You’ve probably heard of Poo~Pourri, a spray that traps unpleasant bathroom odors with natural oils (moms/wives everywhere owe her a debt of gratitude for it!). While you may not have heard though of Suzy Batiz, the amazing woman behind the product has an equally inspiring story.
Since Suzy built an empire on the unlikely platform of bathroom stink, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that she’s known for her willingness to tackle taboo topics and challenge societal norms. She had to overcome huge challenges and multiple “failures” to reach success. In the end, Suzy credits her mindset and willingness to follow an “alive idea” as the reason she was able to create a company worth $500 million without borrowing a cent or enlisting a single investor.
Episode Highlights With Suzy Batiz of Poo~Pourri
- Suzy’s incredible story of overcoming childhood trauma and later business failure, bankruptcy, and personal breakdown
- How Suzy turned everything around and went on to found a $500 million debt-free enterprise
- The four signs of resonance and how to recognize an “alive idea”
- How the idea for Poo~Pourri came about
- The unique contributions women entrepreneurs have to offer
- What to do if you don’t like where you are in life
- And more!
Episode Quotables
You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete. – Buckminster Fuller
Resources We Mention
- SuzyBatiz.com
- Poo~Pourri Or get it on Amazon
- Supernatural.com (natural cleaner) – Use code WELLNESSMAMA20 for 20% off! (one per customer please)
Books Suzy Recommends
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
- Loving What Is by Byron Katie
- The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Your Life to the Next Level by Gay Hendrix
More From Wellness Mama
Did you enjoy this episode? What other questions do you have about Poo-Pourri? Please drop a comment below or leave a review on iTunes to let us know. We value knowing what you think and this helps other moms find the podcast as well.
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Katie: Hello and welcome to the “Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and I am here today with someone I really look up to and admire. Suzy Batiz is a serial creator and expert in entrepreneurial intuition who has built an empire by tackling taboo topics and shaping culture by challenging societal norms. She probably, or she doesn’t recognize conventional boundaries and she operates on an expansive plane of anything is possible. She had an idea that she described as alive and she developed it into an exponentially growing debt-free business, worth $500 million without borrowing a cent or enlisting a single investor. You’ve probably heard of her company known as Poo~Pourri, which is a cult favorite with amazing marketing videos. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about that today, but also more importantly about her mindset and her vision and how she’s worked through some pretty serious challenges in her life. So Suzy, welcome and thanks for being here.
Suzy: Hi Katie. I’m excited to be here.
Katie: I’m so excited to chat with you and to start, I would love if you could kind of talk a little bit about your story because from the outside, I think a lot of people may look at you and see a highly successful entrepreneur with this company worth hundreds of millions of dollars and think that your life must have been pretty easy. And I think that’s always the temptation when we see someone successful. And I know that in the past you’ve been really vulnerable and honest in sharing your journey. So let’s start there. Has life always looked like this for you?
Suzy: Yeah, so I always say I checked off all the dysfunctional boxes. You know, I grew up in Arkansas and my dad was a bipolar alcoholic. My mom was addicted to pain pills. My first memory was cooking at 4 years old for my parents. So, you know, just a really troubled childhood. My parents got divorced when I was 10. I’ll take you through this fun little ride. And my mom met my stepdad and it ended up my stepfather abused both my sister and I, sexually molested both of us. I was married at 18 to get out of the house, bought a business at 19. I was divorced and bankrupt by 20 years old. I tried to kill myself when I was 21 years old and I got into an abusive marriage. It was about four years sleeping with the enemy. I had two children at that point. Had to get my children out of that marriage. Met my ex-husband. We were together for 26 years.
And when I was 38 years old, I had this idea that, it made logical sense. I knew that a person’s culture had to match a company’s culture. And I was recruiting at the time and I had leveraged everything we had and was in the final stages of getting $5 million in funding for this concept I called Greener Grass, and it was a recruiting website that matched the company’s culture to a person’s culture. It’s a very logical, great idea that was about 20 years ahead of its time.
But I had everything really leveraged and the stock market crashed in 2001 and I lost everything. So, you know, prior to my second bankruptcy, my life was about fight, fight, struggle, struggle, just try to keep food on the table. I always thought, Katie, that if I could make money, then I was gonna be happy, you know. It’s like if I were successful, then I was going to be worthy, that people would respect me and then I would actually be valued in the world. So I really pushed through and I clawed and I did, I sold out a lot like we do when we’re on this path to business, and they say business moves that are really out of integrity when you really think about it, but it’s what you do. You know, you go to those meetings with the people you don’t even like, you know, because you think you’re gonna get something in the end. And so then I, yeah, filed bankruptcy when I was 38 and went on a spiritual sabbatical for about four years, I was pretty done. I wasn’t pretty done. I was completely done with business. I didn’t want to have anything to do with it anymore.
Katie: Wow. I feel like you’ve lived multiple lifetimes already.
