Season 1, Episode 13: “From Corporate to Calling: Brand. Your Voice, Change Your Life” with Yolanda Smith

🎧 Entrepreneurship isn’t just about building dreams—it’s about amplifying your voice and protecting what you’ve built. In this episode of the Dream Doers Podcast, I sit down with powerhouse Yolanda M. Smith—award-winning personal branding coach, business strategist, keynote speaker, and founder of Branding for Success.

🔥 Yolanda shares her journey from corporate leader to full-time entrepreneur, how she turned setbacks into stepping stones, and why your brand is the key to influence, impact, and income. We talk confidence, consistency, mindset, and the legal blind spots every entrepreneur must cover to safeguard their success.

💬 Drop your biggest branding win—or a time you struggled to put your voice out there—in the comments. What’s one step you’ve taken (or need to take) to turn your story into influence?

✨ Follow Jana with the Dream Doers Podcast on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook: @thedreamdoers.podcast and visit my website at www.thedreamdoers.com

🌐 Connect with Yolanda and learn more at www.branding4success.com & https://www.yolandamsmith.com/

📝 Read all the Show Notes (full script) on our blog: https://www.janamarie.co/blog

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✨ Episode Highlights:

00:00 Introduction to Yolanda Smith
01:15 Celebrating Achievements and Mindset
03:21 Yolanda’s Journey from Corporate to Entrepreneur
06:11 Overcoming Challenges and Building Resilience
09:32 Transformative Moments and Lessons Learned
12:25 The Importance of Legal Protection
15:49 Navigating Multiple Streams of Income
18:00 Balancing Family and Business
21:40 Finding Clarity and Focus
25:33 Actionable Steps for Success
30:28 The Role of Legal Shield in Business

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Show Notes – “From Corporate to Calling: Brand Your Voice, Change Your Life” with Yolanda Smith

Jana Marler (00:01)
Welcome back dream doers today. my gosh, I’m so thrilled you all to welcome Yolanda Smith, who I had the pleasure of listening to on an online networking event a couple weeks ago. And my gosh, she brought the fire and goosebumps. I was so inspired. I had to reach out to her and I’m honored that she said yes to being on my podcast today. Hi, Yolanda.

Yolanda M. Smith (00:24)
Hello, thank you for

having me. I’m so excited. Yes.

Jana Marler (00:27)
Yes, so Yolanda

a little bit about her and then I’ll let her dive in because she’s got all of the nuggets and I want her to predominantly speak today but she is a personal branding coach, a business strategist, a keynote speaker and the force behind branding for success. Yolanda helps leaders, entrepreneurs and change makers shape their authentic stories and turn their voices into influence, impact and income.

Again, I’m getting goosebumps just saying it. Her journey is rooted in transformation. And today we’re going to explore how she’s helped countless women take momentum and hidden potential and turn it into thriving voices and a sustainable business. So I just heard that you won the 2025 Stevie Award. Do you want to explain more about that experience?

Yolanda M. Smith (01:15)
Yes, my God, how exciting. Yes, they just announced it last week. ⁓ And the Stevie Awards, the best way I can say it is like, it’s the cousin to the Emmys, right? But it’s for women in business. This particular award that I won was for ⁓ the best coach, the mentor or coach of the year. And so it’s just really exciting just to be recognized globally. This is an international award.

And so it goes out to a very rigorous judging panel that looks at the work you’ve done, the impact that you’ve had helping other people achieve their desired goals, and then they score you. And based on the scoring, you get the gold, silver, or bronze, right? So I won’t know what it is until November the 10th, however. Just excited, I’ve already won as far as I’m concerned. I’m celebrating as a winner because…

What’s more important to me is the fact that they recognize that I’m helping other people. It’s the helping other people. It’s not about me, right? Your brand isn’t about you. It’s about the value you deliver to others.

Jana Marler (02:20)
Yeah, that’s so powerful. And you know what I love more importantly that you said, you know, I’m just I’m manifesting this already. You’re already living in success and knowing that you’ve made an impact. And so that is winning. Right.

Yolanda M. Smith (02:34)
That’s right, that’s right. You know, I told him though, I’m going to take gold. We manifested, right? I’m going to take the gold. I’m going for the gold. You know, I always believe we reach for the moon, right? And if we land on some stars, guess what? We’re ahead of that mediocre mindset that could have said, ⁓ just go around the corner. You know, no, we’re going to go out of the stratosphere and we’re going to knock it out of the park, right? So I got that 10X mentality. Yes.

