From FOG to BLOOM with Lorrie Thomas Ross

Hello, and today, I am meeting up with a fellow mastermind sister on today's podcast. And it's funny because as I was listening to this interview, I recognized how many times I laughed. And it's really interesting for me to notice when I'm listening to myself, or re listening to myself, how much I want to edit, and delete, and redo. And so I really held myself back.

So you're going to hear some giggling In this episode, and I thought it was okay to leave some of that giggling. So as you're listening to this, I'm actually on a virtual retreat with Lorrie and with some of my other mastermind sisters. And it's the first time I will be attending a virtual retreat myself. But I am actually co leading a virtual retreat in March, which is for female coaches who are interested in learning how to integrate more about their human design in their business. So if this is something that you're interested in, go to https://rebeccatervo.com/align-retreat.

That's where the information is housed. And we have space for 10 people, we've already sold a couple of spots. And I'm just super excited to finally be bringing information about how to use Human Design for business. It's something that I've been developing, I've been integrating it myself in my own business, and I am so excited to pass it along.

So let's get started with today's interview with Lorrie Thomas Ross.

Welcome to beautifully bloomed, the podcast where we explore how to break you out of the box of rules and beliefs that are holding you back from the life you're meant to live. I'm your host, Rebecca Tervo. Join me as I share mindset tools, coaching conversations and Human Design to help you uncover your unique gifts and create the life relationships in business you desire.

Lorrie Thomas Ross empowers wonderful intentional women business owners via one on one advisory a super supportive rebel circle membership program and fabulous retreats via wild web women. She also leads web marketing therapy, Inc, an optimization firm that diagnosis prescribes and guides healthy, sustainable marketing solutions.

She's at www.lorriethomas.com.

Hi, Laurie, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited to have you here. Because you and I met about a year ago, probably a year ago. Because we're both in the retreat program. Right. And so and also we met in person, which was super fun.

3:04
Yeah, right. And then all the pandemic of all things too.

3:09
Yes. We went to Austin, we stayed together in a a really cute little place you found it was a great

3:23
And the dog. So cute. He had the dog with us. Yeah. So I love that. And we also, I love the fact that you were so I don't know what it was about you but you like to serve us food.

3:37
I felt like I just went long.

3:39
I just I'm like What is going on? You were always bringing food and asking if we wanted something. I was like, Wow.

3:46
So I am an Atlanta girl of southern hospitality.

3:49
I really felt pampered. You know, I appreciated it. And so we went to the retreats and stuff for retreats. And so now we're both kind of retreat leaders, right? You do retreats, too. And so, I mean, I'm curious because what one thing we talked about on this, we talked about how to bloom like how to bloom into life, right? And then you even said you had talks about blooming or some one of your talks was called that and I thought that's interesting. Do you have these blooming talks? What is that about?

4:20
Oh my gosh. So I don't know what it is. When I give talks. I'm either hired to be the morning speaker to kick off events. This is obviously pre COVID where I'm not a morning person at all, I find it really funny. Or I'm the new year kickoff, you know, like the January speaker. And so, especially for women's groups, and so one of the things that came up for me and I'm like super intuitive and so I just felt especially right now, I'm really big on like visuals and what comes up and I just kept feeling this energetic, like we need to open up. And so it was blooming. I think it was like blooming into your best self or something like that. And yeah, it was so fun. To talk about and the thing is just like in nature, I'm actually looking at flowers on my desk right now. flowers or plants, they have to grow in ideal environments, right is we can't grow if we don't have, you know, the nourishment that we need.

I love putting together custom talks. But it wasn't Yeah. And as we were talking because you have your bloom podcast, and so many of the floor visuals, running wild web woman, I use a lot of nature photos and a lot of nature analogies. So yeah, I just was very, very aligned.

5:37
And I remember also, you were saying at our last retreat, we were saying that you took kind of a step back of doing a lot, and you were just living like, in your home and making meals. And I was like that is so it sounded kind of delicious as you were talking about it, for some reason. That sounded good.

5:59
I had to actually write sometimes I use my blog as a way to write through my emotions, and I had to write a post on there's no guilt enjoy, because right now we're in the middle of this pandemic, so many challenging things are happening, and especially politically, you know, health wise.

And here I am, in my house, no longer getting up at the crack of dawn to make my daughter breakfast and throw her in the car and do the school commute and all these things. And I don't have to go to board meetings in person, all these things just got wiped out. And then I kind of felt like I kind of joined this, I don't want a club where I'm like,

No, I don't want to ever go back and do that. I don't want to do this. And so instead, I had this space, and even having my husband home, he's a consultant as well. And, you know, just being together and making meals and not just making meals for my daughter and I have been making meals for all of us all the time.