Suzy: Yeah. Yeah. That was it. And it was really just crazy. I always tell people, it’s like being at the top of the mountain when you lose a ski, like if you’re on a black diamond, you know, really steep mountain and you lose a ski and you’re falling and you can’t quite get, you know, you can’t quite get back up. That’s the way my entire first part of my life was. It was really just clawing and pushing through. And then whenever I filed my second bankruptcy, I decided, like, that’s it. Like I don’t want anything to do with business again, as I said, and I just went through a lot of anger. I had Disturbed, I don’t know if you know this, but it’s like this really, you know those heavy metal band and I would, you know, put it on my Walkman, I think back then, I don’t know what it was 2001 and I would just play this really angry music, just screaming. I had all this, like, anger and rage built up.
Now I know it was actually somatic processing. Back then, I didn’t know, I was just filled with rage and I was just painting the walls of my house and faux finishing. And then it ended up that I lost, you know, both the cars and the house was taken away. And then I was just sitting with my own self, and I often tell people, I lied. I lied to everyone. I lied to my children, which when I tell people what kind of state I was in, I say, just imagine this, imagine you have these beings that are supposed to love you more than anything unconditionally, which they do. And you’re in such a bad space, you can’t even tell them what you’ve done. Like that’s where I was, you know, to lie to the ones that love me the most.
I told them we needed to move, that I hid everything from them. And some people say it was protecting them and it was to a point, but it was also, I was just so ashamed and embarrassed of what I had done. Like I’d really lost everything again. But what happened, Katie, was that clean slate, which I often call the luxury of losing everything, gave me time to really, what I had to do was I had to face myself, you know. I hadn’t faced what I was doing, what I was up to in the world, and that’s what I did. I spent four years doing that to the point that I actually just, I was working a little bit, doing interior design on the side, but really, I went to a workshop from Byron Katie called Loving What Is, and I walked out 10 days later, just, like, happy for the first time in my life. I had peace and I had happiness and I had zero desire for money or, you know, just really enough to eat. That’s it. Like that whole desire for success was removed from me because I had found what I was looking for inside myself for the first time in my life.
Katie: Wow, that’s beautiful. And it really resonates deeply with me on a personal level too because my parents were great and I have no complaints about them, but they did focus a lot on achievements. And so I also came out of childhood with kind of that, like, I need to succeed because then I’ll be worthy and then I’ll be good enough. And I also have sexual abuse in my past, not through family members, but I think that that is sadly something a lot of people listening have also experienced. If we just look at the statistics, we know that it’s really, really widespread. And like you, I went through a lot of therapy and I realized after that time that I had gotten very quiet and I was always very buttoned up and very calm. And so for me, the rage part actually, like, brought my voice back a little bit. And I was surprised because I had kind of prided myself on not having to feel emotions and never being angry and all of these things. And that was part of my process of working through it. And you mentioned a little bit already about Byron Katie and Loving What Is, but I know that this is something many women have gone through. So what were some of the things that really helped you, with anything else in working through that trauma?
Suzy: Yeah, so it’s pretty radical. What happened with Byron Katie, you know, it’s not for the faint-hearted, but what happened was, is I was always victim. So the first 38 years of my life, and I have a lot of victim stories to tell you, you know, it’s like I can very much, I lived in victimhood. And the problem with being a victim is there’s really no power there. So I remember the first time Katie was talking to me about being molested and she literally just looks at me and she said, ”Did you say no?” And I just stopped. And I remembered the first time that my stepdad, he was sitting on the couch and he had exposed himself. And I remember him saying, ”Come over here and sit.” And then all of a sudden I tuned in to, there was a feeling in my body that was just screaming inside, you know, I was like, oh my God. Yet I kept walking towards him almost through a force field. Like, I literally…and I did that in order to be loved, you know, loved. Like I wanted to be loved that much or appreciated or I didn’t wanna cause any confrontation, you know, lots of stories which are very, very, very valid.
So when I tell the story, sometimes people get really triggered because our trauma’s very sacred, you know, and it’s a very tender space. But what happened is in that recognition of going, oh my God, like I never said no. And it’s not even about me not saying no. It’s about noticing that there was something in my body that knew this wasn’t right and I didn’t speak up, right? So once I really started focusing on my little tiny sliver of responsibility, that’s when I started getting freedom again. Going, hold on. I can say no now, right? I’m not that little girl.
So I started disassociating from that past and that brought me a tremendous amount of freedom. Same thing with my abusive husband. Katie said, ”You know, if you had a lion in a cage and you stick your hand in and it bites, you know, who’s fault is it?” And I’m like, well, you know, it’s the lion because yeah, but you stick it in there again and it bites you. And then the third time, how many times did you keep going back? I’m like, all the time. And like I said, I mean, we can look at, well yeah, I had a troubled childhood. Of course I’m gonna go back. I didn’t have any self esteem. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. All of that is valid. But what I found is I was making a choice. Whether it was, like, a sliver or even a 1% of that whole involvement was mine, that was the 1% I could grab onto and find power in that. The rest of the story, I have no power in it.