Jana Marler (02:54)
Yes.

This is the kind of energy that I really connected

with you because there’s, you know, there’s not a lot of, in my personal life, there’s a lot of people I’m around that love the idea of these things, but you’re making it happen. So I was really inspired by you and I am curious, what would you like our listeners today to walk away knowing about your life and your

Yolanda M. Smith (03:11)
Yes.

Well, I think for me, just to give you a little bit of background, I literally was the corporate professional turned entrepreneur. So I spent decades in the pharmaceutical industry, starting my career in pharmaceutical sales. Then I matriculated over into the marketing area, scooted over to the medical division where I really hit my mojo. That’s when I realized that I had a gift for really being able to empower people to educate and engage them.

And so I loved it because it was helping people take responsibility and ownership of their health care in a way that we had never done before. But not only that, training the future leaders of the world. So I’ve been mentoring and coaching for decades. I did medical, went over into the commercial side of the business, and ended my career leading a team of corporate communicators. Who would have thought it? Here’s the goal there. If you take nothing away, you can build a brand that will in… just literally open doors you never thought imaginable. I didn’t go to school for PR or journalism or anything like that. So what do I look like leading a team of seasoned journalists, right, and communication professionals when I’m thinking this is just this little old marketing girl, you know, that did her thing. But here’s the deal. If you can convince people that you can help them achieve their desired goal, you can do whatever you want to do.

You know, they just have to believe it. They just have to believe it. And so, and so I think it all starts with the mindset. You guys, where’s your mindset? Do you think you can or don’t you? Because one of the things for me is that my mother gave me the greatest gift ever. She didn’t have a lot of money. She didn’t have a lot of education. We were first generation college kids. I mean the whole thing, right? But she instilled a level of confidence out of this world.

And she did it over and over and over again throughout my developmental years. And I truly believed I could move mountains because my mom said it. She said I could, so therefore I could. And she told me, she said, you can do anything you choose to do. You just, I just have three rules. She said, one, you got to treat people fairly. Two, trust in God. And three, work hard for it. Just go to work, go get an action, do something. And to this day, I mean, the hurdles, the challenges, the things that I’ve been through, you know, I’m able to overcome because I don’t get stuck in that place of doom and gloom. I just don’t. I just know there’s more.

Jana Marler (05:52)
Yeah. So then in the trenches of building a business and navigating all of life and the exhaustion and the doubt and all the over all the things, you know, what practices and mindsets other than having your mom’s voice in your head, what other practices have you relied on to sustain yourself for the long haul?

Yolanda M. Smith (06:06)
Yeah.

You know, it does start with the mindset period, but I think one of the things that I realized is that there’s something called consistency and action that creates the momentum. And I think for me, you know, it starts with the why. Why do you want to do what it is you say you desire to do? What is it about that? And if you’re able to connect that why and that purpose to your gifts and talent, you’re unstoppable.

That’s just a given. And so for me, you know, working through the corporate trenches, there were lots of ups and downs. I didn’t even have a mentor or coach or a sponsor until I was mid-career. Nobody ever told me I needed one, you know, but I still was curious. I still had the drive, right? That oomph, that thing that said, I want more that would keep me going despite the obstacles. But in 2013, something profound happened and my girlfriend started her own business. was called, and it’s still in existence today, called Girl Talk. And it was a nonprofit organization to help young girls to have belief in self, to have the skills and the tools they need to be confident young women, to go out into this world armed and ready for life’s challenges, right? In addition to helping them find themselves and really understand what their self-worth is. And so when I became the chair of the board of directors,

I said, I want to do more than just fundraise and the foo foo foo stuff. I want to roll up my sleeves and get busy. You see my sleeves are rolled up. Look, I want to roll those sleeves up and get busy. And so I went out there and said, what can I give them? And that’s how I stumbled up on personal branding. And boy, that was just the impetus of what was to later come and just blossom into a full blown business where I work with

Jana Marler (07:47)
Yep.

Yolanda M. Smith (08:05)
I work with entrepreneurs and small businesses, but I also work with corporations doing professional development and leadership training, right? And really helping them align their brand equity with their employees to have a more powerful impact. so it started in 2013, the parents start coming to the workshop and said, we need this. And that was that aha moment where I knew I was onto something. And so I started to level it up and I did it in the company that I worked for.

