Dr. Fern Kazlow specializes in working with high performing leaders, influencers, entrepreneurs, CEO’s and other professionals who want to make exponential leaps in their business and personal success. She is committed to helping you master your Hidden Power Drivers to move past perceived limitations, and operate from your True Power State, your No Do Zone™. Dr. K doesn’t buy into obstacles or limitations. What others or, more importantly, you call your “difference”, Dr. K calls your genius. She sees things through a different lens, the lens of greater creativity, power, and possibility.
Since the 1980’s, Dr. Kazlow has been interviewed and featured in the major media including WABC. The New York Times, WNBC, and New York Magazine among others. Dozens of her articles have been published and she is an author of a book on Adoption Law. She is currently interviewing 100 top achiever entrepreneurs and experts for her upcoming book — The Resistance Paradox™: Mastering the Hidden Power Drivers of Peak Performance.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Dr. Fern Kazlow about how to operate at peak performance by accessing your power drivers.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
- What Power drivers are and how they determine our state and what we create.
- How the paradox of Resistance can either hold you back or catapult you to unimagined success.
- How willingness is a better contributor to success than willpower.
- How to navigate the landmines associated with becoming an adoptive parent.
- How writing a book, and knowing how to use it, can be a game-changer for yourself and your career.
Connect with Dr K:
Twitter
@DrFernKazlow
Facebook
facebook.com/drkazlow
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/drfernkazlow
Links Mentioned:
drkazlow.com
Rob Kosberg:
All right. Hey. Welcome, everybody. Rob Kosberg here, excited to bring you a super guest for our Publish Promote Profit Podcast, Dr. Fern Kazlow or affectionately Dr. K, specializes in working with high performing leaders, influencers, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and other professionals who want to make exponential leaps in their business and personal success. I love what you say here, Dr. K. You’re committed to helping people master their hidden power drivers. I think I want to know a little bit about that during this call, and help people move past their perceived limitations and operate in their true power state. You’ve been doing this for a number of years perhaps I should say since the ’80s. You’ve been interviewed by everybody, the New York Times, New York Magazine, you’ve been on ABC, NBC, you’ve published dozens of articles, which is cool, including co-authoring a book on Adoption Law that the New York Bar worked with you on. We’re going to hear a little bit about that today. Then of course you have an upcoming book called, The Resistance Paradox, love that by the way, and I love that you trademarked it, very, very smart. Mastering the Hidden Power Drivers of Peak Performance. So, Dr. K, thanks for being with us today.
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
Thank you so much for inviting me, excited to be here.
Rob Kosberg:
We’ve already had a great discussion on our dogs and other fun things I heard a little bit about, which we’ll get to a little bit later, about the adoption law book which is very, very intriguing because it seemed like it was outside of your wheelhouse and yet it’s cool how it was directly in it, but maybe we could start with what I find intriguing and interesting, which is these hidden power drivers. What does that mean and what are they? Give me your magic around that.
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
Okay. Everybody just talks mindset, mindset, mindset, right? You have to have the right mindset, but mindset is an outcome, it’s what you get to. I do love magic, I love alchemy, but I don’t have a magic wand that I can wave, and people have the right, in terms of what they want, mindset. What we create or don’t create is totally related to our true power state, which is a reflection of our state and the power drivers are what determine it. It is totally determined by our power drivers. So, what are the power drivers? The power drivers are our nervous system. Entrepreneurs, high achievers, depending on what they do, have different propensities that they really want to learn how to work with. Trauma, how they deal with trauma. We all have trauma, big and small, it affects us differently. We can talk a little bit about that later. Entrepreneurs, especially high achievers have a particular way of dealing with trauma and their nervous system that gets them to a certain point and then stops them and it really works for them to a point. If they don’t know how to navigate it and deal with these power drivers, it either gets them to be unable to continue growing, or they grow, but at a cost, maybe to their health, their relationships, their joy, the freedom that entrepreneurs are all about, freedom in connection. It just blasts that in a way that’s not so great. Resistance is another power driver and that’s a huge one for me. We are that, “Just do it,” culture. “Just do it,” is not such a great idea. We want to do it, but we don’t want to just do it because that’s part of this whole resistance paradox. People think resistance is a bad thing. To me, resistance can be your superpower, how you work with it or the kryptonite. It really can be either one. I’m going to help people find the gold and use it as their superpower. I know we want to talk a little bit about how I work. A key differentiator for me is that I really work with resistance, work with resistance in a way nobody else does.