Katie: Yeah. There’s so much freedom in that responsibility, but I think you’re right. It is a very tough step. And we do hold our trauma sacred and protect them because those are painful places to go back to. And I know from hearing you speak in the past that you also had a somewhat long battle with depression, which is something I get a lot of questions from readers and listeners about. So how did that play into this journey? Was that something that you were also facing during that time?
Suzy: Yeah, so I was facing that more after or before my second bankruptcy. So I was depressed from…I had my daughter at 30 and I was on Zoloft for seven years, so from 30 to 37 I was on an antidepressant. The doctors told me I had clinical depression, that it was from my family, you know, from my father because he was bipolar. I’m not bipolar, but they said that depression ran in my family. And I really believed that story for a number of years. And what happened was, I was drinking alcohol because the antidepressants made me feel weird and I would just lay depressed, like, literally in bed, like, for months and months and months. You know, I could get up and get the kids off to school and then I would just, I would go to work. But every night, like, anytime that I could find time to get horizontal and tap out, I would, and my husband at the time, you know, took care of the kids a lot.
And I’m looking back at what I know now. My mentors, now Gay and Katie Hendricks say that depression is sadness and anger that’s unexpressed. Not saying again, again, these are trigger spots, that there’s not something clinical or physiological, but also there’s, and I could see where I had so much unexpressed anger and sadness that when after my second bankruptcy and I started just raging, that was the first time. It wasn’t even about the bank-, it was about the bankruptcy, but it went back into my entire life, you know. It’s like I was done with everything. What I knew is I wasn’t going to kill myself again or try to kill myself again because I had children and a family, right? I wasn’t gonna be that irresponsible, but I felt really, really, really trapped. But yeah, depression is one of those things that I really…I can tell if I start getting a little bit depressed, I start tuning into myself and go, “Where is sadness and anger that I haven’t expressed?”
And generally speaking, I can express it or really feel it because we’re not taught to feel, we’re taught to suppress. And once I can really start feeling it, it’s like the flood gates start opening and that shifts and that moves. And that’s become a practice that I do is really, if I start feeling depressed, it is so hard, Katie, to not curl up and you know, smoke pot or drink and just curl up and go away because it’s such a familiar pattern. And I have to really feel, like, just feel which I’m still, you know, years later, 15 years of self help later still opening those muscles to be able to feel because it was a lifetime of conditioning.
Katie: Yeah, absolutely. And so you went through this four-year period and you said you had this rage. Was that something you were doing intentionally or was it just completely intuitive at that point that that’s what you needed and your body knew that and you just had to express it?
Suzy: Yeah, it was completely intuitive. I couldn’t stop the rage. It’s just like, it was just spewing out of me, you know? And I was, you know, that bitch, you know what I’m saying? Like don’t get near me because I will tear you up, right? And the reason was because of all the suppressed anger and rage that I had from my entire life that I had never had an outlet. You know, women don’t get angry, right? You’re not supposed to show your anger, then you’re a bitch. It’s like, are you kidding me? I had a lot to rage about, so I would just rage privately. And now of course in somatic therapy, you know, I really, I always bring people into my, you know, I live in a church and I always bring people into the place and I’m like, just scream, let it go. Everything is safe here. You know, this space is big enough to hold any amount of anger that you have. And it’s amazing what that release does.
Katie: For anybody who isn’t familiar, can you explain what somatic therapy is and how you found that?
Suzy: Yeah, so somatic therapy is body-centered therapy. And I had done, you know, for a few years I had tried cognitive behavioral therapy and didn’t really ever have any shifts, you know. And I had a yoga teacher and I asked her, I was having a pain in my body and she said, oh, have you…you know, she just explained something to me and I said, ”Oh my gosh, I’m exactly going through that. How’d you know?” So I started working with her and I remember the first time, Katie, that she asked me, she said, ”Where do you feel that in your body?” And I literally said, ”What body? Like what are you talking about?” And she said, ”Well, like, where do you feel? Do you have any sensations in your body?” I was like, ”No.” And she said, ”Well, just kind of tune in. Is there anything like in your belly, is there any feeling in your chest?” And then I could, she said, ”Even if you just make it up, is there something?” So that began my journey and to even realizing that I had a body. I know that sounds crazy, but I was so operating in just my mind, I was so disconnected from my body.
And then I started saying, ”Well, you know, I do, I feel like a lump, like a really sick kind of feeling in my belly.” So somatic therapy is body centered therapy, you go first into the body and see what the body is telling you and then, you know, work through it, work through a process with that. It’s actually, Dr. Daniel Amen has scanned my brain. They’re a huge brain research center and they said that somatic therapy, hypnosis and EMDR are the three things they’ve seen physical changes in the brain. So yeah, I’ve done a lot of somatic body centered therapy because you’re not gonna figure it out…You try to solve the problem in the mind, but the mind is where the problem is, right? It’s the body is there telling you what’s actually going on in the mind. The mind can be tricky. So it’s hard to figure it out from where it originates.
