am a spark plug.

I help folks make intentional and take intentional actions to create a life that they choose and not a life that they accept.

You can either take what people give you or you can decide.

Like Jay-Z said, and I don't care nobody say greatest rapper alive, but he said, he was like, you know, I have no desire to go with the flow.

I am the flow.

And so I teach people how to harness their own energy, their own desires, their own intentions to create a life of their choosing.

Wow.

Just off the first answer, you've said my favorite word and that's intention and intentional.

I, you know, I'm very big on intention.

I'm very big on, you know, if you're going to do something, do it with intention and make sure that you have a reason on why you're doing it and a reason on why you want to, you know, present, you know, go to that kind of space.

So like intention is big for me.

And I think intention is big for people to, you know, to see success.

Cause you know, one thing I always remember being a kid in, in, you know, one of my, you know, one of my friend's mother's was like, you know, never drive around aimlessly because you have no, if you have no aim or no target, then there's really no plan.

And that's, that's never, that's always a appetite for, you know, destruction.

Right.

So I think being intentional is always one of the biggest things that I try to tell these young dudes now growing up is like, have a plan, but have an intentional plan, have an intention.

Right.

So I love that you use that word and that's what you do, uh, from corporate consultant to author to transformation coach, um, which role feels most natural for you?

Like what's your, I wouldn't say what's your favorite.

You probably love doing them all, but what's the one that feels like this is just so me is this is natural.

Uh, transformation coach.

It is, it really does excite me to see people go from having no clear vision to deciding, Hey, no, this is what I want to experience.

This is the type of life and lifestyle I want to lead.

And then making decisions and making choices and then taking action up against whatever that is.

When I was, I don't remember how old I was.

I just know the year was 20, 2012.

I had decided that I wouldn't be living past January, 2013.

Like for me, I was done with this whole life thing.

I felt I had nothing to offer, that there was nothing about me that made sense for me to stay here.

So I was going to take my life in January, 2013.

I met a young girl in December, 2012, who looked on the outside, how I felt on the inside, on the outside.

I had a brand new home built from the ground up.

I chose the tiles, the marble, the everything.

I had what, three promotions in one year.

I drove a luxury vehicle.

I was married to an extremely handsome young man.

And I had a brand new daughter who was two years old, about to turn three.

So on the outside, things looked great.

Phenomenal.

Looked good, smelled good.

Everything was good.

However, on the inside, I felt like walking death.

And I met a young woman who looked how I felt.

And I asked her, can I help you?

And in asking her, can I help you?

It helped me to realize what most of us are missing.

Number one is purpose, and number two is clarity of intent.

We have no clue what we actually want.

You can ask somebody, you go on the street and you ask 10 people, what do you want in this life?

And you will get 60% of them incapable of answering that question.

They can tell you what they don't want, but not what they do.

So for me, when it comes to transformation, when I met that girl and asked her, can I help you?

In six months, not only did she have now her high school diploma, she had an idea of what she wanted her life to look like, but she also had a place to live.

There was so much clarity that was able to happen in six months.

I was like, yo, her entire life is now transformed because where she was going and where she is now are polar opposites, simply because I assisted her in providing a path.

This is before the company, the business, none of that was even a thought, but that transformation, like all day, every day transformation coach, you wake me up and like, hey, I need you to help us get from A to Z, got you.

I can create a plan to get there.

I love that you do that for people, and I love that, you know, there's a lot of people out there that were, you know, just like you, it looks all great on the inside, but on the inside, you know, it looks all great on the outside, but on the inside, they feel there's no purpose, they feel there's no intention, they feel like they're just kind of going through the motions, and it's funny that you say you ask a lot of people, well, not funny, but it's interesting that you say you ask a lot of people what do they want and they don't know, and that's because most people just want to survive, right?

Most people just want to wake up every day, pay their bills, and just be able to eat and survive, but that's not what they truly want, that's what they need, right?

But what they truly want out of life is something you can go after, but it takes that transformation, it takes that person to help you transform, so what you're, you know, the work you've done, not only with that young lady, but with other people is amazing, because people, sometimes they just need the information, they just need that person to tell them that you're not being all you can be, and there's a way to be all you can be, it's about choosing who you want to be, you know, you can either choose to get, you know, take what, like you said, take what life gives you, or choose to take life and live it the way you want to live it, so, you know, I think what you're doing is important, that's amazing.