Rob Kosberg:
Can you define that a little? Certain things come to my mind when I hear the term resistance, but I don’t know if we’re defining it. I think immediately of Steven Pressfield’s book, The War of Art, and overcoming that resistance to write, to create art, et cetera. Is that what you mean or is there a little bit of a differing definition?
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
So, yes and no. It is what I mean, because that’s one of the ways that resistance manifests, but one of the things, as you get to know me, I go deeper. That’s what’s on the surface, but when I look at somebody’s procrastination, their resistance, I always look at what’s underneath it because then you can catapult. You don’t just push through it, but you catapult in a way that grows and grows and grows you and your business. When I look at the resistance, when we’re wired up, entrepreneurs, high achievers especially, they’re wired up, they want to make a big difference, have big influence, have authority, make a lot of money often, not always, and they’re still human. Even though they have a higher ability to tolerate risk than most people, ultimately, they’re humans that are out for security and safety. When somebody is resisting and digging their heels in and not doing, we can say, “Oh, they’re sabotaging themselves, or they’re doing something,” and I always say, “Okay, let’s go deeper and see what positive thing they’re trying to do in a way that’s not serving them.” I always look at the positive things. I have two arms to my practice. I have a clinical psychotherapy practice and then I have my business of mentoring, business strategy, and marketing strategy. I always look at whichever one it is. With my therapist lens, I look, and I see, “What are they trying to do?” I don’t look and say, “What are they trying not to do?” Sometimes I look at what they’re trying not to do, but I don’t look at it as a negative. I always look at, “What is the thing that they just don’t know how to do any better?” Number one, that unlocks a lot of things within them, because people are much more responsive to that. The other is it’s a deeper truth, and one of the problems in coaching a lot, if I can go there is that people come in with a surface problem and it’s a real problem and it’s plaguing. When I say surface, I don’t mean little. They come in with a problem, and it’s compelling. High achievers can be really compelling. They bring it to the coach and a couple of things happen. Maybe they fix it a little bit, maybe they fix it a lot for a little while, or maybe they don’t and they both agree, “This is an insurmountable problem.” People like to talk about fear being false evidence and appearing real. I talk about FLAR, false limitations appearing real. They both go down that trap and that’s because they’re looking at the wrong problem. It’s a real problem and they should attend to it but if you don’t get to the one underneath it, you can only get so far. So, to me, the resistance holds a lot of the keys to that, and if you learn to work with that, you open things up, you open the person up and you unleash momentum and peak potential.
Rob Kosberg:
I love this conversation because I think about the areas of my life where I have resistance and wonder about why they’re there; simple things. I’m in the book business for crying out loud and yet writing is challenging. I always have resistance around creating in that way. We’re all human. As you mentioned, high achievers, those that are entrepreneurs, they still have the base human needs, wants, and desires. Can you give me some examples of the underlying things that may occur in resistance? You made a couple of specifics.
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
I want to speak to what you just said.
Rob Kosberg:
Fix me Dr. K.
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
I don’t like to fix it but make you even better. I don’t like that idea that we’re broken. One of the things that high performers are awesome at is taking trauma and they push it down, they compartmentalize it, or they use it as fuel. They’re proud of that. In fact, all of us, I am the resistor chief, I really get this because I’m really good at it. What we do is we wear it as this badge of honor, and we talk about all the things we’ve pushed through. I have a whole slew of things that I’ve pushed through. I did it anyway, and I got really successful. I could give you that whole list, and I didn’t really relate to the cost of it. What I want people to do is really shift that paradigm. It really is a whole paradigm shift where you learn, not that you get stopped by trauma, but you do something different. It’s like rewire, reconnect, release, and it’s really different so we can be even better. Most of the people I work with, they’re awesome. They’re very successful. We all have our demons. What I want to say to people is, “Slay your demons, not yourself.” We often slay ourselves in the process. To answer your question about the reason for resistance, If we look at procrastination, if we look at resistance to writing, so on the one hand, there’s an obvious one where we can be protecting that vulnerability or tender soft spot of being seen and our flaws and all of those things, but other times we’re protecting something that we might not think about. For example, we might have a brother or a parent that we don’t want to outshine. Women do this a lot with men; they don’t want to outshine their spouse or their partner. In fact, they’ve been taught that that’s not a good thing to do, marriage isn’t going to happen or last very long if you do that. So, what happens is, it becomes protective to hold yourself back. It looks like it’s a bad thing, but you may be very much protecting relationships. Another one that’s really more common than people think is that if you get a big successful business for most people, a lot of people saying a forty-hour workweek, but we know Tim Ferriss worked 18 hours a day when he was writing. I love you, Tim, but that’s the truth. We know that while you were doing the forty-hour work week, you were doing what most of us do and you worked. I don’t mind it. I love what I do. I work my hours sometimes, and other times I don’t. It’s like my hours. I get to choose the hours. This is really important, to look at what it is that we’re trying to protect. We don’t look at that. Once we start to change our relationship with the whole thing, and instead of beating ourselves up, we start to get to an appreciation and say like I just said, “I’m the resistor in chief, I am so good at it.” I want to really get it because when I get what I’m doing, then I’m opening up choice.
