The Power Transformation Podcast
The Power Transformation Podcast hosted by Alethea Felton, celebrates the resilience, determination, and hope of entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and visionaries who have conquered adversity and various challenges to create meaningful lives.
With her own inspiring journey of living with autoimmune disease since birth (and now thriving), overcoming severe stuttering, and more, Alethea's authenticity adds depth to intimate conversations with her guests who have overcome extraordinary obstacles.
Alethea's heart-centered, introspective, and engaging style elevates this podcast into a movement that inspires listeners to embrace their inner strength, cultivate empowerment, and rise wiser, stronger, and more courageous to achieve their next level of success.
The Power Transformation Podcast
109. Embracing Joy as a Leadership Compass with Jennifer Mulholland & Jeff Shuck
In the Season 2 finale of The Power Transformation Podcast, Jennifer Mulholland and Jeff Shuck of Plenty Consulting share their inspiring journey of redefining leadership through joy, love, and healing. From the corporate grind to founding an innovative firm, they reveal how aligning personal values with professional purpose sparks profound transformation. Through heartfelt stories and actionable insights, Jennifer and Jeff explore conscious leadership as a practice of presence, authenticity, and resilience. So, prepare to reimagine leadership, embrace joy as your compass, and uncover the transformative power of leading with light.
Connect with Jennifer and Jeff:
Episode 109's Affirmation:
I lead with love and compassion, creating harmony and uplifting others in all I do.
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Welcome to the Power Transformation Podcast. I am your host, alethea Felton, and this episode is the last episode for Season 2. Season 3 is approaching us and I have two incredible guests today that will close out Season 2 on a high note. Yes, two, and those two guests are none other than Jennifer Mulholland and Jeff Shuck, who are the owners of Plenty Consulting. They are two of the most warm-hearted, giving heart-centered leaders that I have met ever, and they just bring such a presence to them in all that they do, and I want to thank you for tuning in today, because it is because of all of you who are subscribers, those who listen, you have made this podcast a success and I have gotten so many incredible guests because of you, and so much is going to be happening in season three.
Alethea Felton:Some changes are going to come with the podcast. I've been doing a lot of planning and thinking and even with me, a lot is happening with me, and if you're new and don't really know who I am, I am Alethea Felton and I coined myself as the resilience architect. I help leaders to master resilience and to transform setbacks into unstoppable breakthroughs in order to elevate their life influence and overall success, and this podcast is all about transformation stories, powers of resilience, and I'm telling you, these guests definitely have a story to share. So I want to jump right into their episode and we begin with an affirmation. I'm going to say the affirmation once and then you repeat it. I lead with love and compassion, creating harmony and uplifting others in all I do.
Alethea Felton:I am absolutely excited, overjoyed today to have these extraordinary guests. As I told you up front, they are the principles of plenty consulting, but that title in and of itself just brings me so much life because of how much they do and give, and you will certainly walk away from the both of them with plenty more in your life and therefore I am so pleased to welcome Jennifer Mulholland and Jeff Shuck to the Power Transformation Podcast. Welcome both of you.
Jennifer Mulholland:Thank you so much for having us. We're thrilled to be here.
Jeff Shuck:Thanks so much. Your energy is so infectious. I love it. Thank you and smile having us. We're thrilled to be here.
Jennifer Mulholland:Thanks so much your energy is so infectious. I love it. Thank you and smile, I would say it's so fun to see you too.
Alethea Felton:Thank you so much, and my mom would say that's a touch of hyperactivity, but it's used in a good way.
Jeff Shuck:So thank you, we need it, I love it, I love it.
Alethea Felton:Of course. Thank, thank you, I love it. I love it, of course. Thank you so much. So, listen, I want to jump right into this interview, but first, what I always do with all of my guests is I ask a fun icebreaker question, nothing that's going to make you shock I'm not a gossip or a shock journalist or anything like that but it's just something fun so that we can get to know you more. And so this is the question. You may answer it in any order. I really don't care if Jeff goes first or Jennifer, but this is your question. The icebreaker question today is if you could be any color, what color? And I'm literally talking like a shade of color, like a crayon color, right, if you could be any color, what color would you be, and why? Oh, I love the question.
Jennifer Mulholland:I know immediately the color I would like I would be is is teal, and I wear it all the time. I have it in my earrings and my necklace. Um, I love it for many reasons. I love the ocean when it is teal. When the sunlight brings out the green and mixes it with the blue, the aqua marine, I just feel calm, I feel at home and I tend to dress a lot in that color.
