Time Management Defined with Britt Bolnick

 

 

Listen to the podcast here:

 

Highlights:

01:28 Growing Up in 1980 New York
09:04 How To Impact Someone’s Life
15:20 From Rock Bottom to Pinnacle
19:44 Perspective Makes A Difference
23:57 Men in Business vs. Women in Business
27:30 Dog Rescue
39:21 Teaching How to Make Time
42:43 A Time for Yourself

 

Life can only take you where you spend your minutes. Spend your time so that it takes you to your dream life. Get ready to be misty-eyed in this emotional conversation with @myexpectation and @BrittBolnick #NewYork1980 #punkrock #thinkbig… Click To Tweet

 

Resources:

Books
Expectation Therapy: Mastering Your Expectations by Art Costello
Man’s Search For Meaning by Victor E. Frankl

Blogs
My Ten-Year Love Affair by Art Costello

Quotes:

 “Every family has its… unspoken agreements.” –Britt Bolnick

“We all have a sense of connection when we let ourselves explore it.” –Art Costello

“When you make the effort to find out about other people, you find out how much we are all really interconnected in so many ways.” –Art Costello

“You don’t have to do something monumental to have an impact on someone else’s life; you can just say two sentences that they remember for the rest of their lives.” –Britt Bolnick

“Fear works two ways: It either propels you or expels you.” –Art Costello

“Life is about choices… use it as a learning tool and let it propel you to where you’re meant to be.” –Art Costello

“Greatness… is in how much we can transfer our knowledge to other people so they don’t have to live the same mistakes that we did. That’s how we change the world.” –Art Costello

“Everybody comes to you wanting to be fixed. But you can’t fix them. They have to fix themselves.” –Art Costello

“If you can get people to believe in the possibility of everything, that everything is a learning experience in their life, it shifts you away from that victimization.” –Art Costello

“I think that we are suffering culturally, probably globally… from an absolute acute deficit of time doing things that we love and it’s breaking us as a species.” –Britt Bolnick

 

Meet Britt Bolnick

 

Britt Bolnick describes her childhood as full of anger and pain. But in real life, she is a very together, loving woman who cares deeply for family and her clients. She grew up in New York during the Punk Rock Movement and has experienced most of the things that street life has to offer. But, finding a great mentor in life was a great source of comfort for her. Although it took some time, Britt was able to leave a self-destructive course and walk the path to success. Today, she mentors women in the business world to be heard, be noticed and make money from doing what they love. Her own set of experiences as a woman makes her coaching successful in a personal and professional level. As she was able to scale her business to do only a 3-4 day work per week, Britt was also able to run a Pit Bull rescue on the side. Her secret? Time management. Britt’s story proves that anyone can have all the time they need for everything they love.

Website: https://inarmscoaching.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrittBolnickInArmsCoaching/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/brittbolnick/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/britt-bolnick-a37b6929/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brittbolnick/
Email: britt@inarmscoaching.com

 

Transcription:

Art Costello: Welcome to the Shower Epiphanies Podcast, today, and I hope I don’t blow his name because I didn’t ask before the show Britt Bolnick, and I am just really, really thrilled to have her because I know that her and I are going to make a lot of connections, and we’re going to give you guys a lot of great, great info for you to use in your lives, and I think there’s going to be a lot of epiphanies coming out of this. Brick mentors women, business owners, entrepreneurs, creatives and visionaries who want to do what they love, get seen and make money. We all like to make money. She specialized in the inner work and magical tools that make the external strategies and actions effective. She uses her own tried and true tools developed on her journey from food stamps to financial success, and her 10 years experience in the industry to give her clients their version of success. I am just thrilled to hear your story, I want to hear everything about your Britt.

Britt Bolnick: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Art Costello: We’re going to have a ball.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah.

Art Costello: Go ahead and start out where you grew up, and how Britt became Britt.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah, wow. What a great question. I grew up in New York City. I grew up in the West village in Greenwich Village in an island in Manhattan in the 70’s and 80’s, which was very different from the New York City that anyone visiting today experience. And my mother is a writer, my father worked during the week in South Jersey, so he was gone most of the week. I had an adopted Korean brother, and I really grew up, you know, on the streets of 1980’s New York City, which was a really interesting place. Got Into the punk rock movement. I was an angry kid. I was an angry and kind of constantly flouting and thumbing my nose at authority sort of kid. So I grew up in the punk rock movements, but a lot of time in the East village, and abandoned buildings, and you know, with some really unsavory characters, got into drugs and drinking by the time I was 13, had two runaways under my belt by the time I was 15, really wasn’t heading anywhere that was very good.

Art Costello: You know, the first thought that comes to my mind, and I love how you’ve expressed this, but were you living to your expectations? Or the expectations of others?

Britt Bolnick: You know, I think that I was so hurt and angry that I was kind of just running. But that’s a really interesting question actually, because in the years of work that I’ve done on myself, and understanding who I am and what happened, I think that family dynamics play a lot into it. And one of the things that, you know, every family has its agreements, it’s unspoken agreements. And one of ours was that, I was sort of the scapegoat that would take, I would be the squeaky wheel so that, I got the grease and no one really had to look at the other forms of dysfunction that were happening. And in that instance, I was living up to other people’s expectations. So I think it came partly from that. And partly just from, that I was so hurt and angry and I didn’t really have an outlet for it. So I, you know, what most girls do, men turn it outwards, and women turn it in words, and I turned it back on myself.