And just going down these rabbit holes of, you know, researching recipes. And yeah, it was absolutely amazing. And it's so timely, because I did have a major shift a few years back that actually was prompted by a car accident that made me stop and go, Oh, I am not a human doing. I need to go back to being a human being. And you know, mean, this looking at blooming, right, you know, these flowers aren't like, I gotta do all these things, right? They're there, they're there. They're being right.

And so it's important for us to go back and, and just be and to get connected with what we value. And it's not just our values of what we provide as businesswoman, but what we really value personally. And I value the ordinary, like I call it the extraordinary or, you know, the word extraordinary sounds so, so glamorous. I like the extra ordinary. You know, I like my animals and just kind of you know, floats around the house.

7:55
And you're a dog person we all know. Oh, and a cat person, right? The dogs and the cats.

8:02
And yeah, and it's late in the diehard cat person like the dog was a total accident. I haven't had a dog since I was a kid. So yeah, I love I love you know, making the rounds with my daughter. And like it's just it's the simple things.

8:13
Yeah, simple things. So once you were talking about this car accident, you've told me about this before this fog program or the fog talk you had what does that stand for that fog? And what did you learn from that?

8:27
So I was leaving a nonprofit meeting. I think it was like 2018 it was a meeting I didn't want to go to so I have two houses between Atlanta and this community called Sara Lee. My husband stayed home with our daughter in Atlanta, I drove to San Diego this meeting that I should go to that I felt obligated to go to went to the dinner, you know actually went to my ceremony house cleaned it, but didn't stay at it.

Because you know, God forbid, I stay in my own darn house like by myself. I had to come back to make sure that I was up in the morning for my daughter, mind you I have like an amazing supportive husband.

There's no reason I shouldn't have stayed but I felt this guilt of like, Oh, I'm a bad mom if I don't come home. So I got on the road. It was super foggy weather. I mean, the weather conditions were fine other than the fog. And I did my little essential oils and I'm like my husband, I'm like him on the way home, put my car in the purse and put the purse on the seat. You know, and I'm like, okay, I can't wait to eat.

I was envisioning sitting with Darrell and having the glass of wine that I didn't have at dinner so I can drive home safely. And all of a sudden, I'm like, what's up? Like, like, my car stopped like oh crap like that My battery died. And I'm like, Whoa, it's like super dark. I can't see.

And then these brights come at me and I hear this: Are you okay? And these brakes are like shining kind of on the side of my car. And I opened my window to yell like, I'm fine. Like I think my battery died or something. And no joke branches are going across my face.

Like as I roll down my window. I'm like wow. My gosh and I, and I'm, you know, I'm fishing around like to try to find my purse which had fallen to the floor to text my husband and I texted him my night and something like, I think I was in an accident. And the whole thing was just surreal. What had happened is I had driven my car off the road I didn't have my brakes on, and it's a road I've driven 1000s of times, and I went off the road, took air and landed.

There's a phone pole and two support beams. Miraculously, my car went in between, like, the fact that I didn't hit and like, kill myself was amazing. I mean, no joke, like the tow truck driver was like grabbing my arm and telling me like it was a miracle. I had to climb out of the trunk of my Subaru back and, and but I was at this point in my life where I was like, I've got this like, I'm the supermom, like I'm the volunteer.

I'm the business owner. I'm the wife. And yeah, and the police were even like, Who are you going to call to have you like who's going to pick you up and like, I'll just wait for you guys to pull my car out there. Like, this thing's not coming out tonight. And I'm like, Oh, I can walk home. I'm like, only a few minutes from my house.

Right? mind you. It's dark. Yeah, I was in this like, I'm okay. I'm okay. Yeah, and my wake up call. And of course, the next day my husband picked me up and was like, sweetie, I know you're gonna digest all this. And I'm like, No, no, like you don't understand. It was foggy. And I didn't know my brights on. But fog is fatigue, obligation, and guilt.

And I did not have the brights on and my own personal fog. And that obligation to go the meeting the guilt of not coming home that night where I really just shouldn't have, you know, and just I was so exhausted, not physically exhausted, necessarily, but mentally exhausted of, you know, as a mom, my text blows up with playdates and as a business owner, I'm making sure to keep all the plates spinning and take every you know, make sure everything's taken care of.

But on the outside, I just looked like this. I looked like everything was fine. My husband had no idea how much I was struggling. I didn't know how much I was struggling, because we get caught up on this hamster wheel of like, Ooh, okay, I've got this, I'm a super person.