But the thing about that piece, though, is it takes effort, and if we keep it above, most people don't want to put forth effort, because that means you have to do something that may make you uncomfortable, that may disrupt the norm, that may pose a risk, and most people are like, nah, I'm good.

Yeah, trust me, you know, hard work, a lot of people, some people look at hard work like it's like it's work, but if it's work that you're putting in on yourself as an investment, that's what I always say, like it's not work when you're investing into yourself, because, you know, the results of that is only a better you, so whether they look at it as work, or they look at it like an investment, you know, that's up to them.

One thing I love, you say you often talk about helping people build lives that look good and feel good, you know, I always say that too, I look good, I feel good, I smell good, everything's good.

What does that actually mean in practice to you?

In practice, like I said, I literally, I lived it, like I don't teach anything that I haven't experienced, I'm not that type of person who those who can't do, nah, I do, therefore I can teach, and so for me, if on the outside, you got it going on, you're traveling, you got, you know, awards, you're making the money, you're doing the things, but on the inside, you're anxious, you're sad, you're lonely, you're mean, you're nasty, no disrespect to my, you know, mean-spirited humans, you are incredibly sad, like if you have all of those polarizing experiences where on the outside, you know, you look at it, you read off your resume, you read off the things you do, and it sounds great, but on the inside, it's a consistent theme and thread that you cannot seem to get yourself out of bed, you're having to always pump yourself up, and I understand that there are lots of things that are happening that could cause that, and also, if it is a consistent thread and theme through your life, and that means your life looks real good, but it feels real bad, and you can choose to accept that, like if it's working for you, hey, I don't force grown people to do nothing they don't want to do, however, if it is not working for you to where you literally feel every day that doing the simplest things is a challenge for you, then I invite you to explore what different could be for you.

Yeah, that's amazing, and I think that's probably why people probably come to you, they feel the authenticity, because they feel there's somebody they can relate to that's been through it, that's speaking to testament, right, speaking through experience, so that's the main thing that's important is that you can not only say, you know, not only give advice, but say you live exactly what they're going through, so that's really dope.

You've also worked with big brands in corporate entertainment and media, what lessons did those experiences teach you about alignment and resilience?

Oh, baby, baby, I learned a lot.

The first thing I learned, everything that glitters is not gold, and I don't like, we go to glittery stuff, you know, we like it shiny, especially me, like I like, I like nice things and nice things like me, and also everything that glitters isn't gold, and some of the things that you ask for, you truly aren't prepared for, and because you haven't worked on yourself enough, you can't even manage what comes with what it is that you're asking for, and so don't be so quick and get so frustrated when sometimes you feel you don't get a certain thing, because you may not be able to manage what that thing is, and it's not that you're incapable, it's simply you're not ready.

It's kind of like baking a cake where you can have all the ingredients to make the best strawberry pound cake imaginable, however, if once you put all those things together, put it in the oven, if you take it out too soon, you turn it upside down, it's going to spill out, not because it didn't have the capacity, the ability, all of the ingredients, it wasn't ready, it was not ready, and so what I've learned in working with those big brands, some of them were highly successful, they are still here, some of them are no longer in operation, not because they were not good, and these are major names, it wasn't because they were not good, it was simply because the timing was not right, and they were not ready, or heck, sometimes I was not ready, because we got to call a spade a spade, you got to own your ship, okay, you got to own your stuff, and so understanding what readiness is and being okay with no, and I know that's something nobody likes to hear, me too, I don't like that, don't tell me no, I don't like that, call me spoiled, it is what it is, and also no sometimes is a yes for what you truly want, for what you truly need, and be okay with that.

Ooh, you ain't here preaching, girl, you ain't here preaching, she ain't here dropping bombs and gems, I love it, you know, you speak so well, and I see that you co -host the Triggered AF and Got Value podcast, what inspired you to start those platforms, and what conversations are you most passionate about sparking on those platforms?