Katie: Yeah. I have this same experience, the first time I was asked that, I was like, what do you mean? How would I feel emotion in my body? I don’t understand the question.
Suzy: Yeah, exactly. I’m like, I don’t know this, but really that’s how disconnected we get from abuse, from being told, oh, don’t worry about it. That feeling in your gut, you know, we all have those radars. Don’t listen to it. It’s okay, Uncle Johnny’s fine. You know, it’s like, it’s just a lifetime of conditioning, which is, I feel really sad about.
Katie: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like we’re in an amazing time now though. There’s books like ”The Body Keeps the Score” and Byron Katie’s work and just all of this work coming out that are helping people make that connection so much more and I’m excited for that, to really, like, understand that more and to see the changes in people. Also, I wanna circle back. You said you lived in a church. I feel like I cannot let that go without a little explanation.
Suzy: Yeah. I bought a church about four years ago. It’s an old St. John’s Methodist church and it’s really beautiful. And I converted it into my home and I call it the temple of transformation. It’s about 15,000 square feet. It’s really big. But what’s so beautiful about it is I kept telling my husband like, “I need a place to expand into.” My husband at the time. “I need a place to expand into. I feel like I’m…” and I didn’t realize that that big of an expansion, but it’s been really wonderful, like a wonderful womb of transformation. And now my friend Amy Jo Martin has had women’s workshops in there. I’ve had women workshops, we can hold, like, 13 people. It’s just a really, really, really beautiful space and I feel truly blessed.
I always knew when I first bought it that it wasn’t gonna just be my home, that it was a work play, like a center where I’d have a lot of people. And I also knew that at some point I would donate it to a foundation to help women in transition. And I’ve had, like, five women already live with me, five entrepreneurs, just to take some of the pressure of finance. You know, a lot of times, it’s we’ve gotta live. So I let them live up, you know, six months at a time, just to kind of, so they can invest that time and energy and money back into their business. Yeah, it’s a really special, special space.
Katie: That’s incredible. And how old are your kids? Do they still live with you or are they living their own lives now?
Suzy: No, they’ve lived their lives now. They’re 31, 30 and 25. And I often tell my children that they survived me. They would have a different story, but they are literally the most accepting, beautiful humans that all passionately do their own internal work all the time. Like they are just, they’re incredible warriors. Because doing this work, as you know, Katie, it takes courage. Like there’s one courage to try to be successful. The bigger courage I think is to go in, feel and shift internally all of our patterns. That’s what really courage is.
Katie: I agree. And to circle back on that, so you said you had basically sworn off of entrepreneurship forever and you were never going to have another business until you did. So I’m curious what caused that shift at that point in your life when you had already been through so many struggles when it came to business and finances and all that, but then now we all know that you have this amazing company, so what caused that internal shift in you?
Suzy: Yeah. So I was sitting at home literally, you know, listening to Gangaji and crying a lot and crying from a point of grace. You know, I really was experiencing, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced grace, but grace is where your heart is so full and you’re in so much gratitude that tears just come out, right? And I experienced that a lot in my life now as well, but I was just so happy and so satisfied with my life that I really had zero desires beyond just feeling that state that I was in. And I was at a dinner party and my brother-in-law asked if bathroom odor can be trapped. And it was like a light bulb. Like, you know, people go, oh, the light bulb went off. I felt zing at my body. It’s like everything went in high def. And I immediately stood up and I said, “I can do that with the oils.” Like I just knew it. Everything in me knew it.
And it took me nine months, lots of trials, lots of testing. But I call this, when I’ve gone back and reverse engineer it, that I followed an alive idea. It was because this idea of felt different. It was literally like electricity in me. It was like my passion with this concept together, like we’re married and all of this energy, like I’m researching all night, I’m contacting people all over the world, I’m mixing every single day and Katie, every single person in my life thought I was crazy. I didn’t care, right? It’s like, I don’t care what you think, it’s like, I know I can do this. I didn’t think I’m gonna create this, you know, mega company. I just wanted to solve the problem because I knew that I could do it.
So I just kept working and mixing and working. And finally one day my husband at the time walks out of the bathroom. He was testing a lot, but he had, like, three bowel movements a day, thank God. And he walks out of the bathroom and he says, “Oh my God, we’re gonna be millionaires.” I was like, “What do you mean?” And he’s like, “Do you realize what you did? You literally just took the smell out of,” his actual word was shit. You know, that’s what you did. And yeah. So that started and what I’ve realized the difference from the past is that there was resonance. There was an aliveness. There was a feeling in my body.
Number one, I didn’t want success, nor did I need it, right? Because I was already, I’m happy within my own being. Like I’m settled. And yet, this idea was pulling me towards it. It was so powerful. I couldn’t stop it. I was literally, it was like I was obsessed. So I started just running towards it and then literally one step after another, like I didn’t know anything. I’d never made a product before, knew nothing about the business. But what happens is when you’re in this aliveness and in this flow, everything kind of works out for you. It’s just easier. So I’ll often tell people, if you’re in struggle or things aren’t working, you know, look, is it an alive idea and is it actually flow? So I’ve spent a lot of importance. People often ask me, like, how do you know which idea to follow? And I said the one that turns you on the most, because when it turns you on, meaning I have four signs of resonance.