Sometimes I can do it on myself, sometimes I have to reach out to a colleague or to a mentor to add ideas. Nobody goes through as much self-development and self-work as someone who’s been a therapist for decades. You learn to really work with those spots, and they can either contract you or they open you. One of the things that I say is, “Big lessons for big teachers.” A lot of people writing books have had really big challenges and there’s a lot of vulnerability. Even though they really want to bring it out and really want to make a difference, there’s a lot of things. One of the things that I know about is that most of us that are successful have had a lot of issues about being different. We’ve had a lot of issues. It has not been comfortable, there’s a lot of stories about sitting in a funny part in the cafeteria, or just not being understood or what our family said. I mean my family was about as far from supportive as they could be. The only time they weren’t is when I had my kids, they would come to babysit. Other than that, if they could have taken it and put me in the kitchen, they would have done it. This is what we’re talking about, this level of stuff. You’re doing a book. You’re doing a book that really is exposing so much that’s important to you, but it’s that dance and it’s learning how to navigate that dance with the drivers. It’s like the trauma, it’s the nervous system, the resistance, how we deal with change. It’s also about connection. At the base of every single issue, there’s a disconnection, no matter what it is. It doesn’t matter what the problem is, whether it’s procrastinating on a book, whether it’s you can’t grow your business, you can’t break a certain milestone, you can’t get married, you can’t get well, whatever it is there’s a disconnect. Once you can change the way you experience it and rewire that and heal the disconnect, then what you can do is totally different.
Rob Kosberg:
You said something that I’ve heard a lot and I’ve thought of a lot and that is that oftentimes, entrepreneurs are driven by trauma. There’s maybe some lack or something that traumatized them when they were younger and it’s driven them, it could be a bad relationship, et cetera. Is there a situation where sometimes the trauma is healed and the drive either changes or goes away or just seems like so many big-time entrepreneurs, and when I say big time, I’m thinking the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos and those types of people. It doesn’t seem like they’re necessarily very happy people and yet are doing and have done things that have changed the world. Does that make sense?
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
It totally makes sense because it’s where I live and part of why I’m writing this book, because it doesn’t have to be that way. You’re saying something really important because a lot of entrepreneurs are afraid that if they heal the issue or they let go of the anger or they let go of the grief that they won’t be as successful. Marshall Goldsmith says what got you here won’t get you there. I always say what got you here will now hold you back from getting there. It’s way, way deeper than that and so there’s a lot of fear that if I give up the push, if I give up the drive, if I forgive then my drive will go away. A lot of times people say, “Well, I don’t want to forgive because if I forgive and I’m successful, it will make it look that what they did, wasn’t so bad and I don’t want to do that.” I think it’s also more complicated because sometimes people can’t. I don’t think Steve Jobs could do it. I think that there’s a lot of those people that you named; they really are stuck. Could they have done it? Could they have done it with somebody that really had some alchemy? Maybe, maybe it wasn’t their path. I think that idea, and trauma doesn’t have to be that you were raped, you were assaulted, you were abused, it can be something that you talk. One of the things that I deal with in both my therapy and my mentoring is people say things and different people interpret it in different ways. One of my favorite books, not because it’s the greatest book on the planet, but is, One True Thing, Anna Quindlen’s book. The reason I love that book is because she shares a story of how somebody heard something and how it affected their entire life and the entire life of their family, their relationship with their father for years and years, and years and years. It wasn’t the real what happened. Trauma doesn’t have to be what actually happened, it can be what we experienced, what we perceived, what we thought we heard. It doesn’t have to be the biggest thing in the world. You really have hit on something really important. People that really fight, there’s a certain level that they’re just digging and they’re outgoing, “That’s not my clients, it’s not your client,” but I always ask people a question, I ask them if they’re resisting because some people are really tough to work with. I’ll ask them if they’re doing that because they really don’t want to change because change is hard for a lot of people. Sometimes it’s also a lot of fun, it’s a lot of laughter in my office. It can be a lot of fun, but it’s got a lot of challenges or are they doing it because they really need help and it’s their way of trying to find their way around, their way of trying to ask for help and they’re scared or they’re angry, or they just don’t know how to navigate it. They’re bringing up all these resistances, not because they ultimately don’t want it, but because they’re protecting that tender soft spot until they feel helped or safe enough to open and do it a different way. If they’re in that camp, I’m all in with them. We learn to do things by willpower, especially as entrepreneurs. It’s not about willpower, it’s about willingness. Willpower burns you out.