Jennifer Mulholland:I've studied colors so I'm very attuned to the meanings of them as they correlate with our chakras and our energy centers. But teal is the mix of blue and green, and blue is often represented with leadership, with leading the way, if you will, and open space and open possibility, like you see in the blue sky or the blue ocean. And green is often associated with healing, with plants, with trees, with forests, with the ability to heal ourselves, and so that color speaks to me just because I love, I think it's beautiful, but it's also such a representative. I think two parts of myself that I lean into is leadership and healing. Leadership and wellbeing, that nurturing element. So teal would be my go-to.
Jeff Shuck:I knew. I absolutely knew you were going to say that and you're going to know mine. I absolutely knew you were going to say that and you're going to know mine. Blue, I'm wearing all blue. I always wear blue. It's my favorite color and I think, as Jen was alluding to, it represents the things that I love the most Summer blue sky, crisp fall day, crisp winter day and almost that Caribbean blue that you see, you know the ocean. It just is so warm and nourishing, and even that we have here in Lake Michigan. People don't believe it, but it's a beautiful lake and it looks that blue, it's just, it's calming, it's reassuring, it's subtle, it's understated, it's sunny.
Alethea Felton:It's everything I love, Um it's understated, it's sunny, it's everything I love, and it's so ironic that both of you would mention blue at some point is that blue has always been my favorite color since I was a little girl. I love blue, any and everything blue, and so thank you for mentioning that aspect of it. And I will have to say, just both of you alone. Your voices exude that calm, tranquility, peacefulness, and I love it. I absolutely do, and so a lot of the work that you do in dealing with what's considered conscious leadership. But, far more before we get into that, you both are what are considered principals or the leaders, founders, whatever you may say, of Plenty Consulting. Let's just talk about that upfront. Share with us what is Plenty Consulting.
Jeff Shuck:Yeah, thank you for that question. So we say a plenty. Maybe I'll talk about what we do and, jen, you can talk about the ethos a little bit. We say that we help conscious leaders and organizations grow, and I know we're going to talk about what conscious leadership is and how we say it's different than maybe unconscious management might be the opposite of it. It's different than maybe unconscious management might be the opposite of it. But we talk about growth and we talk about growth in three ways. We say revenue, impact and fulfillment. And revenue is we do a lot of strategic planning. We help organizations and sometimes people in their careers figure out huh, what do I do? How do I offer something to the world that sustains me? How do I offer something to the world that sustains me? Impact is doing a lot of leadership development and oh boy, I'm sorry about that. What Can you hear that?
Alethea Felton:No, not at all.
Jeff Shuck:Okay, nope my son just walked in and my dogs went crazy.
Alethea Felton:That's okay, we didn't hear it at all.
Jeff Shuck:Okay. Impact is helping groups and people make a difference in the world. So either companies make a difference in their work, so it's not just about growing their bottom line or their top line, but it's helping grow the positive influence they have on the world. And then the third piece is fulfillment. And fulfillment is a part of growth that, in our experience, is often relegated to something that happens later. If we make a lot of money, maybe then I'll be fulfilled. Or if we do something that's meaningful for others, maybe then I'll be fulfilled.
Jeff Shuck:And a lot of our work is helping people find that fulfillment intrinsically as they grow. So we do a lot of consulting with organizations in strategic planning and leadership development and a lot of work with individuals in those organizations, helping them find joy and even articulate what that is, because so many of us think that joy is something that happens later, on the weekends, not something that we live into and express every day. So that's the what we do. Jen, do you want to talk a little bit about the ethos and why we do it and what we believe?
Jennifer Mulholland:Yeah, I think the segue there is, our orientation is that every organization whether you're for profit or not in profit, or a community or a collective or a movement, it's all made of people and people. We need the same thing, we want the same thing. We want to be seen, we want to be heard, we want to matter, we want to provide and create value, and so that's really our lens, at which we focus on the human, the people that make up the passions, the purpose, the momentum, the direction for the organization, rather than the reverse, and so that's really how we look at creating a world of plenty for everyone, which is our ethos. It's what would this world be like if we actually hold back from how we define abundance, how we define enoughness, the idea that what if there was enough to go around? What if we actually were not competing with each other, even though there's a lot of messages and a lot of examples that we are? But what if we were actually competing, with a mindset called scarcity, that there's limit, there's lack, that there's not enough? And so that really is our frame, at which we believe there is a world of resources and possibility and goodness and harmony and impact in the world. What if we could harness and channel our attention to focus on that, cultivating that rather than the lack of?