Jana Marler (08:13)
Yeah.

Yolanda M. Smith (08:33)
for years, just it was the best practice ever. And then in 2018, I started my own business. Yeah. While I was still working in corporate, while I was still working in corporate, yeah.

Jana Marler (08:39)
⁓

I love that. And what a beautiful reminder because so many of us feel like we’re stuck, right? You have to do what we’ve been taught as a society. Go to work nine to five. You you come out, you clock out, you come home. Yeah. And so for me, I kind of had the same upbringing where I had parents, thankfully that instilled a lot in me and they, the same thing. You can do anything you want. And I believed it. And I felt like I was equipped.

for connecting and a lot of the positive things in life. For me, what was hard was when the storms came. And then I said, now, okay, I don’t have the proper tools to navigate some of the hardships that I never expected, you know, and how to sustain my business and sustain my family and my children and keep us all afloat and work on my mental health and make sure my physical health is taken care of. So was there a personal moment that you personally faced a low point?

Yolanda M. Smith (09:25)
Yeah.

Yes.

Jana Marler (09:40)
in your career that you had to get through to kind of transform yourself into pushing through it.

Yolanda M. Smith (09:46)
Yeah, it was that 2018 moment and it was interesting. The company had ⁓ gone 2017, had went through a massive early retirement ⁓ and offered a voluntary early retirement. And a lot of people, my coaches, my sponsors, my allies walked out the door. And I remember being lifted and shifted to a new department. My team was really worried. Things were kind of just crazy. You know how you’re in the midst of the chaos, right? The chaos.

And literally a couple months later and walked the best way I can say it as the boss from hell. That’s how I describe it. I’m not going to sugar coat it. That’s exactly what it was. And you know what? People can relate to that because we’ve all had one, right? If you’ve worked anywhere, there’s been that one person, but did not like me, wasn’t really supportive, just for whatever reason. I don’t even try to diagnose it, but it was very difficult. I got demoted. My team was taken away from me.

This was a devastating time for me. And so I took that devastation and it turned into disappointment and then the disappointment turned into anger. So I went through the phases of it, right? But then ultimately I realized I had two questions I needed to answer. One was, was I going to take any accountability? You know, because we always say things happen to us, but sometimes things happen for us, right?

But sometimes we have to be accountable too and say, okay, what could we maybe have done different instead of the blame victim game? Then number two was, was I going to give one individual the opportunity to define my destiny? And to number one, I said, yes, let me take some accountability because as a personal branding expert at that time, I knew I should have been telling my story. I knew I should have been crossing the aisle and building those relationships the two months prior to her coming on board so that at least people had some type of relationship with me and I didn’t do that.

I was very focused on my team trying to keep them together and so forth. And she was allowed to run the narrative. so it really cost me a lot, but I knew who I was. Thank God. And I was confident in who I was. And so I took that moment as a moment, and this is a huge teaching moment for anyone out there, that when you think about if you’re operating with one stream of income, life can be scary. Because the hand that

feed you is the same hand that can starve you. And that was the biggest lesson I learned right there. My mom was diagnosed with cancer and I was dealing with that. We were building a brand new home. I was having some issues with one of my children. I mean, life was life in, right? Life is life. And then here she comes making it that much more difficult.

Jana Marler (12:22)
Yes.

Yolanda M. Smith (12:25)
threatening the livelihood, my very livelihood. So it was a very eye-opening moment for me. And that was the moment when I said, I’ll never again have all my eggs in one basket. And that’s when I started branding for success. And so instead of taking that moment and running and tucking my tail in, woe it’s me, poor me, I had to turn it around. I turned it around to the extent that I took a leave of absence for a minute to work on the mental wellness, right?

worked with my attorney. Attorney said, Yolanda, you need to go back in there. Hold your head high and show them who you are. And then allow them to help you build your business. And I was like, what? He goes, you’re in the middle of Indiana, girl. Where are you going to get a job like this? And so that’s exactly what I did. And you know, that was probably one of the most empowering, but also humbling.

Jana Marler (13:12)
You

Yolanda M. Smith (13:21)
Moments of my life because I had to humble myself. I had to let the ego go the big title go But I held my head up high and literally two years later. I was tapped on the shoulder to take a role Starting a brand new team from the ground up. I mean it just goes to show you So one of the things I learned from that is not every storm Comes to destroy some come to clear your path

Jana Marler (13:36)
Woo.