And that was my complete, like, smack in the face of like, Okay universe, like, you've spared me to teach me this lesson. And it's a lesson that I feel so, so compelled to share with other women. And I've actually shared this on stages before. And I've had women come up to me and I can't tell you Rebecca, how many times I get the, here's my story.

I did a podcast recently where I connected with someone and we just had this great energetic connection. And she was like Lorrie, I was on the road and wanted to drive myself off the road because I had the fog. And I was like, and so so yeah, this, this whole thing of fog. But as soon as we can tune in to that, and you're like, Ooh, I'm feeling the fatigue, or Ooh, ooh, I'm doing this project out of obligation, not because I want to do it. And as soon as you can be like, oh, ding, ding, ding, shine the brights on it. That's when you can start to get clear. And it's so it's so simple. But it's so powerful.

13:05
Yeah. And I hear like, we almost get addicted, I think to the business, sometimes Run, run, run gogogo. It's kind of like, yeah, it's adrenaline or something. We get addicted to the chemical things going on in our body. It is a total

13:21
total addiction. Yeah, it's a false self worth, you know, I'm still worthy, but I'm just as worthy sitting on there. But you know, playing with my pets,

13:32
like I'm so valuable. But in order to be valuable, I have to do all these things. Right. And I think when you hear the shoulds in your head, that's another thing when you were talking, I was like, Yes, and when I hear I should be, or I have to that goes on in my head. I'm like, wait a minute, stop. I don't really have to do anything. You know, there's no shoulds

13:53
I know, it's not nice to shoot on yourself. It's really not or to shoot on others, you know, and a lot of people will shoot on us, which I get, you know, and I hear that word. And I'm like, Oh, it's like a total red light goes off for me. Nice. But what I share as like the kind of end all be all to really break this fog cycle or that addiction to chaos or wood.

You know, all of that is to say this: my favorite saying is that does not work for me. And so after my accident, I was like, this life doesn't work. For me. I mean, things like stupid things. Like I was paying all the Amazon bills and groceries just because it was easier for me to put it on my credit card. Um, and my husband and I are both

This is a second marriage for both of us. We have a very, you know, interesting, fabulous partnership, but, you know, like, we have separate checking accounts and stuff and yeah, and so I was like, I'm paying for more than I feel like I should even though you know, and he was like, why don't I just get your credit card with your name on it and I'll pay it. And I'm like, that's it.

That was easy. I'm like, shoot you asked for that earlier, but I actually had a couple coworkers that I had to have tough conversations with. So in this, this does not work for me. I have worked so hard and I'm such an advocate for a flexible, healthy lifestyle.

I built a business a really sustainable, successful business that was creating lifestyles for my co-workers, my employees, and not myself. And, and I had to have this in this does not work for me. And I just was so dreading the conversations, the conversations were so easy, it was okay. We just needed to know what you needed from us. That was that was it?

Yeah, it's so that does not work for me. And if you're a parent listening to this, that does not work for me with children. It works great with life partners. But even if you don't say those words, for me, I hear that if I get some, you know, here's the proposal. Here's the counteroffer. Oh, but but I can think, oh, that's not gonna work. But here's what it does. And as soon as you have that being, then you can move from problem to solution. That's

16:01
awesome. Like, it's such a short phrase, and you can just memorize it. Like that does not work for me.

16:06
It's non permeable. Yeah. Right. When you say that, it's like, there's no negotiating. Okay.

16:14
Yeah. Right. And I also love, like, what brought that up for me was like, This exercise I like to do with myself, like, this is the stuff I'm available for. This is the stuff I'm no longer available for, you know, it's just like reminding yourself where your boundaries and sometimes you, it feels like an ongoing thing. Because things seep in, it feels like they, without you even recognizing, right, it's this unconscious thing seeping into your life, and they kind of take up space, and energy. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that decluttering like, go through that quite a bit. Right?

16:48
Always. And it's a never ending process. And we, you know, like we create, or we create our life, we live it, we monitor it, and then rinse repeat. And we're always shifting and adapting. And there's things all add back in, but then there are things I'll take away. And so, but, but the same respect is reciprocal is so true. And you have to respect yourself to get that respect back. And that's where we need to grab the reins, and always be clear. And it's it's self work.