Rob Kosberg:
You only have a limited amount of willpower. There has been all kinds of scientific tests and studies on it. It’s a real muscle.
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
It’s funny that you said muscle because I was just going to say to you that if you think about willpower, feel what happens in your body; when you think about doing something, well, for our listeners too, feel how your body constricts it. You can’t do that forever. If you think about willingness, my body started to move correctly.
Rob Kosberg:
Totally, that’s something to embrace.
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
You’re kind of moving, it’s momentum, it’s exciting. I really help people to cultivate, let go of working by willpower, which is a challenge. I was really good at it for a really long time and moving to willingness, which is more challenging to allow yourself to function from there.
Rob Kosberg:
I like the direction of this conversation. I always enjoy being able to take the knowledge and the truth from someone that is clearly a master. 100,000 hours, right? Ten times the number of hours that you would consider a master of a certain subject and then apply it to stuff even that I’m faced with. Many people that listen are authors and have wanted to complete their book for five years, 10 years. I’ve talked to people; they’ve been wanting to do it for 20 years and find themselves stuck; willing but having those willpower and willingness issues.
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
I translate it the more you’re really stuck, but you really want to move through it, the tension is that you’re up to something big. You’re really making a decision because you don’t stand still. You’re growing and your business is growing or you’re dying, your business is dying. Those are the really important pivot points. We’ve used that word a lot since the pandemic, so I hesitate to use it at overviews now, but it really is a pivot point. It is a sign that you’re up to something big and nervousness and excitement in the body can feel the same. It’s really interesting to choose to use it in one way, but we usually need some help because it can be really scary.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Talk to me briefly because I want to ask about the Adoption Law book and then your upcoming book too, but talk to me briefly about who are your ideal clients? Are you working with primarily C-suite executives, are you working with entrepreneurs that have small businesses? I’m sure it could be anybody, but you have your own sweet spots, I’m sure.
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
My sweet spot is the entrepreneur who’s the rebel, the rule breaker, the renegade who can move quickly, doesn’t need a lot of red tape to make a change, and is a little driven. To be really honest, they’re driven. I don’t want to take the drive out of them, what I want to do is help them to use the drive differently. It’s the people who have big dreams, big missions and are action takers. I’m not the person to work with and I couldn’t take that back because if somebody has big dreams within themselves. I’m not so much about the widget maker, I’m about that person who has a huge mission, a vision and they want to do something big and they want to get bigger and be the person who’s capable of being that person who does it. It’s not so much whether they’re, C-suite, it’s not so much, whether they’re small business, it’s more of that person who’s open, who’s a mover, who’s driven, who has a big dream and wants to make things happen and really gets that it’s not something that we do. Change is not something we do alone to the same depth and we’re willing to go to some of those places that are challenging and shift who they are. That’s who the ideal person is. Most people I work with are already pretty successful, but they want to be more. It’s like what you said, it’s not about people who come to me in my therapy practice to a little more of a mix although I tend to get entrepreneurs there too. They tend to sneak in and that’s how my business consulting started, was with patients who were depressed and anxious because they couldn’t build their businesses. I saw how the two went together and then I ultimately, because of licensing laws and stuff like that, separated out my clinical practice and working with entrepreneurs who had issues of anxiety, depression, just needing to be who they needed to be to make things happen.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. Well that is about most every entrepreneur I know.