Yolanda M. Smith (13:50)
And I didn’t want to be distracted. So I took the promotion, got all my money back, and it even was better than it would have been had I stayed where I was. Come on now. because you had to pay the promotion bonus. You had to bring me back up to level. It was better than if I stayed in the role that I was already in. And I kept working my business and almost two years to taking that role.

I walked out of corporate America so that I could become the boss of me and I became a full-time entrepreneur. And it was amazing, right? Amazing, yes.

Jana Marler (14:28)
Some things that you don’t see in the midst of it, but later on you’re grateful it worked out that way, right?

Yolanda M. Smith (14:32)
Yeah,

but you have to make it work out too. You we can’t just sit by and go, there’s two types of mindsets, right? The growth and the fix. The fix mindset allows life to happen to you. The growth mindset, we make life happen for us. You know, now I’m very spiritual. I believe God has a huge hand in this, but through his grace and my actions, you know, we’re a powerful team.

Jana Marler (14:36)
Yeah.

Yeah, no better team I’d want to be on.

Yolanda M. Smith (14:58)
Yeah,

and truly, you know, when I made that decision to leave, it was a scary decision because you said it best. What are we taught? We’re taught to go to to school, get a good degree, get a job, stay there forever, get the pension, get that, you know, do these things. It’s really, I hate to say it, but I’m gonna say it. It’s that slave mentality, that labor mentality, you know, where you go to work for somebody else, for somebody else versus taking your gifts and your talents and adding value to other people and people paying you for your value.

Not your time.

Jana Marler (15:31)
There’s a quote in itself.

Yolanda M. Smith (15:31)
Pay me for

not my time. I don’t wanna trade time for money. I wanna trade my value for money.

Jana Marler (15:37)
Ugh, that’s so powerful. So then how would you help someone who has a powerful story but maybe they’re terrified to put it out there or even scared of the repercussion?

Yolanda M. Smith (15:49)
Yeah, well, think everything we do everything with intention and strategy, right? And so it just depends because it depends on the current situation. Obviously, if you’re having things going on and you’re still in the midst of that or that’s how you’re supporting your family, we’ve got to be very careful with that. But some of the best medicine and antidotes to things when it’s not going well is to figure out how to fix it and start something else, right? Start something else. So one of the things I say to people often is,

As you look at your life, are you living your passion and purpose? Are you where you really want to be? And if not, even though this may be a thing that your talents say you should do, you need to find something else that will fuel that passion for you. Because if you’re not operating at some point in your passion, in your purpose, it’s hard to be really satisfied, right? It’s hard to find that level of contentment in what you do. And so the side hustle is a good thing.

when it comes to working. You start to create multiple streams of income in different ways. That could be real estate, that could be digital products. You write a book, right? You put out an online course because you’re an expert in something. There’s just ways to be able to do that so that if a storm comes and something is taking from you, you have other things to just hold you steady while you pivot, because there’s power in the pivot, right?

Jana Marler (17:12)
Yes, and that makes me feel so much better because I’ve always been a person who does multiple things and I feel like the outside has looked at me like she’s just not satisfied with one thing or she kind of maybe has an ADHD brain and she’s all over the place. But for me, I said, I just don’t want one thing to ever dictate my finances, my life, my, again, my purpose. And so I kind of dabble in all of the things. I have multiple businesses, you know, and

Yolanda M. Smith (17:17)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Jana Marler (17:38)
I’ve always kind of joked that if I did a marketing shoot for myself, I should wear about nine hats on my head and try to take a picture because that’s what we do, you know, we’re juggling all these things. So how, when you were building all these things and working a full-time job and doing side hustles and building courses, how did you juggle all of that?

Yolanda M. Smith (18:00)
Well, I’d be honest, there’s ebbs and flows. There’s a time where you put your feet on the gas and you just go for it. Yeah, there may be a few sleepless nights, but you just gotta dive in because it’s like building anything. You know the first six months to a year, you really gotta give some head space and some time and energy to it so that you can get it where it needs to be, right? ⁓ And so I think for me, it was just making a decision. What was that outcome I desire? What did I wanna happen? But, you know,

It’s having that conversation too with your family, with the kids, with your husband, your spouse, your significant other and saying, hey, I need your support. I’m not going to be as present as I would love to be over the next three, six months. Let me tell you why. This is what I want to do. having a supportive family is good. And sometimes the family doesn’t support you the way you want to be supported, but you got to remember they’ll come around because God gave you the vision. He didn’t give it to them.