17:19
It is self worth. And it sounds like the opposite of what it is, you know, when you say, take care of yourself first put your oxygen mask on first, like that doesn't that sounds selfish. But yet you get so much more available to give when you have now taken care of yourself first. And that's just such a hard lesson as a woman to like, learn, like, I feel like we all have to learn it at some point. Because Yeah, it's not, it doesn't come easily, right? It's, I don't know, it's funny how you feel like, I tend to feel guilty, like wanting to do a footbath. Or I'm like, What is that? Why I have time, like, but still there's like this unconscious guilt about it for some reason, and like,

18:05
I say, shine a light on that guilt and go, I cannot tell you what, what manifests itself when I do give myself that space, you know, the, the work comes into my inbox, the opportunities emerge, and it's in it's like, oh, and this is me. You know, especially when I was you know, traveling and stuff. I was like, I, I could like time and I would get on the plane instead on the plane. And it was like, oh, okay, there's a new new opportunity. Because I was just in this energetic space where I was really aligned with, with what, what matters to me. And when I was giving, like, even just in nourishing ourselves, which goes back to bloom, right, you know, we have to always tend, you know, our garden, we need to fertilize and so the scenes, and it does begin with making sure that our roots are firmly planted.

19:00
And what someone said this one time to me when they heard I was gonna have a podcast called beautifully bloomed. It's like, yeah, Bloom where you're planted. And I was like, Okay, let's, I started thinking about that. What does that mean, Bloom where you're planted, looks like here's my life. Like, let's accept that.

I am me first. This is what I love about human design. I know I work with human design, and we'll talk about that. But it's like, oh, what if we could just accept that this is the life we're given. And this is the person we are, instead of trying to change who we are to be something we're not. Or try to follow someone else's path or whatever we try to do.

We try to fit in all the boxes. What if we just bloom as we are like where we're planted and in our own garden? Right, all the fun stuff. So great. Okay, so we're both manifesting generators. And I think one thing that sparked that in me too was we have this strategy in Human Design called respond when you said that you like more than more than times, you nurture yourself, you're in the energy I thought about and I know you know this about me because I just shared this with you, what's been happening with me that just the past couple weeks of just taking my foot off the gas, and trying to, quote, make things happen?
Because this is what we tend to do. Go make all this stuff happen. And instead of like, well, what if I just waited to respond to things? Because that's literally what we're in Human Design. Like, if you're a manifesting generator or generator, our strategy is to respond. So I like doing all this stuff too, to try to explain to people how to use your strategy. I'm like, Well, what

20:37
if I just did my own strategy? I was like, this is fascinating. So I colored it in my coloring books, like literally, I just decided I'm just gonna do things I enjoy doing. And guess what happened? I like I cannot believe all the opportunities that came in.

That's what when you said that is like, Yes, I totally get it. But we get out of that space of being in our own energy. And we start thinking, we have to go do something. Like we're not busy enough to go create something. Yeah, that is right. And, human design was so eye opening.

For me, it was something I hadn't been exposed to, until we met. And, you know, it's like, there's different, especially from the corporate world, you know, the corporate analysis and things like that. But to actually look at the fact that I am a manifesting generator, and then to work with you. And to understand what that meant. Yeah, so many times in my career, I mean, I can't even count, you should only focus on one thing, you should only serve one target audience, all these shoulds.

And I would hear that, and being that, like you, I like to rebel. I was like, that doesn't feel right. But thanks for sharing your idea. But then to see as a manifesting generator, we're actually fueled and we're most effective when we are touching different things and being the CEO chief enthusiasm Officer of my company, to know that that's where I'm best suited versus me trying to only do sales and marketing or only do one thing.

It's our unique personality. It's something that I've been touting for so many years, you know, running web marketing therapy, being the marketing therapist. I have people that get on my virtual therapy council will say, I heard I should be blogging twice a week, I heard I should have an email list of this size.

And of course, I say the you know, it's not nice to have people should on you. But here's the thing. Yeah. And then I'll talk to someone do you like to write? I hate to write Okay, well, maybe blogging isn't for you. Or you are magnetic on camera? Oh, well, maybe let's put that to work, or the opposite of I'd rather die than get on camera, okay, well, then let's not force you into that.

But aligning how you run your business with your own unique personality is something I've been a big advocate for in the marketing space. But to look at it as an entrepreneur, and then to have now and to refer to the women that I serve through wild web women to you with human design, so they can actually really do that self work and go, Oh, this is, this is how I operate.

So that you can, it's like, it's like just getting on this super expedited path. I mean, I wish I had seen that when I was, you know, my late 20s starting my business, but to give myself that, like, Oh, that's okay. And then also just to know how I respond to things. It's very eye opening, and just very helpful, you know, the more we understand ourselves, the better we can be in business and life, you know, as partners.