Jennifer Mulholland:The second idea that supports this, the kind of frame of there's a world of plenty for everyone, is the idea that actually, what if we have enough right now? And not to say that you know there's? There's plenty of people that are struggling to put food on the table and don't have a safe environment to go to sleep in and don't even have a roof over their heads. So I'm not saying we all have equal or equity in the resources, but what if, wherever we were today, could we look at our lives from a place of abundance? What could we bring our attention to that we have to be grateful for? What are the blessings? What are those little moments? What is around us right now? What do we have that we can bring our attention and gratitude for? Because once we start to train that muscle and be in gratitude, no matter what the external environment looks like, we we can usher more things to be grateful for, more blessings.
Jennifer Mulholland:And then, underneath that is really the crux of most of our work. It's the idea that each one of us is enough right now. Jeff and I have been seekers our whole life and doers and provers and drivers and trying to become better and help others become better. And there's a point at which you have to ask yourself well, what if I was enough right now? What if I had everything I needed to show up to, what's showing up in my life, the things that I can see and plan and predict, and all the other stuff that I can't, the uncertainty what would that feel like if I could really live from a place of wholeness, of enoughness, and so that idea, those three principles, or we call them the ethos of plenty, the idea that there is a world of plenty for everyone, the idea that we have, we have, there is enough out there, we have enough and, most importantly, we are enough. How could we co-create from that place to create the world we seek and the lives we want?
Jeff Shuck:And it's Aletha, I'll just add. It's so circular, right, like when we were seeking growth externally. We're seeking growth for our company as a growth for our product, or growth for our team, or growth, you know, and the impact we make for our nonprofit. But the way to find that, the vehicle to get to that, is through growth internally. And when we all feel whole and complete internally, it's amazing what we can accomplish together. Right, it all works together to try to create the world that we all want to live in, that we all deserve to live in and that we all dream as possible.
Alethea Felton:Yes, and I've heard some key words there that oftentimes you don't really hear in corporate or business settings, and I think this is what sets you apart from a lot of places. Jeff mentioned joy. Then I heard from Jennifer abundance not having scarcity. Abundance not having scarcity, plenty so that there's enough for everybody to go around. This concept of, yes, developing leaders, helping with businesses, helping with entrepreneurial endeavors, but going to the heart and the root of who we are as human beings is so important and I hear that abounding and the fact that not only are you telling people but you're doing the work, and you continually do the work, even outside of the realms of your business. And, jeff, I want to backtrack for a little bit. Let's kind of go on a journey here. Now, when you mentioned joy specifically, jeff, what is your definition of joy and how has joy helped to shape your life, to get you to where you are now?
Jeff Shuck:Yeah, what a lovely question. I mean, without going into too much, we could take a day just to answer that question.
Jeff Shuck:I think maybe I'll answer the second part first, because I think I would have told you until maybe 10 or 15 years ago that joy is what we get as a result of something else, of the pursuit of something else. It's one of the rewards that we get for living life a certain way or achieving our goals. We talked before the podcast started about being high achievers and setting goals for ourselves, and I think I looked at joy as an outcome and through our work, through partnership with Jennifer, through things that I've learned in my own life good and bad, or easy and hard I think joy is the come from that. We bring joy into things. To start with, the joy is an intention and joy ultimately, I think we'd say plenty is us being aligned with our blueprint, is us knowing who we are, knowing what's true for us and knowing why we're here.
Jeff Shuck:We each have something. We've each been designed to be here right now. If you call it spirit, you call it math, you call it science or you call it God, as I would call it, why know? Why is it that we are each incarnated and when we understand what that reason is for ourselves and we live according to it, unselfishly, in service to the people around us. That's joy. So we start with joy. We don't end with joy at the end, and I think that I'll stop there. But that realization comes from working with the people we work with and you know, we all teach. What we need to learn, as Jen would say and I think that's what I've learned through the process is that joy is a starting point of, and a sign that we're living the life that we were designed to live. Wow, that we're living the life that we were designed to live.
Alethea Felton:Wow, and in thinking about this concept of getting you to even create plenty consulting, jennifer, I know that with your background, you had a wake-up call of sorts, so take us on that ride to even sharing with us how this concept of plenty consulting came to be. What were those turning points and the catalysts where both of you saw that a change was needed? And audience I want you to know upfront that they are partners in business, but it's not like they're a husband and wife team. They have their own spouses. And this part is quite fascinating because sometimes we see a man and a woman and automatically think, oh, their husband and wife or brother and sister. It's not like that. So tell us about that journey and starting to form Plenty Consulting. You can start, jennifer, sure.