So they can’t necessarily see what you see, but if they just trust you and they trust the process, it all works out, right? And so sometimes it is that, it’s where you just really dive in. I mean, I’m a three time bestselling author and there would be times I sit down and I’m writing and literally I was writing books before AI became popular, right? So when I’m in that zone, I’m gone. So I may be up till four o’clock in the morning just cranking out stuff, cause I’m in that zone.

And my kids and my husband are looking like, what are you doing, mom? I was like, it was so great. It was amazing. You won’t believe I finished the book, you know? And they’re like, she’s just… But then when it’s packaged up and it’s all there, they’re like, wow, this is amazing. I can’t believe you did this. But I think that’s it. I think the other thing too is you can do a lot of things, but don’t get so far away from yourself that they don’t align. Because here’s where it gets hairy.

Jana Marler (19:29)
you

Yolanda M. Smith (19:56)
your brand, somebody has to understand what your brand represents, right? Because your brand is what you put out there to the public and how they will resonate with you. That’s the relationship they have with you, how you articulate your value, be authentic for those genuine connections that are able to stand out. So if it’s too often, it can’t be bubble gum here and a coloring book here and something over here. But if you can kind of keep it in alignment. So for example,

I’m a personal branding expert and business strategist. So what do I do? So I have digital courses. I have digital products. I have books, right? That all tie back in to the branding or the business. Then, you know, I do the coaching. I do speaking. I do corporate training. It’s still all around the thing because I believe you keep the main thing the main thing. Then I also do this thing called Legal Shield where I empower people with access to their rights.

and I want business owners to protect their brand and business. It’s important. So guess what? It ties right back in. But then I have real estate, a pension, know, these sorts of things. So I think the goal is just to understand that you can have multiple streams of income. Just don’t go so far out of the realm where it’s gonna stretch you in 99 different directions and then you really are all over the place, right? You’re all over the place.

Jana Marler (21:01)
Wow.

Yeah, now as a brand person who’s meeting with a lot of people and trying to pull out their passions and their excitement for life, have you ever met someone who maybe was on this path of doing all the things you just described that related and then they were like, no, I’m tired of this. How do I then pivot and how do you take the change? ⁓

Yolanda M. Smith (21:40)
Yeah,

and I have, and I meet a lot of people that way because here’s the thing, a lot of times we have such creativity. We don’t lack the ideals, right? And it’s like, my God, I’m gonna do this. Okay, this sounds good. I wanna do this too. And they’re all over the place. And so what it is is it’s just bringing them back to center. You know, what is the main thing? How do we get clarity? Because truly when someone asks you who you are,

You know, that million dollar minute, I call it your brand signature statement, a lot of people say elevator speech, I don’t say that because most people put their job title in there, and I don’t believe you’re your job title. You know, your job title comes and goes. I want you to align with your ownable assets, right? So not your job title. But when you tell that million dollar minute, when you have that second to just really give somebody a glimpse into who you are, what you do, how you do it, and why they should care,

You you got to know what that is. And so it’s getting that clarity, bringing them back into focus. You know, I’m a firm believer even in corporate and I was in senior leadership and I’ve led a lot of teams, right? So was always about getting them back center and not doing so much at any given time that you lose sight. Because if you believe in the four disciplines of execution, that’s that Stephen Covey thing, right? You can only do two to three things very well. After that, it becomes mediocre.

And so you got to ask yourself, do I want to be great or do I want to be mediocre? Do I want to get myself out of the people pile or do I just want to blend in and I’m okay with that? And so that’s how it goes. Now I give the example of Rihanna the singer, right? When she started singing, that was her thing. Music was the thing. It was the main thing. That’s what she did. So how did she make her money? She’d have CDs at that time or whatever, know, streaming, whatever she do concerts.

Then she started dabbling in little voiceovers for movies and things like that doing, what do they call it? Like the movie scores and that sort of thing. Okay, but we’re still in music, right? Keep in mind, we’re still in music. Then she dabbled a little bit into the movies, but by then she had established herself really as a powerhouse in the music industry. It was then and only then that she started to feel that sexy and go off into the Fenty lingerie.

And from there then came the Fenty Cosmetics that has just taken her to billion dollar status. But what did she do? She kept the main thing, the main thing, start building those streams of income off the main thing, and then started to deviate a little bit when she had her brand solidified and people understood who she was.