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
Except for the reluctant ones. You don’t get the reluctant ones either. It’s like one of the things I’ve really learned, the ones who just are about lifestyle, I’m not the person for them. If they’re looking for somebody that’s really going to be just about, “Yeah, I have a nice lifestyle. Have your dogs, have time to play with your dogs, your kids, travel.” If you’re just about that, there are other people that are better for you to work with. I get excited about having more impact by helping impactors to have more impact. That’s the person that I want to work with.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s a good segue into the impact that you’ve had being published in this adoption law book. Maybe you could catch everybody up. How did you become a part of the book, why, and also how has it led to even though it’s clearly not directly in your genre, some incredible opportunities for you?
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
I love what you do because I’ve been around books and publishing my whole career. I’ve had lots of articles published. I’ve written forward books, which has gotten me clients. I’ve been acknowledged in books; I’ve been quoted in books. I’m working on a book which even just doing that has been amazing. The adoption book was interesting because while in writing books, we often teach people about niching; really being clear about their niche. What I do, shattering limitations, creating things that seem to be impossible, unleashing your peak performance for yourself and your business, that really does go across different things and I’ve done it with people, with their health, and with their relationships. Even when I work in business, what I call culture hacking is like family therapy in business. It’s bringing in different arenas. I’ve done a lot of work in my clinical work. I’ve had one of the first holistic health and business centers in the world based in New York City and so I’ve worked a lot in the health arena, but I’m also an adoptive mom and it’s a good thing I’m a limitation shatterer, or maybe if I wasn’t, I just accepted things, but I have some pretty wild stories about limitations that I shattered in both of my adoptions, things that I was told were impossible to make happen. One of them was, if we can go into too much information here a little bit, I made milk for two adopted kids having never been pregnant. The gynecologist that delivered my first daughter said, “This is impossible.” Well, tell me that and you just spur me right on. It’s like, “Yeah, watch me.” Never tell me that because that’s going to just help me do it. So, I made 75% of my daughter’s milk supply, which turned out to be miraculous because my first daughter was allergic to everything else and would probably close up and she’d blow up like a balloon. I can’t even tell you what it was like those first months of her life. I was adamant about nursing her in the hospital. Navigating the hospital, dealing with the lawyers, dealing with the dynamics, two things came up that got me invited to write this chapter in this book on Adoption Law in the 21st century. One was the fact of how to deal with the hospital and set up a birth plan because getting them to agree to allow me to nurse my daughter in the hospital was about as close to impossible as you can get. The other thing that was very much in line with everything I do in business within ourselves is all about relationship, and adoption is a landmine. It’s a landmine, we know it’s a landmine for the birth parents, for the adoptive parents, but what we don’t often think about is that it’s a landmine for the attorneys as well. Most attorneys in adoption or adoptive kids, they’ve been adopted, they’ve adopted a child, they’re a sibling of an adopted child and so they come to the table with their experience, their trauma and where it fits in the story of what’s happening. Lawyers can make or break an adoption both on the side of the adopted parent who may walk away or the birth parent who may walk away. Being a therapist and working, to me business is all about connection, it’s all about relationships, it’s all about negotiation. Businesses is negotiation, it’s selling all of those things. First of all, you’re in a crazy place. I mean having a baby makes you crazy. Adopting a baby, I promise you because I’ve worked with birth parents, people who’ve had their own biological children in adoption and myself, you get crazier. As a parent, you already are feeling, “Am I adequate? Am I good enough?” Now here you are. We can do a whole thing about that. It’s a very complicated, tender time. It was important to me to write the book, not only so that adoptive parents could have the best beginning for their child. I was insisting that my child had just as much right to be nursed in the hospital as any other baby, but also to help the adoptive parent, the lawyer, the biological parent, to have the most rich time they can have through this and the baby, because the baby is going to pick up the stress of everybody in that scenario, so the more I could help all of those people to work together, I called it the adoption triad, the more I’d be making a difference in everybody’s life. It was exactly what I do. It’s always about shattering limitations, healing disconnections, and really creating. I had one of the first open adoptions in this country, we just didn’t do that back then. Now it’s not uncommon to have an adoptive parent present at a birth. What was interesting about it, not only did it make a difference in people who use the birth plan, adoptive attorneys who read it and said, “Wow.” This really helped me because I didn’t think about my own stuff that I was bringing to it. On the level of being an author, to have a book, a book was reprinted four or five times. To have a book that is published by the New York Bar association and then reprinted so many times, even though I wasn’t working, I did work in adoption some, but it wasn’t the biggest part of my career, gave me an authority. It was really huge, and it’s been huge over the years, even though it’s totally different. Sometimes people ask me the question, “What are you doing in an adoption law?” There were all these lawyers and I think there was another person who did a about the adoption because they drive you crazy as an adoption parent to prove you’re