23:43
I know, I always say like, it gives you such a big permission slip, like to be who you are, because you'll resonate with so many things in your design that you're like, Oh, so I can do that. Like that just opened up my eyes for some things, too. Like you said, how come we're told you gotta focus on this one thing that's like, you'll never be successful unless you just focus right? You got to focus, focus, focus,

24:09
totally, and what works for one person and what you know kind of system might work for someone, you can take valuable pieces from that. But it was I believe it was Don Miguel Ruiz his book, The voice of knowledge, which is a follow up book from the Four Agreements, where it's being a healthy skeptic and actually having this doubt where you might go Hmm, that's interesting.

And that's and he uses the idea of dream like that's their dream, but it doesn't have to be your dream and what someone's reality is isn't the same for you. And so it's creating your own system and what works best for you and yeah, I mean, I find I'm not a morning person.

I'm not like we are one of our recent coaching calls and we talked about systems and I remember my body going like this But my systems are in place in my business they have been for, you know, 15 plus years. But they're, they're so ingrained in our day to day work world that we don't even think about them. But they're flexible enough, because in our world, we have to be proactive and reactive, you know, I have a client going on the news, I can't go,

Well, that doesn't fit in my box. I mean, I'm like, you know, our team is gonna pivot and make sure that we promote that all over social media for you. So just to understand that you can create your own path, and, you know, in in with the fog, you know, being in my car, having that accident, I was also I had this wake up call of my business is my, my vehicle in the art business for all of us is our vehicle to really drive and get on the path of life that we want, we just have to actually intentionally get behind that wheel and drive and there are times in our lives or our lives around us. And we need to say, that does not work for me in shift, but when you have this human design as your compass as your North Star, then you can start to go Oh, I see. I see how I tried to put myself in this situation. And maybe that wasn't the best fit for me. So

26:17
it's really so fun. And then also, I was gonna say, cuz there's some people who are trying to be generator types, like you and I are generator types. So we have all this energy, and we can do a ton of things. And it's amazing. And, and, and also, the other types that don't have the energy like we do are also amazing in their own way. But they're brought up to believe they need to go go go doo doo doo, and they're so exhausted, you know.

So it really is helpful if you know, for those listening, if you find out at least your type, because there's so many projectors trying to live as generators. And that's where they just get burnt out exhausted, it's, it's not your type. It's not how you're meant to be. And I just love that part of Human Design like showing people. Well, here's what here's, I mean, your life could feel so much better, right? Your energy could feel better if you just allow, like, for me, I allow myself to be interested in many different things at the same time.

So Lorrie, tell us how can women find you if you work with women, right? Yes, wild web women.

27:27
Yeah. And so, so funny about that. So I've run web marketing therapy for, you know, 15 plus years. And as I would speak at conferences, as the marketing therapists sharing my stress free advice, especially and I had a big aha, I was at a food bloggers conference in Chicago. The audience was, I think there was maybe one Man in the audience. And so I had, you know, walked from my hotel, given my morning talk again, like, here, I am the morning kickoff speaker.

And the hands go up, and I'm like, I'm ready for the social media questions like all these. And, and it was, like, I think I saw was that your husband? who walked by with your little girl? In the door shut? You know, it's like, so how, how do you get him to support like what you're doing? I was like, okay, that's not a marketing question. But I'm like, and, yeah, so we we got raw and in the topics that came up for women, yes, of course, the marketing, you know, especially with food bloggers, they get a lot of, kind of influencer deals of like, Hey, I quoted this much.

They came back with this. How do I handle it? So I'm like, yeah, I'm a recovering salesperson. I sold ads before all this web stuff. And so I'm like, okay, here's how you do this. But then it was the life balance. It was operations. It was, you know, so many things. And I walked back to the hotel, and I came back, my husband and daughter were back in the room. And I was like, sweetie, you know, how our clients have called us. They're wild web women for years. And he was like, yeah, I'm like, I want more women to be wild web women. And I want them to know, and to learn from what I've built, and to have access to my team who works with clients day in and day out, but yes to do too, you know, and so that's why I created this program specifically for women in the retreats for women. So that we have that one on one support that can really go deep. And it's it's so gorgeous, it's work that just lights me up and nothing makes me happier than to see women be able to, you know, here I am with my office as a laptop right now and my little power cord like there's my office like that's it I know. Amazing, but to help women create these really wildly wonderful lives and their businesses that vehicle to drive it it's fabulous.

29:43
I love that so where would people find you if they're curious to learn more about your wild women wild web women?

29:53
I know we we did notice that all those years ago yes for like WWE. So there www.wildwebwoman.com and You can find me there. You can Google Laurie Thomas, or web marketing therapy.

Thank you so much, Lori. This was super fun.

30:12
Thank you.

30:23
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30:26
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