Jennifer Mulholland:Great question. Well, I would say we would say our journey started lifetimes ago, is the tongue in cheek. But we met on this plane in 1999. And Jeff hired me to join him in a startup company opportunity that he was just hired to be a part of and we instantly had a connection and we instantly kind of um, pursued a connection of trust as we grew in a the dot com, then dot bus days and um.
Jennifer Mulholland:I ended up staying as part of that tech company um for almost a decade in in many different mergers and acquisitions and Jeff ended up leaving a couple years in and pursuing event fundraising and I'll let him share his story after his mother had passed and had died from cancer. So he was compelled to want to really do something in the cancer space and I ended up staying and we stayed in touch and, like life does you know, your paths weave and cross, but for anybody listening, you know we have connections of all different forms all over the planet. Right, you instantly make a new friend or you meet a stranger and you just have a common language and maybe that's for two seconds in an exchange in a coffee shop, or maybe you decide to continue and stay in touch and that's what happened with Jeff. We just were always each other's champions and maybe I don't know how long ago it's about 10 years ago now one of our good friends, david Berry, reached out to both of us and asked for us to get together as a mastermind in Park City and we ended up reconnecting and Jeff and I ended up sharing our different businesses. And Jeff and I ended up sharing our different businesses. I had left, maybe I don't know six years prior, this large kind of Fortune 500 company that I had grown in the corporate ladder, if you will, and was heading up innovation and the consulting services at the time.
Jennifer Mulholland:To get to one of your subtle questions like how did I know I needed to make a change and how did it lead to Jeff and I, my body, started to speak to me in my corporate kind of world? I had a great job, I loved what I did, but I knew it wasn't why I was here. I knew there was something more for me. I was spiritually in the closet. I couldn't share my healing practices and this whole other life I had pursued working with Jungian psychologists and I was apprenticing to be a healer and leading vision quests and having out of body experiences and it was not safe, not appropriate, not okay to share any of that in the tech world I was living in. And maybe that was self inflicted, maybe I chose not to.
Jennifer Mulholland:But over time my body started to speak to me and get my attention so much that I couldn't sleep. I ended up having a parasite in my abdomen that I didn't know was there and it was just creating havoc, and it it literally called me forth to question like, am I here to stay? And I decided over time to make a huge leap and bet on myself. And then I started to kind of pursue this path of blending my leadership, blending my love of teams and strategy with healing, and I started an executive coaching company and then I started a well-being tech company and it was at that time that our friend David suggested we get together.
Jennifer Mulholland:So, long story short, jeff and I spent hours reconnecting and just sharing our business plans and spreadsheets and like looking at our paths and discovering that actually we may be coming at it from a little bit of a different point of view, but our overarching vision and mission was the same and that was really to make this world a better place and make a difference, and so we decided at that time to merge our efforts. Jeff had started Plenty Consulting as a fundraising consultancy before we had reconnected, and then, once we decided to join forces, we kind of expanded the scope and blended our skills and our strengths to make what's plenty consulting today.
Alethea Felton:And, jeff, I'm definitely going to let you speak. But what is so fascinating to me and I want viewers and listeners to just take this part away, the fact that your body was speaking to you, and in more ways than one is that sometimes seemingly bad situations may actually be what we need to catapult us to that next vision fulfillment in our life, to that next goal, or to just elevate our lives in a way that we could never have seen before and to expand our reach. And Jeff, jennifer mentioned that your mom's transition or passing from this earth or realm was really something that started to shift you in a way. I don't want to make assumptions, but share with us a bit about that journey and your experience with founding Plenty Consulting.
Jeff Shuck:I love that question and appreciate it. I want to underline the point that you just made about. I think, jen, you would call it the yellow brick road or the twists and turns that we feel like we're taking, and there's times in our lives we feel completely lost and we're tested to have faith that there's some reason. And I think it was Sid Banks, who's a philosopher who's passed on, who wrote having faith doesn't mean that things always work out for you in the end. It means that you're okay no matter how things work out. And I think we get those things confused right. We think that it's all leading to this prosperous future when we are prosperous right now. And to your specific question, it's a two-parter.