“Every family has its… unspoken agreements.” –Britt Bolnick Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Yeah. One of the things that I think about, because I wrote the book Expectations Therapy, and I have done a lot of research on expectations. A lot of your anger was probably seated in unmet expectations that you had, and other people were trying to apply there, and it creates this opposition to each other. It’s like two positives, reject each other. You know, you think you’re going in the right direction, but really you’re repelling each other.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah.

Art Costello: And you and me, cause I, we’re very similar. I grew up in New Jersey right across the bridge, and you know, my stories, interesting posts. It’s just about your story. So go ahead, I’ll try not to interrupt more.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah, no, no, no, that’s, I mean that’s really, really relevant and I think that that’s really important to recognize. I was very much reacting at that point and didn’t have the self awareness. I mean, you know who among us really did in the years, 13 to 18. But you know, I was really headed for a dead end, and about 90% of the kids that I knew from that time hit that dead end. Very few made it out, and I made it out and I graduated high school somehow. Very small alternative, super hippy high school. And I went on to college and I found magic, which was really important to me. I found the art and science of changing energy at that point and that really helped pull me out of the self-destruction.

Art Costello: Tell us about that. That’s very interesting.

Britt Bolnick: So, I found a connection with something bigger than myself, which for me, you know, I had a very, my father was raised Jewish, and my mother was Jewish but was raised Catholic because of who her mother married. And I grew up in a very non religious household, but my mother is very spiritual even though she would never describe herself as that. And I think that what I found was my connection to something bigger than myself in the form of a connection with nature, which I again had, but I didn’t really have a chance to consciously nurture growing up in New York City. And I found several teachers, you know, teachers of urbalism, and plant wisdom, and that all sort of helped me to ground and root myself a little bit and let go of some of the negativity and the, it gave me control over myself and my thought process, which really helped.

Art Costello: Yeah, that is really, really significant. Our stories are so similar. My grandmother was Jewish, and my grandfather was Catholic, and she turned Catholic to marry my grandfather and they had come from Prussia. Cause I’m a little bit older than you, I grew up in the late 50’s, early 60’s in New Jersey. Well actually none of the 60’s in New Jersey cause we had moved to a very rural area. But anyway, very similar backgrounds, very similar.

Britt Bolnick: So funny. Yeah.

Art Costello: No, it’s how small the world is.

Britt Bolnick: It is. Yeah.

Art Costello: I mean we all have a sense of connection when we let ourselves explore it, you know?

“We all have a sense of connection when we let ourselves explore it.” –Art Costello Click To Tweet

Britt Bolnick: Yeah.

Art Costello: You know, one of the things I love is, I love having these conversations with my guests because it really shows people, when you take the effort and make the effort to find out about other people, you find out how much we are all really interconnected in so many ways. I mean, I can find connection and it almost everybody.

“When you make the effort to find out about other people, you find out how much we are all really interconnected in so many ways.” –Art Costello Click To Tweet

Britt Bolnick: Anyone, yeah.

Art Costello: Anyone and it’s just a blessing. Here we go again, I went off on this tangent.

Britt Bolnick: No, that’s so awesome. And I think that that’s so important, and I think that, you know, you’re bringing up something that was really important, which I hadn’t quite articulated, which is that I found connections to things that weren’t self-destructive, and that really gave me a way to connect with the world around myself and connect with myself, that pulled me out of that. That helped me to direct my energies positively. That was an important part of it.

Art Costello: Yeah. Who Do you identify as the most important person in your life?

Britt Bolnick: It’s going to make me cry. My uncle, my uncle Tony, who was raised and lived his whole life in South Jersey, and he was just this old school Italian guy, woodsmen very stoic, very serious, but I loved him fiercely. He’s my favorite person in the world other than my daughter.

Art Costello: And I’m gonna, I’m gonna prove it a little further. Why? I mean, what did he do that has made him the most important person in your development?

Britt Bolnick: Gosh, it’s so weird, it’s so hard to talk about without crying. I spent a lot of time down on their farm in South Jersey when I was little, and as I grew older, he and I formed a really, really deep connection and he was very curmudgeonly, didn’t speak a lot, but he loved me fiercely and he had a way of, you know, when I’d show up at their house, I went down there a lot in my early 20’s, and I was still in a really self-destructive lifestyle, and I would often show up there, you know, at 6:00 AM, after leaving the city at 4:00 AM, after drinking all night and driving by myself down there. And I’d show up disheveled, and smelling of smoke, and with alcohol on my breath, and he’d have an ax over his shoulder, and he’d say something like: “Gotta go see about some trees, wanna come?” And I just get out of my car and go follow him. And we’d spend the morning just sitting in the woods talking, and he taught me so much about nature, and about love, and he was, he was one of the first people he had this saying, he’d only say to me, he’d say, you know, these are, he’d look around and say: “These are not our people. One day a ship’s going to land, and that’s going to be our people, and they’re going to take us back to where we belong.” And he just had this sort of humorous, like, these are not our people. But I had always felt that way my whole life. Like I was isolated and no one understood me, and he not only understood me, but he claimed to me, and also felt that our people were out there somewhere.