Ooh, my, so Triggered AF is one, Triggered AF podcast is one that is with my co-host Dani Bordeaux, she and I, we went to college together, we have seen each other through some of our darkest moments, from, you know, miscarriages, to divorces, to weddings, to the birth of children, and we've seen ourselves through so many different phases of this life thing, and the one thing that has been constant between she and I is, is we challenge each other to do better, to be better, we'll call each other to the front of the class, like, hey yo, I love you, and also, you, you need to do a little better, and so what we noticed during the panorama, and I call it a panorama, but during the panorama, we noticed there were so many people who were triggered and who were festering and sitting in such pain and sadness, and so we were like, well, what if we were to take the conversations that we have with each other to help folks overcome their triggers, because you can either deal with your triggers, or your triggers gonna deal with you, either way, you get to choose, because I am all about conscious, consensual choice, and so we started having conversations from race conversations with a white dude talking about, okay, what is it about young white men as to why, you know, they have a proclivity, not always, they have a proclivity to when I'm upset, I shoot things, and then we had conversations with married men, you know, what is it sometimes when you get so irritated with your current circumstances that you decide to bring people in that disrupts your home and disrupts your life, what is it sometimes with women who are high achievers to where, yeah, you're a high achiever, but you're mean, you're nasty, and nobody can work with you, like those type conversations that many people don't wanna have, we have them, and so for Triggered, it was always a, no, we wanna break, like, you have to disrupt the pattern, and energy once in motion will remain in motion, you have to disrupt it, and so for us, Triggered AF came in to disrupt that, to provide an alternative, and we don't just vent, we provide actual tools, because we're both coaches, and so, okay, hey, this is the issue, get it, got it, great, now, hey, here's some tools that you could use, take the meat, spit out the bones, it works for you, works for it doesn't, move that along and keep it pushing, so that was for Triggered, and then for Got Value, for me, like I said, because I lived through an entire, what, 20 years of my life where I felt like I had no value, my plan to end my life was because I literally felt as if I had no value, I had nothing to offer the world, I felt that my daughter, I was worth more to her dead than alive, that is the furthest thing from the truth, but I literally felt as if I had no value, so I created Got Value to show folks, no matter where you are, no matter what you've done, you still got some value, and if you can tap into that value, you can change not only your life, but the lives of those who you're meant to touch.

I love that, you started two platforms that matter, you know, one with the uncomfortable conversations that need to be had, and then one that's really, you know, inspiring people to let them know that they have value, and that they mean something, because a lot of people do need to hear that, so I love that, and that's, you know, same reason I started this podcast, the For Good podcast, was to only push out positivity, because I feel like, you know, we're always hearing all the negative stuff, and we're always hearing other things, but we're never hearing the inspirable stories, we're never hearing the everyday working person, we're never hearing the everyday, you know, transformation coach that really went through it to get to it, that had, you know, now is able to do it for others, and lead others to the water, so like, that's why we started this platform, just like you started your platform, is really to amplify the things that need to be spoken about, right, and that's, you know, ultimately what we want, is we want these conversations to really inspire people, and really make people think, and really join in on a lot of these conversations, so I think that's great work that you're doing, for sure, I see that you also earned your MBA, congratulations, that's no small feat, how has the education shaped the way you approach your work today, whether it's coaching leaders, building businesses, or hosting conversations?

Yeah, so I, for me, I believe everything is a tool, right, I came from really impoverished beginnings, when I was born, instead of taking me to, you know, a beautiful nice home, my mother brought me home to a shack, there wasn't a nice house to bring me home to, it was a shack, and that shack was infested with rats, one of the nights, my mom, she found a rat in my bassinet, and then that day, she made an intentional decision that she was going to do whatever she had to do to get us out of that situation, she worked three jobs, and she was able to save enough to put a down payment on a house, a house that we were able to live in for 15 years, yes, it was in the ghetto, but it didn't matter, it was better than that shack, so for me, she had always told me, not having it is never a reason to not go get it, and because of where we were born, we would need something else to get us out from where we were, whether it was some amazing skill, or talent, or education, again, I told you, I had self-worth issues, so I didn't feel as though I was talented, so I said, okay, I'm gonna have to choose education, so I simply chose education, and then I leveraged and used that to just keep upskilling, like for me, there is nothing I can't learn, and nothing I can't do, if I decide I'm gonna do it, so I just simply use education as a tool, and it's not for everybody, and everybody should not go to college, because it's very expensive, if you don't, you know what I'm saying, know what you want to do with it, but for me, I just use it as a tool, and as a relationship-building avenue, so like, okay, I can meet these people, I can do these things, where can we either partner, collaborate, or just, you know, add value to each other.

I love that, education is a tool, so all the youngins that listen, know that education is a tool, like you said, like she said, not everybody should go, maybe it's not for everybody, but if you do go, use it as a tool, because definitely, knowledge is power, I know that sounds very cliche and old, but as I get older, I read more books, and I want to learn more words, and I want to learn, you know, just from people, knowledge is definitely power, and it's the powerful part about knowledge, is the opportunity you have to pass it on to people that don't know, so that's the power in knowledge, and that's what I love about, you know, education, so dope that you got, you know, you found your way with that, and found other ways to use it, so that's amazing, I want to get into some little, you know, some vulnerability questions here, some personal growth questions, you've shared openly about surviving domestic violence, and later realizing that you were repeating some of those same cycles, what was the turning point that helped you break free from those cycles?