Jeff Shuck:So my mom in 1999 died of cancer after I was 29. So I was still a young man at the time. I didn't feel like I was a young man, but I was young in my career. She had had cancer for five years and I was working with Janet, a software company, and just felt compelled to do something. Quote unquote I'm putting air quotes up if you're listening. I just felt like I need to make a difference. I need to do something in response to this. So, without much experience. I talked my way. I left the company that Jen and I worked at, I talked my way into a fundraising company and found that I loved it and ended up doing that for a dozen years One of the reasons there's a 5k on every block every weekend. You know 5ks, fundraising events, marathons, walkathons, all of that stuff is what I did and eventually a company and a large team of people did together and I really felt, alethea, that I was doing something, that I was responding to this tragedy, that I was making it so other people wouldn't have tragedy, and just felt like I kind of had that part figured out.
Jeff Shuck:Well, the part two of this story is 10 years later, in 2009,. On a random November day, I was actually on site at a fundraising event I was producing. I got a phone call from my sister that I almost didn't answer because it was Saturday morning and I'm busy and I'm important and I don't have time, and I just kind of decided I should pick it up. She never calls me. And she said decided I should pick it up. She never calls me. And she said dad just was killed. I said what? And she said dad, our only living parent was just hit by a car and he had been going out Saturday morning to get his coffee and his morning paper and was killed in a car accident and it destroyed my worldview.
Jeff Shuck:I call 2010 the lost year.
Jeff Shuck:I went into a very dark place and I had constructed this whole life around we can do something, we can respond.
Jeff Shuck:And to be confronted with the idea that, well, are you sure about that? You know, there's this mechanism that's beyond us and and it seemed to just kind of undermine everything that I had believed about what we can do, and so I'll I'll stop there and just say it was a pretty dark year and I had people that really cared about me and I had to reconstruct my worldview about what I felt about God and what I felt about purpose and what I felt about chance and what I felt about destiny, and that led me I think it wasn't immediately then to plenty, but it definitely got me. That was a switchback on the path that got me walking back up the mountain. To you know, there's a piece we need to find first in ourselves, and there's a relationship with, again, the divine universe, the God, however you want to think about it, that isn't just built around our petty needs right. It's built around something bigger, and that was the place, I think, that I was journeying when Jen and I reconnected.
Alethea Felton:Jeff say that there's someone now who may be in one of those dark spaces and they may feel as if there's more they want to do out of life, but where they are right now, they're just stuck in this slump. What would you tell them?
Jeff Shuck:What a question. You matter, you're enough, we need you, you belong. You're enough, we need you, you belong, and even if you don't think that you can find a place that you fit in this world, you belong. It's a different thing, right, and that starts with being able to be your own friend and being able to be your own, confidant, and finding that peace here. You know, we change ourselves and the world changes around us, so I think that's probably where I'd start. I believe in you, we need you, your part matters.
Jeff Shuck:What would you say?
Alethea Felton:It's a question. I think it's so pivotal because there are so many stories of those of us who go through grief or, in Jennifer's case, go through sickness or just burnout and exhaustion and stress and just a lot of things that take its toll on our lives as humans, the human part of us. But also there's this deep-rooted spiritual aspect that really makes us the essence of who we are, and if people could get in tune with more of that side and I'm talking spiritually, I'm not speaking of a specific religion. If that's what you practice, great, just like me. Everybody who knows me knows I follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Alethea Felton:But at the end of the day, we're spiritual beings living in this physical realm, in this physical existence, and I think it's so important to remember our worth and the essence of who we are. The face of leadership globally can change if leaders really understood what it meant to be conscious. And so, jennifer, even with you as a healer and going through different official trainings to be certified in X, y and Z, but just from that healing standpoint, what is a brief overview of what conscious leadership is and how, in fact, in the nation and in the world? What's so great about conscious leadership?
Jennifer Mulholland:Well, I would also include the person that Jeff was speaking to in that mix and say that conscious leadership is an invitation to take our power back, to really embody the light that is within us, that is connected to everything, whatever you name that to be, as you were saying, but to really be aware of it, aligned and intentional with how we use it, how we show up and how we treat ourselves. So the person that's lost and in the dark closet right now, or tunnel, or it seems bleak, it's the same invitation to the political leaders that are trying to gain power, you know, and and everything in between organizations and leadership. And the call for conscious leadership is a call for us to be more aware, aligned and intentional with our life, with our spirit, with our soul, with our embodiment as human beings in this form. And so awareness is this, this gift that we have all been given, to kind of take our heads out of the sand and to pay attention to externally, what are the cues that are coming into our field, what are the synchronicities, what are the signs, what is working for us, what is not, and, more importantly, paying attention to our body, which is the gift that we've been given as the vessel, as the channel, as the vehicle to live on purpose, to share our gifts, to share our light.