Art Costello: Wow. It’s going to make me cry because we are just so, so connected with stuff. You know, I was kind of shunned after we moved from New Jersey to a rural farm in upstate New York, 60 miles below Rochester. When we moved there, everybody thought that we were mafia and we were running. So none of the kids and none of the teachers, I mean I had 20 kids in my graduating class, so it wasn’t a lot of people around, you know. But the ones that were there shunned us.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah.

Art Costello: And I felt that isolation, and I felt so much like you just described.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah.

Art Costello: People don’t know what that feels like unless you’ve gone through it.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah. They don’t know, and they don’t understand what happens when someone says: “I see you, and I accept you, and we are one.” And that would just was his acceptance of me and his quiet love, and the fact that he really didn’t like a lot of people made it so sacred to me.

Art Costello: Yeah.

Britt Bolnick: He was one of my wise, wise mentors and teachers.

Art Costello: The one for me that did that was a teacher named Paul King. He was my social studies teacher in 7th grade, and he walked up behind me and whispered in my ear in my desk one day in school and he said: “Don’t let it get you.” He said: “You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.” And just those words made all the difference. But I see it at the same time that I was having these conversations because I used to go to this hill and lay on my back, and ask God what was going to become on me. And I heard God say: “Just be patient. You’re going to be okay. It will all work out.” And it became such a part of my life, how I viewed the world that, you know, it’s led me to where I am today, which has been this incredible life journey. And I want to hear the rest of yours.

Britt Bolnick: I’ll just say, isn’t it? It’s always so inspirational to me how, you don’t have to do something monumental to have an impact on someone else’s life. You can just say two sentences that they remember for the rest of their lives. And that’s so inspirational to me to remember how many opportunities we have to touch other people. So thank you for sharing that.

“You don't have to do something monumental to have an impact on someone else's life; you can just say two sentences that they remember for the rest of their lives.” –Britt Bolnick Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Kind of make me cry now because that is very much who I am. I can be in the subway in New York, or I can be in Croatia sitting on the patio table at a restaurant and have a conversation with somebody, and we’re just so connected, and you know, it’s just a blessing. You know? My kids thought it was a curse because everywhere we go they were always having to drag me. And say: “Dad, we’ve got to go. We’ve got to go do this right now.” I said: “No, I’m having this conversation.” You know, and they never understood, but you know, it is a blessing of how we can impact people’s lives.

Britt Bolnick: So I agree. I agree, yeah. So he and my daughter, who is 14 now are definitely my two sort of soulmates. So I went on, I went to college, dropped out of one.

Art Costello: Where did you go to college?

Britt Bolnick: So, I started at Marymount in Manhattan, New York City, which I hated. Very traditional, very sit in a room and listen to someone speak. I dropped out and then I found Vermont College in Montpelier, which is based all on self study and intensives on campus, and I loved it. I flew through my bachelor’s and then I actually joined their master’s degree program just because I didn’t want to stop going. So I wound up with my master’s in education. I taught for many years in the New York City jail system, Rikers Island, the houses of detention, and then in an upstate women’s maximum security facility, which I loved, loved teaching in prison. And then what happened? Then I met my husband who was really a blip in this story. My Ex husband, who was turned out to just sort of BSE donor and then kind of went his way, but gave me my kid who’s just my favorite thing in the universe, and I started in Arms Coaching because I was, I mean, I’m fast forwarding over a lot of it. There were a lot of really bad years, he had left, I had no child support. The kid was 15 months old, I couldn’t put her down for the first two years of her life. I think I held her, or someone else held her for two years, and at that point I was completely broke, and waitressing, and bartending six or seven nights a week in New York City, and just really at wit’s end. Like absolutely at wit’s end, I lost my home, makeup for closed on. I had put all this savings into a house in Brooklyn, which you understand the value of, cause I thought, here’s something good I can do. I can invest in our future and I’ll buy a piece in New York City real estate and then wound up getting foreclosed on because I couldn’t keep the mortgage up when her dad left, and just kind of really hit rock bottom and that was the birthing in Arms Coaching.

Art Costello: Can you tell us some of your story, how you pulled yourself up at rock bottom? What it took for you to do that?

Britt Bolnick: Yeah. It took a couple of things that I thought were the worst things in the world, which were really a blessing. One is that my daughter’s father left completely and was either uncommitted enough, or not intelligent enough to sign over sole custody instead of full custody to me. So he lost his parental rights, which meant, or he gave them away, which meant that I was free to do whatever I needed to do. I didn’t need to stay around him or share custody with him. He also then flaked on child support. But looking back, I would’ve chosen my freedom over, you know, 2 or $300 a month anyway,

Art Costello: That’s interesting because I run into so many women who spend so much energy chasing down dollars they may never see.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah.