good enough. Whether it’s making a difference in the book, it made a difference for people. Lawyers were the ones who really read it and got a deeper understanding. It also made a difference because when people heard that I did that, it just changed something. The truth is, it changed something for me. I work with a lot of clients who write books and having that book, as you know, it’s a game changer, especially, if you know how to use it. I mean, if you’re not one of those people that just has the books that you gave to your aunt and your uncle and your parents, right? It’s just on their bookshelf. If you really know how to use it, because if you’re not going to use it, then maybe do it for therapy for yourself, let’s be clear about what it is and what it isn’t. If you’re doing it to change the world and change your positioning in the world, then the process of writing a book and everything from clarifying your thoughts to owning your insecurities, to being out there, to being vulnerable, to stepping up and really going bigger, you really get bigger. When you do this, you are a life-changing for author. I don’t have to sell that to you because you know that. People talk about books so much, about the credibility of having a book that you can give out, you can promote yourself, but they don’t talk so much about the internal state of the journey, of how you must change to complete that book, you must change to promote it effectively, and you’ve got to embody authority. You can’t just stand out here, you’ve got to really stand and take your space in a different way.
Rob Kosberg:
I think to your point, there’s a couple of things that it does. You’re thinking at the deepest level which is motivating and empowering and gets people to believe in their stuff even more than they did before. For a lot of people, they have this unconscious magic power. They do things they’ve been doing for so long that they don’t realize what exactly they’re doing to create results in other people’s lives. Writing the book and documenting the steps, the process, the magic, is very powerful for them for additional courses they can create, for more content that they can put into the world which of course just further builds their profile and credibility.
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
It’s huge in so many ways. It’s funny because I was listening to one of your podcasts with Steve Nepolitano. He was talking about putting all the things he teaches, all the things he does in a book. I’m not one of those people that just writes a book, put anything to it in three hours and you’ve got a book. No, it’s value. You’re not going to feel good. People talk about feeling like a fraud. If you do one of those books, you’re not going to feel good. What he said was really powerful and what you just said, when you don’t think about what you do, writing a book, you’ve got to get clearer. You’ve got to own what you’re doing, you’ve got to understand what you’re doing in a way you can communicate it and it makes the process more powerful. That willingness to just put that out there so more people can take advantage of it, it’s a game changer.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. You said something that reminded me of my start in this book career. Bestseller publishing is now 10 years old, but I wrote my first book in 2009 for my financial services company. It was called, Life After Debt. That book did very, very well. It became the number one business book on all of Amazon, Barnes & Noble bestseller. It had nothing to do with writing books. It led to this entire career and tens of millions of dollars in sales and 1000 plus authors that we’ve helped and so many cool people that I’ve gotten to meet, and yet one thing had nothing to do with the other. How have people found you as a client or customer through the adoption law or your other stuff?
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
I have a lot of fun stories. People have found me, lawyers have found me through the adoption book, people who were just kind of looking at me, googling me and then finding that it changed how they thought about me. It puts a human face on it, and it puts a depth and it puts an expertise and then it’s like everything I’m saying becomes more real. There are some fun things like I wrote The Foreword for someone who is a master in healing. One of the things we didn’t anticipate was that I would get clients that came to me instead of him. It was not the intention when he asked me and to write it and he got a lot of clients from it but I got clients too, because what they liked was when they saw I wrote it and they saw a little bit about in my little board, what I did, they started exploring me and said, “Oh, she does what he does. She’s his prime person that he taught, but she does all these other stuff.” They would call me and say, “Can I work with you? Because this sounds really, really cool what you’re doing.” There are other things, it’s like acknowledgements. I got acknowledgements. I had a doctor that I did a lot of work with and he was just very, very good to me. He was very ahead of his time and I was ahead of my time. I was talking about mind and body health, when it was pretty much voodoo, other than psychosomatic illness. He heard me talking to his assistant. So, this is where when you do stuff, you don’t know where it goes. I was on a Saturday morning radio show, his office manager heard me speak and said, “You’ve got to meet her.” So, he pretty much summoned me to his office on Park Avenue and I had just opened my center. He gave me an office in his Park Avenue office, this huge gorgeous office for years. He had very high-end celebrities. I won’t talk names. People used to wait four or five hours just to see him. While they were waiting, as they came in and out, he would put his arm around them or around me. He would say, “You’ve got to work with Dr. Kazlow.” He would write letters on his stationary, all his patients, that they had to work with me for different things. He would acknowledge me in his books without even telling me, and you would read the acknowledgements, know who he was. It would just be a word, just a little word in there and it would come up. Not only was he really gracious and I still to this day have clients that were from him many, many years ago, but it was amazing because just that acknowledgement was phenomenal.