Jennifer Mulholland:And often what I found, which is how we teach and help others today in our work, when I was in my corporate life, I needed my body to get a. I needed my body to get a very large sign to say pay attention to me. It's the Mack truck moment we talk about like, but there were subtler signs that I was burnout, stressed, even though I loved what I was doing it. It was so stressful I didn't realize stress is stress. We can say it's good and bad, it just has the same impact on you. That was a huge aha for me.
Jennifer Mulholland:So awareness is like paying attention to the, the what's inside, the in formation, the, the information that's coming from within. That is as subtle as I'm getting a rash when I speak, or I feel sluggish, I can't get out of bed, or I'm nervous when I am talking to this person, or I'm procrastinating. I really don't want to do what my boss just asked me to do, and it's how I can't get over this. These are all information that oftentimes we disconnect from. So awareness is like we say it plenty 90% of the game just becoming aware of who you are, what works for you, where you lean in, where you lean out, where you lean in, where you lean out, how your body speaks, and not chalking off the synchronicities of signs as happenstance, like what if they were part of a larger weed that was here to help you become and to be more of you.
Jennifer Mulholland:The align piece is like once we become more aware, then we can say, we can explore is this an alignment with who I am and who I want to be? Does this bring me joy, does this light me up, or does this drain and suck the life force out of me? Am I out of alignment with where I'm showing up, who I'm showing up with, how I'm showing up, the roles that I play? So alignment is really this inner personal rudder where we can kind of tick and tack whether we're on or off course, and only we know that right, we know that for ourselves. So once we find alignment, then we can choose with more intention of how we show up, how we lead others, because, as Jeff mentioned, we only can lead others if we are leading ourselves first.
Jennifer Mulholland:So the work is to become more aware, aligned and intentional for ourselves, so that we can help others do the same in a more conscious way.
Alethea Felton:And you touch on this even when you wrote your book Leading with Light, and we can have a whole episode even just about your book. But I want people to buy the book, read it, things of that nature. But when we talk about showing up and how we are in our daily lives and this connection with being conscious and just aware of it is that you also talk about the importance of the power of presence and how the power of presence helps people in their day-to-day life. But also the premise of your book is about aligning passions, talents and dreams. So when we think about leaders, how can leaders cultivate this power of presence in their daily lives, especially during challenging situations?
Jennifer Mulholland:yeah, maybe I'll tee that up and Jeff can carry um for us. You know, I really believe Jeff and I we don't have an argument, but we we talk a lot about. I'm always saying, like presence is our, is our superpower, and he likes to say it's your superpower.
Jennifer Mulholland:I'm not sure if everybody's, but I really believe it's everybody's superpower because how we how we show up when we, when we go into any newomever we are in front of and when we become aware of that, we can then harness that for good, because oftentimes our presence when I say it's our superpower, it really literally means how present are we in this moment to take in all the information that is right here and to share all that I am with you.
Jennifer Mulholland:It may not be in verbal conversation, it may just be in how deeply I can listen and take you in Mm-hmm. Oftentimes, if I can just share my presence with you, that is all you need, that is the gift. But we underrate it by saying thinking, especially as coaches and consultants, I need to fix, I need to say the right thing, I need to respond. We are starving in sharing our presence with each other and simply sharing space, sitting with a friend, listening. That can heal the world and when we can harness that presence for ourselves as leaders, we make big change just by showing up in our authentic grace, our authentic beingness, and I I can hear myself talking in very kind of broad terms but our presence is so impactful and we have power of how present we are and how we use our presence to make the difference we want to make.
Jeff Shuck:But go ahead.
Alethea Felton:Jeff, what I want you to do is, yes, piggy back on that, but also share the premise of leading with light and how all of that is, of course, focused on conscious leadership. But even when we take that just in terms of the title of Leading with Light, how did that become the premise and the foundation of your book? So just a brief overview about the concept of the book, and again without telling everything, because I want people to buy it so yeah, and I think it does lead naturally from what Jen was saying about presence.
Jeff Shuck:You know, when we talk about presence, we're talking about light, we're talking about the unique blueprint, the unique signature, the unique personality, the unique spirit. Blueprint, the unique signature, the unique personality, the unique spirit is maybe the best word that we all have within ourselves. And leading with light is about finding that for yourself, not being what someone else thinks you should be, or not inheriting or buying the programming you've told yourself on how you should grow up and what you should be like, right, and the connection back to you. Know, jen was talking in kind of these more philosophical terms about presence. I would say one thing I love about the book is we present these ideas in a general way and then we ground all of them, and a grounding for presence is be here now.