Art Costello: And what about the energy? Do you know what I mean? The energy to not go chasing him. And what was the trigger in your head that said, I’m enough that I can take care of my daughter and myself.

Britt Bolnick: I love to say that it was that. I think at that point it was less that and more just that, I was really terrified of having to share custody with him. He was unstable and to some degree, dangerous. So I was counting my blessings. I was holding my breath that he wouldn’t resurface and say: “Nope, I changed my mind. I want to be a part of this kid’s life.” So, I kind of considered it, you don’t have to pay me if you just get the hell out of here and leave me and my kid alone. It was a fair price to pay.

Art Costello: That’s a powerful trigger. You know, when you fear someone, but see, fear works two ways. It either propels you or it expels you, you know?

“Fear works two ways: It either propels you or expels you.” –Art Costello Click To Tweet

Britt Bolnick: Exactly. And it motivated me to say: “You know what, it’s me and this kid, and I got this.” You know, I totally had this. I also had, you know, I mean I had to really eat crow. Losing the house was devastating for me, and I had to let go of the idea that I would have that, you know? And I also had some like $80,000 into it, which I kissed goodbye. And we moved back in with my mom who to this day lives in Greenwich Village. We moved back in with her so that she could take care of the kid at night. So it was really, really hard. And there were mornings where I woke up, you know, I worked until 12 or 1:00 AM, I went home, I went to sleep, it was about 2:00 AM, the kid woke up at 4 most mornings and it was, I was the only one who could get up with her. And I remember just waking up in the dark, hearing her cry at 4:00 AM, and just bursting into tears. I’m thinking, I cannot, like I physically cannot do this another day, I can’t do it. And I did it, I did it every day until she started sleeping later, and I got through. And I think that having him walk away gave me this realization that I was sort of getting into over. I have this kid, I had me, and I had no strings, I could create whatever life I wanted for us. And I decided that it had to be a different life. And that’s when I started in Arms Coaching, and about two hours a week broke as anything. I had ways to help other parents in Arms Coaching originally was parenting coaching, which I was really passionate about at that moment. I had ways to help other parents. I had some expertise. I had climbed out of, you know, assess pool, and I felt like I could start to lend a hand backwards, and maybe create a business that would give us freedom. The two of us freedom.

Art Costello: You know, one of the thoughts I had when you were telling us was, it makes such a difference, our perspective on what happens to us because there’s so many people out there that just don’t have the perspective that you had. It’s available to them, they just don’t make the choice to take it, and run with it. They rather wallow in it, and I’ve got to commend you for doing that. It’s a beautiful thing when you see somebody rise up out of it and make something unto themselves when there was nothing. When you could have fallen into despair because I think a lot of times in our lives, I think everybody goes through things that either make or break some, and it’s all a matter of choice and how we moved through it.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah. I just want to add one thing. Some of this is who I am as a person? But some of it is also, I was very heavily influenced when I was 12 or 13, my mother gave me the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, and that made up, and his premise there for your listeners that they haven’t heard about this is that, “While we can’t control what happens to us, we always retain the ability to control our reaction.” And it was written from his experiences as a concentration camp. I actually just gave that book to my daughter. But that book, and Dr. Frankl’s message has been absolutely fundamental to my core philosophy and the way that I live my life.

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Art Costello: You know, a lot of the survivors of the concentration camps have such powerful perspective on life because they’ve seen so much death, you know, and destruction and all that, and they’ve risen up out of it. Wow, I guess that’s something that, you know, I always talk to people about making lemonade, I have a lemon. You know, so many times we’re not dealt things that we think is fair, but those things are actually meant to teach us lessons that we will use in our lives, or throughout our lives if we choose. It’s about about choice, you know, that’s what I want people to take away from this, and your life, and my life, and all the people that are out there that have the experience things, you know, it’s about perspective, and it’s about just making the choice that you’re not going to let it take you down, and you’re going to let it, use it as a learning tool and let it propel you to where you’re meant to be.

“Life is about choices… use it as a learning tool and let it propel you to where you're meant to be.” -Art Costello Click To Tweet

Britt Bolnick: Yeah, absolutely.

Art Costello: Because greatness, you know what, greatness is not being a superstar in the NBA, or a football player. Greatness to me is, how much we can transfer our knowledge to other people so they don’t have to live the same mistakes that we did.

Britt Bolnick: So well said.

Art Costello: That’s how we change the world.

“Greatness… is in how much we can transfer our knowledge to other people so they don't have to live the same mistakes that we did. That's how we change the world.” –Art Costello Click To Tweet

Britt Bolnick: Yeah, I agree.

Art Costello: So tell us about some of your programs that help women and all that.

Britt Bolnick: So the way that I work with women, a lot of business coaches who are at my level in terms of years and have created, kind of, giant group ecourse programs because they really want to leverage their time. But what I love is really working with people. So my programs, they are very small, and they’re more mentorships than big coaching programs. And I just teach women who are entrepreneurs and business owners who have an impact that they want to see in the world, who want to be a part of the change, and have a brilliance, or a skill set, or a talent that contributes to that. And very often what happens is that women who are very passion driven don’t understand the business end of it, and how to get their impact out there, how to get seen, how to get heard, how to make money doing what they love so they don’t have to work a side hustle. And that’s what I do. I teach women to get seen, to have an impact, to grow their visibility, to grow their businesses so that they can do what they love and actually earn the money that they need to earn.