A couple of them, actually, so I was married to my abuser, however, that wasn't the first person who abused me, that wasn't my first domestic violence relationship, and I always say, it can't always be everybody else, if everybody around you, and it just keeps happening to you, you are the common denominator, so again, let's call a spade a spade, and tell ourselves the truth, so for me, I had to tell myself the truth, and I was like, okay, my level of self-worth, you know, people say, oh, self-worth, I got a lot of self-worth, a lot of high self-esteem, polar opposite for me, I had no self-esteem, and I had very low self-worth, and so I would choose abusive men, like children chose candy, because I grew up in a very abusive environment, from physical abuse to sexual abuse, it was just a lot of abuse, and so for me, I correlated that to love, and so I would seek that out, because that is what I thought love looked like, and so the first turning point was literally, when I was planning to end my life, I was like, but everybody doesn't experience this, this isn't something that happens to everybody, so if everybody doesn't experience this, there has to be something different that I can choose, and I had the young girl I had worked with, her name was Naomi, and I say her name often, from the program that I created for her, I actually turned that into a non-profit organization, I created a program called Life After Foster Care, Now What?, within six months of me working with her, we were partnered with the UPS Foundation, Miami Marlins, the City of Miami Gardens, we had celebrity folks who sat on our board of directors, all the things, I had won an award for my work with foster youth, and I was separated from my ex-husband at the time, and he brought our daughter home, and I guess he saw the award behind me, and he looked at me with this hatred, and he was like, you think you all that, but you're nothing but a piece of ish, and then he started to, I don't know how it escalated, we started arguing, that he reached back to punch me in my face, and my daughter, because I guess he didn't realize she was still there, she came and got in between us, and I was like, and she started talking about, don't talk to my money that way, that is not okay daddy, you need to leave, mind you, this little girl is three years old, or about to be three, and she had, I was like, this girl got bigger balls than me, she can say, she love her mama, she love her mama, listen, but she was stronger, she had more wherewithal, more of a presence, more confidence than I had at 20 plus, yeah, and so for me, that was the first thing, and it was just like, yo, wait, if she can do this, then I absolutely can, but she could just throw her little cell phone out the way, so if she is, you know, unafraid, I can be too, and then the last straw for me was, I was, he followed, my ex-husband followed me from our home, all the way down, I lived in like Fort Lauderdale, followed me all the way down to Miami with his shotgun, my girlfriend saw him following in the car, and I was like, no, no, no, he's at home, he's with our daughter, and they're like, no, he's in the car, and I was like, what, no, not possible, I called my sister, my sister's like, oh no, he has the car, and I was like, oh, okay, and then I asked her, I was like, hey, can you check to see if the gun is still there, she checked, and she said, no, no, it's not there, I stayed at my girlfriend's house that night, because I said to myself, I was like, okay, I no longer want to end my life, I feel as though that I have value now, there's something that I want to leave the world, and I'm not ready to leave yet, so I need to make a different decision, I went home that next morning, I talked to him, and I asked him, well, what was your plan, you know, you had the shotgun with you, what was your plan in following me, and he told me he had planned to take my life, and I said, okay, I'm done, you got a week, either you get out, or I get out, you can have the house, you can have the car, you can have everything but my child, but I gotta go, for me, that was the catalyst to like, yo, this is, you playing around, like, you acting like people won't end your life if you keep accepting this type of behavior, so I ended it right then and there, like, oh no, no other discussions need to be had, like, yes, I'm good, I'm done, we're done.

Wow, so growing up with those experiences, how did you begin that process of breaking those generational cycles for yourself and your family, you know, your daughter, like, I know it's a process after saying I'm done, what was the process like, how was that for you, for anybody listening and maybe going through that same process?