Jeff Shuck:Don't get caught up in your future, thinking, your worry, your stress, your scenario, planning, your goal, setting All of those skills that we all learn in our careers that are helpful, that also take us out of what's happening right now that I need to pay attention to, whether it be this budget that someone is bringing to me or the bruised knee that my son has just be here now, budget that someone is bringing to me, or the bruised knee that my son has, you know, just be here now. And in some ways, I think that is really the idea of the book that we we work with people who get to this point in their lives. We work with high achievers right that those are the people who come to us. They've accomplished a lot and or they dream to accomplish a lot and, for whatever reason, they've gotten to a point and have said I think there's something more out there for me. Either I've climbed this ladder and I've gotten to the top, and now it's like is this all there is?
Jeff Shuck:Is this really what I wanted from 30 years in my career? Or they've kind of feel like, whether it's true or not, that they've gotten stuck, maybe twirling around in a side street, and they think there's something more for them and they can't get there Right. And that's the whole. Really, the idea of the book, the subtitle, is choosing conscious leadership when you, when You're Ready for More, and maybe the trick of the book not to say it's a trick, but it's not a bunch of stuff to do Aletheia it's all about how you can slow down, get in touch with your own unique light, be here right now and say, okay, who am I and what? If I took a clean sheet of paper to what I think about myself and what I want, what would I put on that sheet of paper now?
Jeff Shuck:And you know, look, that doesn't mean throw away. If you have 50 years of experience in business, you don't have to throw that away. But it also doesn't have to define who you are next right, and and you, like you yourself, have had changes in your career, you've had epiphanies, you've had personal experiences that have that, that have made you say maybe there's something else out there for me. So leading with light connects back to this idea of present, of when we give ourselves the gift which is presence, when we give ourselves the gift of just being in this moment, right now, instead of wishing we were somewhere else or hoping that we get someplace else. All the information, all the tools are there, including that feeling of belonging and love and spirit that so many of us yearn for. So now I think, jen, I went even bigger and did all the.
Jeff Shuck:I'm not sure I gave you the reason of buying the book.
Alethea Felton:I loved it. Yeah, I loved it and that was perfect. And if a person wants to purchase the book, how can they go about doing it? And also, if a person leader, CEO, executive, anybody wants to get services from you all through Plenty Consulting, share that contact info, how can they go about connecting with you?
Jennifer Mulholland:Well, they can find us at plentyconsultingcom. Our book is there as well, but we have a dedicated book site called leadingwithlightthebookcom. You can also purchase it at Amazon or Barnes and Noble or any place you like to purchase your books. Currently it's in hardcover and paperback and we are going to be recording the audio version on Audible this fall for, hopefully, a winter release. So for those of you who like to listen versus read, we have it coming to you in that form very shortly.
Alethea Felton:I'm excited about that because I'm an audible person, because I can listen to my books while I'm doing something else. As we come to a close here, what I'd like to ask each of you how do you continue to lead with light, even outside of your consulting business?
Jennifer Mulholland:Love the question. I would say it's such a daily practice. I'm laughing right now because my background is blurred, but honestly, I'm sitting in my in-laws garage and my father-in-law is working around me, clueless that I'm on a call. Well, it is. It's the messy practice, right? You want your environment to be a certain way and then it changes and you have to adapt and show up to practice what we're preaching. So every day I feel like the environment is giving me a stage and a field to deepen the practice of leading with light.
Jennifer Mulholland:What helps me stay grounded is having morning gen. Time is getting up earlier and ensuring that I start my day in ritual, and so for me that looks like guided meditation. I love channeling and leading guided meditation for others. I also need it for myself, and some days I love being guided. So I subscribe to Insight Timer. Our meditations are up there as well for others to hear, but I love that.
Jennifer Mulholland:And sometimes I just put on this beautiful spiritual playlist that I have. That is no words angelic, native American flute, and I am in silence. And then I journal and I pick an Oracle card from one of my Oracle card decks. I have them on my phone when I travel and I have them in physical kind of form and that just helps set the intention and create the space for me. I love to write and create the space for me.
Jennifer Mulholland:I love to write. Obviously we both love to write and so making sure that I can fill that cup up first I often compliment that in nature or with a workout but something to make sure that my cup is full first and that I'm in attuned with the light that I am and the higher light. I really pray and I call in and I command for the higher light to partner with me throughout the day for the highest and greatest good of all, not just myself, but whoever I come in contact with. It's my prayer that the light helps elevate us all. So that's my daily practice, in the mix of being a messy human and not being able to control the car door beep and the cluelessness that's around me at times.