Art Costello: I’m going to make a statement, and I want you to react to it.

Britt Bolnick: Okay.

Art Costello: You focus on women?

Britt Bolnick: Ehm.

Art Costello: Do you not feel that men need the same thing?

Britt Bolnick: Men In business are very different from women in business, and I have no doubt that men come to business and entrepreneurship with their own sets of blocks and hurdles to jump over. They’re generally different than women. And while I have worked with men here and there most, you know, privately, because my programs are just for women, my marketing doesn’t speak to men. My messages don’t speak to men, so I’m not opposed to working with men. It’s just that what I’m saying and what I’m talking about, and what I’ve struggled with doesn’t really resonate with men. They have different issues.

Art Costello: Yeah. You know, I just notice a lot with business coaches that it seems to be divided men work with men, and women work with women, and there’s some women that work with men, and I’ve actually worked with both on coaching, business coaching and marketing coaching, and I’ve had very little success with it, marketing with coaches. I don’t know if it’s because I am such so steeped in my own expectations that I do not, you know, the way that I live my life is that, I live in to my set of expectations for myself and I do not let external expectations dictate my decisions, my maneuvers, how I moved through this life. And it’s what I teach, and you know, because I can teach men and women to be independent, successful people if they’ll just let themselves, if they’ll just listen to their own expectations, and stop living with the expectations of others. But I think part of it is that, I am so niche. I mean, because I’m in this little niche about expectations, and in this country we have such a negative expectation view in our world, we’re told not to expect. And see what people don’t understand this, that’s put out there, so somebody else control how you think?

Britt Bolnick: Exactly, you know, the way that I work with women is very much client led. They tell me what they want, and then I guide them to successful ways that I have made that happen for myself. And that I have guided other women to have that happen. So it’s not really me saying, you know, you need this formula. It’s me saying: “What do you want now? Here’s a way that I believe we’ll get you that.”

Art Costello: I love that because you know, part of the way that I work is that my program is all set up about other people doing work because everybody comes to you wanting to be fixed, but you can’t fix them.

Britt Bolnick: Nope.

Art Costello: They have to fix themselves. They have to fix themselves. So, you know, I don’t have a magic wand that can make you the best internet marketer in the world.

“Everybody comes to you wanting to be fixed. But you can’t fix them. They have to fix themselves.” –Art Costello Click To Tweet

Britt Bolnick: Yeah.

Art Costello: So, you know, I just got to go with giving them the skills for them to do what they need to do. I think we’re functioning in a lot of the same ways.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah. Very similar.

Art Costello: As we do seem to be in our lives, have so much in common. But I know my audience cannot see this, but there’s a dog behind you, an ice cream.

Britt Bolnick: Many.

Art Costello: I’m an animal lover. I just got a brand new Labradoodle.

Britt Bolnick: Oh, aha.

Art Costello: And her name’s Sydney, she’s as cute as can be. Look at my arms, I’m teaching her not to jump up. But anyway, I know that you are involved in animal rescue.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah. My side project is a dog rescue, a pit bull rescue that I started three years ago with my husband, which has been a lifelong dream of mine. And that’s kind of one of the things that I talk about when I guide women in business because I’ve been able to make my business so successful, and profitable, and have gotten it to mostly about three days a week. So I was able to make space to start a dog rescue. These are two of our four rescued pitfalls, and our dog rescue is Pittie Posse, The Pittie Posse Rescue. And we don’t rescue only pitbulls, but in terms of advocacy in responsible dog ownership, and education, and legislation, we focus on the bully breeds because they’re the most, you know, stigmatized and prejudiced against, but it’s just gone, like, it’s grown like a weed. It is, through the roof we have a whole team of people. We’re expanding massively and that’s been really, really great and really kind of a testament to, you know, that what I’m doing is working because I’ve been able to make this space to start and run an entire nonprofit and still take a lot of time off, honestly.

Art Costello: Is that focused in your area where you live?

Britt Bolnick: It is focused in Maine where our social media is. A social media presence is off the hook, and we really want this to be something that grows bigger, and bigger, and bigger. But our long term goal is to buy a giant piece of land here in Maine to build the facility so that we can start training programs, and Doggy Day Care, boarding, and eventually open up our own vet clinic. We’re thinking really big with it.

Art Costello: Let’s talk about that, thinking big. So when you do things, you go full out to do them?

Britt Bolnick: I do, I do it. It’s hard for my husband sometimes.

Art Costello: Do you know that that’s based on your expectations?

Britt Bolnick: Ooh. Say more.