One is some sort of body sensation. Normally chills, like, oh my God, I got chill bumps when you said that, right? The second one is increased energy. You feel like you don’t need that caffeine or coffee, you know, it’s like you’re up all night researching. It’s like a compulsion almost. You’re being pulled towards is what I call it. The third one is synchronicity. Like things just happen. You just happen to see the billboard. It’s like, oh my God, I was just thinking about that. And the fourth one is the idea does not let you alone, like it does not go away. You know, it keeps coming around and around and around. And that was the difference. Before I was always going, oh, this makes sense. A plus B, there needs to be a website on culture. This makes sense.
But recruiting, number one wasn’t my passion. It was a really, really good idea. Had it not been for the times and you know, the circumstances of what was going on in the world at that point, it could have worked, but the issue with those ideas that are only logical is it’s like a math proof, like a formula. Like you have to get it perfect or the end result doesn’t work. And with following an alive idea, what I call it, where you’re just turned on, that seems to have more resilience. And I spoke with Dr. Bruce Lipton about this and I called and asked him, “Are ideas alive?” And he said, ”Why do you ask?” And I said, ”Well, I have a theory that those 75% or whatever percent, you know, businesses fail or because they’re created with the logical mind, they’re not created from this aliveness that I’m feeling.” And he said, ”Tell me more.” And I told them and I said, ”I believe that the ideas that I follow seem to have more resilience and they seem to go easier and they’re more successful than the ones that I’m doing out of fear, out of need or just out of logic.”
And he explained to me resonance and dissonance, and resonance is when you put two ideas together, that there are two energy waves, so it’s two energy waves together and they create more energy together than they do apart. When you look at them, the energy waves are alive. They’re traveling at the same speed and the same wavelength. And you put those two together and they’re more together. So I was more with my alive idea than I was without it. The idea was more with me than it was without it. Does that make sense?
Katie: It does make sense.
Suzy: Yeah. And then dissonance is the opposite when you have energy waves that aren’t at the same speed. It doesn’t mean one’s right, one’s wrong, one’s negative, one’s positive, one’s enlightened, ones not enlightened. None of those rules apply. This is just physics. Physics doesn’t care. It’s literally your energy waves don’t match. Your vibration doesn’t match whether it’s the idea or, you know, a person, you put those two energy waves together and they have less energy together than they did apart. So me with that job, that’s I say killing me, you know, we say those things, this job’s killing me. It literally is. It is literally killing the very cells within your body and within your being because you have less energy in that position, in that job than you do without it. You’d be better off without it, finding a place that actually turns you on. So that’s been just a passion of mine is getting people towards what I call turns on. Because with that idea, with that house, with that, you know, person, with that job that you’re excited about, that literally gives you more energy than it does before you were in it.
Katie: I love that. That was a great explanation. And I’ve also heard you compare kind of birthing this business to birthing a baby. And you mentioned it actually took you nine months even to fully develop the idea. I’m curious, does that still ring true? Is it like raising a child as well, has raising this business sort of been like parenting in a way?
Suzy: One hundred percent, it is, oh my gosh. Probably even more so because at least a child will, they squeak or cry or moan, right? So we have some sort of internal program system within us that knows what to do. What’s interesting about a business is you still see those squeaks and moans, but they’re done in financials, they’re done in whether it’s resonating out into the world, whether there’s problems happening in the company. And I often say that there’s no business problem that isn’t versus spiritual problem. So I go back and look at what’s the core energy dynamic going on in a problem, and then I can figure out how to keep the energy. For example, if your child keeps, you know, spitting up food, right, you’re gonna go in and you’re gonna try to determine why that keeps happening.
So I look at patterns in my company. For example, I had four COO’s and I’m like, why? What’s going on? Am I just, can I not hire? So I went into EMDR and what I found out was I had a problem with support. Do you remember earlier in my life, and I had, like, five assistants, like literally, like, people were just bouncing off like flies. And I’m like, I’m either the worst, you know, hiring person in the world or there’s a major problem. And what I found out when I went into therapy and digging into this is that my first memory was cooking at 4 years old. I didn’t have even a template for support in my body and in my being.