Rob Kosberg:
The power off the written word.
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
People would quote me that I’ve held that little quote and people come to me, they say, “I sought a quote in so-and-so’s book.” The power of that is huge. I’m writing a book now on the resistance paradox and the hidden power drivers. I’m interviewing high-achieving entrepreneurs. Even though I’ve spent decades interviewing and working with them, it’s different when they come to you when they’re stuck, when they’re at different stages. I’m actually seeing things that I didn’t see in the office in the same way. It’s been really very cool; the people that I’m meeting and the people that they’re introducing me to. As soon as you tell people, you’re writing a book on certain subjects, whatever that subject is for you, if the person is a potential client or a resource for media or whatever it is, it just changes things on the spot. I’ve been meeting amazing people. I’ve been getting amazing opportunities, invitations for podcasts, all kinds of things by virtue of me doing interviews. I hope you’ll let me interview you. Private interviews with people because I want to hear the stories that they might not want to tell in public. It’s been amazing. Writing a book from the very beginning of the process all the way through, even though I’ve got so much experience in so much work, it’s changing me. I can feel it. The book is a little bit of a surprise as it’s evolving. Despite all my experience in the arena, it’s like a living thing of its own in a lot of ways.
Rob Kosberg:
Very cool. When can we expect it?
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
I’m not sure because I’m doing this one a little differently. It’s evolving a little differently and looking at different ways that I might publish it. Being a New York therapist, I’m still thinking about one of the traditional routes, even though I can think about all the reasons not to, so I will definitely keep you in the loop about it, but it’s going to be there.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, we’ll want to let people know when, The Resistance Paradox is published and ready to go.
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
If they sign up at my website, they’ll get updates and I’ll be given updates along the way and things that I’m learning because it’s been just such a fun process and I’m learning so much along the way. I know people will have to wait for the whole book to come out. I want to share some of the really cool things that I’m learning.
Rob Kosberg:
Why don’t we do that now? Where can they sign up for these updates? Where can people learn a little bit more, maybe get some information to potentially work with Dr. K.? Where should we send them?
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
My website, it’s drkazlow, K-A-Z-L-O-W.com. There’s a contact sheet there. I would love to hear what people were thinking about regarding what we were talking about today. I also set a certain amount of time each week to meet with people that might want to work with me, that want to look at if there’s something deeper going on that they can work on; for people who are serious and really want to play big, but I do set that time aside and I’m happy, it’s fun for me and really exciting to uncover like, “Oh yeah, that’s really what’s going on.” And then people can see if it’s a fit to work further. I do events, I do masterminds, I do private one-on-one work with people. They can join me on social media. They can go to Facebook Dr. Fern Kazlow Clubhouse. I am loving clubhouse. I see on there a little bit. I’m loving clubhouse. I do a room every Wednesday morning. Eastern time, 5:00 to 10:00 and we talk about all things entrepreneurial, high achiever, peak performance. I’d love to have you and any of our listeners come in because then I can really dig deep. We answer questions, we really look at what’s on people’s minds. The best way to know about all of it, because I share what I’m doing on Clubhouse, I share the notes from Clubhouse, I share all kinds of things, media appearances that I have. Just go and join me at my website. There’s a contact form, but there’s also a signup form on the homepage for signing up on my list. If they want to have any private time reach out and I’d be happy to meet with them.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. Dr. K, thank you for sharing so authentically and really giving your heart today. It’s fantastic to meet you and congratulations on all your success. I love what you’re doing. I love how you’re helping people and can’t wait to see your book come out. So, thanks for being on the podcast.
Dr. Fern Kazlow:
Thank you so much, this has been a pleasure. I’m really excited to share with your audience and to get to know you. Thank you.
Rob Kosberg:
Same.