Art Costello: Well, people who have always had bigger dreams, bigger ideas also have the expectation of being able to not only achieve it, but to actually expect the vision of it, and they open themselves up. See, we see our expectations in two ways, either through faith or fear. There’s no in between. There’s no great gray area about expectations. It’s the one seed that God has planted then every man, woman, and child that propels them into this success and all that. The difference is in how we manage our expectations, because when we manage them correctly, it gives us the ability to dream big, but have the realization that you have to adjust along the way. You keep that dream out there. So I think when your uncle, I think that he watered that seed in you to where you believe in the possibility of everything. Am I wrong?

Britt Bolnick: Yes, exactly. Exactly, you’re right.

Art Costello: See, I believe in the possibility of everything. If you can get people to believe in the possibility of everything, that everything is a learning experience in their life, it shifts you away from that victimization, from that pity me, from that idea because your bounce up, you know, I’m a Vietnam veteran, I was a machine gunner in the Marine Corp. I think of all the things I was abandoned as a child, as a nine year old, and not in the traditional way, but I could have let all these things put me in the pitty patty, and I’ve never done that because I had that conversation with God that everything was going to be okay. And then Mr. King watered that expectation that, just be faithful, you’ll be okay. I believed in it wholeheartedly, and I have done more things than you could ever imagine. I mean, I have always done everything. I’m married, the woman that I wanted to, when everybody said, are you crazy? You know that woman’s never gonna talk to you. And you know, and I was married to her for 38 years and she died in my arms when she got ovarian cancer, and in 2006 when she passed away. But I could have evolved a moments in my life when I lost her. That is the most darkest period in my life. I had been successful in everything I had ever done all my life, I mean everything. And I just, I lost it for about three years and my kids came and said: “Dad, you can’t do this. You promise you wouldn’t.” And then I rejuvenated myself. And out of that came Expectation Therapy and everything I’m doing now, you know, and I’m just blessed. But it’s all about having the expectation that it’s okay, everything is always going to work out when we let it work out. Yes, there’s going to be a pain in your life. Everybody goes through pain. I’m on a preaching.

“If you can get people to believe in the possibility of everything, that everything is a learning experience in their life, it shifts you away from that victimization.” –Art Costello Click To Tweet

Britt Bolnick: You’re making me cry. This is the only podcast I’ve ever done that’s made me cry like three times already.

Art Costello: I’m sorry.

Britt Bolnick: You need to warn people, I have no tissues, anyone hear me.

Art Costello: Hey, see a short sleeve you got on, just wipe them.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah.

Art Costello: You know, it is though, you know, we are so limited when we limit ourselves, but I’ve, I preached.

Britt Bolnick: It’s so true. I’m so glad people are getting a chance to hear that because that’s really inspirational and people need to hear it.

Art Costello: Yeah. I mean, you don’t have to live in poverty, you’ve proved it, I proved it. You don’t, you have to think big and you have to adjust along the way. There’s no simpler way to put it, you know? I mean, really, you just have to be willing to adjust and not let it kick you in the butt, you know?

Britt Bolnick: Yeah, I agree.

Art Costello: So you know, well, let’s see, where could we go with this?

Britt Bolnick: We’re talking about dog rescue, and infinite possibility.

Art Costello: Yeah. And I love what you’re doing with animals, I love animals. I think that they are such a benefit to mankind because they’re so, so intuitive. And I’ll really make you cry. Go to my website, go to my website sometime and read my blog, it’s buried in my blogs. I wrote it a long time ago. It’s called, My 10 Year Love Affair.

Britt Bolnick: Okay, I will.

Art Costello: I won’t give it away too much, but I had a giant Schnauzer named Chloe. She was 155 pounds, the biggest, most beautiful dog you’d ever want to see. She was imported from Romania, I didn’t import her, It’s another whole story, I could go on about that, but my wife ended up being Chloe’s present. Some people found out she had cancer and they gave us Chloe. But Chloe was so intuitive, I’ve never owned an animal as smart as Chloe was, when the EMS would come and Vicky would be so sick, and Chloe would immediately go to the corner and get out of her protective mode and watch every EMS guy. And One night my wife had gone into seizures and they were, I had done CPR for 45 minutes, and the EMS guys got to, our ranch was just very remote and they finally found it and got there and they started, took over for doing CPR and I was petrified because I thought Chloe would think that they were hurting her. That dog knew, but the thing that’ll get you is, and it’ll get me the night that Vicky passed away, she had fought so hard for three years. She did chemo every single week for three years, and it had pretty much destroyed her, not only physically but mentally. And she had fought so hard that she was just taking these shallow breasts for days. Doctor kept saying, she’s gonna: “Vicky will be passing soon.” Next day to come he say the same thing. It’s a Friday night, I got up on the bed with Vicky and a hels her, and I told her, I whispered in her ear: “It’s okay to give up. It’s okay to go.” Chloe jumped up on the bed, and that dog had never on our bed before, that was a no, no. Got Up, put her paws across Vicky’s chest, laid her head on Vicky’s shoulder, and it was a few minutes later then Vicky was gone. You know, after that I was oblivious for six months, I didn’t know what was coming, but that dog had such intuition. It just amazed me, and animals are so instrumental, and this is the point I wanted to make. I think animals help us heal.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah.

Art Costello: They help us heal wounds through their unconditional love that they give us, and people who abused animals to me are the worst people in the world because animals can’t defend themselves.