So I had to go back and reprogram that now, you know, a year and a half later, I have the most incredible VP of Operations. He’s like the most solid guy in the world. I have an incredible assistant. But what I did is I went inside myself going, what’s going on energetically here within me that’s actually manifesting out into the world, right? So, for example, my child keeps screaming, I don’t realize my hypertension that I have, right? It’s like, oh, okay, hold on, I need to calm my ass down before I start holding them. Like there’s just so many things you can do that you are co-creating with this organism. So what I did is I didn’t wanna go back into business. And I said if I do go back in the business, number one, it’s gonna be fun because I know you can lose everything at any moment, and what’s worse than losing everything is realizing you didn’t even have a good time doing it, right? So I’m like, okay, I’m going to have a great time. And that doesn’t mean don’t work hard. So that’s when other people, you know…I still busted my ass, but I’ve done it with something that I’m passionate about and I want to keep alive and I want to co-create and also I’m gonna learn about myself internally. When there is a business problem, I’m gonna look at how I’m manifesting this and how am I creating this because then when the problem is solved, I’ve shifted internally. And again, if the business goes away tomorrow, I’ve gained, that’s an asset within myself, a peaceful place. So that’s the way I’ve treated the business as this co-creating, living, dynamic organism that is here to show me all these edges that wanna drive me crazy. The same way a child will push you to those edges, right, is that projection and to see there’s no difference in a business, in my experience.
Katie: Yeah, that makes sense.
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Katie: And I know that you’ve been a mom and executive for a lot of your life and you’ve balanced this. And that’s a question that I get a lot and I’m guessing you hear it a lot as well is how do you do it all? How do you balance work and kids and how do you get everything done and not yell at your kids all the time? And a lot of questions related to that. So I’m curious if you have any tips or anything that you would speak to there, for those moms or those women who are feeling the overwhelm or feeling that struggle of trying to balance work and home and all of the things that we’re supposed to do in today’s world?
Suzy: Yeah, what amazes me, I’m constantly amazed how few people actually go to therapy. Like I’m like, are you kidding me? Like my, you know, my children go to therapy. For me, it’s one hour a week that I can just blech, right? Let everything go. I also have coaches around me all the time too. But even at that, that’s a minimum. Go to therapy. That’s gonna help you shift and change in balance. Do meditation, right? So there are things that you can do that you can carve out. And also as you’re doing that, when you start thinking about things as a spiritual problem, when I have a big issue in the business, it doesn’t have as much trigger for me. Or, you know, it’s easy to think like, oh my God, this is the worst thing that’s ever gonna happen. I’ve got to put everything into it and I’ve got to save it.
And really, when you fast forward, what I do is I practice my fast forwarding through my life. I look at the end of my life and I turn around and I think, “Will I even remember this at the end of my life?” Probably not. So if not, that helps put the problem into perspective. And also because I don’t have that desire that I have to prove something to you, I don’t overgive and overcommit and overwork. I actually do the opposite. I don’t work very much at all. So for me it says, what I would say, if you’re a new mom, get your butt into therapy, like, start shifting stuff inside yourself where you can relax a little bit and realize, is it a tough ride? Yes. You know, does it demand a lot of your time and attention and love and energy? Yes, but there’s no, there’s not a single pay off that’s gonna be greater because you will feel guilt, you will feel, you know everything that you feel. But also if you can put structures and boundaries around you, that you can still have both.
Another thing is to have, make sure that what you’re doing actually brings you joy and fulfills you. If it’s just a job, you gotta find something else to do, right, because you need to be filled. So then work doesn’t become this laborious thing, it becomes a place that you can go and play and enjoy. And then when you get home, you’re actually energized. You’re not depleted. So I know that’s a lot going on there, but I would first be in therapy, second, really carve out that 20 minutes a day to do meditation. I know it sounds like you don’t have that time, but you do. You know, do transcendental meditation training. It’s like 900 bucks, best investment you’ll ever make, and start finding those points when you can recenter and regroup and realize once you start doing meditation and you start realizing that any problem or any thought is really small and insignificant. So that’s what I would do. And that to me is balanced. When you love what you’re doing, it doesn’t seem like work.
Katie: Definitely agree with that sentiment. And my kids are still young. My oldest is only 12 so I’m curious for you as a more veteran mom, if you have any tips on the parenting side, things that, like, helped you on that journey or I know that you mentioned conscious parenting before. Are there things or principles that you used in guiding that journey with your own kids?
Suzy: Well, I’ll tell you, my gosh, the way I parented is the least probably proud thing in my life. I was really crazy. Remember, because I was 30, when I was 38, my daughter was about 8 when that happened. So she got the better part of me. But my boys, you know, they were, gosh, I’m 38. I had them when I was 23 so they were 15, 16 years old. They went through some pretty wild teenage years. You know, their life was very chaotic. But the main thing that I did do really, really well is regardless of where I was, I always taught my children, they have an internal GPS inside of themselves. And even before I went and took responsibility at Byron Katie, I always knew kind of just intuitively that there’s a radar system that we have.
So always taught them to do that and to trust themselves. They’re all rebels. They all have very alternative careers. I have always just, I didn’t get to do what I wanted to do when I was young. I wanted to be a fashion designer and here I am selling a poop spray. But that was always my dream. So I was really passionate about listening and helping guide, not guide down, but whatever they had interest in, we would explore it. It didn’t matter. I didn’t put, you know, one time my husband at the time, one of the boys played football and they weren’t interested. I’m like, what? And it was just so awful watching him flip all over the thing, but whatever they had interest in, I would support that.