Jana Marler (24:13)
Yes, and there’s different seasons of life. For me, it was really hard navigating all of these because I’m a longevity person. So I, in my mind, just expected everything to kind of be a forever thing. And I wasn’t a seasonal person. And I had to learn personally, there’s a season of that. And then there’s a season of motherhood. And so a lot of my listeners and a lot of the friends in my life, we’ve had to navigate.

Yolanda M. Smith (24:22)
Mm.

Yeah.

Jana Marler (24:42)
how to prioritize so that you don’t lose something in the midst of pursuing something else. Whether it be you’re pursuing your family and then you’re putting your job on the back burner or maybe you’re pursuing a new business endeavor and your family might be on the back burner a little bit. But how do you, what would be like three actionable steps you would give the listeners listening in today to do it in a way that’s healthy?

Like you said, communicating with your family is key, but are there three actionable steps you could give to not lose one? That was so much of my story is that I had people in my life that were prioritizing things and completely pushed us out. You know, so the moms that are wanting to build businesses, the single moms that are at home with their kid and they’re dreaming, what are some actionable steps that they could put in place to build and not lose at the same time?

Yolanda M. Smith (25:33)
It’s not possible. First of all, I’m just be honest with you It’s not possible because sometimes where God is taking you so everybody can’t go so I just it’s not possible and but but the people that you care about the most and and that you definitely want to bring along you can prioritize that I am a huge number one audit your calendar put everything on your calendar and audit your calendar that means Exercise that means, you know focus time that means

Date night, that means quality time with the kid. Put it on your calendar because if it’s there and you have factored it in, it can likely happen. Doesn’t mean things don’t move around, but learning that was huge for me. That was huge for me. And then set milestones, set short goals. I’m a proponent of the 12 week year because I don’t believe that if we set goals so far out, we procrastinate and we lose time because we feel like we got time to achieve them.

So I think it’s going after the small wins as well so that you can feel like you’re accomplishing something, but also having the energy to give back versus taking on these monumentous goals and then becoming so overwhelmed that you get caught up in the swirl and almost nothing gets done, right? So it would be that. And then thirdly, I would just say, just be you, be your authentic self.

and do what feels right to you and understand that no is a complete sentence. We don’t have to say yes to everything. No is a complete sentence. Prioritize what is truly important to you and recognize that some things just will not be prioritized at this moment. You know, I love the idea of it, but right now my capacity says I can’t do that.

Jana Marler (27:23)
Well, and communication is key, right? So if you’re raising children and it takes a village, you might have to ask grandparents to step up a little more for the next four to five months. Yes.

Yolanda M. Smith (27:25)
Yeah.

Absolutely. Use your community, your circle, for sure. For

sure.

Jana Marler (27:35)
I love that you

bring up the calendar. For me, I’m a big calendar nerd and I actually have right over here in my home a huge digital calendar because my kids also, they want to know what’s going on and it’s a way that it syncs with my phone. I can communicate with them. They check it every day and I do the same thing. That was a huge practice for me the last few years. If I need quiet time, I need chair time, meditation time for me, I scheduled it in.

Yolanda M. Smith (28:00)
Yeah.

Jana Marler (28:00)
if I

needed to run errands, if I needed to focus, and I really compartmentalized parts of my day. So at this time when my kids were at school, I would work, I would get my XYZ done, and then when they would come home, my calendar was full of them, know, play time with them individually, outdoor time, and people laugh because they look at my calendar and it’s a colorful, I understand the communication that’s happening, it’s all color coordinated, and my kids understand it.

Yolanda M. Smith (28:15)
Yes. Yep. Yep.

Yes.

Jana Marler (28:27)
but not a lot of people tap into that. So are there organizational skills that you see in each of your clients that are different that might help them succeed more than the other?

Yolanda M. Smith (28:37)
You know what? think it’s just so individual. It depends on the personality. mean, you know, I’m a big proponent of the bank and that’s you got your blueprint, your action taker, your nurture, your knowledge. And depending on how they are, there’s going to be different things that work for them. You know, ⁓ I just, I don’t have any one organizational skill. mean, me, my desk is a mess right now because I can operate in organized chaos. That’s just me, right? I can operate in organized chaos.