Britt Bolnick: I agree.

Art Costello: Whether it be horses, cows, rats, chickens. I don’t care what it is.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah.

Art Costello: There’s something not right with somebody that abuses an animal because they can’t defend themselves. Humans have a choice. We have that pleasure, and we can defend ourselves, but the animals can’t. And I think that their unconditional love for their human kind is just an incredible thing.

Britt Bolnick: It’s amazing. And that’s one of the reasons why they abuse pitbulls, you know, just shakes me to the core because there’s such good dogs, you know, your listeners can’t see this, but this guy, this guy is Diggy and this is my, this is my heart dog. And he was surrendered to us because they said he was aggressive in the home and it turns out that they were being abusive, and he was growling, and you know, knowing this dog, what you would have to do to get a reaction like that out of this dog, I can’t imagine what they were doing to him because he’s bomb proof, otherwise.

Art Costello: Yeah. You know, animals are a reflection of how they’re taught, what they’re taught, and how they’re trained. You know, Chloe could be the most Arden of defenders of her family. She could also be the greatest lover to everybody in the world. If you showed her love, she gave it right back, it was amazing. But yeah, it just really bugs me when people abuse them. But aggressive dogs are aggressive because their owners have made them that way.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah, it’s true.

Art Costello: So do you do dog training type things, or do you just rescues?

Britt Bolnick: As an organization, we do. I’m not a dog trainer, but we have amazing positive force free dog trainers that work with our dogs. And when we have the facility, all of our adoptable dogs will go through basic training and be certified before they’re even adopted out to the community, which is really radical and I’m very excited about it.

Art Costello: Let’s get back on track a little bit. I know that you teach your clients about having free time for their families. How do you teach that? How do you teach people to make time for their families?

Britt Bolnick: Yeah, that’s hard, and it’s one of the things that I think is really missing in society today. It’s one of people’s number one complaints that they don’t have time, they don’t have leisure time, they don’t have self care time. I created a tool back when I was broke, and you know, taking care of my kid, and working nights, and starting in Arms Coaching, I created a time management tool that I call Sacred Structure because what happened was I was looking for time management tools and none of them were written by solo moms working around the clock and starting a business, like, none of them applied to me. And so, I created Sacred Structure, which is a way to prioritize your time according to what you love. And it’s a bit of a process, it doesn’t work overnight, but you know what? Nothing, nothing worthwhile happens overnight anyway. And I teach it to all my clients, and it’s a way of really prioritizing what you’re doing according to what’s most important and what you love the most. And then setting really healthy boundaries, and parameters, and structures around what you’re doing with your time.

Art Costello: Time management is probably one of the biggest issues that I see in coaching.

Britt Bolnick: Oh yeah.

Art Costello: Because a lot of time that people spend, they spend on things that are non productive and they need to be doing things that are productive.

Britt Bolnick: Yep, exactly.

Art Costello: And then cutting out chunks of time that they spend with their family, and their friends, and doing the things that they love. and I agree, it’s a big, big thing.

Britt Bolnick: It is.

Art Costello: You know, we’re getting up here towards, I think we’ve got 10 or 15 more minutes to go, and I wanted to give you the opportunity to tell us, what’s important to you? What’s the most important thing, and I’m talking about business, you know, teaching. What’s the most important thing here?

Britt Bolnick: I mean, personally, my most important thing to me is myself, and my kid, and my family, and getting space to have an impact in the world that I want to have.

Art Costello: You said something that just really hit my heart, myself.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah.

Art Costello: Because you have to give yourself time. You can’t do anything for anyone else unless you take care of yourself first.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah, so important. This is part of Sacred Structure for me. When I’m planning my schedule, and giving it to every summer, I make my calendar for the year and I give it to my assistant because she’s the one who plugs in my client care times and all that stuff. The first thing that goes in my calendar is all the time off I want. I take every school vacation that my kid has off. I take every day off that she has. I work half a day every summer. I take all of August off, most of December I put in the exercise classes I want to go to. I put in the vacations I want to take. My entire work life is built around me and my family first, so that’s really important to me. I think that we are suffering culturally, probably globally, but certainly culturally from an absolute acute deficit of time doing things that we love and it’s breaking us as a species, so that’s really important to me, and that’s very core to what I teach on our women for sure.

“I think that we are suffering culturally, probably globally... from an absolute acute deficit of time doing things that we love and it's breaking us as a species.” –Britt Bolnick Click To Tweet

Art Costello: I think that that’s probably one of the most powerful things that we’ve talked about on this podcast. Could you just go over quickly again that you break out your time for yourself?

Britt Bolnick: Yup. I make my calendar every summer. I make it in the summer because that’s when I get the kids school schedule for the next year, so I sit down and I put into my calendar all of her weeks off, all of her days off, all of her early release days off. I put all in most of August off, most of December off, I put in every family vacation we’re taking. I put in all the exercise classes that I want to take and anything else. I also put into my calendar, which is really important for people running their own business. I put in regular periods of time, about a week, every five or six weeks where I’m not seeing clients, I’m only working on my business. And then I give that to my assistant and she schedules in my client hours, and group calls, and things like that around that time. But everything is built around time for myself, time to nurture myself, time to nurture my family, and time to nurture my business.