So yeah, I would say just really they are little, but you know, you guys are just, you women and men are doing such a better job and you’re so much more conscious than we were, you know, like this was, you know, 30 years ago, I don’t know how much consciousness existed in the world back then. I knew I didn’t have any of it or very little. But what I did know is that they were just precious beings that were independent of me, that had their own energy. And what I had to do is basically keep them alive and support them as much as possible. And I also knew I can’t do it right, that I’m gonna screw it up. So if you are struggling internally, fix yourself, fix yourself, fix yourself as soon as possible. Put all of the energy you have going into career into going into yourself because every second of that will be manifested within your children.
Katie: I love that. I think that’s such an important thing to remember as moms is that independence that they have because it’s so tempting to want to, like, you know, wrap them up in yourself and love them so much. And we do, but also to realize that independence and that they do have that free will and that it’s an important part of them and to try to nurture that. I’m curious if any of your kids are entrepreneurs as well.
Suzy: They all are. So my older son is, he makes his money in Crypto. So he did the first Bitcoin meetups in Dallas and he’s done really quite well for that. So he does that all day long. My other son is into hydroponics and my daughter’s an artist in Brooklyn so they’re all very much in not normal jobs and they’re just figuring it out. They’re very entrepreneurial but not really in selling products. They’re doing literally what turns each of them on and I couldn’t be more proud. Like none of them have ever had a regular job. They’ve always just done whatever made them happy. And that makes me so happy.
Katie: I love that. It’s so encouraging to hear because that’s the one principal my husband and I really hope for our kids, if it’s what they want is to get into the entrepreneur world in some way. And so our focus has been finishing up their more traditional education by about high school. So that way they can basically, we can have an entrepreneur incubator with them and let them try out ideas and fail a few times because I think that’s actually, like, your story illustrates and mine as well. Like the failures sometimes are important steps and there’s lessons and there’s so much gratitude in those, but to create a place where they can have those failures, but while we can still help them.
Suzy: See, so conscious. I love it. I love what you’re doing. And that’s…one of my insights lately has been, I mean, we’ve all heard that failure’s a part of success, right? Like, yes, but what I’ve really, if you look at like a Yin and Yang, right, symbol, right? You have the Yin and you have Yang. What I’ve realized is that the more you can fill up, so let’s just add this in, fail and win and the fail may be the Yang part, right? And the win is the Yin part. If you look at that, my experience is the more you can fill up this failure part, the more actually that that the Yin part of what we call winning or success fills up. So if you look at, let’s just say a violinist, right? They go and they’re starting to learn how to play. How many times did they fail? Like over and over and over and over. When they had their 10,000 hours of failure, what happens? They become a master, right? But it’s because that Yang, you know, if I call it Yang, but it’s that failure, or what is conceived as failure. What happens, I’ve seen, we don’t talk about failure. We don’t admit failure. And we think that it’s actually bad, when I am with you. I think it’s actually good. So I would have your kids fail a lot. So if I had to do it over again, I would tell my kids, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, keep failing because you’re going to start figuring out success.
Katie: Absolutely. And then you also sort of develop an immunity to all of those insecurities and fears that happened in those first few failures that seems so scary, but they’re actually not. And so at dinner time with our kids, family dinner is one of our nonnegotiable. We don’t do anything that interrupts family dinner. And there’s a few core questions we ask them and one is, “What are you grateful for today?” And the second is always “What hard things did you try and fail at today? Or what hard questions did you ask today?” Just because I feel like you’re so right, that that is something, it’s very much a natural part of life and it’s not necessarily a bad thing at all. It can be a wonderful thing and that’s sometimes how we learn our best lessons. And not that we would ever, of course, wish failures or pain on our kids, but we know that that’s part of the process. And all of us have those things in our life that we look back and have these lessons from. So it was really important to me to kind of nurture a mindset that didn’t fear that in my kids.
Suzy: Yes, I would absolutely, I would actually encourage failure. So I would encourage failure because that means that they tried and they pushed it past their limit, right? It’s like you’re never going to get somewhere if you continue staying within these limits, like you literally have to fail if you keep pushing these boundaries. Yeah, I love what you’re doing. Keep doing more of that. Yeah. I love what’s happening with children and parenting. It’s like, oh my gosh, there’s so many conscious people being birthed in the world, like that’s where the world’s going to change 100%. And you already see it coming in. Kids are so much more conscious now than they were.
Katie: Exactly. It’s an incredible, exciting time and I think that lot in a lot of ways, I’ve always said this, I think moms are somewhat leading that charge. I think women and moms have tremendous power, more so than we realize and that I think people are starting to understand and step into that more. So as we get toward the end, I’d love to ask that of you. What advice or encouragement or just general wisdom from life would you have for women, especially in moms who are on this journey and have these struggles and are trying to find their own thing in life?