So first of all, a piece that I feel that not enough people talk about, so my ex-husband was paying all the bills, like, unless, again, I'm a firm believer in keeping it a buck, I'm a straight shooter, I don't like to fluff it, you have to make money to sustain yourself, there is a level of financial abuse that sometimes abusers will wield over you and will use to control you because you don't make money, I wasn't making enough money to do my life, and so when he, you know, left and he said, okay, well, I'm not paying a mortgage on the home anymore, it almost went into foreclosure, I had to call the mortgage company and tell them, hey, I'm trying to figure this thing out, I was in an abusive marriage, I've walked out of it, I don't have the money right now, I do want to pay you, I don't want to lose my house, my daughter still lives here, and the lady was such a godsend, I cannot tell you her name, I don't even remember the mortgage company, all I know is she said, well, here, what I'll do is I'll take the three months that you're behind, I'll put them on the end of your loan, and then we can give you 30 days so that you can pay this next bill, she didn't have to do that, but because I was willing to say the hard thing out loud, that, hey, I'm struggling, I've left an abusive situation, I do not want to lose my home, but I also need help, and so for me, it was first, I needed to make more money, and I know people are like, oh, it's always about the money, oh, yeah, listen, for those who are listening in the States, we live in America, it's expensive, for the bare minimum, it's expensive, and so I started a for-profit company because I had a non-profit at that point, I then started a for-profit company and was picking up extra hours, hey, what can I do?

I had to make some more money, and then from the money-making side to where like, you know, in your hierarchy of needs, your baseline needs got to be taken care of before you can get to self-actualization, you got to be able to eat and not live under a bridge, so I started creating ways to make more money, and then I got into some therapy, I got into some therapy because I was having such a difficult time processing how I let myself get this deep, and it wasn't the first time, so I can't just blame it on him, because it was me, too, because I accepted it, people only do what you allow, if you won't allow it, they won't continue to do it, because you don't even allow space for that, and I am not at all blaming victims, what I am owning is my own stuff, in that I kept choosing something that I knew was causing me harm, and that's on me, so yeah, those are two, that's how I started, those two.

I love your vulnerability here, I love, you know, you kept it real here, and you're a testament to it's not over, you know, you're a testament to it gets better tomorrow, you're a testament to you've been through this, you've gotten through worse, so you know, what else can life throw at you, right, and I think people need to understand that here, that as you told your story, and you told what you went through, it's like you could have easily ended your life, you could have easily said it's over, you could have easily said I have no value, but you decided to do what's hard for yourself, and invest into yourself, and go make money, go get a therapist, go do everything that you needed to do to reset your life, refresh everything, and I think that, you know, thank you for the vulnerability, and yeah, man, it's a deep story, and I'm appreciative of you sharing it, and speaking about reset, we'll come out of the deep waters a little bit, much of your work is with leaders and entrepreneurs who are high performing, but burning out, what's the first thing you would do to help them reset, speaking about resetting?

Oh, so there's this thing called the Thrive Audit, my co-host and I for Trigger Day podcast, we crafted it, and if you go to justthrivenow.com, you're able to download it for free, but what it is, is it helps you to identify where there are gaps, again, like I said, most people can't tell you what they actually want, but they can tell you what they don't want, and so what we did is we, and it's a simple, it's a quick, easy PDF, you could type in on the PDF, but it allows you to identify in six primary areas of your life, what your life looks like, and then what you want it to look like, then you're able to clearly see where is the gap between what I want, and where I'm at, once you can identify what that gap looks like, then you can take what I call your MVA, which is your minimum viable action, it is the smallest, most intentional step that you can choose to get exactly where you want, case in point, if you say, okay, I want to run a marathon, the journey of a thousand miles start with a single step, so if you say you want to run a marathon, you've never run a mile, okay, bet, first things first, let's walk half a mile, minimum viable action, what are you going to do, your MVA, what MVA are you going to choose to do that will take you from a sedentary place of where you are, to what is not working, to where you want to be, the best way to eat an elephant is a piece at a time, you do not have to try and swallow it whole, that's too much, you're going to choke, and depending on how good you can get it out your throat, you're going to die, so instead of doing that, just take your MVA, which is your minimum viable action, take the smallest, most intentional step towards exactly what it is that you want, you don't got to do it all at once, but you do have to take one step.

I love it, now you speak a lot about, we've spoken a lot about value in this conversation, you know, you use that word a lot, and you say it's central to your work, how do you help people discover their true value beyond just titles, money, or achievements?

Absolutely, listen, we got another one of those on the website too, however, it's, there is a discovery mapping tool that I use with a lot of clients, and it's literally four pillars, in the first line, or in the first column, you list all your skills, I mean every skill you have, from your ability to double dutch, your ability to braid hair, your ability to, like all of every single thing, like your ability to communicate well, whatever your skills are, list them all in column A.

Column B, I want you to connect,