Alethea Felton:But what's so remarkable? And then, jeff, I'm going to let you answer. If you hadn't have said that, I know that I wouldn't have known. I can't hear any of that. And all I heard was the sounds of a bird chirping, and that's so beautiful to me. So I don't even know if that was from there or the bird I have down the hallway or what, but I heard a bird chirp. I didn't hear anything else for that. But anyway, jeff, how do you lead with light in your everyday life?
Jeff Shuck:Well, I want to start by saying what Jen said, that the questions, the questions you're asking, are so lovely and thoughtful, and I want to thank you for how intentional you've been and kind with us and generous with your time. Thank you Well. A specific tool I want to underline that Jen already shared is journaling. I started that practice when my dad died. I've journaled every day for at least 12 years straight and it's just a great practice for me to know who I am and have a dialogue with the one person who's going to know you your whole life. You know and it's so. It's something I highly recommend, um, but I think you know it's interesting that you're asking cause we're. We're living in a time, um, we're recording this in the summer of 2024. We're in yet another election cycle. There's a lot of noise out there. We're in yet another election cycle. There's a lot of noise out there, and I find that that is creating a lot of practice opportunities for me. The other thing I've really noticed the last couple of years if you're watching this, you can see I've got more than a bit of gray hair and you get to a certain point in your life where you have experiences that you can count on. All three of us have done things that we've learned. We can rely on ourselves and we learn we can trust the divine and all of that. But there's, I think, a risk of of things hardening of beliefs, hardening of. You can use your experience as a shorthand and it's almost like water If you don't keep it moving, it can freeze, it can harden up. And I'm really finding the last year or two and I think into the next few years, for me is going to be making sure I keep things fluid, making sure I don't rely so much on my experience that I'm making judgments, that I'm prejudging, that I'm assuming that I'm shorthanding my way over actually meeting with people or looking at things with fresh eyes. And I see that everywhere, and I think it comes out in politics because it's just it's it's so divisive at times now, but I see it in other things too, too, where the practice is looking at things anew and saying is this real? Do I know this? Is this information that I need to update for myself, and I always refer to this.
Jeff Shuck:There's a wonderful Buddhist author and practitioner named Pema Chodron. Everyone listening to your podcast is probably familiar with her. She's written an incredible number of things. But there's a book called Comfortable with Uncertainty, which is kind of a collection of her writings, and in the intro she talks about the.
Jeff Shuck:You know, we all have this model of like spiritual enlightenment or or or or maturity. That is like we go into the ivory tower, right, that the more wise we get, we're kind of isolated from the world, we're at peace, we're protected. And she said you know, she writes that the reality of spiritual growth and growth as a leader who wants to lead with spirit is the opposite. It's not marching up into the tower, it's marching out of the tower, down the mountain, into the masses and, as Jen said, into the mess and allowing ourselves to flow into the people around us.
Jeff Shuck:And instead of saying like, oh, I've been there, I know that, I know where they're coming from, I have the answer for them been there, I know that I know where they're coming from, I have the answer for them, asking who you are, how you are, do I know this? And I think that is the practice for me now and I say practice because it's difficult at times I want to rely on my experience, I want to rely on what I know, and most of the time I can, but often it's being intentional about meeting people where they are and giving them a chance to be them instead of who I think they should be. So that's, I think, when I can lead that way in work or outside of work, I'm I'm really helping other people be themselves when they're not being looked at or judged for anything other than who they want to be in that moment.
Alethea Felton:And I can say that both of you today have certainly led with light just in how you have taken your time to be so giving and thoughtful and loving in your responses, and what you have shared today will help others. Continue to let your light shine. You are more of what the world needs, and I will say that it has truly been an honor having both of you on the Power Transformation Podcast, and I encourage every listener and viewer out there to please learn more about Jennifer and Jeff and to support them in their endeavors, even if it's just purchasing a book I know I'm going to get my copy of it too. You have my word on that but, more importantly, show up for yourself and stay in the power of your presence, and I encourage the both of you to do the same thing. You are doing incredible work and continue to know that you are touching the lives of many, and thank you sincerely from the bottom of my heart.
Jennifer Mulholland:Oh wow, Thank you. What an honor to share this time with you. Thank you for your light and all the beautiful work that you're doing in the world on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you usually listen.
Alethea Felton:And remember to rate and review. I also invite you to connect with me on social media at Alethea Felton. That's at A-L-E-T-H-E-A-F-E-L-T-O-N. Until next time, remember to be good to yourself and to others.