Suzy: Oh my gosh. So one of my favorite quotes, I’m gonna look it up right here while I’m talking. Well, I thought it would, is that you can’t change, it’s by Buckminster Fuller. And what he says is basically ”you can’t change the system within the system.” But you have to really, ”you never change things by fighting against the existing reality, to change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.” I have seen us as women fight system so much and it doesn’t mean we’re not getting ahead. We are. But if there is an opportunity to break away and start something new rather than fighting and trying to get this entire corporation to change, you know, so like if you’re in a job and you’re trying to get the school system to change, you’re trying, is you can do that and with enough energy and enough effort. But if you look at that, take that energy into creating a new school, you know, or going to a school that’s more resonant, like, or going to a job, you know, creating your own company rather than working within corporate America.
If we take all the energy that we’ve had in trying to fight reality and put that into creating something new, that’s where the world’s gonna change. That’s where you’re gonna change as a parent. That’s where you’re gonna change as a wife. That’s where you’re going to change as a mother, I hear it all the time. What do you do? I, you know, I have $1 billion investment fund, but these, you know, the two guys in the office won’t listen to the two women, we keep fighting them on everything. And I ask, like, “Did you get the investment?” “Yes.” “Okay. Do you have a noncompete?” “No.” “Okay, then why don’t you start your new company?” And people just look at me like I have four heads. And I do understand the energy that you’re using to try to fight and fighting’s okay. And it’s good, but that’s not all you need to do. Why don’t you break off, start your own company and build it the way you want to as a woman. That’s actually what I’m super into right now. Build the new schools. Build the new systems, build the new…and yes, it takes a lot of work and a lot of energy, but if you’re passionate about it, that’s how we’re gonna create change. To keep fighting the system is almost impossible to create change.
Katie: That’s such a great point. And I think as women, we’re kind of naturally in tuned to be creators and innovators. It’s kind of built into us. And so I think this is an exciting time and we’re gonna see a lot of that hopefully. Another question I love to ask at the end, because somewhat selfishly I’m an avid reader. If there is a book or books that have really impacted your life, and if so, what they are.
Suzy: Yeah. I mean, I would say probably three. If you haven’t had any spiritual journey or any spiritual awakening, first read ”Man’s Search for Meaning,” you know? So it depends on where you’re at. If you have had a spiritual Aha, like, okay, yeah, I know that this is a spiritual world. I know that I need more meaning in my life and you’re a victim, start reading, ”Loving What Is.” Do that. And then if you’re not a victim and you are spiritual and you’re already on your path, I love “The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks, one of the issues that I have, I tell people the hardest thing about business is actually, and being successful is expanding into all of the goodness. It takes a lot of energy to actually keep opening and keep receiving and keep expanding into massive amounts of energy.
That’s how you can create the container for more and more and more and more and more without spinning out or sabotaging or Gay talks in there about upper limits. So it teaches you about that. So it depends on which stage you are. But I would say one of those three books are awesome and then there’s another 20 more. I will be putting a resource page, I think it’s going up next week on my website where I explain a lot of books and all my podcasts are listed and everything.
Katie: Awesome. I’ll make sure we pull the link for that and put it in the show notes. Like I said at the beginning, I think a lot of people are familiar with your company Poo~Pourri and have seen some of the amazing witty marketing that you guys have put out. But I also know there’s a new project that you were working on right now. So can you talk about where people can find you and stay in touch with some of your businesses?
Suzy: Thank you. So yeah, poopourri.com is a before you go bathroom spray. Supernatural.com is a revolutionary, 100% natural, lowest carbon footprint, aroma therapy-based cleaning line. And it’s, I just say, wow, the scents are intoxicating. We just made the O list for April. Martha Stewart, it sold out in Goop in two hours. It’s just getting so much press, but it really is special. You’ve just got to smell it. You know, look online. You know what, let me see if we can get a 20% off coupon for that for you for the starter set. It is absolutely fabulous. I’m so proud of our, I call her my love child because I birthed her on the side, and then my brand suzybatiz.com S-U-Z-Y-B-A-T-I-Z.com is where I just wanna inspire, encourage and give entrepreneurs and women resources to be everything that they can do and create the life that they actually desire. But not only desire, but also deserve because it’s all available. I mean if I came from where I’m at and I have…like I’m happy. Money or no money, like I am a really, really…I’ve found peace and I love sharing that information.
Katie: Yeah. I totally love that. And I think that’s true success when you have found that peace and that happiness inside that doesn’t depend on anything external or certainly not money for happiness. So I love that and I love that you shared your story with us today. I’ll make sure all the links you mentioned are in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm. You guys can check there in case we get that coupon worked out. But Suzy, thank you so much for all the work that you do and for being such an inspiration to so many.
Suzy: Thank you and thank you for what you do and raising six conscious beings in the world, plus spreading that consciousness out to all the people you do. Just oh yeah. Got a little teary just tuning into what you do. So thank you.
Katie: Thank you to all of you for sharing your most valuable asset of your time with us today. We’re so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama Podcast.”
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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