Art Costello: You know, I used to own a business and I had quite a few employees and all that, and my thought was after you said that, I wished that my employees would have given me a calendar of when they want time off. What day it was, I mean, I wouldn’t care if it was one day during the week and all that, but you know, I wonder how many employers would let their employees do that. I know small employers would be more apt to do it.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah.

Art Costello: But large employers really need to do it because it will cut down on a lot of turnover. I mean, you know, especially in the lower types of jobs where people just work for six, seven months and then go onto another job. I’ve seen people leave jobs they love just because they wanted to have two weeks off to go do something and just walk away from it.

Britt Bolnick: I hope to one day be giant employer of people and be able to do that for all of my employees. I have only four, five employees now or people who work for me, and I highly encourage four day work weeks, you know, five hour work days, whatever helps them to be happy, and healthy, and functioning because that’s what makes my business good. When people work for me are really happy and healthy.

Art Costello: More productive.

Britt Bolnick: Way more productive.

Art Costello: When you have happy employees, you’ve got productive employees, they’re committed to you. If I knew that I could submit my schedule for the next year to my employer, and that these were the days that I was going to be able to take off around what was important to me, my children, you know, my, my three kids in their schedule. Had I had that opportunity, I had it because I worked for myself, so I did it. But for people who worked for me, I would have loved that, instead of having them call in and creating a void on a day when I really needed them, you know, because they’ve come to you and say, Hey, today my son is doing this really cool thing at school, and it’s been planned for a year. Well why do you wait the day before to tell me?

Britt Bolnick: Yeah, exactly.

Art Costello: And then I have to make the adjustments. So anyway, that is a great, great tool. That’s something really special.

Britt Bolnick: Thank you.

Art Costello: We’re getting, we’re keeping on here, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to tell people about, where they can get ahold of you, what you’re up to, what’s going on in the next six months, a year, that is really important that you can share with us.

Britt Bolnick: Sure. Yeah, I’m really active on Facebook so folks can find me either at Britt Bolnick, B-O-L-N-I-C-K on Facebook. There’s an In Arms Coaching page where they can find me, and I always welcome people just coming and saying hi. There’s a website inarmscoaching.com and we keep that fair. Honestly, most people come to me through connecting with me in real life or on Facebook. So the website has, you know, the stuff that websites have, but that’s a good place to reach me or email me. But really come by and say hi to me on Facebook or Instagram. I just love connecting with people and anything that I’m doing will be up there.

Art Costello: What’s your handle on Instagram?

Britt Bolnick: I knew you were gonna ask that. I’m really not good at Instagram, I spend most of my time on Facebook, but I think it’s just Britt Bolnick.

Art Costello: Okay.

Britt Bolnick: I mean if you put in Britt Bolnick, there aren’t any others that I’ve ever known, so you can definitely find me that way.

Art Costello: Well, I didn’t think there was any other Art Costello’s, but I found out.

Britt Bolnick: Wow, who knows.

Art Costello: Yeah. So any events you’re doing this year,

Britt Bolnick: I’m not quite sure how you turn these out, but I do these virtual weeks on Facebook. Again, they are for women, business owners, entrepreneurs, creatives. But you know, that’s probably half of your community at least. And it’s on, it’s a virtual week on money and magic mindset. So it’s about a really important lesson I learned in the last year or two about the difference between financial success, which is about what you have externally, and financial sovereignty, which is about how you feel about what you have. And that’s coming up September 23rd through 28, so I don’t know if that’s going to be applicable to your peeps, but they can always find me on Facebook and see what I’m up to.

Art Costello: Yeah, that’ll come up. I don’t know my own schedule when it comes to publishing this, but we’re, I think we’re about five weeks out right now.

Britt Bolnick: Okay. So they can come find me, you know, and just say hi.

Art Costello: Yeah. Well, I think we’re waning off and I’m going to have to wean myself off of this, this great conversation that we’ve had. So would that be, and said, man, I just, we got to stay connected.

Britt Bolnick: Yeah, yeah. I would love that.

Art Costello: I really, really enjoy you and we have so much in common. I think my audience is gonna really find this interesting. And by the way, I think 80% of my audience is women.

Britt Bolnick: That makes sense. Yeah.

Art Costello: I’m too sensitive for men.

Britt Bolnick: You are men, men need you, more men need to listen.

Art Costello: We didn’t talk about emotional intelligence and all that, but–

Britt Bolnick: Another time.

Art Costello: –I do a lot of work with that and there definitely will be another time. So with that being said, thank you Britt. I’ve really, really enjoyed it and I can’t tell you audience, you’ve got to go to her website. This woman will change your life. She’s got so many good things going on with time management, and her personal story. You’re going to love it, and please support her, and we’re going to honor her by our support. Thank you, Britt. Again, it’s been a pleasure. Again, audience. Thank you for listening and I gotta tell you again, follow Britt. Goodbye everybody, love Ya.

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