Then when I get ready to go and I’m going to hit the road and I’m going on to everything needs to be needed, it needs to be night because I got to come home to tidy because then my head is clear again to start the creative process all over. So I think it’s different for everybody, but there’s a lot of tools out there to help people stay organized these days. So they just have to find really what works for them. And the thing is, is that to give yourself grace, right? Don’t be so hard on yourself. Don’t.

You know life, it’s not a big deal. If it’s not crashing down and the world’s not tumbling, don’t just don’t take everything so literal. Just really enjoy the process because here’s the deal. The journey is much better than the destination. Because when you get to the destination and you get to the mountaintop and you get to go, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, well guess what? Then it’s like, what’s next? So literally, don’t.

Jana Marler (29:55)
Yeah, now you want a bigger mountain to climb.

Yolanda M. Smith (29:57)
Don’t get

so wrapped up in getting there that you just forget to be present and enjoy the journey. That’s what I can say about that.

Jana Marler (30:07)
There’s a beautiful song that’s out right now. My kids and I love it so much, but the key that we take away in the song is that the flowers grow in the valley, right? So much of what we think again is at the peak, but there’s so much beauty in every step and everything has its purpose. To kind of spin, I want to take a turn here because…

Yolanda M. Smith (30:16)
and

Jana Marler (30:28)
It’s really easy for me and I know you said it earlier. There’s so many people that have all these ideas and these big dreams. The idea of a partnership or the idea of a business or building something is always there. The practical steps to putting it in place is, you know, a big factor in that. But then once you’re in it, there’s so much that can happen as far as how quickly it can be unwound by going through something legally. Maybe someone sues you a client or

a contract gone wrong. know you had mentioned that you work with Legal Shield. I just joined in to, in my own personal situation, I connected with Stacy Rich and she was like, you know, this is a service I really think that would benefit you. I leaned in a lot in my personal and my business endeavors when working with the court. I learned so much in that time that one tiny thing can take you out financially.

Yolanda M. Smith (31:07)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Jana Marler (31:25)
It can take you out emotionally.

It can take your whole family down, every single thing that you’ve built in your life. So for me, Legal Shield is a huge topic of conversation that I’ve been having lately. Stacy and I just launched ⁓ a passion project is what we’re calling it called Rich Life Alliance. But it’s to connect people like you, businesses, and then ⁓ for me, it’s families, so families and businesses to have access to their rights because if we don’t have access to them and we don’t know them, we really don’t have them.

So can you speak a little more to how important it is for businesses to tap into this type of protection for them?

Yolanda M. Smith (32:01)
Yeah, I think it’s super important. For me, I lost $45,000 my first year in business. And it was just because I had what I call ⁓ raggedy paperwork, right? Those are bad contracts. And I thought they looked good to me. The language sounded good to me. But they were missing some fundamental key elements that allowed people to take advantage of me. And so when I say legal protection is important,

Jana Marler (32:18)
Ooh.

Yolanda M. Smith (32:24)
one of the things I wanted people to understand is that it’s super important to have your house in order because not only is it for your family, but also it’s to protect your brand and business. Everything that you’ve worked hard for, that you’ve accumulated, and you just don’t want to leave it up to probate courts to decide who have no interest in you whatsoever to make decisions about where your thing should go and how it should be distributed to your family.

You know, but not only that, looking at it from a proactive standpoint, because a lot of people feel like they can’t afford legal service. And that’s what we do. We empower people with access to affordable legal services so that they can be proactive versus reactive. One of the things I say is never allow a legal question to become a legal problem, right? And then allow yourself the opportunity to live more and worry less because you know you have protection. You know you have 24-hour consults that you can…

You can get emergency service. You can have somebody there on your side at all times. And to me, that is powerful because you safeguard what is important to you. And that’s usually your family, your business, you know, and you can sleep well at night, your identity, it’s so important. And so for literally, you know, anywhere from a little over a dollar a day to about a cup of coffee a day, you can protect your family, your brand, business.

and literally have somebody there to support you every step of the way. This has been great. This has been a great opportunity to be here with you.

Jana Marler (33:52)
Thank you so much. means so much. You’re such

a fiery, passionate woman and you have such a wealth of knowledge. So I’m really honored that you took the time out of your day to do this. So I’ll…

Yolanda M. Smith (34:00)
Yes, so we

believe people would get protected, you know, and build your brand. Thank you. All right. Talk soon. Bye bye.

Jana Marler (34:05)
Yes, thank you so much Yolanda.